Jeanne K. Pettenati, J.D. (Children's Literature)
A young Korean girl and her family immigrate to America, hoping to create a better life. This poignant story begins when Young Ju is four years old and ends when she is going off to college. Despite her age, Young Ju is old beyond her years. Unlike many of the American classmates she meets, this child of immigrants deals with poverty, abuse and living up to an ideal expected by her elders. Sadness permeates her short life--her father's alcoholism, her parents' disintegrating marriage, incomplete friendships and trying to make sense of an incomprehensible world. There are moments where light shines in her bleak world, but not many. After enduring many, many disappointments, Young Ju's life brightens when her parents separate. Her mother becomes a friend, an ally. Together with her younger brother, they make a new beginning. There is the promise of a better world, after all. This book enriches readers' understanding of Korean culture and of the immigrant experience shared by many. 2001, Front Street, $15.95. Ages 12 up.

Cherri Jones (Children's Literature)
When four-year-old Young Ju learns she is going to move to America, she thinks her family is on its way to heaven and that she will see her deceased grandfather, Harabugi, when they arrive. Bitterly disappointed when she learns this is not true, her American uncle tries to console her by telling her that perhaps it is "a step from heaven." Young Ju believes that "In Mi Gook (America), everyone will be happy and filled with love." Unfortunately, her family brings its own problems with them, and as her father fails to find a job that will lift them from their poverty, his drinking and abuse worsen. Young Ju finds refuge in her school. She spends as much time as she can with Amanda, her American friend--a friend her father views with suspicion since she is outside the Korean culture--and keeps her family's poverty a secret. The many trials of an immigrant family adjusting to life in this country appear in stark clarity through Young Ju's eyes. The struggle to assimilate and to deal with her father's abuse will leave a deep impression on middle school or high school readers. 2001, Front Street, $15.95. Ages 12 up.

Susie Wilde (Children's Literature)
An Na's A Step from Heaven is the story of Young Ju, a Korean girl whose family escapes poverty by immigrating to America. The novel escapes cliché through the author's poignant telling. Na begins this narrative when Young Ju is a small child. She persuades and hooks readers by combining lyricism with a limited viewpoint to communicate character and situation. We quickly know and worry about this little girl who is nurtured by her mother and grandmother's love, but lives in a fragile world easily shattered by her father's drinking and abuse. Young Ju rarely gets to hear her mother's squeaky-shoes laugh and she prays to her deceased grandfather to send God down so he can be Jesus again and give Apa his spanking. The narrator might miss subtleties, but the author doesn't. She contrasts Young Ju's innocence with the adults' comments. As Young Ju's mother prepares her for travel to Mi Gook (the U.S.), she tells her daughter to wear the only nice dress you have and try not to raise your arm too high. Young Ju believes she is traveling to heaven and when she reaches the house of her big, round money-eyes American uncle, she is disappointed until told that Mi Gook is almost as good as heaven. Let us say it is a step from heaven. This irony plays out as Young Ju faces intensifying difficulties. Without mentioning age, Na shows us Young Ju growing up through shifting perspectives, increasingly complex imagery and by charting the disintegration of the girl's family life. On first arrival, Young Ju's problems are small. She feels strange as she drinks Ko-ka Ko-la, a dirty black water with "bubbles that bite the inside of my mouth and throat like swallowing tiny fish bones." As the story continues, Young Ju's problems and her awareness become more sophisticated. Poverty, acculturation and her father's growing cruelty plague Young Ju as she reaches adolescence. Na's vivid sensory descriptions pull us into Young Ju's world, make us squirm and wish for relief, even as we admire her eloquent voice. The sights, sounds, smells and poignant images trap us with their power. We know her mother's calloused hands and her father smell of alcohol mixed with ammonia and bleach from his janitorial job. This is a hard book to read, but the ending brings some well-deserved solace to Young Ju and readers who have suffered with her. 2001, Front Street Press, $15.95. Ages 14 up.

CCBC (Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices, 2002)
As a small girl living in Korea, Young Ju Park leads a relatively carefree life, although she is often aware of the unhappiness of her father, mother, and paternal grandmother. Young's four-year-old mind reasons that they are all unhappy because her grandfather has gone to live in heaven. When she and her parents board an airplane, she assumes that they are going to join him. Instead, she finds herself in the unfamiliar United States with no grandfather. Worse, Young's grandmother has stayed in Korea. They have come to America for a better life, Young's parents tell her. But her parents still seem unhappy -- understandably, since they're living with relatives and working menial jobs. In the years that follow, even the birth of a cherished son and the purchase of a home don't make things better. Young's father sinks deeper into alcoholism and depression. For Young, attending school where everyone speaks English and expects her to act like an American girl is challenging enough. But at home she's expected to uphold Korean cultural values, something that gets harder to do as she grows older. An Na's stunning first novel depicts Young's development by showing the complexities of her world, screened through her mind. We see Young, even as a small child, trying to piece events together on an intellectual as well as an emotional level. Her struggle to comprehend her family life leads to a mature understanding of her mother, allowing Young to take some courageous steps into the adult world. CCBC categories: Fiction for Young Adults. 2001, Front Street, 156 pages, $15.95. Ages 13 and older.

Deborah Stevenson (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, July/August 2001 (Vol. 54, No. 11))
Even as a little girl, Young Ju understands that there are family tensions, that her father is an unhappy man, and that his wife and his mother are hoping for better things. Young Ju’s parents hope to find it by taking their daughter and moving from Korea to Mi Gook, the United States, which is a “step from heaven.” That step is farther than anticipated, as the hoped-for financial success isn’t forthcoming and Young Ju’s father continues his abusive ways. As the years go by, Young Ju grows more Americanized, becoming, along with her brother, the translator of English and of America for her family and resenting more and more her father’s rigidity and abuse. This is a quietly but effectively told story, with the first-person present-tense narration broken up into brief titled sections that are more vignettes than chapters; they’re sufficiently connected to create a poignant overview of a life undergoing extraordinary change as Young Ju loses a country, a grandmother, and, ultimately, a father (her father, after being arrested for assaulting Young Ju’s mother, leaves her for another woman). Na has a streamlined, unaffected style that offers childlike focus without being babyish (after wishfully telling her second-grade classmates that her very-much-alive younger brother is dead and reveling in the attention, Young Ju says, “I play with my fuzzies, scratch and sniff my stickers, and think about how nice it is that my brother is dead”). A contemporary and personal immigrant tale, this will make an affecting counterpoint to well-worn stories of Ellis Island. Review Code: R -- Recommended. (c) Copyright 2001, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 2001, Front Street, 156p, $15.95. Grades 6-9.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, Fall 2001)
Young Ju tells of her family's immigration from Korea to the United States and their subsequent struggles in a new country. The brief chapters have the intimacy of snapshots, and images of reaching and dreaming poignantly convey Young Ju's desire to survive her father's brutality. Mother and daughter exhibit a quiet strength; similarly, each of these vignettes displays an astonishing and memorable force. Category: Older Fiction. 2001, Front, 156pp, $15.95. Ages 12 to 14. Rating: 1: Outstanding, noteworthy in style, content, and/or illustration.

Michael Levy (VOYA, June 2001 (Vol. 24, No. 2))
In this luminous, bittersweet debut novel, a young Korean girl crosses the Pacific and does her best to adapt to life in Mi Gook, the United States, despite the difficulties involved in learning western customs and the English language. Park Young Ju, her parents, and Joon Ho, her younger brother born soon after the family arrives in California, work hard, but her father is not very flexible and his business enterprises fail to prosper. Embittered by failure, he takes to drink. A strict disciplinarian in the traditional Korean manner, Mr. Park gradually turns abusive as his own life spins out of control. As Young Ju, her brother, and even her mother become increasingly Americanized, gaining new, non-Korean friends and interests, her father lashes out at the family with increasing violence. Only gradually does Young Ju realize that she has the right to stand up to him and fight back. Eventually, the father returns to Korea a broken man, leaving his wife and children behind in America to go on as best they can without him. Young Ju's voice as she grows from little more than a toddler to near adulthood is conveyed in a tightly focused and enormously persuasive first-person narrative. This beautifully written book, a tale of both tragedy and eventual triumph, is likely to bring tears to the eyes of any reader. Its author must be considered an important new voice in Asian American children's literature. VOYA CODES: 4Q 4P M J S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Broad general YA appeal; Middle School, defined as grades 6 to 8; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2001, Front Street, 156p, $15.95. Ages 11 to 18.

Miriam Min Joo Lim Levy, Teen Reviewer (VOYA, June 2001 (Vol. 24, No. 2))
A Step from Heaven is an unusual book because it is about a Korean girl adapting to America from age two to eighteen. I liked that the author showed how people hear languages differently when they really do not speak them well. I also liked the realistic way that the girl lived her life, showing how her life was not always perfect. What was really sad was how her father treated her, not understanding that she suffered from being in a strange land. This book should be read by teens fourteen and up because it is somewhat painful. VOYA CODES: 4Q 4P M J S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Broad general YA appeal; Middle School, defined as grades 6 to 8; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2001, Front Street, 156p, $15.95. Ages 11 to 18.