Customer Reviews

Come a Stranger (Lions Teen Tracks)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Wilhemina Smiths (Mina), wants to dance. She's got liveliness, intelligence, zest for life, and determination; but she is also black. Voigt produces her usual not-out of the ordinary kaleidoscope of REAL people...and this is precisely what makes this book out of the ordinary. She presents Mina's emotions beautifully and level-headedly: her love of ballet, her keenness, her crush on/fascination with Tamer Shipp, her relationship with Dicey. The concluding sentences of the book are wonderfully ambiguous (at least a little). There's disappointment, triumph... It's just great.

Characters and scenes from the other books in the Tillerman Cycle overlap and are introduced through her own perspective. I'd recommend this book far more than "The Glory Field", and feel that it lived up to its potential and even surpassed my expectations.

Read it!

Mina Smith loves dancing, and when she gets accepted to the summer ballet school she thinks all of her dreams have come true. When she arrives at the school, she is the only black girl there. The other girls treat her differently, but Mina is too blind to notice. The next summer, she loses her coordination, gets sent home, and falls in love with the summer minister. In this book, Mina embarks on a journey to find herself, and comes to love dance even more than before.

What an amazing novel! Cynthia Voight proved her talent as an author with HOMECOMING, DICEY'S SONG, and ON FORTUNE'S WHEEL, but she proves herself to have amazing talent at understanding people. This book is told from the point of a black woman born and raised in Maryland. Though Voight is a white woman, her power of empathy, creates a realistic telling of the story in a way that crosses all race barriers. Voight reaches into her character Mina and retreives what counts; not color, not hardships, but soul. In expounding on the soul of her character, she deftly weaves through the events and people that have shaped Mina's life. She creates a wonderful compliment to the novel DICEY'S SONG and a excellent addition to the Tillerman saga. This novel reminds me vauguely of a phone conversation between Dicey and Mina in which we finally here Mina's end of the story. Details that Dicey overlooks, Mina fills in and vice versa. I would recommend this if you've enjoyed other novels in the Tllerman saga, and also as a jumping off point into the series. Please read it... I know you'll enjoy it.

In the story "Come A Stranger" a young black girl named Mina, experiences bigotry that she is not used to. Mina is a wonderful dancer at the age of eleven, and is a very sweet kind girl, who loves herself for who she is. Then she gets accepted in a dance camp that is supposed to help her learn how to dance better, but teaches her something else. Mina loved being black and then she went to dance camp and learned how to hate being black. Mina is the only black girl at camp, but she doesn't really notice that and no one really shows their true colors toward her. Mina makes friends at camp and is sad when she has to leave when summer ends. Mina returns home and has turned into a snob, she has grown to hate being black in every way and feels that she is better than everyone else is. The next summer when she returns to dance camp, people start to act differently toward her, like they are better. Mina becomes miserable and wants to go home. Her dancing has changed a great deal because she hit puberty and is going though many changes. Dancing has become hard for Mina when it was once so easy. She is eventually kicked out of camp because no one wants a black girl there who can't dance. Mina for the first time in her life experiences racism. When she has to go home she feels angry, sad and happy all at the same time. She meets the summer reverend at her church named Tamer Shipp who comforts her, while she falls in love with him. Mina becomes a better person because of the dance camp rejection eventually meeting someone named Dicey and makes a great friend. The ending has a sort of funny twist to it. I really enjoyed this book and I think anyone would. I give this book 5 star.

Cynthia Voigt presents another sensitive representation of the struggles so many of us face as we grow up. With the help of very supportive adults in her life, Mina comes to grips with some of her "first" experiences - prejudice, falling in love, etc.

One of the great aspects of this series of books is that there are questions left unanswered in Dicey's Song, and A Solitary Blue that are answered in Come a Stranger, and it works the other ways as well. It seems as if Voigt wrote all three books simultaneously. Each young character finds in him or herself a well of strength that is bolstered by some of the people in her or his life. I find myself thinking that I would like to have Mina, Dicey, and Jeff for friends.

Mina Smiths, an African-American dancer, struggles to "fit in" with her peers and learn more about herself. Mina is very disciplined at her art and is self-conscious after being discriminated against. Most people will be able to relate to this book very easily because everyone has been treated differently at one time. Some may even learn how to solve some of their own problems through the book's teachings. This book is not essential to the series, but it does let you see part of the Tillermans' story through someone else's eyes.

This book portrays a young black American girl who grows from her innocence of security and warmth to a hostile and cruel world in which people most often judge others by their color. It gets adolescents thinking about their own perspective about this vital issue that have haunted Americans for hundreds of years. As a spice in the story, Voigt has added to this teenage girl a strong ability to love, and the growth of maturity as she realizes that her 'crush' can never be obtained no matter what. She also comes to understand the true meaning of love, which can be described by the following intercept:"Feeling love is easy; it was finding the ways to give it that was hard".
This book is highly recommendable for adolescents for the author has tried to reached the audience by saying that this is 'all right, it is perfectly normal for you to experience these emotions'. Overall, Voigt has understood what normal teenage girls go through, and have described this stage in a different, unique point of view.

I read (and loved) the entire Tillerman Series Novels when I was in junior high. This year, I decided to read them again, and I'm so glad I did. I feel like I have a completely new appreciation for the books as an adult. "Come A Stranger" is about Mina, one of Dicy's friends. It deals a lot with being black about 100 years after slavery ended in America. Cynthia Voigt does an incredible job of truly letting the reader in to the emotions of the characters. It's also very unique how each book in the series doesn't necessarily go in order of time. She takes you into the lives of characters who are related to the Tillerman children, and then you see how their lives intertwine. She is building a much bigger story, with a unique look inside many different characters. These books are truly fantastic literature. I highly recommend them to junior high students and adults alike.

Mina Smiths is a young African American girl who hopes to become a dancer. Although talented, when she begins puberty, she finds the once-easy moves difficult, and she is sent home from an all-white summer ballet camp for this reason. Through her friendship with a black neighbor and his family, she begins to grapple with issues of racism as well as coming of age. In school, she befriends a white girl, whose family has ties to her neighbor's past. Mina is a strong, assertive heroine whose triumphs and struggles are interesting and endearing.

In the story "Come A Stranger" a young black girl named Mina, experiences bigotry that she is not used to. Mina is a wonderful dancer at the age of eleven, and is a very sweet kind girl, who loves herself for who she is. Then she gets accepted in a dance camp that is supposed to help her learn how to dance better, but teaches her something else. Mina loved being black and then she went to dance camp and learned how to hate being black. Mina is the only black girl at camp, but she doesn't really notice that and no one really shows their true colors toward her. Mina makes friends at camp and is sad when she has to leave when summer ends. Mina returns home and has turned into a snob, she has grown to hate being black in every way and feels that she is better than everyone else is. The next summer when she returns to dance camp, people start to act differently toward her, like they are better. Mina becomes miserable and wants to go home. Her dancing has changed a great deal because she hit puberty and is going though many changes. Dancing has become hard for Mina when it was once so easy. She is eventually kicked out of camp because no one wants a black girl there who can't dance. Mina for the first time in her life experiences racism. When she has to go home she feels angry, sad and happy all at the same time. She meets the summer reverend at her church named Tamer Shipp who comforts her, while she falls in love with him. Mina becomes a better person because of the dance camp rejection eventually meeting someone named Dicey and makes a great friend. The ending has a sort of funny twist to it. I really enjoyed this book and I think anyone would. I give this book 5 star.