Therese Park's When a Rooster Crows at Night: A Child's Experience of the Korean War was sponsored by the Center for the Study of the Korean War at Graceland University in Independence, Missouri. The center's mission statement is "to develop insights into the causes and costs of the Koreans war, and war in general, in order to understand and promote peace."

While the book, written from a child's point of view, does not provide insights into the causes of the war, it succeeds in providing insights into the costs of the war.

Park seems to instinctively sense how to write from a child's point of view, remaining genuine to the voice of the child without making her cutesy. In the book, Jong-ah, who is 8 when the novel begins, learns to face the deprivations of war, which start small and gradually shape her daily experience in dramatic ways.

First, the family must worry about an extended family member with communist ties. Then they are required by the South Korean government to take in war refugees. Jong-ah doesn't understand this at first but becomes increasingly more sympathetic as she witnesses first-hand the plight of these people.

The reality of war becomes starker when her family learns her intellectual father would be killed if the North Korean government enters their town. The family decides to escape to an outlying island. On the way, Jong-ah is separated from her family and learns what it's like to live as a poor, homeless refugee.

The experiences in this book are vividly portrayed, backed up with rich, factual detail. Park has clearly done considerable research into the subject.

While this book may not pack the emotional wallop of Park's previous book, about a Korean schoolgirl forced into prostitution by the invading Japanese army during World War II, it does boast an emotional clarity that, backed up by vivid detail, helps readers understand what it must have been like to live through this time in South Korea.

Therefore, When a Rooster Crows at Night effectively accomplishes the goal set out by the Center for the Study of the Korean War: it helps increase understanding about the Korean War and the effects of war in general.

iUniverse Inc., 2004; ISBN: 0-595-30876-7