• Age: 3 to 6
• Grade: p to 1

In this memorable story, a young boy finds solace flying his kite from the rooftop after soldiers take his father and brother away.

Without his father and brother, the young boy’s life is turned upside down. He and his family have to stay inside, along with everyone else in town. At suppertime, he can’t stop looking at the two empty places at the table and his sister can’t stop crying. The boy looks out the window and is chilled to see a tank’s spotlight searching the park where he plays with his friends. He hears shouts and gunshots and catches sight of someone running in the street — if only they could fly away, he thinks.

Each day the curfew is lifted briefly, and the boy goes to the park to see his friends. One day, inspired by the wind in the trees, he has an idea. Back at home he makes a kite, and that night he flies it from his rooftop, imagining what it can see.

In this moving story from Anne Laurel Carter, with haunting illustrations by Akin Duzakin, a young boy finds strength through his creativity and imagination.

Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.3
Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.

Anne Laurel Carter was born in Don Mills, Ontario. She has suffered from a bad case of wanderlust all of her life, which has taken her all over the world. In between travelling, Anne completed Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Education. Anne loves working with children, and became an ESL and French teacher. She is also the mother of four children, but still finds time to read and write. Anne currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, where she works full-time as a teacher-librarian.
Anne is a multi award-winning author of several books for children. Her picturebook Under a Prairie Sky (Orca, 2004) won the Mr. Christie's Book Award in 2003.

Anne Laurel Carter's profile page

Akin Duzakin is an illustrator and author who studied industrial design in Turkey before moving to Norway where he majored in visual communication at Oslo’s National Academy of Craft and Art Industry. Since then Duzakin has illustrated fifty children’s books. He is passionately interested in the picture-book genre and its ability to engage the whole family. He has received a number of awards for his work, including a Special Mention for the BolognaRagazzi Award for the original Norwegian edition of Why Am I Here? by Constance Ørbeck-Nilssen. He has been nominated twice for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

Akin Duzakin's profile page

• Commended, Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Books of the Year

This is a beautiful and moving story about finding strength through creativity and imagination and offers many lessons about empathy and compassion.

Vancouver Writers Fest

Simple text and vivid, emotion-filled imagery. STARRED REVIEW

School Library Journal

[T]hought-provoking and haunting.

Horn Book

[A] penetrating, enduring story of not only the atrocities of war, but also the resiliency of the human spirit and the power of imagination.

CM Review of Materials

In a word, powerful. STARRED REVIEW

Kirkus Reviews