The author of Becoming Joe DiMaggio (2001) and Almost Forever (2003) once again uses spare verse to tell a poignant story about a child touched by war. Burn scars, sustained in Kosovo during the most recent war, cover most of the narrator's body: I look like / where I'm from, she says. Even so, the eighth-grader feels like a typical American schoolgirl. Her parents are more at odds with life in the U.S., and the girl speaks powerfully about the heartbreaking choices her parents have faced. But after the girl's father organizes a protest against a hate group in a neighboring town, the family is heartened by the public's response and support. Testa's distilled poetry never seems forced, and her stirring words enhance a sense of the characters' experiences and emotions, particularly those of a young person caught between cultures: I have two languages / in my head / and no accent / on my lips. Based on an actual incident, this is an excellent choice for readers' theater and classroom discussion.

The narrator of this brief novel fled Kosovo, Yugoslavia, with her parents to seek medical care in the United States. Years later, when she and her parents participate in a post-9/11 rally against ethnic hatred, they begin to reconcile their losses. While this novel-in-verse is too thin to convey both emotional complexity and necessary history, it's bolstered by spare, vivid phrasing.

Testa writes stories told in poems of surpassing beauty, fragility and depth. The narrator of these poems is 13, living in Maine with her parents, refugees from Kosova. She loves America, loves her place and her family but suffers because she knows her parents miss their homeland. They cannot return, however, as their daughter needs the medical care provided in the US. When she was four, she was burned badly, although as she says in "Fire can be kind," her face was untouched. When her father hears of a protest against Somali immigrants in Lewiston, Maine (a true incident), he helps organize a rally in support of the Somalis that draws thousands of people. His daughter's voice seems artless, and yet is full of youthful wisdom and candor: " . . . we could be / a slice of pizza / with everything on it," she says of her school's diversity, and she thinks it's pretty funny that her father learned English from watching TV so much. Riveting—and tender. (Fiction. 10-14)

Gr 6-8-In poetic free verse, a 13-year-old narrator describes her life in America after having been horribly burned during the war in Kosova. While she still carries the scars, she has assimilated into American culture much more than her parents. This book offers a brief glimpse into the lives of refugees from the Kosovar War. However, the poetic form limits the plot and character development, leaving readers with many more questions than answers about what happened to these remarkable people. When an act of racism inspires the entire town to stand up against prejudice, readers will cheer for the ideal, but not for the individuals, who never appeared to have been affected by it. This topic, inspired by actual events in Maine, needs a more detailed narrative and fully fleshed out characters to be truly compelling. Libraries with a need for stories about war refugees may want to consider this title as an additional purchase.-Sonja Cole, Briarcliff Middle School, Mountain Lakes, NJ Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

This slim volume of prose poetry eloquently tells the story of a young girl who has come to America with her family to escape the horrors of the Serbian conflict. But the scars of war are difficult to banish. At the age of three, she was badly burned over most of her body in a terrible fire, leaving only her face unscathed. Now she hides the physical scars on her body with colorful scarves, but the emotional scars are more difficult to disguise. Her strategy for coping with painful memories is to enthusiastically embrace her new home in America. But her parents, especially her father, are not as eager to assimilate or forget. Then a protest in her hometown by a local hate group who resent the influx of new immigrants spurs her father to organize a counter protest that unites the family and creates a groundswell of support in the community. The author uses spare, simple verse to illuminate this poignant story, which is based on an actual incident that took place in Lewiston, Maine. The writing is similar to a haiku in its ability to suggest a world of emotion in only a few carefully chosen words. Teens who enjoy books of prose poems, such as Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust (Scholastic, 1997/VOYA April 1998) and Testa's previous books, Almost Forever (Candlewick, 2003/VOYA October 2003) andBecoming Joe DiMaggio (2002/VOYA October 2002), will have much to ponder with the issues raised by this story. The book would be an excellent selection for a book discussion or a readers' theatre group.-Jan Chapman.