Asian-Americans, Minnesota, memories, immigrants, cultural-assimilation, cultural-exploration, cultural-heritage, refugees, illustrated, food-fishing, father-and-son, sharing***** Beautiful in meaning, sharing, and illustrations. The publisher's blurb is quite good, but I see in this book the people of many countries around the world who are displaced. Even in the land to which they are born and have lived for generations. I cook and eat the fish I have caught as well. This book clearly deserved all the awards it earned!

I recently received A Different Pond by Bao Phi and illustrated by Thi Bui from Capstone Young Readers for Multicultural Children's Book Day, and it was such a captivating read. It is such a powerful and gripping story about a fishing trip a father and his son takes early one morning. The fishing trip seems to be a routine for the two, but this time they have to fish earlier than usual because the father is now working a second job in the morning. When our narrator asks his father why they have to continue fishing for food when he has two jobs now. His father replies, "Everything in America costs a lot of money" and the son can feel all the callouses on his father's hand as they hold hands to get to the pond. It is a heart wrenching story to read about the struggles the family faces. You get a glimpse of the sacrifices the parents go through in the story. To have to work multiple jobs and to have to wake up in the wee hours to fish your own food because you are too poor to buy food is very sad. Unfortunately, it is all too common of a scenario for poor immigrant families. In the book, you meet other fishermen who likely having to fish for food, and they are also minorities. Phi's eloquent writing and story-telling and Bui's evocative illustrations had me in tears when I read the story. I have never cried reading other children's picture books before, and I have read many picture books since my daughter was first born 8 years ago. Like Phi and Bui, I am a child of a poor refugee family who fled Vietnam due to the war. Needless to say, this picture book really resonated with me. My family and I grew up poor. Both my parents made many sacrifices so my siblings and I can have a better life than they had growing up. This is by far my favorite picture book of the year! I intend to purchase this book for our friends and family members. It is a phenomenal book to share and read in hopes to open a dialogue with our children about family, sacrifice, poverty, immigration, and war. After reading the story, my daughter asked if we could go fishing. It's not something we have tried as a family. She said she didn't want to eat or hurt the fish though so we will do a catch and release. Fortunately for my daughter, she doesn't understand what it means to be poor or hungry. My parents' sacrifices have paved the way for a better future for me and my children.