Customer Reviews

Korean Children's Favorite Stories

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A Korean mom living in the US,I've awaited this kind of simple but beautifully illustrated Korean favorite story book.
This book contains the most famous 13 Korean old tales.
-The Story Bag/The Pheasant,the Dovemand the Magpie/The Bridegroom's Shopping/The Bad Tiger/The Great Flood/The Pumpkin Seeds/The Tigher and the Rabbit/The Green Leaf/The Three Little Girls/The Snake and the Toad/The Grateful Tiger/The Three Princess/The Disowned Student-
This book much owes to Jeong Kyoung-Sim's illustration. Her illustraion is charming and elegant. She shows real Korean colors and real Koean old days. You can enjoy the beauty of Korean art with this book.

My youngest child is adopted from Korea. We gave him this book as a gift on his "gotcha" day, the anniversary of the day we adopted him. To him, this book is very, very special and at only 5, he requests it every night. The stories are fables and are very unbelievable but enjoyable if you like fables as many children do. My only complaint is that, because they are old stories, some are insensitive and a little gory. For instance, one story talks about a woman finding a husband for her daughters. One daughter is the "real" daughter and the other daughter is adopted. She is going to give the more desireable husband to her "real" daughter. Another story has something about stabbing with a knife or something to that effect. Overall, though, the stories are good and it's invaluable to have a book from my son's culture.

It is rare to find good Korean fairy tale stories in English. Familiar with many Korean folklores and legends, I found the translation to be accurate and the illustrations very beautiful. With a history of 5,000 years, Korea is one of the oldest civilizations in the world, and this collection of fairy tales is a great way to show Korea's rich folklores and legends to the outside world. I highly recommend this book.

This is really neat, comprehensive book with Korean stories. Most of them are long and so it's probably better suited for older kids.

This is a great collection of Korean Children's stories. The illustrations are great as well. I'd say it is about a 5/6 grade reading level. I bought the book for my young daughter that can't read yet but I like to read the stories to her and she can always read them herself when she gets older.

Two of the stories mention adopted children in an unfavorable light. I know this is just old-fashioned language, but I hope it's changed in the next edition of this book. Otherwise, the stories were sweet and the illustrations were lovely.

"The Great Flood" involves a woman with two daughters, "her real daughter" and an adopted one -- "Now the old woman's own daughter was very much the more beautiful of the two girls."

In "The Green Leaf," an adopted son lies about his father and gets him imprisoned, although they are reconciled in the end: "The youth had learned his lesson. Not only once, but twice, had his life been saved by his foster father. From then on, he became a changed person and grew into a good man."

Some of the stories are a little more dark than I like, but that is how is goes with fairy tales. Wordy pages make it not great for a younger kid, maybe under 6. My son loves it, because it has darker tales.

I bought this book for my children and for me to get reaquainted with some stories that I was told as a child. I didn't recognize most of the stories and a couple that I did was a variant of what I was told. This didn't detract from the book, it's a good collection of folk tales that my children did enjoy.

I was born and grew up in Korea until I was 15, I'm not so familiar with these stories though. Translation was not done well either.