Going Home, Coming Home/Ve Nha, Tham Que Huong (Hardcover)

by Truong Tran (Author), Ann Phong (Illustrator) "I left Vietnam for America when I was five, only days before the fall of Saigon..." (more)
Key Phrases: Uncle Binh, Ami Chi

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 2-Eight-year-old Ami Chi makes her first trip to Vietnam, her parents' homeland, and stays with her uncle and grandmother. The heat, the small house, and her inability to understand the language make the child long to return home to America-until she visits a market, makes a friend there, and develops a closeness with her grandmother. She realizes that "Home is two different places, on the left and right sides of my heart." Told through Ami Chi's eyes, the story occasionally lapses into a poetic, adult voice. The impressionistic illustrations, done in acrylic paint on rag paper, fill the entire spread, with the bilingual text sometimes all on one side and sometimes divided between the two pages. Facial features are often missing from people in the background; mouths, when present, are sometimes strangely drawn. It's unfortunate that the objects in the market and on city streets lack a sharp focus; the art fails to provide an interesting look at the country and its culture. That said, this title is still a useful addition for Vietnamese-Americans traveling to their native land with children.
Diane S. Marton, Arlington County Library, VA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 1-3. This moving bilingual picture book, from an author and artist who are both Vietnamese American, tells a contemporary immigrant story, not of child refugees coming to America, but of a child of those refugees visiting, for the first time, the country her parents still call home. For Ami Chi, eight years old, home is the U.S. She doesn't want to fly to Vietnam and meet her grandmother (ba ngoai). It's too hot there, Ba ngoai's house is too small, and Ami Chi can't understand what anyone around her says. But then she makes a friend who speaks English, and by the time she returns to the U.S., she recognizes that she is both Vietnamese and American. Phong's richly colored, double-page acrylic paintings capture both the child's dislocation in the strange crowds and the contrast between the two worlds she now knows. Most eloquent is the beautiful close-up of Ami Chi combing Grandmother's hair. Immigrant kids everywhere will recognize the space across generations and the idea that home is not one place. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 4-8
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Children's Book Press; Bilingual edition (June 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892391790
• ISBN-13: 978-0892391790
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8.7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #589,450 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Book, March 13, 2007

By	D. R. (Littleton, CO) - See all my reviews

I am a Vietnamese American, born in Saigon but raised in the States. I still speak Vietnamese at home, and would like to teach the language to our daughter. My husband is Caucasian, so we are trying to teach our daughter both English and Vietnamese. This book is a good start to that teaching however; we were taught very formal and polite Vietnamese growing up. Some of the terms used in this book, I found, were a bit rough around the edges. For example, referring to a little girl as "Toi" as opposed to "Em", I didn't care for too much. Other than the minor semantics, I found this book to be enjoyable and reflective of our visit to Vietnam.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The true meaning of "home" in more than one location, November 17, 2003

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

Going Home, Coming Home is a bilingual English/Vietnamese storybook by Truong Tran about a family visiting Vietnam. The mother and father had to leave their home during the Vietnam War, but their young daughter has no memories of Vietnam and struggles to understand what it means to have a home one has never before visited. Ann Phong's warm and colorful illustrations embellish this thoughtful tale of making new friends, learning new ways of doing things, and embracing the true meaning of "home" in more than one location.