The Mozart Season

At the beginning of summer, 12-year-old Allegra Leah Shapiro finds out that she has been selected as a finalist in a local violin competition. She spends the summer practicing Mozart's fourth violin concerto, preparing for the competition and sorting through her conflicting feelings about wanting to be herself and wanting to please her parents and grandmother. The Mozart Season is long on rumination and short on action, as Allegra wrestles with everything from what it takes to be a musician to what it means to be half Jewish and half Gentile to the exact nature of her connection with her grandmother, murdered in a concentration camp during World War II. Unfortunately, Wolff's constant repetition of themes is hardly hypnotic, as was probably intended, but simply mind numbing. However, Wolff's slightly flawed work contains some redeeming qualities--it is a pleasure to have a novel of ideas for young adults that describes the delicate dance between honoring traditions of the past and being your own person in the present. Ages 11-13. (May)