One hot summer day Luke and his friends decide to play their favorite game of war, using sticks for guns and pine cones for bombs and grenades. Sameer, who hasn't lived in their neighborhood for very long, hesitates to join in. When he tells Luke and Jen and Jeff and Danny that he has been in a real war, they don't believe him.
"No way! You haven't told us anything about that! A real war? Did they let kids be soldiers? Did you have an M-16?"
Then, as Sameer explains what happened to his family, the other children start to see their game in a new light.
While Playing War is a book about understanding what war can be like for families, and that it's not a game, it's also a sensitive story about the power of friendship and how children can learn from one another.