A Place To Grow
Like a 17th-century poem, this high-toned story about why a family chooses to move to another country rests on a single, extended metaphor. Unfortunately, the book ultimately sinks under the weight of its poetic abstractions. Pak (Dear Juno) introduces the book's theme when the girl narrator says that her father, like a springtime seed, "flew a long way to grow into our family." Truong alternates warm renderings of the girl and her father planting a lush garden in their new homeland with illustrations of the hardships endured in the Asian country from which he emigrated. The repeated and often forced analogy between seeds and people carries political freight beyond the knowledge of most children (the father tells the girl a seed needs rain to grow, but "the rain that fell on our seed came only now and then,/ and sometimes not at all./.../ That is what it is like when there are too many workers/ and not enough work"). The leap from rainfall to unemployment, or from a seed/person needing "good land," but not "too many guns and not enough love" may be asking too much of some readers. The book ends on a cozy, if didactic note, as the father remembers his father saying, "There will always be a garden in my heart for you." While the book's heartfelt sentiments may appeal to some, its preachy tone and strained images will likely confuse young readers. Ages 4-10.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.