(no subject)

[cahn]

Please rec me books with dads who are major characters (important secondary character is fine) and for whom parenting is an important component of their character, with kids who are older at the time of canon (teenager or above). They don't need to be good parents, necessarily, and they can make horrible mistakes, but they should be (relatively?) non-abusive and clearly love their kid(s).

So far I've got

-Aral Vorkosigan (...I guess he's not super a main character any more, but he casts a pretty long shadow)
-Atticus Finch
-Andrew Wiggin
-Jean Valjean
-Reb Saunders and David Malter
-Van Hohenheim (taking the prize for not being a good parent and making horrible mistakes...)

...this is a much lower percentage of the books we own than I had thought it would be!

Comments

[ricardienne]

This is so much harder than it should be! I can add:

- Abednego Twite in Black Hearts and Battersea/Dido and Pa almost counts. (He’s a pretty terrible dad, but Dido’s relationship to him is really important to her...)
-Annabel Lyon’s The Sweet Girl is about Aristotle’s daughter and her dad has a big role in her life although there as well, there’s a growing apart as she matures and her father starts to see her as a woman to be married for rather than a brilliant child to share his research with (general I highly recommend it as historical fiction),
-Star’s dad is a pretty important character and a very present parent in The Hate U Give

[ricardienne]

Wait a few more!

- the father in All of a Kind Family— in the last couple, especially Ella of All of a Kind Family, the older girls are teenagers or older, and the father is just as kind and loving and an important part of their lives.
-Johnnie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is an extremely flawed dad, and he dies when the protagonist is relatively young, BUT he’s so important in her life even as she grows into teenager and young adulthood that maybe he counts?
-I suppose Sabriel and Touchstone are active and good parents in the later Old Kingdom books.

[cahn]

Oh man, I need to go back to All of a Kind Family, I am pretty sure I read them but I remember exactly zero about them!

Johnnie!! Yes, yes, he totally counts. What a great (and extremely flawed) character <3

I stopped reading after the first couple of Old Kingdom books -- is it worth reading further?

[cahn]

Right?? I don't understand why this is so hard!

These all sound great! Putting them on the list :)

[ricardienne]

if you haven't read Joan Aiken, you are in for a treat! (The series is long and extremely weird -- Black Hearts in Battersea pretty much has to be followed up by Nightbirds on Nantucket -- which, come to think of it, also has a father as a fairly important secondary character --, then there three or four increasingly bizarre Dido Adventures before Dido and Pa that are also lots of fun (especially The Stolen Lake - which is a post-Arthurian adventure set in alt-19th-century South America).

And I thought of another classic juvenile novel with a strong and very important father character: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (and sequels), by Mildred Taylor.

[cahn]

Both Joan Aiken and Roll of Thunder belong to a class of books that fall in the "I saw these as a kid and I have no idea why I never actually read them" category. Clearly I should go back and have a Talk with me!kid :)