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| My Name Is Yoon (Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award, 2004) | 
| Authors: Helen Recorvits, Gabi Swiatkowska
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $6.10
You Save: $9.90 (62%)
New (42) Collectible (1) from $6.10
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 34465
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Reading Level: Ages 4-8
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 32
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 9.1 x 0.5
ISBN: 0374351147
EAN: 9780374351144
ASIN: 0374351147
Publication Date: April 3, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Ships immediately! Perfect and New! Has a publisher remainder mark. 1st ed. 2003 Hardcover.
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Product Description
Getting to feel at home in a new country
Yoon’s name means Shining Wisdom, and when she writes it in Korean, it looks happy, like dancing figures. But her father tells her that she must learn to write it in English. In English, all the lines and circles stand alone, which is just how Yoon feels in the United States. Yoon isn’t sure that she wants to be YOON. At her new school, she tries out different names – maybe CAT or BIRD. Maybe CUPCAKE!
Helen Recorvits’s spare and inspiring story about a little girl finding her place in a new country is given luminous pictures filled with surprising vistas and dreamscapes by Gabi Swiatkowska.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
Yoon is Adapting to America January 25, 2008
Yoon is a little girl who has moved to America from Korea. She feels very displaced and is unhappy with having to write her name in English. Korean writing is much more beautiful to her. This story illustrates how difficult it can be to move to another country and learn another language. It's hard and it often implies that a person must give up ways of living that the person holds dear. This story provides a smidgen of insight into this conflict.
A Wonderful Addition the School Library September 20, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is a great ice breaker for those first few days of school. The story is well written, and beautifully illustrated.
Young students can relate to the character, Yoon, on many levels.
What's in a name? Letters, I s'pose. August 2, 2005
17 out of 17 found this review helpful
In 2001 a book came out entitled, "The Name Jar" about a girl from Korea who had moved to America and wanted an Americanized name. Then, in 2003, "My Name Is Yoon" came out with practically the same plot. Normally, I have little sympathy for children's books that mimic their predecessors. In this case, however, there can be little doubt as to which book is the better of the two. "My Name Is Yoon", is a complex tale of imagination, flights of fancy, and gradual acceptance. By contrast, "The Name Jar" was simply okay. You can find ho-hum picture books lining the shelves of most libraries and bookstores around the globe. It is far rarer to find books quite as remarkable as the stunning, "Yoon".
Yoon isn't exactly thrilled to be in America. Wherever she looks, she sees that life is different in this strange new land. In Korea, where Yoon was born, her name meant Shining Wisdom. Despite her father's assurances that it means the same thing here, Yoon isn't so sure. And then there's the fact that when she writes her name using English characters, it's just a series of sticks and circles, whereas in Korean, "The symbols dance together". She's right. They do. Yoon carries her unhappiness to school where each day she learns a new word and makes that her name. One day it's cat. Another it's bird. Still another (and most amusingly) it's cupcake. In the end, Yoon learns to like her new country, supposing perhaps that maybe that being different can be good too. And in the end, she embraces her real name. "It still means Shining Wisdom".
I hate summarizing picture books where the plot, when written down, sounds so much hokier than it feels on the page. What I've just written sounds nice but bland. The book is anything but bland. Yoon's a distinct and remarkable character. With each new name she adopts, she becomes that object in her dreams. For example, when she becomes BIRD she wishes she could fly back to Korea once again. The book also skips what I've come to feel is the obligatory foreign-child-gets-teased sequence. The kind of thing you tend to find in books like, "Molly's Pilgrim". I was grateful for the oversight. "My Name Is Yoon" is tackling more important problems here. The acceptance of one's own self in a foreign environment, for example. Becoming your own name. Becoming your own self. What could be greater than this?
The pictures, for their part, don't hurt. Artist Gabi Swiatkowska is perhaps best known for this book and the title, "Silk Umbrellas" by Carolyn Marsden. "My Name Is Yoon" is good as a story, yes. But the Yoon we see here is a complex original human being. A one-of-a-kind gal. When her imagination soars it takes off like nothing else, aided by Swiatkowska's realistic images. I especially liked looking at the pictures of her in her home. Here, the black and white tiles of the floor bend and twist in strangely surreal patterns. I'll be honest with you, though. The book could've been awful and I still would have loved it just so long as it continued to contain the picture of Yoon floating through her classroom window as a delicious fluffy cupcake.
Realism is what grounds "My Name Is Yoon". Surrealism sets it apart from the rabble. If you're stocking your personal library with only the most essential picture books out there, you'd be doing yourself a disservice not to include this truly delightful title.
Great illiustrations, great message May 1, 2005
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is a wonderful story about a young Korean girl who has moved to America with her family. At school when she write her name Yoon in English for the first time, she decides that she likes her Korean characters more than the English version because, "My name looks happy in Korean. The symbols dance together."
She decides that she would like to go back to Korea because everything is different in America. Every day at school, her nice teacher asks her to write her name on a paper, and Yoon instead writes a different word that she has recently learned. The beautiful illustrations go along with these words, showing Yoon as a bird, cat, and cupcake. In the end Yoon realizes that perhaps America will be a good home, and that, "maybe different is good."
A great story for children to read, to aid in understanding and acceptance.
Young Immigrants Featured Review December 6, 2004
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Immigrant kids recognize that hesitation during roll call when a new teacher gets to their name. I used to dread it, but the experience depended on how a grownup handled these encounters with the unfamiliar. If only all teachers (and immigrant parents) were as wise as the ones in this book! Recorvits' poetic, spare text and Swiatkowska's imaginative paintings explore one aspect of feeling "foreign" -- an immigrant child's name. In a new language and a new alphabet, Yoon's beautiful Korean name seems foreign even to herself. Are you still "Yoon" when people outside the family pronounce your name differently? When they don't know that it means "shining wisdom?" For a child to feel at home in a new country, she needs a loving circle of teachers, parents, and classmates, as well as a good measure of her own courage. Reading My Name is Yoon might compensate somewhat if any of those crucial ingredients are missing.
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