Tara Takes the Stage

Volume XXV / Issue 5 - October 5 / 2018
Tara Takes the Stage
Tara Takes the Stage
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Tara Takes the Stage

Author: 
Tamsin Lane
Series: 
Yes No Maybe So
Toronto, Ontario: Simon & Schuster Canada, 2018
151 pp., trade pbk. & hc., $8.99 (pbk.), $23.99 (hc.)
ISBN: 
978-1-5011-7609-8 (pbk.)
978-1-5011-7568-8 (hc.)
Grades: 
3-6
Ages: 
9-11
Review by: 
Libby McKeever
3
Excerpt: 

“Rohan,” I said. “I am excited. Of course I want to meet her!”

He shook his head and then walked away, his shoulders slumped, clearly disappointed in me. And, well he was right about Preeti Chandran, because she was a VBD. She wasn’t a Broadway actress, like I wanted to be, but she was still very successful and SO famous! She’d been my idol before the summer I turned eight, when I discovered live theatre like Annie and Cats. Meeting Preeti would be like dream come true.

But Hiro had specifically said I should be at drama club. With him.

Me and him. Together.

Eight-year-old Tara’s dream versus thirteen-year-old Tara’s dream.

My friends looked at me in sympathy.

“What are you going to do?” Gemma asked.

I looked down at my carrots and shrugged. “I have not idea. What should I do?
_____________________________________________________________

Tara goes home. Turn to page 23.
Tara goes to drama club. Turn to page 43.

For Tara, musical theatre is her passion. So, when her best friend Yael, who loves set design, shows Tara the audition notice for the local theatre’s production of The Wizard of Oz, the two are thrilled. For them, theatre is a Very Big Deal (VBD), and when Tara’s crush, Hiro, asks her specifically to come to the auctions and to practice with him, she is smitten.

The only trouble is that Tara’s parents expect her to help out in their Indian sweetshop, Mummbai, at the same time as drama club. Then when a famous Bollywood star, Preeti Chandran, engages Mummbai to bake the desserts and cake for her wedding, her parents really need Tara’s help. Tara is torn as the auditions for the musical are when Preeti is coming to choose the sweets for her wedding.

Rohan, a family friend who also works in the sweet shop, is disappointed with Tara. He feels strongly that Tara should make her family needs a higher priority. Tara is undecided: should she choose her friends and acting, or her family needs? What is even more confusing for her is that she has detected some love interest from Rohan and wonders if she feels the same about him.

Should Tara go home and help with the baking, or should she follow her heart and go to drama club? The reader has the choice in this “Yes, No, Maybe So” story where they can follow the outcome of each choice: disappointment and disillusion with Hiro and her audition, or being able to enjoy Preeti’s wedding and the complementary tickets to her premier, with Rohan.

Author Tamsin Lane has created a fun, choose-your-own-plotline story for readers to enjoy. Whichever outcome is chosen, the reader will have fun following the result of Tara decisions, both good and bad.

Yael and the Party of the Year (Vol. 25, No. 2, Sept. 14, 2018) is Tamsin Lane’s other novel in the “Yes, No, Maybe So” series.

Recommended
Reviewer: 

Libby McKeever is a retired Youth Services Librarian from Whistler, British Columbia.