The Letter Home by Decker, Timothy

Title: The Letter Home

Author: Decker, Timothy

Illustrator: Timothy Decker

Publisher: Front Street

Year 2005

Comments

This book is not going to win any awards. It isn’t going to change the world. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t passed over. The narration isn’t great. It is short, choppy, and not well developed... The text only slightly aids the illustrations.

So why did I take up precious space on this blog for a book with so many negatives? All of its positives. The illustrations are simple yet leave an impression on the reader. But mostly I wanted to put my little plug out there and because I wanted to put my little thanks to the author. Decker tackles a war that is nearly forgotten. Once known as the Great War or the War to End All Wars, it is hardly more than a paragraph in high school textbooks.

It is a father writing home to his son saying that he will be home soon. The simple illustrations tug at your heart. It is a short walk in time. To a war that is just as mean as any other war. People died, and people went away. But in the end, this little boy gets his daddy back.

I was just rereading my evaluation of the text and such. I feel like I have unfairly harsh on the text and narration. The shortcomings in the narration are not as bad my first few reviews. The sparseness on some of these pages shows the hard times that our soldiers faced back then.

This is a book for historians, for artists, and for those who wondered what it might have been like for people back then.