As Jane Eyre is a coming-of-age story following Jane into adulthood, our book is about a young woman called Kim Ji-Su who is determined to succeed, even though she faces many challenges. Ji-Su is cut off from making friends by her older cousin, and she doesn’t have the same resources as other people. But Ji-Su is not willing to give up. She meets new people who help her grow and succeed, and she eventually finds her place in the world.
(Source: Sophora Books)
Not as good as I'd hoped
Pros: This is a "chapter" book that feels like an early middle-grade reader. Several pages of simple text per chapter, large font, with a single rudimentary illustration. With 8 chapters, there's about 70 pages of actual reading. Each chapter took me between 15-20 minutes to get through, first reading through with the audio accompaniment, and then going back from the beginning to read at my own pace more intensively.
This is the first part of an ongoing story, and each chapter follows the same main character. So the feel is more like a really simple novel than the standard graded reader.
It's neat to feel like you're progressing to being able to read things that feel more like "real" books.
Cons: I read reviews for this book on other sites that said some of the language was awkward. I can't judge that as I'm not a native, but I can say that things still *felt *a bit awkward, what with the way some sentences/concepts seemed almost repeated, right after each other. That's something I expect in children's picture books, but felt a bit amateurish for this kind of book. I did notice at least 1 misspelling in the English introductory section.
This book uses a lot of the 다 ending, which I've heard described as "plain" or "diary" ending. This was my first time encountering that, but it wasn't too difficult to get used to.
As of the time of writing this review, this book is graded as Level 7, and I'm not sure that's accurate. I've read several other books graded at this level, and this one was the most difficult to understand, not because of the vocabulary (which did contain a several dozen new words for someone who is at 1300 known words in Kimchi Reader), but because of the grammar.
There is a vocabulary and grammar appendix at the back of the book, but none of the grammar is explained, just giving a one-word equivalent. However, when I met a new grammar construct and looked it up in the back, several times the explanation didn't seem to fit with the actual sentence, leading me to think they left out a lot of nuance or even missed some of the grammar usages entirely.
There's no translation available to check if you understood the content correctly.
I ended up typing things into Kimchi Reader or a translator to try to understand some of the meanings in a more holistic way. It was still somewhat comprehensible for me, but I'd guess it would be better graded at Level 8, or maybe even 9.
As for the story itself, it's billed as a reimagining of Jane Eyre, but except for the fact that Jisu is an orphaned(?) girl abused by her elders, there isn't much similar. The story seems to diverge wildly from what I remember of reading Jane Eyre. I won't spoil it. I don't think it actually matters too much, since I and probably everyone isn't actually reading this for pure enjoyment of the storytelling. However, this might not be a con, but it is relevant in that you can't understand things from English-memory context, like you might be able to with a book that was actually translated from English, like Harry Potter or the Little Prince.
The series supposedly continues on with further books, but I won't be reading them. I'm still open to trying the other series from these same authors when I'm ready for slightly higher level content.
However, if you're looking for any single graded reader at Level 7, TTMIK's Easy Korean Reading for Beginners is far superior to this, in my opinion. Both in execution and in "fun" level.