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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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