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Ten Cents a Dance
by
Christine Fletcher (Goodreads Author)
With her mother ill, it's up to fifteen-year-old Ruby Jacinski to support her family. But in the 1940s, the only opportunities open to a Polish-American girl from Chicago's poor Yards is a job in one of the meat-packing plants. Through a chance meeting with a local tough, Ruby lands a job as a taxi dancer—a girl paid ten cents to dance with any man—and soon becomes an...more
Paperback, 368 pages
Published
March 30th 2010
by Bloomsbury USA
(first published April 1st 2008)
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Leanne
rated it
1940's Chicago.
The main character in the novel is Ruby Janckowski, a poor Polish-American young woman living in the slums. Life is not easy for Ruby, since her father is dead, her mother has arthritis and has been fired from work (the family's main source of income), and Ruby is then relied on for supporting her unstable family. No easy task for a young, restless, teenager. But when a man named Paulie introduces her to the life of a taxi-dancer, meaning, girls who "fish"...more
Sonia Reppe
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
teens and up who like coming-of-age, and WWII era
Bad boys and secrets are both hard to keep...So it says on the cover of this coming-of-age novel set in the early 1940's. When her mother loses her job due to arthritis, Ruby Jacinski drops out of school to work in the Chicago stockyards. (Do I need to explain that this is dirty, smelly work?) Soon she is saved from this when she gets a job at the Starlight dance "school" as a taxi-dancer, dancing with men for ten cents a dance. Suddenly her work involves ball gowns and music and i...more
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Christine Fletcher's novel about a taxi dancer during World War II is both painful and compelling. Ruby Jacinski is only fifteen when she drops out of school to work in a meat-packing plant so that her family can survive. When Ruby sees the chance to escape bottling pickled pigs feet she jumps at it. She signs on at the Starlight Dance Academy where men pay ten cents for a dance with one of the "instructors." As Ruby enters the world of dancing, music, men, favors, and corruption, she ...more
This book has been sitting on my shelf for quite a while now. I don't think I'll finish it.
It sounded interesting and unique for a YA novel, so I really thought I would like Ten Cents a Dance, but the main character just didn't appeal to me. Of course, that could be quite different for others, so don't feel discouraged to give this book a try.
The story is set in 1940s Chicago, its protagonist Ruby struggling to earn the money her family desperately needs to survive the winter...more
It sounded interesting and unique for a YA novel, so I really thought I would like Ten Cents a Dance, but the main character just didn't appeal to me. Of course, that could be quite different for others, so don't feel discouraged to give this book a try.
The story is set in 1940s Chicago, its protagonist Ruby struggling to earn the money her family desperately needs to survive the winter...more
Fletcher, Christine. 2008. Ten Cents a Dance.
Ten Cents a Dance is a book I enjoyed. A great deal enjoyed. But it could make a movie that I would just love and adore. Set around 1940-1941, the novel follows the adventures and misadventures of a teen girl, Ruby Jacinski, who is charmed away from the meat factories by the glamor and allure of a local dance hall. Instead of slaving all day for a very small paycheck, she could be dancing the night away at a taxi dance hall. Ten cents per ...more
Ten Cents a Dance is a book I enjoyed. A great deal enjoyed. But it could make a movie that I would just love and adore. Set around 1940-1941, the novel follows the adventures and misadventures of a teen girl, Ruby Jacinski, who is charmed away from the meat factories by the glamor and allure of a local dance hall. Instead of slaving all day for a very small paycheck, she could be dancing the night away at a taxi dance hall. Ten cents per ...more
Reviewed by JodiG. for TeensReadToo.com
It is the 1940's and 15-year-old Ruby Jacinski has had to step in and support her family. Her father is dead and her mother is now too sick to work. The family has had to move to a poorer neighborhood and the only work Ruby can get is at the meat-packing plant, earning $12.25 per week. Her only escape is when she meets her friends to go dancing.
One night, Ruby's entire life changes. Tough-guy Paulie Suelze tells her how she can earn...more
It is the 1940's and 15-year-old Ruby Jacinski has had to step in and support her family. Her father is dead and her mother is now too sick to work. The family has had to move to a poorer neighborhood and the only work Ruby can get is at the meat-packing plant, earning $12.25 per week. Her only escape is when she meets her friends to go dancing.
One night, Ruby's entire life changes. Tough-guy Paulie Suelze tells her how she can earn...more
I don’t know why I was expecting this to be a quick, average read, but I was. The setup, I guess, made it so it’d be pretty easy to pull your usual trials and tribulations story about a girl living a double-life who then found redemption and yada-yada. So when the novel turned out to be the exact opposite, well...
Ten Cents a Dance opens with Ruby going to this huge-deal dance in her neighborhood. There she meets the bad boy with whom she’ll become inextricably involved and who’ll lea...more
Ten Cents a Dance opens with Ruby going to this huge-deal dance in her neighborhood. There she meets the bad boy with whom she’ll become inextricably involved and who’ll lea...more
Fletcher does a terrific job with a time and place not seen much (or ever) in YA lit. Ruby is a vivid character, sassy, strong and also naive. Her journey from innocent teenager to young woman trying to negotiate the gritty world of taxi dancing really kept me turning the pages. The descriptive writing is really wonderful and I can see, hear and smell Ruby's world. This is historical fiction that will win a lot of fans to the genre. I hope to see much more from this author.
Very interesting story. Some parts of the book I really enjoyed and some not as much, so I kind of have mixed feeling about this book.
This was a fantastic book - the first historical fiction book I've just loved in a very long time. It reminded me of a book I would have devoured as an early teenager without making me think "I would have enjoyed this MORE if I was fourteen years old."
It's based on a true story - a great aunt of Fletchers - and that made it all the more awesome.
It's based on a true story - a great aunt of Fletchers - and that made it all the more awesome.
Inspired by the mysterious past of her great-aunt, Fletcher created this enthralling tale of a World War II era "taxi girl." The book is set in Chicago and starts in 1941. Ruby Jacinski is the daughter of an Irish mother, who can no longer work because of terrible arthritis, and a Polish father, who died years before. As a result, 16-year-old Ruby takes on a job at the local meat packing factory.
She has always had a love for dancing and jazz so when Paulie, the guy she like...more
She has always had a love for dancing and jazz so when Paulie, the guy she like...more
It was kind of interesting to get a glimpse of the the whole "taxi dancing" culture, popular in this country from the nineteen twenties through the end of WWII. This is a new era of historical novel for me, and one with which I have little familiarity. The teen protagonist, Ruby, has already been forced to quit school and go to work to support her family. She follows in her mother's footsteps and takes a job working for next to nothing in the meatpacking industry in the slaughterhou...more
Chicago, 1941. Ruby has problems with her mother, her sister, and her whole life in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. Ruby hates working in the meat-packing factory, and she desperately wants to catch the eye of cute 19-year-old Paulie. When Paulie sets her up as a "taxi-dancer," a girl who dances with men for 10 cents per dance, Ruby knows that her mother would kill her if she found out -- but Ruby thinks it's the only way to relieve the family's grinding poverty. Along the way...more
the world of taxi dancers is something that i had never heard of before, but is something that i find very intriguing. these girls are paid to dance with men, and beyond that is where the drama ensues.
as is the case with most young adult novels, this story is about ruby's coming-of-age as she matures and grows. at the beginning, she is merely a wide-eyed naive little thing, but once she gets sucked into taxi dancing due to her love for jazz and dance [as well as a need to earn cash f...more
as is the case with most young adult novels, this story is about ruby's coming-of-age as she matures and grows. at the beginning, she is merely a wide-eyed naive little thing, but once she gets sucked into taxi dancing due to her love for jazz and dance [as well as a need to earn cash f...more
Not what I was expecting, a bit too long, but a very quick read. This book illustrates how Ruby transitions from girl to woman and not in the way you would want your daughter to experience life. Her mother cannot work due to severe arthritis, her Pop is dead, and so she has to take a low paying job in the meatpacking industry. They are barely surviving with her wages. She has a crush on Paulie, the local bad boy, who tells her about a job teaching dance to "gentlemen." Considering...more
Best Books for Young Adults: Realistic
I really liked this book. It is about a teenage girl who is living back during WWII in the Chicago suburbs. She is in a family with a single parent and siblings. Money is tight because her mother is too sick to work and Ruby's job at the factory is not allowing ends to meet. Ruby soon Ruby becomes acquainted with the neighborhood bad boy Paulie and receives employment at a dance club where she can earn $.10 for every dance. She soon finds herself...more
I really liked this book. It is about a teenage girl who is living back during WWII in the Chicago suburbs. She is in a family with a single parent and siblings. Money is tight because her mother is too sick to work and Ruby's job at the factory is not allowing ends to meet. Ruby soon Ruby becomes acquainted with the neighborhood bad boy Paulie and receives employment at a dance club where she can earn $.10 for every dance. She soon finds herself...more
Ten Cents a Dance is very informative for young women; it's about the promises men make and the promises men break. Although this book has 400 pages, I read it all in one night! I just could not put it down, and the next thing I knew, the sun was rising as I finished off the final chapter. This book was on the Boston Public Schools Middle School Summer Reading List.
The protagonist of the story, Ruby, is a high school dropout and factory worker in 1940's Chicago. At a dance, she meets...more
The protagonist of the story, Ruby, is a high school dropout and factory worker in 1940's Chicago. At a dance, she meets...more
Strange WW2-era fiction in the vein of Judy Blundell's What I Saw and How I Lied. Despite Blundell's National Book Award, this is a much better book. She writes about the same uneasily gritty, romanticized, black-and-white glamour of the 1940s, but unlike Blundell, Fletcher manages to pull herself out of it. The book ends with clarity of mind and a fitting end to the moral ambiguity that Blundell can never escape.
Ten Cents a Dance is about a Chicago Taxi-Dancer, one of dozens of you...more
Ten Cents a Dance is about a Chicago Taxi-Dancer, one of dozens of you...more
My Rating: 4.5
Ten Cents A Dance was a jazzy, heart-breaking story of a fifteen year old girl trying to support her family in the 1940's. The dialogue of the era was spot on and it flowed perfectly with the plot. Ruby, was a good girl at heart with a mind of a strong-willed woman. Her innocence was respectable but flawed by her poor judgment. The moment she fell for the neighborhood's bad boy her life changed. He introduced her to the job of a taxi dancer, a job where women paraded th...more
Ten Cents A Dance was a jazzy, heart-breaking story of a fifteen year old girl trying to support her family in the 1940's. The dialogue of the era was spot on and it flowed perfectly with the plot. Ruby, was a good girl at heart with a mind of a strong-willed woman. Her innocence was respectable but flawed by her poor judgment. The moment she fell for the neighborhood's bad boy her life changed. He introduced her to the job of a taxi dancer, a job where women paraded th...more
It's 1940, and while girls are giggling over dances and school boys, Ruby Jacinski becomes the breadwinner of the family as a factory girl. But when she meets bad boy Paulie Suelze, he nudges her into the world of taxi dancers- girls who take men out on the dance floor for money. Ruby is soon swept away with the dancing, the dresses and the money. But the deeper she delves into this world, the harder it is to hide this job from her mother, and soon Ruby realizes she's in over her head.
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has got to be one of the best historical fictions I’ve read in a long, long time. The 1940s in Chicago setting is vibrant and comes to life with Fletcher’s amazing writing ability and paramount research, from the setting descriptions to the dialogue and just, everything. I love Ruby, and I love seeing a YA novel that is really all about our female protagonist and the way she views the world around her, and less about her one-true romance with some creepy stalker-ish guy. (Not to say that there w...more
Fascinating look at a teenager living in the 'yards' of Chicago at the beginning of WWI. Ruby, 16 years old, has been supporting her younger sister and widowed mother for months when local bad boy Paulie tells her she can make more money taxi dancing than working in a meat-packing plant. Ruby can't tell anyone she has a new job for fear of her reputation and must find a way to juggle increasing attention from the men at the dance hall and her desire to make money in order to help her family. On...more
Riveting, informative and juicy all at the same time. Ruby is an easy heroine to root for even as she makes bad decision after bad decision, due mostly to her young age (15) and the dire poverty she, her widowed mother and sister face in 1941 Chicago. Ruby takes a job as a taxi dancer to pay the bills and finds she likes "the Life" as much as the financial opportunities it presents. Provides a good sense of the history at that time, including Pearl Harbor, growing problems in Europe, a...more
This book didn't have much of a moral story, nor did I learn anything from it (except a little about Taxi dancers in the 1940s), and it didn't make me want to be a better person, but.... it was a very entertaining read and I couldn't put it down once I started!
I don't typically like to delve into plot but I am really sick of novels (especially YA) that set up the girl to fall for the "bad boy" when the "bad Boy", with a bad reputation and his brooding, mys...more
I don't typically like to delve into plot but I am really sick of novels (especially YA) that set up the girl to fall for the "bad boy" when the "bad Boy", with a bad reputation and his brooding, mys...more
I can't praise Ten Cents a Dance extravagantly enough. Fletcher creates a remarkably detailed and engaging portrait of 1940's Chicago, and a headstrong young woman, Ruby, who is just beginning to come into her own and makes several questionable decisions along the way. Ruby's need to help support her family leads her into the seedy world of taxi dancing (which may be a revelation for many readers who are unfamiliar with the concept as anything more than a throwaway line uttered by Madonna,) and ...more
We always hear about young boys who lied about their age in order to enlist in World War II. Here's a tale of a girl -- fifteen year old Ruby -- who lies about her age in order to become a dance hall hostess, circa 1942. It's not prostitution -- she charges men ten cents a piece to dance with her -- but it's not exactly respectable, either. But how else is Ruby going to get her mother and sister out of the stockyard slums and into a better life?
There was so much that was good abou...more
There was so much that was good abou...more
Back during World War II, just before the US entered the war, there was slightly disreputable member of society called the taxi dancer. She was the dime-a-dance girl who worked in local dance halls, trading dances to strangers for tickets and tips. Ruby Jacinski is the half-Irish half-Polish daughter of a working class widow who can't work anymore due to arthritis. To support her family, Ruby drops out of school to work in the meat-packing plant: hard work that doesn't pay enough to support h...more
This book was not the quick, average read I was expecting, but neither was it brilliant and fantastic. I liked that I connected with the main character right away, I understood all the decisions she made and would probably have many of the same things with a few exceptions, if I were in her shoes. The mother-daughter and sister-sister relationships seemed very accurate, as well. That was the best part, for me- the connection that I felt with the characters, which enabled me to care for them. I a...more
On the cusp of WWII, 15-year-old Ruby Jacinski is forced to leave school and go to work at the local packinghouse after her mother is fired from her own job. Sick of working her fingers to the bone and hoping for a better life for her mother and little sister, Ruby meets a Capone-wannabe named Paulie Suelze and falls head-over-heels. Paulie suggests Ruby take a job as a taxi dancer at one of the Chicago dance halls, and Ruby is immediately dazzled by this "glamorous" profession. Ruby...more
This book begins in Chicago, October 1941. The USA hasn't yet entered WWII. The main character is 15-year-old Ruby, who drops out of school to work in a meat-packing plant. Her father is dead, her mother can't work due to health issues, and Ruby wants her younger sister to stay in school. Ruby soon hears of a "dancing school" where men pay for dances. She tells her mother that she's gotten a job as a night telephone operator and goes to work at the dancing school. Ruby's life cha...more
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I'm a veterinarian and author of two young adult novels: Ten Cents a Dance, which was named a 2009 Top Ten Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association, and Tallulah Falls, which was named a 2007 Book for the Teen Age by the New York Public Library. I currently write and practice veterinary medicine in Portland, Oregon.
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