kiddieliter

The traditional occupation of shrimping as practiced by the Vietnamese is the inspiration for this story which features an immigrant and his American-born son.  The father tells his son about his own father whom he left behind when he came to America during the Vietnam War.   He expresses his desire to return to his homeland to see him.  The scenic illustrations portray the past as the father reminisces, and the present as the father instills in his son the values of his people and teaches him his occupation as his father had taught him on the South China Sea in Vietnam. 

As he is later drifting off to sleep, the son imagines that he, his father, and grandfather (whom he has never seen) are all together in his father’s boat out on the lonely sea.

This book, which is of the contemporary realistic fiction genre because the father (like many other immigrants) has made America his home, also fits in the multicultural literature genre because it presents some of the values and traditions of the Vietnamese people.