Marisol Perez, who lives on New York City's Lower East Side, has always loved to dance; when she is given a scholarship to the Manhattan Ballet School, she is thrilled. But she needs someone to take her on the subway, since both her widowed father and older brother work and they won't let her travel alone. She hooks up with the other scholarship student, DesirÇe, a poor Haitian girl whose mother will take them. The book shifts between introducing the world of ballet (and its vocabulary, e.g., leotards, pliÇs, etc.) and current social issues. Marisol's brother comes close to working for a neighborhood drug lord, and anti-cop sentiment affects her relationship with her policewoman Big Sister. Also, Marisol must face her prejudice toward people who live in shelters and the shift in her relationships with friends who are resentful of her involvement in the uptown world of ballet. Tamar (The Garden of Happiness, p. 537, etc.), normally in command of her scenery and setting, is clumsy here; the book is often long-winded. The appeal is in featuring girls from various backgrounds involved in dance, and for that, the book should reach an audience well beyond balletomanes. (Fiction. 8-11)
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-027328-3
Page Count: 168
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
Despite its lackluster execution, this story’s simple premise and basic vocabulary make it suitable for younger readers...
From the author of the Animorphs series comes this earnest novel in verse about an orphaned Sudanese war refugee with a passion for cows, who has resettled in Minnesota with relatives.
Arriving in winter, Kek spots a cow that reminds him of his father’s herd, a familiar sight in an alien world. Later he returns with Hannah, a friendly foster child, and talks the cow’s owner into hiring him to look after it. When the owner plans to sell the cow, Kek becomes despondent. Full of wide-eyed amazement and unalloyed enthusiasm for all things American, Kek is a generic—bordering on insulting—stereotype. His tribe, culture and language are never identified; personal details, such as appearance and age, are vague or omitted. Lacking the quirks and foibles that bring characters to life, Kek seems more a composite of traits designed to instruct readers than an engaging individual in his own right.
Despite its lackluster execution, this story’s simple premise and basic vocabulary make it suitable for younger readers interested in the plight of war refugees. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-312-36765-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
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