Huynh, who grew up in Vietnam, doesn't tell an exciting story, but his heartfelt account of part of his childhood in a tiny hamlet during the late 1940s or early 1950s is filled with fascinating details about culture and custom. At the center of his story is Tank, his family's prized water buffalo. Huynh explains how his father acquired the beast as a calf (the slowest part of the book) and how Tank grew to be both gentle pet and fierce defender of the village herd. Scenes of Tank's battles--with a tiger, another buffalo, a wild hog--are brutal and detailed, but these are somewhat moderated by views of the buffalo and young Huyhn roaming the rice fields and forests together in quiet companionship. And readers can't fail to be moved by the tragic conclusion. A book that may inspire talk about cultural differences and be a springboard to Asian history. (Reviewed November 15, 1997)

In a book for slightly younger readers than his first memoir, 'The Land I Lost: Adventures of a Boy in Vietnam', the author explores more deeply one aspect of his childhood--his closely bonded relationship with the family's prize water buffalo, Tank. Huynh relates his boyhood adventures in a simple, matter-of-fact style, including details of rural life that will enlarge the reader's understanding of another country.

The village social life and customs in the central highlands of Vietnam prior to the involvement of the US provide an affecting platform for the author's warm memories of a childhood enriched by close relationships with the animals vital to the family's economic survival. Delicate pencil drawings accompany the first-person narrative that shows the role water buffaloes played during dry-season farming and rainy-season hunting. They were creatures of such importance that, when one named Water Jug dies of old age, it is only fitting that he is buried in the graveyard, as we had done for all the dead of our family.'' The boy hopes for a new bull with the same gentle temperament as Water Jug's, but his father has always dreamed of a replacement bull that would be not only a valuable worker, but a strong fighter and true leader when tigers, panthers, and lone wild hogs from the jungle threaten the village's herd. The father brings home a calf from a distant village, but delays naming him until his nature makes one apparent. After a fight in which he bests the reigning leader of the herd, the young bull is named Tank. Fierce in battle, Tank's gentleness otherwise earns him the respect of the village, and readers will come to admire him; his death, the result ofa single misplaced bullet'' in a military skirmish, is very affecting. In Tank's passing, the author brings home the waste of war, in a book written from the heart. (Autobiography. 7-10)"