Written by Jane Park
Illustrated by Felicia Hoshino
Published by Lee & Low Books (May 2022)
Learn more about illustrating Juna and Appa.
Available at your local bookstores, online stores and Lee & Low Books
$19.95
32 Pages
11″ x 8.5″ x 0.1″
Hardcover ISBN: 9781643792279
Juna enjoys helping her father in their dry-cleaning shop on Saturdays. It’s their special time together.
One day Juna sees a customer yelling at Appa about a lost jacket. Juna has never seen her father look so worried and becomes determined to help. She sets off on a magical journey in search of the jacket, and along the way meets remarkable animals that show her the different ways that fathers care for their young.
Juna and Appa is a tender ode to fathers and to the many families working behind shop counters.
by Kirkus Review
While helping at her family’s store, a little girl daydreams of animal adventures that remind her of her father’s love.
Juna loves going with Appa, her father, to his dry-cleaning shop on Saturdays; she enjoys feeling the soft steam of the pant presser and sorting the colorful spools of thread. But when a customer claims his jacket is lost and Juna’s attempts to recover it seem more of a distraction than a service, her imagination takes flight. Conjuring up everything from a giant, nuzzling bird to a water bug that offers a piggyback ride, she realizes parental love comes in many forms. Not wanting her father to worry, the kindhearted heroine offers her own savings for a replacement coat. Her father refuses and, to reassure her, leads her by the hand to their beloved taco truck across the street. Hoshino’s watercolor illustrations, with their soft, dreamlike quality, are perfectly matched to Juna’s musings. Delicate patterning and fanciful play of scale will captivate readers, while the warm glow of the shop brings the Korean American girl’s emotional connection and sense of place to life in this love letter to the mom-and-pop shops that carry the hopes, dreams, and hard work of the families who run them.
Alight with generosity and familial love.
by Booklist
Juna loves Saturdays when she can spend the day at her father’s dry-cleaning shop, helping him and enjoying his company. One day, Appa is preoccupied, and Juna has to keep out of his way. The warm steam of the pants presser makes her dreamy, and her imagination takes flight. In her dream, she is helping her father find a customer’s missing jacket. When she tries to help Appa in reality, though, he brushes her aside in his own worry about finding the jacket. Gentle watercolor illustrations mirror the text and capture the close and caring relationship that Juna and Appa share, as well as her feelings of vulnerability when she feels she isn’t needed. In the author’s note, we learn that the story has some autobiographical elements, and that this is a tribute to Park’s parents and the happy memories she had in their dry-cleaning shop, even while they were preoccupied with work responsibilities. This lovely message will resonate with empathetic readers everywhere.
JANE PARK (formerly Bahk) won Lee & Low’s New Voices Award for Juna’s Jar, which was also recognized with the Asian/Pacific American Library Association Award for Literature and as a Notable Book for a Global Society by the International Literacy Association. Juna and Appa was inspired by her memories of growing up in her family’s dry-cleaning shop. Park lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can visit her online at janeparkbooks.com.