The Turning Pointe

 

The Turning Pointe

by Vanessa L. Torres

Alfred A. Knopf, 2022.425 pages. Young Adult Fiction

When sixteen-year-old Rosa Dominguez pirouettes, she is poetry in pointe shoes. And as the daughter of a tyrant ballet Master, Rosa seems destined to become the star principal dancer of her studio. But Rosa would do anything for one hour in the dance studio upstairs where Prince, the Purple One himself, is in the house. After her father announces their upcoming auditions for a concert with Prince, Rosa is more determined than ever to succeed. Then Nikki--the cross-dressing, funky boy who works in the dance shop--leaps into her life. Weighed down by family expectations, Rosa is at a crossroads, desperate to escape so she can show everyone what she can do when freed of her pointe shoes. Now is her chance to break away from a life in tulle, grooving to that unmistakable Minneapolis sound reverberating through every bone in her body.

I was deeply struck by the amazing descriptions and imagery used to describe the music of Prince and the dances in the book. This novel is really just a love note to Prince and the artist that he was. It was well written, a bit gritty, not preachy, and full of the effervescence of dance. What's not to love?

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Viking Children’s Books, 2011. 402 pages.

 Following her parents' bitter divorce as she and her father move from town to town, seventeen-year-old Mclean reinvents herself at each school she attends until she is no longer sure she knows who she is or where she belongs.

 

AG