
Thinking of selecting The Best We Could Do (Thi Bui) as one of your comparative texts for Leaving Cert English? This free two-page PDF guide tells you everything you need to decide.
The Best We Could Do is the prescribed list’s only graphic memoir, which hands any combination its sharpest formal contrast: a story told in two channels, the adult’s captions and the scenes’ speech balloons, washed in a single warm colour, with wordless pages doing what prose cannot. Its refugee family history, from wartime Vietnam to an ambivalent America, gives Cultural Context rare and current ground, and its central question, what parents hand their children and what children make of it, pairs with almost any text about family.
Inside the guide: an at-a-glance table covering form, setting, narration, length, prescribed-list status and the book’s strongest modes; a clear synopsis; the themes the book carries; and an honest “before you teach” note on what needs care in the classroom and where the real teaching risk lies.
The guide then sets out how the book pairs in every comparison mode at BOTH levels, partner-agnostic so it holds whatever you set it against:
- Higher Level: Cultural Context, Literary Genre, Theme or Issue, and General Vision and Viewpoint.
- Ordinary Level: Hero, Heroine and Villain; Relationships; Social Setting; and Theme.
The companion Student Textbook and Teacher Guide (full exam-ready analysis and complete teaching support) are available separately from The Prescribed Shelf, or together in the Complete Bundle.
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