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BY STEPHANIE HEINATZ
Newport News, Va., Daily Press NEWPORT
NEWS, Va. - (KRT) - For the nearly three
years that Michelle Ferguson-Cohen's
Army father was deployed to Vietnam,
Cohen had a hard time relating to other
kids. "He was gone off and on from the
time I was 3 until I was 6," she said.
"Listening to kids tell you that
soldiers are nothing but baby killers
was hard to deal with." Cohen said it
was hard to understand. Her father
wasn't a killer. He was her daddy. Her
hero. "Only as an adult did I realize
the sacrifice and commitment that my
parents made and how my mother made
everything seem so normal," Cohen said.
Now, she said, she has an "awe and
respect for military parents and their
commitment to raise children in the
toughest situations." Cont'd on website-
To read the complete article, click
here. © 2004, Daily Press (Newport News,
Va.).
Fayetteville Observer
BY REBECCA LOGAN
A few years ago, when I was a Family Readiness Group leader, I stumbled across two books on the Web.
New at that time, they were about the military and were called “Daddy You’re My Hero” and “Mommy You’re My Hero.”
So I ordered two of each — one set to give as prizes and one set to lend out to parents who asked. I also passed out the author’s Web address at a meeting and remember saying something like, “I thought maybe those of you with kids might be interested because I know I personally haven’t seen books like these before.”
Fast forward more than four years.
The National Military Family Association’s Web site now lists 28 books “for children living the military life.”
A few aren’t military specific. But others have titles such as “A Yellow Ribbon for Daddy” and “Daddy’s in Iraq and I Want Him Back.”
And there are many more than that on Amazon.com.
Cohen
I contacted Michelle Ferguson-Cohen, the author of those “My Hero” books to get her take on what seemed to me to be a big increase.
She said media executives are certainly paying more attention to military children than when she was shopping for a publisher.
Ferguson-Cohen is a former founder and president of a New York and London-based music management and marketing company and the daughter of a retired career military officer. She ended up publishing her own books.
“I heard a few things from (traditional) publishers … that the military was not a viable market ...” she said. “I had one really large publisher … actually say, ‘We don’t care about those kids.’ And I knew that, because I grew up as one of them and I didn’t have anything like this.”
Many parents like to use books as tools to help their children cope.
And the Army knows that. In October 2004, the Child Welfare League of America announced that the Army was buying from the league 14,000 copies of “The Kissing Hand” — a book about a raccoon missing his parent. Those were distributed to organizations and groups dealing with military children.
Ferguson-Cohen said the Internet has played a big part in waking up traditional media to the fact there is an actual military community -- even though it’s a community without traditional borders.
“I think there have been some strides,” she said.
“But, while the entertainment media now acknowledges military families as an audience, they have not provided a platform or encouraged the voices of the military community,” she said. “We see lots of promotional dollars going toward books written for military families by people who are not part of the community.” Anissa Mersiowsky, author of “A Yellow Ribbon for Daddy” does have an inside view.
Her husband had deployed to Iraq from Fort Hood, Texas, where she stayed to take care of their newborn daughter and run an FRG while her husband did his company command overseas.
“I hadn't set out to write a book,” Mersiowsky said in an e-mail. “But my journaled thoughts started to rhyme and everything just fell together.”
She said the number of books aimed at military children seemed to increase dramatically in 2005.
“The sad reality is that so many more have come out because of the war,” Mersiowksy said. “Many military moms were probably looking for something to help with deployments and then realized that they could do something about it.”
Rebecca Logan is a Maryland-based freelance journalist and Army wife. She can receive e-mail at military@fayobserver.com
Recommended Reading
Looking for books to read with younger children dealing with deployments?
They don't have to be specifically about military families, said Maryann Williams, a counselor at Fort Bragg's Holbrook Elementary School.
For example, she likes "Daddy, Will You Miss Me?" a book about a father who works in Africa and shares traditions with his child while they're apart.
Books can help parents tackle deployment related emotions, which vary greatly from child to child, Williams added.
"But you don't want to make a big deal out of something that's not there," she said. "Parents might read through the books and see if (the children) are having these feelings. But if not, leave it alone. Don’t push it."
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Stars and Stripes
European edition, Friday, November 21, 2003
ARLINGTON, Va. —
BY LISA BURGESS
It’s a dilemma faced by many military families today: How do you get very young children to understand why their parent is leaving?
If anyone can help, it would be a former “military brat.”
That was the thinking that prompted Michelle Ferguson-Cohen to write and illustrate two new books for children: “Daddy, You’re My Hero!” and “Mommy, You’re My Hero!”
The books are written for children ages 4 to 8 — the same age window Ferguson-Cohen fell into when her own father, retired Army Brig. Gen. Michael Ferguson, did two tours in Vietnam.
During the Vietnam conflict, “society as a whole was not terribly compassionate towards military families,” Ferguson-Cohen said in a Wednesday interview with Stripes. “The thing I remembered the most as a military brat was this perception that you’re alone.”
Reading was both solace and an escape.
“My mom took me to the library every single night after dinner,” Ferguson-Cohen said.
But there was a gap on the bookshelves.
“It made me crazy that I could never find any books that reflected my reality.”
Fast-forward to Sept. 11, 2001, the day Ferguson-Cohen watched the Twin Towers crumble from the roof of her Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment.
“Our neighborhood was covered by debris,” she said. “The first thing on my mind was the military and their families — I knew there would be a military action. And at that moment, all these memories came flooding back.
“I wanted to do something to remind [military kids] that they aren’t alone.”
At first, Ferguson-Cohen, 38, wrote a simple little poem that later formed the text for her books. Then she created a Web site on which to post the poem, which she illustrated herself in her first-ever foray into drawing and painting.
After making the rounds of uninterested publishers, Ferguson-Cohen and her husband decided to invest their own savings in a paperback, and later, a more sturdy “board book.”
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
BY SHEPERD PITTMAN
Michelle Ferguson-Cohen remembers when she was a child and her father was serving in the Vietnam War. She trekked to the library every night to find solace in fairy tales, Judy Blume's youth novels and Shakespeare. But there was one kind of book she never found, one that reflected her life as the daughter of a serviceman.
"There wasn't a book on the shelf I hadn't read," Mrs. Cohen said. "And yet I never, ever, ever saw me."
That's why she wrote and illustrated two books for children of military families: "Daddy, You're My Hero!" and "Mommy, You're My Hero!" The books, intended for 2- to 8-year-olds, contain the text of a poem Mrs. Cohen penned after surveying the destruction of September 11 from her Brooklyn rooftop. Knowing military action would follow, Mrs. Cohen said, "Automatically, my heart went to military families."
The books depict boys and girls seeing off their military parents and awaiting their return. Colorful drawings accompany rhymes such as: "We're having a party when daddy comes back / With pizza and ice cream and presents, in fact."
Think of it as Dr. Seuss for military "brats," as children of troops describe themselves.
Military families are a community largely overlooked by the press, which leaves children feeling different, said Mrs. Cohen, a former public relations consultant. "It is vital to a person's self-esteem to see themselves reflected well in the media," she said.
The author is scheduled to read her poem to more than 500 children at Fort Benning in Columbus, Ga., in November. She said some children have memorized the poem to cope with their parents' absence.
Major publishers were reluctant to accept the manuscript, Mrs. Cohen said, so she and her husband published it themselves.
Children shouldn't be penalized because their parents are in the military, Mrs. Cohen said. "We have to get away from the idea that these families are separate, or that their experience is political. They have every right to be proud of their parents."
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