A few years ago when we lived in Pennsylvania, I happened upon this book at our library. I read it aloud to the kids and we laughed, cried, and thoroughly enjoyed this glimpse into rural Vietnamese village life and a very large water buffalo named Tank.
It is Water Buffalo Days: Growing Up in Vietnam by Huynh Quang Nhuong. A job change and move later caused me to forget about it until I happened upon it again, but this time in the library where we currently live.
How many resources are there for kids from Vietnam? Very few, but this is an outstanding one that lets you read your way through geography. Add notes of details of daily living while you read, collect pictures of animals from the story (wild hogs, otters, tiger snakes), note relationships between community members, and you have a mini-unit study for geography and history of a foreign culture. (Nhuong also wrote The Land I Lost: Adventures of a Boy in Vietnam, though I have not read this yet.)
This book and the 10 Days in Asia game are both listed under Geography in the Creative Home Learning Store - my personal choices for a creative environment in which genius can flourish!
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