20 Books (for Kids) on Incarceration

Where Fleur ponders what it means for a kid to have a parent in prison.

Once upon a time, long ago, my oldest daughter was invited to a birthday party—one of those situations where at least half the class was there. Parents were encouraged to stick around, so I sat with the parents and got to know the birthday girl’s mom a little. During a conversation, she brought up that Dad was away on a business trip. It was clearly a lie, but I assumed that maybe they were separated.

Come to find out later, Dad was in prison. Mom just didn’t feel like sharing that, and neither did the daughter—not that I could blame them. And it made me sad to think of how lonely that whole family had to be, not being to talk about this and missing a father and husband.

For Daybreak on Raven Island, I had to dig deep to find out more about what it means to have an incarcerated loved one. One of the book’s main characters Tori has a brother in jail, and the book is set on an abandoned prison island (like Alcatraz). It was hard to do the research on incarceration in the U.S. and make sense of it all. So I tried to shift my focus on the impact on kids.

In the U.S., 1 in 28 kids has (had) an incarcerated parent. This statistic boggles the mind...

I went into this when it came to writing Daybreak on Raven Island and how hard it was over at Teen Librarian Toolbox.

Also, I recently made a list of 20 books (for kids) on incarceration here.

If you have any to add, please drop them in the comments. Books help kids make sense of difficult problems, and I’d love for this list to grow.

What I’m Writing

I’m still trucking along on my WWII novel, though it’s inching out of kid book territory and into YA… I figure I’ll worry about that later. Clocking in at just over 18k words, so on schedule, but not as fast as this impatient writer would like.

I’m trying to remind myself that slow and steady wins the race. Again.

Your Weekly Floof

Floof owns the house, and the couch too.