Sky of Bombs, Sky of Stars: A Vietnamese War Ophan Finds Home

Written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-094-9

224 pp.

Ages 8-12

April 2020

For young readers who have not had the privilege of reading Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch's award-winning non-fiction books about Son Thi Anh Tuyet, a child rescued from Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War and who finds a new life in Canada, Sky of Bombs, Sky of Stars offers an omnibus of the two earlier stories.  

In her first book, Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan's Rescue from War (2011), Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch tells the story of Tuyet, an eight-year orphan in today's Ho Chi Minh City who knows only bombs, soldiers, caring for babies at the orphanage and two visits from a woman and a boy. Convinced she would never be adopted because of a damaged foot and because she did not understand English, she never sees the opportunity presented to her when she is taken with numerous babies onto a plane to head away from the danger and to a new life with the Morris family in Brantford, Ontario.

In the sequel, One Step at a Time: A Vietnamese Child Finds Her Way (2012), Tuyet has become a part of a family with a mom and dad, two sisters and a little brother. She no longer believes she has only been welcomed to tend to the children and, though she is still haunted by nightmares, she has learned to play and be a child again. But she has new fears when she learns that she will be undergoing surgery to resolve her foot and ankle impaired by polio. With her minimal English and her family unable to speak Vietnamese, Tuyet's world continues to be a challenge. Still, with the love and patience of her new family and other special people, she forges ahead, taking new steps forward.

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch consistently tells stories about young people challenged during historical times and how they rise above the adversity to make lives for themselves. Tuyet's is such a story. She was a little girl alone, feeling her life limited to work and caring for others, never expecting much for herself. But with an airlift out of Saigon and the love of a compassionate family, Tuyet builds something new and begins to see herself as the incredible person she has always been, beyond what service she provides. Fortunately, by putting both Tuyet's stories together in an omnibus, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch and Pajama Press will help young readers get the whole story, saving them from a search for sequels or determining which book came first.  Sky of Bombs, Sky of Stars truly gives young readers the more complete story of a Vietnamese war orphan's journey from hardships and horror to hope and home.

••••••••••••••••
The two original books

Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan's Rescue from War (2011)
One Step at a Time: A Vietnamese Child Finds Her Way (2012)
were reviewed on CanLit for LittleCanadians originally
on April 9, 2012 and September 9, 2012 respectively.

Dodger Boy

Written by Sarah Ellis

Groundwood Books

978-1-77306-072-9

176 pp.

Ages 10-14

September 2018

Most people would not think of the 1970s as the setting for historical fiction but, at 40 plus years ago, it definitely qualifies, and it was a time rampant with fodder for fiction writers. From Apollo 13 to the attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics, the pioneering of in vitro fertilization and, of course, Watergate, the 1970s rolled through on a plethora of highs and lows. But for many it will be the decade during which the Vietnam War finally ended. Before that end, however, lives were being shaped by either going to war, protesting it or dodging the call to military service, and those who met those individuals were likewise forever changed. Such are the circumstances of Sarah Ellis's newest middle grade novel, Dodger Boy.

Vancouverites Charlotte Quinlan and her best friend Dawn Novak, both 13, attend a hippie event called an Easter Human Be-In. There, amidst the music and dance and fun, they meet Tom Ed, a draft dodger from Texas, who is invited to stay with Charlotte's Quaker family while he tries sort out his plans. When Tom Ed gets a job as a car jockey and has to drive a car up to 100 Mile House, Charlotte and Dawn accompany him. But while, Charlotte appreciates how Tom Ed talks to her like an adult, Dawn sees the trip as something else.

Meanwhile there is a war against the girls' teacher, who is affectionately known as O.O., from a parent seeking her firing for including the book The Catcher in the Rye in her classroom library.  Even within the context of a greater conflict, Charlotte is compelled to protest the censorship and the attack on her teacher, learning about civil disobedience and taking herself out from Dawn's shadow to find her own voice.

Dodger Boy piggybacks on an era of free love and peace but is embedded in a time of conflict. Sarah Ellis may use the Vietnam War as the big conflict, one between nations, but by including those involved with censorship  and between friends, she makes it personal. There may be discussions about pacifism and Nixon and the war but there is also much learning about differences and similarities between Americans and Canadians, about growing up and being an Unteen or a teenager, and about having a friend and being one.  It's a comprehensive look at the 1970s while still being selective about where Charlotte's focus is. Sarah Ellis, in her crafty subtlety, takes a massive picture of life in the 1970s and angles it at the individual, acknowledging what is important to Charlotte: her family, her friends, her school and the freedom to be her best human "be-in."

Pandas on the Eastside

by Gabrielle Prendergast

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-1143-0

192 pp

Ages 9-12

October, 2016

Reviewed from advance reading copy 

Never underestimate the power of goodness to overcome that which others consider weaknesses: youth, poverty, lack of education, dysfunctional families.  Ten-year-old Journey Song doesn’t.  She sees beyond the slummy side of the 1970s Eastside of Vancouver and sees a community of friends, that includes classmates, school staff, street people and local merchants.

Some people call the Eastside a slum.  That’s because they are describing buildings and roads instead of people.  To them, people on the Eastside probably look poor, sad, uneducated, sick and worthless.  But I don’t care what they think.  To me, the people around here are friends. (pg. 1)

And she’s going to need all of them in her mission to help the pandas housed in limbo at a local warehouse while the governments of China and the United States engage in a bureaucratic kerfuffle regarding action during the Vietnam War.

Though Pandas on the Eastside is narrated by the youthfully buoyant voice of Journey, each chapter brings another Eastside community member to the forefront, from homeless Kentucky Jack and mentally ill Contrary Gary, to teacher Miss Bickerstaff and her black boyfriend Ben Wallace, and Officer Pete Baker, and grocer Mr. Huang. Everyone adds to Journey’s story, not the least of which is her father whom she meets for the first time, finally answering some of her questions about her heritage.  But, just like everyone else on the Eastside, it doesn’t matter where you come from but who you are now. For Journey, her now involves helping the pandas and hopefully spreading some happiness in a world filled with war and sadness and conflict.

Gabrielle Prendergast, who made her literary mark with young adult novels in verse Audacious (Orca, 2013) and Capricious (Orca, 2014), demonstrates a formidable skill for writing an intricately-plotted, character-filled middle-grade novel that confronts prejudice without preachiness.  Yet it’s Gabrielle Prendergast's rich setting that truly drives the story, providing the impetus for action and consequently acceptance.  Pandas on the Eastside is an uplifting story from a time long-gone but a place ever-present in heart and geography.


(A version of this review was originally written for and published in Quill & Quire, as noted in the citation below.)

Kubiw, H. (2016, September). [Review of the book Pandas on the Eastside, by Gabrielle Prendergast]. Quill & Quire, 82 (7): 37.

Soldier Doll

by Jennifer Gold
Second Story Press
978-1-927583-29-6
256 pp.
Ages 13-18
March 2014

One doll. Five wars. Many hearts touched.

A summer yard sale doll, with a cherubic face and a soldier's uniform, is the quirky birthday gift fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Bryant picks up for her dad, an engineer shipping out with the military to Afghanistan in a few weeks.  Just recently relocated to Toronto from Vancouver, Elizabeth goes to check out the neighbourhood and wanders into a bookstore where she meets Evan, an older teen who works there.  Talking books, Elizabeth and Evan learn they share an appreciation for author Margaret Merriweather's work, and he introduces Elizabeth to her poetry, including her famous poem, "The Soldier Doll." 

As Elizabeth delves into the poem, she discusses the possibility that the doll of which Margaret Merriweather wrote may in fact be the doll she purchased for her father.  While the reader will know this to be true from the historical anecdotes involving the soldier doll that are interspersed in Elizabeth's narrative, the teen, her parents and Evan set out to discover the mystery of the doll, looking into its provenance and journey to the Toronto yard sale where it was found.

The little soldier doll, originally a girl's keepsake after the loss of her mother, is shared years later with her fiancé as he heads to France in 1918.  Though the soldier doll is thought to be lucky by his fellow soldiers, it begins the next step of its journey when the young man is killed and the doll ends up in an antique shop in Germany.  Without spoiling the story, suffice it to say that the soldier doll is present when Jewish people were being rounded up in Berlin, when the Red Cross comes to assess the conditions at the concentration camp at Terezín in Czechoslovakia, when young American soldiers seek the Viet Cong in Da Nang, Vietnam, and after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 when the war on terrorism begins.

Almost a century of history is witnessed by the unusual wooden doll, privy to secrets and shared fears, watching death, destruction, kindness and hope all twisted together.  With Elizabeth and her family endeavouring to learn its complete story, Jennifer Gold is able to bring the Soldier Doll home, both in the story and with her writing.  Wrapping all that history in a mystery makes for an intriguing read.  While I thought that Elizabeth's dad knowing an archaeologist/historian was a tad convenient, I realize that with his history (pun intended) of seeing the fantastic amongst his yard sale finds he'd probably reached out to everyone and anyone who could verify them as authentic.  And in a story where a doll is able to reach across time and place and work magic on those who held it, I think that coincidences may be more fortuitous than contrived.

Jennifer Gold is very astute in using the doll as the focus for discussions of life and death, war and peace, and responsibility and honour.  Even as the narrative moves from World War I to World War II and ultimately to the recent war in Afghanistan, I wondered about those who enlisted or were drafted and went to war under a banner of duty or compassion, and ultimately had to face the horrors and tragedy of war.  The wars that the soldier doll witnesses may have different names and locations but those who live and die through them are always the same.

"I wasn't sure what the right thing to do was.  I don't think the right thing was that clear.  I guess it never is, not in a war, really." (pg. 263)

Not much has changed.  But, just as history is apparently told by the victors, the Soldier Doll lives on because of those who endured or lived long enough to share its story. And though one veteran acknowledges that, "It's hard to be the one who lives" (pg. 265), the living are critical in keeping those who passed alive.  Just like the soldier doll does.

What We Hide

by Marthe Jocelyn
Tundra Books
978-1-77049-642-2
275 pp.
Ages 14+
May, 2014

I can't imagine a freer time than the 1960's and early 1970's when there were calls for "Love, Not War", when peace symbols and drugs were everywhere, and when contraception helped support the idea of free love.  Strangely, the young people in What We Hide should be immersed in all that liberating freedom, standing up for their views, and not taking any directions from the establishment.  Yet these teens have their heads and hearts in two worlds: the traditional, even old-fashioned world more typical of  their parents and school administrators, and the experimenting, liberal explorations of their peers.  What they choose to hide is all rooted in their conflicting ideas of right and wrong, wants and needs, smart and ignorant, and childish and mature.

To help her older brother evade the draft for the Vietnam War (sadly something his best friend Matt chose not to do), Jenn accompanies Tom to England where he will attend Sheffield University and she Illington Hall, a boarding school, nearby.  The new milieu allows Jenn to become the American Jenny with the (imaginary) boyfriend Matt who is fighting in Vietnam.  Except for occasionally hearing from Tom who is heavily into smoking weed and avoiding contacting Matt, Jenny's world is Illington Hall, her new friends and misdirecting them to maintain her story.  But Jenny is just one of the narrators in What We Hide who reveal in the text that which they won't share elsewhere.

There's Robbie a local boy who knows he's gay but keeps it from everyone, especially his 18-year-old brother Simon, whose sexual exploits have already made him a father and has him engaged to marry another pregnant girl.  Robbie meets a boy from the boarding school, Luke, who never knew he was gay and, although smitten with Robbie, is still trying to discover whether he might like girls if he just found the right one. Luke and sister Kirsten come from a seemingly perfect family, or so classmate Penelope believes, until she finagles an invitation from them for the weekend.  And Penelope, whose aggressive attitude suggests that she'd have sex with anyone and it wouldn't be a big deal, has a big secret about her mother that she won't share.  Another classmate, Percy, too has a secret about his parent but one that could bring him popularity or shame.

I haven't even mentioned Nico, who is the school's heart throb and whose intimacy with his girlfriend Sarah is well known. But now that Sarah has returned home to Toronto, who is in Nico's line of sight? Jenny? Oona, Sarah's best friend?  What about Brenda, the sister of the mother of Simon's son?  She's a local but she attends Illington Hall as a day student, always straddling the line between the unrefined life of a local and the ambitious scholarship of her boarding school.

How Marthe Jocelyn, who could not have been old enough to have experienced this era, could accurately portray the thoughts and actions of Jenny, Robbie, Luke, Penelope and all their peers is astounding to me.  She has covered the full gamut from naive to promiscuous (though it is the time of free love, right?) and brash to reserved, but the confusion that seems to predominate the teen years is always there, regardless of background, wealth, family, friends, or intelligence.  These young people are all trying to find out who they are, wanting to be someone: a cherished son, a first love, a supportive sister, a sympathetic friend.  But wanting to be someone is not enough  to make it happen.

"Maybe I'd been hoping for a miracle, but I thought I'd be someone else by now.  I thought at least that I'd be . . . someone." (pg. 258)

But like all stories based on secrets or lies (misdirections, as Percy calls them), the truth will eventually be uncovered, for good or bad. Marthe Jocelyn makes it clear that the drama swirling around all these hidden truths in What We Hide is what takes the energies of these young people.  Sadly they don't know that the issues which are consuming them are real and significant as they are but creating dramas enfold these concerns just compounds them.  Some come to that realization more swiftly than others but still with heartache (Penelope recognizes that, "There is only me to blame for where I am.  There is only me." [pg. 197])

While I feel for these young people, wishing that they could trip through their teen years with more spirit and less angst, Marthe Jocelyn makes it clear that they will deal as they can, and things will work out or not, but they have the capacity to learn more about themselves through these hardships, regardless what they hide.

Book Launch: One Step at a Time, A Vietnamese Child Finds Her Way

Join

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

author of 

Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan's Rescue from War

on   
Wednesday, September 19, 2012

7:00 - 9:00 p.m.

at

The Station Coffee House and Gallery
5 Wadsworth Street
Brantford, ON
(519) 309-0008

for the launch of the sequel

One Step at a Time
A Vietnamese Child Finds Her Way

Eight-year-old Tuyet's harrowing escape from Saigon in 1975 and adoption by her new family in Brantford, Ontario was the focus of Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan's Rescue from War (Pajama Press, 2011).  One Step at a Time: A Vietnamese Child Finds Her Way recounts Tuyet's true story of adjusting to her new family and country and accepting the unconditional love and support extended to her, regardless of her polio-stricken left foot and leg which she had always believed made her unadoptable.

Marsha Skrypuch accompanied by Tuyet will generously answer questions and autograph books at this book launch.

Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan's Rescue from War

by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Pajama Press

978-0-9869495-1-7

99 pages

Ages 10-15

2011

When the Americans joined to support the government of South Vietnam to prevent a communist takeover, they could not have guessed that the fall of Saigon in 1975 would compel them, among others, to participate in frenetic evacuations of military personnel and civilians.  Most surprising were the targeted efforts, by the U.S., Canada, Australia and France, to ensure that orphaned children were not left behind to face either death or indoctrination with communism.  Because of the escalating attacks by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, it was imminent that flight by air would soon be impossible.  As such, the rescue efforts involving both private and military transport would be seen as daring and urgent, especially for a child.

Eight-year-old Son Thi Anh Tuyet knows nothing of the machinations of the Vietnam War except the relentless pounding of bombs and the presence of soldiers.  Her only memories are of life in the orphanage (with random visits from a woman and a boy) and helping to care for the countless infants.  Last Airlift is Tuyet's true story, relating to her exodus and deliverance to a Canadian home for adoption.  Her recollections of the disquiet of war, coupled with her perception of herself as unadoptable, because of her polio stricken left foot and leg, imbue the events of her journey with the colour that is uniquely Tuyet.

From her spartan existence at the orphanage to the white Volkswagen van that takes Tuyet and countless babies (in boxes) through the turmoil of the streets to the fenced airfield, Tuyet relies only on what she knows and what she can see, believing her purpose is to be useful in the care of the infants.  When another child, Linh, joins the orphans, Tuyet learns that the foreigners are speaking English and that, since she cannot communicate with them, "No" is the best answer to give.  Through their numerous flights and eventual arrival in Toronto, Tuyet is flooded with new experiences, from seeing herself in a photograph for the first time (Did she really wear her sadness on her face for all to see? Tuyet asks herself; pg. 43), to wearing underwear, and to being gifted a doll and later a stuffed animal.   Even after she meets Mom and Dad and their daughters, Beth and Lara, Tuyet is still convinced she would be going with them only to help care for the girls and a Vietnamese toddler, Aaron, who was being adopted.  How Tuyet is able to see past her impaired foot and her orphanage experiences to become a sister and a daughter is a testament to the unconditional love of a family who saw past the qualities Tuyet believed defined her.

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch mentions in her notes that she had initially intended for Last Airlift to be a piece of historical fiction with the main character as a composite of experiences of many orphans.  However, as Marsha Skrypuch pursued her historical research relentlessly, as she always does (see, for example, Making Bombs for Hitler, Scholastic Canada, 2012, and Stolen Child, Scholastic Canada, 2010), the real Tuyet recalled more details about her story, until the author recognized the scope was appropriate for a piece of non-fiction.  Surprisingly, readers will find that Last Airlift still follows like a fictionalized account for the reason that, as the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction. (Okay, not always.) It seems unimaginable that a child, who had felt disconnected from those who were able, from those who were adoptable and from those who welcomed the soldiers who visited the orphanage with candies and toys, be plunged into chaotic circumstances directed by those who look and speak differently from her, into surreal vehicles, and to follow customs unfamiliar to her.  It would be a story of speculative fiction, except that it isn't.  Tuyet becomes a heroine of her own story, using her fortitude, observations, and humanity to navigate the new territories outside of the orphanage and to make herself fit in.