Comments on: The Saddest Children’s Book in the World

By: sarah tauhid

sarah tauhid — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 02:04:45 +0000

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.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:57:35 +0000

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.

By: Anna

Anna — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:04:01 +0000

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.

By: kelli

kelli — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:53:44 +0000

Wow. Beautiful illustrations… melancholy and subtle, yes. No idea what I would have thought of it as a kid.

By: Andrew Wilkins

Andrew Wilkins — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:35:45 +0000

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’.

By: erika

erika — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:19:39 +0000

I think the illustrations are stunningly gorgeous. Maybe it would do better without words at all?

By: Elsbeth

Elsbeth — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:18:24 +0000

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.

By: John

John — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:30:27 +0000

That was awful.

Other books from the publisher include “Waiting for my Zoloft Prescription” and “Waiting for the Propofol to Kick In”