A DANCE TO STILL MUSIC

by Barbara Corcoran ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 1974

Another Corcoran runaway (see The Winds of Time, KR, p. 243, J-113) finds an idyllic haven, this time with Josie, who deans motel rooms by day and enjoys the tropical delights of the Florida Keys in her shipshape houseboat. While Josie is an impossible, but nonetheless highly attractive, paragon of quiet maturity and unselfish acceptance, Margaret, the runaway fourteen-year-old, is a bundle of frustration and rebellion. Newly deaf, Margaret is struggling against the unfamiliar isolation of her conditon and against the label ""handicapped"" which has cut her off from friends, her guilt stricken mother, and her love of music. The houseboat, where the two nurse an injured faun, study the local marine life and enjoy each other's home cooking, is merely the stage for Margaret's gradual adjustment. It might be argued that her successful resistance against attending a regular school for the deaf presents all such institutions in an unfairly negative way. However, for the hearing person, Margaret is a reliable guide to the problems of a handicap that is less well understood--and often less sympathetically treated--than blindness. And as always, Corcoran's gentle, supportive solutions have a convincing grace that compensates for their circumscribed reality.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 1974

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1974

Categories: FICTION