JACK & LOUISA

When Jack Goodrich, a 12-year-old Broadway actor, moves from New York City to Shaker Heights, Ohio, he decides to reinvent himself—but his new neighbor and classmate, musical aficionado Louisa Benning, is determined to lure him into a local production.

In New York, Jack went to the Professional Performing Arts School, where it was perfectly normal for a boy to take ballet without becoming “bully bait.” Not so at Shaker Heights Middle School, so Jack, whose changing voice has left him feeling insecure about his true passion, decides to try out for soccer. But Louisa, who dreams of being a Broadway actress, uses every trick in the book to get him to audition for the Shaker Heights Community Players’ production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Jack and Louisa take turns narrating the story in the first person, and the conflict between them has a manufactured quality. This is partially because neither has an offstage reality and also because the outcomes of Jack’s two "will he, won’t he" dilemmas seem inevitable. The joy in this book, which is full of theater lingo and other references, is the palpable pleasure the protagonists take in the art and craft of musical theater and its subtle but boffo ending.

Theater fans will eat this up, but it’s unlikely to find a wider audience.