Avalanche Dance

Gr 8 Up—In this pedestrian story, two best friends grow apart and then find one another again. Molly and Gwen were inseparable until the seventh grade, when Molly decides to start hanging out with the kids who drink and smoke pot, while Gwen continues to work on her dancing. When she and her father are caught in an avalanche while skiing and he is seriously injured, Molly is hanging out with her friends in Gwen's family cabin and accidentally burns it down. Gwen has relatively few injuries except for a mysterious pain in her right leg, for which there is no physical cause. However, she is convinced that she will never dance again. Meanwhile, Molly takes the fall for burning the cabin when her "friends" leave her holding the bag. She must complete community service by working for Gwen's family to help out while the girl's father is in the hospital. The writing is simplistic, the dialogue is bland, and the characters are one-dimensional. The lesson about who your real friends are is delivered with a heavy hand, and the final reunion of Molly and Gwen is sickly sweet. There are many better-written books about friendship that are not so pedantic.—Robin Henry, Wakeland High School, Frisco, TX