My sincere thanks to the Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards committee for this honor.

When the award was announced in June, the news of this recognition spread to Korea, and my picture was in the newspaper my parents read. So my father, who hadn’t really read a single picture book in his life, opened this book and read it. It’s heartwarming to share what I love, especially with my loved ones. Luckily, I love picture books, and I can share this love with my kids and now with my father.

Ode to a Bad Day is the perfect book to show my picture-book-newbie father what a picture book is like. When my editor, Taylor Norman, sent me this manuscript, I immediately fell for it. Chelsea Lin Wallace’s voice is funny yet honest in portraying this girl. I was smiling as I read the manuscript for the first time, and that smile didn’t fade while I was illustrating the book. I have to thank Taylor again for giving me the wonderful opportunity to work on it. Thank you to Chelsea for writing this story, and many thanks to Jay Marvel, my art director, who made this book so beautiful.

I had a bad year. When I have a bad day, I read. I turn to books, bury myself in them, and read and read. By the end of a book, as the main characters overcome their hardships, I experience the sense of ending and find hope to start again. By the end of my bad year, I had read quite a lot of books, and I found the courage to start again.

In Ode to a Bad Day, a girl wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. Her cereal is too soggy, she’s late for school again, and all day long, nothing goes right. But at the end of the day, she says, “The best part of a baddish day is when it ends…” She expects the best day tomorrow and falls asleep.

I imagine young readers closing this book before bed, smiling, and dreaming of the best day tomorrow. That’s what good picture books can do: you open them over and over, experience and overcome challenges, and find reassurance.

I hope kids, and my father, too, can open this book and read it again and again. They might say, “I suppose a better day is on its way.”

[Read Horn Book reviews of the 2024 BGHB Picture Book winners.]

From the January/February 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. For more on the 2024 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB24.