Fifteen-year-old Ben Conrad can’t seem to catch a break. With three self-absorbed older sisters who treat him like a baby, and with a widowed mother who’s still mourning her husband’s loss ten years before and is too busy anyway to notice that her son is growing up, Ben can’t make sense of his life. Who is he? Who will he become? While he does have two best friends who offer solace and support, his life’s on an even more precipitous downturn since he gave up something he’s really good at and enjoys—dancing—and since Claude, the school bully, has become increasingly menacing. Into this turmoil comes elderly great-aunt Frieda, a Mennonite survivor of Stalin’s reign of terror. Her wisdom, patient understanding, and the stories she tells about how she faced up to the tragedies in her life with quiet courage help Ben grow in self-confidence and self-knowledge. How Frieda’s influence helps Ben to work up the nerve to develop a relationship with the girl he likes and to use his dancing skills and natural agility to turn the tables on his nemesis, and, in short, to turn his life around, makes for a satisfying, logical progression of events. This Canadian import by the author of Janey’s Girl (1998) is very well-written, and Ben is a fully realized, funny, and charming character. Whether many young readers will completely buy the premise that a teenager could be so powerfully transformed by an 85-year-old’s accounts of long-ago events, however, is not at all a given. The ending, furthermore, is a bit too pat with the whole family’s sudden awakening to Ben’s needs and feelings. Worth a try, but may be a tough sell. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-55074-781-9
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A mild exploration of pacifism, from the perspective of a 14-year-old boy who carries on turbulent friendship with a young Mennonite in WWII-era Kansas. When William moves to Plaintown, he is lonely and unsure of himself until he befriends Jim, a Mennonite. The two become fast friends, but soon the relationship is sorely tested after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when Jim elects not to participate in the war effort. William tries to understand, at first, but soon allies himself with narrow-minded Clive and his buddies, who taunt the Mennonites. William’s father, the earnest local minister, advocates tolerance, patience, and fair-mindedness, but does not always understand William’s predicament. In the final cathartic scene, William joins in a fight that leaves Jim beaten and bloodied, but also helps him. That kind of conflict characterizes this realistic historical novel, whose 1940s Midwestern values may seem oddly outdated to today’s readers. Gaeddert (Hope, 1995, etc.) outlines, however, a classic struggle between right and wrong, and the fashion in which it is played out is timeless. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-82822-5
Page Count: 163
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PLB 0-7868-2427-1 The content and concerns of Levy’s latest is at odds with the young reading level and large type size, which may prevent this novel’s natural audience of middle schoolers from finding a fast and funny read. In sixth grade, Rebecca broke her friend Scott’s toe at a dance. Now, in seventh grade, they are partners in a ballroom dance class, and they soon find they dance well together, but that makes Rebecca’s friend Samantha jealous. She gives a party during which spin-the-bottle is played, kissing Scott and then bullying him into being her boyfriend. While Rebecca deals with her mixed feelings about all this, she also has a crush on her dance instructor. Levy (My Life as a Fifth-Grade Comedian, 1997, etc.) has great comedic timing and writes with a depth of feeling to make early adolescent romantic travails engaging; she also comes through on the equally difficult feat of making ballroom dancing appealing to young teens. The obsession with kissing, pre-sexual tension, and sensuality of the dancing will be off-putting or engrossing, depending entirely on readers’ comfort levels with such conversations in real life as well as on the page. Precocious preteens will find that this humorously empathetic take on budding romance is just right. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7868-0498-X
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
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