Narrated by a six-year-old girl, Testa's (Becoming Joe DiMaggio) sensitive and moving cycle of verse opens as the girl's family is decorating the Christmas tree in 1967, when her doctor father receives orders that he must go to Vietnam. The father explains to his daughter and son that as a doctor he won't fight, but will take care of the people who are wounded while fighting. The mother, meanwhile, owns the fears that the daughter can't yet feel: as Mama folds clothes and rolls socks, she nevertheless says, "I can't help you,/ .../ I have no idea/ how to help/ someone pack/ his bags/ to go to war." The day after he departs, the child is surprised that no one looks at her differently in school, that no one says anything special to her and that the teachers and kids "were the same," even though her life has changed dramatically. As the year of her father's service passes, she worries that she is forgetting the sound of her father's voice and prays at night, "our father, hail Mary,/ angel of God,/ help me/ help me/ help me remember/ him." The family members' anxiety increases when they learn that the father is missing and evaporates when he arrives home safely. Testa's poems give her young speaker a believable, sympathetic voice; the author avoids the melodramatic and instead captures lifelike emotions. Ages 9-13. (Sept.)
