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nancy@nancykeane.com
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Ho,
Minfong.
STONE GODDESS
New York: Orchard Books/Scholastic,
2003
IL 5-8, RL 6.9
ISBN 0439381975
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“Fingers
flexed far back, wrist circling continuously, back arched, shoulders straight,
ankles bent, feet alternately flat on the floor or lifting-every movement
had to be controlled, and in perfect unison with the other dancers….As
they moved, so I moved, because in dance we were moved by the same rhythm
that moves the whole world…Teeda was lifting one slim arm up, and so I
did too, trained as I had been for years to dance behind my sister…Like
a goddess she was, like the apsaras of old that we were supposed to be.”
When the Khmer Rouge take over the Cambodian capitol of Phnom Penh, the
lives of Nakri and her family are drastically changed. They are forced
to leave their home and the children are made to work in a terrible labor
camp. The work is brutal and endless. Nakri and her sister Teeda follow
the rules and try not to draw attention to themselves. Except, there was
one thing that Teeda did in secret for which she could be severely punished
if caught. “She danced. Not the whole sequence of steps, of course, not
even for more than a few minutes or so. But every chance she got, in the
twilight when she would be the last one coming in from the fields, or behind
the bamboo grove near the river, she would practice.” Then Teeda gets sick
and with a deliriously high fever, she dances and dies shortly after. After
the Khmer Rouge is overthrown, Nakri’s family is reunited and they make
their way through refugee camps to the United States. Read Stone Goddess
by Minfong Ho to see how a young girl deals with the atrocities of war
and begins to build a new life. Oklahoma
Sequoyah Young Adult Book Award nominee, 2005-2006 |
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SUBJECTS:
Cambodia -- History 1975-1979 -- Fiction.
Cambodia -- History 1979- -- Fiction.
Sisters -- Fiction.
Dance -- Fiction.
Survival -- Fiction.
Emigration and immigration -- Fiction. |
© 
Permission is granted for the
noncommercial duplication and use of this resource, provided it is substantially
unchanged from its present form and appropriate credit is given.
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