Every Falling Superstar, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a audience, may be the intense memoir of the North Korean boy named Sungju who’s forced at age twelve to go on the roads and fend for himself. To endure, Sungju produces a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing trips on cargo trains. Sungju richly re-creates his scabrous story, depicting what it was like for the boy alone to create a fresh family along with his gang, his ‘brothers’; to be hungry and to fear arrest, imprisonment, and even execution. This riveting memoir enables young listeners to learn about other civilizations where freedoms they take for granted do not exist.