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The Magic Fish
Nov. 13th, 2020 07:16 pmThe Magic Fish, Trung Le Nguyen, 2020. Gorgeously-drawn YA graphic novel about a Vietnamese-American boy and his mom reading each other fairy tales, interweaving the fairy tales, his real life, and occasionally scenes from her past deciding to leave Vietnam. If I have one complaint, it's that I wish we could have gotten to see a little bit more of that thread, although, the story isn't really about that, beyond what we already get to see, so, I think it was probably the right choice, I'm just greedy. It was really good... really neat stuff about immigrant experiences and the ways people connect with and through stories and all kinds of stuff. And the art is so pretty.
I did make one mistake, and told Q, who'd been asking about it since I brought it home, that he could read it - yeah, somebody probably just made a face there. For what it's worth, I *think* he stopped reading before the most grisly part, but was significantly upset by an earlier upsetting part, whoops. Honestly, I was mostly focused on my fear that he would take certain homophobic comments made by a minor-character authority figure at face value (and so I told him not to - I pointed that guy out and said he was a bad guy), and was not really thinking about the fact that my 8yo has vastly less exposure to the sometimes gruesome details of traditional fairy tales than I do. To me, as a middle-aged mom, the idea of my kid thinking I would be sad if he came out to me is way scarier than fantasy violence in fairy tales... not so much the 8yo. Anyways, as far as I can tell he did a good job of stopping and self-regulating, like, not continuing to read something that was upsetting him, which is an important reading skill, and I have recalibrated my sense of what he's probably okay with.
Specifics of fairy tale violence, animal harm, and a few more spoilery content notes relating to parents behind the cut here: ( Read more... )
I did make one mistake, and told Q, who'd been asking about it since I brought it home, that he could read it - yeah, somebody probably just made a face there. For what it's worth, I *think* he stopped reading before the most grisly part, but was significantly upset by an earlier upsetting part, whoops. Honestly, I was mostly focused on my fear that he would take certain homophobic comments made by a minor-character authority figure at face value (and so I told him not to - I pointed that guy out and said he was a bad guy), and was not really thinking about the fact that my 8yo has vastly less exposure to the sometimes gruesome details of traditional fairy tales than I do. To me, as a middle-aged mom, the idea of my kid thinking I would be sad if he came out to me is way scarier than fantasy violence in fairy tales... not so much the 8yo. Anyways, as far as I can tell he did a good job of stopping and self-regulating, like, not continuing to read something that was upsetting him, which is an important reading skill, and I have recalibrated my sense of what he's probably okay with.
Specifics of fairy tale violence, animal harm, and a few more spoilery content notes relating to parents behind the cut here: ( Read more... )
