Pageant

by Kathryn Lasky

Sarah Benjamin, a Jewish teenager on the brink of Kennedy's New Frontier, wonders if she can endure four more years of Stuart Hall, Indianapolis's most exclusive, very Christian, and impossibly stuffy school for girls.

Genres: Young Adult, Historical Fiction

221 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1986

About the author

Kathryn Lasky, also known as Kathryn Lasky Knight and E. L. Swann, is an award-winning American author of over one hundred books for children and adults. Best known for the Guardians of Ga’Hoole series, her work has been translated into 19 languages and includes historical fiction, fantasy, and nonfiction.

Reviews

[Sophie Glazer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kathryn Lasky’s "Pageant" is back in print, a treat for those of us who remember the complicated, transformative years of the Kennedy administration, an era when most of us had not yet heard of Vietnam. Sarah’s a smart Jewish girl in a conservative girls’ school, the kind of girl who gets cast as a shepherd every year in the Christmas Pageant, because angels of course are blonde and blue-eyed: short, curly-haired brunettes are stuck being shepherds. As Sarah untangles the complex web of racial, sexual, and personal politics that keep her in her place at her school, the world changes around her, and keeps on changing. Her mother battles censorship in the school library; her father, a plastic surgeon, keeps the family wealthy with rhinoplasties, “fixing” the noses of women who are tired of being shepherds, who want to be angels. In one of the loveliest scenes in the book, Sarah and her friends frolic in the snow on a crystal clear night, making snow angels under the sparkling stars, revelling in youth and promise.

[Meave · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my first young adult books that actually meant something to me. I finally figured out what it was called and re-read it this week (10-11 January 2008) and it's still marvelous. I wanted to live inside my favorite stories when I was younger, and found it so upsetting to finish a book because then I had to come back to my own life. Reading Pageant again, I still kind of want to be Sarah.

Yes; 15 years later, still in dreamworld. Excellent.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic, a great YA read. One of my favorites.

[Stephanie A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A touching look at the outsider: a Jewish supporter of Kennedy against a school full of conservative Christians. Mean girls aren't a new thing.

[Ericka Clou · Rating 4 out of 5]