Title: The Long Road Home
Author: West Hand
Publisher: Book Savvy International
ISBN: 978-1-958876-32-9
Pages: 48
Genre: Illustrated Children’s Book
Reviewed by: Beth Adams
Pacific Book Review
I must say The Long Road Home, by author West Hand is unlike any story I have ever read. It begins with such an ordinary day in the life of these little girls Sky, along with her sister Ocean, walking to school – and frankly ends up as Sky and Ocean are on a new planet somewhere far off in the Universe. How they got there and what they encountered along the way will fill the imaginations of children in a loving way. It brings in a cast of ordinary characters, such as a school teacher, then spices it up with angels, while toying with the element of time travel itself – as an old man becomes a young child – and finally having the girls take a ride in a rocket and seeing a type of UFO as they frolic on a new and distant planet. In short, it is the genre of a book Rod Serling would most likely love to have read to his daughter at bedtime.
With a variety of deeply rooted themes of inter-racial couples, adoption of babies (due to their birth-parents dying), school, weather, and of course, the coincidental circumstances of walking on the other side of the street causing fate to unfold in a new and unpredictable way, The Long Road Home will open the readers’ minds like Jack & Jill couldn’t imagine; more like a Lewis Caroll book without the personified rabbit or fanciful characters. In two words, it is very “creatively unique.”
On my second reading of this book, I knew what to expect and wanted to dive deeper into the morals and philosophy West Hand embedded, and I must say with each reading now I tend to see new things. Along with the very artfully crafted illustrations, which are necessary to help readers’ imaginations grasp the story-line, this book will open slightly different meanings to many readers. Children want to have stories which challenge their minds to comprehend new events, and this book definitely is a “reach” for a bed-time fantasy. It shows love, both the parents of the adopted girls and the deceased parents of these little girls, always watching over them while they are growing up, and how the spirits of the dead parents reveal themselves at the right time. That latter example is at a time the girls took the long road home which is the root-cause to the effect of so much change.
Written with a loving style, encompassing compassion and tolerance for all people, and something out-of-the-ordinary, The Long Road Home by author West Hand will become a favorite among children just beginning to enjoy the fantastical events bestowed in fictional books.
