cover image Stay on Your Toes, Maggie Adams!

Stay on Your Toes, Maggie Adams!

Karen Strickler Dean. Avon Books, $2.5 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-380-89711-7

The heroine of Maggie Adams, Dancer and Between Dances, now 19, faces a variety of problems: she and her MIT boyfriend Doug want to marry but neither will give up their opposite-ends-of-the-country lives. Blikk, a sexy, older choreographer, is taking Maggie's otherwise committed breath away; she has just offended the company's prima ballerina; and the temperamental artistic director wants Maggie out of the company altogether. The story that follows is the resolution of these problems, leading to the happy, expected conclusionMaggie becomes a company soloist; the artistic director is run out of town; Blikk (she never really loved him) takes over the company promising many roles for Maggie; Doug returns to San Francisco, with Maggie and marriage on his mind. The romance is absorbing and the book is far better written than many for this age group, though Maggie's total lack of shortcomings may strike her audience as unreal. (12-up)