I am confident that a unit like this could be quite beneficial for our students as they find that they can relate and feel for people like Stephanie and her family.2017 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) FinalistĪBA Indies Introduce Winter / Spring 2017 Selectionīarnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Spring 2017 SelectionĪn intimate and poignant graphic novel portraying one family’s journey from war-torn Vietnam, from debut author Thi Bui. I found that as I translated this story to comic-strip form, I related more than when I was quickly reading these stories from the original website. To drive this point home, we could ask our students to create short graphic stories depicting the letters they find on this site or others like it.įor my make, I transcribed one of these painful stories and used the comic generator on Inspired by 'The Best We Could Do,' I used minimal colors and characters who are expressing their raw emotions through their facial features. While one or two stories are quite inspirational, the majority make your heart hurt as you learn how difficult immigration has been for so many people. Here, people send in their personal stories of immigration. I thought a great unit could involve researching immigration stories and this leads me to. As I mentioned previously, Bui usually depicts more than one day or week on a page, but this moment was different the pace was slowed down to highlight how genuinely jarring this was to the Bui family. Next, there is a frame of him slowly wiping his face off, and then finally, they continue walking down the road. Bui then dedicates another frame to a drawing of her father's face with the spit prominently covering his face. After screaming an incredibly racist remark at them, the boy proceeds to spit in her father's face. On page 66, a teenage boy and his friend ride their bikes by Bui and her father. To highlight how difficult this was on the family, she slowed down the pace to discuss a moment that would've probably happened in mere seconds and devoted most of a page to the moment. Bui's family had issues integrating into America and faced moments of racism and discrimination.

from Vietnam, she slows the story down during the moments of hardship so we might feel as they did.

The best we could do book