Bibliography

Plot Summary:  Prom is supposed to be the best night of your life, right?  Not for popular Bliss who catches her BFF and boyfriend making out.  Not for bad girl Jolene who can’t believe that she is dressed in pink ruffles risking her rep for a guy who is late.  Not for Meg who just wanted a night to be a normal teen but whose date stood her up. Each existing in her own circle of high school, they find each other on this less than magical night and decide to get revenge–throw in a few frat parties, karaoke, breaking and entering, a trip to the emergency room, a makeover and a stop at Dairy Queen.  Three girls who couldn’t be more different realize they might have something in common after all.

Critical Analysis:  This novel reads like the best teen prom movie that you’ve never seen.  Hear that, Hollywood?  Someone should buy the rights ASAP.  Frothy and fun and full of girl power, McDonald hits all the right notes.  Her characters maybe a little true to type, but in this case, it works perfectly with the madcap plot of revenge they concoct and carry out together.  Each learns something about herself and the others over the course of the night.  And if the ending is a little too good to be true, what’s the harm in providing hope that three very different girls from different worlds might come to be friends through sharing an intense series of adventures?  Light and frothy fun, perfect for prom season and teen girls dreaming about prom and prom haters alike.  I love McDonald, her three young adult novels each  little different but wonderful in their own right.  Please write faster!

Extras: In collecting stories about the American prom experience (being from Britain, McDonald didn’t have the American prom night), McDonald was surprised to hear from many teens that they felt pressure and stress surrounding the event.  So she set up PROMyourway.com “to encourage a ‘prom-positive’ message, and help teens make prom an experience that matters to THEM. You don’t need to buy into the stereotypical image to have a good time - prom can be whatever you want it to be : a way to give back to your community; a force for social change, and – yes – an amazing party where everyone’s invited!”

Check out Aimee Ferris’ site for her book, WillWorkForPromDress.com to see pictures of young adult authors in their prom best.

Review Excerpts:  ”…[T]he novel is lightly wicked fun in formal wear, filled with bickering, breaking and entering, and quick getaways. The girls basically play to type, but grow enough to make their journey an amusing diversion.”–Publisher’s Weekly

Reviewed from publisher provided advanced copy.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Levine, Gail Carson. (1997). Ella Enchanted. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN: 978-0060275105 (hc) 978-0064407052 (pbk)

It is funny to me how some books stick out in my mind.  I associate this book with when I was starting out as a librarian.  I remember how it and other books by Levine were very popular and we couldn’t keep them on the shelves.  But even though I had read it, I couldn’t recall much about the book itself.  Listening to it on audio, it was like reading it again for the first time.  So charming, so witty, so well plotted.  And Eden Riegel did such an excellent job in reading it.  Levine was not the first to retell or reimagine a fairy tale, but she was so successful I believe it led to many others we have today that otherwise may not have been published, and for that we should all be thankful!

Reviewed from public library audio book.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Bibliography

Plot Summary: Shira Brazille, billionaire entrepreneur, has a new venture: Alpha Academy.  She has gathered together 100 teen age girls–artists, musicians, dancers, scientists, chefs, writers and more–they will live together, eat together, sleep together, train together on a special man made island full of incredible science fiction gadgets, but in the end, only one will survive to win untold fame and fortune.  Dancer Skye, singer-songwriter Allie J. and inventor Charlie find themselves at Alpha Academy, living in the same house and trying to avoid getting thrown out.  But Skye has boys on the brain, Allie J.is hiding a big secret, and Charlie had to make an awful choice to get in.  Will they make till the end?

Critical Analysis: The premise of this book is intriguing.  The set up, the futuristic gadgets, the island, pod planes, bubble train, A-pods and more show a unique imagined world.  The characters are a little stock and two dimensional, but you find yourself caring what happens to them.  I found Charlie to be the most dimensional and well drawn, perhaps because she is the most different from all the other Alphas.  She has talent but not the kind that is easily recognized by others.  She has a mother who loves her and a best friend who becomes her boyfriend but then loses them when she chooses Alpha Academy.  She has a hard time getting along with the other girls because she has to hid her feelings and connections to the Brazille family.

Part of me wishes I hadn’t listened to this on audio.  Hearing the words spoken highlight the “teenspeak” and awful clunky writing that permeates the novel.  I must be honest and tell you several times I was tempted to stop listening but the story and characters carried the story along.  I can see why tween girls love Harrison, but wonder how much staying power these books will have.  That being said, I keep looking (hoping) that a library will get the next volume on audio.

Reviewed from public library downloadable audio book.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Plot Summary:  After the curse that forces Poppy and her sisters to dance night after night in Princess of the Midnight Ball was broken, she decides she has had enough of dancing and balls, thank you very much.  When she travels to Breton to help rebuild relationships and alliances, she gives in to her hosts and agrees to attend a ball or two but not to dance.  If anyone could persuade her otherwise, it might be the charming and handsome Prince Christian, but he seems to have eyes only for the mysterious Eleanora, whose gowns dazzle and shoes of glass sparkle.  But what is Eleanora giving up for such magnificent beauty?  Poppy and her friends are determined to find out.

Critical Analysis:  This companion to George’s Princess of the Midnight Ball is charming, romantic, witty and lots of fun.  A retelling of the Cinderella story with a twist that one of the main characters has given up dancing.  The plot and packing seems to move faster than Midnight Ball, and if I have one quibble, it is that because Poppy is for the most part outside of the enchantment until the very end, the story does not have the same sense of urgency and danger that the first book has.  That being said, so refreshing to read a fantasy that doesn’t feel the need to go on and on and on for hundreds and hundreds of pages for no real reason.

I love the world that George has built, the details of a fairy godmother is anything but an old grandmotherly type, the description of the ball gowns, how the glass slippers came about, the horse and carriage and everything add to this magic world where things are not always what they seem.  I am excited for the thought that there are many more of Rose and Poppy’s sisters left for George to use as a basis to retell still more fairy tales and to continue to build this world.

Readalikes:  There are many wonderful Cinderella retellings available.  Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine comes to mind, as does Ash by Malinda Lo.  For another view of the fairy godmother, look for Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story by Carolyn Turgeon.

Review Excerpts: “In a clever reworking of the Cinderella story, George once again proves adept at spinning her own magical tale. Fans of Donna Jo Napoli’s retellings will cheer loudly as George proves her own mettle.”–Booklist

Reviewed from publisher provided advanced copy.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Bibliography: George, Jessica Day.  (2009). Princess of the Midnight Ball. New York: Bloomsbury USA Children’s Books. ISBN: 978-1599903224

Plot Summary: Princess Rose and her 11 sisters are exhausted and wearing through a pair of dancing shoes almost every night.  But no one knows how or why.  Others have tried to discover their secret with no success, but Galen, a handsome kind-hearted young soldier with a talent for knitting, has help from unexpected places and both ingenuity and perseverance to discover the truth and help the princesses.

Critical Analysis: This is a wonderful, lush, full, romantic and engaging retelling of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale The Twelve Dancing Princesses.  I have read a lot of fairy tales and retold fairy tales.  The public library where I went as a small child had what seemed like a whole shelf of Andrew Lang’s color fairy books.  My grandfather gave my sister and me a set of gilt edged tales, and I don’t know how many versions my mother had in her collection.  I even asked for a complete volume of Grimm’s fairy tales when I was in college for Christmas.  So the story of almost all fairy tales and the dancing princesses were very familiar.  That probably explains why I enjoy retold fairy tales so much.  When I heard this was based The Twelve Princesses, I thought that was interesting, considering that another newish title,  Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier used the same tale of inspiration, and I know that there are many picture book versions, some with twists to the story as well.

What makes George’s unique and so satisfying to read is that she has taken the original Grimm tale and filled in and fleshed out all the details.  If the Grimm version is a penciled sketch, then George has made a lush oil painting full of shadows and light and color and little details.  The soldier has a name and a family that he is looking for and a talent for knitting.  The princesses, especially the older ones have their own personalities, likes, dislikes, wishes.  But all the details fit with the original, even down to the imagined version of Bavaria and the Germanic names and words.  George has taken the story that some readers imagined in their minds and committed it to paper.  And I didn’t want it to end.  I guess I’ll have to go check out Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow and hope that Day has more wonderful retellings waiting in the wings.

Readalikes: Wildwood Dancing, as mentioned above, is another version of the Twelve Dancing Princesses.  For me though, this book reminded me the most of Robin McKinley’s retold tales, especially the earlier ones.  Beauty and Deerskin, and one of the stories in The Door in the Hedge has the dancing princesses as its source as well.  For a series that starts with a retold Grimm’s tale then creates a cast of characters living in a different version of a historical and magical Bavaria, check out Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl and the rest of the Books of Bayern, Enna Burning, River Secrets, and Forest Born.

Review Excerpts:  “This is a well-realized and fast-paced fantasy-romance that will find favor among fans of fairy tales, feisty heroines, and dashing young men with strength, cunning, and sensitivity.”–Booklist

“As she did so deliciously with 2008′s Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, George takes another fairy tale, “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” and turns it into a rich and engaging novel.”–Kirkus Reviews

Reviewed from public library copy

One of the first dance books I remember reading was Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild. This story of three adopted sisters who studied at a performing arts school in England to help their family by making money acting, singing, and dancing. The adoptions were romantic enoug, as the babies were gathered by G.U.M. (Great Uncle Matthew) as he traveled the world collecting fossils and other specimens. The details of the dance and theater world just add to the romance.

On Stage Please is an autobiographical novel by Victoria Tennant that describes her being accepted and going to study at the ballet school for the National Ballet of Canada.   The details of the young girl leaving home to live at a boarding school that is combined with pursuing the dream of becoming a dancer is also the theme of Listen to the Nightingale by Rumer Godden and The Royal Ballet School Diaries series by Alexandra Moss.

A common theme in some of these books is the pull between wanting to be a normal kid or teen and the life and sacrifices of a dancer.  In Ellie and the Bunheads by Sally Warner, Ellie loves dance but is tired of her mother and teacher putting her down, telling her not eat this or that or not to go out with her friends.  Sometimes she just wants to be a normal teen and wonders if she could give up dancing. A few more older titles that I remember reading and enjoying:  Just Like Jenny by Sandy Asher, Maybe Next Year by Amy Hest, Ballet Fever by Betty Cavanna.

Some books use dance in conjunction with more serious themes.  In A Time For Dancing by Davida Wills Hurwin, best friends and fellow dancers Jules and Sam must come to terms with Jule’s cancer. Vicki, a teen dancer that gets accepted to a prestigious summer ballet intensive, learns that dance is not color blind when it comes to the color of your skin in Martha Southgate’s Another Way to Dance. Some more recent titles include The Melting Season by Celeste Conway where Giselle uses dance to avoid her giref and memories of her dead father, and Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier, a novel based on several fairy tales, including The Twelve Dancing Princesses, where sisters use their experiences in the magical Dancing Glade to realize ther worth and declare their independence from their expected roles in life. Finally, while the ton is light and there is quite a bit of humor intertwined in the story, Dancing in Red Shoes Will Kill You by Dorian Cirrone is ultimately the story of Kayla who realizes that she may not have the perfect ballet body, but she has a good heart, a kind soul, and friends who love her for who she is.  In the end, she finds her place in the dance world may not be the one the expected.

Dancers and those obsessed with dance also like to read about other dancers.  One of the first biographies I remember reading was Dancing Star: The Story of Anna Pavlova by Glady Malvern.  It looks like it was reprinted in 2000, but still may be difficult to find.  Well worth the searching though as it reads like a novel rather then a dry discussion of the dancer’s life.  I liked it so much that I borrowed it from the library many times.  Another book read around the same time was Dance to the Piper by Agnes DeMille.  In this first volume of her autobiography, DeMille recounts the story of gorwing up in and around Hollywood and how she first became exposed to and interested in dance.  In college I was exposed to modern dance, lucky enough to take classes from someone who had danced for Martha Graham.  Several great videoes on Martha are out there, and I highly recommend all of them so you can see her dances and artistry.  One that is especially good is Martha Graham: An American Original in Performance.  It includes several full length productions.  I did enjoy Martha Graham: A Dancer’s Life by Russell Freedman for its detail and beautiful pictures.  In those same classes, we were exposed to Paul Taylor’s Esplanade full of light and joy.  I had admired Taylor for years after watching the Houston Ballet perform “Company B.” His autobiography, Private Domain, is well worth seeking out, as is a DVD of Dancemaker.