Skip to main content

To Dance: a memoir

Image
By DeeDee
To Dance: a Memoir
By Siena Siegel
Antheneum Books for Young Readers, 2006, unpag. graphic novel

One of this year's Siebert Honor books is"To Dance: memoir" by Siena Siegel, being the first graphic novel to win this award. Some people think that graphic novel is just a fancy name for comic book, and on the most basic level it is, in the same way that a billboard is a work of art. However, a graphic novel is much more than just a comic book. It is a new literary form. In a graphic novel, the role of pictures and words are reversed. In a regular novel, the text is illustrated by a few well chosen pictures. In a graphic novel the pictures bear the burden of story telling and are illustrated by a few well chosen words. The graphic novel format is a good choice for the topic of this book, which is, of course, dancing. This is a story of the author's journey from her first ballet class at age 6, to dancing with Baryshnikov at the New York State Theater. The pictures show her first classes, passion for dance, hard work and rewards. The story is told with sparce, straight forward narrative that sounds like a young girl's voice. The pictures, done by the author's husband, are simple line drawings, filled in with mostly pastel watercolor washes. Even though they are simple they are very expressive and take full advantage of the visual language that has become a part of the graphic novel vocabulary. The book is ideal for young girls who are just starting dance class or for anyone who has ever been enchanted by a ballet performance.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

By
A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall By Jasmine Warga New York: Harper, 2024. Fiction. 211 pages. A painting has been stolen from the Penelope L. Brooks Museum and sixth-grader Rami Ahmed is worried he's the main suspect. His mother works at the museum as the lead custodian and Rami spends a lot of time hanging out at the museum while she works. On the day the painting went missing, the only people there were the security guard Ed, the cleaning crew, and Rami. Then, a mysterious girl appears in the museum. She floats around from room to room and only Rami can see her -- and she looks exactly like the girl from the missing painting. To prove his innocence and help figure out who the floating girl is, Rami partners up with an aspiring sleuth at school named Veda and the two dive into unexpected situations as they try to solve the mystery. This is a cozy mystery that is focused mostly on characters and ambiance and only a little on the mystery itself. Don't read this book if yo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Alice with a Why

By
Alice with a Why By Anna James New York: Penguin, 2026. Fiction. 240 pgs. In 1919, in the aftermath of the first World War, Alyce is living with her grandmother in the English countryside. Her grandmother, also named Alice, tells Alyce (with a y) stories from her childhood adventures in a wonderful land filled with white rabbits and mad hatters. Alyce doesn't really believe the silly stories, she just misses her father who was killed in the war. One day, Alyce receives a mysterious invitation to tea, and subsequently falls into a pond where she is transported to Wonderland. Her grandmother, of course, is that Alice. Alyce is prompted by the Mad Hatter, Dormouse, and March Hare to seek out the Time Being and put an end to the war between the Sun King and the Queen of the Moon. Thus begins Alyce's adventure through Wonderland. I have a certain soft spot for the original story of Alice in Wonderland. It is one of my particular favorites and I often have a hard time reading new int...
Post a Comment
Read more