Point of View

The novel is written in third-person, with each chapter for the most part following one character and narrating the events through that character’s perspective. The narration includes that character’s emotions, thoughts, and memories. Exceptions to this are found in Chapters 1 and 24. In these chapters, all four main characters are together in one place so the narration includes perspective from each character interspersed throughout the chapter.

Since the author chooses to follow the lives of four different middle school students who live in different parts of the United States in the days leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a third person narrator works well. This narrator is able to tell each character’s story using basically the same voice. This is important since it is the children’s stories that are of focus in the novel. The author could have used a first-person point...