Nonfiction Monday Book Review: Me.Jane, by Patr.Book Review: Johnny Swanson, by Eleanor Updale (D.Book Review: Just in Time, Abraham Lincoln, by Pa.Blog Tour and Giveaway: Stones for My Father, by.Book Review: Irena Sendler and the Children of th.Second Fiddle was recently picked as a Spring 2011 Kids Indie Next list, from the independent booksellers association.ĭisclosure: Review copy provided by publisher. A time before kids were constantly checking in via texting and phone with their parents-positively the Middle Ages for today's kids! This is an engaging story of friendship, music, and freedom set in what's a long-ago era for today's tweens-the end of the Cold War. The three girls have the adventure of a lifetime in Paris, with lots of local color thrown in, including a stay at Shakespeare and Co., the famous English-language bookstore in Paris. Is he friend or foe? Are the Russians following them on the train to Paris, looking for the Russian sergeant? When they get the idea to have him impersonate their music teacher-providing them with a chaperone and getting the young Estonian away from the Russian army in one fell swoop-they can't foresee what the consequences will be, nor who exactly the young Estonian might be. On their way home from the lesson, the girls witness a terrible crime in East Berlin, and save a Soviet soldier from drowning in the river. In the meantime, she and her friends are preparing for a chamber music ensemble contest in Paris when their teacher falls ill and tells them he can't be their chaperone on the trip from Berlin to France. As the novel opens, Jody will soon be moving back to the States since her father is retiring from the army.

But she's made two really good friends in Berlin at the American school-Giselle and Vivian-and the three take music lessons together. Our narrator, Jody, is a army kid, used to moving constantly and not forming bonds that are too tight. 'If we had known it would eventually involve the KGB, the French National Police, and the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, we would have left that body in the river and called the Polizei like an normal German citizen.' In her second novel for young people, Rosanne Parry takes us back to Berlin in 1990, at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in Eastern Europe.

Second fiddle rosanne parry