Mommy's Hometown

3.8

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Author(s)

Hope Lim

Co-Authors / Illustrators

Jaime Kim

Publisher

Candlewick

Genre(s)

Asian Setting

Age Range

Release Date

April 12, 2022

ISBN

978-1536213324

Buy This Book

This gentle, contemplative picture book about family origins invites us to ponder the meaning of home. A young boy loves listening to his mother describe the place where she grew up, a world of tall mountains and friends splashing together in the river. Mommy’s stories have let the boy visit her homeland in his thoughts and dreams, and now he’s old enough to travel with her to see it for himself. But when mother and son arrive, the town is not as he imagined. Skyscrapers block the mountains, and crowds hurry past. The boy feels like an outsider—until they visit the river where his mother used to play, and he sees that the spirit and happiness of those days remain. Sensitively pitched to a child’s-eye view, this vivid story honors the immigrant experience and the timeless bond between parent and child, past and present.

Editor review

1 review

Parents Were Children, Too

July 11, 2022

Overall rating

3.8

Plot

3.0

Characters

4.0

Writing Style

4.0

Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)

4.0

A boy has heard many stories from his mother about what the town in which she grew up was like. While the country is not specifically stated, the author is from South Korea, and the illustrations show the scenes the mother describes set in a bucolic neighborhood with lots of foliage, houses with Asian architectural details, and a river. When the two travel to the mother's hometown, they find that things have changed dramatically and most vestiges of the rural setting are gone. There is one older house among the new, tall buildings that is reminiscent of Burton's The Little House. While the boy tries to make sense of how things have changed, he is able to get a feel for his mother's life in the country when they are able to play in a river that is now surrounded by concrete reinforcing walls. Even though much has changed, he is still able to connect to his mother's past.

Good Points

I loved the use of light in Jaime Kim's pictures, especially in the evening when there is a red sky shown over the mountains, and the old fashioned house in the city has it's interior lights glowing warmly. The new and modern city is is usually very bright and light colored, whereas the mother's memories of the country have the feeling of a sunny haze. While there are small details that would connect the city to a specific part of the world, the illustrations are generic enough that it could reflect any countryside that had seen a lot of urban growth.

It was good to see a close relationship between the mother and son, and also to see the boy take an interest in the ways the world was different when his mother was a child. It is sometimes hard for children to imagine their parents as younger, so showing the mother playing in the river and running around with friends may spark some good conversations with readers and their adult companions.

There are a lot of middle grade novels about traveling back to visit grandparents in different countries, but I haven't seen too many picture book ones, which surprised me. I'll Go and Come Back by LaRocca is a fantastic title where the girl travels to India and bonds with her grandmother, which would accompany Mommy's Hometown well. Wang's Watercress is a good exploration of continuing family traditions in a new country. For traveling, Júnior's From My Window is a good look at life in Rio de Janiero and Gördüm's I See the Sun in Turkey takes us to that country.