The Saddest Children’s Book in the World
We recently borrowed Tae-Jun Lee and Dong-Sung Kim’s Waiting for Mummy from the library.
Holy cats. Coming from the extended psychotropic sugar high of Seuss, or even the sacchrine high of Milne and Potter, it’s a bit like stumbling out of the latest showing of Terminatatron III into that slightly dusty theatre uptown. You know, subtitles. Five minute slow pans of pigeons and the Vienna skyline. No beginning, no middle and no end. The same.
The first few times I read it, I found the book overwhelmingly melancholy. It seems to just end, without resolution. You can imagine the film version. The child standing stoically in the wan puddle from the streetlight as the snow falls quietly. Just the sound of the wind and the receding streetcar bell. Slow pan of the snow-covered city. Fade to black, roll the credits. Sniff.
Later Anna pointed out the happy ending, but it’s subtle.
The publisher has put the whole book up in PDF form. It doesn’t do it justice.
p.s. I just noticed Waiting for Mummy is actually an Australasian release, and neither Powells nor Amazon have it. Order now at Marburg books, just in time for Christmas!
p.p.s. I should of course mention that the book cover from above came from the Category: New Zealand 8 comments »
8 Responses to “The Saddest Children’s Book in the World”
October 26th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
That was awful.
Other books from the publisher include “Waiting for my Zoloft Prescription” and “Waiting for the Propofol to Kick In”
October 26th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
I protest!!!!!! This is a great book, and it’s available in German. I think that the Kafkaesque vibe works better “auf deutsch” than in English. It is wonderfully illustrated and deals quite poetically with the concept of waiting, something children do allot. Probably better for the Pre-K crowd though. I admit that the English translation is kinda bad. If you can get you hands on the German version, I think they did a better job.
October 27th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
I think the illustrations are stunningly gorgeous. Maybe it would do better without words at all?
October 28th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
I’m the publisher in Australia and New Zealand of “Waiting for Mummy” – in fact, we were the first publisher to publish the book outside Korea. I first saw the book at the Seoul Book Fair in 2005 and the subtlety of the ending is one of the things that appealed to me, along with Dong-sung Kim’s amazing illustrations.
What I find most interesting is the difference between how most (not all) adults and most (but not all) children read the book. Adults skip read to the end and say “What a depressing book”, without finding the happy ending, whereas kids tend to stay on that last page until they’ve found the happy ending, and then take great delight in it. Is this because children are more visually literate than most adults? I like to think so, but there may be another explanation.
I can’t really say anything about our translation except to say that translating from Korean is hard, mostly because there aren’t many translators for that language about. I don’t read German, but the German edition looks great.
A note about the tension in the book. For a Korean reader, the tension is greatly increased because of the historical period the story originally comes from – the 1930s. At that time, Korea was under Japanese rule and many Koreans worked as forced labour for the Japanese. For women, matters were often worse. So, a parent who hasn’t come home isn’t just late from work, but may never come home. The fact that the author was an orphan makes the whole story even more poignant for me.
Anyway, that’s my two bob’s worth. Enjoyed reading your post!
If you’re interested, we’ve just published two new books: a graphic novel called ‘Kampung Boy’ by Malaysia’s favourite cartoonist, Lat, and a picture book based on an extraordinary true story from China’s Cultural Revolution, ‘The Red Piano’.
November 1st, 2009 at 7:53 am
Wow. Beautiful illustrations… melancholy and subtle, yes. No idea what I would have thought of it as a kid.
November 1st, 2009 at 11:04 pm
My 3yold loves this book, and we have to read it again and again. I love the illustrations and I’d be interested to know what your children thought of it.
November 2nd, 2009 at 1:57 pm
We aren’t quite to the stage of reading books over and over. Or even reading books beginning to end. When we get to that stage I’m looking forward to introducing this one to the mix.
January 11th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
i have it. it’s one of my fave.
it is beautiful, ironic it’s sad.
but still love it.
@Andrew Wilkins thanks for publishing this book.