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Grace Anne Remey poses for a photo in front of her book display at the Ramstein Library. She has published two children’s books designed to help families cope with the constant change of the military lifestyle.
An extraordinary 9-year-old girl has taken it upon herself to share her and her family’s story about the military lifestyle and what they do to cope with all of the constant changes.
Grace Anne Remey, daughter of Lt. Col. Robert Remey, U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa Directorate of Air, Space and Information Operations deputy director, and Lisa Remey, a child therapist, just arrived to Germany from Tucson, Ariz.
Grace Anne has written and published two children’s books on how to help children get through a move and cope when a parent is deployed. “Deployments impact kids more than you know,” Robert said. “I always try to find different things to keep connected while deployed to make it a little easier.”
Grace Anne’s second book was written after her father’s fifth deployment. The book goes through the deployment process and
what they do to make it go a little easier and faster. “It goes through the entire process, the traditions we have and how it feels to say goodbye,” Grace Anne said.
In the back of each book, Grace Anne’s mother helped her include some of their family traditions in hopes to help other families. “We have a jar that we put one chocolate in for every day that he will be gone, and we get to eat one chocolate every day until he’s home,” she said.
It was their traditions that aided in the accomplishments with her first book, she added. Grace Anne won the Hasbro Community Action Award from the nonprofit organization GenerationOn for her books. She is also one of the finalists for the 2013 Military Writers Society of America and is eagerly awaiting the results, which come out Sept. 28.
“Her books have inspired other kids and adults to write their own books,” Lisa said. “I remember while she was at camp she had a 5-year-old tell her that she read her book every night before bed while she waited for her dad to come home.”
Along with all of her accomplishments she has already performed, she is part of GenerationOn Kids
Care Club where she spends a lot of her time doing different types of volunteering.
One of her favorite volunteering opportunities is working with animal shelters. She also was at the Tucson Festival of Books last year where she presented how to self-publish books, followed by a book signing.
Grace Anne and her family donated her books to the base library here for other children to read. They are the first books the library received that are written by a child author.
“I’m a very proud father,” Robert said. “I’m glad that she was able to share her story, and we’re very excited that her stories have helped so many families and hope they will continue to positively affect a lot more people.”
