What inspired you to create Zodiac Animals for Movers? What drew you to focus on the zodiac animals specifically, rather than other animal themes or groupings?
When pandemic hit in 2020, the Stop AAPI Hate campaign initiated a critical shift in how I used my work as a public school dance teacher to reimagine the AAPI narratives that show up in my curriculum. Aside from diversifying the AAPI dance traditions I taught, I began to discover new ways to engage students with historical, cultural, and creative AAPI source material as a counter narrative to the hate. The twelve animals in our Vietnamese Zodiac Calendar was an obvious choice, because it has always been a source of wisdom and celebration in my upbringing, helping me understand everyday interactions with the people around me and ritualized at the start of every Tết to set intentions for the year. When I first identified Zodiac Animals for Movers as a choreographic concept for my lessons and eventually my book, I realized that the gifts of each animal and their movement dynamics as a whole can offer a world of fun discoveries for all movers.
Storytelling can take many forms, as reflected in this year’s Viet Book Fest programming. What inspired you to combine movement with a physical book for young readers and their families? How do you see dance and reading complementing one another?
As a mother and teacher, I cherish the personal acts of reading and dancing with my children to support their development as critical, compassionate, and creative beings in the world. I’ve also seen how reading, play, and acts of human connection have increasingly been replaced by screens and devices, interrupting our human capacity to connect with each other. Physical books with engaging narratives and movement themes provide young readers opportunities to deeply process the material with their bodies in space, negotiating energy and time, and relationship choices with others followed by insightful conversations and discoveries. Dance, movement, and TPR (Total Physical Response) is also proven to elevate our happy endorphins helping language learners and resistant readers with reading comprehension. My husband and I created Zodiac Animals for Movers to show how culture, characters, and movements can complement one another to curate a meaningful book experience for every family to process, connect, and enjoy.
Were there any favorite moments or pages you especially loved while creating Zodiac Animals for Movers? Did your children or other family members share any feedback or reactions during the book’s development?
In the Summer of 2025, we started to finalize the illustrations in our book. Around this time, our school community was resiliently working together to recover from the Altadena Eaton Fires while fighting I.C.E. officers that were showing up at graduations and kid soccer games. This was right around the time Elliot illustrated the page where all the animals show up together for the message “How can we move as one?” When I see this page, I reflect upon our beautiful capacity as humans to build and sustain communities while on the opposite end, I am reminded of the hate, violence, and division that continue to invade our spaces. I am empowered by this question because it continues to challenge my transformative agency as a teacher, mother, and creative.
I love how my book developed from the collectivity of conversations I had with my students in the classroom, family members at parties, and strangers at bars about their zodiac animal years and their desires to find balance and purpose. Every zodiac animal page was informed by real people in my life so I have a soft spot for every page for different reasons.
What advice would you offer to movers, artists, and storytellers — from the very young to the young at heart? How can we move as one as a community of creatives across generations?
I’ve dedicated my career to creating learning communities for the young because of their vibrant and authentic need to move, create, and tell their stories freely and unapologetically. When the same students progress into the upper grades, their excitement and freedom of expression fades because the adults around them fail to create spaces to nurture it. As leaders in our creative field, we must keep our creative excitement alive while creating spaces and communities that cultivate our movers, artists, and storytellers of all ages. If we share and practice the community values of creative expression, love and support, and reflection as means to transform and grow, our power to move as one will only become stronger and sustain across generations.
Peggy HồngĐức Nguyễn is a LA-based Children’s Book Author, Dance Artist, and Elementary Teacher for nearly 20 years, studying Dance, Cultural Anthropology (BA) and Social Justice Elementary Education (M.Ed) from UCLA. As a full-time Dance teacher and instructional coach for LAUSD, Peggy thrives on applying creative and culturally sustaining pedagogical practices to make Dance accessible and relevant to all students. Zodiac Animals for Movers is her first book and first collaborative project through Nguyễn-Griffin Creatives, a space created with her illustrator husband Elliot Griffin to pursue passion projects that empower community, culture and creativity in all forms.
This interview was conducted by Alan Trinh, Viet Book Fest’s Program Manager, as part of the Author Spotlight series. All featured authors participated in Viet Book Fest 2026, a literary event presented by the Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association (VAALA).
Join us on Sunday, April 12, 2026, from 10 AM to 5 PM at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California for a full day honoring Vietnamese storytelling and culture in literature.
Viet Book Fest 2026 offers a full day of programming focused on Vietnamese literature, storytelling, and culture. Attendees can participate in five panel discussions, enjoy interactive activities for children, and experience youth performances that showcase Vietnamese traditions and creativity. The festival also provides a space for community collaborations, where participants can create their own art and engage in hands-on projects.