Okchundang candy

A child's unconditional love for their tender, quirky grandparents pivots into a bittersweet coming-of-age narrative in Go's delicate and raw autobiographical tale. The bespectacled narrator spends school vacations at their grandparents' home where simple pleasures--sitting in front of a fan, eating watermelon--prevail. Observing Grandfather's gentleness toward his small, shy wife, the child recalls, "I think I loved watching my grandparents being so sweet to each other because my own parents were so busy fighting back home." Grandfather's premature death of lung cancer prompts Grandma to withdraw emotionally; the now-older narrator tries to take his place, eventually witnessing the physical manifestations of her declining health. Crisp-edged cartoon-style illustrations rendered with loose pencil sketches give the work a handmade feel that parallels the tone of events: full pages of a sunny, colored-pencil childhood darken to smudged graphite comic-strip panels as Grandma's health worsens. Go's focus on scatological details, such as the couples' toilet paper rule of "two squares for pee, three for poop," presages Grandma's later incontinence, which is handled with compassion by her grandchild. It's a meditative graphic novel that twines the joys of living and the pain of loss into one indistinguishable braid. All characters cue as East Asian. Ages 10--14. (Mar.)

Go reflects on the experience of watching her beloved grandparents grow older and weaker. The young narrator adores spending time with Grandma and Grandpa. Their interactions have a loving simplicity: Grandpa gently places a hat on Grandma's head when the weather turns hot, and every Jesa Day, when many Korean people honor their ancestors, he gives her a brightly colored okchundang candy. As the book progresses and the narrator matures, Grandpa is diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, but he initially conceals his illness from everyone except Grandma. Slowly he weakens and dies. Grandma retreats into silence; a doctor diagnoses her with Alzheimer's, and she's admitted to a nursing home. Mirroring the sweet okchundang, her color fades with time. Told from the perspective of an adult Go reminiscing, this graphic memoir, set and originally published in South Korea, takes on aging and death--topics many authors flinch from--with a rare mix of respect, tenderness, and candor. Love is palpable throughout, too: in the grandparents' enduring bond and in scenes of the narrator bathing Grandma and trimming her nails. Go's illustrations have a childlike playfulness that often tempers the heavy subject matter; characters have rounded, oversize heads, while pencil marks are visible throughout. Themes of familial love and loss will pierce readers' hearts while also offering them both windows and mirrors into Korean culture. An achingly lovely work laced with profound truths on love, death, and grief.(Graphic memoir. 10-14) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.