Author: David McPhail
This slim book is a moral lesson in picture book clothing. The story is simple and told almost entirely without words. A little boy writes a letter to the president of his country. As he walks to the letter box to post it, he sees various horrors of war. There are bombers and explosions, a tank, jack booted soldiers, a policeman who sets his dog on an older man.
The boy is physically unscathed, but when he reaches the letterbox, an older boy starts to bully him. Much to the surprise of the bully, the little boy delivers his big line… “NO!”. You can read the book in a minute, but the issues that it raises are far from easily dealt with. While I thought the key question about “what has happened to the rules?” was effectively asked, I was less comfortable with the apparently instant resolution of the cities problems… if only it was that easy!
The book is supported unobtrusively by Amnesty International, who give a brief reflection inside the back cover.
The pictures are quaintly drawn with a partially naïve style, and much play of light and dark. Would you actually give this book to a five year old? I actually think that that might be a bit of a problem. There is a fair amount of implicit violence: the policeman’s dog is shown biting the older man, and the soldiers are kicking in the door of a mother with young children. I wonder if the instant resolution actually is more likely to give false hope.
The book is therefore a bit lost between younger readers for whom it may not be suitable, and older readers who may demand significantly more from any work on the subject of war and violence. I think it would be best used by a teacher in Middle School as a talking point, and indeed the book is dedicated “for teachers everywhere”.
Andrew Lack
