When Yeonju, a Korean girl, visits the UN headquarters in New York with her grandmother, she meets Juan, a Mayan boy, and his grandmother.
At the rooftop garden, the grandmothers share stories from their cultures.
Listen to the words of the grandmothers, and hear traditional stories about the sun and the moon from each culture.
(Source: Yes24)
A girl and her grandmother are visiting UN headquarters in New York, where they meet a young boy who is accompanied by his grandmother. The group tour together, then share stories about the origins of the sun and the moon from their respective cultures.
While I wanted to like this - the idea of finding similarities between different cultures using mythology is a nice idea - I didn't find the execution all that compelling. We don't learn much about the main characters or their backgrounds (the way they relate to their own culture and its stories could be very different depending on whether they are third-generation immigrants in the US or tourists visiting from their homeland), and the stories they tell don't seem to have much in common except the sun and moon being siblings (given they are both heavenly bodies that illuminate the earth, this doesn't seem like much of a coincidence).
The author stresses that these are "not just trivial stories", asserting that we can better understand our own and other cultures by examining the context from which they originate. Unfortunately, this is all in the afterword; the narrative doesn't elaborate on the origins of the stories, the cultural contexts, or the lessons we can learn from them, which makes it come off as very shallow. It's as though the author likes the idea of finding connection through sharing culture, but doesn't know how to implement it in the story.
On the other hand, it is a good resource from a language-learning perspective: it uses simple language, and the English translation runs alongside the Korean, so it's ideal for beginners.
Overall, an easy read that disappointingly doesn't live up to its full potential.