This is a beautiful and sad book that can be read aloud for Memorial Day. It brought tears to my eyes. ( )

This book is hard to review. It’s good to have books like this to introduce and discuss difficult and very sad truths. ( )

State of the dead conversation ( )

The son and grandson of a fallen soldier visit the Vietnam Memorial to look for their soldier's name. The young boy notices the sadness of other memorial visitors and the mementos left to honor the dead. Some of the characters are dated now more than 30 years after the book's publication. However, many families still live with the effects of this war and books like this will help successive generations of children understand its lingering sadness. ( )

I recently used this book in a lesson about point-of-view - I first saw it online and it had good reviews. I went ahead and purchased it. My original intention was to only use a passage from it, but I ended up reading through the entire book. I found this book to be incredibly moving. When I was reading it, my eyes became very teary. I find stories about people's lives lost in wars to bring me a lot of sad emotions. It's easy for me to become sad for the people they left behind, and I think about what it would be like to lose someone close. I think this book is really good for children to read because, not only does it provide a lot of good information, it also helps illustrate the pain people feel from losing loved-one and the impact of wars on future generations. ( )