My Sweet Anna

I found this book and note on my nightstand last week.



"Dear Mommy,

I think you will enjoy this book as much as I did. It really is a beautiful story.

Love, Anna"

And she was right. I picked it up and could hardly put it down; the story of a ten year old girl who escaped war torn Vietnam with her mother and brothers to America; a refugee story. It was profound really, and explains why Anna is always a deep thinker, lost in a book, lost sometimes in thought. Although Anna's circumstances were very different I could see how she could relate to this story in her own way. She didn't loose and grieve for a country, but she certainly knows the pain of loosing a mother and having to start all over again.

I wrote back to her and told her I hope she spends her life loving books as much as she does now. Real books that make her think and realize that there is a whole world and so many other people in it. I told her that I hope to find many, many books (and sweet notes) on my nightstand throughout the years.

I can almost see the emails or the texts twenty years from now, "mom, you've got to read this book. You'll love it."