Thanks to Amanda Kang, who wrote this review:
In The Shadow Of The Sun by Anne Sibley O’Brien
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I am 13 years old going into the 8th grade, and felt that it was a good fit (part of that may have come from the fact that Mia’s character and I have a lot of similarities, being Korean-American, about the same age, having to go to Korean school/한글학교, etc). In general, I enjoy these kinds of books about semi-hardcore survival (like The Boxcar Children) because it’s exciting to read about people my age staying alive due to their own resourcefulness.
I myself have only ever been to South Korea, although my grandpa was born in Pyongyang and my dad has been on the other side of the border twice. I learned some valuable information by reading this book, whether it’s how heavily a family’s fate depends on the time that one of their children flips her card at a performance, how accidentally dropping an important person’s portrait could send you to reeducation camp, or simply how dangerous it is to be associated with someone/something that the North Korean officials do not approve of. It’s scary, especially at this time. On the bright side, it’s helpful to know that I could change the meaning of my middle name if I wanted to. That’s not something many of my friends can do.
Of course, there is also the element of Simon and Mia’s relationship. I liked how the whole experience of being stuck there brought them closer together, the way they should be as siblings (but who am I kidding? I never get along with my sister). It was nice to see how their working together was what saved them in the end.
Anyhow, I am glad that I read this book and will give it four or five stars on goodreads as soon as it’s published (I also don’t think I mentioned that I have never read an advance uncorrected proof before, so this is a first for me). I believe that it’s really important, especially for people who assume ideas based only on what they hear in the news about places like North Korea (a kid asked me on the playground “why are you reading a communist book? That’s where Kim Jong-un is from, and we don’t like him”), to read this book and books like it, because then they’ll have a better idea of why these things happen while still reading from an outsider’s perspective. Speaking of perspectives, I really appreciated those grey sections in between the different chapters, because it is always better to have multiple viewpoints in a complicated story. I am also glad that those parts–while short–connected to the main story, because otherwise you would just have random parts mixed in with the plot and you wouldn’t get the background of the tertiary/secondary characters that you meet briefly in the narrative.
Because of this book, I now have a better understanding of the more misunderstood side of the country that my family is from, and for that I am grateful.