Missing Momma
by Winsome Bingham (Author) Rahele Jomepour Bell (Illustrator)
A tender picture book about a veteran's PTSD and a family's love for each other--on good days and hard days--from award-winning creators Winsome Bingham and Rahele Jomepour Bell
Momma wears combat boots, a camouflage jacket, and a U.S. ARMY tag on her chest. She is a fighter for her country's freedom, but she is also a fighter for her family. When Momma comes home from a long deployment, however, something has changed. Our narrator, Momma's "Baby," misses the big hugs, uniform fashion shows, and music mornings they used to share. And she really misses planting vegetables together. Now her Momma won't even come out to the garden. But maybe, just maybe, she can bring the garden to Momma.
Missing Momma is the poignant and ultimately hopeful, comforting story of a child with a parent affected by PTSD. Sensitively written by Winsome Bingham and movingly illustrated by Rahele Jomepour Bell, Missing Momma beautifully reminds kids that a family's love endures even on days that aren't picture perfect.
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Publishers Weekly
Drawing from personal experience, per a concluding author's note, Bingham (The Walk) pens a compassionate work featuring a perceptive child whose mother has returned from military deployment significantly changed. "Before the Army, / before she went to war, before deployments in Africa, Afghanistan, and Iraq./ Momma was the funnest momma in the whole wide world." The protagonist reminisces about playful times in which mother and child danced to Beyoncé, cooked together, and planted vegetables in the garden--where Momma says, "You not living life unless you're one with the earth." Now, though, the narrator reveals, Momma stares out the window all day, no longer hugging or humming, and sometimes exhibits behaviors that feel "mean, mean, mean." Dragging a bucket of watery dirt inside, the protagonist meets Momma where she is, and the family finds a way to move forward through "days of sadness./ And days of joy." Boldly stroked illustrations by Bell (Angry Me) add hints of the garden to domestic interiors through this tender work about cycles and transformation. Background characters are portrayed with various skin tones. Ages 4-8. (Oct.)
Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.
Kirkus
A thoughtful, empathetic, and stirring child’s-eye view of an all-too-common struggle.
E.B. Lewis is the award-winning illustrator of numerous books for children, including Coming on Home Soon (a Caldecott Honor Book), Talkin' About Bessie (a Coretta Scott King Award winner), and The Bat Boy and His Violin (a Coretta Scott King Honor book). In 2003, the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota purchased a collection of original watercolors from Lewis's first 50 children's books. Today, his works are displayed in museums, owned by private collectors, and sold by art galleries throughout the United States and Europe. He lives in New Jersey.
JUV013060 - Juvenile Fiction | Family | Parents
JUV039240 - Juvenile Fiction | Social Themes | Depression & Mental Illness
JUV075000 - Juvenile Fiction | War & Military
Picture books
Family life
Veterans
Mothers and daughters
JUVENILE FICTION / Family / General (see also
Post-traumatic stress disorder
JUVENILE FICTION / Social Themes / Depression
