Playing Dad’s Song
by D. Dina Friedman
Summary
It’s been two years since Gus’s father was killed in the World Trade Center, and Gus can’t figure out how to move on. His mother thinks he needs to do something so she rents him an oboe and signs him up for lessons. As Gus’s friendship with his oboe teacher, Mr. M. develops, so does his passion for music, and soon he decides to compose a song for his father.
In turns playful and poignant, Playing Dad’s Song personalizes the losses at the World Trade Center in New York City by focusing on one child’s struggle with the tragedy.
Excerpt
We learned in school that Brooklyn used to be farmland, but it was hard to believe, because there was barely any grass in the entire borough, except in Prospect Park. I just couldn’t imagine Brooklyn covered with rolling hills and barns, even though I knew we didn’t always have so many sidewalks and buildings. And I knew that things could change quickly--the way one minute the World Trade Center was there, and the next minute it was gone.
We never talked about that at home. Mom let us keep Dad’s picture in the living room, and sometimes Liza and I talked about him when Mom wasn’t around to hear us. Mom didn’t seem to like Dad any better now that he was dead. I thought she might feel sorry for him or something, but I didn’t think she did.
In my life the way I’d like to compose it, I wouldn’t be the only person I knew who had lost a parent on September 11, 2001. Not only that: if I could compose my own life, September 11 never would have happened. We’d skip that day and go right to September 12. Dad would still be alive, and he and Mom would still be married. They would both be singers, just the way they’d intended to be--Mom in the opera and Dad on Broadway. Dad had been in a lot of Off-Off-Broadway productions, but he’d never made it big. He didn’t get much money from singing, so he worked as a waiter in fancy restaurants. He was working at Windows on the World, at the top of the Trade Center, and even though he usually worked at night, he had switched shifts with someone, so he was there when the plane hit. That was two years ago, but I still thought about it every single day.
Reviews
"A moving, heartfelt story" --Kirkus
"Absorbing plot and a theme that exalts the healing powers of creativity and imagination"--The Association of Jewish Libraries
"Brings the grief and loss of the terrorist attack home to the reader"--Booklist
Author's Biography
D. Dina Friedman lives in Hadley, MA and teaches at the University of Massachusetts. She is also the author of Escaping Into the Night, an award-winning historical YA novel about teenagers who lived in forest encampments during the Holocaust.