Customer Reviews

Betti on the High Wire

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Betti on the High Wire is an often humorous look at what it means to be a member of a family, to be loved and accepted as different without being asked to compromise who you are or purge your unique history. Hopefully, someday, we'll see Babo become Betti on the big screen. The tender, funny flick could be a big hit with young audiences.

Girls age 8-14 are likely to enjoy Betti on the High Wire the most. But, clearly, 34-year old dads may love it as well.

Babo is a child of war, a left-over child. At 10 years old, she has no parents, only the family she has created from the other left-over kids on an abandoned circus camp. Babo takes care of the left-over kids, telling them stories and looking after their welfare while waiting for her parents to return. When a couple from America comes to the rescue, rescuing is the last thing Babo wants. When she arrives in America, even her name is lost to a new unfamiliar name -- Betti. The language is not her own, she misses those left behind and her new world is quite strange. The new children in America don't understand her. Even worse, they ridicule her for those very things that are dear to her. When Betti makes a friend, somehow the world seems different. As she gets to know her family, the isolation she once felt becomes transformed.

Lisa Railsback's BETTI ON THE HIGH WIRE tells the story of an orphan from a war-torn country by bringing the reader inside the emotional world of Babo. Babo is just delightful! In a world where war has destroyed her world, she reaches out to others and cares for them and yet she too is a little girl too with all the emotional needs of a young girl. Babo creates stories with vivid imagery which draw a reader into her world. Once in America, she creates a journal of new words and insights into America. The journal not only shows the novelty and strangeness of her new home, but it also adds a humorous insight as a world familiar to readers is seen anew through the eyes of Betti.

The setting of the war-torn world looms behind Babo, in her own country and in the interior setting of her mind and emotions. Instead of inundating the young reader with violent imagery of war, Lisa Railsback instead reaches into the emotional world of the characters -- and she does so beautifully! BETTI ON THE HIGH WIRE does not end on a simplistic or sappy note, but rather the ending truly warms the heart precisely because the author maintains a perfect balance, respecting her character and the fictional world she creates. Make sure not to skip the author's note in the back of the book. BETTI ON THE HIGH WIRE is quite simply a book that stirs the imagination -- young or adult.

Courtesy of Book Illuminations

Betti on the Highwire brings meat to the typical adoption narrative of a third world child adopted by nice people and given a suburban life in America. Betti/Bobo is nine when she's taken from the circus camp orphanage in her war torn country and adopted by a mild-mannered white couple with a five-year-old daughter. Betti has constructed a story for herself and the other orphans about her parents, the tallest woman in the world with a tail and the crocodile man, and how they will come back to the circus camp for her someday. She clings to this story even as her new parents try to integrate her into American things like day camp. Betti eventually manages a compromise between her new life and her old stories. She's a strong-willed, tough survivor, and that helps the book to be more about one girl's reactions to a new set of circumstances and less about a little foreign girl being helped. The book is more sensitive to adopted children issues than most. The plot is by turns funny and harrowing. In the end, Betti finds balance and starts to grow up.

In her war-torn country, Babo lives in an abandoned circus camp with Auntie Moo and a group of other "leftover kids". She entertains the children with stories of the old circus days, which feature, among others, her parents-the Tallest Woman in the World and the famous Green Alligator Man.

One day, a couple from America comes to see the "leftover kids". They want to adopt Babo and change her name to Betti. Babo certainly doesn't want to leave Auntie Moo and all the children, especially when she knows one day her parents will come back for her.

Soon Babo, now Betti, finds herself in America. She's definitely not going to like it there. It's filled with strange sounds and smells, and the people speak a weird language. Betti is determined to run off and find her way back to Auntie Moo and the "leftover kids". But the more time she spends in America getting to know her new family, the perfect opportunity to run away never seems to come.

Railsback seems to have found her niche in writing about young girls who have experienced more than their share of heartaches. Babo's country has been torn apart by war. The fantastic stories she shares with the "leftover kids" about the circus people are filled with triumph over the soldiers who destroyed their once beautiful camp. They are also a way for Babo to dream of the circus people's return. Abandoned as a result of the war, she feels a responsibility to care for the "leftover kids". She can't imagine them being okay without her when the American couple decides to adopt her.

Betti on the High Wire also deals with prejudice. Betti has her ideas of how foreigners, what she commonly refers to as Melons, act. She shares these ideas with the "leftover kids" so they will be sure not to like foreigners too.

Railsback does not rely as much on humor in this book as she did with her other book, Noonie's Masterpiece, but it's definitely there. You just can't help but laugh over some of Betti's thoughts on things.

Betti on the High Wire by Lisa Railsback will make you laugh; it will make you cry; and most of all, it will touch your heart. I highly recommend it. I can't wait for Railsback's next release.

My review for Betti on the High wire...it was a very great book. It was entertaining to learn about Babo's and George's country. I loved the stories that Babo would tell to her circus camp and Lucy. My favorite part of the story was when George and Babo went on the airplane. My favorite person out of the circus people was The Snake Lady. I also liked when Babo made the circus out of sticks and rocks. I thought it was a great book.
Jmccbyer

Babo is one of many "left-over" children. She lives in a sort of orphanage in the ruins of an old circus camp. Her story could have gone many ways from this point, but she is adopted by an American family and raised along with their 5 year old daughter. Betti on the High Wire is about Babo (now Betti) coming to terms with her new life while still clinging to the fantasy she created about her real parents someday coming back for her.

While I've never worked with children in this situation, I see many of the things Betti goes through in children that move to the U.S. from other countries, or that do not live with their natural parents. Just like Betti, many of them have trouble combining their past with their present. Betti on the High Wire is a great story that I highly recommend. Young teenage girls will find many things in Betti that they can identify with. Parents and people that work with children on a daily basis will see Betti's struggles and triumphs in the faces of the children they work with.

Highly recommended!

At 10, Babo is the oldest in a camp of "leftover kids" who have lost their parents to war. She helps Aunt Moo care for the littler ones and likes to tell stories of her mama and dad who were in the circus. When families from America adopt Babo and her friend George, she worries that if she leaves, her parents won't be able to find her when they come back. Babo, now Betti, finds her new home confusing and has trouble fitting in. She wants to go back to her home country, but each day she finds another reason to stay just a little while longer.

Betti on the High Wire by Lisa Railsback is a look at the tragedy caused by civil strife through a child's eyes. In her home country Babo is innocent and war-savvy at the same time. She believes the circus stories told about her parents and other performers, but she knows how to hide and protect those around her when the soldiers come. Railsback deliberately doesn't name the place where Babo is from because there are so many places in the world that are just like the one described in the book.

In the U.S., Betti is out of her element. No one depends on her for protection and she's free to be a child without worries. Yet because she doesn't understand the difference between her new life and her old, she worries about everything--having enough food to eat, staying safe from the police and even sleeping in a quiet house.

Betti on the High Wire is a great way to introduce younger readers to life in war-torn countries. It's enlightening without being too graphic or despairing. Betti has hope, and she learns how to help make a difference in her new world and her old one. As she tries to make sense of the world around her, she'll break your heart then put it back together again. I highly recommend Betti on the High Wire for mother-daughter book clubs with girls aged 9 to 12.