어느 바닷가의 하루

There are so many great silent book artists in every corner of the world, but  a few countries really stand out. With an abundance of titles of very high quality, Korea is clearly one of them, and A day at the beach is a wonderful example of this.

This is a story about a fisherman, that appears to be blind, and his dog. The blind fisherman uses a rope line to find his way to the beach, accompanies by his loyal, four-legged friend. The love between them is obvious from the start of the book. The beautiful artwork show us how they work together, until there is an accident: The fisherman falls into the sea! In a dream-like sequence the dog jumps in after him, the fisherman turns into a fish, the dog to a rock, there is a body swap: You can spend hours exploring just these few pages for interpretations and stories. The swap might be interpreted as a picture of how the two friends are like one - two separate bodies, but sharing so much of each others soul.. The fisherman´s line can be seen as a lifeline, or a line that connect two lives to one another...Regardless of how you interpret this magical sequence, there is a happy ending, the fisherman and the dog walking together once again, both happy, on their way home, ready for a new day tomorrow.

The artwork is magnificent. The original version of this book was published as an artists book called "A line", made with linocut and woodcut illustrations in leporello format. The story then consisted of a strip of narrative of almost five meters. This version proved to be too expensive for the common market. The hardback version is beautiful, but I find myself wishing the publisher would have kept the leporello format instead of breaking it into ordinary pages - a leporello would work so beautifully with the fluidity of the sea and waves that make the scene for the story.

Regardless of the format, nothing can take away from the beauty and strength of these illustrations. The artist uses the woodwork so that the lines of the wood becomes the waves of the sea, and it is perfect. The characters are portrayed in a refined, simple style typical for these traditional printing techniques, and the simplicity adds to the expression and story. 

With A day at the beach, Author Kim Su-Yeon has won several well-deserved prestigious awards. ​​​