Going Home, Coming Home/Ve Nha, Tham Que Huong
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, VACopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.