'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 00:29:32 Boxid IA141614 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Donorīostonpubliclibrary Edition 1st ed. Ages 12-up.Ĭopyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. Joyce's understanding is believably paced and powerfully realized, and her story is uplifting. Though the time sequence is sometimes confusing, the author successfully balances Joyce's many worlds: home, school, the dance studio, the world inside herself. The story ends poignantly and positively, inspiring readers to look for love and strength within. It's a lesson learned painfully, only after Joyce destroys her chance to experience real love with J'had. The ensemble teaches Joyce many things: that in order to make the audience believe in her, she must believe in herself, and that to gain respect from others she must respect herself first. Best of all, she meets J'had, a handsome drummer whom Joyce grows to love. The students welcome her, the teacher accepts her.

When she joins an African dance ensemble, her world begins to expand. Joyce Collins seeks warmth and loving that she can't find in school or at home. Gerry Larson, Chewning Junior High School, Durham, N.C.Ĭopyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. Readers will relate to Joyce's adolescent mood swings, be swept along with her dancing exuberance, and applaud her final success and independence. She is no longer just ``Blue Tights'' to her ballet teacher or an object of ridicule among her peers. In the end, Joyce develops a greater sensitivity to others and accepts responsibility for her own actions. 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. Joining the group, Joyce finds that her spirit, style, and abilities are at last unleashed in this dance form which reveals her talents. By accident, she intrudes on a practice session of African dancers. Physique, not technique, excludes Joyce from her high school's classical ballet production of Sleeping Beauty.

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. 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.

Blue Tights by Rita Williams-Garcia