Theodora "Teddi" Baldwin is a promising ballet dancer. She has taken lessons for years and now, thrilled with the glittering excitement of stardom, she's hooked. Almost. If ballet dancing is going to be the most important part of her life, Teddi knows she'll have to give up her cheerleading and her dates with Rodney Shaw. Worst of all, she won't go to boarding school with her best friend, Pat Rutherford. But right now, there's a different love in her life—one Justin Falk, the new ballet instructor. He's a stranger in town and Teddi is getting a severe case of Ballet Fever just dreaming about the future with him.
American juvenile author (full name: Elizabeth Allen) Betty Cavanna suffered from a crippling disease, infantile paralysis, as a child, which she eventually overcame with treatment and exercise. During her convalescence, attentive adults read to her until she was old enough to read to herself, beginning a long love affair with books.
Cavanna majored in journalism at the New Jersey College for Women in New Brunswick, from where she received the Bachelor of Letters degree in 1929. She also took art classes in New York and Philadelphia. Cavanna's first job was as a reporter for the Bayonne Times. In 1931 she joined the staff of the Westminster Press in Philadelphia and over the next ten years served as advertising manager and art director. She also wrote and sold material to Methodist and Baptist publishing firms. In 1940 she married Edward Talman Headley, with whom she had a son. They moved to Philadelphia. After her husband's death, she married George Russell Harrison, a university dean of science, as well as nonfiction writer, in 1957. He died in 1979.
Cavanna became a full-time writer in 1941. Since then she has written more than seventy books under the name of Betty Cavanna as well as two pseudonyms: Betsy Allen, under which she wrote the "Connie Blair Mystery" series, and Elizabeth Headley, under which she wrote several books, including the Diane stories. As Betty Cavanna she also published the nonfiction "Around the World Today" about young people living in various countries.
Cavanna's juvenile fiction, about the difficulties of adolescenc, appealed to generations of teenage girls. Her characters confronted loneliness, sibling rivalries, divorce, and tense mother-daughter relationships. Her books, although characterized as pleasant, conventional, and stereotyped, have been extremely popular and recommended by critics for their attention to subjects which have reflected girls' interests. Going on Sixteen and Secret Passage were Spring Book Festival honor books in 1946 and 1947.
In the 1970s Cavanna turned to writing mysteries, which she termed "escape fiction," because she said she felt out of sync with the problems of modern teenagers. Two of her books have been runners-up for the Edgar Allan Poe Award: Spice Island Mystery in 1970 and the Ghost of Ballyhooly in 1972.
I came upon this book in an antique shop on the North Fork of Long Island on a recent family road trip. I love that the internet allows me to search for and buy almost any out of print book that might catch my fancy, but I have a special fondness for books that I come across in person, as it were, and that I probably would not otherwise ever have considered buying. They just have more associations. It's part of why I can't imagine myself owning an e-reader, although I will never say never. There was a time when I was quite determined never to have a cell phone.
The book caught my eye because it was by "Elizabeth Headley," a pen name of Betty Cavanna, whose book Catchpenny Street I'd just read and enjoyed. The two books are part of what the publisher called the "Starlight" series of books for girls, with similar jacket design, so I knew they'd look well together on the shelf. I happen to already own a third starlight book, Francie by Emily Hahn, also, happily, with a dust jacket, so the thought of forming a little collection of these is pleasing.
So, this second Betty Cavanna book confirmed my initial impression that she's an author well worth reading if you have an interest in mid-20th century vintage teen fare. Topsy (who in later editions was renamed Teddi) comes from a nice normal suburban family, and tries to balance her passionate ambition to become a ballerina with a well-rounded 1950s style high school life. Realistically, she finds that this is nearly impossible. There are two obvious directions the author could have taken this story, and admirably, she doesn't really go in either. She conveys well how much single-minded work it take to be really first rate at something that takes as much dedication as ballet. There's also something believable about how Topsy is not entirely a likeable character -- like Posy Fossil in Ballet Shoes, she has that little element of selfishness that fictional ballet dancers seem to require to achieve success. In a Harry Potter mash-up, they'd both be sorted into Slytherin.
This book is a later edition of _Take a Call, Topsy_ with a new title for, I would guess, obvious reasons. Teddi forgoes a chance to go to the posh boarding school her mother attended and which her best friend Pat is planning to attend in order to continue her thrice-weekly dance lessons. In fact she has to make some difficult choices and gives up several high school activities and opportunities while pursuing her dream of becoming a professional dancer. She hurts Pat and Rod, the boy she is dating, in the process. Justin Falk, the visiting professional dancer who teaches a master class, seems to provide a more alluring opportunity. Teddi is not quite as nice a person as Cavanna's usual heroine, and the novel really never deals with the hurts she deals out. Still, Teddi matures in the process and things turn out as they probably should, without the "rainbow's end" kind of denouement one comes to expect in a Cavanna book.
I loved it! I just recently got into reading books that have ballet in them! I love that Teddi becomes her own person and does her all to be a ballerina!
Although there were some parts that bothered me (How did an "overweight" girl make it to the advanced ballet class? Why were the advanced students only having class three times a week, and 45 minute lessons at that?), Teddi's life had enough non-ballet realism and warmth to round out the story nicely.