Perhaps it’s the first book to be marketed specifically to a young audience, but otherwise I didn’t notice any real difference between this and other North Korea memoirs written for a presumably adult audience.Īnyway, this memoir is the story of Sungju Lee, who was born into a somewhat well-to-do family but had to leave his life of comfort at the age of 12 years old. I believe that YA audiences will enjoy this book, but I also believe that they will enjoy other memoirs just as much.
The blurb of Every Falling Star says that it’s ‘the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience’, but having read a couple of other similarly themed memoirs before, I have to say that I didn’t specifically get that sense. North Korea is indeed a Hermit Kingdom: a true-to-life dystopian nation.
I went into these aforementioned books with prior knowledge because I did my own research, but you really don’t need to do any sort of research with this one - just start reading it. Now, I’ve read several other books on North Korea – Nothing to Envy, The Girl with Seven Names, Somewhere Inside – but I think this one is a great one to start with, as it has background information those other books may not. This riveting memoir allows young readers to learn about other cultures where freedoms they take for granted do not exist.Īnyone who has seen my non-fiction TTT post knows that I love memoirs and I have a special interest in all things North Korea, so it should be no surprise that the first non-fiction book I review for this blog ends up being a North Korean memoir written specifically for the YA audience! Sungju richly re-creates his scabrous story, depicting what it was like for a boy alone to create a new family with his gang, his “brothers” to be hungry and to fear arrest, imprisonment, and even execution. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains. Author: Sungju Lee, Susan Elizabeth McClellandĮvery Falling Star, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience, is the intense memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju who is forced at age twelve to live on the streets and fend for himself.
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