"You don't have a dad!" Those were the words my son
Adam's three-year-old
daughter, Kylee Timperley, heard from a little boy at daycare
after her dad was deployed to Iraq in the fall of 2003. Kylee responded,
"I do too, he's just at drill for...a very long time."
I looked around for a
children's book that might help Kylee
grasp the meaning of time and how long it would take for her
father to return. Finding none, my daughter, Nikki, and I wrote our picture book, A
Very Long Time, to help Kylee and other children generate the
tools they need to deal with the separation that might
otherwise seem to never end.
As it turned out, Adam came home
early. He was the first Minnesota Army National Guard member
to be wounded since WWII. The armored vehicle he was driving
was hit by an improvised explosive device (IED) but he and the
other soldiers in his humvee miraculously survived.
Having suffered through the
strains and pains of Adam's injury, recovery, and return home, we are now focused on gaining the
greatest possible distribution for the story. Not the story of
his unexpected return, but of his leaving and its impact on a young daughter.
We are particularly
interested in placing the book in the hands of families of
service men and women with children between the ages of four
and eight years old.
We will give a portion of the
sale of each book to MN Military families through
www.thankMNtroops.org.
If you are in position to help
us place the book where it can be found and purchased by those
most likely to benefit from its story, please contact us by
email at
info@averylongtime.com
A Very Long Time costs $15.95 per copy.
Please
click here to order.
Or, contact us by email at
info@averylongtime.com
Thank you so much. AND, God
bless our troops!
Geri Timperley and Nikki Arro
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