Drina Ballet Series #4 Drina Dances in Italy

Drina Adams, who was sent to the country for a year's rest, returns to London's Dominick Ballet School.  Here she lives once again in the world she loves—the world of tutus and magic princes and hard, hard work.

At Eastertime, Drina goes to Italy to meet her Italian grandmother Adamo, whom she has never seen.  There, in Genoa, she is suddenly offered the chance every young ballerina dreams of—to dance with the Dominick Ballet Company itself!  

The above summary is from the publisher. 

Drina becomes friends with a refugee named Ilonka who came from the eastern European country of Lynzonia. 

From page 32:

Drina was by no means ignorant of the tragedies of Europe.  There were three girls and a boy at Chalk Green who had, in their different ways, escaped from behind the Iron Curtain.  In the little country of Lynzonia there had recently been a tragic and unsuccessful revolution against Soviet rule.

Lynzonia is fictitious, but the Iron Curtain and Soviet oppression in Europe were quite real.  It was timely and jarring to read this passage at the beginning of the second week of Russia's war with Ukraine.

Jenny loves farming films.  From page 67 of the Collins edition:

Jenny adored the farming film, which she pronounced more sensible than usual.

"They did cram in rather too many disasters—to make the story exciting, I suppose—but he was quite a sensible man.  I hate the soppy ones, who neglect their farms for their girl-friends."

Farming disasters and farmers neglecting their farms for their girls struck me as funny.

I found parts of this book to be a bit boring.  During one stretch, Drina exchanges letters with her friends, Jenny, Rose, and Ilonka, as well as with her grandmother.  This part of the story consists of one lengthy letter after another, all of which are in italics, which makes reading them to be more difficult than the rest of the book.  This part of the story also has a lengthy description of the entire plot of a ballet.  I was so bored and began skimming.

The book gets more interesting during the part about Igor Dominick's son in Italy.  It then goes back into more letters and lots of detail about Italy.  After I finished the book, I realized that a good part of it is a travelogue.  I think overall that the travelogue aspect is interesting, and I did enjoy some parts of it.  But I'm really struggling with reading right now, so I found it to be quite tedious.

Parts of the book are excellent, parts are very good, and other parts are boring.  The book is overall very good.