Lupe Wong Won't Dance by Donna Barba Higuera (review)

Seventh grade starts badly for Lupe Wong when her gym teacher informs the coed class that this year's curriculum kicks off with square dancing, and as a dubious incentive, the best dancers will perform at a school assembly and get an automatic A. Lupe needs that A to collect on her uncle's promise to introduce her to a star baseball player who, like herself, is Mexican/Chinese and an inspiration to kids who never find their identity on a standard checklist. But square dancing? Never. Turning, of course, to the internet, she finds some research into "Cotton Eyed Joe," the example piece from gym class, and takes the tidbit about its possible reference to an STI symptom to the administration. "Cotton-Eyed Joe" is out, but square dancing is still in, and a few kids—among them several good friends—have made peace with it or even mustered a little enthusiasm for it. Lupe's having none of it, and she turns every objection into a crusade, even as her friends distance themselves and her grade sinks into jeopardy. Lupe's anti-square dance rants can be pretty funny: "The ladies are wearing matching puffy skirts bloated out like a Pinterest cupcake fail. … Arm in arm, the people clomp around like trotting donkeys." Although impelled mainly by self-interest, Lupe does expose several murky or dark corners of square dancing—from truly racist lyrics, to middle-school rules that require boys to ask girls to dance and girls to comply—that result in some needed curricular reforms. Much of the realism of Lupe's crusade is buried in a concluding pile-up of feel-good episodes, but this will pair neatly with Kyi's Mya's Strategy to Save the World (BCCB 3/19) for readers with eyes open to the messiness of activism.