Bindi Babes

Narinder Dhami

2/2/2005

Review by Molly

The narrative told by twelve year old Amber Dhillon opens at school: Coppergate Secondary School where the sisters are known to be too cool and too attractive and too chic.   Amber regales her friends with a description of the new trainers she is getting as soon as she persuades her dad to let her get them, while older sister Geena, 14, is showing her new mobile phone to a group of friends.   Amber's sort of friend Kim needs help, again.  Kim seems to need help a lot.  This time she is running from George Botley who is trying to stuff a worm or something down her back.  Jazz, aged 11, takes her classes at the lower school.  It was just an average day until the girls arrived home after school to find their father was already there.  Dad did not come home early.  He had the most dreadful news: his sister was come to live with the family.

Merchant Mr Attawal, disagreeable next door neighbor Mrs Macey, head of the lower school Mr Grimwade, teachers Miss Thomas and Mr Agora, a clumsy newspaper boy, inspectors coming to visit Coppergate, Ms Woods and a special assembly, sharing a room and of course Auntie all figure in this entertaining tale.  The girls are determined to marry Auntie off, doesn't matter to whom.  Just to get her out of the house and out of their hair becomes the main focus of life for the sisters.  That, and the assembly and Kim and her problems, and the newsboy who sails his newspaper anywhere but on the porch.  Before long the meddling aunt has set about to make friends with the disagreeable neighbor, provide a listening ear to Kim and the newsboy and Mr Attawal and refused to be married off to anyone including the oh so cute school teacher.  What are the girls going to do?  Just when it seems that Auntie has finally gotten a clue, their rude behavior has worked and Auntie will leave the girls find a most significant letter.

Narinder Dhami has set down a captivating, absorbing anecdote certain to enchant girls in the target audience of 11-15 year olds.  The interaction among the sisters, their dealing with having their lives turned topsy turvy first by the demise of their mother and later with the introduction of an aunt they don't really know, don't trust, and don't want to like; is plausible.  Conversation between the girls moves the account along in satisfying fashion.  The conspiracy and machination undertaken by the girls in trying to marry their aunt off to someone, anyone at all, just to get her out of the house is so similar what might as a matter of fact take place in a comparable life situation. 

Filled with generously contrived characters, anticipated strife appropriately determined, snappy colloquy and a ingeniously interwoven tale Bindi Babes is a well written anecdote.  Author Dhami dexterously captures the vitality of girls in the target age and composes a vibrating yarn which grabs reader appeal from the first lines and holds interest fast right to the last paragraphs as the Bindi Babes come to perceive that life cannot always run precisely as we wish.  Death, transformation, expectancy and longing all play a part in what our lives were, are, and will be.

Banner, engaging work appropriate for the upper middle grades to high school library, the home personal bookroom and home school library.  Girls especially will delight in the publication. Written by a British woman, Bindi Babes contains colloquialisms sure to fascinate the US American reading audience.

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