하얀 비행

Have you ever gone to bed in a grey, grimy city, only to wake up in an amazing winter wonderland of freshly fallen snow? This book, which title translates to "A white flight", is a playful description of how that could happen. The first pages show the grids of light from a city, far, far away from the little snowpeople that are tumbling down. The "snowpeople" are made into funny, chubby litte figures with hands, eyes and feet, small personalities that each carry a precious, little snowflake. Their shape and overall cuteness is reminiscent of some of the adorable figures from Studio Ghibli.

The reader gets to follow their flight, tumbling down from vast heights. They greet everyone in the city: a playful dog, a lost teddybear and people on the street. They bask in the street lights, go ice-scating on the water and do gymnastics on the power cords, in other words, they are exactly as playful and joyful as one would imagine snowflakes to be. They then quietly pile up on top of each other, and fall to sleep. With a masterful use of light, the author gently leads the reader from the dark blue of the night through the dawn and into the morning, to a city that is all covered in white.​

There is no complex story to this book. But because the snowflakes have so much personality, there is an abundance of fun to be found and little stories to be told. For many children, snow is like magic, and this book lets them enjoy that feeling and imagine just what the snowflakes might feel on their flight down from the sky to earth.

This is Park Seon-Jeong´s first silent book, and the format is perfect, because what is more silent than snow, covering the noise of a busy city in a soft white blanket? 하얀 비행 has both the high artistic quality and light playfullness that are characteristic of so many Korean silent books. 
​​​​