The Magic Fish

 Nguyen, Trung Le. The Magic Fish. 2020. Random House Graphic. New York, NY.

Traditional Vietnamese Folk Tales interweave throughout this graphic novel story of a young Vietnamese-American boy struggling to find the words to tell his parents of his sexual orientation. I love the beautiful retelling of these stories and how they tie together the plot points as Tien struggles to find the words to speak his own truth. 

I especially appreciate that while the entire work is written in English, I want to point out the work that the author/illustrator used with the text to indicate which conversations were in English, and which conversations were taking place in Vietnamese. It helped me feel like I was a part of a separate conversation that I would not normally have been allowed to hear.

This book is magic. If you haven't read it yet, add it to your list! It's an awesome tale!

Image: World Cat

Author Website:

http://www.trungles.com/

Clap When You Land

 Acevedo, Elizabeth. Clap When You Land. 2020. Harper Collins Publisher, New York, NY.

ISBN 13:  978-0062882769

Content Warning: Sexual Assault

This book took me by surprise with the open honesty throughout the book.  Two young girls: Yahaira and Camino with two different mothers in two different countries discover that they are related to each other when their mutual father dies.  Their father had spent 9 months of the year in New York with Yahaira and 3 months in the Dominican Republic with Camino.

Each daughter was very different from the other, and yet the father did his very best to give both girls the very best opportunities that he could. The day that their father boarded an airplane to the Dominican Republic to spend the summer with Camino, the plane crashed soon after take off.  As the families grieve the loss of a wonderful man, the girls learn of each other's existence.

The honesty of the girls and the women in the family as they struggled to come to terms with who their father actually was, the lies that had been told, and how to reinvent themselves in the face of great tragedy makes this book stellar. This novel in verse is a must-read.

Author Website: http://www.acevedowrites.com/