TrunglesBesprekingen

What an extraordinarily beautiful book. Nguyen integrates Vietnamese - yet very familiar - fairy tales into a contemporary situation. Amazing. Submitted by SNW 5/9/24

“Is that really the ending?”
“It’s an old, old story. Details change. Things change. And now this story is ours. Yours and mine.”

Ahh. Every page is a feast for the eyes and heart.
Smart and lovingly done.

Soo cute ❤️

This graphic novel was full of beautiful illustrations, and a heartwarming story. I enjoyed the way the fairytales mixed in between real life.

This graphic novel was thoroughly beautiful. The artwork, the story, the themes, the authors notes at the end— all of it! I definitely teared up a little at the end.


The Magic Fish is the story of Tiến, a 13 year old boy whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam when they were younger. One of the ways his family likes to connect together is through story time, which they also use to practice their English. Tiến is also able to learn more about his family’s past through the stories his mom shares with him. Both mother and son go through some tough things during the story and find it hard to communicate about them in the way they would like to. Tiến worries over how to come out to his parents and his mother must deal with deep grief. But perhaps their tradition of storytelling, and interweaving the stories of two different generations, will become the language that finally allows them to connect.

I loved seeing the weaving together of Tiến’s life with the fairytales told between family members. It made it even cooler after reading the author’s notes at the end and seeing the inspiration behind how each story was told, both with the words and illustrations. I loved seeing the power of stories in Tiến’s family to connect them together in a sort of language that is able to transcend space and time and bring the two generations closer together.

The art is so stunning and detailed that I would spend a lot of time on each spread just taking it all in and have also gone back to look through it again. This is most definitely one of my favorite graphic novels now. Can’t wait to see more from Trung Le Nguyen (aka Trungles)!

The Magic Fish: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Made me cry at the end. A cathartic book for those who bury themselves in stories as a way to navigate the world and personal identity. Will especially speak to those who are seeking out themes of queerness and the impact of immigration on culture and family. Gorgeous art.

Thirteen-year-old Tién reads fairy tales aloud in English to his mother, so she can improve her English. As an immigrant, she still speaks mostly Vietnamese. In his home, Tién and his mother and father speak a mixture of English and Vietnamese, but at school it’s all English, so Tién is the most fluent in English, and less so in Vietnamese.

The traditional folktales and literary fairy tales from Europe and Asia that he reads have bold plots, vivid stereotypical character types, and dramatic endings, sometimes happy, and sometimes tragic. Their characters act decisively. Tién finds his real life more complicated and fraught. Language differences don’t help. He wishes that he knew the Vietnamese words to tell his parents that he has a crush on one of his two best friends, the one who is a boy. He hears his mother speaking in anxious tones to her mother back in Vietnam, but he can’t really understand what’s going on between them. Then just when he gets up the courage to talk to her, his mother receives a shocking phone call, and announces that she’s flying back to Vietnam immediately.

This book bounces beautifully between fairy tales and reality, past and present. Bold color palettes visually distinguish the fairy tales Tien reads aloud to his mother and her memories of escaping Vietnam, as well as his modern reality as a child of refugee immigrants grappling his sexual identity. With subtlety and powerful imagery, this graphic novel is engaging and interesting.

I'd heard so many good things about this that I had to go check it out when I saw it at the library. All of its praise is deserved. A magical read with beautiful illustrations -- about immigration and language and faerie tales and identity and clothing and coming out. Especially love the Vietnamese faerie tales -- the similarities and differences with the Western tales I grew up with are fascinating.

A treasure of a book.

Wow. What a marvel The Magic Fish is; beautiful and poignant, it hits a perfect sweet spot of being suitable for children and teens as well as adults.

The central story is about Tiền, a 13 year old Vietnamese-American boy, who reads fairy tales with his mother. It's a lovely personal tradition that really shows the warmth between mother and son.

The story alternates between the present with Tiền, illustrated in shades of red; interspersed with the fairy tales they read together in blues and violets; and finally, there are flashbacks to Tiền's parents leaving Vietnam, in yellow. It's a simple conceit that makes it easy to follow the story without getting confused between the stories.

Trung Le Nguyen's art is gorgeous. It's simultaneously simple and complex, childlike and mature. The detail on the character's hair is particularly gorgeous.

Set in the late nineties, Tien reads fairy tales from the library with his Vietnamese immigrant parents to help them learn English. Tien wants to come out to his parents but does not know the words in Vietnamese.

This is a beautifully illustrated graphic novel that delves into the generational trauma that comes with immigrating to a new continent. The art is a major aspect of the storytelling. The book emphasizes shared folklore stories while embracing cultural differences and nuance. This book both is and isn't a coming out story- it felt more like the main conflict of the story was bridging the cultural gap between Tien and his mother’s worlds.

I'm loving the notion that the stories we tell change to suit our needs but not enthused by the artwork.

Three stars? Yes--this is a really well done, clever graphic novel. I just didn't find it entertaining. It's purpose is very literary and it succeeds very well.

The gist is that fables are the tales that pull us together and help us copy with life.

I really enjoyed this graphic novel, The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen, both in reading and in his drawing style. Nguyen's art style, to me, had this art deco feel with similarities to W. W. Denslow and amazing sense of fashion throughout the comic. Story wise, I liked the Vietnamese culture; the mother and son relationship; the realistic struggles of coming out gay in the 1990s along with the secret crush that goes nowhere other than a platonic friendship; and the frame-story element from the real world, flashbacks, and the fairy tale worlds.

I highly recommend this to any young or old reader who enjoys cultural stories, immigration stories, positive LGBT stories, fairy tales, and/or parent/child relationships.

Comparing folk tales from Vietnam and the western world, The Magic Fish follows a young teenage boy in the 1990's trying to figure out how to come out to his mom. With friends who support him, he does everything he can to gather the courage, and tries to do so by reading carefully selected stories to his mom to help her learn English.

What I Loved:
I love the connection and telling of folk tales and how the similarities between cultures exist. I also loved to see how we use stories as a true form of expression. The artwork has detailed line work that causes the reader to see the real message each panel is trying to tell.

What I Missed:
I would have narrowed down a bit of the folk tales, but not by much. It still connects how we can lose ourselves in stories and tend to ramble as we tell them.

Beautiful book with a lot packed in -- immigrant parents, language sharing, crushes and coming out and fairy tales and bereavement. All of that, and yet it's a quiet sort of book, with a quiet main character and a ton of heart. Beautifully drawn, beautiful visual storytelling. I'm not at all sure why this is recommended for older kids -- there's nothing in it that I think would qualify it as YA aside from the intricacy of story. I suppose there is some very graphic violence, fairy tales being what they are. Love Tien's spectacular friends. Hate the faith counseling, not ok.

The illustrations in the fairy tale sections of this book really remind me of the dusty old illustrated fable and fairy tale books I used to dig up at thrift stores and yard sales when I was a kid, and they are absolutely to DIE for. That plus a wonderful story come together to be just a fantastic read.

Just, love!

Vietnamese retelling of Cinderella and Little Mermaid. Very pretty drawings.

The Magic Fish is a graphic novel about the relationship between a closeted 13 yr old boy named Tien and his refugee mother who mostly speaks Vietnamese. The panels of this graphic novel are told in three colors: red for present day, blue for stories, and yellow for the past. The pair read children's stories as a way to connect, and as a way for Tien's mother to learn English. It is not just a story about coming out, but it is also a story about a young boy who has a disconnect from his culture, Tien having been born and raised in America after his parents defected during the Vietnam war, and a mother who wants to share her culture with her son but struggles to find the right way to do so. It is a heartwarming tale with ELAR connections through fairytales, Asian-American representation, and a wonderful Mother-Son relationship.½

Gorgeous art, beautiful story, great characters. Emphasizes the power of books to connect people and the power of family.

*reviewed from uncorrected ARC - via #netgalley

diverse middlegrade/teen graphic novel, #ownvoices bilingual Vietnamese-American family and LGBTQAI interest
Beautiful art tells the story of 13 y.o. Tiến, a sweet kid who is close with his parents but doesn't quite know how to tell them he's gay. The story alternates between fairy tales (including a Vietnamese Cinderella tale that is as grisly as the Grimm version), Tiến's secret crush on his friend, and his mother's experiences as a refugee and immigrant.
Don't miss the backmatter, "Between Words and Pictures," which explains why the princess illustrations appear to be so westernized at first (that is probably how Tiến would have imagined them), as well as the real life inspirations behind Princess Alera's magnificent gowns (Callot Soeurs/Poiret, Givenchy/Dior, Christian Lacroix/Franck Sorbier) and other decisions the author made with the art and story.

This story focuses on a boy named Tien who is raised in America. His mother is an immigrant from Vietnam, and is working with Tien to learn English. Tien speaks Vietnamese at home, but speaks English when he is out in the world. The story includes multiple different fairy tales, and this fairy tales help Tien learn more about his past and the generations that came before him. Tien is also trying to come out to his parents that he likes his best friend, Julian. However, he is having a hard time translating, gay, into Vietnamese.

Beautiful, thoughtful read. First, the artwork is absolutely stunning, from the character design to their expressions and outfits, the colour-coding, and panel layout. The graphic novel is worth it just for the art.

But beyond this, it’s a poweful story, told with an intricate, intelligent combination of image and word. I was sold on it thinking it was about a young Vietnamese immigrant trying to make his coming out. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the narrative also centers Helen’s (who is the mother of the main character, Tiến) experience and emotions. It recontextualizes the coming out narrative, and speaks to the idea that it’s not a unilateral event in one’s life. Tiến is close to his family, especially his mother, and her own experience as an immigrant is being taken into account in relation to Tiến’s desire to affirm his identity. I feel like this will be relatable for the children of Asian immigrants and immigrants in general.

The way in which Tiến’s story, Helen’s story and her past, and the fairy tales are interwoven shows a real mastery of the form of the graphic novel. I loved how the themes of migration, queerness, memory, and the stories we tell are discussed, and how the accompanying feelings of guilt, displacement, alienation, and ultimately love and empathy are parsed in the book.

I’m also a sucker for reading about an artist’s creative process... so the notes at the end, which offer a glimpse into Trung Le Nguyen’s thoughts, research, and sources for inspiration just made me admire the work more!!!

This is the kind of book to which I’ll go back and keep on finding find new things to love!!!