Profiles in courage from the youngest members of America’s military family.
When military mothers and fathers are deployed overseas, they’re not the only ones called to make sacrifices for their country. There are nearly 2 million American children in military families, and their lives are marked with frequent moves, fleeting friendships and extra household duties to make up for an absent adult. Often they wrestle with the fear—and sometimes the reality—of having a parent wounded or killed in combat. Operation Homefront’s Military Child of the Year Award recognizes youths who display leadership and resilience despite the hardships. This small but heart-tugging book tells the stories of the 2011 winners and finalists from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard. These remarkable kids faced estrangement, disease and parents injured in battle yet still volunteered countless hours to charities and excelled in the classroom. There is the story of 17-year-old Taylor Dahl-Sims, whose stepfather was injured by multiple IED blasts while in Iraq. With shrapnel still embedded in his face and suffering from a traumatic brain injury, her stepfather faced a long road to recovery when he returned home. Taylor not only helped her mother care for her two siblings, she went on to become the backbone of her family’s nonprofit North Star Group, serve as commander of her Air Force Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps unit and make the honor roll. Other children featured in the book overcome physical challenges: 9-year-old Lily Moser suffers from a neurological disease that causes her to have seizures several times a day, yet at age 6 she completed nearly 400 hours of community service and continues to participate in several charity endeavors. Inspiring is an inadequate word to describe the 25 vignettes about ordinary kids fighting through loneliness and self-pity with a positive attitude and willingness to serve. Told in concise, unadorned but engaging prose, these profiles offer proof that age and circumstance are not barriers to accomplishing great things. A window into the difficult lives of military children and a testament to those who persevere in spite of it.
Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-1466256514
Page Count: 66
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
