At Last She Stood: How Joey Guerrero Spied, Survived, and Fought for Freedom

Gr 4-8–Gr 4-8–Two-time Newbery Medalist Kelly returns to her journalist roots for an impressive first foray into nonfiction, rescuing from obscurity “a diminutive Filipino woman who walked through war zones, carried secret messages for the Allied Forces, [who] spent much of her time in forced quarantine.” Born in 1917, Josefina Guerrero died in virtual anonymity in 1996, “but the pieces she left behind are enough to leave us in wonder,” Kelly promises. She impressively delivers a remarkable story of an orphan girl with Joan of Arc aspirations, who miraculously used her Hansen’s Disease to her advantage as a WWII spy, and earned a Medal of Freedom from President Truman, only to pawn it to survive in a racist America that didn’t recognize her courage. Fellow Filipina American Capistrano thoughtfully and empathetically embodies Kelly’s clever use of present-tense prose, underscoring an immediate timelessness to Joey’s phenomenal accomplishments.