Barbara H. Cole

Anna and Natalie both enter a contest to lay the wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown soldier. Anna works hard to write a letter for her and Natalie. Anna's teacher is moved by the letter and allows the two to walk together. As Anna and Natalie lead the group to the Tomb, we then see Anna being escorted by Natalie, her service dog.
An excellent read! The way the author wrote the character of Natalie paired with the illustrations completely threw me off guard! Each picture depicted Natalie in such a way that you didn't even realize which "girl" was her. You also would not expect Anna's character to have a disability, which I think serves as a good reminder for kids and reinforces how we are all alike.… (meer)

This has been one of my favorite children's books I have read recently. The story has so many central messages but still manages to get each point across and surprise the readers at the end. I think one of the central messages was the importance of overcoming obstacles. Anna is clearly disabled in some way but you are not clearly told how until the end. i think that this helps the readers relate to her but also fall more in love with her. She was able to set a goal and be driven enough to complete that goal. I also liked how the author explained the historical significance of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. By relating it to the main character, the reader is able to closely connect with Anna and why she is so determined to be in the wreath ceremony. And the final message that really tied the whole book together was the message about guide dogs. Natalie is not a person, like the readers are led to believe, but she is actually Anna's guide dog because she is blind. The author chose to focus more on Anna's determination and not on her disability. This story was heart-worming and informative.… (meer)

Anna and Natalie, by Barbra H Cole, was amazing. I really enjoyed reading this book the first time and enjoyed it even more reading it the second time. My favorite thing about this book was the characters, when you first read the book you don’t realized Anna is blind and Natalie is her seeing eye dog. As Cole build the character of Anna she builds Natalie with traits, at one point in time Anna calls Natalie lazy while she type the letter up and the dog sleeps. Even though she builds this awesome characters she builds them without pointing out, Anna's blind and Natalie's a dog, and this I found extremely interesting and fun to read. The next thing I really liked about this book was the push topic it was based on. Having blind children in a classroom can really be tough and for a student who has never seen a blind student before it might e a shock. This book talks about how Anna was never picked for anything, except the spelling bee, but never mentioned why till the end. After you finish you make the connection and go that is awful, that poor girl never gets picked because she's blind. This book is great for breaking the ice on special needs students. Last thing I really liked about this book was the illustrations. The illustrations allowed for you to not realize she was blind the first time around, but see it clearly the second time around. In every picture of the book Anna is pictured with someone and the dog is somewhere in the picture, in class the dogs under her desk but not super obviously. Outside the dogs on the swing, with another person, so you figure the author is describing that person not the dog. The illustrations for this book for just all around good and useful. The big picture for this text in my eyes would be to not judge people by first appearances.… (meer)