Book Review: The Name Jar
Yangsook Choi wrote and illustrated this book about Unhei (Yoon-hye), a young girl from South Korea who moves to the U. S. She struggles with ideas of assimilation and difference in Cultures.
While she is proud of her name, Unhei finds that Americans have trouble pronouncing her name, coming up with such mangled attempts like you hey, hey you.
She wonders if it would be better for her to choose a new name that would be easier to pronounce. When she tells her classmates she is thinking about a new name, they set up a name jar where the students begin to drop in possible names for Unhei to choose from.
The first single page shows Unhei, a young Korean girl, her skin light brown, her hair dark, short and straight, looking out a bus window on her first day of school.
The first two-page spread is a wonderful little flashback of Unhei with her grandmother, who has given her a name stamp or chop with her name carved on a wooden block in Korean characters. Over the course of the story many people, including her mother, try to talk Unhei out of a new name, but she remains undecided until the end of the story.
Choi gives us a glimpse of this mixed neighborhood where Unhei can see Fadil’s Falafels, Tony’s Pizza, Dot’s Deli, or even Kim’s Market. It’s a neighborhood where all the signs are in Korean…
