Seth Kastle

In my opinion this is a great book to discuss military families and something as complex as PTSD. The language in this book is easy for young children to understand but uses comparisons so that children can better understand what PTSD is. For example "it's like dad always has a fire inside his chest." The author compares the dad's anger and frustration to fire so it is something tangible that children can picture and understand PTSD.

I also enjoyed the plot of the book. It starts off with a confused boy wondering why his dad is so mad at him. His mom goes onto explain what happened to dad and some of the other things has changed since he comes back from overseas. It then flows into how even though dad is mad he still loves us and is trying his best.

The main idea of this book is to help children understand a difficult subject like being a military family and loving someone with PTSD. It describes how PTSD effects someone and the struggles that come along with being part of a military family.… (meer)

I liked this book because of the message. This book is written to reassure children in military families that when their loved ones come home from overseas they sometimes change. Some soldiers come back with PTSD and it cause them to be very angry. This anger effects their family, especially the children. This book is great way to explain to young children that their loved ones are not mad at them and they are still loved. The second reason I like this book is because instead of using real people, they use lions instead. I think this makes the story much more kid friendly by making it less intense.… (meer)