My Father's Summers: A Daughter's Memoir [Hardcover]

Kathi Appelt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2004

We saved things for him. My sister Patti saved whatever she could hold in her palm-rocks, pennies, bottle caps. With the pennies she planned to save enough to buy a plane ticket to go see him. How many pennies would it take? Photographs, report cards, jokes, songs, stories, we even saved Christmas. Long after my mother took down the tree, his gifts sat in the corner of the living room.

A beautifully crafted memoir from acclaimed author Kathi Appelt

Told in a series of eloquent prose poems, My Father's Summers is Kathi Appelt's memoir of coming-of-age in Houston, Texas. Without a wasted word, she recalls her faraway father, who is first halfway across the world in Arabia and then across town living a new life. For Kathi and her sisters, there are unknown stepbrothers, a stepmother who drinks gin and tonic for breakfast, and a painful awareness of their mother's loneliness.

By turns heartbreaking and achingly funny-through first kisses, best friends, accidental shootings, and all manner of pets-these poignant remembrances communicate the disappointment and the delight of growing up in a loving, imperfect family.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 7 Up–Nostalgia and longing waft through this spare collection of poetic vignettes. The selections capture a girl's life in the late 1960s and early '70s pitted by the pungent absence of her father, who is working for long stints in Arabia. He returns, but there's the larger distance of a dissolving marriage and establishment of a new family. Lyrical prose probes the heart, as in "Long Division": "...Then there were the three of us, sisters. All loving him. But there was a remainder. My mother still loved him too." Throughout the confusion of adult discord, there's a constant, the tight ties between a daughter and her father. The uplifting joys of a happy girlhood and the conflicting slide of loss are well balanced. Appelt uses historical events and black-and-white family photos to anchor the emotional timbre of her youth, and the nonlinear selections roll past like snapshots from a scrapbook. Unfolding in Houston, TX, this past might have been "anywhere USA." Appelt bridges the continent and the baby-boomer generation with heartfelt reflections. The question is whether today's readers will understand the fluid connection of these seemingly disjointed images. This may be one of those YA treasures especially suited for adults.–Alison Follos, North Country School, Lake Placid, NY
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 6-12. Growing up in Houston, Texas, in the 1960s, Appelt always missed her beloved dad--first when he was in the Persian Gulf, then later after he returned to Houston but was with a woman on the other side of town. In short, simple prose poems and occasional family photos, Appelt vividly captures moments of her childhood and teenage years. The dense particulars (what they bought, ate, wore, and watched on TV) may appeal most to nostalgic adults, but kids today will be drawn in by the author's sadness, clearly expressed in her obsession with her absent parent. Everything reminds her of him, and everything in her life becomes a metaphor for missing him--whether it's "steps" ("stepdaughter . . . watch your step"), roads, or the wars abroad and at home. True to one young girl's viewpoint, the anguish and longing are also universal. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR); First Edition edition (April 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805073620
• ISBN-13: 978-0805073621
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,116,701 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kathi Appelt's poignant collection of eloquent prose poems, June 11, 2004

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: My Father's Summers: A Daughter's Memoir (Hardcover)

The memory of our childhood is like a collection of snap shots that capture not only high points but unrelated odds and ends that are preserved for reasons we can not even suspect any more. An autobiography tries to connect all the dots and provide a smooth narrative flow, filling in gaps the way the scientists in "Jurassic Park" spliced in other genes to make a complete strand of DNA. However, the artificiality of such life stories and the way they lose reality but making all the pieces fit is revealed by Kathi Appelt's "My Father's Summers: A Daughter's Memoir." What we have here are a series of prose poems that provide brief glimpses at the bits and pieces of a life more vividly than would a complete autobiography.

"My Father's Summers" are created for Kathi and her two younger sisters when the absence of her father working half a world away in Arabia turns to a smaller but more devastating move across town to a new life with another woman her sons, suddenly stepbrothers for a little girl who cannot understand what has happened to her family but who can appreciate the emotional pain. Against such stark moments as the whispered insinuations that her mother was not a good wife or the constant connections between life in general and what had happened with her father (e.g., the idea that crabs leave one shell to find another), there are touches of wonder, such as the sweet boy with brown hair and deep brown eyes who made sure Appelt had been kissed before her 16th birthday.

There are a couple dozen black & white family photographs scattered throughout the book, some tied specifically to the prose poems and others just showing Appelt, her sisters and her parents (but, somewhat surprisingly, none of Karen, the best friend of which she often writes). While there is a rough chronological structure to the arrangement of the prose poems, the topics go where memory takes and other tenuous connections take them; at one point the photographs of Appelt are going backwards in time. Memories are unstuck in time.

The description on the front flap of "My Father's Summers" describes it as a "memoir of coming-of-age in Houston, Texas" and sometimes it is difficult to think of it in those terms because the title and the revelation that Appelt's father found a variety of ways of being absent from his daughter's life becomes the dominant element of the book. Even when she does not write explicitly about her father and his absences, he is a presence, even when the death that ends the story is not his own. The poignancy of Appelt's work will have a resonance beyond that for the daughters of divorce or those who grew up in Houston or some similar place, because these remembrances combine the bitter disappointments and unforgettable delights that make up the life of any child.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Father's Summers, December 13, 2006

A Kid's Review

This review is from: My Father's Summers: A Daughter's Memoir (Hardcover)

When you look back at your childhood, you remember the great things, the bad things, and even sometimes the unusual things. The book My Father's Summers: A daughters Memoir by Kathi Appelt, is a fascinating arrangement of Kathi's childhood memories. While reading this memoir you know all of Kathi's feelings and emotions when she is going through anything, such as staying with her dad and new mom and brothers. The memories are the good, bad and random things she remembered about her life. All ages would enjoy reading about Kathi's ups and downs in her early days. What I loved about this book is that it made me feel as if I are watching Kathi live her life because of the wonderful format her life as been presented in this book.
Each page is a different day in Kathi's childhood that narrates a different amazing adventure that Kathi takes you on. The adventure started on her 11th birthday when her dad sent her a letter from Arabia saying happy birthday. It ends with a great black and white photo of her young dad hold her as a baby, still loving her, more than ever. "It's clear he is happy to be holding me, hanging on to me. Despite everything, that was always clear." There are remarkable black and white photographs placed through out the book helping the reader recognize what Kathi is explaining and gives a good image of what life was like when the story is taking place.
When you read autobiographies of people who are reflecting on their childhood, they usually cover only happy and sad points in their life. However, in My Father's Summers: A daughters Memoir, Kathi writes about anything that she can pull out of her mind to put on paper. On every page that goes by, a day goes by and more events happen to her. She includes every bit and end of her life. This memoir keeps you on your toes about what event is going to happen next, or what her next birthday will bring. Nothing is boring and everything is so real.

4.0 out of 5 stars The seperation of a family, December 28, 2006

A Kid's Review

This review is from: My Father's Summers: A Daughter's Memoir (Hardcover)

I am eighth grader. This memoir tells you how Kathi Appelt misses her old life when her loving father and mother were together and happy. It goes through many feelings and emotions of a young teenager and how she copes with change. Kathi gains a new family and loses part of her old one. this book also talks about how her dad included her and her sisters with his new family and how difficult it was for them. I recomend this book to any teenager or anyone who is experiencing change in their life.