Released by disco funk group Machine in 1979, the song describes a young couple who abandon their roots and move to the suburbs for what they believe to be a better life (“Carlos and Carmen Vidal just had a child/A lovely girl with a crooked smile/Now they gotta split ‘cause the Bronx ain’t fit/For a kid to grow up in”), only for their daughter to embrace the same world they were attempting to escape. Similarly, “There but for the Grace of God Go I” was another dance hit with wry lyrics that belie its infectious beat. Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” (released two years after the book was set) was inspired by an experience of one of Summer’s assistants, who was mistakenly assumed by a police officer to be a prostitute, and its lyrics have a more melancholy undertone (“Bad girls/Talking about the sad girls/Sad girls/Talking about bad girls, yeah/See them out on the street at night, walkin’/Picking up on all kind of strangers”). Though these songs, like most disco music, had a peppy vibe, there were also examples of deeper, poignant tunes. So which tunes would have been on our protagonist’s playlist? A dance lover and a self-professed fan of Donna Summer ( “Love To Love You Baby” “On the Radio”) and Vicki Sue Robinson ( “Turn the Beat Around”), Nora would probably have kept Maxine Nightingale’s “Right Back Where We Started From,” Heatwave’s “Boogie Nights,” and KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Keep It Comin' Love” in constant rotation. Teens may want to read the book while listening to the bands and singers Nora mentions. Like many teens, Nora finds a sense of fun and escape in movies, TV, and music, and pop culture references, from Parliament to Carrie to the Eagles, add flavor to Medina’s novel. While she longs for a life with possibilities, reality-seeing her mother work long hours and trying to contribute to her family’s funds herself-has a way of making her dreams seem out of reach. Nora Lopez fears not only the murderer but her brother, Hector, whose behavior is becoming more and more erratic.

2016 Gr 9 Up) is aptly named the novel crackles with tension. Set in Queens during the summer of 1977, when serial killer David Berkowitz (known then as the Son of Sam) terrorized the city of New York, Meg Medina’s Burn Baby Burn (Candlewick, Mar.

Banded Together by K.C. Burn