No romance here, but copious ballet details and hard-won steps toward independence.
This verse novel debut follows a reticent Vermont girl through a scholarship-funded year at the elite Jersey Ballet school.
Sara’s always been the best dancer in the neighborhood teacher’s basement classes. The summer before junior year, she leaves Darby Station’s orchards and woodstoves behind. Adjusting to New Jersey is difficult; she’s older than the other dancers at her level and feels “like a hick.” She’s terribly lonely and shy, her voice “[a]n unflexed muscle.” Despite first-person narration, Sara’s withdrawn personality keeps her at bay from readers as well as characters. There’s little joy in her ballet-skill improvement or going to bed with her object of desire. Sara’s 16, and Remington is “God, maybe twenty-two” (an unsettling double meaning). She stretches naked in his apartment and becomes his choreography muse, but he casts other ballerinas—not her—to dance those roles in public. Sara tires of “endless auditions, eternal scrutiny” and “giving pieces of my body away.” As she finds agency, she offers conclusions that seem oversimplified given earlier ambivalence: that ballet was only ever “a dream others dreamed for her,” that sex was solely “a price to be paid / For company,” “in hopes / Of feeling my worth.” Her attitude about food, moreover, is an inconsistent point in the writing.
No romance here, but copious ballet details and hard-won steps toward independence. (Fiction. 13 & up)Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-670-01319-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
This story is necessary. This story is important.
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter is a black girl and an expert at navigating the two worlds she exists in: one at Garden Heights, her black neighborhood, and the other at Williamson Prep, her suburban, mostly white high school.
Walking the line between the two becomes immensely harder when Starr is present at the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend, Khalil, by a white police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Khalil’s death becomes national news, where he’s called a thug and possible drug dealer and gangbanger. His death becomes justified in the eyes of many, including one of Starr’s best friends at school. The police’s lackadaisical attitude sparks anger and then protests in the community, turning it into a war zone. Questions remain about what happened in the moments leading to Khalil’s death, and the only witness is Starr, who must now decide what to say or do, if anything. Thomas cuts to the heart of the matter for Starr and for so many like her, laying bare the systemic racism that undergirds her world, and she does so honestly and inescapably, balancing heartbreak and humor. With smooth but powerful prose delivered in Starr’s natural, emphatic voice, finely nuanced characters, and intricate and realistic relationship dynamics, this novel will have readers rooting for Starr and opening their hearts to her friends and family.
This story is necessary. This story is important. (Fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-249853-3
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A solid sophomore novel celebrating love that begs for a soundtrack.
Queer Black girls fall in love at a summer music festival.
When dating the top basketball recruit in Indiana turns disastrous, ruining her socially, emotionally, and in her mother’s eyes, perpetually in love 16-year-old Olivia Brooks begs her best friend, Imani Garrett, to take a summer road trip to the Farmland Arts and Music Festival in Georgia. Imani agrees on one condition: Olivia cannot hook up with anyone on the trip. Meanwhile, Toni Jackson is heading to Farmland for the first time without her musician-turned-roadie dad, who was killed 8 months ago. Joined by her best friend, Peter Menon (whose surname cues him as Indian), Toni is trying to figure her life out—college or something else? She believes that if she performs in the festival’s Golden Apple amateur competition, the truth will become clear. The four meet in Georgia, and when all the solo slots in the competition are full, Toni and Olivia agree to enter as a duo and help each other with their individual quests—Toni’s to perform on stage, Olivia’s to be distracted from the upcoming judicial hearing over violating behavior by her ex-boyfriend and to win the prize of a much-needed car. Although Imani and Peter feel more like devices than well-developed characters with substantial relationships to the protagonists, the exploration of Olivia’s tendency to adapt to others’ expectations of her is wonderfully nuanced, and her relationship with Toni is delightfully swoon-y.
A solid sophomore novel celebrating love that begs for a soundtrack. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: July 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-66223-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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