The Adventure of Living by Paul Tournier

Mar17

Once upon a time when I was in high school, back in the dark ages, I had a friend and mentor who was a big fan of the work of Swiss physician and counselor Paul Tournier. Tournier, who lived and wrote during the 1960’s and 70’s, was a Christian author who advocated for what he called “medicine of the person”, treatment of the whole person, mind, body, and spirit or soul. His most famous and influential book was The Meaning of Persons, published in 1954.

I had not visited with Dr. Tournier since those high school days, but I remembered him as wise Christian counselor, even if his work was a bit over my head at the time I was introduced to it. So, when I saw The Adventure of Living on the used books sale shelf at my local library, I decided to give it a try. It was an especially appropriate read for me now since my word for the year is “venture” or “adventure.” I’ve been trying to live my days as adventures and to venture out beyond my self-imposed limits this year.

I found The Adventure of Living to be helpful and inspiring in my adventurous year. Modern author and psychologist Jordan Peterson has a lot to say about adventure and our need for adventure in our lives, and Tournier reminds me of Peterson at times, except that Tournier is more Christian and a little less esoteric than Jordan can be. In the first chapter of the book, called “An Instinct Peculiar to Man,” Tournier writes, “I should like to depict as I see it the great impulse toward adventure which is peculiar to man . . . ” and later, “Woe betide those, who no longer feel thrilled at anything, who have stopped looking for adventure.”

He goes on to write about what adventures actually are, how they begin, and how they die, creating the need for a new adventure. And using examples from his own counseling and pastoral care practice, Tournier illustrates the risks of taking the adventures that life places before us, the choices we make about how to react to both success and failure, when to follow a new adventure, and how to know which adventure to choose. He writes with wisdom and balance about prayer and meditation and how to experience and know God’s guidance in our small adventures and in the Big Adventure of Life itself.

I suppose The Adventure of Living could be classified as a “self help” or “Christian living” book, but I think it delves deeper than most such books tend to go. It was written before the advent of the 21st century tendency that we have to label and medicate every problem, spiritual or mental. And the advice and exposition of the subject come from a European Christian perspective, but the book speaks to anyone with a Western cultural background, even secular nonbelievers and those of a different religion. I don’t tend to enjoy the self-help or Christian living genres, but I did find this sixty year old book to be absorbing and useful. Mr. Tournier still has a lot to say to our somewhat jaded and over-psychologized age.

I’ll leave you with a couple of quotes that I copied into my commonplace journal just for a sample and a bit of adventurous inspiration:

“What matters is to listen to Him, to let ourselves be guided, to face up to the adventure to which He calls us, with all its risks. Life is an adventure, directed by God.”

“[T]he excitement of adventure rescues us from the sea of introspection that drowns many of those who hesitate. The more they examine themselves the less they act. The less they act, the less clearly do they see what to do. In vain do they interrogate even God on what they ought to do; rarely do they receive any reply. God guides us when we are on the way, not when we are standing still, just as one cannot steer a car unless it is moving.”

The O’Donnells by Peggy Sullivan

Mar11

I knew this book reminded me of the beloved All-of-a-Kind Family series by Sydney Taylor when I first opened it up. And sure enough, this story does for Irish Catholic families what Ms. Taylor’s books did for Jewish families —and for those who are interested in seeing how families of all different faiths live and grow and work together over the course of a year.

The O’Donnell family consists of Papa, an Irish American police sergeant, Mama, a homemaker and former maid, and five girls: Grace, Ella, Margaret, Rose, and Cis. They live in Kansas City in a small two-story house not far from Saint Aloysius (Catholic) School where the girls attend school. The story begins in the spring and relates the family’s fortunes until Easter Sunday of the following year.

The adventures chronicled in the story are mostly simple, but sometimes dramatic, too. Ella, age eleven, is Papa’s best helper who learns how to lay bricks for a sidewalk and drive a horse and buggy from Papa as well as how to cook and do housework with Mama. Margaret, age twelve is the quieter, more thoughtful, sister, and she and Ella are in the same class at school and are best friends. “Ella liked doing things much more when Margaret was there to share them.”

Sensitive readers will want to know that a neighbor’s dog dies suddenly and tragically near the beginning of the story, and a friend of the family is shot and killed near the end of the book. And one chapter in the book tells about how one of the sisters gets typhoid and comes near death, but recovers. None of these events felt too traumatic for children to read about and take in, but your mileage may vary.

I loved the way work and worship and holidays and feast days were all woven into the story and into the rhythm of the O’Donnell family’s lives. Neighbors and friends and relatives are all a part of the story, too, demonstrating how life was lived in community back in the “good old days” of the early twentieth century–even in the city.

So, yes, this book came from Follett Publishing, published in 1956, in the wake of the success of Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family series. And the illustrations are by the same illustrator, Mary Stevens, who did the All-of-a-Kind Family books. Unfortunately, this book about the O’Donnells is the only one Ms. Sullivan published, and it was formerly out of print. Fortunately, a new print edition is now available from Bethlehem Books. So, you can purchase a brand-spanking new copy from Bethlehem, or you can check out an ugly-on-the-outside, but beautiful on the inside, copy from Meriadoc Homeschool Library. I recommend it for your reading pleasure.

Jella Lepman and Her Library of Dreams by Katherine Paterson and Sally Deng.

Mar8

Paterson, Katherine. Jella Lepman and Her Library of Dreams: The Woman Who Rescued a Generation of Children and Founded the World’s Largest Children’s Library. Illustrated by Sally Deng. Chronicle Books, 2025.

I’ve never heard of Jella Lepman, and even though I’ve been in the children’s library world for a long time, I am only cursorily familiar with IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People, and the International Youth Library in Munich, the world’s largest library for children’s literature. Nevertheless, since I love children’s books and own a library full of them, of course I was drawn to this true story of a German Jewish woman who fled Germany before World War II and came back to bring “nourishment for the soul” to the German children after the war.

“It was obvious that the children of Germany whom Jella had come home to help were in desperate of food, of clothing, of safe shelter. Elly Heuss-Knapp, whose husband later became president of West Germany, told Jella that while soup kitchens and care packages were all good and necessary, ‘nourishment for the soul’ was even more important.”

So, Jella Lepman, who was under contract to work with the U.S. army of occupation in Germany with the title of Advisor for WOmen’s and Youth Affairs, became the originator and spokesperson for gathering, translating, publishing, and providing books for the impoverished German children who, after all, weren’t responsible for the war and for Naziism. She began with an International Exhibition of Children’s Books, an affair for which she had to obtain all of the books free of charge from libraries and donors and publishers all over the world. There was no funding for such an exhibition.

Then, Jella had to find a suitable place to hold the exhibition and get volunteers to help clean and ready the building for a book show. The books came form all over the world–from countries that had been enemies of Germany until recently, and the exhibition opened on July 5, 1946. German publishers, authors, parents, and children were welcomed into the exhibition, and Jella soon began her next project of finding a permanent place to house a library for the many books she had collected.

The remainder of the book tells about the library that Jella Lepman began with the help of such luminaries as German children’s author Erich Kastner, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as many volunteers and donors from all over the world, but especially the United States. The library was and is located in a castle, and it made me a bit jealous. All of that room! They even had an art studio where children could paint and draw, inspired by stories read aloud.

Katherine Paterson is a distinguished author in her own right, winner of two Newbery Medals, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the Hans Christian Andersen Award. The Andersen Award is administered by IBBY, the international organization that Jella Lepman helped start. This biography of Jella Lepman at first glance looks like a picture book. It’s picture book size, and illustrated with lovely charcoal(?), chalk (?), and watercolor drawings interspersed with photos of Lepman and her colleagues and the places where she lived and worked. So, sort of a picture book, but the text is written for middle grades and older. And the entire book is 105 pages long. So, it’s not a picture book for preschool and primary audiences.

I enjoyed reading about Ms. Lepman and her work with the library and IBBy in post-war Germany. The biography would give children and adults quite a bit of insight into the time period as well as reminding us all of the importance of books as food for the soul. It reminded me of me of the work that the 21st Century Packhorse Librarians are doing in South Carolina and neighboring states and of the work that private living books lending libraries and librarians continue to do daily.

The Three Brothers of Ur by J.G. Fyson

Mar8

Fyson, J.G. The Three Brothers of Ur. Illustrated by Victor G. Ambrus. Coward-McCann, 1966.

Version 1.0.0

Published in 1964 in England and honored as runner-up for the British Carnegie Medal, The Three Brothers of Ur is set in ancient Ur, a city that is mentioned three times in the book of Genesis as the city of origin for the patriarch Abraham. Abraham’s two brothers, also named in Genesis, were Nahor and Haran. This is important because the three brothers of the title are Haran, the youngest, Naychor, the middle son, and Shamashazir, the eldest, heir to his father Teresh the Stern, a wealthy merchant of Ur. Despite the differences in the names, it is obvious to anyone who knows the Bible that these three brothers of Ur in the book are meant to be the three Biblical brothers who play an important part in Biblical history.

As far as I can tell, Ms. Fyson (an author about whom not much is known), seems to have done her research in regards to life in ancient Sumer/Mesopotamia. The city is made up of Sumerians and Akkadians who manage to get along with only occasional tensions between the two groups. Their religion centers on the worship of the Dingir of the Moon, Nannar, who is the patron god of the city of Ur, worshipped on the ziggurat (pyramid temple), but also the associated worship of family gods called “Teraphim” who speak to the family, give guidance, and ward off the evil dingirs (spirits) that also inhabit the city. The economy of the city is based upon craftsmanship and trade. Slavery is also practiced and portrayed in the book in the person of Uz, an enslaved donkey boy who wishes to become an artisan and sculptor of images.

The story focuses on Haran, the youngest son of Teresh, who is full of mischief and audacity. As Haran gets into one scrape after another, we get to see many aspects of what can be imagined about life in a Mesopotamian city in pre-2000 B.C. Ten year old Haran is a sometimes truant school boy who finds it difficult to learn all of the Sumerian characters for writing. His father, Teresh, is an autocratic ruler of the household whose word is law. The place of women in the society of those ancient times is limited, and yet the girls in the story–Haran’s sisters, Sarah and Dinah, in particular–are bright and interesting in their own right. The protagonist of the book is Haran, but Shamashazir, Haran’s fourteen year old brother, is the one who is beginning to grope his way toward the idea of a transcendent God, more powerful and relatable than the dingirs and the teraphim that his people and his family worship.

Children who read this story, or have it read aloud to them, will enjoy the exploits and misfortunes of Haran, who is a typical rascal of a boy, but with a good heart. Adults will be more aware of the religious journey that Shamashazir and his family embark upon in this book, and which is carried further, I am told, in the sequel called The Journey of the Eldest Son.

The Three Brothers of Ur was somewhat difficult to find in an affordable hard cover edition, and the sequel is even more rare and expensive. Nevertheless, I hope to find and read a copy of The Journey of the Eldest Son soon so that I can experience “the rest of the story.” You may be able to find a copy of either or both of these in a library near you, and Meriadoc Homeschool Library now has a beautiful copy of The Three Brothers of Ur available for check out.

The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly

Feb24

Kelly, Erin Entrada. The First State of Being. Greenwillow Books, 2024.

Newbery Medal winner for 2024 and National Book Award finalist. Erin Entrada Kelly’s science fiction story, set in the final days of the twentieth century (1999), tells about Michael, who’s worried about the future, meeting with Ridge, who comes from the future (2199) via time travel. Theories of how time travel works and what consequences it might have swirl and intersect, enough to make the reader’s swim. But time travel itself isn’t the focus of the novel. Instead it’s a book about learning to live in the present rather than being anxious about the future or trying to change the past.

“Michael smiled and joined her on the couch. ‘How was work?’ he asked.

She smelled like the restaurant, but Michael didn’t mind. If his mother was home, he was happy, even if she smelled like chimichangas.

‘I took every breath,’ she said. It was what she always said. I took every breath. In other words: if she was still here, still breathing, it was a good day, and she was thankful for it.”

The love and wisdom embodied in that quote from the beginning of the book are the best parts of the story. Thirteen year old Michael and his mother have a close and loving relationship. They take care of one another. Michael is a good kid, somewhat anxious and over-concerned about the future, Y2K in particular. His only friends at the beginning of the story are his sixteen year old babysitter, Gibby, on whom he has an innocent crush, and his apartment building janitor and handyman, Mr. Mosely, a kind old soul who takes a special interest in Michael.

I wanted to like Michael, and I did. I even forgave him for stealing canned goods from the local supermarket to add to his Y2K stash in the opening scenes of the novel. Michael is just trying to take care of himself and his mother–in case Y2K really is the disaster that many are predicting. But I wanted him to realize by the end of the novel that theft is wrong, no matter how good your intentions are. And he doesn’t, really. He decides that he has become a thief, and that he is much too anxious about a future he can’t control, but his “repentance” takes the form of surrepticiously donating his stash to the local food bank.

I don’t want to be picky, but this scenario of repentance without confession and restitution reinforces the common and fallacious idea that stealing from a store or large business isn’t really like stealing from a person. The store will be O.K. They won’t miss whatever you took. Michael feels guilty because he hasn’t been the best person he can be, not because he’s taken something that belongs to someone else. I want someone in this story to tell him that he owes the owner of the grocery store an apology and restitution.

Ridge, the boy from the future, has made a mistake, too, and although he regrets his action of using his mother’s untested “time machine”, he never really experiences guilt or asks for forgiveness. Maybe it’s all a part of the theme of living in the present and not worrying about the future or spending time time regretting past actions.

Anyway, it’s a good story with fun cultural references to the late twentieth century (Red Hot Chili Peppers, hanging out at the mall, KB Toys, etc.), but the ethics are somewhat mixed. I like the idea of living in the present and not worrying about the future, but stealing is an offense against an individual and needs to be resolved by repentance and restitution to the wronged party, if possible. If you read this one with a child, these are topics ripe for discussion.

The Wager by David Grann

Feb10

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann. Doubleday, 2023.

Not a tale for the faint-hearted. The Wager is the name of the ship that wrecked in this harrowing story of hunger, violence, and rebellion, not an actual gambling wager. However, these sailors of the mid-18th century were wagering their very lives when they went to sea as part of the British Navy, and many of them lost the wager, so to speak.

As part of the War of Jenkins’ Ear, a conflict between the British and Spanish empires that was really about naval superiority and about which country would rule the seas, The Wager set sail in 1740 as one of the ships in a fleet with a mission from His Majesty’s government: to engage and capture Spanish galleons “weakening Spanish holdings from the Pacific coast of South America to the Philippines.” To fulfill this mission, the Navy convoy of five warships would need to cross the Atlantic and round Cape Horn at the tip of South America.

Ay, there’s the rub. Cape Horn is notoriously dangerous, stormy, and difficult to navigate. The Wager and its crew became victims of that stormy and tumultuous passage, shipwrecked on a small, inhospitable island off the Pacific coast of Chile (Patagonia). And then, all h–l broke loose.

The main thing I learned from this true story is that I never want to sail around Cape Horn in any kind of sailing ship, even a modern one, and I hope to never be in a situation in which I and my companions are stranded on a desert island and starving. Apparently, hunger can make men into monsters–as can the lack of “spirits” for 18th century British sailors. Again, I repeat, while well-written and filled with intriguing details, this is not a story for the faint of heart. It is rather a tale of murder and mayhem, violence and degradation. And there are conflicting stories about what really happened on the island and on the way home for the thirty-three survivors (out of approximately 250 original crewmen and officers) who made it back to England. And to top it all off, the Navy convenes a court-martial when the emaciated survivors return to their native land, and all thirty-three men are in danger of being hung for their ordeal.

This incident in the history of the British navy predates Mutiny on the Bounty by about 50 years, and I had never heard of The Wager and its tragic fate. There’s a reason for that, in author David Grann’s estimation, as the reader will discover. If you are interested in sea stories, the novels of Patrick O’Brian and Herman Melville, and other tale spinners of the ocean, this narrative history will add to your ocean-going knowledge and lead you to more of the same. The book has extensive footnotes and a “Selected Bibliography” in the back as well much information about sailing, and navies, and war, and history of the 1700’s.

Did you know?

“To ‘toe the line’ derives from when boys on a ship were forced to stand still for inspection with their toes on a deck seam. To ‘pipe down’ was the boatswain’s whistle for everyone to be quiet at night, and ‘piping hot’ was his call for meals. A ‘scuttlebutt’ was a water cask around which the seamen gossiped while waiting for their rations. A ship was ‘three sheets to the wind’ when the lines to the sails broke and the vessel pitched drunkenly out of control. To ‘turn a blind eye’ became a popular expression after Vice-Admiral Nelson deliberately placed his telescope against his blind eye to ignore his superior’s signal flag to retreat.”

Ode to Grapefruit by Kari Lavelle

Jan25

Lavelle, Kari. Ode to Grapefruit: How James Earl Jones Found His Voice. Illustrated by Bryan Collier. Alfred A. Knopf, 2024.

The things you can learn from picture books! I had no idea that James Earl Jones/Darth Vader was a stutterer. Ode to a Grapefruit by speech pathologist Kari Lavelle tells the story of Mr. Jones’ childhood and young adulthood and his struggles in learning to work with and through his stuttering.

James Earl Jones grew up in Michigan, and according to this picture book biography, he felt such shame and fear about his stuttering that he decided to remain silent in public for the first eight years of his school career. In high school, James Earl, who never received speech therapy as a child, found something that helped him to speak: poetry. The rhythm and cadence of poetry and memorized lines in plays made it easier for James Earl to speak clearly and fluently. With encouragement from a teacher mentor, James Earl began to speak in class and on stage, and he learned to use his resonant voice and overcome his stutter. Even so, he still considered himself a stutterer as an adult, with occasional lapses in fluency.

I had a good friend in college, Gail, who was a stutterer. Gail taught me a lot about stuttering and how it works and how speech therapists teach people to deal with stuttering. This book felt true to what Gail experienced and what she told me long ago about her journey with stuttering. As I was reading the book, I noticed that not much has changed in regard to the advice that is given to people who stutter and to their family and friends.

To those who stutter: “There are no miracle cures for stuttering. But there are many ways to help people who stutter.” To friends: “Be kind. Be patient. Listen to their message. Don’t try to offer word suggestions if they get stuck.”

And what do stuttering and James Earl Jones have to do with grapefruit? Well, that’s something you’ll have to read about in the book. This biography was published in 2024, and James Earl Jones died in September, 2024. It couldn’t have been planned, but the coincidental publication of the book in the same year of Mr. Jones’ death seems like a fitting tribute to the great actor with a great voice.

Gifts From Georgia’s Garden by Lisa Robinson

Jan24

Robinson, Lisa. Gifts From Georgia’s Garden How Georgia O’Keeffe Nourished Her Art. Illustrated by Hadley Hooper. Holiday House, 2024.

Georgia O’Keeffe, renowned for her iconic paintings of skulls and bones, landscapes and skyscapes, and colorful flowers, was also a dedicated gardener and a warm, welcoming host in her New Mexico home. Her garden in the New Mexico desert not only inspired many of her works but also provided fruits, vegetables, and flowers that graced her table and were shared with friends and visitors.

This picture book offers a glimpse into O’Keeffe’s artistic world, but it serves more as an introduction. It can spark curiosity, leaving readers eager to explore her full body of work, whether online or through other books. The focus here is on her New Mexico garden, where she practiced sustainable gardening techniques to enrich the soil, protect her plants, and cultivate food that nourished both her body and her art.

The author also shares some of the dishes—soups, salads, and desserts—that O’Keeffe prepared for her guests, including a recipe for Pecan Butterballs. As someone who loves anything with pecans, this was a delightful bonus!

This book paints a picture of O’Keeffe as not just an artist, but also a gardener and homemaker who left the “male-dominated” art scene of New York City to create a fulfilling life and career in the New Mexico desert. I admire O’Keeffe’s art, and it’s refreshing to learn how her gardening and love of simple, wholesome food shaped her creative process.

One sentence near the end of the book did leave me pondering: “Georgia grew old in her garden sanctuary, and even when she became blind, she continued to tend her garden and paint.” This statement may prompt children to ask how an artist can paint without sight, a valid question that reminds me of how Beethoven composed music despite being deaf. ‘Tis a puzzlement.

Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope

Jan21

Trollope is fast making a bid to become my favorite of the British Victorian novelists. I love the story of how he worked as a civil servant in the post office for twenty years while writing novels on the side. “He trained himself to produce a given number of words an hour in the early morning before going off to his post office duties.” By this means, he eventually wrote and published 47 novels and 16 other books and became well known in the Victorian book world, especially for his series of six novels about clerical life in the made up county of Barsetshire.

I also like the novels themselves. Trollope lands somewhere between Dickens and Thackeray in tone. His novels are less sentimental and heart-rending than those of Dickens. The reader does begin to care about Trollope’s characters, but we see the flaws in each of them as well as the pathos, and we’re never too surprised or struck down when their lives are a jumble of good and bad as a result of poor and not-so-poor decisions and eventualities. I’ve not yet been moved to tears or deep emotion by any of Trollope’s novels.

Trollope’s heroes and heroines are human and flawed, but Trollope is not so cynical and world-weary as Thackeray on the opposite side. (Vanity, but enjoyable vanity.)Trollope’s books have a lot to say about marriage and romantic relationships, both prudent and imprudent, mercenary and idealistic. But his characters are generally multi-dimensional, not completely out to marry for love or for money or for social position, instead maybe for some combination of the three.

Anyway, I read all the Barsetshire Chronicles last year and the year before, and then I decided to continue on with Trollope’s political series of novels, The Palliser Novels. The Barsetshire novels take place mostly outside London among people who are country people even though they may rich and aspiring to be “citified.” The Palliser books are set in and around Parliament, and there is a great deal of talk about British politics and political maneuvering. It’s all very confusing for an American reader, and maybe even for a current day British reader. But I could just read through all of the political mumbo-jumbo and set it aside to get at the meat of the story, a tale in this second Palliser Novel of a young Irishman, Phineas Finn, who is flattered and cajoled into running for office in the British House of Commons and wins a seat therein. Then the rest of the book is about Phineas’s romantic adventures and entanglements with some parliamentary wrangling and angling thrown into the mix.

Phineas Fin is young and innocent and Irish when he comes to London to take his seat in the House of Commons. And by the end of the book three years later, he has become romantically involved with no less four different women, and yet managed to remain rather innocent, even if he is somewhat older and and wiser.

Phineas is a frustrating and endearing character, a “gentleman” working hard to maintain his own integrity and honor while swimming along in a sea of political intrigue and compromise and conflicting rules and societal norms. He becomes an outsider, then an insider, then an outsider again, all in the space of three busy years. And his romantic and monetary fortunes rise and fall just as quickly. He falls in and out of love several times, considers marrying for the sake of money or position, resolves to give up all money and position for the sake of the woman he loves, and finally ends up with the best of the four women he has been courting. But I wasn’t sure that in the end he would remain happy with the marital bargain he made.

It was a good story. One of the things it made me think about, on this day after the inauguration of our 47th president, was the responsibility that we have to pray for our politicians and elected officials. It’s not any easier now than it was in the nineteenth century to maintain one’s integrity and do the work of government in Washington, D.C. or London or even Austin, TX. I thought about praying especially for Vice-President Vance and for other younger men and women who have been elected to office for the first time. It really is something of a swamp up there, and it’s not easy to know when to compromise and when to stand firm and how to stay out of trouble and how to still keep the courage of one’s convictions.

So, Phineas Finn is the second of the Palliser Novels, and the third one is called The Eustace Diamonds, which I believe has nothing to do with Phineas Finn. Then comes a book entitled Phineas Redux, which I assume is all about our man Phineas Finn again. Will he return to Parliament? Will he become some other sort of public servant? Will his marriage work out? Will the other ladies that he didn’t marry reappear in his life? Stay tuned, as they say on TV.

The House Before Falling Into the Sea by Ann Suk Wang

Jan18

Wang, Ann Suk. The House Before Falling Into the Sea. Illustrated by Hanna Cha. Dial Books for Young Readers, 2024.

This picture book, based on the true experiences of the author’s mother and the illustrator’s grandmother, tells about a seven year girl living in Busan, South Korea, during the Korean War (1950-1953). Kyung, the little girl, sees her family welcome many refugees, both strangers and relatives, into their home near the seashore. Kyung gradually learns through the example and words of her parents that their hospitality in “the house before falling into the sea” is a gift to the refugees but also to Kyung and her family.

When Kyung wishes for things to go back to the way they used to be with no noisy visitors and scary sirens, Kyung’s mother tells her:

“Kyung. Our visitors are not stones we can toss to the sea. They are people, our neighbors, to help and to love.”

And one of the refugees, Mr. Kim, tells Kyung:

“Kyung, do you know why I called your home ‘the house before falling into the sea’? Because without your umma and Appa opening your doors to us, we would have had no other place to go. Soldiers might have chased us farther, until we fell into the sea. Being here with you, safe, is a gift that Sunhee and I will never forget.”

The story reminds one of the story Jesus told of the Good Samaritan, and that affinity is reinforced by the “Questions to Consider” given in the end notes. “How do you define neighbor? Who are your neighbors? What have you learned from a friend? What have you taught a friend? How can you show kindness to others?”

These questions are, of course, optional. Use them or not as you see fit. I would tend toward letting the children with whom I was reading this book ask me their own questions, and there might very well be some questions about Korean words used in the story, about war in general and the Korean War in particular, and about the hospitality and care that Kyung’s family shows to the refugees. There’s a glossary in the back for the Korean terms, and a note about the author’s and the illustrator’s family stories of living through the war.

Recommended for children of Korean heritage, for those who are studying the Korean War and the general time period of the 1950’s, and for children of any background who have questions about war and refugees. It would also be a lovely story to read in conjunction with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Just read it and let the children make their own connections.