Thi BuiRecensioni

This graphic novel was heartbreaking but beautiful. Telling the story of one family’s journey from Vietnam and the long lasting impacts of trauma upon that family

This is a great read for the intermediate age group. I feel that this book is great for showing those about immigration. This is a book about a family from Vietnam. The main characters talked about in this book are father and son they go fishing for the family and bond over providing a meal.

This book would be good for primary students. This book is "A Different Pond" written by Bao Phi, illustrated by Thi Bui, and published in 2017. This book is about a dad and a son who go fishing and his dad tells his son about how he used to go fishing with his brother before he died in Vietnam. It tells a cute story about how his son didn't wan to go fishing but after learning that it was a part of his culture he go excited to be a part of it. I think this would be a good book to have in the classroom to teach about other cultures. It has a part at the end telling a true story about the author and how they relate to the story so you know it's authentic and real.

This book was fantastic. It was about a young boy who woke up early to go fishing with his father so they could have food to eat. It was sweet and the father-son relationship was endearing. It shows the hardworking parents and how they are proud of their children for helping them and learning from them. The illustrations were almost graphic-novel-like. This would be a great read-aloud, if not a fantastic addition to a classroom library.

Graphic novel tells the true story of one family's struggles and final escape from South Vietnam at war's end, the challenges they face building a new life together in the Midwest, and the relationship between a daughter and her mother.

This is the heartfelt graphic novel about Thi Bui and her family’s life in Vietnam during the war, their subsequent escape by boat, growing up in San Diego, and her determination to uncover the stories of the past as an adult. The horror and struggles make this a compelling read in their own right, even if you’re aware of similar accounts, but perhaps where the book shines brightest is when Bui comes to understand her father’s trauma and connects it to why he acted as he did later in life. There is also a fascinating human story at the bottom of all of this – how her mother came to meet her father, how their relationship evolved over time, and how she gave birth to one of their children in a refugee camp. It’s quite a page-turner to learn more about these lives, and clearly a labor of love for Bui to have documented it.

There is also a historical account here as well, and some of the eye-opening bits were the French coming back to “reclaim their inheritance” after WWII, and the subsequent events, contrasted to American accounts. There are also descriptions of life under communism, e.g. the copying of Mao’s land “reforms” in China by Truong Chinh which killed 220,000 people, the burning of books, and the requirement to agree to unswervingly agree to the propaganda. Her father says, “A new regime that was both nationalist and communist, they had to kill all those people who were friends of the French. The communists, they called those things sacrifices.” She replies, “And you called them Grandmother and Grandfather.”

Maybe the most touching bit was when Bui described saving up what she thought was $100 to give to her mother as a Mother’s Day present as a child, but finding to her dismay that she had miscounted. She writes: “What if all my mother remembered was that I came up short?” It’s devastating, and a reminder to be forgiving of others who might have not acted ideally in a situation in our lives, and to remember what they were able to do. While processing her own sublimated anger, she ponders her roots, thinking of those who came before her that “My life is a gift that is too great – a debt I can never repay,” and of her own son that “I don’t see war and loss, I see a new life, bound with mine quite by coincidence, and I think maybe he can be free.” Amidst a profoundly personal and specific story, she touches on things which are universal. I would love to see more from her.

1.5 stars

While the illustrations were attractive, the story itself was very mediocre.

I normally love memoirs and thought the idea of an illustrated one was very interesting; unfortunately, there wasn't enough information (such as background on the culture and political turmoil) for me to fully follow the story. The text was flat - not nearly as charming as the illustrations.

Edit 2/8/2017: Changing rating from 2 stars to 1.5 stars, as I already have forgotten nearly the entire book.

I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Welp I wasn't expecting to cry at the end of this book, but here we are.

Wow. What a poignant read ! A hard reminder that history repeats itself. I learnt about the history of Vietnam. I could map the story and relate it to the situation in Srilanka too.

This is a beautiful story with lovely illustrations depicting life in the United States through the eyes of those who no longer live in Viet Nam. When the small boy awakens to go fishing with his father, he questions why if the father has two jobs, do they have to continue to fish to feed the family for dinner. The father replies that everything in America costs a lot of money.

Together they leave early in the cold morning air. The boy loves his father and is sad that a kid in his school said that his father's English sounded like "a thick, dirty river." The boy notes that his lauguage sounds like gentle rain. The father and son walk together in the dark as the stars in the sky are very bright.

Along the bank, the father holds his son's hand. As the little boy walks with his father, he feels the callouses on his hands. It is just the two of them as the stars are bright in the early morning sky. It is cold and the boy builds a father where they can warm their hands and eat the sandwiches packed for them. As they eat, his father tells of a pond where he fished in Viet Nam. As they fish, his father talks of the war where both fought side by side. Sadly, one day his father's brother does not return. His father rarely talks about the war. The son listens carefully.

They catch a fish and know they will have something to eat for dinner that night. The beauty of this book is found through the eyes of the child who loves his family, wishing they didn't have to work so very hard and the difficulty of making a living in this country where his family looks tired.

As both mother and father leave the house to go to work, they ride their bikes to the destination. The young boy also has a job to take care of his little brother. Feeling proud that he helped catch a fish that will be eaten for dinner that night when they all are together round a table.

There is a lot of respect and knowledge of how hard each member must work together as a team in able to live in this country. There was a different pond in Viet Nam, but now they fish in another pond in this country where they now live jointly.

Thi Bui's graphic memoir documents follows her family's tumultuous journey from war-torn Vietnam to America, illustrating themes of family, identity, and the lasting impacts of war. Bui's work revisits the lives of her parents in Vietnam growing up and prior to the war, finally leaving in 1978 with Bui and her three siblings. After a difficult journey, the novel then follows the difficult process of their assimilation in America and the lasting impact this has on the family. The book demonstrates the great lengths her parents went to give Bui and her siblings a better life by leaving a country ravaged by war, demonstrating the sacrifices that they made as well as the challenge of building and raising a family amidst so much trauma. The emotional scars, cultural confusion, and generational misunderstandings put a strain on the family, but ultimately as an adult Bui is able to realize that her family did the best they could do, and is proud of this. This undercurrent of the presence/lasting impact of history is clear throughout the book, and it forces the reader to recognize the myriad of challenges presented by the immigrant experience. The illustrations allow Bui to weave together the personal, the political, and the historical to present the readers with an important, and sometimes overlooked angle of the Vietnam war.

I really liked this book. I feel like this is the definition of a cozy book even though it implies economic difficulty etc. It might be the illustrations and the color pallet. I am particularly a sucker for books about loving fathers, I think we need much more of them.

This powerful graphic novel memoir traces Thi Bui's family journey from Vietnam to the US. The connections between events in the present and the family's history intertwine to tell about daunting task of being a parent. Understanding the struggles her family faced to secure a better future, Thi is able to reflect on the sacrifices her parents made that made her who she is now. This memoir could be used with older young adults to explore Vietnamese history and immigration.

A different pond is a short story about a boy on an early morning fishing trip with his father. The boy's parents are of Vietnamese decent while the boy is first generation native born in the US. The story takes place following the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese family has been experiencing difficulty in the transition.

This book would be good for primary and intermediate. It is about a boy and his father going fishing early in the morning to catch dinner before the dad has to go to work. They talk about his home back in Vietnam and the pond the father used to fish in. I think this book would be really good to have in the classroom, especially to discuss different cultures and family traditions.

A boy and father wake early in the morning to fish in a small pond, having a successful catch meant having a fed family. While they fish, the boy's father retells the story of a different pond from his homeland, Vietnam.

Intermediate
A boy and his dad go fishing so they can catch dinner very early in the morning, before anyone else in the house is up. The dad tells stories of how he used to fish in Vietnam, and the boy wonders what the pons in Vietnam were like.
This would be a good book to have in a second thru fifth grade classroom. The surface level story is simple, but you can tell there's a lot going on underneath the surface. I could have students do discussion questions about the book like "why does the dad have to work two jobs? What do you think happened to the dad's brother?"

Primary-Intermediate
A boy and his father fish for food, his father telling stories about Vietnam while trying to support his family in a new place.
This is based on the author and his father's experiences and both the author and illustrator have notes talking about their experiences at the end of the book, a great way to tie the story to the real world.

This is a touching story about a boy and his father who wake up long before dawn to go fishing and provide food for the family before the rest of the family is awake. The boy's father shares stories of "another pond" that he would fish in as a young boy in Vietnam. He shares stories of his family who are now lost. The young boy listens and wonders about the country his father came from.

"A Different Pond" is about a boy and his father on a fishing trip. While on this fishing trip, his father recants stories from his time in Vietnam and gives the son a history lesson. I would recommend this book to the age range of 3rd to 5th or 6th grade. The book would fit this particular age group and demographic because of the way it is written and drawn and the level of content within it.

This book would be good for primary grades. It is about a boy who goes fishing with his dad who immigrated from Vietnam. I would use this when discussing Vietnamese culture.

This book is for primary age students. This book tells a simple story about a boy and his father going fishing that holds many deeper meanings about what it means to be an Asian-American immigrant and how this affects their life. This book dives into the boy's relationship with his family and his connection to his culture, despite growing up only in the United States.
This would be a great book for a parent to read to their child to have a conversations about culture and how culture looks to each individual family. This was also a great book for illustrations, and each page is full of color and art.

This graphic novel is both heartbreaking and contemplative. Its the story of a modern family both past and present, and the difference in life between two mothers. A turbulent mother daughter relationship is hard enough but add to it immigration, war, poverty, and death and it becomes a tough mountain to climb. Eventually the other side found. This is a look at a family that most people won’t recognize but some will. The author gives us the true accounts of her, her mom, her dad, brother sisters, and how it correlates to the life that she lives now. This graphic memoir has been chosen as an NEA big read book for this year, and after reading it, I understand why. This isn’t any graphic novel, but an in-depth tale of longing for a place to belong and longing for the family you think you should have. This book both breaks your heart, but helps find a way to mend those pieces as time marches forward

4.5/5

I loved this so much, while we are our parents children, they do not have to define who we become. Powerful stuff, read this in one sitting. Just the sacrifices the parents made.