Review: `You should not leave scars on your friends' hearts'
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 19, 2014
Israeli author Yael Aharoni, an accountant and a medical secretary in Haifa who left her job to write children's books, gifts us with yet another fine children's book that is both entertaining and carries an important behavioral message.Michael was irritable, waking every day in an angry grumpy mood causing him to not speak nicely to family and friends. He was sarcastic and hurtful making everyone avoid him. One day, wanting to break his bad habit,  he sought advice from his father who told him to use a sack of nails and every time he said something rude or hurtful to hammer a nail into his yard's fence. The next day he hit seven of his friends - that night he hammered seven nails into the fence. The following day he tried harder but still had to hammer four nails and the next day two more nails. Finally he came home not having done anything hurtful and didn't have to hammer nails in the fence. Sharing with his father, his father told him that everyday he comes home without having hurt anyone he can pull out one of the nails. In time Michael stopped his bad behavior and won his friends back, but now that all the nails were gone the poor fence still had holes where the nails had been. His father replied, `No matter how many times you say sorry, the wounds will remain. A verbal wound is as badas a physical wound."Fine story, fine lesson, fine illustrations, and another fine book from Yael Aharoni. Grady Harp, March 14