: Fiorella De Maria
: My Family and Other Skaters
: Magnificat, Inc.
: 9781639679997
: 1
: CHF 10.50
:
: Kinder- und Jugendbücher
: English
: 159
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
With both realism and humor, this compelling and heartwarming novel describes, in first-person narrative, the joys and the challenges of a modern English family. They are unique in many ways-for one thing, all of the six children are competitive figure skaters, and for another, they have a pet alpaca. Yet, they weather the storms of life with the same, sometimes clumsy attempts at patience and understanding found in most families.

2

I can remember the first time I knew I wanted to be an ice skater. Actually, it’s the first thing I ever remember thinking about. I was three-and-a-half years old, tucked up under my bright pinkTombliboosduvet with Mum showing me funny films on her phone. I’d spent the past two days throwing up, and Mum was trying to cheer me up. When she ran out of films of cats running away from cucumbers, she found a film about the famous ice-skating couple Torvil and Dean winning gold at the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics. I watched them gliding around the ice rink in their stunning purple costumes to the tune ofBoléro, and then everyone cheering and throwing flowers and the judges giving them the best score ever: 6.0– 6.0–6.0–6.0… from all nine judges! I just thought, “I’m going to do that.”

Mum had other ideas. She said she took me to the rink, opened the door, and felt a blast from the North Pole hitting her as we stepped inside. Mum came from a hot country where the only ice they ever see comes in little cubes in glasses of lemonade. She said she just thought, “No way am I spending the next ten years shivering at the side of an ice rink.” So, she made me do ballet, pretending I needed to do ballet first to make my little legs nice and strong. Hmmph.

Every Saturday for six long months, we walked to Miss Hannah’s ballet school in a big building overlooking the river. And every Saturday I asked when I was going to start skating. “Soon,” said Mum, which means never.

Then we got to ballet school one Saturday and found the windows smashed in and the class cancelled. I have never been so thankful to a pair of naughty vandals. That was the end of Saturday ballet class. For ever and ever. Bye-bye shiny satin ballet shoes; hello Ice Champions rental skates.

According to Mum, she prayed when I first got on the ice that I’d hate it, but God was on my side and listened to me instead. I was so excited I jumped right onto the rink, which scared Nick the coach half to death, because he thought I was going to fall flat on my face.

“She’s brave!” he said, but I couldn’t stop. I skated round and round in great big circles. I wasn’t skating; I was flying. It was