Review of the Day: Borders by Gudol, ill. Haerang, translated by Sophie Bowman

Borders: Meeting Our Neighbors Around the World
By Gudol
Illustrated by Haerang
Translated by Sophie Bowman
Helvetiq
$21.95
ISBN: 978-3-03964-149-9
Ages 7 and up
On shelves now

I wonder if the children’s literature publishing trends follow a similar path in every nation. Probably not. Publishing anything, let along books for kids, is an endeavor fraught with political and social implications. Still, when I look at the current publishing landscape of books for children, particularly as it applies to nonfiction and informational books, I get curious. America doesn’t really do it like anyone else. In other countries information on the written page is a more free and easy process. Fiction and fact can weave together effortlessly if the ultimate goal is beauty. Backmatter? Sources? A Glossary? Don’t make me laugh. In most countries the idea of children’s books adhering to the same standards as those of adults is laughable. But here in the States it’s sort of a different matter altogether. Even before the current wave of fake news and online misinformation, writers and publishers had already been moving towards backing up what we teach our children with additional information. As a result, nonfiction imports from other countries have often had to add backmatter when published in the States. Annoying? Maybe. But hey, at least we know you’re not making anything up. In the case of Borders: Meeting Our Neighbors Around the World the entire book is predicated on how people from different places interact when the places they identify with meet. Backmatter is nonexistent, but with its lower reading level and the sheer importance of its subject matter, we may offer Korean creators Gudol and Haerang a temporary pass. Because when you find something this intelligent, beautiful and, yes, on occasion, funny, that’s a book worth holding onto tight.

You open the book to a beautiful two page spread looking down at a bird flying over sand to sea. “Lines crisscross deserts and oceans, flow along rivers and mountains. Birds and fish can cross them freely, but boats and airplanes cannot.” Turn the page and here we have the title. Welcome to Borders, a book dedicated to delving into the strange boundaries that people conceive. Right from the start, the young reader is asked if they’ve ever tried crossing a border before. We’re treated to a vision of going through immigration at an airport, but then we get a more all-encompassing look at what borders are. We learn that sometimes they are open, sometimes shut, and sometimes those parameters can change. We see how things are different on different sides, what they tell us about relationships between neighboring countries, and even how geographical elements determine where borders fall. Images of real world borders always take time to label the countries in the lower corner of the pages. In the end, the book reminds us that these borders are often made by people. When smog drifts, it doesn’t pay attention to borders. Nor do nuclear accidents, greenhouses gases, or flooding. In this way, we are all striving for the dream, “where more than 200 countries live together as neighbors. A place we call planet Earth.”

So I’ll confess that when I first encountered this book, I had entirely the wrong idea about it. Size wise, it clocks in at an impressive 12.3” X 8.9”. And when you look at a book that size in your children’s nonfiction section, that usually means one thing: wordy but beautiful European title. European nonfiction imports are going through a phase right now. They like to be big. They like to cover cool topics. They hate backmatter (or, more accurately, they don’t even think about it). And they like to fill their well-designed pages with words, words, words, words words. Look, I know we’re all lamenting the death of the child attention span right now. You know what helps increase that attention span? Not scaring a kid away with a nonfiction topic with multiple paragraphs of thick, impassable words. I knew immediately that Borders was different the minute I started to read it. I mean, it has paragraphs in it, sure, but it’s choosy about where they go. It’s not European at all but Korean, and I can’t help but feel that this makes a huge difference on the page. It’s… readable. I mean, an enterprising teacher could actually read this aloud in front of a group. No one would fall asleep either, because Gudol is very good at synthesizing text down to not just its most essential parts but also its most interesting ones.

Politically it’s a potential minefield, right? I mean, this South Korean author/illustrator team is literally discussing some of the most contested and hottest issues in the world. You could say that the facts about where a border lies is indisputable, but that’s not really true, is it? And to be fair, they’re not going to talk about EVERYWHERE. Taiwan, for example, is a notably absent presence. But other areas of the world are definitely labeled, as are the reasons for these borders. In one particularly impressive section, you hear about people crossing borders to sell things, spread religion, or explore. In the past the explanation would have ended right there. It’s a relief, then, to see the opposite page that discusses, “Greedy invaders crossed borders, and so did independence fighters to liberate their colonized lands…” We turn the page and see a truly gorgeous and heart rending spread of a small boat packed to the gills with people traveling over the waves. “Travelers cross borders to discover new cultures, and refugees who cannot stay in their homelands cross borders because they have no other choice.” Thank you!! The fact that this is followed by a montage of India/Pakistan, Palestine/Israel, Tajikistan/Kyrgyzstan, Iraq/Saudia Arabia, Serbia/Hungary, and Germany/Switzerland (that one’s about borders that “stop a disease from spreading”) is a bold choice. Palestine in particular gets a special mention later in the book when it reads that, “There is also a country whole borders have been erased from maps, as if to say that it is no longer a nation. But, to this day, the people there refuse to be forgotten and strive to reclaim what was taken from them.” It is the rare book that is published in 2026 in America that says so much.

By all rights this shouldn’t be a particularly fun topic to read about, but somehow Gudol and Haerang do a fantastic job keeping everything enticing. Sometimes to the point where I wonder if the author and artist worked together on some of the fun elements. For example, there’s a moment when we learn that in the European Union “many countries live as one, without borders.” The accompanying image is of all the countries in the EU, each represented by a little doll wearing an outfit indicative of the area. There’s even a little square for the United Kingdom, but it’s boarded up, with nailed slabs of wood, separating it from the others. Cute. In a section on the town of Baarle where the border between the Netherlands and Belgium is cut into dozens of pieces, you get this cool series of visuals of different places in town where two countries meet and nobody could care less. There is no joking around when the book dips into the American/Mexican border, the border between North and South Korean, or what’s going on with Israel and Palestine right now, but I appreciated these sections that show, with a magnificent amount of subtlety, the sheer lunacy that some borders highlight.

For all that the book’s writing makes or breaks how well it works, it’s the art that often proves the real test. For a book on this topic, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to just slap some perfectly acceptable, but not particularly interesting, images in here. Instead, we got Haerang. I’m not really familiar with her work. She wins quite a few points for getting away with a bio that reads, “Haerang is an illustrator who explores the invisible threads woven by the beings dwelling throughout daily life.” Uh, yeah. Same. From what I can tell she’s not done much in the way of children’s books, but the clarity of her art is its allure. The lines, colors, characters, and landscapes are so clearly defined. Speaking of landscapes, there’s a moment when the book changes with the turn of a page from streets where people live to this magnificent view of the Himalayas and the borders that climb to its peak. It’s breathtaking, but it’s just the beginning. Haerang has a natural talent for figuring out precisely how to break up these pages so as to maximize visual interest. Look at what she’s doing with the borders of the images, when speaking about the borders of countries. Sometimes they’re horizontal, sometimes vertical, sometimes two=-page spreads, and sometimes they’re eclectic montages. I can’t even imagine how one would begin to figure out how to put such pages together. Awe-inspiring to say the least.

How well this book ages is anyone’s guess. A lot of the information on these pages is attuned to this current political moment. There’s a point in the book where it talks about how, “In the spring of 2018” the leaders of both North and South Korea, “held hands and crossed the border together.” This book was published originally in South Korea in 2021, taking five years to get to the States. Yet for all that, there’s something strangely timely about all of this. Contested borders will always exist, it’ll just be a question of who is doing the contesting. Finding a book that can talk about this with a relatively simple text, gorgeous art, and ability to take complex ideas and make them relatable to kids in countries all over the world isn’t just difficult. It’s almost impossible to accomplish. Borders: Meeting Our Neighbors Around the World is, in the end, a hopeful book. It acknowledges the problems and inspires kids to understand that there are times when walls can come down and problems are solved through group action. A book for our times, for our kids, and for our consideration.

On shelves now.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2026, Reviews, Reviews 2026, Uncategorized