Shooting the Moon

December 17, 2007
Reflecting America's changing sentiments toward war, this coming-of-age novel set during the Vietnam era focuses on the internal conflicts of an Army “brat.” At first, 12-year-old Jamie Dexter doesn't understand why her colonel father—a war hero who “runs the show” at a Texas Army base—disapproves of her brother's decision to enlist. But after her brother TJ leaves for Vietnam, Jamie begins to understand that there is more to fighting a war than glory and heroics. Rolls of film sent home by her brother depict gritty scenes, while the dangers become all the more real when Jamie learns that her card-playing buddy, a soldier stationed at her father's base, has lost a brother in Vietnam. Then TJ is reported missing in action. While segments of this story—particularly the climax—seem rushed, readers will get a clear sense of Jamie's growing understanding of her father's fears. Her work developing her brother's film, a skill she learns at the PX, serves as an effective metaphor for her developing awareness of violence and danger, but the symbolic significance of the moon, appearing in TJ's photographs, feels strained. Although the book lacks the fine-tuned characterizations of the author's Dovey Coe
, it succeeds in credibly depicting a girl's loss of innocence. Ages 10-up.

Starred review from May 1, 2008
Gr 5-8 -"The Army way is the right way." So says Jamie Dexter's father, The Colonel, a die-hard officer who has raised Jamie and her older brother, TJ, to be proud believers in the U.S. military. Stationed at Fort Hood, TX, in the summer of 1969, Jamie's family is tested when TJ decides to forgo college and volunteers for the Medical Corps in Vietnam. The spirited 12-year-old wishes that she could go, and she shocked to discover that The Colonel disapproves. When TJ sends rolls of film home from the front, Jamie learns how to develop them. They are chock-full of pictures of his surroundings and his favorite subject, the moon, but over time she's less eager to develop the increasingly disturbing images. As Jamie learns about the war from soldiers at the fort's rec center and watches her father grow disenchanted with the Army, her firm worldview is shaken. The clear, well-paced first-person prose is perfectly matched to this novel's spare setting and restrained plot. Dowell captures Jamie's growing self-awareness and maturity with the slightly detached, wistful tone of a memoir related well after the fact, and the precise clarity of a developing photograph. This thoughtful and satisfying story is more a novel of family and growth than of war. Readers will find beauty in its resolution, and will leave this eloquent heroine reluctantly. This is Dowell's most cohesive and engaging novel yet."Riva Pollard, American Indian Public Charter School, Oakland, CA"

Copyright 2008 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2008
Twelve-year-old Jamie Dexter and her brother, TJ, have grown up with the Army: their dad is a colonel. So Jamie is puzzled when neither the Colonel nor their mother is thrilled to learn that TJ has enlisted. After all, hes going to war in Vietnam, where Jamie would like to go if she werent so young. But then TJ, a photographer, begins to send her rolls of film to develop that gradually reveal the horrors of what hes seen. This is a sparse, beautifully written story about learning to truly see people, situations, and emotions as they are, not as we want to see them. Through lovingly drawn, complex characters and explicit details about photography, Dowell introduces a war, and the issues surrounding it, that will seem familiar to contemporary readers in spite of the historical setting, and she invites young people to reflect on the many shades of gray that Jamie confronts.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)