Dear Dad: Growing Up with a Parent in Prison—and How We Stayed Connected

by Jay Jay Patton, Antoine Patton, Kiara Valdez

" ...Your dad is coming back home."

As far back as nine-year-old Jay Jay Patton can remember, her dad, Antoine, has been in prison. Growing up in Buffalo, New York with her mom and younger brother, she's only visited him twice. Instead the two have sent each other numerous letters. Jay Jay's letters can take weeks or months to reach her dad, and some never even get delivered. What's it going to be like having Dad home?

This powerful coming-of-age sequential-art memoir shows Jay Jay Patton's life of growing up with a dad in and out of prison. The experience led her and her dad to develop a powerful father-daughter bond and create Photo Patch, a life-changing application that connects children to incarcerated parents.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Middle Grade, Memoir, Nonfiction, Family, Biography, Comics

Kindle Edition

Published September 17, 2024

Reviews

[Bookishrealm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oof...I wanted to like this one so much more because of it's potential; however, I genuinely do think that this one suffers from marketing issues.

Dear Dad: Growing Up with a Parent in Prison caught my attention because publishing is doing more to publish books that address the impact of having an incarcerated parent. I thought that this graphic novel would do the same; however, this felt more like an advertisement for the app that Jay Jay created with her father. Don't get me wrong, I think that what they have done is brilliant and has impacted so many lives; however, I think that people will go into this book expecting something a little different than what's provided. Personally, I wish it would have explored the emotional and mental impact that comes with having an incarcerated parent just a little more. The artwork was good, but it will leave some readers yearning for more.

[Margaret · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, this middle grade graphic memoir reads like an infomercial for the app the authors made connecting incarcerated parents and their children. I do like that it addresses incarcerated kids and their parents; it's an important topic that I don't see often enough in kidlit. I also think it's cool that this was written by a teen. But there's not a lot of context or story here. It's mostly about how she and her dad made an app for incarcerated kids and parents.

[Rod Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

A girl struggles to cope with her dad in prison and then again when he returns to the family. Interesting points are made, but I grew bored with the stiff and simplistic writing and art that are probably aimed at readers much younger than I.

The ending really fizzles out with some jarring and abrupt scene changes that try to cover too much too quickly. The end matter starts with photos of the family and morphs into a cross-marketing brochure for the foundation with which they are currently involved, leaving a last impression of this being a promotional work.


(Best of 2024 Project: I'm reading all the graphic novels that made it onto one or more of these lists:
• Washington Post 10 Best Graphic Novels of 2024
• Publishers Weekly 2024 Graphic Novel Critics Poll
• NPR's Books We Love 2024: Favorite Comics and Graphic Novels

This book made the NPR list.)


FOR REFERENCE:

Contents:Where's Dad -- Welcome Home -- Re-introductions -- Patching Things Up! -- The Coder -- [Timeline]

[Hannah]

Let me put right out there that what this book is about--a father and daughter creating an app together to help incarcerated parents stay in touch with their children--is awesome. But this book is absolutely not at all what the subtitle promises--it has nothing to do with how the author and her father stayed connected while he was in prison, it has to do with how they connected with each other when he was out. That's actually really interesting too, but it's just not what was promised by the subtitle! I had soooo many questions: the dad was in prison all that time yet the mom got pregnant while he was there? And is that baby even real? This says it's a memoir, not a novel based on true life, yet the baby in the comic appears nowhere in the family photos in the back matter. No acknowledgment whatsoever that it is rather rare for someone to be able to achieve the things he did in prison while so many other prisons just do slave labor and mistreatment? How was he able to do those things? I'm assuming based on being in Buffalo that maybe the Bard College program was involved, but I'm not sure... This feels like a really clever promotional method to gain donors and users of a really important app, which is a great idea marketing-wise but doesn't make it compelling or successful as a piece of literature.

[✿ Harper Susco ✿ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall a great book and story but I think the book could’ve been a bit longer so that it could go into more detail.

[Kim]

I felt like this book had the opportunity to do something that it just didn't do. The artwork was amazing but I felt it lacked the depth and message it intended to send. Even the title mission didn't land.

[TheNextGenLibrarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fabulous graphic memoir about a girl creating an app to help connect incarcerated parents with their kids due to her experience with her own father in and out of prison. Love a good women in STEM book, but it was a bit boring, very short and didn’t really dive into the feelings part of the characters much.

CW: imprisonment

3.25 ⭐️

[Amber Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based on a true story, Jay Jay and her dad shed light on living with an incarcerated parent who rises to success. Her dad teaches her everything he knows and together they work on a project to help others who have an incarcerated family member!

[Pam Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great addition to kids' graphic novels. This book will help so many children - both those with parents who are/have been incarcerated or for those who do not (to develop empathy). I do wish there was more text - even for a graphic novel it seemed sparse. But overall, I love the topic and that a graphic novel is the delivery format!

[Andrea Beatriz Arango]

This was such an excellent short read! ✨

I spent a lot of time interpreting for incarcerated parents who couldn't pay their bond this past year, and the #1 thing they CONSTANTLY brought up was their kids.

📣 Not every kid and incarcerated parent have a terrible relationship!!! And I was thrilled to read about a parent-child duo with such a strong bond 🥹. Thank you for putting this one on my radar, @librarychrissie .

Extra cool facts: Jay Jay (the author of the memoir) is only 18 🤯 and the book includes a bunch of photos of her family at the end, plus extra info about the prison system & the app she and her dad developed to help kids talk to their parents in jail.

This sort of letter/digital communication access is extremely important because what some of you may not know (I myself didn't know this until I started working in the field) is that most prisons don't even allow contact visits with family anymore. And phone calls / video visits are not just expensive, they're often unreliable services.

Point being, DEAR DAD is a must for teachers and librarians to have in their mental recommendations bank because there are a LOT of kids in our school system with loved ones in jail, and a lot of stigma among peers regarding what that means.

Pick this one up pronto!

[Paige Lacker · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first graphic memoir-my only complaint was that it wasn’t longer. I wanted more of Jay’s story. The pictures of her and her father at the end of the book really moved me & made the story real. So thankful our sweet school librarian is constantly sharing books she loves with both me and my students!

[Becs]

I've been reading more contemporary graphic novels this year, and there seems to be two types - informational and educational, and telling their life's story. This is definitely the former.

Even when I was a kid I was pretty good at figuring out which books were telling a story and which were trying to influence the reader, and I preferred the story books.

This story wasn't really about growing up with a dad in prison, because the dad comes home at the very beginning. This book is about a girl who learns to code, and creates an app so parents and kids can stay connected when a parent is in prison.

It's a real app, and I'm sure it is helpful to families in these situations. But I also feel like I was tricked into reading an advertisement.

The informational graphic novels I've read this year, including this one, often mentions conflicts, but then never brings them up again and we don't get conclusions.

[Matt Glaviano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conceptually, there may be a really good book lurking in here. The final product, however, is not that book.

The art is ok - although I have no idea who draws broccoli the way it's drawn when the characters have fettuccini alfredo with broccoli. The characters are two-dimensional; you never get to know anyone in a way that makes the action of the book feel important. The plot itself feels disjointed and lacks focus.

So it's ok. It might be a good resource to hand a person in a similar situation. It might work well for it's intended audience. Then again, given how fractured the narrative is and how fallow the characterization is, it might not.

[Mariah · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I can tell Jay Jay Patton is passionate about maintaining connections between incarcerated parents and their children, this book has the air of someone who is using this as another venture to build a brand not as a legitimate attempt to create an authentic work.

Jay Jay is a perfect character who never does anything wrong. As such, she feels unrealistic, like the author is unwilling to admit to any mistakes she made as a child or like an adult who thinks children should act this way and is ignoring that well behaved children still screw up or argue.

I can imagine that there are a lot of complicated feelings and growing pains that stem from an adult figure, who has a fragmented idea of you because of their absence, entering the home again yet this is never explored in the narrative.

I'm not sure how helpful this might be for children who have incarcerated parents because it paints such a rosy, narrow picture of what it's like.

It does address how painful it feels to be separated, but Jay Jay seemingly had no other messy emotions about this experience or thoughts on her father's choices. We never even find out what he did to go to prison, which, depending on what it was, could have led to a lot of interesting reflection on her part.

The artwork is stiff, and many characters look slightly off model from panel to panel. The colors were also inconsistent throughout.

A very thoughtful concept that was marred by its execution. Jay Jay Patton and her father are doing wonderful work in the community, and I commend their efforts. Still, I can't recommend this memoir on good intentions alone.

[LG (A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions) · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this graphic memoir, Jay Jay Patton talks about what it was like growing up with a father in prison, how the two of them stayed connected during that time, and the work the two of them did on the Photo Patch Foundation, an app designed to help children more easily stay connected with an incarcerated parent.

Patton's father was incarcerated from when she was age 3 to about age 10. She was only able to see him a couple times during that period, and calls to her dad's prison were expensive. They wrote each other as often as they could and Patton's father, who learned coding while in prison, would send her math puzzles to solve.

About halfway through the volume, Patton's father came home, and the whole family moved to Florida. The rest of the story was about Patton's efforts to adjust to her new life, her own budding interest in coding, her father's work on the Photo Patch website, and her own work on the Photo Patch app.

By the end, this kind of felt like an extension of Photo Patch marketing efforts. I wished it had stayed more focused on the relationship between Patton and her father. This felt a bit surface-level, and I was left with a few questions that were never answered.

Extras:

Photographs of Jay Jay and her dad, Antoine, and a little info about the Photo Patch foundation.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

[Teonna Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Growing up with her father in prison was challenging for Jay Jay. Although she wrote him letters often, it would sometimes take weeks or months for her father to receive them. After years of incarceration, Jay Jay finally receives the news her father is coming home. Although Jay Jay is ecstatic about the news, she is sadden when her parents reveal they will soon move from Buffalo , New York to Florida. Living with her father comes with adjustments and learning opportunities. While incarcerated Jay Jay's father learned to code and soon teaches Jay Jay. In doing so, with the help of her dad, Jay Jay creates an app that connects incarcerated people with their families for free.

This graphic novel memoir is a perfect read for young people who are or have experienced having incarcerated loved ones and the complicated feelings resulting from this. Even more, this read is great for exposing this topic to young readers. Dear Dad illustrates themes of father/daughter relationships and the need for children to connect with their incarcerated parents/loved ones.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

A focused memoir written by an 18-year-old woman who grew up with an incarcerated parent. Once he was released from prison he taught Jay Jay to code and together they created Photo Patch, a service that connects kids with their incarcerated parents, making it easier to share messages and photos consistently. I wished for a little more fleshing out of the story around this specific topic, but it is a memoir, so it’s technically not necessary. I’ve honestly never thought about this topic before, so it was eye-opening in a lot of ways.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a simple book. It’s easy to read. BUT, this memoir is so important. I know there are probably others out there, but this is the first time I’ve read a memoir about a kid communicating with an incarcerated parent. It also shows the positive things that can still happen after someone is incarcerated. It was so wonderful to learn about Jay Jay and her dad, Antoine. This is a worthwhile and needed addition to any school library.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this short memoir about how a young girl and her dad bond over coding while creating an app that can help keep kids in touch with their incarcerated parents. It's rare to see compassionate stories about incarcerated people and their kids, who, like Jay Jay make have felt along and possibly judged by others. I love how this is a true story of a Black girl in coding showing that tech can be used to being people together rather than just generate profit for some ahole white men.

[RaspberryRoses · Rating 2 out of 5]

Calling this a graphic memoir is... odd, considering that the subject of the story did not write or illustrate this book. I feel like that accounts for the weird tone/infomercial vibe of the whole thing. It felt much more like a book explaining an important historical figure to a child then it felt like anything personal about Jay Jay's life and story.

[Steph · Rating 5 out of 5]

I super appreciate the concept of this book and the app that’s been created to connect incarcerated parents with their kids. This graphic novel also is a quick - but impactful - read, and it will be so meaningful to many of our students.

[Colie Cole · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing and inspiring story! Great for young techies!

[Shana Bird · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely wanted more from this

[Joanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Jay Jay’s memoir tries to capture the realities of having an incarcerated parent—missed letters, long separations, inadequate phone calls—while sharing how once he was released, she and her dad built an app to help other families stay connected.

The storytelling feels more like a highlight reel than a full portrait of the family’s plight, but Jay Jay’s message is clear: “It’s not a privilege for a kid to talk with their parent. It’s a right.”

The art suffices and the story is succinct—probably just the right length for middle-grade readers.

[Kaitlyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great middle grades graphic memoir. I love the concept and the execution of this. I'm glad it's joining my classroom library :). I just wish it would have been longer.

[Haley Kilgour · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I expected this to be about staying in touch with parents while they are in prison. This was more about reconnecting afterwards.

I think it’s a cute little memoir for sure, but the title is a tad misleading.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

It finished a little abruptly but overall I really liked it. We need more books like this about kids with family members who have been or are incarcerated and the dynamics it involves, especially once that person is released. Overall a beautiful story about a loving family working together on an important cause: making it easier for kids to contact their incarcerated loved ones.

[Meghan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting story about the origins of the app, but it is somewhat limited by the graphic novel approach. There are some details that seem to be left out or, while clearly important to the relationship between the father and daughter, are a little vague to the reader.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, but found it a bit sparse. I would have loved more detail, especially since it’s rooted in an important topic that we should de-stigmatize.

I received this ARC at ALAAC2024

[Sarah]

first of all, the subtitle is entirely misleading. 90% of the book takes place after her father is released from prison.

second, the art wasn’t very good.

It wasn’t a bad book to be clear

I didn’t realize how many kids have a parent in prison. That sucks. Poor kiddos.

She’s 18???? bruh 😭 when i was 18 the school office pre-printed tardy slips with my name on it because i was always late to school
hate when people younger than me are so so much better than me like good for them im glad for them but excuse me while i go cry lol rip help

Uhhhhh don’t really have much else to say about this book. It was lacking, I think. There was like one page of conflict between her and her dad adjusting to him being there but that was it. She moved and was very upset but she got over it very quickly. I don’t know it was 90% “me and dad coding” which was fine and sweet and whatever but idk, “let’s do coding with dad” doesn’t really seem to merit a book?
Yeah like “me and my dad built an app together!” is more of a cool anecdote than a graphic novel

i dunno i kinda liked it but it’s not like i wanna read it again. yeah it was a neat story but not a STORY yanno ? idk anyway. i should go to bed

yeah so like the description says this is a “powerful coming-of-age memoir” like no it wasn’t. It wasn’t powerful, it wasn’t coming-of-age, it wasn’t memoir. It was one specific incident in this girl’s life with a smattering of context. It was a pleasant, unoffensive, casual short read and not much more
I’m too tired for proper adjectives to express
It was bland
But bland makes it seem bad
It just does not inspire any strong emotions whatsoever
I’m kinda like what was the point of this
At the end of the day it’s basically just an ad for this app