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A Phở Love Story book cover

January 2022, Young Adult Level

See all January Books See all 2021-2022 Books

A Phở Love Story

by Loan Le

Vietnamese-American teens Bảo Nguyễn and Linh Mai have avoided each other for most of their lives because of a feud between their families’ competing phở restaurants. But as Bảo and Linh get to know each other, they wonder what’s really been keeping them apart.
Themes
Community, Culture, Family, Trauma
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A Phở Love Story book cover

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Help teen readers fall in love with A Phở Love Story and other romantic titles during a Book Speed Dating or Speed Booking activity:

  1. Book Speed Dating introduces participants to lots of books with its informal “meet and greet” attitude. Organize diverse titles into romance subgenres (contemporary, historical, paranormal or fantasy, time-travel, LGBTQ+, etc.) and divide participants into the same number of groups. Each group has 5 minutes to peruse their pile before moving on to the next. After participants have visited all the genres, have everyone go back to “hook up” with the romantic book of their choice.
  2. Speed Booking is like speed dating, only instead of looking for a date, participants are looking for their next great read! Readers sit across from each other and have 3 minutes to each talk about a book they’ve read recently. After the 3 minutes are up, one side rotates so everyone is now sitting in front of a new person. Set the clock for another 3 minutes for this new group. Keep up the conversations until everyone has talked to each other.

Questions for Discussion or Reflective Writing

  1. Food can often serve as shorthand for culture. How was food used in A Phở Love Story to tell a more complicated story?

Related Resources

  • Loan Le from Simon & Schuster's Books Like Us

     
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