Kallie's corner

by Alice Low

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0006BNTE2
• Release Date: January 1966
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 246 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A 12 year old girl matures in 1960s Manhattan

Twelve year old Jane Nichols, the only child of wealthy parents, lives a comfortable, orderly, sheltered life in Manhattan in the 1960s. She attends a private school, is a member of the most desireable clique, and does whatever her parents, teachers, and friends expect her to do. Then Kallie, a scholarship student, joins the seventh grade class, and Jane begins to question her passive and conformist existence. Kallie, the daughter of traveling anthropologists, is comfortable with people and places beyond the borders of Jane's narrowly defined world. Jane's friends think that Kallie is weird, but Jane is intrigued by Kallie's descriptions of her dollhouse, an alleged replica of a Hudson River Octagon with three stories, including a dome with a cupola. When Jane discovers that the dollhouse is not exactly as described, she is initially angry and disappointed, but she rapidly recovers as she discovers the joy of imaginative play and the satisfaction of creating playthings. Shunned by her old friends, Jane decides to celebrate Kallie's birthday by helping Kallie's neighbor, Mr. Girandello, stage a puppet show with a Christmas theme in Kallie's honor. But first, Jane has to locate a venue, write a script, help create the puppets, obtain refreshments, and solicit the assistance of the unconventional inhabitants of Kallie's Greenwich Village neighborhood. The events that follow help Jane develop her leadership skills and usher her towards the threshold of adulthood. A well-written story that I enjoyed as a child and as an adult.