Warfare exists as a human practice of ultimate contention, rife with deviousness and brutality and ruin.
Amidst such violence, there are occasional rare glimmers of humanity.
Ann Suk Wang’s The House Before Falling into the Sea (2024) remembers the Korean War (1950–1953) through the eyes of Kyung Tak, a seven-year-old Korean girl, whose family home in Busan serves as a place of safety for refugees from the north. Busan is on the southeastern tip of the Korean peninsula, backed up against the Sea of Japan to the East or East Sea and the Yellow Sea to the south.
The scene opens with the family watching the arrival of travelers that “looked like oval stones,” carrying their worldly possessions on their backs. They are welcomed and hidden away.
Her parents welcome one group of people after another. One fisherman from Incheon has arrived with his daughter Sunhee, and he quips, poetically, “With enemies at our backs, yours is the house before fall into the sea.” Sunhee and Kyung Tak become friends. Kyung shares her sleeping mat. She runs errands. She is sent out to play when she is underfoot.
Sirens sound to warn them to hide underground when soldiers (unidentified in the text) are near.
This book is gloriously illustrated by Hanna Cha. Cha is a Caldecott Honor Award winner, who is known for her in-depth research and rich sketch work.
The House Before Falling into the Sea evokes how much warfare serves as touchpoints in human history. This nonfiction work can serve powerfully as a bridge for elementary readers to learn more about the history of the Korean peninsula, and its reality today, with the 38th parallel and the DMZ (demilitarized zone).
Through a child’s eyes, the hospitality of her family seems wholly understandable but without the adult awareness of actual risks and actual costs (in a time of mass starvation and disrupted society). The availability of a home and implied safety belies the historical reality of destroyed cities, hundreds of thousands homeless and starving, during the war years, which included combatants from the just-founded People’s Republic of China and the U.S. on opposite sides.
This children’s book shows the preciousness of hospitality and care, with a child’s sense of wonderment and naivete, set in a time of severe strife and privation. The moments of cultural politeness and formalities evoke a hunger for normality.
The characters live in the colorful present moments of mutual survival and mutual help. The back story is only subtly and inferentially evoked.
This book is eminently readable, by children and by adults. It offers opportunities for discussions and pondering.
Ann Suk Wang combines the as-told-to experiences of her grandparents during the Korean War and a gentle imagination to tell the story of humanity in The House Before Falling into the Sea. Some cultural and historical notes follow after the story.
Shalin Hai-Jew has worked in higher education for many years. She has edited dozens of nonfiction educational books and authored a dozen with a number of publishers.
