‘The Magic Fish’ Book Review

“Tiến loves his family and his friends…but Tiến has a secret he’s been keeping from them, and it might change everything. An amazing YA graphic novel that deals with the complexity of family and how stories can bring us together.“

‘The Magic Fish’,  shows the power of storytelling. Books and stories are so important to every single culture around the world. We can find ourselves in stories, making us realize that we are not alone in this world. You can go through terrible things and these books will get you through that journey, it will put words to feelings that you had but didn’t know how to express. A good story can even help you find yourself.

To me that is the main theme of this book. We see a young person who is trying to find himself and trying to express himself to his immigrant family. His family  might not have the words to understand what he is trying to say and who he is as a person. Literature helps him do that, art helps him do that. 

I didn’t expect several things that we got in this book, rather that be, getting a multi-perspective story as we also see the character’s mom’s perspective. I also didn’t expect the fairytales to actually be shown. This is going to be a crazy comparison, but if you like Mistborn, I think you might like this book. One of the stories really reminds me of the characters in Mistborn. A common problem that I have while reading graphic novels is that the transitions can be choppy and make me feel like I missed a page that happened here. I was having to go back and see if I had accidentally skipped a page. No, it was just choppy.  

We do get a note from the author at the end of the book and more notes explaining the stories and so on. As an adult reading this book, I thought that was a bit much but at the same time this is intended for a middle grade audience whose media literacy may not be as developed as an adult so I do think it could work well for them. This is a good book and I’m happy that there’s a story like this out there. I just don’t see myself rereading it in the future.