One Day

A gentle, delicately illustrated story, told from the perspective of a young boy who has lost a beloved grandfather.

A Bank Street College of Education Best Book of 2022
One of World Literature Today’s 100 Notable Translations of 2021

Occupying two dimensions—one that is tangible and heart-wrenching in its details of traces left behind, and another that is cosmic, created by the boy's imagination as he longs for a reunion—One Day explores the inner world of a child as he comes to terms with a deeply felt and aching loss.

A boy’s grandfather goes away suddenly, never to return. How could he leave just like that, without even saying goodbye? His smell remains in his sweater, and his shoes wait to be worn, but he is nowhere to be found. As the boy looks and wonders, a refrain runs through his mind, Grandpa is gone. The boy lingers in the midst of his grandfather’s things, to feel him and remember, but also as a way of beginning to say goodbye. There in the quiet, the boy begins to imagine his Grandfather returning to the planets and stars, the faraway home from which he must have come. 

This is a beautifully made book, in which the cosmic dimension of the story inhabits its very construction. It is a wonderful story of agency and imagination, showing a child navigating the very process of filling the absence that death brings through storytelling and self-reflection.

Lee Juck is a well-known singer songwriter in Korea, who has released over 100 songs and captivated the public with his lyrics. He shares short stories on his blog [夢想笛-leejuck.com], some of which appeared in his first book, Fingerprint Hunter.

Kim Seung-youn studied visual design at HongIk University and currently runs the independent publishing company Textcontext. She likes drawing with soft, light lines and is also the author of Fox Hat and Yan Yan.

Asuka Minamoto is a freelance translator based in Seoul, South Korea. She works in English, Japanese, and Korean. In 2016, she won second prize in the JLPP (Japanese Literature Publishing Project) International Translation Competition. Her works have appeared in the Asia Literary Review and Korean Literature Now.

Dianne Chung graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has worked as a translator and interpreter with various companies, including Samsung, LG U+, and Lotte Hotel. She lives in Seoul, South Korea.

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