In this story of family dysfunction, two sisters attempt in very different fashions to cope with the death of their mother. Pearl, who is older, practices white magic, paints her face white, and wears cut-up black dresses. Delia devotes her body and soul to ballet after enrolling in a Washington school run by a Russian émigré teacher. Their father sends Pearl to a private school where she is assigned the task of training a difficult horse. By the end of the story, she has found happiness and a career—horse trainer. Delia follows a more difficult path. She loves to dance but finds herself in the back row of the corps when a famous former dancer stages a ballet choreographed by a famous Mr. P. (Balletos will perhaps find hints of George Balanchine and his seminal American masterpiece, Serenade.) Madame, who runs the ballet school, tells Delia that she is too fat and too ordinary to attain the status of prima ballerina. At the same time, fortunately, Delia finds meaning and purpose in studying the ghost dances of the late-19th-century Plains Indians and Brazilian dance. The issues of teen rebellion, anorexia, and family communication are treated too glibly while the constant stream of ballet terminology could confuse even an aspiring dancer. The references to New York companies and schools are out of date and too esoteric for most readers, though budding Delias will probably not mind. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-028182-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2002
The poster boy for relentless mischief-makers everywhere, first encountered in No, David! (1998), gives his weary mother a rest by going to school. Naturally, he’s tardy, and that’s but the first in a long string of offenses—“Sit down, David! Keep your hands to yourself! PAY ATTENTION!”—that culminates in an afterschool stint. Children will, of course, recognize every line of the text and every one of David’s moves, and although he doesn’t exhibit the larger- than-life quality that made him a tall-tale anti-hero in his first appearance, his round-headed, gap-toothed enthusiasm is still endearing. For all his disruptive behavior, he shows not a trace of malice, and it’ll be easy for readers to want to encourage his further exploits. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-590-48087-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
Themes of freedom and responsibility twine between the lines of this short but heavy novel from the author of Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). Three months after his mother's death, Rob and his father are living in a small-town Florida motel, each nursing sharp, private pain. On the same day Rob has two astonishing encounters: first, he stumbles upon a caged tiger in the woods behind the motel; then he meets Sistine, a new classmate responding to her parents' breakup with ready fists and a big chip on her shoulder. About to burst with his secret, Rob confides in Sistine, who instantly declares that the tiger must be freed. As Rob quickly develops a yen for Sistine's company that gives her plenty of emotional leverage, and the keys to the cage almost literally drop into his hands, credible plotting plainly takes a back seat to character delineation here. And both struggle for visibility beneath a wagonload of symbol and metaphor: the real tiger (and the inevitable recitation of Blake's poem); the cage; Rob's dream of Sistine riding away on the beast's back; a mysterious skin condition on Rob's legs that develops after his mother's death; a series of wooden figurines that he whittles; a larger-than-life African-American housekeeper at the motel who dispenses wisdom with nearly every utterance; and the climax itself, which is signaled from the start. It's all so freighted with layers of significance that, like Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue (2000), Anne Mazer's Oxboy (1995), or, further back, Julia Cunningham's Dorp Dead (1965), it becomes more an exercise in analysis than a living, breathing story. Still, the tiger, "burning bright" with magnificent, feral presence, does make an arresting central image. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7636-0911-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK TO SCREEN
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