by Jill Murray. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2007.
Nadeen Durant moves with her family from Parkdale to Rivercrest. She struggles to adapt to her new life and forms a b-girling group to appear at an important battle.
The main thing I took from this book was how Nadeen's parents don't want to be "the black people." They try to keep their credit card troubles quiet and have the neighbour over for shrimp, but there is this undercurrent of them being thought of as the black people throughout the book, even though it isn't said.
I also picked up on the fact Nadeen's parents ignore her (except to nag and yell at her) and devote all their time to the new baby because this new daughter is going to be their legitimate child for whom, unlike Nadeen, they can do everything right. Buck of it is they live so far away that bucking kid is going to be raised by the bucking daycare centre anyway.
Pathos is also developed for Nadeen, who had never had friends or really been good at anything until she discovered break dancing. Now she's a square peg living with two other square pegs trying to fit into the round hole of some horrible subdivision. I mean buck, you can't even call it the suburbs and you certainly can't call it a community because most of the residents work in Toronto and have two-hour commutes each way so a community can't develope.
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