MY SHADOW THE TOMBOY

The protagonist, Sa-rang is a model student famous throughout her neighborhood. Tidy and precocious, she is praised everywhere she goes. However, the girl in fact is suffocated every day by the over one hundred rules devised by her mother and the tight schedule of shuttling from one afterschool private academy to another. One day, her shadow comes alive and starts to move on its own. In contrast to the well-behaved Sa-rang, Da-som, the shadow, is a tomboy who sings and dances as she pleases. Spending time with her shadow, the heroine engages in exciting activities hitherto unimagined including waking up early in the morning and dancing, making and giving chocolate cupcakes to her favorite friend, and skateboarding. In this work, through attractive personages and vivid incidents, writer Choe Yu-jin fascinatingly depicts the process through which Sa-rang, a model student, liberates herself from the framework of a “good girl” created by grownups and gradually finds her free and independent self. In the scene where the previously passive protagonist musters courage and shouts out her true feelings and thoughts, young readers will feel thrillingly liberated.