The Color of Heaven (Colors Trilogy: Book 3)

by Kim Dong Hwa, 310 pages

Ehwa grows into a confident, strong-willed young woman as her mother passes into a new stage in her own life.

I recommend reading all three volumes of this quietly beautiful series to appreciate the author's nostalgic, lyrical depiction of childhood's transformation into adulthood.  His imagined rural Korea may be a bit rosier than the real thing, but he doesn't shy away from some of the hardships of the time.  Characters like Ehwa's mother, an ill-fated retainer, and Ehwa's childhood friends all show how class and gender and marital status all had an effect on a person's daily struggles and future prospects.  Ehwa's growing understanding of her mother's and others' positions helps her to better understand her own and make sound judgments as she moves forward.

The Color of Water (Colors Trilogy: Book 2)

by Kim Dong Hwa, 308 pages

As her mother waits for her travelling "picture man" and puts up with the crude remarks of her tavern's male patrons, Ehwa continues to mature and continues on her own meandering journey of the heart.

This series is full of symbolism involving imagery from nature, including flowers, water, and butterflies.  It's interesting to go back through and see how they all connect together in their variations and who and what they're linked to.

The Color of Earth (Colors Trilogy: Book 1)

by Kim Dong Hwa, 319 pages

A young widow and her daughter experience new / first love in their small rural Korean village.

Lovely, this.  Inspired by his mother's memories of her own youth, Kim recounts young Ehwa's coming-of-age as she ventures out from her and her mother's tavern porch to explore the world around her and the young woman she's destined to become.  The backgrounds are beautifully detailed, the figures more stylized and simple, drawing attention to the symbolic role of the natural world and its processes over the passing seasons and emphasizing the archetypal nature of the characters.

It amuses me that I picked this first volume of the trilogy for my graphic novel discussion group before I knew that ALA had listed it among the top challenged books of the year for two years running.  *shrug*  This is a coming-of-age story.  Puberty.  It happens.  *sigh*

Swamplandia!

By Karen Russell
320 pages

Ava Bigtree is hardly your typical thirteen-year-old.  She lies in the middle of the Florida Everglades on an island that holds her family's alligator wrestling theme park.  She has spent her life running free in the swamp, entertaining tourists, and training to follow her mother's footsteps as the park's headlining alligator wrestler.  But when her mother dies suddenly, life changes very fast.  The park begins to fail, her father is in denial and disappears, her brother leaves to try to earn money on the mainland, and her sister Ossie becomes obsessed with ghosts.  When Ossie disappears, Ava is the only one who can save her.  The only problem is, who will save Ava?

Angel Diary: Volume 13

by YunHee Lee (story) and Kara (a.k.a. Yoon-Gyeong Kim and Eun-Sook Jeong, art), 156 pages

Chapters focusing on the stories of three side characters fill up this final volume of the series. We learn how Bi-Wal's right-hand-man came into his service, how Dong-Young met two of her Guardians, and about a classmate's experience with one of those Guardians.

Apparently, this series almost didn't get to finish in Korea, with the creators having to find a new publisher partway through. I'm glad they were able to finish their story. The telling is complicated and a little disjointed at times, and the large cast of characters (and their job titles) can be hard to keep straight, but if you can read the series without too much of a lag between volumes, it makes more sense. :)

Angel Diary: Volume 12

by YunHee Lee (story) and Kara (a.k.a. Yoon-Gyeong Kim and Eun-Sook Jeong, art), 181 pages

Dong-Young runs away from home (that would be Heaven) and falls in love with a boy, Bi-Wal, at the school she orders her minions to hide her in. It's only after-the-fact that she realizes he is the arranged fiancé she'd been running away from in the first place and not so awful as her imagination had made him out to be. Just because he's the next King of Hell doesn't mean he's a monster. She decides that the only way to make everything right that long-held misconceptions and misunderstandings have made wrong is to become the next Queen of Heaven and change some laws. So she asks Bi-Wal to go home to Hell and wait for her while she returns to Heaven and works toward her goal.

This series is a little hard to follow, politics-wise, and there are lots and lots of characters to keep straight, but it's fun and fluffy and even made me a little sniffley once a few volumes back. The main story mostly wraps up in this penultimate volume along with two extended side stories on the pasts and futures of a number of the characters.