Mama's Home

Daddy is trying his best. Tasha is keeping his secrets. And Mama is far away.

Tasha's mama is a soldier, deployed and fighting a war. At home it is just Tasha and Daddy, and Daddy is doing everything the way Mama did, or close enough. He puts Tasha's hair in a puff because he can't braid it. His macaroni and cheese sticks together. He falls asleep during story time, and he turned her new white underwear pink.

Tasha never tells Mama any of that. When Mama calls, Tasha tells her about first grade, her purple schoolbag, and a teacher named Mrs. Garlic. Mama laughs with wet eyes and says how proud she is of her big girl.

Then one morning Tasha wakes up to the smell of bacon. And Daddy never cooks bacon.

Told in the voice of a first grader, Mama's Home is a tender picture book about a military family counting the days until everyone is home again. Its warm, full-page illustrations center an African American family and the small, loving ways a father holds things together while his wife serves overseas.

For readers ages 4 to 8, and for every family who has waited by the phone for a call from far away.

Written by Linda Rose Pelton, a retired first-grade reading teacher who spent nearly thirty years looking for books in which her African American students could see themselves, and finally decided to write them.