Tempo Change

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More About This Book

Overview

It’s tough enough defining your identity—imagine if your father was a rock legend.

Blanche Kelly's dad is a famous indie rock icon, but not many people at the private school she attends on scholarship know this. Her father left when she was in the first grade, and she can’t quite forgive her mom for not understanding that an artist like her dad needs the time and space to connect to his muse.

When Blanche creates an all-girl rock band, their sound captures a wide audience and the band is invited to compete at the Coachella Music Festival. Blanche feels this could be the perfect time for a reunion with her father. Won’t he be proud to hear her band? Won’t he be happy to get to know his only daughter?

Author Barbara Hall sensitively explores the expectations between parents and teens, as well as the value of learning about your past to make your own future.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Hall, a rocker as well as an author (The Noah Confessions), is familiar with the trappings that accompany life as a musician, yet this novel about a high school band's moment in the sun teeters between glam and corny. Sixteen-year-old Blanche Kelly's father, a famous musician, has been out of the picture for the past 10 years, and her mother is a recovering alcoholic. Blanche, smart but lacking a social life, starts a band called The Fringers on a whim; the group wins some local competitions and goes on to play at the Coachella music festival. She enjoys the spotlight, but is crushed when her selfish and aging rock star dad, who has resurfaced, is not what she expected. Blanche is a religious skeptic, which lends the book some depth, and music buffs will appreciate nods to Jeff Buckley, Elliott Smith and the like. But the clichéd vocabulary used to describe the music scene and the tepid dialogue between Blanche and her dysfunctional parents may disappoint. Ages 12-up.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
School Library Journal
Gr 7–10—Blanche, a high school sophomore, does not want to be defined by her father. A renowned musician, Duncan Kelly disappeared at the height of his career, abandoning not just his fans but also his six-year-old daughter. Of course, no one at the teen's downscale prep school even knows her father is famous, and she treats her own songwriting like a dirty secret. Blanche is headed straight for college, no detours and no messing around—until she suddenly decides to start a band. Things go smoothly at first, but soon tensions develop among the band members, followed closely by an identity crisis for Blanche. Is she a freak, or an artist? The one thing she knows is that she is not a normal person for whom everything is certain, which is how she classifies her mother, many of her peers, and, eventually, her bandmates. It takes meeting her father to realize that the world isn't divided into those who made it and those who gave up. Tempo Change treads familiar paths and the plot is sometimes contrived, particularly the unreasonable premise that the entire novel is Blanche's memoir, written over the weekend at the request of a reporter. Still, readers will be drawn by the protagonist's frank narrative and her insider/outsider perspective toward music culture. Give it to fans of Cecil Castellucci's Beige (Candlewick, 2007) or Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist (Knopf, 2006).—Eliza Langhans, Hatfield Public Library, MA
More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
Blanche's father, who did a disappearing act when she was six, is famous, a seminal rocker who has been off finding himself for the last ten years. Blanche idealizes him and longs to have him back in her life. So, after her newly formed band is asked to play in a famous festival, she invites him to attend, inadvertently setting off an emotional bombshell. Although that's what the plot is about, Hall's real interest is the personal and generational interconnections between ego, talent, dreams and assumptions. These concerns are neatly dramatized through a host of characters, most notably Blanche's recovering alcoholic mother, who stuck with her daughter and whose scaled-back aspirations are modest, and Blanche's self-absorbed, runaway father, a legend with an oversized talent and unresolved ambitions. This is not to say that the story is in any way preachy or didactic. Despite the fact that the plot hits some dissonant notes, it's a funny, lively performance, and Blanche, who narrates the story in the first person, is a witty, likable companion. Bravo. (Fiction. 12 & up)

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780385736084
  • Publisher: Random House Children's Books
  • Publication date: 11/9/2010
  • Pages: 256
  • Sales rank: 914,128
  • Age range: 12 - 15 Years
  • Lexile: 0690L (what's this?)
  • Product dimensions: 5.20 (w) x 7.90 (h) x 0.70 (d)

Meet the Author

Barbara Hall is the author of eight novels and has written and produced numerous television shows, including Joan of Arcadia. She lives in Santa Monica, California, with her daughter.

Read an Excerpt

And So It Happened

When I got home from school there was a note by the phone.

My mother had written it. It was in her large, loopy handwriting that always seemed like it was shouting. Sometimes she actually drew flowers or smiley faces and they seemed like they were shouting, too. Be happy! Chin up! It's all good! But the contents were usually completely ordinary, like Dinner's in the fridge! or I'll be home around eight!

This time the note was completely different:

Maggie Somebody called from Topspin magazine. Something about writing an article. Here's the number. She wants you to call. XOX

I stared at it for a long time. Finally I picked up the phone and called my mom at work.

"Biscuit," she said in her chirpy tone. That was the name of the clothing store she worked in, not a nickname for me.

"Hi, Mom. What's this note?"

"What's what note?"

"Somebody called from Topspin magazine?"

"Oh, yes. Maggie from that magazine. I know it's a music magazine. Does this have something to do with your father? Or maybe you don't want to tell me?"

"Mom, I really have no clue. You took the call. Topspin is like one of the best indie magazines on the market. What about an article? Maybe it has something to do with Coachella."

"Why don't you just dial the number and see?"

"This could be a big deal," I said.

"Well, just give that Maggie a call. Let me know what she says."

I hung up and stared at the phone for another minute, then dialed the number. Someone said, "Topspin magazine," and I asked for Maggie and then someone said, "You got her."

"Maggie?"

"Yeah."

"This is Blanche Kelly."

"Who?"

I repeated my name. "You called about an article."

"Oh, Blanche Kelly," she said. I could hear the exhale from a cigarette. I pictured her as some hip and tortured type.

"So Blanche," she said, as if she was picking up from some conversation we had had earlier. "I'm really interested in your experience at Coachella."

"You're interested in my band, the Fringers?"

"Who?"

"The Fringers. My band. We played at Coachella. That's why you're calling? Somebody saw us there or something?"

"Everybody knows what happened there. It was history-making."

"Oh."

"And I want you to write about the whole experience."

My heart dropped a little. Deep down I'd known it would be like this. There was no escape.

"You want me to write about my father."

"Yes," she said. "That would make a great piece."

There was a protracted silence.

Then she added, "Oh, money. We pay . . ." Blah blah blah. Some words and terms that didn't mean much to me. I did some math in my head and figured out what they were going to pay me. Not that much. But this wasn't about the money.

"I'm in high school," I said.

"Right," she said.

"I'm not a professional writer."

"We know that. But we want your unique perspective."

"About my father."

"Right," she said. "You're the only daughter, right?"

I was quiet.

"You can write whatever you want. We can fix it up, you know," she added.

What could I say? That this was going to be happening to me for the rest of my life? In one way or another. While I was still quiet she piped up with "Okay, we'll pay three hundred dollars."

I was still thinking, but asked, "When would I have to deliver it?"

"I'll need it by Monday."

I laughed. "That's so soon."

She said, "I know, but that's real-world journalism."

Real world. She didn't sound too much older than me from her voice and she had figured out the real world.

"So will you do it?" she asked. " 'Cause I'll keep an open space."

"I'll think about it."

"I need it on Monday."

"Best I can say is, if you get it on Monday, then I guess you'll have your answer."

I hung up the phone and stood in the living room and thought about what I had to say.

Maggie from Topspin said she wanted to know about my own unique perspective. Because of my father.

As I had recently learned, it's best to be careful what you ask for.

I went into my room and turned on my computer. I stared at its blank but demanding screen. The prompter blinked.

There was so much to say.

Now I had someone to say it to.

So I started to write. I couldn't start with what Maggie called a "history-making" experience. For me it went back before that day. I started where I felt I had to . . . back to when the cracks in the dam first appeared, and then the dam burst.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3.5
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Sort by: Showing all of 3 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted February 21, 2012

    Hi

    I wouldnt recommend buying it. Not worth it. Its about a girl who wants to be a star like her dad but just as her band rises, it falls apart in weird ways. Good read if you are bored and have NOTHING else to read.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted August 8, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    Another one bites the dust...

    tempo Change, in retrospect, did not have a lot going on - at least, anything major that sticks out in my mind as I type this review. It was basically about a girl who starts a band and hopes that this will entice her father to come back into her life. Nothing too deep or mind-boggling, but I still found it rather charming. A nice story to fill in that small gap of free time right before I completely zonk out from exhaustion.

    I suppose, after reading about loud-mouth, rebellious girls, Blanche seems a little quiet in her rebel ways. Let's face it, the girl on the cover doesn't seem very "rebel" material either - more "nice girl" aura. Not a lot of time was spent on the other characters, save one, but even then it was but a blink of an eye. Which sometimes works in books if the main character has quite the presence, but I think it might have made the story more interesting if the other characters had more page time.

    Like I said earlier, tempo Change is like a love child from this lullaby and I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, but the main character does not have as much spunk and the story is not as compelling.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted July 10, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    Reviewed by LadyJay for TeensReadToo.com

    "There was so much to say......Now I had someone to say it to."

    Blanche Kelly knows good music. She knows music because of her father, Duncan Kelly. He was a musical genius, in his prime.

    But most of the people at Laurel Hall Academy (fondly referred to as LaHa by its students) don't know this detail of her life. She tries to keep his influence hidden, but it's always there - the guitar he left with her mother; the music column that she writes for the school newspaper; the snippets of lyrics that Blanche begins to pen.

    It all culminates with the creation of The Fringers, an all-female rock band, sprung from the mind of Blanche Kelly herself. Blanche does not necessarily want to start a band, but her over-bearing guidance counselor feels that it would be best if Blanche "stretch" herself artistically. So, The Fringers are born, and a journey begins.

    Blanche learns much about herself as a musician, as a daughter, and as a person. Her journey is surreal, yet surprising and profound.

    TEMPO CHANGE is an excellent novel. It reminded me a lot of the film Almost Famous. William Miller and Blanche Kelly are very similar characters. Both are thrust into the music industry and must find their way without losing any integrity. Even if you are not familiar with Almost Famous, the book still resonates.

    If you are passionate about something, anything, read this.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
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