The One Thing You’d Save

Published in 2021 this short, yet powerful and provocative chapter book, begins with a homework assignment—“Imagine that your home is on fire. You’re allowed to save one thing. Your family and pets are safe, so don’t worry about them. Your most important Thing. Any size. A grand piano? Fine.” Each student in the classroom has an answer after agonizing over the choice. And the homework assignment is used to build a community of thoughtful middle school students who talk, argue, stand by their choices, and change their minds. In the process they get to know themselves and one another. Because the structure is built like the classroom discussion, I felt like I was one of the kids, right there in that classroom. I was unable to put this book down once I began but it’s a good thing because the book is less than 100 pages.

There are plenty of opportunities to practice inferring, making text-to-self connections, and determining importance. This is because the story is told in verse—a new form of verse called sijo. Drawing on her own Asian roots, Linda Sue Parks has crafted this story using the ancient art form of traditional Korean poetry. Want to know what sijo is? The author’s note will tell you, but it does not resemble poetry forms that we are familiar with. This book could serve as a mentor text for sijo poetry. It might be fun to have students analyze the structures of a few of the poems as they learn to understand what sijo is. Then they might try writing something in this same form—the one thing they’d save. This could become a class book.

Students may be familiar with this author who also wrote A Single Shard and A Long Walk to Water. In her 20 years as an author she has grown by attempting to write in numerous genres and forms. She has been the recipient of many awards, including the Newbery Medal for A Single Shard.

Her parents grew up in Korea and often told her stories. Those stories turned into another favorite book of mine, When My Name Was Keoko. She regrets that she never learned to speak Korean.

Pathways Themes: Personal Feelings & Growth

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