Dancer

Rating:
Summary: Terrific!
Review: Dancer shows readers what being a real ballet dancer is like- how you have to work hard, how you have to love it with everything you have, how you have to make sacrifices for it. But what separates Stephanie from all the other dancers is that she doesn't fit the mold. She's black, and ballet dancers are supposed to be snow white, according to some old-fasioned person. Despite this, she's still one of the best dancers at her dance school. Stephanie also doesn't fit in at her school.

I love Stephanie's connection to Vance. It's a deep feeling that is hard to describe, but you don't find it often in books. Vance is realistic and his attitude about ballet was funny (at least to me!).

You'll like this book even if you don't dig ballet. (I'm a ballet dancer, so I REALLY liked it.) This book is mostly about fitting in and liking yourself and how different people act. The ending is PERFECT, but it leaves you wanting more!

Rating:
Summary: Terrific!
Review: Dancer shows readers what being a real ballet dancer is like- how you have to work hard, how you have to love it with everything you have, how you have to make sacrifices for it. But what separates Stephanie from all the other dancers is that she doesn't fit the mold. She's black, and ballet dancers are supposed to be snow white, according to some old-fasioned person. Despite this, she's still one of the best dancers at her dance school. Stephanie also doesn't fit in at her school.

I love Stephanie's connection to Vance. It's a deep feeling that is hard to describe, but you don't find it often in books. Vance is realistic and his attitude about ballet was funny (at least to me!).

You'll like this book even if you don't dig ballet. (I'm a ballet dancer, so I REALLY liked it.) This book is mostly about fitting in and liking yourself and how different people act. The ending is PERFECT, but it leaves you wanting more!

Rating:
Summary: Full of Soul
Review: Dancing is sixteen-year-old Stephanie's whole life and she cannot imagine her life without ballet. Ballet class is the only place where she can go and forget about everything on the outside and just concentrate on her love for dance. Stephanie's life starts to unravel a bit when a new Russian girl moves into her area and is cast as Sleeping Beauty, a role that everyone agrees should have been Stephanie's since she has been dancing at the studio longer. School is hard, too, because Stephanie doesn't fit in with the other kids. She has a scholarship to go to a ritzy private school where her father is the janitor and just cringes everytime she passes him in the hallway. She doesn't have many friends and cannot seem to understand why the rich kids are so weird. When Vance, an African-American boy about her age, starts coming to her ballet class, she tries to befriend him, but really ends up becoming friends with his Aunt, Miss Winnie, who takes Stephanie under her wing and starts giving her extra lessons on Sundays. This concerns Stephanie's parents who want her to scale back on her dancing so she can prepare to go to college and get a real career. As she comes under more pressure at home, she turns to Miss Winnie to help her turn her dreams of becoming a professional dancer into reality. In the process, she alienates herself from her parents and Vance. Stephanie cannot understand why Vance doesn't love ballet as much as she does and why he doesn't try harder at auditions and for Miss Winnie at practices. As Stephanie struggles to decide which path to follow, help comes to her in surprising places and she finally begins to grow up...

Dancer was a fun read with a little bit of romantic interest. The characters were well developed and you really understood why Stephanie was acting the way she was and it was easy to remember what life was like at that age. Stephanie did a lot of maturing in the novel and was eventually able to start making the right decisions on her own instead of relying on others to make decisions for her and then getting upset when their choices didn't match her dreams. If you like dancing or ballet, you will really enjoy this novel. I recommend it to anyone looking for a good book about dancing and/or growing up.

Rating:
Summary: I'm not a dancer, but I enjoyed this book.
Review: I took ballet lessons when I was very young. It was more the story of romance and friendship that interested me, rather than the ballet. I read most of it in one afternoon, which is pretty rare for me anymore.

Rating:
Summary: It is amazing for all the young children achieving a dream
Review: The book was so amazing that i didn't want to put it down and i am the kind of person that doesn't like to read but this book has changes a whole lot for me. Dancing is sixteen-year-old Stephanie's whole life and she cannot imagine her life without ballet. Ballet class is the only place where she can go and forget about everything on the outside and just concentrate on her love for dance. Stephanie's life starts to unravel a bit when a new Russian girl moves into her area and is cast as Sleeping Beauty, a role that everyone agrees should have been Stephanie's since she has been dancing at the studio longer. School is hard, too, because Stephanie doesn't fit in with the other kids. She has a scholarship to go to a ritzy private school where her father is the janitor and just cringes everytime she passes him in the hallway. She doesn't have many friends and cannot seem to understand why the rich kids are so weird. When Vance, an African-American boy about her age, starts coming to her ballet class, she tries to befriend him, but really ends up becoming friends with his Aunt, Miss Winnie, who takes Stephanie under her wing and starts giving her extra lessons on Sundays. This concerns Stephanie's parents who want her to scale back on her dancing so she can prepare to go to college and get a real career. As she comes under more pressure at home, she turns to Miss Winnie to help her turn her dreams of becoming a professional dancer into reality. In the process, she alienates herself from her parents and Vance. Stephanie cannot understand why Vance doesn't love ballet as much as she does and why he doesn't try harder at auditions and for Miss Winnie at practices. As Stephanie struggles to decide which path to follow, help comes to her in surprising places and she finally begins to grow up.

Rating:
Summary: Had me dancing...
Review: To Stephanie, an African American ballerina, dancing is life. Yet her parents don't understand her, her dance teacher flat out tell her she wasn't good enough to get the main part in their performance of Sleeping Beauty, and she is warned that there isn't always room for black dancers in ballet corps. As she struggles to fulfill her dream of making it as a professional dancer, her experience with Vance, also a black dancer, teaches her a lot of things and gives new hope to her dreams.

In my opinion, this was a truly amazing book. I was really able to understand the main character and her struggles, even though I have never danced in my life. Well written, I found myself cheering for Stephanie as she tried to hard to accomplish her dream, while wanting to be 'normal' at the same time. Definitely a book I will want to buy.

Rating:
Summary: perfect book for pre-teens and teens
Review: When I first picked up this book, I was a little skeptical. I was not a dancer, had never been a dancer, nor had conjured up the plans to become one in the near future. I sat down to read the novel and more than once wondered what I was doing with such a book. It was not the typical writing genre I enjoyed, but with personally knowing the author, I stuck with it nonetheless.

As the pages flew by, I found myself becoming exceedingly engrossed in Stephanie's world. I felt her pain when she continued to face setbacks from both her parents and herself as she pursued her dancing, but I also felt her jubilation when she excelled.

Dancer is wonderfully written and very true to life. Being a teenager myself, I sat in awe as I realized that I had no trouble accepting the typical teenage lifestyle Hewett painted as fact.

The connection between Stephanie and Vance I thought was a powerful one, and perhaps a little unconventional. Most of the books I've read have had a different chemistry than the one Stephanie and Vance shared, and I was relieved to find a change of pace. They both possessed the talent to dance, but Vance felt more pushed into it than Stephanie did.

I thought that the relationship between Winnie and Stephanie was engrossing, especially when the reader is hit with the realization that maybe Winnie has been planning to turn Stephanie into her all along.

This book portrays the idea that being an African-American dancer is no small feat, and Hewett backs this core theme up several times throughout the novel. For this reason I found the book far more impacting, especially when Stephanie makes it as a dancer when even she begins to have doubts.

By the end of the story, I still wondered what I was doing with ballet book in my hand; however, my skepticism was gone and I was left with no regrets. Dancer is an amazing book that pushes people to strive for their goals, even when they might have to defy everyone who stands in their way. It conveyed a powerful message and left me grinning when I finally closed the cover.