Sam and the Firefly

The story takes you on an adventure where Gus is writing words in the night sky. At first the words are fun, but soon, Gus starts to play tricks with his words! First Gus causes a “pile-up” on the highway. Then he causes a dilemma with airplanes in the air. Gus changes the marquee at the theater and people swarm to see the “Free Show”. Finally, Gus changes the Hot Dog sign to “Cold Dogs”. All the time that Gus is playing these tricks, Sam is trying to get him to stop. Gus does stop but not on his own…the hot dog man catches him and puts him in a jar and decides to take him away so that he will no longer play his tricks on anyone. Sam sees all this happen and he’s almost frantic trying to figure out a way to save Gus.

As the hot dog man is taking Gus out into the country, his truck breaks down…on the train tracks! Of course a train is coming! Sam gets a brilliant idea …he picks up the jar with Gus in it, drops it so that Gus is free. Gus is then able to write “Stop” for the train to see. Sam and Gus save the day!

The end of the book has both friends going their separate ways to sleep…so that they can meet back up to play in the evening!

I love this book for many different reasons. I originally found my copy at the Ronald McDonald House in Knoxville. Our son, Gus, was in the NICU at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital. The book caught my attention because of the name Sam in the title. We had lost a little boy named Sam before Gus was born…seeing the name in the title made me smile so I picked it up and read it. Much to my surprise, the firefly’s name turned out to be Gus! Now that Gus has gone to Heaven too, this book is even more special! I love to think of them playing with each other like Sam and Gus do in the book…very neat!

Oh, one more thing…since Gus was deaf, I learned how to sign this story and that was a lot of fun! I think it would be a story to “act out”…