THE GIRL IN THE PICTURE The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph, and the Vietnam War

While many photographs documented the horrors of the Vietnam War, one stands above the rest as the most indelible image of that conflict: the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a naked Vietnamese girl aflame with burning napalm. Kim Phuc is the girl in the picture. In a soft, pleasant voice, with a touch of an Asian accent, the author reads her biography of a young girl enveloped in a war difficult for us to understand because it had no front. The juxtaposition of such a quiet and reserved narrator and the atrocities she describes make the acts seem even more brutal. But not all of Chong's reading is restrained; at one point she cups her hands and shouts an announcement over a loudspeaker. Kim Phuc's name means happiness in her native language; her personality glows in the warmth of Chong's narration. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 01]