Both my kids regularly refer to me as 'the crazy cat lady.' When Eldest gets especially annoyed, I get shooed off with advice to conduct feline conversations instead. So imagine my delight in discovering a shared obsession with Canadian Korean cartoonist Seo Kim! Currently Los Angeles-domiciled and...
Here's a narrative I haven't seen often: a not-yet-an-immigration story. Young Aref has one more week left to spend in his idyllic home in Muscat, the capital city of his native Oman. In too-few days, he and his mother will fly to the other side of the...
Some of us should probably stay out of the kitchen – "cooking is not one of your strong points," Eldest remarked gravely the other day after the rice fell and the chicken was way too dry (and we had guests, egads!). To avoid such culinary disappointments,...
As the story begins, the titular 'I' is dead. That's actually not a spoiler – "The day after Meg died ...
Juna and Hector are best friends as well as apartment neighbors. They share regular "kimchi jar adventures," filling the large, clear jar with "colorful rocks and small bugs." One day, Hector is no longer with his grandmother downstairs; while Juna was out, Hector left to...
So when's the last time you took screen shots of book pages and sent them to friends and family because you wanted to guffaw in virtual company? Once upon a time, my middle brother and I would have long lasting giggle-fests triggered by what might not have been...
'The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot' presents a riveting slice of North Korean history Writing one of the most difficult-to-read books ever – Escape from Camp 14 (2012), about a young man’s harrowing odyssey from North Korea where he was bred as a labor camp slave...
"Peace is an offering. / A muffin or a peach" proffered from one sibling to another who sits in bed, casted and bandaged, missing the fun adventures happening just outside his window. Peace is a trip to the beach, enjoying ice cream under an oversized striped...
Headlines in 2009 put Laura Ling and Euna Lee on screens and print around the world. 'American journalists held captive in North Korea' was certainly not a common occurrence. While filming footage for a documentary on North Korean defectors in March 2009, three colleagues from...
In 2009, journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling made headlines around the world, first for being kidnapped by North Korean border guards, then five months later being miraculously released. Such international reverberating news usually begets a book – in this case, two: both Lee and Ling released...
An Indian fakir gets in an old red Mercedes cab at Terminal 2 of Charles de Gaulle Airport and utters his first word – in Swedish – to the driver: "Ikea." Have you heard this one before? Well, no, most probably not ...
Welcome back to the massive media franchise that is Cardfight!! Vanguard, which includes a multi-season anime series, official trading card game (each manga volume continues to be packaged with a limited edition playing card), and live-action film. In spite of a mostly-digital playing field these...
Over a decade has passed since a Suki Kim title landed on my shelves. That she's been repeatedly crossing the "immutable border" into North Korea since 2002 – just months after George W. Bush dubbed the closed country as one of the "axis of evil"...
Spring is coming! Start sharing the joy of rebirth – and all the small surprises that the new warmth brings – with this wordless, magical book from our northern neighbors. Here, even weeds can be the most thoughtful, transformative of gifts. Daddy and daughter – we'll call her Little Red...
Well, of course, the year I'm mostly out of DC, Brando Skyhorse is the Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Residence at George Washington University. Not that I have any affiliation there now (only a leftover GWU ID from when I took a couple of classes 3.5 decades...
This thus-far six-parter has to be the most visually exquisite series in a long, long time. Every panel is an exercise in meticulously rendered details – whether fabric textures, the subtlest of facial expressions, fur moving in the wind, a hair out of place, a cloud...
While the majority of the nonfiction books about North Korea have focused on the extreme deprivation and unbearable suffering of the common citizen – for example, labor camps and slave children born to prisoners in Blaine Harden's Escape from Camp 14, numerous "ordinary lives" in Barbara Demick's...
The Buried Giant – the much anticipated seventh novel of Kazuo Ishiguro – does not disappoint The first question readers will most likely be asking about Kazuo Ishiguro’s seventh novel, The Buried Giant, will be, “Is it worth the decade-long wait?” The short answer is a...
Ah finally, I'm fully caught up with the good doc, having read each of Atul Gawande’s four bestsellers in published order. And how grateful am I to have followed through so methodically, because all that 'homework' certainly made this, his latest, an even fuller read. Here's...
These days, too many young folks know little of life before smart phones enabled virtual instant access. Last century – in the 1990s, that is – something called 'zines' gave voice to angry young voices ...
