The Little Gymnast by Sheila Haigh
My rating: 5/5 cats
FEBRUARY
as part of my personal reading challenges for 2017, once a month i will be revisiting a favorite book from when i was a little bitty karen and seeing if it holds up to my fond memories and determining if i can still enjoy it as an old and crotchety karen.
fingers crossed.
so: first things first. in answer to the question ‘does this book hold up?’ yes, it does. again, i read this book so many times as a kid, there was a cozy-blanket familiarity to reading it so many years later, but i felt just as invested in anda’s struggle as i did when i was a kid, and the book didn’t feel childish at all. it’s a genuinely good story with a realistic character at its center whose frustrations and determination make her genuinely sympathetic and likable.
baby-karen’s review:
i like this book because i am very good at gymnastics* and i liked it when anda rescued that cat from the roof View Spoiler » i also liked the blizzard because i love the snow.
adult-review:
i think this book is responsible for my adult love of dance movies. the plot is pretty much the plot for every dance movie ever—young unwealthy girl has all the talent and grit to land her in the highest echelon of competitive world mostly populated by affluent peers, but is held back by poverty-based obstacles: missing a competition because the rusty old truck breaks down, missing practice because a sick goat must be tended to, without even a telephone to make other transportation arrangements, but lo! opportunity in the form of a scholarship is within her grasp, if only she can win better than anyone else and become a STAR!
no better drama, no more fulfilling triumph.
this has all the ups and downs of an olympic backstory: sacrifice View Spoiler », overcoming illness, injury and innate stubbornness, learning self-control, harnessing all that unfocused energy into discipline, and accepting that life isn’t all tumblesaults; sometimes you gotta learn ballet, too.
her mom’s kind of a drag, though. i’m not sure why i’m scrutinizing the adults in these books so much as i reread them, except for the fact that i am closer to their age than anda’s, and when i was a kid, grown-ups weren’t interesting, and i didn’t have an adult perspective. but now, money woes are unfortunately very familiar to me, and having just read You Will Know Me, which is about a family with a gymnast prodigy and how everything revolves around her training and the sacrifices they have to make in order to afford that lifestyle, i can understand where her parents are coming from, with the caution and stress-crankiness. but her mom is pretty chilly, for a hippie with a backyard fulla goats and chickens. she’s not horrible, but she has enough moments where you wanna shove her outta the way of anda’s path to glory.
a few loose comments:
i totally had a crush on anda when i was little, and i used to think this picture was real cute.
but now i am old and that kind of thing is creepy, so i have to get over her. sorry, anda.
i had forgotten this took place in england. there’s no big revelation there, it was just a moment of “oh, yeah,” when i saw the glossary at the front, where some of the terms are ‘translated’ for non-british readers.
i did find one error that i must have missed as a kid, because it didn’t spark anything in me. but bella is indeed a special cat:
“Oh look, Daddy! She’s got pink feet! Her paws are pink on the bottom. Like pink beads! Look at her white whiskers! Oh, she’s got little white eyelashes! Why are her eyes blue?”
“They’ll change,” said Bill, steering Murgatroyd carefully round a group of moorland sheep. “They’ll go green as she gets older. Or yellow. Oh, she’s magic, isn’t she?”
she is magic, because her eyes go both green AND yellow. about thirty pages later, she has green jewel eyes, and then about twenty pages after that, they are yellow. kaleidoscope cat!
i am very excited to continue this rereading project. will they all hold up?? let’s find out!
* adult edit—childhood self-confidence aside, i was NOT “very good” at gymnastics. i was tragic on balance beam and, like anda, i hated the floor-dancing parts. the only things i was good at were the ones where you fling your body about without worrying about the landing parts—i was strongest on vault, decent at uneven bars, and i liked the flippy parts of the floor routine, because wheeee. but “very good?” not hardly.
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just as good as i remember! review to come! for now, fume with me over the fact that there are TWO other books connected to this one, making this a little gymnast TRILOGY, that i never knew about and am now gonna need to track down.
https://www.goodreads.com/series/182760
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the second of my middle grade rereads for 2017-project.
this one has a different bookplate:
and another “how karen kept track of her reading when she was a baby” account:
and it was even cheaper than Wait Till Helen Comes!
will it hold up!!?? let’s see!
JANUARY: wait till helen comes
MARCH: zucchini
APRIL: something queer at the library
MAY: good-bye pink pig
JUNE: the girl with the silver eyes
JULY: the phantom tollbooth
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