The Magic Fish

[cornerofmadness]

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


There was such a gentle sweetness to this graphic novel. Tiến is a young boy of immigrant parents who shares something very special with his mother, the way they tell fairy tales to each other. It embodies their time together and their hopes but Tiến has a secret and he doesn't have the language with which to tell his parents. He doesn't know it in Vietnamese and isn't sure his parents would grasp it in English.

But really it is more than that. Tiến is a young boy struggling with the idea of coming out to his parents. He's naturally afraid of what could happen. This is playing out against the background of his grandmother (back in Viet Nam) getting more and more ill and his mother's worries over her.

I loved the subtle ways the fairy tales change their narrative to fit what Mother and Son need to say to one another. (I mean how many different endings have you seen for the Little Mermaid?) It's very inventive and there is a nice mix of western folk tales and Vietnamese.

Tiến's friends are very special too. The teachers are his school are much less so.

The art is lush and lovely. My only quibbles with the book are that dad is so minor a character he could almost not be there and that Mom is drawn so young looking I thought she was a kid at first but those are little things. It was a lovely read.



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