A 10-year-old girl in a motorized wheelchair longs to dance and fulfills her wish in this lovely and lyrical book about following your dreams and belonging.
Through a straightforward first-person narrative, the girl tells us that she doesn’t have enough strength to blow out the candles on her birthday cake, but wants to dance. She was not expected to survive more than a few minutes after birth, but somehow did. As she tells us, we see images of her and her two moms, both at the birthday party and in a flashback to her birth.
She can only move her head, arms, and fingers, she tells us, and wonders how it would be to move like other kids. She envisions herself rolling her chair around other dancers as they glide and tumble.
One mom tells her to imagine herself dancing; a teacher tells her to pretend. But imagining and pretending aren’t enough. One day, however, the mom finds an ad in the paper for an organization called Young Dance, which is looking for “all abilities, all ages.” The girl is hesitant, wondering if the others will stare or tease her. “I am safe in my steel chair,” she says. She summons her courage, though, and goes to the dance class, where there are children “with canes and crutches, walkers and wheels, bare feet, slippers, or callouses—dancers.”
The other children welcome her, and she gradually joins with them in a harmony of movements, no matter how small. The next few pages show the children moving together to “create space, create shape, create dance.” Some moves don’t work, but they keep practicing. Her chair is a tool for dancing, not a limitation.
Finally, it is time for a performance. Despite some nerves, the girl joins the other children as we see them connecting and moving together on stage. “I roar, spin my chair, circle round, soar,” she tells us triumphantly. They are real dancers, “Not imagine. Not pretend. Not alone.”
Nancy Bo Flood’s prose is almost poetic in its spare elegance. Julianna Swaney’s soft watercolor illustrations deftly capture the flow and swirl of the dancers and the magic they create when they connect.
My only small criticism is that the two moms are both referred to as “Mom.” Some other parental title to distinguish them would have been helpful, e.g., Mom and Mama. Both are White; the girl’s skin is slightly darker, and the other children have a range of skin tones.
An Author’s Note tells us the book is based on the story of a real girl who dreamed of being a dancer. Back matter also includes a note from the executive director of the real Young Dance organization, “an inclusive artistic community of people of all abilities.”
