Memorial Day is a day to relax and enjoy time with family and friends – but it’s also much more than that. Established in the 1860s to honor those who served and died in the Civil War, it is a day to remember and honor everyone who has died. Many towns organize memorials and parades, and cemetaries are decorated with flowers and flags.
Always and Forever by Alan Durant
“Otter, Mole, Fox, and Hare share a house in the woods. When Fox dies, the other three struggle with their grief. By remembering the love, wisdom, and support he showed them and the funny things he used to do, they are able to create a memorial for him. As they sit in the garden they made in honor of him, they realize that Fox is with them ‘always and forever’ in their memories and in their laughter.” [JPB DURANT]
Bird by Zetta Elliott
“Young Mekhai, better known as Bird, loves to draw. With drawings, he can erase the things that don’t turn out right. In real life, problems aren’t so easily fixed.
As Bird struggles to understand the death of his beloved grandfather and his older brother’s drug addiction, he escapes into his art. Drawing is an outlet for Bird’s emotions and imagination, and provides a path to making sense of his world. In time, with the help of his grandfather’s friend, Bird finds his own special somethin’ and wings to fly.” [J ELLIOTT]
Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiley
“Comfort Snowberger is well acquainted with death since her family runs the funeral parlor in their small southern town, but even so the ten-year-old is unprepared for the series of heart-wrenching events that begins on the first day of Easter vacation with the sudden death of her beloved great-uncle Edisto.” [J WILES]
Red Moon at Sharpsburg by Rosemary Wells
“One word describes 13-year-old India Moody: perseverance. She has heard of a college in Ohio that accepts women and is determined to go there, an unthinkable dream for a girl in 1862. She is tutored by her neighbor, Emory Trimble, an eccentric scientist who teaches her about biology and chemistry. When her father, an ambulance wagon driver for the Confederate Army, is missing in action, she sets off to find him, ending up in the middle of the Battle of Antietam, one of the bloodiest of the war. She faces danger as the Union Army advances toward her home in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and sees soldiers leave her town and not return. She witnesses Micah and Ester, slaves and friends of the Trimbles, harbor an injured Yankee soldier, putting their own lives in danger. Wells has created a sense of what the North and the South endured during the Civil War by interweaving stories from both sides, and gives a horrifying picture of medical practices and superstitions of the times. This powerful novel is unflinching in its depiction of war and the devastation it causes, yet shows the resilience and hope that can follow such a tragedy.” [J WELLS]
