My Name Is Yoon

I enjoyed reading this book as an adult and then to students in general and overall. Nice addition to any classroom library if not a must-have, which it is, in my opinion, if you are a teacher, or just an awesome parent reading and teaching to your kids at home.

I teach newcomers and wanted to expose them to stories of other children’s experience that were moving to a new country. As a Korean American this book made me quite emotional.

I used this as a mentor text within a 2nd grade writing unit on personal narratives, along with several other texts on names including The Name Jar, My Name is Maria Isabel, and The Name Quilt. It fit beautifully into the unit, and is written on a very accessible first grade level. It was a great model for the impact of varied sentence structures and how to craft a character who changes over the course of a story. The illustrations really make this book: they're gorgeous and complement the text perfectly. If this comes out on paperback, I will buy multiple copies to use it as a guided reading group book.

What a gem of a book. My 4yo daughter really enjoys this book and I was able to find a name stamp with a similar drawstring pouch.

I purchased this book for one of my fifth grade students who is from Vietnam Nam. She loved this book, which she had read in her reading book, so I bought one for her to keep. I think that she identifies with the young girl in the story. I am so proud of my student as she learns to read and speak in English.

This book is powerful and great to use with kids of all ages.

The book brought back memories of my grandmother who had told a story of her necklace that she let someone hold. That was the last time she ever saw it. This book teaches us a dear lesson, the pictures are beautiful as is the story.

Great book for the beginning of the school year

I'm not sure what to think about this book. Yoon arrives in USA from Korea together with her parents. Compared to them, she is not really happy in her new home and would rather like to go back. In school, she is under pressure to spell her name with English letters instead of using Korean. She makes up different names for herself; she prefers being bird or cupcake than writing her name in English. In the end, the teacher only accepts her when she does change her name and adapt to the school norm. This is a plain story of assimilation and power; it presents an ideology that tells children that society only appreciates them when they apply to an established standard. This has nothing to do with multiculturalism or celebrating plurality; it doesn’t take hybrid cultural identities into account. For example, her parents do not praise Yoon for being able to actually use two languages. Instead she needs to decide and her parents and teacher only express pride when she finally adapts, speaks and writes in English. It is a good book for deconstructing such mechanisms and I really like to use with my university students. However, I'm not sure it is a good for children. I would certainly not want to expose my children to such paradigms without critical review. As they are too young for a critical reading, I don’t think it is a good for younger readers.

I bought this book for teaching practice and it surpassed expectations. The text is minimal but the illustrations are simply extraordinary. Lovely to help children understand how hard it is for migrants coming to school or all children can appreciate that universal feeling of being an outsider.