Jessica Yoon. Photo courtesy of Kate McCord Photography.
For someone who has a background in numbers and percentages, Jessica Yoon sure knows a lot about words and pictures.
And to think: That knowledge would never have been accrued without a global pandemic.
As the COVID-19 outbreak effectively shut the world down, Yoon, who lives in Mechanicsburg, found herself juggling remotely working a finance job while raising her first child. After her second child, a daughter, was born, she concluded with her husband that it might be time to retire from corporate life and settle into being a stay-at-home mother.
The transition was taxing, Yoon said, but it turned out to lead her down an unexpected path.
“I was losing my sense of self,” she said. “I was looking for something that was just for me, and writing ended up becoming my creative outlet.”
Yoon watched as a surge in anti-Asian sentiment spread, and it influenced the topics about which she wrote. It wasn’t long before she also realized, as she was reading her son’s children’s books, that there weren’t any characters that looked like him—or her.
As a result, the author decided to start writing down the stories she would make up for her children during story time. By the end of 2021, she began her pursuit of publication.
“As someone with zero background in writing, I was filled with a healthy dose of illusion and audacity,” Yoon quipped. “I just really wanted my kids to see themselves in media.”
While her desire to write was born out of practicality, she had no idea it also would lead to a long-held dream coming true. After landing and parting with an agent, she came across her current agent, who asked her what she wanted to do most.
Yoon’s answer was simple: a “Little Golden Book.” She grew up reading the fabled series of children’s books, so seeing her name on one would be magical. Through a shot of serendipity, her agent reached out to the series’ editor and found that they had a book featuring the K-Pop sensation Blackpink on their calendar—without an author attached to it.
The editor asked her agent if Yoon was a K-Pop fan, and the rest was history.
“I’m actually an OG fan of K-Pop,” Yoon said with a laugh. “In the ’90s, there was a boy band called H.O.T., and I had their posters all over my childhood bedroom. So, I’ve been a fan of this from the start.”
The result is “Blackpink: A Little Golden Book Biography,” which hit bookstores in December, a year earlier than planned. The Penguin Random House publication, illustrated by Honee Jang, chronicles the members of the girl group from their childhoods, through their training to become worldwide pop stars and into the modern day as they tour the world.
That’s not all. Beyond the Blackpink book, Yoon will release “Jeong Is Joeng,” a book about a little girl who embarks on a journey of discovery, kindness and understanding, illustrated by Michelle Lee, in February. Then, in May, “The Legend of Ban-Dal” will hit bookshelves via Simon & Schuster’s “Little Bee Books.”
Yoon’s meteoric rise within the kids lit world is as shocking to the author herself as it is to anyone else. She currently has nine books contracted and is quick to point out that she has wider aspirations for her writing career somewhere down the line.
“I definitely want to publish an adult novel someday,” she said. “I have tons of ideas, and I’m just trying to pace myself at this point because I want to have a long, sustainable career as an author. It’s a matter of, ‘When can an idea fully crystallize and when can I sit down and write it?’”
For now, Yoon is thrilled to be on what she called a “crazy ride” in the children’s literary world. As for her old job, she has zero plans of rekindling her passion for those numbers and percentages.
“I never want to go back to business,” she said. “This is all the result of a lot of different events in my life happening at the same time.
“Sometimes, I have to pinch myself,” the author added before wondering aloud, “Is this real?” she asked. “What is happening?”
For more information on Jessica Yoon and her books, visit www.jessicayoon.com.
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