A Proper Little Nooryeff

Jamie Carr #1

by Jean Ure

Little does an athletic teen-aged boy realize as he goes to pick up his sister at ballet practice that his own life is going to take a new direction.

Genres: Young Adult, Childrens, Fiction

158 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Prolific English children and young adult author.

Had her first book published while still in high school, then studied theater at Webber-Douglas in London. Her most well-known work is the Point Crime novel Dance with Death. Others include Plague 99, After the Plague (previously "Come Lucky April"), Big Tom, Family Fan Club and Shrinking Violet, as well as the fantasy The Wizard In the Woods.

Today, Ure is very popular with British female teenage readers with novels such as Shrinking Violet, Family Fan Club and Passion Flower.

Ure has also translated Danish writer Sven Hassel's WWII novels to English.

Reviews

[Felicity · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hadf never read a Ballet book from a boy's point of view before and Jean Ure nailed it!

Jamie Carr wants to be a cricketer and strugg-les with lessons at school. He has no interest in ballet and would never dance a step until he is in the wrong place at the wrong time...

This was a brilliant read and I will have to track down the sequel at some point. Ure manages to capture the teenage non-commital psyche vividly and does a great job of discussing why ballet is not a sissy thing for boys to do.

An excellent read but maybe not for very little kids as some of the content is geared more for teenagers.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sixteen year old Jamie is picking up his little sister Kim from her ballet class, when unexpectedly finds himself being persuaded to dance himself. Jamie has no interest in ballet, his only ambition is to get into the school cricket team. But Thea Tucker, theprincipal of the ballet school, and Anita, her attractive star pupil, won't take no for an answer. The hapless Jamie finds himself drawn.into the world of ballet against his will. Even more confusingly, he begins to enjoy it. This is a very amusing story with some good characters, something of a rarity for the early 1980s, there weren't many stories about boy ballet dancers in those days. Still fun to read today.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dusted off from my parents' garage and is still the beloved book of my pre-teen years that I remember