Ola Shakes It Up
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Moving? When Ola Benson's family leaves Roxbury in Boston to a house in the suburbs, Ola is sure her parents have made a big mistake. What on Earth are they doing in Walcott--a historic, stuck-up town where the Bensons are the only black family?
True, there are a few good things about the move: Mama and Daddy have better jobs. They have a bigger house, big enough to offer a home to Lillian, a Haitian refugee. But the house is in a "cooperative community" with a million rules: No kids outside after dark. No playing in the street. No jumping in the leaves. No fun.
Well, if Ola's stuck in Walcott, she'll make it a place where she can feel at home. Ola the undaunted comes up with plan after plan, including Operation Pretend I Belong Here and Operation Smile If It Kills You. Finally she hits upon the superspecial can't miss plan: Operation Shake It Up.
Joanne Hyppolite celebrates community, cooperation, and family life in a warm and realistic story with an irrepressible heroine.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hyppolite (Seth and Samona) offers reassuring yet markedly simplistic solutions to racism and forced assimilation with this upbeat story about an African American girl's adjustment to an all-white community. Ola's parents think their children will have better opportunities if the family moves from Roxbury to a "cooperative community" in the historic, more affluent town of Walcott, but the nine-year-old has serious reservations. Her new home, which is almost identical to every other house on the block, is too large and quiet, and there are endless neighborhood rules about curfews, lawn care and even laundry (clotheslines are banned). At school, Ola, her older sister and her older brother are met with preconceptions and prejudice. After Ola's attempts to fit in fail, she decides that instead of changing herself, she must change what she does not like about Walcott. With the help of the mayor's daughter, she prevents a second "cookie-cutter" development like her own from being built in the town, and simultaneously wages a campaign to curb restrictions in her own neighborhood. Meanwhile, her sister and brother win a few of their own individual battles. At one gigantic block party, all the thorny conflicts in Ola's life are neatly pruned: she reunites with old friends, finds several new ones, helps her neighbors and makes her parents proud. Unfortunately, what promises to be a novel that grapples with complex issues wraps up too easily. Ages 9-up.
