The Street Dancers - Hardcover

Hill, Elizabeth Starr

3.75

8 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670834351 ISBN 13: 9780670834358

Publisher: Viking Juvenile, 1991

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Fitzi longs for a "normal" life instead of one where she moves from place to place and performs in various acts with her parents.

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From School Library Journal:

Grade 5-7-- Fitzi Wolper, about ten, belongs to a New York show-business family that is never able to put down roots. She had always liked being part of a mime act with her parents, but now she is embarrassed to be a street performer. She wants desperately to be a normal kid going to a normal school. With her grandfather's support, she achieves at least part of her goals, and at the same time realizes that performing will always have a place in her life. The ending is pat, but the plot moves smoothly, propelled by the well-developed main characters. When a stroke forces her grandfather to face a life without stage lights, it also allows him a better understanding of Fitzi's discontent. Her parents, buoyed and sustained by their careers, are one-dimensional, albeit loving and caring, but the more complex viewpoints of other characters help Fitzi toward the resolution of her own problems. She in turn becomes more sensitive toward and understanding of the needs of others. Readers who are intrigued by this seemingly glamorous profession will be especially interested in this view from the inside. --Tatiana Castleton, Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library, CA
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews:

In a charming family story that grows out of the author's own stage experience, a girl deals with her mixed feelings about her family's profession. The members of Fitzi's family are all performers. When their agent doesn't come up with jobs, they do their mime act in front of New York's Metropolitan Museum. Fitzi has always taken delight in an audience's happy response, but now encroaching adolescence counterbalances the theatrical life's glamour with a new feeling of embarrassment; she feels envious of a friend who used to be a model but now goes to regular school. Meanwhile, just when Fitzi is confronting her desire for a life like her peers', she must also adjust to new emotional demands: her beloved grandfather has a stroke and comes to live with the family. Finally, Fitzi gets up the courage to ask for a chance at the ``normal'' life she craves. An entertaining insider's glimpse of the discomfort, instability, and excitement of life in the New York theater. (Fiction. 10-14) -- Copyright �1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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