Fact Friday and Picture Book Review: Twenty-One Steps: Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by Jeff Gottesfeld

Image: Candlewick Press

Twenty-one Steps: Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by Jeff Gottesfeld. Illustrated by Matt Tavares. 32 p. Candlewick Press, March, 2021. 9781536201482. (Review of finished copy courtesy of publisher.)

Happy Friday! It was a balmy 57 degrees when I had my dogs out for their early morning walk a couple of hours ago and heading up to a high of mid-sixties. I hope you all have been taking advantage of the balmy weather and spring teaser. Buckle-up because March is mercurial and temperatures are expected to drop next week! There's even the possibility of snow.

Fact Friday features Twenty-one Steps: Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by Jeff Gottesfeld and illustrated by Matt Tavares. Surely one of the great tragedies of war is the failure to return the remains of a fallen soldier to their family for mourning and burial. Mr. Gottesfeld poetically chooses one soldier to speak for the many Unknowns who fell on battlefields. "In life, we were our mothers' sons. In death, we are faded photos on the mantel, empty chairs at Thanksgiving...We are known but to God."

While most of the fallen came home for burial after the War to End All Wars, which World War I was naively named, many were not. In 1921, one unknown soldier's body was chosen to lie in state in the Capitol as the nation mourned. He was buried on the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour in Arlington National Cemetery. There were speeches, taps and twenty-one gun salute before the crowds dispersed. Eventually, the tomb, standing on the top of a hill, became a destination for picnicers who, "came for the view and not the meaning."

On July 2, 1937, at midnight, the first shift by the Tomb Guard began. The tomb has been guarded twenty-four hours a day since. Three more bodies were added to the tomb after World War II, the Korean War and from Vietnam. Thanks to advances in science and DNA testing, the Vietnam Unknown was later identified, disinterred and returned to his family.

Tomb Guards have to memorize not just the precise timing and steps of the duty, but hundreds of facts about Arlington National Cemetery as well as maintaining an impeccably turned out uniform. Each movement, position and step has to be precisely carried out. The Tomb Guards perform it around the clock through all kinds of weather whether or not they have an audience. The ceremony is somber and sobering. If you ever have the opportunity to witness one, you won't be the same.

Matt Tavares' illustrations are just luminous and emotionally resonant. They were drawn in pencil and digitally rendered. One can almost hear the click of the guards' heels and the sound of those twenty-one steps back and forth in front of the tomb. Each spread begs the reader to stop and linger. 

A short afterword by the author provides additional information. If you can, remove the dust jacket to view the cover of the book. Book covers in library collections are covered with mylar and taped down to prolong the life of the book. I'm not sure what I'm doing with this book in my library. I am not inclined to tape it down. I took a couple of stinky pictures with my phone, but they don't do the cover justice. Matt Tavares posted a tweet with a way cooler clip of the covers. Check it out then, go and check the book out for yourself. Click here to read Mr. Schu's interview of the author. 

Twenty-one Steps was just published and isn't yet available in our library system, but it belongs in every library - schools, classrooms and home! Trust me, this is a first-purchase. It's a book you will return to again and again. I usually donate books I'm sent to review, but I'll be keeping this copy and purchasing copies for my library and select colleagues and friends.