When my father, Odysseus, and his men sailed off to the Trojan War, they were confident their gods favored a quick victory. Instead, the siege of Troy lasted ten years. After Troy fell, the survivors made their way home to Sparta, Mycenae, Pylos, and elsewhere in the ancient Peloponnese. Neither my father nor any of his troops arrived home with the rest. We waited for years as the news grew worse. Odysseus was dead, we were told,or imprisoned, or, worst yet, he had married another woman and abandoned my mother Penelope, my brother Telemachus, and me.


If he is alive somewhere, his thoughts may wander to Penelope and Telemachus, but he won’t be thinking of me. I am the daughter he doesn’t know exists. Odysseus went off to the Trojan War when his son, Telemachus, was barely old enough to walk. His wife, Penelope, was a teenage bride, and is now a young wife, mother, and queen who has to try to rule Ithaca without him.


I was born seven months after he left. I am a hero’s daughter and a princess of his realm, but I have lived my entire life without a father. I’m nineteen now, and still waiting.


All over the world, and throughout history children grow up as I have. This website will focus on the children of those men and women who have gone off to fight America's wars, and provide information and resources for all who care about military families and want to help.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Dove Song

What does a novelist think makes the perfect gift?  A novel, of course, and with the holiday season coming up, I have been doing sone research on books for children and young adults, focusing on the experiences of military families.  
I haven’t read Kristine Franklin’s Dove Song (Candlewick Press, 1999), but it sounds as if it might be particularly apt for today’s middle schoolers. The main character, eleven-year-old Bobbie Lynn, moves with her mother and brother after he father is deployed to the Vietnam War. Her transition to her new civilian school in Washington State is difficult, but eventually she makes friends with another girl on the margins, Wendy Feeney. Wendy has a severely retarded twin sister, who freaks Bobbie Lynn out at first, and she is puzzled by her new friend's deep belief in guardian angels, and the Feeney’s family unfamiliar Catholic ways.  
Life is better, thought with quirky but fun Wendy as a friend. Then, Bobbie Lynn’s family gets the dreaded news that her father is missing in action. Bobbie Lynn’s mother has always been fragile, but this news sends her spiraling down into depression so profound that Bobbie Lynn and her brother, afraid to reveal their problems to anyone, resort to spoon feeding her to get her to eat. Only when Bobbie Lynn herself becomes ill with pneumonia does she realize that she isn’t alone and doesn’t have to bear the weight of the world on her shoulders by herself.
The seriousness of the mother’s inability to cope with the absence and possible loss of her husband, and the effect this has on her children, make this a difficult book emotionally, but it is uplifting nevertheless for the powerful message it sends about community and friendship.   Franklin has been praised by critics for her convincing portrayal of the late 1960s, especially the national conflict about the Vietnam War,  and the less-than-welcoming treatment of disabilities in the pre-ADA era.  A solid work of YA historical fiction, it won the Minnesota Book Award in 2000.

If you have an independent bookstore near you, please consider buying your books there.  We need neighborhood bookstore to thrive!
Posted by About AART at 6:49 AM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)