Today’s post comes to you from Hwee Concerning My Daughter is a South Korean novel written by Kim Hye-jin, translated by Jamie Chang, who has also translated popular novels like Kim Ji Young : Born 1982. The book has also won the prestigious Shin Dong-yup Literary Award in 2018. The book is about an ageing mother … Continue reading #WITMonth: “Concerning My Daughter” by Kim Hye-jin
Today’s post comes to you from Nadine Bailey Won-Pyung Sohn’s Counterattacks at Thirty is a sharp, humane workplace comedy exploring systemic disillusionment. Informed by her background as an award-winning screenwriter, Sohn filters the crushing weight of modern corporate labor through traditional East Asian narrative structures, creating a story deeply specific to South Korea yet universally resonant. … Continue reading #WITMonth: Won-Pyung Sohn’s “Counterattacks at Thirty”
Okchundang Candy 옥춘당 by Jung-soon Go 고정순Translated from Korean by Aerin ParkLevine Querido, March 2025 “I still remember that house filled with summer lingering.” As the story opens, the narrator leads us back into the summers she spent with her grandparents, Mr. Go Jadong and Ms. Kim Soonim. Words rendered in crayon carry a handlettered … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Okchundang Candy
If you’re looking for stories that blend horror, humor, and a dash of magic, you’ll find many appealing works by South Korean authors now in translation. One novel that is representative of this sub-genre is The Disaster Tourist, by Yun Ko-Eun. It was originally published in 2013, while the English translation (by Lizzie Buehler) was … Continue reading #WITMONTH 2025: Surreal Stories by South Korean Authors
A 2025 GLLI Translated Young Adult Book Prize Honor Book and the first fabulous volume in a sci-fi duology, Snowglobe is set in a post-apocalyptic, post-climate-change world. Life for the lower class is cold and brutal. Most labor daily to create electricity via giant human-powered hamster wheels, except for the lucky few who live in … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Snowglobe
Written by Melissa Cooper A flurry of kindergarteners zoom past on tricycles, sticks clenched between their teeth, fully in character as Nezuko, the demon from the wildly popular manga Demon Slayer. This series took Japan by storm, captivating everyone from toddlers to teens. Despite its violent story - beginning with the brutal slaughter of the … Continue reading #INTYALITMONTH: Manga, Manhwa, and Manhua
Written by Angela Erickson Those of us who work or live in a world of books know that perhaps the richest terrain for graphic novelists is memoir and biography. As I type this, I can picture the covers of Maus, Persepolis, and Dragon Hoops -- some of the graphic memoirs that I regularly press into … Continue reading #INTYALITMONTH: Graphic Novels of Displacement
Written by Fiona Collins Banned Book Club – by Kim Hyun Sook / Illustrated by Hyung-Ju Ko / Translated from Korean by Ryan Estrada (Iron Circus Comics/2020) – KOREA Korean literature in translation is extremely popular at the current time, thanks in no small part to Han Kang who recently became the first Asian woman … Continue reading #INTYALITMONTH: Banned books in Korea too?
The next couple of posts are going to be the country celebration posters of the last few months. Please note these are not an exhaustive list of the literature coming out of those countries, or even the literature in translation, merely what I have to offer our students, including stories of Korean diaspora - mainly … Continue reading #DecDisplays – August celebrations
On a hot day, how wonderful it is to be able to sit outside in the shade of a tree! And how terrible to be deprived of the opportunity by one person’s greed and selfishness. In The Shade Tree, renowned picture book creator Suzy Lee retells a traditional Korean folk tale. As the story goes, … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: The Shade Tree
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 