Written and Illustrated by Yangsook Choi 

Reviewed by Ellen HurdBeing the new kid at school is a tough experience for most kids. It can be even harder for children who are from another country with a different language and culture. In the book The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi, a girl named Unhei moves to the United States from Korea with her parents. When she takes the bus to her first day of school, the other kids tease her and purposely mispronounce her name because they think it sounds funny. When Unhei gets to school, she is so afraid to tell her classmates and her new teacher her name, that she decides to pick an American name–but she doesn’t know which one to pick. Her classmates give her a “name jar” and write their name suggestions on slips of paper. As Unhei struggles to decide on her new name, she receives a letter from her grandmother in Korea. Her grandmother helped name her, and she reminds her that in Korean, her name means “grace”. When Unhei returns to school the next day, she finds that her name jar is missing! She decides to keep her Korean name and learns to be proud of her identity as she teaches the class how to pronounce her name correctly. In a heartwarming scene on the last page, she learns that her classmate Joey had secretly taken the jar because he wanted her to keep her name. She teaches him the word for “friend” in Korean. 

This is a wonderful realistic fiction picture book to use for all elementary students. The book has a lot of text, so I would recommend splitting the read aloud into two days with primary grades. When using this book as an interactive read aloud, my 1st grade students had impactful conversations about the importance of a person’s name, and how it is part of one’s identity. We had explicit conversations about how we should all commit to learning to pronounce someone’s name correctly, even if it takes a few tries. Students wrote a note to their parents that said: “How did I get my name?” to prompt conversations at home. During community circle the next morning, students were able to share their name story. We even had a few of our Korean students write their Korean names on the board, and we learned how to pronounce them! This book will be a mainstay on my future read aloud shelf.