Two stories are told in parallel: scenes of a dad with his child, rendered in mostly blue with English dialogue, and scenes depicting a mother and her child, portrayed in a yellow and sepia palette, in Vietnamese. Both kids are learning to ride a bike\u2014a process marked by falls and tears of frustration. Phi\u2019s succinct stanzas are composed entirely of tender dialogue between parent and child. Both kids start out apprehensive, and each even briefly gives up. Yet with the parents\u2019 persistent encouragement, both are eventually able to ride independently, making the kids\u2019 triumph feel all sweeter. Laudably, both adults also give their little ones room to struggle and even fail. The dialogue in both stories is essentially identical, with the mother and child\u2019s Vietnamese followed by English translations in parentheses. It\u2019s only when the father and child walk home that both stories converge, the house being a color blend of both palettes. Bui\u2019s minimalistic illustration style with soft blurred spots of color and lined textures deftly complements the dialogue, creating a tone of warmth. As the child asks Dad who taught him to ride, the picture of the father as a boy with his mom can be seen on a nearby mirror.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two stories are told in parallel: scenes of a dad with his child, rendered in mostly blue with English dialogue, and scenes depicting a mother and her child, portrayed in a yellow and sepia palette, in Vietnamese. Both kids are learning to ride a bike\u2014a process marked by falls and tears of frustration. Phi\u2019s succinct […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6949"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}