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When juvenile biography of the story sort became unfashionable some years ago, children certainly gained in terms of historical accuracy. All that invented dialogue and those speculated feelings -- e.g., "Marie Curie must have been so excited" -- were a bit corny. But the child reader also lost something: the emotional engagement of living through a life with another person. In Tchaikovsky Discovers America, author Esther Kalman and illustrators Laura Fernandez and Rick Jacobson use a biographical approach that combines the best of both history and fiction. The history is based on Tchaikovsky's journals and letters from his 1891 trip to America. The fiction involves an 11 - year - old girl named Jenny Petroff who meets the great composer. The two modes meld together beautifully as Jenny herself keeps a diary in which she records and muses on her experiences.