Amiri & Odette: A Love Story (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Amiri & Odette: A Love Story Deborah Stevenson Myers , Walter Dean. Amiri & Odette: A Love Story; illus. by Javaka Steptoe. Scholastic, 2009 [40p] ISBN 978-0-590-68041-7$17.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 7-12 "The Swan Lake Projects" are the setting for this romantic tale in verse, a retelling of the story of the ballet Swan Lake in a modern urban setting. Out playing ball with his friends one night, Amiri falls for a beautiful girl named Odette, who informs him that she's in thrall to the malign Big Red, to be freed only by a true and exclusive declaration of love. Amiri swears he loves Odette, but when he mistakes her double for her at a dance and publicly, if unintentionally, proclaims his love for a woman other than Odette, Big Red's claim on Odette is confirmed. It's an interesting project: certainly the hyper-romantic ballet story has considerable possibility for appealing adaptation, and the use of verse is a logical analog for the [End Page 211] formality of classical ballet, while Myers' knotty and alliterative language has some of its lush and studied elegance. The poetry is variable, however, with meter (mostly pentameter) uneven and inconsistent, and some of the language overworked to the point of opacity or bathos (it may in fact be difficult for those unfamiliar with the ballet to discern the plot). While altering the ending to a happy one offers romantic satisfaction, the fact that that success is achieved by Amiri basically beating Big Red up raises the question of why he didn't just do that first and bypass the intervening drama. Steptoe's illustrations are tense, moody, and nocturnal, with an intensity and pebbly underlying texture that suggests mural art. Between the darkness and some artistic choices, the art misses opportunities to illuminate the text (the Odette/ Odette's-double issue is particularly murky in both illustration and verse), but it's got a nice sense of nighttime life and atmospheric drama. Dramatic reading aloud may be the best way into this narrative, and it could certainly make for an intriguing introduction to the classical Swan Lake. Copyright © 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois Used by permission of Atheneum Books for Young Readers.