The Color of Water (The Color of Earth)

The Color of Water (The Color of Earth)

When Ehwa goes to the town festival, she meets a handsome young wrestler named Duksam who's eager to catch her eye. After he wins the festival wrestling championship, he and Ehwa begin to meet, sneaking spare moments to be together. But a shadow falls on their romance when Master Cho sends Duksam away and asks for Ehwa's hand in marriage himself It is then that Ehwa discovers the pain of heartbreak – and that love is always complicated. In the tradition of My Antonia and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn , from the pen of the renowned Korean manwha creator Kim Dong Hwa, comes a trilogy about a girl coming of age, set in the vibrant, beautiful landscape of pastoral Korea. Grade 10 Up–In this installment in the trilogy set in 19th-century Korea, Ehwa falls in love with a strong young man named Duksam, while her mother continues her affair with a traveling salesman. This is a quiet and intimate story about a girl's first sexual awakenings as well as the changing nature of her relationship with her mother during her adolescence. The language and concepts are poetic–Ehwa's mother teaches her that women are like flowers while men are like fire and wind. While Hwa's artwork predominantly conveys a lot of emotion with very few carefully placed lines, there are some larger scenes of natural beauty (flowers, trees, the night sky) that are breathtaking in their detail. A Korean village is a far cry from the environment of most American teens, but the romantic themes will keep even modern girls pining for more of this story. It is not necessary to have read The Color of Earth (Roaring Brook, 2009) to understand this volume, but since readers will probably be curious to learn about Ehwa's first two loves and about what will happen with Duksam in the future, ordering the trilogy is a sound investment. –Andrea Lipinski, New York Public Library END Kim Dong Hwa is the author of many graphic novels – or manwha, as they are called in Korea, where he lives. His books include the popular work My Sky and the literary piece The Red Bicycle .