Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - The Magic Fish

I've been wanting to read this for over a year. It came on my radar in 2022 with the increase of books being challenged and banned. And, of course, in some areas it was in fact banned because the main character is gay. Boo hiss boo!! Anyway, I saw it come into the library and thought perfect timing.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this graphic novel. I loved how the fairy tales are blue, present day (Tien) is red, and Hien's memories are yellow. I loved how the author interwove the fairy tales into Tien and Hien's stories and thereby giving them a real world connection. Cinderella are the first two fairy tales and The Little Mermaid is the third.

Nguyen tackles quite a few themes in this graphic novel like love, immigration, gender identity, being afraid to come to your parents, and the importance of stories to name a few. In one of Hien's storylines she is back in Vietnam and her aunt asks her if she remembers how a particular fairy tale goes and she doesn't but once her aunt finishes it's revealed that this may or may not be how the story goes but this version of it is ours. And I found that absolutely fascinating because it's true. We are first and foremost oral storyteller's and the SAME story can be used situationally, have different meanings for different people.

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olive_lol's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

This graphic novel is stunning. An unbelievable amount of detail is in every frame, and I especially liked how it uses colors to differentiate between the present, past, and fairytale sections. Each major character is thoughtfully crafted and feels real (even those in the fairytales), concluding in a heartfelt ending. It combines a family, fairytales, and Vietnamese culture into a story that leaps off the pages.

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northerndryad's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

5.0

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ellornaslibrary's review

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I had been looking at this graphic novel for awhile. The cover was always just so captivating it always drew my eye when popping up in recommendations, but I couldn’t get ahold of it at my library. Then I managed to get ahold of it this much just in time for a very important readathon - it is called Asian Readathon and is ran by Cindy (withcindy on YouTube); definitely check it out - and I’m so happy I was reminded of this book in time cause it is so, so good. Even made me cry a bit.

The art is stunning, and the way the stories of the mother and son are told through a mixture of their real world experience combined with the messages of fairytales is brilliant. I especially loved the information given by the author, Trung Le Nguyen, after the acknowledgements on his inspiration for both this important story he was telling as well as the comparison of graphic novels to a hybrid language.

I will give a warning though that as this is also a story about an LGQBTIA+ kid struggling with his identity in the 90s that there is a brief reference to the horrible, tragic murder of Matthew Shephard which was a big topic in the media at that time in regards to hate crimes and definitely relevant to the fears of coming out. There is also in regards to the immigration part of the story as far as mentions of loss of a parent & re-education(there might be some others I missed). I wanted anyone going into this graphic novel to be as informed as possible in case they aren’t able to handle it or need preparation to be able to do so.

Even so, I still think this is a beautiful story worth reading and highly recommend it.

Content Warnings