Seventh grader Dillon is a bench rider on the football team. But he’s okay with that. The thing is, the football team is his dad’s dream for him. It’s not his. What Dillon really wants, though, is to be a dancer. A real one. Right now, he’s a dancer . . . if doing his ninja freestyle in his best friend’s basement counts. Along with two of his closest friends, Dillon is part of Dizzee Freekz. With crush Kassie leading the Dizzee Freakz, they’re pitted against the t
raditional dance studio Dance-Splosion, which Kassie turned against after her own bad experience.
But when Dillon enters a contest to win a Dance-Splosion scholarship, everything changes. He gets one of the snobbiest girls (basically Kassie’s nemesis) to help him train and he discovers something that seems to go against everything Kassie told him about dance. Could part of what makes dance so great, and so beautiful be the rules and the tradition? His friends want him to slay the audition, and then turn around and tell the Dance-Splosion folks he doesn’t even want their scholarship anyway . . . but what if he does want it? And even more, what if he’s actually becoming a better dancer with instruction?
Brooks Benjamin‘s debut novel has so much spunk and heart. Dillon is a charismatic narrator to whom readers will instantly relate. (I honestly spent a bit too much time reading aloud from the book to my husband because so many of the lines had me laughing out loud.) I love the way Benjamin explores aspects of dance culture that are sort of fraught right now. As a fan of So You Think You Can Dance, I’ve watched as the show has grappled over the past couple seasons with the disconnect between traditional dance (which is often quite pricy/exclusive to participate in) and the more accessible hip-hop and street styles. With all of the popularity of dance-themed movies and TV shows, I have no doubt that this book will find a large audience with upper elementary aged kids and middle schoolers. The fact that the author is a school teacher should not come as a surprise to readers. This book feels incredibly attuned the experiences of middle school kids today.
I’m going to pull a Mary Murphy and put both Dillon AND this book on the hot tamale train.
My Seventh Grade Life in Tights (Delacorte Press / Random House) will be in a bookstore/library near you starting April 12, 2016.
