Fri. August 14, 2026
From the Caldecott Honor-winning creators of A Different Pond comes a new picture book that encompasses three generations, two languages, and one universal experience. Receiving a starred review from Publishers Weekly, Ride/Ð?p Xe is a bilingual story in English and Vietnamese that explores a child’s trust, a parent’s guiding hand, and the paradox of loving and letting go.
Author Bao Phi was born in Vietnam and raised in the Phillips neighborhood of South Minneapolis. He’s an author, poet, community organizer, and parent. In this interview, he shares his own experiences with learning how to ride a bike from his father, the creative process with illustrator Thi Bui, and more.
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Who taught you to ride a bike – and what do you remember most about that experience? My dad. He taught me in a small parking lot across the alley from where we lived. I remember most that he would run behind me with one hand under the seat, holding me steady as I pedaled. Without telling me, he would sometimes let go, so I would peddle on my own. But when I saw the shadows cast beside us, I would lose my nerve and fall. At least at first! Eventually we figured it out.
The book is about learning to ride a bike, but it’s also about trust, independence, and growing up. What do you hope readers will take away from that?That care and love are among the most powerful forces in the universe, and those things can lead the way to trust, independence, and growth. And we need that for ourselves and each other.
You teamed up once again with artist Thi Bui for this book. Can you talk about your creative process together? What do you think Thi’s illustrations bring to the book that words alone couldn’t?I feel lucky working with Thi! She’s extraordinarily talented and sharp. And she has a genuine curiosity and intuition in her work. It was her idea for the child in the bottom panels to have a larger and somewhat awkward bike to symbolize how we had a different reality when we were younger and poor. That’s just one example of how Thi’s intentionality and brilliance adds so much to the work.
The English and Vietnamese texts aren’t direct translations – they each have their own voice. What inspired that creative decision?It was important that this book be bilingual, and I wanted to try to do something that felt different and meaningful. So I thought, what if I told two stories that were echoes of each other, or related to one another in a way that would be revealed in the end? What creative use of the picture-book medium could I experiment with? That being said, I wanted it to also be relatively simple, focusing still on the stories and the characters within all of it.
If readers could walk away remembering just one feeling from Ride/Ð?p Xe, what would you hope it is?How truly important care is.
About the AuthorLearn more about Bao Phi and his work. >
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