"The language and evocative pencil pictures shine in this quiet tale of World War I with other stories nestled inside it. Marcelle and her little sister, Coco, find a soldier in the woods near their home. He cannot see; he is very hungry, and he wants to go home across the Channel. The girls spirit food out of the house for him: bread, jam, hard-boiled eggs. Each day he spins them a story evolving from the tiny silver donkey he holds in his hand. There's the donkey that carried Mary to Bethlehem when she was great with child; the donkey that prevented a monsoon; and the donkey that transported injured soldiers from the front. Then there's the explanation of the silver donkey itself, found by the soldier's small brother. The girls enlist their older brother, Pascal, to help the soldier, whose vision slowly clears as the fog of war recedes. There's some didacticism here, but it's softened by the story's extreme gentleness and the sweetness of its ending."—Booklist