Kang So-cheon`s collection of children`s poems revived

What do you make/ With the pumpkin flower you pick/ What do you make/ I make a little lantern/ For my baby/ I make a little lantern/ What do you do/ With the firefly you catch/ What do you do/ I light a candle/ In my baby`s lantern/ I light a candle (Children`s poem `Pumpkin Flower Lantern")

"Pumpkin Flower Lantern," a collection of poems for children`s songs, has been revived to mark the 100th anniversary of children`s book writer Kang So-cheon`s (1915-1963) birth. The collection, originally published in 1941, contains 33 poems and two fairytales published in the Dong-A Ilbo and its children`s magazines after 1930 that are critically acclaimed for Kang`s vivid poetic language and deep contemplation.

The collection`s prologue poem was contributed by poet Baek Seok, who praised Kang`s love of the beauty of nature. Seo Seok-kyu, a children`s writer, wrote in a commentary that the collection was a "very precious legacy of the Korean nation published in the late period of Japan`s colonial rule when Japan brandished guns and swords to obliterate our language and script." He recommended the book to readers, saying that it would guide them "on a trip to a faraway dream through the sky and clouds against the backdrop of consistently pure and unspoiled innocence of childhood."

The publisher, Jaimiage Publishing Co., re-issued the book in its original form after just turning it to from vertical writing to horizontal writing and correcting spellings.

tigermask@donga.com