Monsoon Summer

Publishers Weekly

Fifteen-year-old Jasmine (aka "Jazz") Gardner, resident of Berkeley, Calif., is less thrilled than the other members of her family to be spending the summer in India, where her mother was born. While her mother, father and younger brother happily do charity work at a local orphanage (where Jazz's mother spent her first four years), Jazz broods about what she's left behind: summer practices with her track team, her lucrative business selling postcards on Telegraph Avenue, and her track teammate/business partner Steve, her childhood friend with whom Jazz has recently fallen in love. Throughout this heartfelt story, India's rainy season and myths of "monsoon madness" ("Some people go crazy with joy when the rains come. Others go mad because they can't handle the constant downpour," explains the director of the orphanage) become metaphors for Jazz's internal changes as she gradually and somewhat reluctantly assimilates to Indian culture. Danita, a 15-year-old orphan hired as the Gardners' cook, teaches Jazz to look at herself from a new perspective, convincing the tall, self-conscious teen that she is beautiful and worthy of seemingly out-of-reach Steve. In return, Jazz assists Danita in evading an undesirable arranged marriage, helping her start her own business. Besides having educational merit in conveying India's culture and its problems, Perkins's (The Sunita Experiment) novel sensitively traces an American girl's emotional growth. Readers will not be surprised when, in the end, Jazz wins greater self-respect along with Steve's heart. Ages 12-up. (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Children's Literature

Jasmine "Jazz" Gardner travels to her mother's native India on a philanthropic quest that is emphatically not her idea, and leaves behind her childhood friend-turned-love interest Steve. With his "Hope you guys survive the visit" ringing in her ears, the journey is not off to an auspicious start. Once in India, however, Jazz is drawn despite herself into many circles—the orphanage where her mother was cared for as an infant, the ritzy school she initially enrolls in, and the world of Danita, the girl who is assigned to be the family's domestic help. This is an unusual perspective on an Indian setting for more than one reason. First of all, Jazz is part Indian, part American, and even her Indian-born mother has few tangible memories of the country, having left it when she was four. As a result, the India we see is not familiar to these characters, as it would be to the families of returning immigrants. Instead it is quite exotic. In addition, it is colored by layers of emotion related to that long-ago adoption. The adoption theme, even one generation removed from the protagonist, might well resonate with the American families who adopt from overseas. Jazz's voice is sassy and likeable. Mature at times for her age, with business-savvy to boot, she leads the reader through cluttered city streets and the cloistered setting of the orphanage, to a final resolution afforded by her own generous gesture. The orphanage, located outside the city of Pune in the western state of Maharashtra, feels generically Indian rather than reflecting the specific geography and linguistic mix of that region. Monsoon Summer is one of a growing number of books for young readers about American familieswith links to the Indian subcontinent. With it, Perkins (The Sunita Experiment) contributes to changing the paradigm of cultural contact from collision to fusion. 2004, Delacorte, Ages 12 up.
—Uma Krishnaswami

KLIATT

To quote the review of the hardcover in KLIATT, July 2004: Jasmine (aka Jazz) lives in Berkeley, California, and she and her best friend Steve have a little business they run after school, weekends, and in the summer?—?a business that is highly successful. Jazz is in love with Steve, but feels awkward about letting him know how she feels, afraid it would ruin their friendship and partnership. Jazz's mother has a plan for the family to travel together to the orphanage in India where she was once abandoned as a baby; they will spend the summer helping the nuns who once had helped her so much. Most of the story takes place in India, as each member of the family discovers new interests and changes in profound ways. Jazz makes friends with an orphan named Danita who is about her own age and learns that Danita is expected to accept an arranged marriage soon and leave the orphanage. Jazz is horrified that Danita is willing to even consider this fate, and she encourages Danita to start her own business to gain some independence. Jazz's own experience is invaluable to Danita, and by the end of the summer Jazz is seeing new ways she can help Danita achieve independence. Throughout is Jazz's correspondence with Steve who is back in California, but many of the letters she writes she is unable to send, afraid of revealing her true feelings towards him. How their romance develops even over such a long distance is a major aspect of the story, and an appealing one for YA readers. But the strength of the novel is the detailed life in India in Pune during the months the family is there. The author is Bengali herself and she and her husband journeyed to Pune, "where God blessed us with the gift of ourtwin sons." KLIATT Codes: JS—Recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2004, Random House, Laurel Leaf, 257p., Ages 12 to 18.
—Claire Rosser

School Library Journal

Gr 6-9-Jazz, 15, and her best friend (and secret love), Steve, own a successful small business in Berkeley, taking photos of tourists in hippie costumes. When her mother wins a grant to spend the summer in India to establish a clinic at the orphanage from which she was adopted as a child, Jazz is reluctant to go but understands that the family must stick together. The girls she meets in Pune help her see herself with new eyes: more than a solidly built shot-putter, she is a beautiful young woman who might be worthy of Steve's affection. Once burned for following a do-gooder impulse, Jazz is initially afraid to befriend Danita, a talented 15-year-old orphan who dreams about starting her own business but feels compelled to accept a marriage proposal from an older man who will care for her sisters. Influenced by the magic of the monsoon season, the girls push one another to take chances rather than play it safe. Jazz reaches out to Steve and finds a way to make a difference in Danita's life. This realistic and romantic novel unobtrusively incorporates details of Indian life and culture. Jazz is a believable character, curious about her new surroundings but most engaged by her own family and friendship issues. She is appropriately upset by the poverty that surrounds her and increasingly aware of the Indians' different perceptions, including subtle indications of race and caste. Readers with an interest in faraway places will enjoy this story of friendship and first love.-Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

With an athletic build, Jasmine "Jazz" Gardner barely resembles her petite, delicate Indian mother. She can understand why her best friend and partner of the Biz, which sells photo postcards with Berkeley, California, backgrounds to nostalgic hippies, probably has no interest in her as a girlfriend. Now she's spending the summer with her family in Pune, India, while her mother sets up a women's clinic at the orphanage from which she was adopted. After being robbed by a homeless woman working for the Biz, Jazz hesitates to get involved in charitable acts like her mother. Is it Monsoon Madness-magical rains that cause people to behave in peculiar ways-that drives Jazz to help an orphan girl who dreams of starting her own business rather than accept a marriage proposal by a man more than twice her age, confess her love to Steve, and accept her body as beautiful? Although the author's altruistic messages are heavy-handed, she enlightens readers not familiar with the richness of Indian culture. In Bollywood fashion, she turns turmoil into happy endings. (Fiction. 12-15)