(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

[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 :)