Blue Tights - Softcover

Williams-Garcia, Rita

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140380450 ISBN 13: 9780140380453

Publisher: Puffin, 1996

Synopsis

Joyce Collins desperately wants to be accepted into the popular circle, and when she is cut from the ballet recital, she is devastated, until she joins an African dance troupe and quickly discovers a place where she truly feels she belongs. Reprint.

About this title

From School Library Journal:

Grade 9-12 Joyce Collins stumbles through an array of adolescent crises, emerging by story's end with self-respect and recognition as a dancer. In the nitty-gritty language and world of an urban black teenager, 15-year-old Joyce rebuffs the advances of an older man, struggles for acceptance with snobbish peers, mourns an unrequited love, and aspires to a dancing career denied her lonely mother. Physique, not technique, excludes Joyce from her high school's classical ballet production of Sleeping Beauty. By accident, she intrudes on a practice session of African dancers. Joining the group, Joyce finds that her spirit, style, and abilities are at last unleashed in this dance form which reveals her talents. Although the introductory emphasis on Joyce's big ``butt'' and bustline and her subsequent sexual allure is heavy-handed, Williams-Garcia goes on to convey Joyce's eagerness to dance, hunger for acceptance, and need to be loved. In the end, Joyce develops a greater sensitivity to others and accepts responsibility for her own actions. She is no longer just ``Blue Tights'' to her ballet teacher or an object of ridicule among her peers. Readers will relate to Joyce's adolescent mood swings, be swept along with her dancing exuberance, and applaud her final success and independence. Gerry Larson, Chewning Junior High School, Durham, N.C.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly:

An inner-city African American girl joins an African dance group after her high school ballet teacher says her body isn't aesthetically pleasing; PW called the story "believably paced and powerfully realized." Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Puffin
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0140380450
• ISBN 13: 9780140380453
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144