A very sweet book about a father returning home from deployment. ( )

Made me cry. Suspenseful. I felt myself reading faster and faster wanting to know what would happen next. As he loosened the balloon string, my heart sank, I knew what was going to happen. I wanted to scream to him to stop so he wouldn't lose his balloon. The balloon was how his dad was going to find him. He had thought he had changed so much since the last time he saw his dad, that maybe he wouldn't recognize him. ( )

This book would be good for a shared reading with students in first or second grade. It tells the story of a young boy who is excited for his dad to return home from overseas. The boy has gotten his dad a red balloon so that he can easily see him when he gets off the ship. The boy runs into trouble when the balloon gets away from him, but is still reunited and excited to see his dad. This book would be good for teaching many literary concepts. The first is point of view as the book is told in a first person point of view from the little boy's perspective. The second is symbolism and what the balloon represents to the boy. The third is tone and how the boy's tone changes as different events occur in the story. This book describes the excitement military children feel as their loved ones retune home.

age: 5
Summary: The boy lives only with his mother because his father is a sailor. It means that he cannot meet his father in his daily lives, so he thinks that his father forgets him. However, his father shows his affection toward his son when he meets his son at the harbor.
Source: Pierce library

a boy is waiting for his dad to return from military deployment, the child is worried his father wont recognize him. plot