Great Children's book for those with deployed parents!

“I’m a Hero Too” is a lovely little children’s book written for the sons and daughters of our deployed Marines, Army, Navy, and AirForce. Jenny Sokol is the wife of a Marine and mother of two, so she knows the ups and downs of dealing with children during Dad’s deployment.
 

Sokol’s book is written simply and elegantly in a style that lends itself to being read to small children, or having an older ( 7+ ) child read it to him or herself. Her experience as a mother and writer is demonstrated as she’d done up the book in a picture-book style, which lends itself to easy and interesting reading.
 

But it’s in the text that Mrs. Sokol’s talent as a writer surfaces. She writes of how children feel as their father’s leave on deployment, and she lets her young readers know that tears are OK. A child’s feeling towards hearing news about “the war” and “terror attack’s” on the television are also discussed, as are problems fitting in at school, as well as growing up when Dad is away fighting. Her text is simple enough that children of all ages will fully understand and appreciate the sentiments and problems that the book addresses, with the important result that the children realize that their private fears are actually shared by many others in their age group.

This is simply a lovely little book that should be given to the family of every one of our deployed warriors. Highly recommended.

Jenny Sokol Chronicles Her Life and Ours

August 30, 2007|SemperFi Wife

There was a treasure waiting for me every week in the Orange County Register when I lived at Pendleton.

Jenny Sokol.

In 2004, I first read her column, titled "Singing the Cowgirl Blues." Jenny wrote about getting used to her husband being gone.  All the little things that we do as we slowly accept that our husband isn't coming home for dinner that night or any other for a long time.  She nailed it and I was hooked!  Sadly, her column wasn't archived at the time or I'd put up a link to it.

The Marine Corps is a very small place and it turns out that Jenny and I have mutual friends.
Dave and Nicole are both active duty Marines AND parents.  Jenny has written a couple of columns about their lives, trials and tribulations.

Her columns are snapshots of our lives as milspouses and sometime single  parents.  erious, sad or silly, you will find something from your own life in her words. Jenny's columns appear weekly in the Family/Parenting Section of the OC Register.

Many of her columns are about adventures in parenting.  When her husband was getting ready to deploy to Iraq , Jenny looked for books to help her family deal with the separation. Not finding much and true to the ingenuity of a milspouse, she WROTE one.

I have read "I'm a Hero Too"  and I highly recommend it to all of you looking for a way to help your children deal with the hard realities of having a parent deploy.  Written from the perspective of a young boy, Jenny discusses the feelings of sadness, of missing Dad at school events, of staying in touch with care packages, emails and phone calls and the importance of staying busy.

Check out Jenny's website. I think you'll be hooked too.