Janice DeLong (Children's Literature)
Speaking with nuanced passion expressed in blank verse, a thirteen-year-old refugee from Kosova draws readers into her unique community. Fleeing ethnic conflict, she and her parents arrived in America while the narrator was a small child. This country offered the medical care she needed to recover from burns suffered as her family barely escaped with their lives from their native land. Adjusting to a new environment has been easier for this only child than for her war-scarred parents. Most adolescents will relate to her frustration with her mother and father and their reactions to life. However, her dad volunteers to coach soccer and organizes a peaceful protest against demonstrations of prejudice in a neighboring town, and respect grows. The concluding scene promises better days to come, because there is “something about America” that offers hope. This small volume will inspire discussions about racial conflict and creative sparks for adolescents to express their feelings through blank verse. Parts of the story are based on an actual event of ethnic conflict across town lines in Maine. 2005, Candlewick Press, $14.99. Ages 12 up.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2005 (Vol. 73, No. 16))
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. 2005, Candlewick, 96p, $14.99. Category: Fiction. Ages 10 to 14. © 2005 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Claire Rosser (KLIATT Review, September 2005 (Vol. 39, No. 5))
This is a brief story told in poetry about an immigrant family from Kosova. The narrator is a 13-year-old girl who was trapped in the family’s burning house when she was four years old during the war in her country. Her parents brought her to America to start a new life. Now, some years later, as many from Kosova are returning to their country to help rebuild it, there is tension in the family. The daughter feels American and wants to stay; the father longs to return to Kosova; the mother is torn between the two of them. Then, in their town of Lewiston, Maine, the mayor and others start complaining about having too many immigrants, and some group drops hate leaflets around their neighborhood. The girl and her father attend a meeting held as a protest to these extremists--and emotionally the father finally feels at home in America, and he urges her to welcome some recently arrived Somali women. The phrasing is lovely and moving. This would be wonderful to read in middle school classes, especially where there is a high immigrant population, or where there are strong feelings about immigration. Category: Hardcover Fiction. KLIATT Codes: J--Recommended for junior high school students. 2005, Candlewick, 85p., $14.99. Ages 12 to 15.

Elizabeth Bush, Reviewer (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, October 2005 (Vol. 59, No. 2))
In the opening entry of this gripping novel in poems, the narrator introduces her father as a man angry with America, beholden to America, and at odds with his country of adoption at precisely the wrong post-September 11th moment. As the eighth-grader backtracks into the family story, readers learn that she and her parents were driven from Kosova by war, and that America--the country that her parents had always revered from afar--was the only place where they could find both refuge and medical assistance for their badly burned little girl. Now the daughter has made a fair adjustment to her new country, and she can even acknowledge that her carefully hidden scarred skin has, in its strange way, helped her seem less foreign and more attractively tragic to her school-age peers. Her parents, however, have had their dreams and plans torn apart by homeland war, are reduced to menial labor in the U.S., and have developed a love-hate relationship with the country that holds them hostage through love of their daughter. An emerging hate group in a nearby town finally gives her father and their immigrant community a cause around which to rally, and as they draw their many foreign neighbors together in a show of support for the American Dream, the family begins to connect with the open door values that drew them to America in the first place. Simplicity of language is a powerful counterpoint to the emotional complexity of the immigrants’ story, and classrooms of mixed reading abilities and/or second-language learners may find this an ideal vehicle by which to bypass much of the challenge of reading and cut straight to the heart of discussion and debate on what it means to be welcome, what it means to be lucky, and what it means to be American. (Reviewed from galleys) Review Code: R -- Recommended. (c) Copyright 2005, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 2005, Candlewick, 96p, $14.99. Grades 5-9.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, Spring 2006)
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. Category: Older Fiction. 2005, Candlewick, 85pp, 14.99. Ages 12 to 14. Rating: 4: Recommended, with minor flaws.

Jan Chapman (VOYA, February 2006 (Vol. 28, No. 6))
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) and Becoming 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. VOYA CODES: 4Q 3P M J (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Will appeal with pushing; Middle School, defined as grades 6 to 8; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9). 2005, Candlewick, 96p., $14.99. Ages 11 to 15.