Cover of Kaleidoscope Song

Kaleidoscope Song

South Africa is loud. Listen. Do you hear the song and dance of it? The chorus of Khayelitsha life? Every voice is different, its pitch and tone and intonation as distinct as the words we choose and how we wrap our mouths around them. But everybody has a voice, and everybody sings...

Read more

Fifteen year old Neo loves music, it punctuates her life and shapes the way she views the world. A life in radio is all she's ever wanted.

When Umzi Radio broadcasts live in a nearby bar Neo can't resist. She sneaks out to see them, and she falls in love, with music, and the night, but also with a girl: Tale has a voice like coffee poured into a bright steel mug, and she commands the stage.

It isn't normal. Isn't right. Neo knows that she's supposed to go to school and get a real job and find a nice young boy to settle down with. It's written everywhere - in childhood games, and playground questions, in the textbooks, in her parents' faces. But Tale and music are underneath her skin, and try as she might, she can't stop thinking about them.

Audience
young adult
Length
medium · 384 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Kaleidoscope Song? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Kaleidoscope Song. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Our Own Private Universe Shares LGBT, young adult, contemporary
  2. Meg & Linus Shares LGBT, young adult, queer
  3. The Fosters: Keep Your Frenemies Close Shares LGBT, young adult
  4. It Looks Like This Shares LGBT, young adult, contemporary

“If you want more of the same (lgbt about diversity), start with these.”

  1. The World Unseen
  2. Red Spear: An African Odyssey
  3. If Found Return to Astropop
  4. Coins in the Coffee Cup

“If it was the contemporary that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Summer I Wasn't Me
  2. Perfect Ten
  3. Read Me Like a Book
  4. Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Beautiful Music for Ugly Children
  2. Kenya's Song
  3. Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You: Stories
  4. A Song to Take the World Apart