Guest Blog--Daddy's Climbing Tree by C.S. Adler

While the bookrater is busy interviewing for a job, I thought I would add a review of a children's book that I just finished. I am not sure why I was attracted to this story of a young girl whose father dies while jogging in a hit and run accident. Is there a morbid side to me? And I am not sure that I remember very much about being a child. After reading the story, I have a tendency to think I am far more like the grieving mother/widow who keeps saying to her angry, bewildered child, "Don't do this to me!" How centered on my own world am I? Can I not see the grief and the struggles of even those who I think are closest to me? I am not sure if Adler has the vision of the world from a child's perspective right or not, but she certainly understands the grief and anger that we feel when we lose someone or something vital to our personal lives. I wept buckets over Jessica's quest to find her father because she is convinced that he would never leave her. I am just uncertain whether the tears were for Jessica's loss or the wish that I had a father like Jessica's. I wonder if children reading this story think the same thing.