By: Rhiannon Navin BUY BOOK HERE
Only Child hit really close to home for me, I am a teacher and we practice lock down drills all the time in case of an emergency. Never actually thinking it will happen. But it happens to Zach. He hides from a gunman with his teacher behind a locked door. I cannot imagine this horror. The details of emotion that his family experience are real and intense. His 6 year old perspective is naive and sweet and holds no understanding for why he feels what he feels. Only Child needs to be talked about. There are hundreds of families around the world who have experienced this and we need to understand their grief.
"Yesterday we did all the things we did every Tuesday, because we didn't know that today a gunman was going to come."
Synopsis
Squeezed into a coat closet with his classmates and teacher, first grader Zach Taylor can hear gunshots ringing through the halls of his school. A gunman has entered the building, taking nineteen lives and irrevocably changing the very fabric of this close-knit community. While Zach's mother pursues a quest for justice against the shooter's parents, holding them responsible for their son's actions, Zach retreats into his super-secret hideout and loses himself in a world of books and art. Armed with his newfound understanding, and with the optimism and stubbornness only a child could have, Zach sets out on a captivating journey towards healing and forgiveness, determined to help the adults in his life rediscover the universal truths of love and compassion needed to pull them through their darkest hours.
“I never knew you could feel more than one feeling inside of you at the same time. Especially feelings that are opposites. I know you can feel excited, but when you do what made you excited, the excited feeling goes away and you feel happy because it was fun. Or sad because it’s over already, like right after everyone leaves from your birthday party. But more than one feeling all at the same time, right next to each other or on top of each other and all mixed up inside you? I never knew that could happen.”
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