Late Today
by Jungyoon Huh; illus. by Myungae Lee; trans. from Korean by Aerin Park
Primary    Eerdmans    40 pp.
9/25    9780802856494    $18.99

It’s 8:15 a.m. in Seoul when a kitten “barely two weeks old” stumbles its way onto a car-congested bridge. Many of the commuters caught in traffic watch with bated breath and hope for the best, but nobody seems moved to action until one car brakes and its driver steps out to rescue the kitten. Crisis averted, the narrator muses, “We were all late. But it’s okay. Today was a good day to be late.” Huh’s story homes in on a mundane incident in urban life—being stuck in traffic—and dramatizes it, asking readers to be self-critical of the tendency to remain passive bystanders: “Why is no one helping out?” “Too heartbreaking to see. I’ll just look away.” The composition and creative abstractions of Lee’s colored-pencil and oil-pastel illustrations imbue the story with atmosphere and tension. In one spread, the high-angle perspective and the slant of the long, bold, and sharp blue lines of rain create the illusion that spears of water are attacking the cars below. Another spread is sectioned into two pages of twelve squares that the kitten crosses, its squiggly figure repeating across the scene in many different configurations as it leaps and crouches and dashes to avoid a barrage of rolling tires. Huh tells a simple but riveting story that is elevated by Park’s smooth translation and Lee’s expert use of visual storytelling techniques.

From the November/December 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.