Dogtag Summer

It is a 2016 CYRM nominee. This was a good story, held my interest, but I look forward to reading the other nominees.

Set in the years following the end of the Vietnam war, Dogtag Summer is a sweet coming of age story. Author, Elizabeth Partridge, does a good job of showing the impact of the war through the eyes of a child who doesn't understand the war, but lives with the suffering it causes. Partridge also does a good job of showing the strong feelings Americans had about the war. War orphan, Tracy, sees the hostility some people have towards vets. She also sees how vets are honored and respected. These conflicting points of view add to her confusion and feelings of isolation. Her father was an American soldier. She doesn't know what happened to her extended Vietnamese family. Her adopted American parents are loving and supportive, but Tracy feels like she can't talk to them about her feelings of loneliness and doubt. She also knows her parents are keeping secrets, and she fears the secrets are about her. As Tracy's memories of her life during the war begin to surface, she pulls away from her parents and best friend. She begins to have nightmares and feelings of doom. I appreciated that Partridge does not neatly wrap up all of the conflicts for an unrealistic happily ever after ending. But Tracy, and her parents, do learn that keeping secrets does not heal emotional wounds. And Tracy learns that a true friend will forgive you if you ask.

This book gave me so much to think about, and it kept me glued to the pages the entire time I read it. Protagonist Tracy is easy to like, and her confusion about who she is and where she came from just leaps out of the book. Her helpless rage is convincing and understandable, as is her inability to communicate her feelings to the people she loves. Because she doesn't know how to talk about her doubts and her fears, she instead keeps pushing her family and friends away. This is a heart-wrenching read, because it's hard to think about a young child enduring what Tracy had to. Her story is relevant to any war situation. During the horrors of fighting, it is always the most vulnerable who suffer the most.Tracy has been adopted by an American couple, and the half-Vietnamese kid seems happy and carefree on the outside. Inside, however, she is a bundle of confusion. After finding an old ammo box in the garage, she is assailed with questions about herself. She remembers bits and pieces about her life in Vietnam - she had a grandmother who loved her, she lived beside a tea-colored river, and her mother worked for the Americans in the laundry at their base. What she doesn't remember is how she got to her adoptive home, and once she opens the ammo box, she is like Pandora. The box has been opened and her questions, like the ghosts of her past, won't leave her alone.I found this story so compelling because I never stopped to think of something that is very obvious - adopted kids had a life before they were adopted. There was a there before there was a here. Tracy's there is filled with both soft, gentle memories, and more traumatic nightmares as the warfare escalated in 1975 Vietnam. She lived through some truly horrific moments, and to protect herself, her mind shut down and simply forgot about her ordeal. The ammo box, and the set of dogtags she finds, blows the lid off of her memories. Through a series of short flashbacks, her past is slowly revealed, linked together like beads on a necklace, to expose her past again.Tracy's adoptive father, a Vietnam vet, is also suffering from PTSD. I found it very moving when Tracy confronts him, begging him to share his memories with her. She is the only person who could possibly understand what he was going through, but, like Tracy, his defense mechanism is to shut everyone out. Tracy is persistent, however. The horrors of the Vietnam War belong to both of them, and Tracy won't stop asking questions until she gets some answers. Who is she? What were her parents like? Where does she belong?This MG read is touching and emotionally satisfying. I am dismayed that it isn't getting the buzz it deserves. If you are going to read just one MG book this year, read this one!Grade: A-

Dog Tag Summer is an amazing book that uncovers the many aspects of the Vietnam War. The main character is a young girl that was born in Vietnam. An American family adopts her as she tries to unfold the truth about her past. She describes her first memories of Vietnam as a scoop taken from her insides and realizes that the empty space inside will always be there. Ghosts of the war come and go throughout the story as her family begins to talk about Vietnam and discuss the things that they will "never forget."

Who am I? Where do I belong? Who can I trust? These are questions that all children ask as they grow older, but for twelve-year-old Tracy these questions haunt her. In the moving story Dogtag Summer, Tracy knows that her mother was Vietnamese and she was adopted when she was six, just after the Vietnam War ended. But her parents won't share any other real information with her. So she is left with a hole in her heart, an empty place inside her.As Tracy searches for her identity, a sense of home and where she belongs, she remembers bit by bit more of her childhood. Each chapter begins with a brief snippet of a memory, almost like a fragment of a dream, of Tracy's childhood in Vietnam. She remembers living with her grandmother, having her mother visit her, and running away from the bright lights of an American jeep. She remembers the villagers calling her con-lai, or 'half-breed', because her father was an American GI. But she can't remember enough to put all the pieces together, to fill the longing in her heart.Partridge conveys Tracy's emotional struggle realistically, showing how this young girl is torn by the secrets stifling her home, and yet how she is unable to really articulate what it is she needs to understand. Her writing is both accessible and full of wonderful images. I can't wait share this with students.

All good