It was a July evening just after 9 p.m. in 2024 and Julia Kim was on the beach off Drayton Harbor Road, watching a sky awash in an apricot sunset. She looked up and saw something striking: a cloud that looked just like a bird, wings stretched wide in flight.
Just eight months before, Kim, a Semiahmoo resident, had lost her husband. Seeing this unexplainable sight felt to her like a sign from him.
“To me, this was like my husband,” she said.
She took a photo and video and looked at them nearly every day until November of 2025, when she started writing.
From that moment of inspiration came “Cloud Bird: The First Flight,” a children’s book about a little cloud who dreamed of becoming a bird. Throughout the book, the little cloud tries with all its might, finally becoming Cloud Bird and inspiring the other clouds to dream about what they, too, could become.
Kim immigrated to the United States from South Korea in 1998, and had written two children’s books while in Korea. She sold the copyright for just a few hundred dollars, but her books later went on to sell around 150,000 copies.
“I didn’t get any benefit,” she said. “I didn’t expect (it) because I wrote those stories within two hours, just to keep writing.”
Although her passion for writing never left, life simply got in the way and Kim didn’t write another children’s book until “Cloud Bird.”
“I was like a cloud bird,” she said. “I dreamed of writing again, but life didn’t work for me for a long time and so I waited, and finally this happened.”
She started her own publishing company, Global Wings Press, which published “Cloud Bird.”
“This time I purchased the copyright and everything,” Kim said. “I wanted to own (it).”
“Cloud Bird” was published in April, and Kim decided to donate all proceeds to the Blaine Library, totaling $915 so far.
“This book was born (on a) Blaine shore and this is a gift from my residency, so I want to give it back,” Kim said.
Blaine Library branch manager Jonathan Jakobitz said the funds have gone to Friends of the Blaine Library, a nonprofit that supports the library, to be used for library programming and other needs of the branch.
“I was truly just blown away with the generosity of Julia Kim to want to donate the proceeds from her new book towards supporting the library,” Jakobitz said. “It was such a generous thing that she did.”
Kim has received much support from the community following her book release, and her neighbor even hosted a book signing event for her in May.
The day after the book-signing, Kim was driving along Drayton Harbor Road and when she passed the spot on the beach where she first saw the cloud, she noticed a bench had appeared.
She made a Nextdoor post to ask who had put it up and thanked them, and while the post reached 3,000 locals, the person responsible remains a mystery.
“I still don’t know who that was,” she said. “That was really cool and — oh, my god — another gift.”
The wooden bench is still there, a welcome spot for anyone to sit and see what they might find up in the clouds.
Kim wrote the book in Korean, her first language, as she does with all her writing, and it was later translated into English and Spanish. All three versions are available for purchase on Amazon as a physical or e-book at bit.ly/4vmFcEG.
Kim also writes personal essays on her Substack, @sunsethealing, often writing of her memories and life, cultural differences and nature.
“Sometimes it’s really funny, sometimes it makes you cry,” she said.
Cloud Bird’s story doesn’t end here, though. The sequel, “The Rainmakers,” is complete and will be published before the end of the year.
