THE ONE THING YOU'D SAVE

THE ONE THING YOU'D SAVE by Linda Sue Park

I wasn't a big fan of this book at first, but once I understood it, it has been a great launching pad for myself and my kids.

Linda Sue Park is the well known author of A Single Shard and A Long Walk to Water, so when I came across this little book with the title The One Thing You'd Save, I was intrigued.

In the book, Ms. Chang asks her class a question, " If your house is on fire and your family and pets are safe, what is the one thing that you'd save?" What follows is a series of students' answers. We don't know anything about these kids, but we learn a little about their lives in their short responses. Some students share out loud and some we read their thoughts as they wade through the difficult decision of what they'd grab. I finished the simple book, set it down, and was a little disappointed. The responses were interesting. It made me feel a bit like I was back in a classroom again, but there was no back info or explanation to each answer. Then I flipped to the back and read the author's note.

This book is a series of poems written in a traditional Korean form called Sijo (Shee-zho). Park explains the characteristics of this style, and suddenly the text form made sense.

Now my kids are working on writing Sijos. We're using the original topic and then branching out from there. One thing that makes writing certain types of poetry challenging is that you only have a certain number of syllables to work with so word choice is everything to make your message understood.

So, if you could save just one thing what would it be? Oh wait ...could you please write that in a Sijo?