Title: Feet of Dreams
Author : Aliya Shetty Oza
Type: Paperback
Age 8-11 years
(I am typing this review on behalf of my 9 year old daughter, Ankita Ahuja who studies in 5th std. She won this book from The Curious Owl and Kids Book Café Review-a-Book Contest ! Do check it out – who knows, your child too can win a book!)
“We should dance to express and not to impress”, is the message which Aliya Shetty Oza, the author of this book, Feet of Dreams gives to her readers.
Feet of Dreams is a light-hearted story or chapter book written by a budding young writer, Aliya Shetty Oza. She is a Grade 4 student at Ecole Mondaile World School, in Mumbai and is herself and avid reader with a flare for writing short stories. This is her first chapter book and the inspiration to write it has come from her favourite hobby, which is dancing. She has also been inspired by her real life teachers and friends.
The story is centered around six girls named Nicky, Julia, Kelly, Nita, Alira and Mirabelle. They hail from different countries, are passionate about different things and each one of them has a liking towards a different dance form. Kelly loves Jazz while Julia is interested in Ballet.
The girls are set to join a new academic year at the ‘Feet of Dreams’ Dance Academy. This is a three year long residential course where these girls are staying together with about 200 other students and are going to learn different dance forms like Hip Hop, Salsa, Aerial, Jazz, Ballet etc.
After bidding goodbye to their parents the girls find that they are going to stay together in the same room. They are strangers but even before they get settled in the room, they become friendly. Slowly and steadily they get introduced to the academy, its teachers, Principal Stasha (she wears red colored high heels, spits while speaking and is little cranky and strict) and their classes begin.
Everyone is happy and busy when one day while cleaning their room (which is extraordinarily dirty), Mirabelle, is caught by the Janitor. The academy has a ‘no pets allowed’ policy, while Mirabelle had brought her cute pup and had hidden it in her bag. What follows is Mirabelle’s bad session with the Principal and then her parents. But the way her friends support her throughout the incident builds a strong bond of friendship amongst them.
The normal routine resumes and the girls are together in everything. They share their joys and sorrows and have a gala time when Halloween is celebrated with full fervour in the academy.
Everything is normal when the girls discover that there is a gang of bullies in the academy. They get into trouble when they win a Fancy Dress Competition and irk the bullies – Alicia, Chloe and Zoey!! Thereafter the gang plans a revenge on them and are successful in hurting Julia.
The story reaches its climax when the End of the Year Competition is declared and the girls and the bully gang are the final teams who will compete for the trophy.
If you want to know who wins the cup and how the story ends with an interesting twist, you have to read this book.
This is an ideal book for Children who are 8-11 years old. Many children after completing school, join courses where they have to stay in a hostel and this book gives a fair idea about hostel life, strangers becoming best of friends and even jealousy and enmity amongst students of an institution. It’s a light and easy to read book. The paper quality is very good.
Other books by the author are:
The remaining are available for free download on her website or for viewing online at www.shortstoriesbyally.com
Fables by Ally
Animal Diaries
Short stories by Ally
