REVIEW: “Simone” is a Powerful, Poetic Book About Moving Through Uncertainty

Simone

Publisher: Astra Books for Young Readers | Minerva

Pub date: May 07 2024

Words by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Art by Minnie Phan

Reading age : 5–9 years,

Grade level : Kindergarten — 4, 50 Pages

Simone is sold as “an unforgettable story of a Vietnamese American girl whose life is transformed by a wildfire” by its publisher. The book opens to a little girl, who is soon revealed to be named Simone in the following pages, who is in the ocean. Not drowning, not fretting, not in danger, just blissfully floating in the water, unafraid and safe. She’s dreaming and this peaceful, colorful dream state is interrupted as she awakens to her mother at her bedside in a hurry. Her blue skied and blue watered paradise is gone and the color scheme she awakens to is likened to a grayscale lack of color. Little Simone is instructed to get up, grab what’s important with someone else outside their house shouting that there is a fire and to evacuate now!

Artist Minnie Phan’s artwork in Simone has layers to its emotional storytelling way of her usage of and also lack of color. So much of the book’s color scheme is in this murky, gray scale color scheme from the very beginning after Simone is awakened from his colorful dream: Simone and mom evacuate away from home with the flames outside their home’s window being a vibrant, raging orange color.

I think of the bright color of the uniforms of the firefighters, the sleeping bags in the shelter, the sheer magnitude of the blue of the water from Ma’s memories and more all add emotional weight to each page and each continuing part of the narrative as international visuals that help ground the readers to the story. My favorite pages happened to be Simone’s art supplies like her crayons and the way she literally breathes new life and color into the situation at hand that eventually brings the book itself to full color before the final page.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen (Nguyễn Thanh Việt) who was born in Vietnam and raised in America has long been interested in how stories about his home country of Vietnam are told here in America. In this short but absolutely marvelous book created for younger readers, the author expands upon his love for Vietnam by introducing a little Vietnamese-American girl who experiences being displaced like her mother, before her back home in her native country. While having never visited Ma’s home country, Simone is fascinated by the “country of water”, a beautiful place that her mother has promised to take her one day.

Ma was rescued from her home after a flood as a little girl, around the same age as her future daughter. Ma’s past in Simone parallels her daughters: the precious childhood keepsake they both rush to grab, the tale of ultimately surviving with family and living to see another day. The sharing of Ma’s life back home serves to better connect the little girl to not just her mother but of the place she has roots via her loving parents that I adore from this creative team of Vietnamese Americans.

Simone is a beautiful picture book with a sprawling story with lovely artwork that uses color as an emotional anchor for readers to grab on throughout reading. I am delighted with all the questions, observations and open spots for dialogue that will be invited by these pages. Simone seeing firefighters and having questions about the incarcerated firefighters she sees fighting on the front line against the flames made me so happy to see on the page. I have long been interested in Californian firefighting inmates and their inclusion may turn up great discussions about rehabilitation, societal expectations, the price of labor and the history of exploitation.

Simone could also be a gateway to open up dialogue about climate change for younger readers as they could connect that both California wildfires that little Simone and Ma escape from and the great floods that younger version of Ma survived. Persons displaced by natural disasters and introductions to shelters for those facing possibly losing everything along with their homes is another great way to speak through scary thoughts and situations that may or may not already have been experienced by the readers of this book, young and old.

I can think of younger readers seeing the titular little heroine in Simone ruminate on what to take with her (in the beginning of the book) and wanting to know about how to pack and keep a go bag (or a stay box!) for emergency preparedness and knowing steps to be disaster ready. This can become a family project and can start with baby steps for little ones in the fight to prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural disasters, everywhere and anywhere!

[Videos courtesy of one of my favorite California public outreach operations: Listos California who believe that Every Californian, regardless of age, ability, income or language, deserves culturally competent education to prepare for wildfire, flood, earthquake, drought, heatwave and other disasters!]

See more about them here and find different places Listos can be found online here like Instagram, Facebook and X (Sigh — Twitter, y’all)

Readers will gravitate to Simone for an age appropriate book on a little girl discovering the power of community, nurturing empathy and seeking to understand the world around her. While Simone’s life was transformed by a wildfire, it was not for the worse. Instead the event led her to not only connect to her identity as a Vietnamese American girl and also tap into the stories of those who came before to bring strength to herself and those around her.

Her ability to use art to help process current events and move others to action as they share the best parts of their lives in the face of uncertainty–while also imagining a future that includes them all is perhaps the best part of reading Simone. Our titular heroine speaking about a future where those who work to save others and the planet that includes faces of herself and all the different kids at the shelter she ends up at with mom is a stunning and hopeful reminder for the next generation.

As a Californian, reading Simone feels like home, a piece of home in book form. California Natives and those seeking to return to the California soil will be treated to a children’s picture book that moves readers to imagine a future where we all not not only have compassion for ourselves, those around us and the planet.

I hope Simone brings attention to not only the fire danger that often plagues my native home state but also the plight of the incarcerated firefighters who earn sometimes less than a few dollars per day. I love that this book from author Viet Thanh Nguyen and illustrator Minnie Phan includes what I love from a children’s book: threads in the narrative on important topics like social justice, striking artwork and child characters ready to take on the world and make it a better place for us all.

Simone is published through the Minerva imprint of Astra Publishing House, which continues a publishing tradition devoted to opening children’s minds and hearts to the promise and challenges of the world we share. The book can be found where most books are sold. (Images used in review, are courtesy of publisher: Minerva) Thank you so much Netgalley for the review copy!

Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. He is the author of The Committed, which continues the story of The Sympathizer, awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, alongside seven other prizes. He is also the author of the short story collection The Refugees; the nonfiction book Nothing Ever Dies, a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; the children’s book Chicken of the Sea, co-written with his son Ellison and with Thi Bui and Hien Bui-Stafford; He lives in Los Angeles. Follw him on Instagram: viet_t_nguyen

Minnie Phan is an illustrator and writer based in Oakland, CA. Her work has been featured by Google, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the San Francisco Public Library, for which she illustrated a citywide reading campaign in 2022. She is the illustrator of several picture books including The Yellow Áo Dài, written by Hanh Bui, and Simone, written by Pulitzer Prize winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen. Follow her on Instagram: @minnie_phan.

Carrie McClain is a lifelong lover of children’s lit (Expect to see more kid lit book reviews, soon!) and also a Californian native who navigates the world as writer, editor, and media scholar who firmly believes that we can and we should critique the media we consume. She once aided Cindi Mayweather in avoiding capture. See more of her on Twitter (X) and other places she can be found online.