Book Description
for I Am the Subway by Kim Hyo-Eun
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
A day in the life of a Korean subway is told in the voice of the subway itself. “I run in one big ring around the city of Seoul each day, sending people off and welcoming them in. ba-dum, badum ba-dum, ba-dum This station is Sindorim. Sindorim station. The doors will open on your left.” At each stop, people get on and people get off. There’s a man who’s late for work, a grandma who’s taking fish to her granddaughter, a student worrying about an upcoming exam, a shoemaker, a mother with two young children, a man looking for work. For each person we get a brief monologue of what’s running through their minds as they ride the subway, while the accompanying watercolor illustrations show them on a crowded subway seat, looking at their phones or staring off into space (or, in the case of the shoemaker, studying everyone’s feet). It’s a train full of strangers, and yet we feel as if we know each one by the end of the journey. (Ages 4-7)
CCBC Choices 2022. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2022. Used with permission.