THE WALL

A young boy visits the Vietnam War Memorial with his father, finds his grandfather's name, and leaves a picture of himself at the wall's base. He sees a legless veteran; an older couple weeping together; a boy and his grandfather walking by; a teacher explaining the wall to her class ("The names are the names of the dead. But the wall is for all of us"), and the small offerings left by others: letters, flowers, a teddy bear. The story is told with a spare, highly charged simplicity; Himler's misty watercolors capture the solemnity of the vast reflecting surface and the pathos of the visitors better than any photo of this difficult-to-represent monument—although his decision to mute its somber black is debatable and using the teddy bear on the title page is an unfortunate choice. Still, a moving introduction.