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**FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE**
Title available
online from AuthorHouse, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders
EDITORS: For
review copies or interview requests, contact:
Sharon McBride
Tel:
907-384-0094
Or 907-745-5039
Email:
sharon.mcbride1@yahoo.com
(When requesting a review copy, please provide a street address.)
My Mommy Wears Combat Boots
Sharon G. McBride, author, reveals what
it means to be a mommy in the military service in a new children’s book
PALMER, Alaska – There are a
lot of children’s books on the market explaining what it means for a
daddy to be deployed, but books explaining why mommies have to go away
have been few and far between. When operations started in Iraq, a
generation of U.S. women became involved as never before; more than
155,000 women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among their ranks are
more than 16,000 single mothers, according to the Pentagon, a number
that military experts say is unprecedented.
Meanwhile, the children these
single mothers leave behind are looking for answers. According to
current statistics, 700,000 children of military members are under the
age of 5. In Sharon McBride’s new children’s book, My Mommy Wears Combat
Boots
mymommywearscombatboots (published
by AuthorHouse), she appropriately conveys the emotions and
behaviors of the young children who find themselves in the care of
others when their mothers deploy. The tone of the book is soothing and
uses words that are easily understood by young children.
“When I was deployed a third
time, my daughter started having emotional issues with me being gone.
She had begun getting into books at age 3, so I began searching around
to find other ways to explain things to her,” McBride said. “I noticed
there were a lot of books that explained why daddies serve in the
military, but not a lot about mommies. So I decided to write my own.”
Mommy Wears Combat Boots is an
illustrated children’s book based on McBride’s personal experience as a
soldier and a single mother. It also serves as a way to explain why she
needed to leave her child again and potentially be in harm’s way. The
book explains emotions involved when a parent leaves and that it’s OK to
feel things.
“They are scared. The parent,
who was there 24-hours-a-day before, now has to leave and there’s an
issue of abandonment there,” McBride said. “Kids feel all the emotions
an adult does, but can’t verbalize them like an adult.”
The 12-page book is about a
little girl bear cub whose mother bear is away serving as a soldier in
the U.S. Army. The cub goes through all the emotions of having a parent
missing from her life and tries to cope with them. When the cub is mad
at her mother for being gone, Grandma helps with other ways to make her
feel better. But the cub has a difficult time expressing guilt,
frustration, anger, loneliness and sadness, not realizing at first that
it’s normal to feel all of this and more as the result of her mother’s
absence due to military deployment. In the book, the cub prays for all
the other children with moms in the military serving away from home,
because there are lots of mommies who wear combat boots.
“The book goes into things
that we went through,” McBride said. “Grandma would help my daughter
count the days off the calendar to when I would get home and read her my
e-mails. I also bought her these shoes that light up when she runs, and
I asked her to think of me and I how much I love her when they glow.”
Sharon G. McBride is an U.S.
Army veteran of 13 years, and has completed three deployments since
2003. As a photojournalist, the author wrote about and photographed
events of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, and
Hurricane Katrina. As the single parent of a four-year-old toddler, she
wrote My Mommy Wears Combat Boots based on her personal experience in
addressing her child’s negative feelings associated with her
deployments. The author is out of the service now, but she hopes that My
Mommy Wears Combat Boots will help other military children cope with
their separation from their mothers as the result of this war; because
there are a lot of mommies who wear combat boots.
###
It is
Autumn 1942 and Hitler’s legions have swept across Europe; France
has fallen; Churchill and the English are isolated on their island.
In North Africa, German field marshal Erwin Rommel and his Panzers
have routed the British Eighth Army and stand poised to overrun
Egypt, Suez, and the oil fields of the Middle East. With the outcome
of the war hanging in the balance, the British hatch a desperate
plan. Young, Oxford-educated lieutenant R. Lawrence “Chap” Chapman
is recruited into the Long Range Desert Group, a Special Forces unit
with one purpose— to penetrate the Afrika Korps in the field and
kill Field Marshal Rommel.
In
KILLING ROMMEL, Steven Pressfield brings to life the flair, agility,
and daring of this extraordinary historical commando unit. He
describes in detail the tactics, weaponry, and specialized skills
needed for combat under extreme desert conditions. He captures, too,
the camaraderie of this band of brothers as they perform the acts of
courage and cunning crucial to the Allies’ victory in North Africa.
As in his acclaimed earlier novels, including the bestseller GATES
OF FIRE, Pressfield combines historical accuracy and
edge-of-your-seat battle scenes to create riveting fiction.
An exciting action/adventure novel with a dramatic race to Berlin for
freedom
S.G.
Cardin’s first novel, “Destination: Berlin” romps through the Cold War
nation of East Germany on a suspenseful race to get to Berlin.
(Los Angeles, Calif.)—
Tension filled Europe in the 1980’s set the stage for Corporal Sharon
Cates, the betrayed heroine of author’s S.G. Cardin’s book,
“Destination: Berlin.” (ISBN: 978-0-595-16419-6, Iuniverse, 2007)
Corporal Sharon Cates’s
military career is in high gear. Recently promoted and returned from a
leadership school, she’s selected to attend the Berlin Orientation Tour.
Her idyllic trip takes a detour when the duty train to Berlin derails in
the middle of communist East Germany. Sharon then discovers a top-secret
document in her briefcase – a document the KGB and Stasi are willing to
kill her for. The race to Berlin is on, with Sharon accepting help from
an unlikely source – a Russian soldier, Jr.Sgt. Dimitri Nagory.
As Sharon and Dimitri
travel on foot paralleling Bundestrasse One, KGB and Stasi agents in the
city of Genthin confront them. Sharon is caught, and Dimitri makes a
decision that will affect the rest of his life – and helps her escape.
The tension heightens as
Sharon and Dimitri get closer to Berlin. As the KGB and Stasi close in,
the only thing between Sharon and freedom is Dimitri.
“Destination: Berlin” was
inspired by the author’s own trip to Berlin to attend the Berlin
Orientation Tour. This gives the novel a personal touch, allowing the
author’s enthusiasm to shine through. The novel is a thrilling adventure
ride though East Germany to West Berlin. Fans of action/adventure novel
will enjoy the ride.
About the Author
S.G. Cardin resides in Los
Angeles, California. She served in the military for 11 years and is now
a 911 dispatcher for the Los Angeles Police Department. She is the
author of several novels and has won an IUniverse Editor’s Choice Award.
She’s an Honorable Mention Winner in the 75th and 76th Writer’s Digest
Competition. Cardin is currently working on “Twilight Over Moldavia,” a
supernatural novel.
“Destination: Berlin”
(ISBN: 978-0-595-16419-6, iUniverse, Aug 2007), can be purchased through
local and online bookstores. To order from iUniverse: 1-877-823-9235.
For more information, visit:
http://sgcardin.tripod.com. Review copies available upon request.
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2005 - 2009 MWSA
I
recently attended a fundraiser for this group and donated approximately 25 books
from our members to be used as items to be sold. 100% of this money went
directly to the organization. The books, originally sent in for reviews, were
part of the one hundred or so given to me by Bill McDonald when I took over as
President of MWSA.