Beaty, Daniel (2013) Knock Knock: My Dad’s Dream For Me. New York: Little Brown and Company.

This children’s book tells a powerful and moving story of a young boy’s growth into a man when his father does not knock on his bedroom door as expected. What makes this book so intriguing in the realm of diverse children’s books, is that it explores the emotions and strength development a child goes through when experiencing the loss or absence of a parent. Here I feel that loss and/or absence is interchangeable. When first reading this book, I interpreted the situation to be that the father voluntarily left the boy and his mother, and that he had either decided to write and send the response letter himself, or that the boy’s mother had written it posing as his father. But now I see that there are other interpretations that can be gained from this reading–perhaps the father died, was incarcerated, etc. It makes the story flexible so that children that are dealing with loss such as this can relate.