Becoming Joe DiMaggio

by Maria Testa, Scott Hunt (Illustrator)

Overview

"With ineffable tenderness and absolute clarity, Testa tells a tale in blank verse. . . . Powerfully moving as it braids together baseball, family, and the Italian-American experience." — Booklist (starred review)

It's 1936, and the Yankees have just hired a star center fielder whose name sounds like music. What could be a better time for Papa-Angelo's grandson to be born? Christened after the legendary ballplayer, young Joseph Paul learns much at his Italian grandfather's knee — about holding your breath in front of the radio during a 3-2 count with the bases loaded and having the audacity to dream big dreams. "Each poem is a perfect, gripping chapter," says Kirkus Reviews in a starred review of this novel in verse, which honors the timeless bond between a grandson and his immigrant grandfather — and the process of finding one's own place in a brave new world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536254693
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	04/07/2026
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	64
Age Range:	10 Years

About the Author

“My father was not a storyteller,” says Maria Testa, author of the critically acclaimed poetic novels Something About America, Almost Forever, and Becoming Joe DiMaggio. “Our family was not the kind that sat on the front porch, sipping lemonade and listening to the elders reminisce. We were doers and did not spend a lot of time on verbal reflection.”

How then, did Maria Testa come to write three deeply affecting novels? Her novel Something About America was inspired by true events in Lewiston, Maine. Narrated by a young daughter from Kosova, this nuanced and deeply moving tale explores immigration in contemporary America.

Previously, Maria Testa has found inspiration from her family history. “Sometime, without remembering when, exactly, I learned about my father’s life before me, before Vietnam, before medical school,” she says of Becoming Joe DiMaggio, which takes readers back to the summer of 1936. “Maybe it was in the car, out in the yard playing catch or pulling weeds, at the dinner table, or between the innings of a Yankees game on television. Somehow, without remembering how, exactly, I learned about a radio, a garden, a grandfather, and Joe DiMaggio. So maybe my father was a storyteller after all.”

With Almost Forever, Maria Testa moves ahead to the 1960s to evoke—through the eyes of a six-year-old girl—the experience of seeing one’s father march off to Vietnam to serve a year in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. “It is a tribute to the children of Vietnam veterans and to those who did not come home from war,” she says. “It is my hope that we can always remember ourselves as children, so as not to forget the new generation of young people still waiting for the end of forever.”

The recipient of a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Work-in-Progress Grant for Becoming Joe DiMaggio, Maria Testa has garnered extraordinary praise for her spare, gripping novels. “Powerfully moving, as it braids together baseball, family, and the Italian-American experience,” said Booklist in a starred review of the novel, which was selected as an American Library Association Notable Book for Children, an International Reading Association Children’s Choice, and a Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Winner, among other accolades. In a starred review for Almost Forever, Kirkus Reviews calls the novel “A tour de force. . . . Rapt readers don’t need to know anything about Vietnam to understand love, loss, fear, and waiting.”

Maria Testa has written three picture books for children and a collection of short stories for young adults. She is also the author of another book about baseball, Some Kind of Pride, which was awarded the Marguerite De Angeli Prize for a first middle-grade novel. Maria Testa grew up in Rhode Island and now lives in Portland, Maine, with her family.

Editorial Reviews

Joseph Paul, named for the wondrous new rookie centerfielder of the 1936 New York Yankees, has big dreams and a long hard road to travel in order to achieve them. Papa-Angelo, his grandfather, teaches him baseball, honor, compassion, courage, perseverance, and so much more. His very existence is a special gift to the old man, for he gives him "dreams to go with his nightmares." His father is in jail during much of his childhood, but in spite of the shame and the broken promises, these two love him. The son of poor Italian immigrants, Joe DiMaggio is a guiding star for both of them. In 1941, when most of the world is already engulfed in war, DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak postpones for a while the dread of what is to come. "Hits were the same as hope that summer, filling our hearts in the face of the truth that the president had been wrong: there really was something to fear after all." Joseph matures during the war, watching his grandfather's sadness intensify, and accepting that his father will never become a hero. At war's end, DiMaggio returns from the army, hitting a homerun in his first game, bringing forth "a sigh of relief so pure and loud you would have thought the whole world had finally remembered how to breathe." Joseph identifies with DiMaggio and everything he stands for in reality and in his imagination. He wants to become Joe DiMaggio, but he is reminded "that someone else already is." So Joseph chooses his own path and becomes someone truly wonderful and unique. Testa tells the entire story in verse. Each poem is a perfect, gripping chapter in Joseph's story. Words are carefully selected and images are beautifully crafted. Strong emotions are evoked, but there is nosentimental manipulation. When the author states in an endnote that Joseph was her father, it serves to validate the reader's instant recognition of his humanity. A powerful, glowing, unforgettable achievement. (Poetry. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews

"BECOMING JOE DIMAGGIO is wondrous in its heartfelt, sparse, home-run, free verse tribute to both a family's love of baseball and one of the game's greatest players, "Joltin' Joe." Readers will long remember Testa's words long after the book has been read, long after games have been played."—award-winning poet and anthologist Lee Bennett Hopkins
— Lee Bennett Hopkins

From the Publisher