Description:
Young ballerinas who love to leap, twirl, flutter, or float in their leotards and tutus will be enchanted by Peter Sís's graceful celebration of dance in Ballerina!. A little girl named Terry changes from pink tutu to blue gown to violet cape to white feather boa as she dances and imagines herself as the prima ballerina in The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Swan Lake. In her mind's eye, the little girl she sees in her bedroom mirror becomes a willowy, poised, grownup dancer with all the glamorous trappings of a real performance. By the end of her own performance, Terry gathers her many different colored scarves and becomes the best ballerina of all, while her audience (her mother and father) "claps and claps and claps." Peter Sís, creator of such favorites as Madlenka and the Caldecott Honor book for older kids, Tibet: Through the Red Box, brings the joy of dance to the printed page. Terry appears on the left pages in each successive costume, while on the right page readers see a transformed ballerina reflected in her big bedroom mirror, captioned by a dance position or movement: "tiptoe," "dip," "stretch." (Ages 4 to 7) --Emilie Coulter
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