Break On Through

by Jill Murray

Welcome to the worst day of Nadine "Lady Six Sky" Durant's life. Just as she's getting used to the idea of a new baby sister squeezing her out of her family, her parents drop the REAL bomb--they're moving out of Parkdale, the downtown neighborhood they've always called home, to cheesy Rivercrest, a million miles away in the middle of nowhere.

Is this a conspiracy to keep her from breakdancing? Are they trying to force her to break up with her boyfriend Sean, aka Ruckus, aka the leader of their crew, Tha Rackit Klub, aka the sickest crew in all of Toronto? And just when they finally had a shot at the Hogtown Showdown, the biggest b-boy battle in town!

How's she going to get any respect in Rivercrest, when everywhere she turns another hater is waiting to smack her down, her parents only want her to focus on her grades, and her old friends back home won't even give her the time of day?

But b-girling is hers . And with the Showdown just months away, nobody is going to keep her from dancing, no matter how hard anyone tries.

304 pages, Paperback

First published February 12, 2008

Reviews

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book.

Break on through is about Nadine`s `Lady Six Sky`s` life. Her life she feels is in a downward spiral when her parents tell her that they are moving out of their apartment in Parkdale and moving to a new house in Rivercrest. Lady Six`s thinks her life is over, because her dance crew is here in Parkdale along with her boyfriend Sean. but she learns she doesn`t have a choice and it is happening weather she wants it too or not. They have a new baby girl coming and they want to be in a better neighborhood to raise them both.

Nadine is in a dance crew called Raket Klub.Encore and Recoil first didn`t accept Nadine as part of the group when she first met them, but now Nadine feels like they are part of her family, and to have to leave them is killing her. They always planned to do a battle and they need to have a group of four to enter the contest. When Encore, Recoil and Sean hear about her moving and having to leave the group, they are, pretty hard on her. Nadine figures out that she could bus it back and forth to them so that they can practice and be ready for the battle that was coming up in a 5 months. They all agree to it until Nadine actually moves and then everyone is always hard to get a hold of all of a sudden, including Sean.

After Nadine`s family moves and Nadine starts in her new school in Rivercrest, she thinks everything about it is lame and she just wants to go back to Parkdale to be with her friends. There are people there that look at her and ask her what country she`s from because the school is pridominately caucasian and she is african american she`s finding people are judging her because of it.

While adjusting to the people around Nadine, in Nadine’s gym class she comes to meet a girl who soon starts to be someone that she is going to butt heads with often. She doesn’t even know her name yet, but she quickly has a nickname that Nadine thinks of when this girl hits her in gym class when they start to fight over ridiculous things. “Slasher” becomes a frequent annoyance with Nadine because they are always egging each other on by one comment or another. They end up getting a detention and have to stuff and lick 500 envelopes as a punishment for the fight in class.

While walking home one day Nadine can see that Slasher isn’t with her group of friends that are usually all together and taunting Nadine whenever possible. Slasher surprises Nadine by coming up and apologizing for treating her the way she did. Nadine is completely shocked to hear this coming from her. When Slasher’s group walks by them completely ignoring Slasher, she knows something had happened. Slasher tells her they were once friends, but not now and drops the subject. Nadine can see she is hurt, so she asks if she wants to walk home with her, Slasher agrees.

Nadine is slowly adjusting to have to live in Rivercrest, but she is really missing her b boying. While out with Slasher, Nadine tells her about how she used to dance and she misses it. Slasher asks Nadine if she could teach her how to b boy, but Nadine tells her no because it’s not something you can teach you would have to feel it and she couldn’t because she didn’t come from Parkdale. Slasher is disappointed and leaves her. As Slasher is walking away Nadine realizes that she was a bit harsh on Slasher and decides she will try to show her. She then asks Nadine to call her by her name which is Madi.
Madi and Nadine practice often everyday, in fact Nadine tells here parents she’s been in the library all the time after school instead of dancing. When her parents find out she is grounded and isn’t allowed to go anywhere for a month besides to school. Nadine is just miserable and so are her parents.
As the weeks go by her parents decide she has learned her lesson, and she free to go.

When returning to Madi Nadine tells her that if they are going to battle they have to have a four person group. Madi tells her about her friend Alya who knows how to dance and she’d be great. When they go to see Alya while she is teaching a class of dancing, Nadine thinks she will work great. Now they hold auditions for the 4th person and soon realizes when no one shows up for the audition they are in trouble.

On New Years Eve Alya and Nadine are invited to stay at Madi’s place for the night. The plan was to just hangout and eat pizza, but Madi and Alya want to go out and party. Nadine doesn’t but being the odd one out she goes. Non of them drive so Alya gets her brother Devin to come and drive them. Devin’s car is how do you say, a clunker but he says it gets him from a to b so not to complain. On the way to downtown to party Devin’s car breaks down. While waiting for a tow Devin surprises Nadine on the side of the road and starts to dance. He’s really good. and this causes the girls to fight again over something that was out of their control. They don’t speak for awhile again. Nadine really thinks its over, because of this stupid fight so is the battle is over because she doesn’t have a crew.

When the battle day arrives Nadines father tells her she has to stay home because she is grounded from not getting good grades in school. Her mother is out and so is her father, when Nadine sees Devin tapping on the window asking why isn’t she one the way with the rest of the group for the battle. Nadines pride shows and she says she doesn’t need the crew to dance there. Devin of course doesn’t believe her. She didn’t spend all of that type practicing not to care. He tells her that he’s parked up the street, if she isn’t ready and shows up there in 15 minutes that he was going without her. Nadine really thinks about and at first she wasn’t going, but she calmed down and set her pride aside and went to meet Devin.

When arriving at the battle, Nadine knows she was going to be in trouble, but she texts her father to let them know where she was. As she watched all of these groups, she ends up seeing Sean and the Raket Klub, Sean tries to apologize and wants her to come back to him. He even dumps the girl he’d been seeing and says he’ll kick her off the group if she was to dance with them in the battle. Nadine considers it only for a second, because she can see what kind of friends she has now and she wouldn’t ditch them, like he did to her not that long ago.

Nadine apologizes to her friends and group “the hydro-force”, and asks if they could forgive her for the way that she has been acting. They said of course that they were just waiting for her. They do their first battle and win. While waiting for the second round, Nadine phones her cell, and she felt bad for leaving, she answers the call. Her dad tells her that her mom is in the hospital getting ready to have the baby.
Nadine realizes then what really is important. Family and friends. Nadine asks the crew if they would be super mad at her if they didn’t do the battle because her mom was going to have the baby. Her crew was excited for her and tells her that there’s always next year. They head off to the hospital.

At the hospital Nadine thanks her friends for everything, and they tell her they are going to wait awhile to hear what happens. Nadine sees her father waiting outside of her so they head in.

Nadines mom is so happy and thankful she made it in time. She is able to help her mom out and see the arrival of her new baby sister Karina.

[Katya M · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.9 stars

a wonderfully unexpected gem of a book!

i had (and still have, really) no knowledge or interest in b-girling. at all. so this book did not immediately jump out to me as something i would be interested in, but i am so glad that i gave it a chance! despite my total lack of interest in the topic, i found myself caring deeply with Nadine's passion and struggles with b-girling, her love for it was truly just shinning off the pages. Nadine is not a perfect character by any means, she is selfish and cannot see other peoples perspectives, and can be very teenage-rude and angsty at times; but honestly i found this characterization to make the book so much better. she felt like an actual person (and very much a teenager)! however, she was not so overwhelmingly a bad person that i did or could not care for her. she comes off much more as pissed off teen than uncaring idiot, in fact by the ending of the book she sacrifices her opportunity to b-girl for being with her family and baby sister.

the other charaters are varying amounts of fine-to-good in terms of characterization, the side characters composing the hydra-force crew were standouts in particular. the writing was overall immersive enough and though somewhat lacking description, was not entirely shit in that way (no matter how much i hate the lack of fully described locations in slice of life). the pacing was pretty perfect, kept me engaged throughout while not being too fast or slow, the themes and plot threads being the same good balance. not too much here had too much or too little of it, it felt very balanced in how much of it was in the book - shoutout to the editors here, because this is a great job!

i personally loved the themes in this book, about assumptions and misogyny - how women are treated unfairly and looked down upon just for being female. here, this is shown through how crews don't believe in having a female member, and how few women there are in b-boying in general; Nadine having to fight agenst assumptions to be recognized. Nadine also assumes and stereotypes many things about Rivercrest people - about how cushy and boring the rich, spoiled Rivercresters are and how much better GTA is and how much more real those people are. Nadine developes quite a lot in this way, realising that some Rivercresters might not be that bad (good, even) - and that her former crew (and boyfriend) are real misogynist pieces of shit!! to make it even better, this feminist pro-women message is very much not an anti-men one, just and anti-shittymen one ;)

did i enjoy it? -yes!!!
would i read it again? -yep!
would i have read it knowing what i do after? -100%

[Canadian Children's Book Centre]

For original b-girl (breakdancing) Nadine (aka Lady Six Sky), moving out of the Parkdale community where she grew up, and into the more affluent suburb of Rivercrest seems like the end of the world. Not only are her parents obsessed with the imminent arrival of a new baby, but she also has to leave her boyfriend, her crew and her friends. But nothing can stop her from dancing, and with the Hogtown Showdown just months away, Nadine is determined not to let anybody or anything get her down. First time novelist Jill Murray has made an impressive debut with this highly original urban novel, written as a tribute to the art of breakdancing, and particularly to the girls who fight to make their way in a boy-dominated sport. Told in first person, and filled with breakdancing jargon, the author gives an extremely authentic and honest voice to her principal character. She is “badass,” but not bad, and most of her opinions are shaped by the environment in which she grew up. Judgments and assumptions are a big part of this book, and Nadine makes as many as she fights against. From the attitude of her parents and teachers about her b-girling, to her own suspicions about the motives of supposedly spoiled Rivercrest kids, she discovers that friendship can be found from unexpected sources, and that putting your heart into your passion can go a long way to overcoming challenges. This very complete and well written novel has a lot to offer teen readers.

Reviewed by Rachel Steen in Canadian Children's Book News
Summer 2008 VOL.31 NO.3

[Nick Carraway LLC · Rating 4 out of 5]

1) ''Eight o'clock. Time to eat breakfast and do more homework, and do anything I can to distract myself from the fact that there will be no actual mills for me, no Showdown, no second chances.
I get dressed and take my time on the breakfast part. Missing the most important event of my life calls for some kind of celebration, and nothing says party like pancakes from a box with sausages from another box.''

2) ''Like Kool Herc said in The Freshest Kids, b-girl---break-girl---has nothing to do with a beat or a dance. It means you've been to your breaking point. Sean and tha Klub may play it tough. They may pretend you need to be from the city to break. But I was never really broken until I moved to Rivercrest. Tha Klub tried to break me. My parents tried to break me. My school tried to break me. But I'm still here. I'm not giving my power back to anyone.''

[Erika · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel bad because everyone rated this book so high but I didn't. It's not that I didn't like it, I just don't really know what to say about it. It was alright but it was nothing special. I think it lacked a bit of action and maybe a better love story. The second half of the book is a lot better than the first half and I liked the ending. Keep in mind that I am picky when it comes to books and it takes a lot for a book to get a 4 or 5 stars with me.

[Bless · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very powerful book. A popular b-girl can't always have her way. I'm glad she learns to back down and learn while also living in the moment. Controlling yourself and not Judith other people from what they seem they are are the main lessons of this story. I have learned the names of so many break dance moves. I might actually consider doing it myself. At least I know how to 6-Step. But I'm not préparé for all those injuries, but you fall and get back up again.

[Edith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story for young teens about 'fitting in' and being yourself.

[Amy Mathers · Rating 4 out of 5]

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