Shades of Gray is a book by Carolyn Reeder. It is about a boy named Will, after the Civil War, who has lost his whole family because of the war. He goes to live with his mother’s sister, whose husband did not fight in the war. Will is not happy about living with a traitor, as he calls him at first, because he did not fight for the Confederacy, and refuses to call him “uncle.” As he lives with his aunt, uncle, and cousin, he learns to respect them, and to see things from their view. Will gets a chance to go back where he used to live, in a different part of Virginia, but finally decides, after weeks of thinking, to stay with his aunt, uncle, and cousin.
I liked this book because it re-establishes the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” and it show how, when we think we’re always right, we’re sometimes not. There are different ways of seeing things, and sometimes more than one is right.
