Kids Coping with War--Iraq

This week I've featured books about war. Most of them have been about how the family at home copes, especially the kids. Do you know of others? Please share in the comments section.

If you've read the two books by Joyce Moyer Hostetter, BLUE and COMFORT, you will see great similarities between Ann Fay and Rachel Ann in BACK HOME, discussed below. Yet, the two wars are more than half a century apart. How we fight "the war" may have changed, but the struggles at home seem much the same.

BACK HOME by Julia Keller.
Soldiers returning from war often are not the same husbands, fathers, sons, or daughters who left the home front. Rachel Ann's dad survives horrendous injuries but lives to sit slumped in his wheelchair, unable and unwilling to get better. How can a 13 year old help? Rachel Ann is the oldest. Her sister Marcy is 8 and her brother Robbie is 4. Rachel finds herself trying to smooth over all the bumps in the family’s road. She sees that her mother’s struggles are valiant but often unappreciated.

The author refers to "the quiet daily heroism of those who struggle with brain injuries." The patient is only one of those people. Keller chronicles therapy, friends and neighbors who help at first and then slowly slip away, and relatives who don’t agree with the mother’s choices for treatment and further care when improvement ends. The reader sees and feels the impact of a soldier’s traumatic brain injury on the family’s love and support. As the cover blurb says, "Dad’s war is over, but the battle’s just begun."

If you're searching for just the right book for a family going through this traumatic experience, this may be the book.

Iraq--Kids Coping with War

Yesterday I talked about how kids coped during World War II. Flash forward to today.

HEART OF A SHEPHERD by Rosanne Parry.

Brother is the youngest of a family of boys. He's not quite ready to go away to high school when his dad leaves for Iraq. Mom left to follow her art career several years ago, so Dad's deployment means Brother and his aging grandparents are the only ones left at home to run the ranch. The older boys are away at boarding school, college and in the service, too. When the siblings come home for a visit, they act as if Brother is still the boy they left behind months before. He sets out to show them he has become a man.

Family members who have scorned the title of "little brother" or "baby sister" will relate to Brother's struggles and cheer him on.

WWII--Kids coping on the home front

War seems like an unlikely topic for a discussion of children's books. However, reading can lay the foundation for any youngster trying to develop coping skills--and don't we all need those? Children at home while their loved ones serve in the military are serving, too, in ways adults might not imagine.

The following two books have a gentle tone. The characters are as warm and believable as your next door neighbors. Their lives are changed, however, by a war far from their vegetable garden. Where do they find the strength to live the next day?


BLUE by Joyce Moyer Hostetter.
Ann Fay Honeycutt grows on you. From the first time you hear her voice, soft as honey but strong as the sulfur and molasses her North Carolina kin might have used to ready themselves for spring, you won’t stop listening. Ann Fay’s daddy goes off to war "to fight Hitler" and leaves her, only 13, to be "the man of the house." No matter what the crisis in her family of Momma, younger sisters, and little brother, she stands up to the task. Then a polio epidemic strikes. And Daddy is still away at war.

I won’t spoil the rest of the story. Ann Fay survives and is the main character in a sequel, COMFORT, which may not have been in the original plans of the writer. Maybe author Hostetter couldn’t let Ann Fay go, and, like the rest of us, wanted to know, "What happened next?" It’s enough to say both books are about kids coping with war and its aftermath. You’ll want to hear Ann Fay tell you how.