Waiting for Tomorrow

Susan Yoon spins a heartfelt story of love and acceptance in a pair of Korean-Canadian sisters awaiting their father’s return. Set in a wintry city, the story starts with Hanna, the younger sibling, declaring her love for gogi-and-turnip soup (meat and turnip soup) at the dining table. Imagining she could swim in the warm and comforting broth, Hanna becomes even more excited when older sister Haejin reminds her that their Appa is coming back home tomorrow.

Umma leaves for work, and Haejin, now in charge, decides they should make something special for Appa’s return. Hanna brims over with excitement and suggests hotteok, a hot pancake-like dessert filled with brown sugar. The two girls gather the ingredients and realize that one is missing, and so they go to Mrs. Shin’s grocery. With childlike ardor, Hanna insists on wearing colourful slide sandals rather than proper winter boots, and, on the way back with their baking soda, she is so cold that Haejin picks her up piggyback style to spare Hanna’s feet.

Back home, the girls take honey, flour, sugar, vegetable oil, and start to mix the dough. Like every little sister, Hanna insists on helping but is a little sloppy. Despite Haejin’s warning, she clumsily grapples with the mixing bowl, and it splatters to the ground with a crash. Dismayed, Haejin stares at the ground so hard she starts to cry. Does that mean tomorrow won’t come and neither will Appa, Hanna wonders. Haeijin reassures Hanna that tomorrow will still come, just without a special surprise, and Appa will still come home. By now, snow has started to fall outside, and Hanna thinks its fluffiness may make it a good substitute for flour. She gathers some in a bowl to give to Haejin who comes up with a better idea to commemorate Appa’s return.

The two girls spend the rest of the afternoon building a family of snowmen on their apartment balcony to represent each member of their family. It is the perfect welcome home present for their Appa. The story closes with a penultimate wordless spread of the two sisters flying into their Appa’s arms as he steps through the front door and ends with the snow family peering in with their grins at the reunited family making hotteok together.

Waiting for Tomorrow is a perfect collaboration between author and illustrator as Kwon’s snug tableaux of family life enliven and uplift Yoon’s sweet and gentle text. Yoon doesn’t insult the intelligence of the reader by over-explaining Korean terms sprinkled into the story, letting context do the heavy lifting. Visual cues that signal the subtle differences in a Korean-Canadian household are apparent through such examples as Korean Hangul in Haejin’s cookbook, handwritten labels on jars, and bangsuk (floor cushions) stowed away beneath the coffee table.

In an afterword, Yoon writes that a memory of her elder sister carrying her because she refused to wear warm shoes outside on a cold winter’s day sparked her imagination to write a story that captures the feeling of the “warmth of those you love, who truly love you.” She intertwines that feeling with the wistful anticipation for the return of a family member to create the equivalent of a soft, comforting quilt in book form. Waiting for Tomorrow is a story that will resonate with any child who has experienced the anticipation of reuniting with a loved one and the way in which an initial failure can be turned into something just as meaningful. Included in the afterword is also a simplified recipe for hotteok that readers can try their hand at making. Altogether, Yoon and Kwon create a cozy story of sibling affection and family reunion that can be revisited again and again by young readers.