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Amiri and Odette A Love Story Walter Dean Myers Javaka Steptoe 9780590680417 Books

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Amiri and Odette A Love Story Walter Dean Myers Javaka Steptoe 9780590680417 Books

Amiri and Odette didn't connect with me. At times, this love story by Walter Dean Myers confused me. Just as sadly, the characters in this boldly illustrated picture book failed to move me.

Told in four acts, Amiri and Odette is a poetic retelling of Swan Lake, a play about a beautiful princess who turns into a swan. As Myers explains in his forward, when he saw a production of Swan Lake featuring Erik Bruhn, he noticed that the ever-present threat of violent played a significant part. He began to ask himself if there were modern dangers to young people, similar to those in the legend. In the city, Myers feels, there is an ever-present promise of youth. But news headlines also speak of lurking dangers. And so Myers wrote Amiri and Odette, with the aim of bringing healing and caution.

In the first act, the Swan Lake projects are introduced: "These streets are vicious, these streets are wild, these streets have mouths." Amiri also makes an appearance. He is a young person, with bright vision, but he is also a warrior and a prince of the night. Unfortunately, the descriptions rely far too heavily on adjectives rather than concrete examples. Consequently, I feel removed from the setting or as if a spectator instead of an involved reader.

In the second act, Amiri is playing on the basketball courts. Then he discovers the girl, Odette. She tells Amiri that she has danced with angels and sung with nightingales, but now she's a fallen sparrow bound forever by her pain. The reason for her grief wasn't clear to me, nor did I understand why her flock left without her. The whole act befuddled me, instead of evoking my sympathies.

By the third act, I have figured out that Odette is promised to Big Red. Yet I don't understand why that causes Odette heartache. What's wrong with Big Red, other than of course the fact Odette has fallen for Amiri? That seems to be the major conflict. Well, and the issue that somehow Amiri also ends up betraying Odette.

Perhaps, Myers left out too many details from the original for those like me who are unfamiliar with Swan Lake to comprehend his retelling of the legend. Maybe the fault lays with Swan Lake itself, which I haven't seen performed, in being just about two guys fighting over one girl. Whichever is true, I didn't end up caring who won the girl. That also means I missed out on the healing and caution, which Myers hoped to bring to readers.


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Amiri and Odette A Love Story Walter Dean Myers Javaka Steptoe 9780590680417 Books Reviews

Swan Lake the ballet is a classic because it is a well-choreographed ballet. You can take ANY weird, improbable, unrealistic, over-the-top story and turn it into a successful dance performance if the music and choreography is good enough. (This reality is key to understanding my review.)

Once upon a time Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was successfully translated into an urban story set in the streets of New York City -- that translation being the broadway musical West Side Story (later made into a film musical by the same name). A huge reason West Side Story was a blockbuster success is because it had great music and great choreography . . . like Swan Lake the ballet. Shakespeare made the story work without dancing and music, for two reasons (1) He was Shakespeare, and (2) the story of Romeo and Juliet is a story grounded in reality without supernatural elements and there is enough character and plot development for readers to understand what is going on and why it is going on.

So here is why Amiri and Odette does not work. First, I do not see how anyone unfamiliar with the original Swan Lake story will ever understand Walter Dean Myers' attempt to recreate it as an urban legend. Even his attempt in the preface ("How I Came to Write This Poem") to explain the original Swan Lake is confusing "In Swan Lake the mother of the prince is worried about her son. She wants him to settle down, to lead a safe life. She offers him a party and a chance to choose a wife, and he agrees. The prince and his friends go into the woods and we learn that they are armed. We think their weapons will also keep them safe. But when the evil Rothbart appears, the traditional weapons are useless, and we are left hoping that there is sufficient strength within the young lovers to help them survive."

??? The prince went into the woods with his friends, not his lover -- so how does the encounter in the woods threaten 'the young lovers' ??? I guess Myers didn't want to give too much of the story away, but I say the opposite if he had provided his readers with a full outline of the original Swan Lake story, they might have better understood what he was trying to say in his story about Amiri & Odette.

Myers says he wants his story to help heal today's troubled youth. If that is truly the case, then his story should help them learn truths about life -- but I fail to see any helpful truths in this book. To start off, in Act I we learn that Amiri is a 'troubled youth.' If Amiri is genuinely troubled, then he is not yet ready to get into a love relationship with a woman! It is a lie that romantic relationship is the key for healing an individual's psychological problems, just as it is a lie that having a baby will heal a failing marriage. It SEEMS at first, in both cases, that healing is happening, because new relationship and the birth of a baby each bring the type of intense joy which, for awhile, overshadows/masks/hides the underlying dysfunction. But teenagers are too young and inexperienced to understand that this APPEARANCE of healing is temporary, transitory, and, thus, deceptive and a lie.

And when the initial high ends, you are worse off than you were before! Because now you are a troubled youth WITH A WIFE OR BABY; i.e., you have even less time/money/ability to focus on healing yourself because you have burdens and responsibilities you didn't have before. Myers' tale does troubled youth a great disservice by perverting the idea that 'love heals.' Yes, GENUINE love has the potential to heal -- but intense romantic attraction is not 'genuine love.' Genuine love is what hangs around after the initial intensity of romantic attraction fades and disappears -- but, in my experience, only psychologically healthy individuals are capable of cultivating 'genuine love.'

The divorce rate is so high because American culture equates intense romantic feelings with love, but it isn't. Indeed, what I have observed during my 50+ years of life is that the greater the intensity of the initial attraction, the lower the likelihood the relationship will last! When attraction is obsessive and so intense you feel you could not live without the person, it's better to see a psychologist and pursue counseling than to pursue the relationship, because something unhealthy and dysfunctional is at play, and the relationship will eventually self-combust, possibly in a way which is destructive to one or both the individuals involved.

And I don't understand why Amiri's mother thinks marriage is the way to keep Amiri safe from 'vicious streets.' Again marriage and romance are not panaceas for the ills of the world!

Then Amiri declares his love for Odette THE FIRST TIME HE EVER MEETS HER? Omg, even Romeo and Juliet got to know one another a LITTLE bit. As one other reviewer states, there is no magic spell in this story, so the 'cure' to break the spell -- Amiri declaring his love to Odette and never saying it to another -- doesn't really work in Myers' story. But that doesn't stop Myers from using it as the primary plot device!

Further, Myers states in his preface that he tried to make his poem sound like rap music -- but it doesn't, in my opinion. The problem is that he wants to sound both like Shakespeare and like rap -- at the same time -- but I don't know if that is possible. For example

"I love you!" Amiri says. "You, Odette, and only you! You are the one, and there will never be a two. My mom is giving a party. It'll be eloquent and grand. Come, so she can meet you and rejoice when I beg your hand." And thus the pact is set, the bargain sealed, both agony and love revealed.

Yes there is rhyme, but that's about it. Not Shakespeare, but not rap either.

The bird imagery and the fact that the girl at the party is not really Odette is VERY confusing if you do not have the plot of Swan Lake memorized. Then Big Red gives up his girl and his drug territory, and leaves town, after ONE FIGHT? THAT'S unrealistic! You may counter, "It's just a fairy tale," but that's a cop-out because supposedly this story grounded enough in reality to provide wisdom and insight to urban teens! It goes without saying that a teen is not going to see a story as applicable to his/her situation if there is not enough reality for the moral of the story to apply in real life -- and life is NOT a fairy tale, as those of us of advanced age well know.

Finally, Myers ends his preface by stating "I believe in Amiri and Odette. I believe in the beauty of the music they hear and in the strength of their love." What beautiful music do they supposedly hear? And, again, how do they have a 'strong love' when they've know each other all of 2 minutes? The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard warned two hundred years ago that we were headed towards a world where the media would declare, "Tonight a revolution took place!" and we would all believe it, simply because 'authorities' said so. I almost get the feeling that Walter Dean Myers expects teens to similarly assume he has written a gritty, powerful, meaningful adaptation of Swan Lake simply because he SAYS that's what he's done, and the story is loaded with adjectives and heavy dialogue. WORDS DON'T MAKE IT SO, WDM. As another 2 star reviewer stated, this book has too many adjectives and not enough concrete examples. Hear, hear -- I agree.
Amiri and Odette didn't connect with me. At times, this love story by Walter Dean Myers confused me. Just as sadly, the characters in this boldly illustrated picture book failed to move me.

Told in four acts, Amiri and Odette is a poetic retelling of Swan Lake, a play about a beautiful princess who turns into a swan. As Myers explains in his forward, when he saw a production of Swan Lake featuring Erik Bruhn, he noticed that the ever-present threat of violent played a significant part. He began to ask himself if there were modern dangers to young people, similar to those in the legend. In the city, Myers feels, there is an ever-present promise of youth. But news headlines also speak of lurking dangers. And so Myers wrote Amiri and Odette, with the aim of bringing healing and caution.

In the first act, the Swan Lake projects are introduced "These streets are vicious, these streets are wild, these streets have mouths." Amiri also makes an appearance. He is a young person, with bright vision, but he is also a warrior and a prince of the night. Unfortunately, the descriptions rely far too heavily on adjectives rather than concrete examples. Consequently, I feel removed from the setting or as if a spectator instead of an involved reader.

In the second act, Amiri is playing on the basketball courts. Then he discovers the girl, Odette. She tells Amiri that she has danced with angels and sung with nightingales, but now she's a fallen sparrow bound forever by her pain. The reason for her grief wasn't clear to me, nor did I understand why her flock left without her. The whole act befuddled me, instead of evoking my sympathies.

By the third act, I have figured out that Odette is promised to Big Red. Yet I don't understand why that causes Odette heartache. What's wrong with Big Red, other than of course the fact Odette has fallen for Amiri? That seems to be the major conflict. Well, and the issue that somehow Amiri also ends up betraying Odette.

Perhaps, Myers left out too many details from the original for those like me who are unfamiliar with Swan Lake to comprehend his retelling of the legend. Maybe the fault lays with Swan Lake itself, which I haven't seen performed, in being just about two guys fighting over one girl. Whichever is true, I didn't end up caring who won the girl. That also means I missed out on the healing and caution, which Myers hoped to bring to readers.