Theresa Ann Fraser
Loving Healing Press (2009)
ISBN 9781932690873
Reviewed by Madeline McElroy (age 8) for Reader Views (4/09)
Madeline: This is a story about a boy named Billy. Billy was sad because his Nana had died. Billy had to live in a foster home now because they couldn’t find his mother. Billy was worried who would take care of his cat. He had been sad for many days.
I thought this book was very sad but had a happy ending for Billy. This book made me feel kind of weird because I didn’t know that kids had to live with strangers. I feel lucky to have a caring family. I learned about how there are people to help take care of kids who don’t have parents to take care of them. I found out about lots of people like Social Workers and Therapists who can try to help you when you are sad, angry, scared or confused. I think kids like Billy should read this book because it would show them what to do if they are sad.
Parent: I had a hard time reading this book with my children; I was choking back many tears throughout the story. They were both very interested and had a lot of questions and compassion for Billy. I think if a book that to us was “fictional” had such an impact, surely it would be an outstanding tool for a child experiencing these feelings. It seems to me it would really open-up a dialogue at the least. I think “Billy Had To Move” by Theresa Ann Fraser would be a wonderful book for any library and that all school-age children would benefit from reading, either identifying with Billy or by presenting a way of life they may not have known about before. We certainly share a lot of different things about society with our children, but this really illustrated how hard life can be for such a young person. My only critique would be to add more artwork to break-up some of the very text intensive pages. Perhaps editing out some of the text might be helpful as well depending on the target age. We broke the book up over three days because it was such a “heavy” subject.
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