I has assumed the title of Ann Sue Hak’s 2024 picture book The House Before Falling Into the Sea was metaphoric–some symbol of something that would happen in the book. It was, and is, but it is also more.
This book is quietly impressive. It is told from a child’s point of view as her world is completely disrupted. Kyung, a young Korean girl, sees unfamiliar travelers approaching her home. After her father welcomes them, she hears “war sirens” in the distance. Her father guides her to treat these strangers as guests, these strangers and the next and the next who arrive, all of whom are fleeing for their lives from the upheaval of the Korean War in the 1950s.
Hak doesn’t give readers detailed explanations in the book–those are held till after the story, in an afterword where Hak explains she’s telling her mother’s story. In the book itself, what we get is a very strong sense of what it felt like–and feels like–in the middle of war or other social chaos.
This would be a good book for kids trying to understand the social stresses around immigration. In this case, Kyung’s home is literally the last home before the sea, and if they were not welcomed there, the soldiers drive the refugees into the sea (or kill/capture them). The house is a literal refuge and a symbolic one.
Illustrator Hanna Cha spent time in both the U.S. and Korea as a child, and her illustrations echo some of the style of Korean paintings.
