Jasmine "Jazz" Gardner heads off to India during the monsoon season. The family trip is her mother's doing: Mrs. Gardner wants to volunteer at the orphanage that cared for her when she was young. But going to India isn't Jazz's idea of a great summer vacation. She wants no part of her mother's do-gooder endeavors. What's more, Jazz is heartsick. She's leaving the business she and her best friend, Steve Morales, started--as well as Steve himself. Jazz is crazy in love with the guy. If only he knew! Only when Jazz reluctantly befriends Danita, a girl who cooks for her family, and who faces a tough dilemma, does Jazz begin to see how she can make a difference--to her own family, to Danita, to the children at the orphanage, even to Steve. As India claims Jazz, the monsoon works its madness "and" its magic. "From the Hardcover edition." Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Fifteen-year-old Jasmine (aka "Jazz") Gardner, resident of Berkeley, Calif., is less thrilled than the other members of her family to be spending the summer in India, where her mother was born. While her mother, father and younger brother happily do charity work at a local orphanage (where Jazz's mother spent her first four years), Jazz broods about what she's left behind: summer practices with her track team, her lucrative business selling postcards on Telegraph Avenue, and her track teammate/business partner Steve, her childhood friend with whom Jazz has recently fallen in love. Throughout this heartfelt story, India's rainy season and myths of "monsoon madness" ("Some people go crazy with joy when the rains come. Others go mad because they can't handle the constant downpour," explains the director of the orphanage) become metaphors for Jazz's internal changes as she gradually and somewhat reluctantly assimilates to Indian culture. Danita, a 15-year-old orphan hired as the Gardners' cook, teaches Jazz to look at herself from a new perspective, convincing the tall, self-conscious teen that she is beautiful and worthy of seemingly out-of-reach Steve. In return, Jazz assists Danita in evading an undesirable arranged marriage, helping her start her own business. Besides having educational merit in conveying India's culture and its problems, Perkins's (The Sunita Experiment) novel sensitively traces an American girl's emotional growth. Readers will not be surprised when, in the end, Jazz wins greater self-respect along with Steve's heart. Ages 12-up. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Gr 6-9 Jazz, 15, and her best friend (and secret love), Steve, own a successful small business in Berkeley, taking photos of tourists in hippie costumes. When her mother wins a grant to spend the summer in India to establish a clinic at the orphanage from which she was adopted as a child, Jazz is reluctant to go but understands that the family must stick together. The girls she meets in Pune help her see herself with new eyes: more than a solidly built shot-putter, she is a beautiful young woman who might be worthy of Steve's affection. Once burned for following a do-gooder impulse, Jazz is initially afraid to befriend Danita, a talented 15-year-old orphan who dreams about starting her own business but feels compelled to accept a marriage proposal from an older man who will care for her sisters. Influenced by the magic of the monsoon season, the girls push one another to take chances rather than play it safe. Jazz reaches out to Steve and finds a way to make a difference in Danita's life. This realistic and romantic novel unobtrusively incorporates details of Indian life and culture. Jazz is a believable character, curious about her new surroundings but most engaged by her own family and friendship issues. She is appropriately upset by the poverty that surrounds her and increasingly aware of the Indians' different perceptions, including subtle indications of race and caste. Readers with an interest in faraway places will enjoy this story of friendship and first love. Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Gr. 7-12. Fifteen-year-old Jasmine ( Jazz ) is conflicted about spending the summer in Pune, India, where her mother has received a grant to work at the orphanage where she had lived as a child. Jazz would rather spend the summer at home in California, with Steve, the best friend she secretly loves. Jazz has always identified more with her tall, shy, bulky father than with her slight, do-gooder mother, but as she forms new friendships in Pune and delves deeper into her Indian heritage, she discovers her own strong beauty as well as the confidence to help others. Although Jazz's loving, altruistic, multiethnic family is a bit idealized, this debut novel, written in Jazz's smart, funny, self-deprecating voice, vividly evokes the smells, sights, and sounds of India in the monsoon season. Perkins folds interesting questions about caste discrimination, charity, and the challenges of growing up with a heroic parent into her warm, romantic story, which shows how the deepest private discoveries often come from very public risks. For other books about Indian and Indian American culture, see the Read-alikes Out of India [BKL S 15 03]. GillianEngberg. From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.