The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi

 

Title: The Name Jar 

Genre: Realistic Fiction 

Author and Illustrator: Yangsook Choi  

Major Awards: No Major Awards 

Age group: 3 to 7 years old 

 

Summary: 

This Children’s book by Yangsook Choi is about a little girl named Unhei and her family who move from Korea to the United States. Since some of her classmates are having trouble saying her name, she decides she wants to change her name to an American name. Her classmates all wrote different names for her in little pieces of paper and put them inside a jar. At the end of the story, she realizes that she loves her Korean name and instead she teaches her classmates how to pronounce it. 

Evaluation: 

Appropriate grade levels would be Preschool to 2^nd grade. Even though the pictures in this book were more of illustrations that didn’t go with the story plot of the story, I still enjoyed the way Yangsook Choi used the pictures to illustrate what was going on in the book. 

I would definitely use this book in my classroom, especially maybe for the first day of school when my students are meeting each other. I believe this book would be a great ice breaker to learn each other’s name and maybe any nicknames we would like to go by. This could help my students start right from the beginning and make sure that everyone feels welcomed in my classroom.