Description Picking fights with hardworking ants, hunting for million-year-old fossils on the playground, dreaming up a kind robot teacher, and marching off to sell his teacher because of Vita 300... Have you ever met a troublemaker this wonderfully strange? 【Interview with Song Eon, Author of The Adventures of Kim Baebulttugi】 *Is Kim Baebulttugi based on a student you met at school? He's an extremely special and remarkable student. I've been teaching for over 20 years now, and meeting 'Kim Baebulttugi' feels like a huge stroke of luck for me as a children's book author. I doubt I'll meet another student like him again in the next ten years. *You've written stories about many different children before, like Congratulations on Graduating, Song Eon Elementary School and Kim Guchunguback. Was there a particular reason you decided to write Kim Baebulttugi's story as a five-book series? Our society—and adults in general—seem determined to raise children in ways that aren't childlike at all. I believe that's the single biggest reason children are unhappy today. In this frustrating and often disheartening world, Kim Baebulttugi is a character who shows us, without holding anything back, what it truly means to live true to the heart of childhood. He's such a unique kid that even five books could barely contain all the fresh adventures he kept having. I hope children everywhere read The Adventures of Kim Baebulttugi and rediscover the adventurous, childlike spirit hidden within their own hearts. *Why did you choose to pair the word 'adventure' with a story about school? In Mark Twain's story The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn set off on a raft down the Mississippi River. I wondered how convincing it would be if, in today's reality, our hero Kim Baebulttugi set off on a raft down the Han River toward the West Sea. But then I realized that if a child can look beyond a stifling reality to see a new world, and keeps working to make that new world real, then that child's life is itself an adventure. At its heart, the spirit of childhood seeks freedom—and isn't freedom just another name for adventure? *Adults often use words like 'problem child' or 'maladjusted' to describe kids like Kim Baebulttugi who don't fit in at school. What's your view on so-called 'problem children'? In my view, there is no such thing as a problem child in this world. There are only adults who create problem children. Seeing a mischievous kid as a 'problem' is simply a flawed way of looking at things on the part of adults. Mischievous, playful kids are exactly the ones bursting with the true spirit of childhood. I sincerely hope that adults with problems will read stories full of childlike wonder and find a way to work through their own issues. *What's the class motto in your classroom? Honestly, the very idea of a 'class motto' feels a bit uncomfortable to me, but if I have to give the kids something like one, I tell them: "Kids, study just a little, and spend the rest of your time having fun. That's how a better world comes to be." *Is there a character in your stories who resembles you as a child? Not really. As a child, I was introverted, passive, and often lost in thought. Honestly, I don't like kids like that, and I have no interest in making a character like that the hero of my stories. To put it simply, I was a rather dull and unhappy child. 【About the Book】 ■ Even More Outrageous Than Little Nicolas Kim Baebulttugi enrolls in a school that seems as calm and peaceful as a quiet fish tank. He finds class boring, so he spends the whole day playing outside—only to show up right at lunchtime, mouth wide open, begging the teacher for just one bite, then pestering for a sip of Vita 300 to wash it down. Among all the things in the classroom, he declares that the old broom-teacher is the most 'broken' one of all. His wildly unpredictable antics stir up the fish-tank calm of the classroom in an instant. Both the teacher and the other kids look at him and think, "What in the world is this kid?!" But Kim Baebulttugi's outrageousness—even more over-the-top than that of Little Nicolas, the classic symbol of mischief—starts to ripple outward like the flutter of a butterfly's wings across still water. Even when Baebulttugi himself isn't around, his brand of mischief has a way of sneaking into the classroom through the other children. The kids who once watched him warily out of the corners of their eyes now start clapping, marveling, and even imitating his wonderfully odd ways.