Dance, Dance, Dance

Prom

by Laurie Halse Anderson

As I started typing this review, I realized I have yet to share with you an earlier title by author Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak, which is an amazing and powerful book. I’ll put that on the to-do list! For now, onto Prom ...

Summary

Ashley Hannigan is a high school senior in Philadelphia. She comes from a lower-middle class family (members of which drive her insane, though she really does love them all), is dating a guy who dropped out of high school the previous year, and she has no plans beyond high school except to find a job and live with her boyfriend. Oh, and she could care less about the senior prom, even though one of her best friends is on the planning committee. But when the faculty advisor for the prom is caught stealing the money for the event just over a week before the big night, Ashley gets pulled into the maelstrom of activity that is the cobbling together of details, donations, and bribes of arranging a new prom.

Though she’s a reluctant participant, Ashley can’t let her best girl down. And somewhere in the process, she begins to reevaluate some aspects of her life she didn’t think were all that important before. By the time prom night rolls around, Ashley has made some discoveries about herself and her life that no one saw coming.

Worth staying up past bedtime?

Rating: Early Morning Hours

Seriously, go out and get a copy of this book. For anyone who has read Speak, well … this isn’t the same, though it deals with some tough teenage issues. I actually saw the cover and did a double-take because it looked too cutesy for the Anderson I know. However, as soon as I read Ashley’s dialogue, I knew I had found another gritty but admirable teen character. When we first meet her, Ashley has already resigned herself to a future of low-expectations. The examples that have been set for her defined her course, and she doesn’t see herself being any different. But when she gets pulled into helping her best friend save the prom (a task she is literally pulled out of bed for and bribed to do), she begins to realize that some of the stupid teenage ideals that she has shunned aren’t as meaningless as she once thought. And as she helps pull together a seemingly impossible event, Ashley learns that she may have more talent than she thought, and dares to see her future in a new light. She's a tough girl, and there were a few times I wanted to smack her across the back of the head because she couldn't see her own worth, but Ashley has a good heart and I was rooting for her from the start.

Recommended for ages 14 and up.