When I was growing up with my five siblings, it was clear that there was something mysterious about my older sister’s history. My mother and the sister became upset if it was mentioned. The rest of us knew we weren’t supposed to ask questions about it. We learned to tippy-toe around certain topics.
Years later, the secret was revealed: My mother had been married and divorced before she met my father, and my sister was the child of that marriage. Divorce is now an accepted fact of modern life, but in my mother’s day, it was a shameful thing that was best kept secret. The fact that her first husband was an abusive alcoholic probably made her want to pretend that marriage never happened.
By the time the secret could be openly discussed, the damage had been done. My sister always felt like a misfit in the family, and her resentment created a barrier between her and the rest of us. That’s often the case with family secrets.
With people spilling the most intimate details of their lives on social media, podcasts, and talk shows, it might seem that no one is keeping family secrets anymore, but that’s not the case. The stigma surrounding drug addiction, sexual orientation, incarceration, homelessness, bankruptcy, mental illness, suicide, and unemployment is still powerful, and it can still do tremendous damage.
In a perfect world, no one would need to keep secrets. We’d have a compassionate understanding of mental illness, sexual orientation, and the other complexities of being human. We wouldn’t hold others accountable for mistakes made by their ancestors. Emotional and financial support would be readily available for those who need it, and there’d be no shame in asking for help. As you may have noticed, we’re not there yet.
While we’re waiting for the world to improve, it’s important to remember that it is often children who suffer the most when family secrets are kept. They may know only that something is out of kilter without understanding why, and they don’t have the authority to demand answers. The people to whom they should be able to turn for guidance may be the ones keeping the secret. For example, a parent trying to conceal alcoholism probably doesn’t have the wherewithal to explain the situation to a child. Children who are aware of a family secret but are expected to conceal it may feel overwhelmed by such a heavy burden.
For children living with the effects of family secrets, books can be a source of comfort. The four books described below feature protagonists struggling with or confronting family secrets. They find different solutions to their situations, and they can all serve as role models for young readers.
Effie Starr Zook Has One More Question
By Martha Freeman
Effie Starr Zook is not happy about being sent to the family farm run by her aunt and uncle while her parents fly around the world in a solar-powered airplane. The farm was started by her great-grandfather, who left the family “well-fixed” after inventing the barf bag. She is constantly told that “he was a great man.” Fortunately, she asks for and receives a new bicycle on the way to the farm, and she uses it to explore the nearby town, where she encounters many quirky characters and some unexplained animosity toward her family.
As the title suggests, Effie likes to ask questions. When she starts asking questions about her family’s history in the region, her suspicions are aroused by the evasive answers she receives. She keeps digging for answers, and she discovers that many people in her family and her community have been keeping secrets — from her and from each other. She begins to suspect that her great-grandfather might not have been quite as great a man as the family legend suggests.
Effie Starr Zook Has One More Question seems like a lighthearted adventure story about a young girl investigating a small-town mystery, á la Nancy Drew, but it actually involves some substantial issues, such as discovering the racism of long-ago relatives, intellectual property rights, and male inventors taking credit for the work of female inventors. Those were all secrets that were hidden until Effie Starr Zook kept asking questions.
You can learn more about Martha Freeman here.
Sure Signs of Crazy
By Karen Harrington
Sarah Nelson has many of the typical worries of a 12-year-old girl: having a crush on an older neighbor, getting her ears pierced, reading an adult romance novel. She is also worried that she might have sure signs of going crazy like her mother, who killed Sarah’s twin brother and tried to kill Sarah when the two were toddlers. The notoriety of the case is so great that Sarah and her father relocate as soon as their new neighbors discover who they are. Her father, who is revealed to an alcoholic in the course of the story, clearly loves Sarah but is emotionally unavailable, and her best friend is a potted plant. She knows what will happen when people learn her secret.
That description makes Sure Signs of Crazy sound too depressing for adult readers, let alone middle-grade readers, but Sarah is one of the most charming, engaging, funny narrators imaginable. Her experience has made her wise far beyond her years, but she has all the endearing awkwardness and insecurity of a 12-year-old. Readers can’t help but connect with Sarah as she bumbles through embarrassing adolescent situations, and they’re on her side when she confronts her father about his alcoholism and insists that she be allowed to see her mother (who is in a psychiatric hospital).
Karen Harrington manages to present Sarah’s situation without making it maudlin. She has performed the remarkable feat of taking a story that arouses tabloid frenzy in the real world and showing the humanity of the people involved.
You can learn more about Karen Harrington here.
No Fixed Address
By Susin Nielsen
Felix Knutsson and his mother have been sliding inexorably into homelessness ever since his grandmother died, and now they are living in a van parked on the streets in Vancouver. This means they must take showers at a community center, eat out of cans, and keep their situation a secret from the authorities. Felix’s mother once had a bad experience with the Ministry of Child and Family Development, and Felix is terrified of ending up in foster care himself.
Felix’s father can’t or won’t help, and his mother lies and steals to keep them fed and barely housed. She also lies Felix’s way into a spot in a French Immersion program at a new school, where he reunites with Dylan, a friend from the days when he had a home. (Felix is part Haitian and part French by way of his father.) He also reluctantly begins working on school projects with Winnie, a well-to-do Asian student. While he is glad to have friends, having them means that he must constantly manufacture excuses to avoid revealing his secret — that he lives in a van.
Felix decides that his only hope is winning a $25,000 prize on a TV game show. Dylan and Winnie help him prep for the competition, but his “home life” disintegrates even further when the van is reported as stolen and his mother is arrested. The tension builds as the day of the contest gets closer.
Does that sound too over the top? Well, it’s not. My family never lived in a van, but we often teetered on the brink of homelessness, and one of my greatest fears as a child was that my siblings and I would be put in foster care and separated. Susin Nielsen gets the details exactly right, especially the part about keeping secrets to stay off the radar of the authorities. More importantly, she shows that making friends and revealing your secrets to your friends is often the way to get the help you need.
You can learn more about Susin Nielsen here.
Star in the Forest
By Laura Resau
Zitlally’s life changes dramatically when her father is deported to Mexico. In her father’s absence, her mother must work extra shifts to support the family. Her mother also rents a bedroom in the family’s trailer to three construction workers, which means that Zitlally and her three sisters must squeeze into her mother’s bedroom. Zitlally can’t tell her friends at school what has happened because then they’ll know her family’s secret — that Zitlally, her parents, and her older sister are all undocumented immigrants. When she becomes anxious and withdrawn, her friends abandon her because she’s “boring.”
Zitlally finds solace in the junkyard behind her family’s trailer, which she calls a “forest.”
One day she finds a dog tied to a car in the junkyard. She’s a little afraid of the dog at first, but she is also drawn to him, especially when she sees the patch of black fur in the shape of a star on the back of his neck. Zitlally’s name means “star” in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs that her father speaks to her in secret. Zitlally names the dog Star, and she becomes convinced that Star is her father’s spirit animal.
Based on a Nahuatl folktale her father told her, Zitlally thinks that as long as she keeps Star safe, her father will be able to return safely to the United States. She and a new friend from a nearby trailer make it their mission to give Star the best of care. Then Star appears to have been kidnapped at the same time her father is kidnapped and held for ransom while trying to cross the border into the United States. Suffice to say that all is well by the book’s end.
It’s not easy to make the immigration conundrum relatable to a middle-grade audience, but Laura Resau has managed to do it with finesse in Star in the Forest. Every child can imagine what it could be like to have a father torn away from the family, which is what deportation means to the child of an undocumented immigrant. Having the story of Star the dog parallel the story of Zitlally’s father creates even more empathy, because there aren’t many children who can resist the idea of saving an abandoned dog.
Resau includes “A note about immigration from Mexico to the U.S.A.,” which explains why people migrate to the United States. She describes the emotional stress of being an undocumented immigrant under a constant threat of deportation and what this stress does to children and their families. She provides a Nahuatl Glossary and Pronunciation Guide and a Spanish Glossary and Pronunciation Guide. She also includes the text of the folktale that Zitlally’s father told her, “The Deepest, Most Magical Forest.”
You can learn more about Laura Resau here.
Concealing family secrets can create anxiety for adults and children alike. Of course, revealing family secrets at inappropriate times can create its own set of problems. Knowing when and where to share personal information is a complicated skill to learn. Reading about how characters in books have handled family secrets is a safe way for children to see it in action. Let’s all be grateful for the writers who find creative ways to address this sensitive subject.