A Different Pond by Bao Phi

Phi, Bao and Thi Bui, illustrator. A DIFFERENT POND. North Mankato, Minnesota: Capstone Young Readers, 2017. ISBN: 978-1623-708-030.

Family, tradition, and hope. These are the pillars of A Different Pond, in which a boy and his father rise hours before dawn to go fishing. This isn't just a nice father-son bonding experience, but a necessary excursion to put food on the table. In fact, the boy and his siblings take responsibility for attending school and completing chores while both parents work hard to support the family. The parents, refugees from Vietnam, demonstrate sacrifice and self-reliance to support the family.

The characters and setting of A Different Pond support its multicultural value as a diverse book. The story is told in first-person, and so it is empowering to the central character, the boy. His parents are hard-working and loving figures, and the children seem to take nothing for granted. They recognize the sacrifices made by their parents, and see the beauty around them. For instance, the boy says that a kid at school makes fun of his dad's accent, but that he thinks it "sounds like gentle rain." The kindness and empathy shown within the family highlights the importance of their relationships.

The setting could be any American city, but Bao Phi shows the family's culture through details like their food: fish sauce, rice, and red pepper flakes, for instance. The inclusion of minor characters, like the Hmong man and the black man fishing, show an extra effort to include diversity in a natural, unforced manner. The language in A Different Pond is natural in its dialogue and contains beautiful imagery and poetic devices. The present and future tense alludes to the family's hope for the future.

This book trailer offers a peak at this beautiful, powerful picture book. The illustrations by Thi Bui are bold colored drawings, reaching to the edges of the pages. The scenes are enclosed in panels similar to those in a comic strip. This allows a frame-by-frame retelling, almost like a storyboard for a movie. In one page, an inset box shows the boy sitting in the car, while the rest of the page shows the scene of the town, with buildings, streetlights, and the car driving down the road en route to the bait shop. Bui adeptly captures the facial expressions of her characters, the ripples on the pond's surface, and the haze around a streetlamp. The illustrations are so powerful and convey the family in the story in a deep and respectful way.

The stories shared between father and son touch upon loss, war, and nostalgia. These serious topics are explored in a delicate way to make them accessible to a young audience. This powerful tale of a refugee family centers on the themes of embracing tradition and adapting to a new place. In the face of struggles, the family never loses hope for a better tomorrow.

A Different Pond is authentic and respectful to its Asian immigrant characters. Both the author and illustrator were born in Vietnam and moved to the United States as refugees fleeing the carnage of the Vietnam War. Consequently, they are both qualified to tackle the topic of a Vietnamese refugee family, and they do so with great care. The two creators provide notes explaining their personal experiences as refugees and immigrants. According to Bao Phi, his family faced discrimination from people who either did not understand why they were in Minneapolis or blamed them for the Vietnam War. The book is based on his own experiences as a child, and he honors his parents and their efforts to overcome the challenges they faced. He strives to acknowledge the traumatic stories to help his own children and others to better understand. Illustrator Thi Bui shares details common among Vietnamese American immigrant homes that she symbolize her own experiences. She used inspiration from Bao Phi's childhood photographs in creating her illustrations.

A Different Pond is a 2018 Caldecott Honor Book, a winner of the Asian/Pacific Award for Literature, and it earned the Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Honor. The book also earned spots on various lists for the best books of 2017. Independent of its characteristics as a multicultural book, A Different Pond is an excellent book for all children and adults alike.

As part of a lesson for this story, the teacher and librarian could do a read-aloud. This book, although a picture book, could be used in a middle or high school classroom in a powerful way. Students could learn about modern examples of issues that are causing people to flee their homelands, including violence in Syria and the Northern Triangle of Central America. Reactions to some of these refugees in the United States could be discussed. The importance of empathy and kindness would be emphasized. Students could finish by writing about their own experiences of feeling like outsiders, and the ways refugees should be treated.