Books about Wheeled from Amazon.com

Winner of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Winner of the Whiting Writers' Award
A Seattle Post-Intelligencer Best Book of the Year

Catfish and Mandala is the story of an American odyssey—a solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnam—made by a young Vietnamese-American man in pursuit of both his adopted homeland and his forsaken fatherland.

Andrew X. Pham was born in Vietnam and raised in California. His father had been a POW of the Vietcong; his family came to America as "boat people." Following the suicide of his sister, Pham quit his job, sold all of his possessions, and embarked on a year-long bicycle journey that took him through the Mexican desert, around a thousand-mile loop from Narita to Kyoto in Japan; and, after five months and 2,357 miles, to Saigon, where he finds "nothing familiar in the bombed-out darkness." In Vietnam, he's taken for Japanese or Korean by his countrymen, except, of course, by his relatives, who doubt that as a Vietnamese he has the stamina to complete his journey ("Only Westerners can do it"); and in the United States he's considered anything but American. A vibrant, picaresque memoir written with narrative flair and an eye-opening sense of adventure, Catfish and Mandala is an unforgettable search for cultural identity.

The fifth book in the series

Gus is unimpressed when Ryan coolly stops his sleek five-speed bike with the hand brake. But he's totally nonplussed when Daddy buys him a bicycle like Ryan's. Gus will never give up his training wheels. Enter Grandpa, who wisely removes Gus from the neighborhood and curious eyes for practice, digs out Daddy's old bike for the occasion, and patiently holds that bike as Gus rides it around and around. Gus's ultimate triumph belongs to Grandpa as well, and will be shared enthusiastically by reluctant riders and their supportive families. Claudia Mills and Catherine Stock contribute a gem to the bike-riding genre.