A Spoonful of the Sea

Gr 1-3–Yum (Toto) honors an old Korean custom with this intimate family exchange, illustrated in subdued hues with soft focus figures. Serving her young daughter a bowl of “miyeok-guk,” or seaweed soup, on her birthday, a mother sees her screwed up face and explains that it’s not only a traditional birthday dish for children, but like her own mother and all the mothers before them, she herself had a bowl every day for a month after she gave birth. The mother then tells a story about how the practice was inspired when a pregnant “haenyeo,” one of the women divers who for generations have gathered shellfish and other bounty from the sea, saw a mother whale nibbling on seaweed and followed suit after she gave birth. The diver served the nutritious, restorative soup to her daughter when she became a mother, and so on down the generations. By the end, understanding that the soup is a way of remembering mothers and celebrating birth, the child finds it more palatable: “It smells like grandma’s town. It tastes like a birthday.” Though she doesn’t include a recipe Yum has more to say about both the soup and the women divers in a brief afterword.