Or is he? It’s up to Jake to either find the talent that lies within or embarrass himself in front of the entire school. All is well until Jake discovers that the end-of-the-semester talent show is only two weeks away, and Jake is short one very important thing…talent. So how did Jake get accepted to the Music and Art Academy? He faked it.Īlongside an eclectic group of academy classmates, and with advice from his best friend, Jake tries to fit in at a school where things like garbage sculpting and writing art reviews of bird poop splatter are the norm. He can’t read music very well, and he can’t improvise.

'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.Black sixth-grader Jake Liston can only play one song on the piano. Tatiana Castleton, Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library, CAĬopyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. Joan Lowery Nixon's popular 'Orphan Train Quartet' series (Bantam) places more emphasis on adventure Holland deals more with life. Holland balances Maggie's tension with a series of rather quiet everyday episodes that set the mood, advance the plot, and make for an accessible and readable novel. By fierce determination and strength of character, she earns her place and comes to be valued and to feel at home.

She stays true to her heritage and religious beliefs, but she knows that this is her only chance, and Annie's, and she must learn to accomodate. There are a good many peripheral characters, all of whom Holland brings into sharp focus, but it is Maggie who carries the novel. She is sustained by her strong sense of self, by all the good things that happen, and by the support of Priscilla Russell, her warm and gentle new mother who has an unshakable sense of right and wrong. Annie is a sunny, dreamy child it is Maggie who must come to grips with the newness, the loss of her mother, the fear of being sent back, the hard work, and the hostility of some toward Roman Catholics and Irish immigrants. Taken in by a childless couple, they begin a new life on the Kansas prairie, far different from all that they have known. Grade 4-6- After their mother dies, Maggie Lavin, 12, and her younger sister, Annie, leave the slums of New York City on one of the orphan trains that deliv ered thousands of tenement youngsters to adoptive homes during the second half of the 19th century.

The Journey Home by Isabelle Holland