The Magic Fish. My tears were the drops of sweet, unbridled joy and unencumbered hopefulness. As a middle-aged, lifelong comic book enthusiast I found my emotional response after finishing The Magic Fish to be a delightful surprise.
While The Magic Fish is aimed at a middle-school audience, its heartfelt honesty transcends age. It is a bold immigrant story focusing on Tien, a 13-year-old Vietnamese boy, and his parents as they navigate their new home in America.
It is also an LGBTQ+ narrative about finding the words to vocalize your queerness to parents who lack the language to fully understand what being gay means.
And it is a tale about the power of shared stories and how fairy tales are often used to express deep truths about society and.