Kids into books: Ticket to the Sky Dance

This week's title: Ticket to the Sky Dance

Author: Joy Cowley

Illustrator: Nik Andrew

Publisher:Penguin Books, $15.95

Age Group: 8-13 years


They were still the width of the street away from the shop, yet already the smell was rising off Shog's skin. Fear, it was. Plain old fear. Like his armpits sensed danger long before his head did. He hugged his elbows to his sides and stepped between Jancie and Banjo.

Jancie knew what he was thinking. She always did. She moved from one foot to the other, bouncing back and forth, in the dance she reckoned was the Zulu in her from 200 years back.

'Shog, you devil, you're not backing out!' She was getting good and mad at him.

He rubbed his neck and grinned at her. Nah, it was not the Zulu but the Irish, the flaming temper of old Granny bashing the telephone with her walking stick because it wouldn't spit out her pay card. He groaned with the remembering of the little old lady with her rosary beads, going berko in a phone booth and everyone watching. Well, his sister would grow old like that. Heck, she was like that now!

From the photos they had seen, they both looked like their Jamaican mother, same high nose, same wide dark eyes, but Jancie really belonged to the other side, a Donoghue through and through, always whirling in excitement between love and hate.

'This job smells real bad,' he said.

'Not it. You!' she spat. 'You stink!'

He knew it. Oh, he knew it. Again, he looked across the road at the shoe shop.