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Dear Dad, Love Laurie
Laurie's letters to her divorced father chronicle her year in the sixth grade and her efforts to enter her school's program for the gifted and talented
120 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1989
About the author
Susan Beth Pfeffer
92 books1,946 followersSusan Beth Pfeffer was an American author best known for young adult and science fiction. After writing for 35 years, she received wider notice for her series of post-apocalyptic novels, officially titled "The Life as We Knew It Series", but often called "The Last Survivors" or "Moon Crash" series, some of which appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 3, 2015
Written correspondence or journal entries are storytelling formats Susan Beth Pfeffer works well in, as evidenced by the success of Life As We Knew It and This World We Live In from her Last Survivors series decades after the arrival of Dear Dad, Love Laurie. With none of the narrative happening outside of ten-year-old (soon to be eleven) Laurie Levine's letters to her father, we rely on those letters for all the information we need in order to be invested in the story, and Susan Beth Pfeffer adroitly catches us up on everything important within the first several weeks' worth of letters. Laurie's parents split up not long ago, her father moving more than a thousand miles away to Missouri to accept his dream job, leaving Laurie and her mother to rebuild their home life as Laurie enters her turbulent preteen years. Laurie might have gradually phased out interaction with her father altogether if not for her mother's insistence that she write him a letter a least once a week, and these letters are what moves the story forward over the course of one hundred twenty pages of domestic drama and ups and downs at school in just less than a full year of Laurie's life. The wound of the divorce is no longer raw and weeping, but it's far from healed, and Laurie has trouble understanding her own occasionally over-the-top responses to disappointment when she suffers emotional setbacks from the divide in her family. Laurie's preadolescent drama isn't anything beyond the norm, but even typical heartbreak and angst for her age is a steep mountain to climb, with or without being on good terms with her closest friends and her own mother at any given time. Laurie will somehow make it through to every tomorrow on the calendar, though there are days when she feels she can't bear another twenty-four hours of sadness.
"Have you ever noticed that? The less you want to be someplace, the harder it is for you to be someplace else. Sometimes when I'm at the dentist's I think I've been there since the moment I was born it feels like so long."
—Dear Dad, Love Laurie, P. 71
Readers must look beneath the superficial to understand why Laurie is troubled by some of her life's circumstances. Why is it such a big deal that she be accepted into the Gifted and Talented program at school like her friend Kris? Why does it so agitate Laurie when her mother begins dating a gym teacher from school, though Laurie knows her parents fought constantly before the divorce and they're never going to remarry? Laurie can't explain her own severe visceral responses to these events. She just reacts as her feelings tell her to, putting the onus on her friends, family, and herself to divine the reasons why and figure out how to bring their relationships back into some semblance of harmony. Laurie has several major dustups with her friends from camp last summer (Darin and Jamie) and school (Kris, Shannon, and Jimmy), experiencing differing magnitudes of strife with each of them, and it seems she's never on good terms with everyone at once. Darin splits off with Jamie from the main group at Laurie's birthday party and doesn't interact with the others, and Jamie stirs up trouble at the party with her jarring screams. Kris is a little too smug about her Gifted and Talented status for Laurie's liking, which worsens the sting when Laurie's overtures to the teacher to be added to the program go unrewarded. Shannon is upset and brooding over Maria, who has always been part of their group of friends but was assigned to a different class this year. Maria starts hanging out with a girl named Gracie whom none of them used to like; Shannon is angry that Maria could forget about her real friends so easily, and takes it out on Laurie and Kris. Jimmy is reluctant to be seen with Laurie anymore since she's a girl, so he's one less friend to help her through these hard times. Just when Laurie's family life is at its most trying, her core friendships are changing, too, making the transition to living without her father all the harder.
From June 24 to the following April 30, the first and final correspondence dates of this book, Laurie's expressions of feeling for her parents vary wildly, sometimes from one letter to the next. She has difficulty controlling her emotions, so when she feels overwhelming anger toward her father because he has to suddenly cancel a scheduled visit she's looked forward to for months, or toward her mother for entering a new romantic relationship, Laurie interprets the anger as hate, going from daily affirmations that she'll love her parents forever to intense invectives against them, swearing she hates them and always will. But it's the red-hot pain of the moment that spurs her hurtful words, and when the angry red gash is given time to be soothed, she never holds on to bitterness. Laurie needs both her parents during the upheaval of this season in her life, as the three of them try to close the hole ripped wide in their once happy family. Whatever developments with her friends, schooling, and changing view of the world around her put their spin on Laurie's life, her family still exists, albeit as a fractured unit, and the essential challenge is to continue growing together even as they lead separate lives for the most part, a nuclear family distanced by elements beyond Laurie's control. It's a balancing act too unpredictable and unrehearsed to get right on the first attempt, but the key is to go at it again and again until they've learned its novelties and can adapt to its demands, never giving up on this most vital of interpersonal equations they'll ever be assigned. The balance can be struck and maintained, if imperfectly, and Laurie and her family are on their way there, even if they won't ever stop missing what they had before.
"A little weight gained is a lot of weight to lose."
—Laurie's mother's fortune cookie, Dear Dad, Love Laurie, P. 36
What lingers with me about this novel is the rawness of emotion in Laurie's letters when she's at her most distressed. We deeply feel her anguish when she's telling her father she hates him, after taking such pride in saying she loved him a day or week earlier. The collapse of that love into such disillusioned disappointment that she believes she hates him is hard on the reader, too, releasing memories of our own turgid disappointments we felt that strongly. It's in these moments that Laurie discards the canopy of politeness covering her feelings of abandonment, and writes her father that she knows he doesn't love her because if he did, if he harbored any love at all for his only child, how could he have stepped out on her and moved a thousand miles from home? He doesn't love her, Laurie concludes in the depths of pity and despair, and if she's honest with herself, she continues, neither does her mother. They act like they love her, saying the right things when they're supposed to, but they can't truly love her and be so indifferent to her feelings. Laurie vacillates between begging her father to let her move in with him so she can get away from her mother, and telling him she never wants to see him again, that he's lost the right to be her father. It's a congested emotional mess, but that comes with the territory when ties with loved ones are legally severed and grievous injuries to family structure have to be slowly, gingerly mended, a delicate operation sure to incur a lot of additional pain. It's a hurt that goes beyond words when you feel you aren't loved enough by the ones you depend on to carry you through your darkest hours, even if, in your heart of hearts, you know they love you more than you could ever understand.
I don't know how to rate Dear Dad, Love Laurie. Two and a half stars, yes, but it's practically impossible for me to round that up or down. Whichever way I go with it, please know I could have just as easily rounded the other direction. This book's lasting value is how it frames the indomitable nature of our love for the ones who matter to us, showing that our mutual assurance of love isn't jeopardized by mean, hateful words, or vows that we won't forgive a transgression that supposedly placed them beyond reclamation in our eyes. None of that is important in the end because we either love the person or we don't, and love is sufficiently durable to outlast every negative entity working against it. This is the poignancy of Dear Dad, Love Laurie, that beyond the shouting, angst, and bitterness with which Laurie rails against her friends, parents, the universe, and the unfair family situation she's stuck in, Laurie is always going to love her mother and father, and they all know that. The sincere cries of her bruised heart in her own time echo the sorrow of girls and boys through the ages who endure the loneliness of broken homes and feeling unloved, a cycle of emotional solidarity that should be comfort to anyone feeling the same way. You're not alone, as Laurie isn't alone. Thank you for this book, Susan Beth Pfeffer. The Last Survivors series may be your legacy, but you've accomplished something significant here, too.
"Have you ever noticed that? The less you want to be someplace, the harder it is for you to be someplace else. Sometimes when I'm at the dentist's I think I've been there since the moment I was born it feels like so long."
—Dear Dad, Love Laurie, P. 71
Readers must look beneath the superficial to understand why Laurie is troubled by some of her life's circumstances. Why is it such a big deal that she be accepted into the Gifted and Talented program at school like her friend Kris? Why does it so agitate Laurie when her mother begins dating a gym teacher from school, though Laurie knows her parents fought constantly before the divorce and they're never going to remarry? Laurie can't explain her own severe visceral responses to these events. She just reacts as her feelings tell her to, putting the onus on her friends, family, and herself to divine the reasons why and figure out how to bring their relationships back into some semblance of harmony. Laurie has several major dustups with her friends from camp last summer (Darin and Jamie) and school (Kris, Shannon, and Jimmy), experiencing differing magnitudes of strife with each of them, and it seems she's never on good terms with everyone at once. Darin splits off with Jamie from the main group at Laurie's birthday party and doesn't interact with the others, and Jamie stirs up trouble at the party with her jarring screams. Kris is a little too smug about her Gifted and Talented status for Laurie's liking, which worsens the sting when Laurie's overtures to the teacher to be added to the program go unrewarded. Shannon is upset and brooding over Maria, who has always been part of their group of friends but was assigned to a different class this year. Maria starts hanging out with a girl named Gracie whom none of them used to like; Shannon is angry that Maria could forget about her real friends so easily, and takes it out on Laurie and Kris. Jimmy is reluctant to be seen with Laurie anymore since she's a girl, so he's one less friend to help her through these hard times. Just when Laurie's family life is at its most trying, her core friendships are changing, too, making the transition to living without her father all the harder.
From June 24 to the following April 30, the first and final correspondence dates of this book, Laurie's expressions of feeling for her parents vary wildly, sometimes from one letter to the next. She has difficulty controlling her emotions, so when she feels overwhelming anger toward her father because he has to suddenly cancel a scheduled visit she's looked forward to for months, or toward her mother for entering a new romantic relationship, Laurie interprets the anger as hate, going from daily affirmations that she'll love her parents forever to intense invectives against them, swearing she hates them and always will. But it's the red-hot pain of the moment that spurs her hurtful words, and when the angry red gash is given time to be soothed, she never holds on to bitterness. Laurie needs both her parents during the upheaval of this season in her life, as the three of them try to close the hole ripped wide in their once happy family. Whatever developments with her friends, schooling, and changing view of the world around her put their spin on Laurie's life, her family still exists, albeit as a fractured unit, and the essential challenge is to continue growing together even as they lead separate lives for the most part, a nuclear family distanced by elements beyond Laurie's control. It's a balancing act too unpredictable and unrehearsed to get right on the first attempt, but the key is to go at it again and again until they've learned its novelties and can adapt to its demands, never giving up on this most vital of interpersonal equations they'll ever be assigned. The balance can be struck and maintained, if imperfectly, and Laurie and her family are on their way there, even if they won't ever stop missing what they had before.
"A little weight gained is a lot of weight to lose."
—Laurie's mother's fortune cookie, Dear Dad, Love Laurie, P. 36
What lingers with me about this novel is the rawness of emotion in Laurie's letters when she's at her most distressed. We deeply feel her anguish when she's telling her father she hates him, after taking such pride in saying she loved him a day or week earlier. The collapse of that love into such disillusioned disappointment that she believes she hates him is hard on the reader, too, releasing memories of our own turgid disappointments we felt that strongly. It's in these moments that Laurie discards the canopy of politeness covering her feelings of abandonment, and writes her father that she knows he doesn't love her because if he did, if he harbored any love at all for his only child, how could he have stepped out on her and moved a thousand miles from home? He doesn't love her, Laurie concludes in the depths of pity and despair, and if she's honest with herself, she continues, neither does her mother. They act like they love her, saying the right things when they're supposed to, but they can't truly love her and be so indifferent to her feelings. Laurie vacillates between begging her father to let her move in with him so she can get away from her mother, and telling him she never wants to see him again, that he's lost the right to be her father. It's a congested emotional mess, but that comes with the territory when ties with loved ones are legally severed and grievous injuries to family structure have to be slowly, gingerly mended, a delicate operation sure to incur a lot of additional pain. It's a hurt that goes beyond words when you feel you aren't loved enough by the ones you depend on to carry you through your darkest hours, even if, in your heart of hearts, you know they love you more than you could ever understand.
I don't know how to rate Dear Dad, Love Laurie. Two and a half stars, yes, but it's practically impossible for me to round that up or down. Whichever way I go with it, please know I could have just as easily rounded the other direction. This book's lasting value is how it frames the indomitable nature of our love for the ones who matter to us, showing that our mutual assurance of love isn't jeopardized by mean, hateful words, or vows that we won't forgive a transgression that supposedly placed them beyond reclamation in our eyes. None of that is important in the end because we either love the person or we don't, and love is sufficiently durable to outlast every negative entity working against it. This is the poignancy of Dear Dad, Love Laurie, that beyond the shouting, angst, and bitterness with which Laurie rails against her friends, parents, the universe, and the unfair family situation she's stuck in, Laurie is always going to love her mother and father, and they all know that. The sincere cries of her bruised heart in her own time echo the sorrow of girls and boys through the ages who endure the loneliness of broken homes and feeling unloved, a cycle of emotional solidarity that should be comfort to anyone feeling the same way. You're not alone, as Laurie isn't alone. Thank you for this book, Susan Beth Pfeffer. The Last Survivors series may be your legacy, but you've accomplished something significant here, too.
June 29, 2008
This was one of my favorite books growing up! Laurie's parents are divorced, and the book solely consists of Laurie's letters to her father, with her explaining everything going on in her life. I specifically remember a part where she is discussing where she falls on the spectrum of attractiveness compared to her other friends. Oh, to be thirteen again....
December 22, 2008
I think even as a child I realized how unrealistic the premise this book was, and how absolutely selfish and short-sighted the main character behaved throughout the entire book. There are a good deal of young adult books out there, don't punish a child and make them read this one.
May 16, 2013
Cedar Mill
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews