Weirdo (i)

From author Anh Do and Scholastic

I follow the reporter Anh Do, who grew up in her father’s Người Việt of Westminster, California, went on her own at the Orange County Register there, and now writes for the Los Angeles Times. I went looking for her latest early this January.

The search engine came back instead with author Anh Do of Sydney, Australia. I bought a used copy of the first each of 3 series with Scholastic.

Scholastic publishes the Harry Potter books, in the hundreds of thousands of copies at a time. For a century they have sold many other books at the same numbers that no one has ever heard of except the children who enjoy them.

I think the world of Scholastic. I am so glad to have learned of Anh Do. The Vietnamese-language entry at Wikipedia gives his name as Đỗ Anh. The Arabic version is السيد دو. In Esperanto as well as English he is Anh Do.

Anh is a dynamic man of the arts, the stage and screen and the painter’s studio as well as the pen. You may read of him and his deeds, along with his brother the film-maker Khoa Do, all over the interweb.

This one book of Anh’s I have examined so far seems gestural, schematic, more aspirational than achieved. Jules Faber’s illustrations suit the text in that way. I bet many readers have thrown their own fears and hopes onto these pages, reading with engagement and imagination as Anh, Jules, Scholastic and I would like them to do.

But not me. Not yet. Anh is a young man and a prolific talent so who knows when his work will grab me now that I follow him too.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.