What We’re Reading

A Crooked Kind of Perfect | Linda Urban

Rating:

Zoe Elias has grand dreams of being a pianist. For her, there is nothing better to be. She imagines evening gowns, audiences awaiting in anticipation, beautiful recitals, much adoration. So you can understand how, when her father comes home with a Perfectone D60 Organ, instead of her lovely piano, why she’s a little upset. In fact, she’s fairly sure this might be unforgivable.

But the organ came with free lessons, which she reluctantly agrees to take. Miss Person (read: Persaaahn) is not the world’s most enthusiastic teacher. In fact, during lessons, Zoe doesn’t get into much of her instrument’s capabilities. But when Miss Person isn’t around, she likes to kick things up a little. Which is how, after a lesson one day, upon forgetting her purse, Miss Person comes to realize Zoe has talent, and decides she ought to enter the Perform-O-Rama.

And so Zoe spends the next few weeks practicing and practicing the same song: “Forever in Blue Jeans”. Not knowing the words, she’ll often make up her own. In the Kitchen, baking up a storm, her father, and schoolmate turned constant house-guest enjoy the show.

With the competition nearly upon them, Zoe’s mother not only misses her birthday, but has an emergency at work, which means she won’t be able to take her to the Perform-O-Rama after all. Disaster. Mr. Elias is not exactly known for his worldly skills. In fact nearly every time he goes out, he has to be guided home by a local mechanic. But he knows how important this is to Zoe. Armed with pre-programmed cell phone, ready for any disaster, they set off.

And he does get her there. But doesn’t make it to her first performance, which she would tell you, was not all that bad, since she was not all that good.

This was a very cute and extremely quick-reading story. Through her music, and her enthusiasm, Zoe manages to bring her family together, help a schoolmate, and inspire her dad. So maybe the Perfectone wasn’t such an unforgivable gift after all.

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The A Crooked Kind of Perfect | Linda Urban by Jaemi, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 10:34 am by Jaemi and is filed under Book Review. Find similar posts by selecting and of the following tags: family life, humor, interpersonal relationships, juvenile fiction, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.