ACCIDENT, Maryland — By noon on the Fourth of July, families and their children in this Garrett County town will have just finished the annual fireman’s parade that will stretch all the way down Main Street and be filled with local bands, floats, fire equipment and plenty of red, white, and blue regalia.

This town does a great job of really educating the children about the importance of this profoundly important holiday that marks the beginning of the long and arduous road our forefathers took to get us to independence. And, too, of the generations that followed who have fought, sometimes giving the ultimate sacrifice, to protect those freedoms and liberties.

The day begins here in the far outpost of Maryland with a worship service, then a flag raising at the American Legion Memorial. While they do their fair share of bounce houses, a dunking booth, mechanical bulls, and craft shows, and serve up sloppy joes, hamburgers, and hot dogs for everyone to enjoy, they also do a very good job of reminding the young folk and their parents through history docents and displays of old military uniforms of why we celebrate this sacred moment of our founding.

One part of that founding happened just down the waterway from here at Wills Creek, where a pretty nondescript log cabin sits that was the living quarters and office that a young George Washington used between 1755 and 1758 during the French and Indian War.

As we all should know, had Great Britain not accumulated staggering debt because of that war and tried to milk monies out of the colonists to pay it with a series of taxes that led to the Boston Tea Party, there would have been no American Revolution — at least not in the way we know it.

However not every small town, or large, has such a detailed and meaningful parade for their citizenry. Many parents, and therefore their children, have somehow lost understanding of why we celebrate the Fourth of July.

For many families, outside of a day of consuming hot dogs and hamburgers, and not having to work, all that anybody thinks about is too many popsicles, lots of splashing in creeks, beaches, and lakes, and the noisy sound of fireworks.

Kylie Wyman has served up, just in time, a delightful Fourth of July book, aptly named It’s the Fourth of July!, that takes children, and their parents, through the celebration part of the holiday and does a great job of reinforcing the exceptionalism of what it means to be an American. It underscores the rewards of hard work, the importance of kindness, and the meaning of being part of something bigger than ourselves, and it does a magical job of celebrating the greatness of the American experiment.

At the end of the book it gives to young people, and I’d argue the young at heart, 13 challenges as a way to thank our country.

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Two years from July 4, the United States of America turns 250 years old. Wyman’s children’s book is truly a great primer for the young people in your family. The prose is magical, the illustrations by Monique Machut meet the moment, and the book really prepares young readers by taking them into the themes of the importance of family, the purposefulness of the bonds of friendship, and the sense of not just being part of a community but of everyone’s role in making theirs better.

Which in turn, as Wyman advises, makes our country better.