For Dahshan, 15, and his 7-year-old sister, Malia, hearing gunfire is nothing alarming. Training exercises with gunfire are a normal part of living at Fort Bragg, N.C., along with hearing taps at night and having your dad go off to fight in the war in Iraq.But normal doesn't equal easy when your parents are in the military, as author Deborah Ellis eloquently demonstrates in her new book, "Off to War: Voices of Soldiers' Children" (Groundwood, $15.95, ages 9 up). A companion volume, "Children of War: Voices of Iraqi Refugees," will be published in January.Three years in the making, Ellis' book features interviews with children from more than two-dozen different families in the United States and Canada. Some of the children, like Dahshan and Malia, live on military bases; others live in regular neighborhoods because their parents are in the reserves.All of them, however, share the challenges that are part of having a military parent: saying "goodbye" as your parent heads off to war and potential death; trying to cope with your parent's absence; and then learning how to be a family again when your parent -- stressed by war -- comes home.As Ellis notes in her introduction, the voices of these children "remind us that when we send an Army off to war, we are sending human beings with families and friends."In her book, Ellis offers readers a fascinating, and sometimes searing, glimpse into these children's lives as she briefly introduces them and then allows them to tell their stories in the own words."I heard from a lot of the kids that they are really lonely," Ellis noted in a recent interview from her home in Toronto.Ellis, who writes both fiction and nonfiction for children and teens, said she got the idea for the book when she kept hearing about soldiers' stories of going to war."I wondered what that would do to their kids," she said.As Ellis discovered, the answer depends on the kids and their parents. For Dahshan and Malia, for example, their father is "really good at bouncing back," as Dahshan told Ellis."I know it must have been really difficult for him over there, but he worked hard at being the same guy when he came back as he was when he left," Dahshan added.But Chad, 17, has found it difficult to connect with his dad, who is in the Canadian military and recently returned from Kandahar, Afghanistan."I wish I knew what happened to Dad ...," Chad told Ellis. "He won't talk about it. I think he's afraid he'll end up scaring us because of what he went through."Ellis' book, in which kids are identified only by their first names, is compulsively readable. These are kids who are dealing with major life challenges and, in general, coping fairly well. But, as Ellis acknowledges, the kids with whom she spoke were ready to share their stories."Families truly going through trauma likely wouldn't want to talk with me," Ellis said, although she did include an interview with a 17-year-old girl -- identified only as an "anonymous female" -- whose family has been torn apart since her father returned from witnessing horrific violence in Bosnia."Kids were very protective of their parents, and they often didn't want to ask their mom and dad questions that would bring up difficult experiences," she said. Ellis, who is donating the royalties from her book to the Children in Crisis fund of the International Board on Books for Young People, added that she omitted some things that kids told her during interviews, such as a parent's drinking problem."It would have been good for the story, but not good for the kids," she said. "The Iraq war, in particular, has caused a lot of divisions in families, a lot of stress."Even as they deal with the challenges of having a parent off fighting a war, many of the kids willingly shoulder extra responsibilities, something that Ellis didn't find surprising."It really helps when kids have something useful to do. Children have all kinds of ways they can contribute when we allow them to."Ellis was surprised, however, by what she sees as a "real lack of imagination" about whether "the world could do without war. All of the kids seemed to pretty much accept war as part of life, almost like trees, rocks and the corner store."If that's accurate, then we are to blame -- we haven't put forward an alternative. And that's something we need to work on," she said.(Karen MacPherson, the children's/teen librarian at the Takoma Park, Md., Library, can be reached at Kam.Macpherson(at)gmail.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com.)
Post new comment