Just One Gift

Gr 3-7–Park offers a deceptively simple classroom premise that unfolds into a deeply humane exploration of gratitude, connection, and moral imagination. Centered on a teacher’s invitation to consider giving “just one gift” to a family member, a friend, or a “question mark” person (someone who exists on the margins of the students’ daily lives), the book reveals how intentional acts of noticing can reshape how young people understand community and themselves. What makes this text especially powerful is its refusal to sentimentalize generosity. The students’ reflections span joy, grief, longing, and ethical uncertainty, engaging with illness, immigration and separation, poverty, loss, queerness, loneliness, and quiet acts of care that often go unseen. Park treats these moments with remarkable restraint and respect, trusting readers to sit with complexity rather than rushing toward easy resolution. The hybrid narrative structure, combining verse, classroom dialogue, and reflective questions, creates an accessible, conversational text that allows many voices to emerge and positions the classroom as a microcosm of empathy and civic life. While this structure may ­benefit from guided discussion to connect individual stories to the book’s larger themes, it ultimately deepens engagement.