To Take a Dare
by Crescent Dragonwagon (Author), Paul Zindel (Author)
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Description
A teenage runaway encounters both love and loneliness when she decides to settle in a small Arkansas town.Tags
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Member Reviews
This book really affected me as a kid, and it felt like a secret treasure -- simultaneously taboo and comforting. About a prematurely physically developed and sexualized girl whose wretched parents kick her out. She hitchhikes around, passing for older so that she can work. At a restaurant job she takes in a young tough-guy kid, falls in love with a coworker, and reclaims herself. Heartwrenching, dark, and hopeful.
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Best Young Adult
399 works; 101 members
Runaways -- children's/young adult fiction
98 works; 4 members
Author Information
Crescent Dragonwagon is the author of more than 50 books, seven of them cookbooks, including the James Beard Award-winning Passionate Vegetarian. She has grown more than 31 bean varieties and once had a cat named Beanblossom. She writes the blog Nothing Is Wasted on the Writer and lives in Westminster West, Vermont.
Paul Zindel Born on Staten Island, New York, Zindel was raised by a single mother who pursued a variety of odd and mostly unsuccessful jobs and took in terminally ill patients to supplement the family income. Due to her eccentricity and restlessness, the mother moved the family from one apartment to another, making it difficult for Zindel to form show more lasting friendships. As a consequence, the boy lived in the world of his imagination, developing interests in both science and writing. Zindel majored in chemistry at Wagner College on Staten Island, completing both bachelors and masters degrees. During this period he also took a creative-writing course offered by the playwright Edward Albee. After college he worked briefly as a technical writer for a chemical company and then discovered a more fulfilling vocation as a teacher of chemistry and physics at a Staten Island high school. It was during this period in the early 1960s that Zindel was able to develop his potential as a playwright by drawing on his own background as well as the experiences of his young students. The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds premiered at the Alley Theater in Houston in 1965, was presented in a condensed version on television the following year, and finally opened off-Broadway at the Mercer-O'Casey Theater in 1970. Because of a fire in the theater, the play was moved, with a new cast, to the New Theater on Broadway, where it ran for a total of 819 performances. In addition to being enormously popular, Gamma Rays earned in 1970 an Obie Award as the best play of the season, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award as the best American play, and the Vernon Rice Drama Desk Award for most promising playwright. In 1971 the play was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Gamma Rays is the story of an embittered, half-mad widow, Beatrice Hunsdorfer; her teenaged daughters, Ruth and Tillie; and Nanny, a decrepit old woman who boards with them. The family lives in chaos, with Beatrice dealing out petty vengeance to everyone. Nanny has been abandoned by her daughter. Ruth is wanton, untidy, and subject to seizures. Tillie, however, has become interested in science and enters her marigold experiment in the science fair; by exposing the marigold seeds to radiation, she shows that some produce normal plants, others produce mutations with beautiful double blooms, while still others die. The metaphor, of course, is that Tillie has emerged from her chaotic environment as a beautiful and whole person, a human "double bloom." Zindel's other plays include And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little (1971), The Secret Affairs of Mildred Wild(1973), Let Me Hear You Whisper (1973), and Ladies at the Alamo(1975). While these plays continue to show Zindel's skill in writing excellent roles for women, none of them have matched the critical and popular success of Gamma Rays. Since the late 1960s, Zindel has also written several novels for young adults. The Pigman (1968), which is about a lonely widower and two destructive teenagers, has sold more than 1 million copies. His other novels include My Darling, My Hamburger (1969), I Never Loved Your Mind (1970), Pardon Me, You're Stepping on My Eyeball (1976), Confessions of a Teenage Baboon (1977), and The Undertaker's Gone Bananas (1978). As in Gamma Rays, these works display not only a penchant for grotesque humor but an uncanny awareness of the problems of teenagers. Zindel's works, which also include several screenplays, explore the themes of loneliness, escapism, and eccentricity. His best works are humorous, perceptive, and warm; they present an affirmation of life emerging from desperate and grotesque circumstances. He is especially noted for his excellent women's roles, which has helped sustain him as a best-selling playwright for school and community groups. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Distinctions
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- To Take a Dare
- People/Characters
- Chrysta Peretti; Luke; Dare; Lissa; Nettie
- Important places
- Excelsior Springs, Arkansas, USA; Benton, Illinois, USA; Arkansas, USA
- First words
- Luke has been saying that I should write all this down, this whole crazy period from when I was twelve or so until now, which is sixteen.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"Chrysta Perretti, that's who I am now."
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 41
- Popularity
- 712,885
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.14)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 1
