A Sky of Paper Stars, an imaginative graphic novel on grieving and death

Kids of a certain age think that everything revolves around them. Heck, some adults haven’t realized it yet and still think that everything revolves around them. They’re the only one who has experienced whatever circumstance they’re wrestling with and nobody is capable of understanding or relating to their issues. I was that way as a kid and I see children in classrooms every day who are wrangling with those same emotions. A Sky of Paper Stars by Susie Yi is a graphic novel that tackles all of that, with a side order of cultural differences, maybe a yokai and a death in the family. It blends all of those things together, with an added sense of wonder to create a book that gives you the feels and makes you think.

Sometimes, “making you think” is the elusive nugget that graphic novels seek to avoid or embrace. If it’s done too overtly then it could seem preachy and will drive kids away. If it’s completely not there then it could be a voidless collection of fart jokes with a base appeal that aspires to impart nothing. A Sky of Paper Stars ponders on life, family, loss, dealing with feelings of being totally out of control and being a teenager, so it’s totally alien to readers aged 10 and up. <insert sarcasm here>

 Yuna is the main character in A Sky of Paper Stars, she’s an American girl being raised by her Korean-American parents. At home, through her lens, they live more like a Korean home than an American one. She’s unable to attend sleepovers, doesn’t have a cell phone and her mom forces her to bring a homemade bento box, instead of having the option to purchase lunch at school. Yuna is tired of being unique or special and simply wants to be a kid, just like everyone else.

She’s dealing with teen-related issues and makes a ‘wish’ one night as she’s going to sleep. The reason it’s a ‘wish’ is that it’s more of a thought based on childish hopes. One could easily use superstition, instead of that word in this context because the cause and effect that she’s trying to rectify have nothing in common. It’s based on the premise that if you make a wish to the 1,000 paper stars that you’ve folded then it will come true.

Yuna has had an especially bad day and wishes to her jar of stars that she just wants to have a normal family. The next morning she’s woken up to the news that her beloved grandmother has died in South Korea. Her family is immediately going to this place that she’s never seen and has been rebelling against for a while so that the family can pay their respects. This leads to a massive feeling of guilt that she somehow caused her grandmother to die. As her family is going to South Korea then the thing that caused this, wishing on the 1,000 paper stars, could surely solve it, couldn’t it?

When they arrive in South Korea there’s all manner of cultural and familial pomp and circumstance that has to be done. All of this affords Yuna the free time to become reacquainted with her distant relatives, as well as, the impact that her grandmother had on her mother. She starts to realize the massive sacrifices that her family made for the betterment of them. This includes the big things like moving to a different country for more opportunities and making the intricate lunches that she used to belittle and complain about. Her quest to make 1,000 paper stars builds as the end of the third-day approaches. It’s then that the soul of the deceased supposedly fully crosses over and the stress of this deadline is getting to Yuna.

We often talk about reluctant readers and books that appeal to them. A Sky of Paper Stars is a graphic novel. Because this format is more illustrated-oriented, it has the ability to bring in readers who aren’t normally interested in reading. This is also an example of a graphic novel that brings the feels. It’s a story of loss, sacrifice, death and the minute things that family members do that sometimes go unnoticed or unappreciated.

Is there such a category as reluctant reader books for youth who might be too self-centered? Even if it did exist that category would leave out the fact that A Sky of Paper Stars is fun to read. It’s not enjoyable to see anyone experience death in the family or figure out their social strengths. However, everyone will, and has, encountered both of these things. Ask any teacher how ironic it is that their own children won’t accept the educational advice that they give them, but will seek the exact same knowledge from a tutor, friend or different teacher. That’s a level of frustration that burns with a very specific heat of irony.

Kids need to read about loss and the difficulty of families figuring out how to handle the void of the person who was just here. For most kids, like the one in A Sky of Paper Stars, that will be a grandparent who passes away. While the manner of death will vary, kids need a resource to see how their peers deal with things, but they probably won’t seek a book that’s too overt on the subject. A Sky of Paper Stars doesn’t flinch from the subject and has a package that will appeal to kids via its artwork and patient story, Those readers might not have a grandparent who passed away in South Korea, but they’ll enjoy and relate to the process of Luna going through the process.

A Sky of Paper Stars by Susie Yi and is available on Roaring Brook Press, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers.

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