Summary: Suzy spends her year in first grade waiting for her father, who is serving in Vietnam, and when the postcards stop coming she worries that he will never make it home.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Collins mines her own experience to tell a tender personal story of war seen through a child's eyes. First-grader Suzy's father is deployed to Vietnam. At first, though she misses him, she dreams of the exotic jungle. But as the year goes on, marked by Christmas trees and candy hearts, things get harder. His postcards arrive less and less frequently, while news of the war, and its real dangers, comes more and more often. In the end, Suzy's father returns, and while some things are different, some things are the same. Collins' unflinching first-person account details the fears and disappointments of the situation as a child would experience them. And where more realistic illustrations would feel overwrought and sentimental, Proimos' flat, cartoony drawings, with their heavy lines and blocky shapes, are sturdy and sweet, reflecting a child's clear-eyed innocence. While small personal details and specific references to Vietnam fix the story in one child's individual experience, it is these very particularities that establish the kind of indelible and heartfelt resonance that is universally understood. Indeed, children missing parents in all kinds of circumstances will find comfort here. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Heard of a little series called The Hunger Games? Yes, well, this is by the very same author. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.
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