(Illustration by Stripes Guam)
“Ah-venture awaits!” our daughter, Anna, mispronounced to her little sister Lilly on the night before our overseas move to Stuttgart, Germany. Everything they’d known was about to change, and having an active imagination was Anna’s way of coping.
Our household goods had already been packed into cartons and hauled away. We’d eaten pizza for dinner in our empty kitchen, sitting in our neighbor’s folding soccer chairs. We slept that night in sleeping bags on borrowed air mattresses.
Somewhere in the shuffle, Lilly had lost “Pink Bunny” — a worn plush bunny head attached to a security blanket that she’d had since she was born. She was getting too old for it, but this was definitely not a good time for Lilly to part with her comforting constant companion.
As for my husband and me, we were excited for this move. Germany would be a grand adventure (or “ah-venture,” according to Anna) for our whole family. Our oldest child, Hayden, was a bit apprehensive, but he’d been bullied during his sixth grade year, so the move represented a fresh start at a new school with potential new friends.
But for Anna and Lilly, our move to a foreign country was scary. Anna had moved to Virginia Beach as a baby, and Lilly was born there. Our Dutch colonial on a cul-de-sac near their elementary school was all they ever knew.
To familiarize them with the beauty and culture of Germany, I made the mistake of playing “The Sound of Music” movie for our family one night. The next day, when I asked Lilly what she and her friend had done on their playdate, Lilly reported, “First we played Polly Pockets, then we had a snack, then we played ‘The Nazis are coming! The Nazis are coming!’, then we …”
I wish I’d known in 2008 about United Through Reading, a national nonprofit that helps military families through challenges like deployments and PCS moves through story-telling. Recently, UTR selected the new picture book “Home Moves With Me” by Kathy Feedham Raggio as the 2026 Book for the Military Child. UTR, working with publisher Elva Resa, will distribute 14,000 copies of the book to U.S. military families worldwide in both English and Spanish (“Mi hogar se muda conmigo”)
“Home Moves With Me” is a story that uses the sweet simplicity of a child’s perspective to depict a military family’s PCS move. It contains many relatable details in the lightly rhyming text and illustrations — boxes, sleeping bags, empty rooms, long drives, moving stickers, pizza, crinkled paper, eating “dry cereal out of little boxes,” tears, and laughter. I could immediately imagine Anna as the main character, taking the stairs of a new home “two at a time” and yelling, “Ah-venture awaits!”
Also, the book lends itself to repeated readings because the illustrations offer a sort of “I spy” element where readers search each page for the family dog who is always in the background, up to no good. Or, the hidden references to the main character’s favorite imaginary theme — dragons.
Author Raggio grew up as an Army brat and became an Air Force spouse who moved eight times with three children of her own. “Since I have lived a life of multiple moves, I also wrote this story to explore what home means to me. For me, home was never the building we lived in. It was my family, memories we made, and traditions that went with us from one place to another, those things that made us feel like we were home, no matter the dwelling place or place in the world,” she said.
UTR will begin distributing “Home Moves with Me” in all 50 states and on U.S. military installations worldwide during April, the Month of the Military Child. The book will be available for purchase through retail outlets beginning June 9.
Home is not simply a place, it’s also a feeling that moves with you and your family. I’d advise military families facing moves with small children to get the book, and skip “The Sound of Music.”
Read more at themeatandpotatoesoflife.com and in Lisa’s book, “The Meat and Potatoes of Life: My True Lit Com.” Email: meatandpotatoesoflife@gmail.com
