The Magic Fish

 The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen, 256 pages.

Tiến loves his family, reading fairy tales, and reading fairy tales with his family. The fairy tales are especially important to his mother, both because she loves the stories and because they are helping her to practice her English. This graphic novel switches between
Tiến's story of trying to find a way to tell his parents he's gay when he doesn't even know the word in Vietnamese, and his mother, who is missing her family (and especially her ailing mother) back in Vietnam, and is afraid she abandoned them to be safe in the United States with her husband. These two stories are beautifully interwoven with three gorgeously illustrated fairy tales, which are the lens through which all of the characters are processing both their own and their loved one's problems. 

I was very interested into this story because I, much like our protagonists, love fairy tales. I also love inter-generational stories, so I was pretty sure I would like this one. I really underestimated just how much though. The colorful illustrations are breathtaking, and the flow of the narrative is pretty much flawless. The interplay between the stories and "real life" was done more cleverly than I had expected, with each narrative genuinely enriching the others. I also loved how very human everyone felt. All of our characters very much felt like real, three-dimensional people. I would definitely recommend this very quick book.

(Also a note: the author's notes in the back talk a lot about the development of the art, and they are extremely interesting)