Amazon.com
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
From Publishers Weekly
S¡s here uses the format of his successful series for very young boys (Fire Truck; Ship Ahoy!) to strong effect in exploring a girl's love of ballet. Equipped with a trunkful of dress-up clothes, her dancing aspirations and a full-length mirror, young Terry dreams she is a prima ballerina. With each change of dancewear, she transforms: "She puts on her pink tutu and dances The Nutcracker," writes S¡s, as Terry's reflection shows a graceful, mature ballerina starring as the Sugarplum Fairy. On the next spread, the girl changes into a red leotard, and her exotically dressed reflection leaps over volcanoes in "a fire dance." Each spread also illustrates a physical aspect of dance in non-technical terms ("Stretch," "Twirl," "Leap," etc.). Older balletomanes can fill in the proper labels, but S¡s is more interested in a pas de deux with a child experiencing the first thrill of slipping on leotards, tights and dance shoes. Ages 3-up. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
PreS-K-An aspiring ballerina can't wait to practice before a large mirror in her room when she gets home from school. First, she warms up in her tights and then dons various costumes: a pink tutu for The Nutcracker, a red leotard for a fire dance, a blue gown for The Sleeping Beauty, an orange turban for a tiger dance, a white feather boa for Swan Lake, a green hat for a spring dance, and a violet cape for Cinderella. Last of all, she swirls streamers of all the colors as she pretends to be the best ballerina in the world. In crisp black-line art combined with watercolor, the verso pages show the little girl in simple outline performing the various steps, while the recto pages show a more-detailed, grown-up mirror image dancing the various roles with grace and spirit, just the way little ballerinas would like to do. The text is minimal, and all is printed on heavyweight paper. A book that's sure to feed young dancers' dreams and encourage them to step a little higher.-Patricia Pearl Dole, formerly at First Presbyterian School, Martinsville, VACopyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Ages 3-5. Following the same format as Ship Ahoy! (1999) and Dinosaur! (2000), Sis offers another delightful fantasy about play. "Terry loves ballet," begins the text as a young girl enters her bedroom and runs toward what seems to be an elegantly framed mirror. The following spreads juxtapose the real Terry with her imagined self. On the left-hand pages, drawn in simple lines, the girl appears in variously colored, basic costumes-- a red leotard, a yellow turban, a violet cape. Framed in a "mirror" on the right-hand pages, grown-up Terry dances through elaborately rendered magical scenes, until "the best ballerina of all" appears, streaming rainbows of color. As "her audience claps and claps," little Terry, all simple lines again, is hugged by her parents. In this exuberant celebration of dance, Sis once again creates a beautifully realized, spot-on view of creative kids at play. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
"In my view, life without dance would be quite unthinkable. In this book, Peter Sis confirms it."
Book Description
Do you love to dance? If so, this is the book for you! Twist! Stretch! Reach!Leap! Be a swan! Be a tiger! Be a flame! Be a ballerina!
Card catalog description
A young girl puts on costumes of different colors and imagines herself dancing on stage.
About the Author
Peter Sis was born in Czechoslovakia and now lives in New York City with his wife and two children. His drawings appear regularly in The New York Times Book Review and other publications. He is the author-artist of The Three Golden Keys, Komodo!, Follow the Dream, and A Small, Tall Tale from the Far, Far North. He has illustrated several books by other authors, including Sid Fleischman and George Shannon. In His Own Words..."I was born in the middle of the century and grew up in the magical city of Prague, Czechoslovakia, in the heart of Europe. My father was a filmmaker and explorer, and he brought back many interesting things from his travels to Tibet, Borneo, and other places all over the world."From early on, I was encouraged to make pictures by my mother and father, both artists, and by their artist friends. I was not always encouraged at school, where I used to draw little pictures on everything, for everybody, usually in the middle of class."I remember with great fondness what I thought of as the largest bookstore imaginable. It was our library at home. My mother's father designed railway stations in Cleveland and Chicago in the 1930s, and my mother lived in the United States as a little girl. When the family returned home, my grandfather brought back with him a great many books, including a collection of all the Sunday cartoons from the Chicago newspapers bound in one large volume. I remember stretching myself over a page, and panel by panel devouring Little Orphan Annie, Mutt and Jeff, Krazy Kat, and the one with the little cable car."I went from art school to art school and had some wonderful teachers, especially J. Trnka, who was a famous illustrator and animator. I remember sometimes becoming so involved with a picture that I didn't notice the night was just about over. I would place the picture next to my bed so that I could see it first thing when I awoke. Things changed when my daughter, Madeleine, was born. I began to get up at night to look at the picture and my daughter. Now that my son, Matej, is here, my pictures remain out of the house in the babyproof studio, and I get up at night just to look at the children."I was lucky to have Quentin Blake as a tutor at London's Royal College of Art. By that time, I had already become involved with animated films. After my film Heads won a prize in Berlin in 1980, 1 did an animation series for TV in Zurich, Switzerland, and then another film in London. Before I knew it, I found myself working on a film in Los Angeles. But what I really wanted was to draw and paint my own pictures."On the advice of a wonderful friend, Josine lanco, I wrote to Maurice Sendak, hardly expecting him to write back. He didn't. He telephoned, first from the East Coast and then from Los Angeles, where he had come to be honored by the American Library Association. By then I had a hazy idea that I should go to the East to meet with children's book publishers."To my surprise, Mr. Sendak, after seeing my portfolio, in the last hours of the ALA convention, introduced me to Ava Weiss, Greenwillow's art director. I showed her my work, and she in turn introduced me to Susan Hirschman and Greenwillow. Shortly thereafter I started work on my first book, Bean Boy, by George Shannon. I moved to New York, and here I am, many books and some dozen years later. Before I had Madeleine and Matej, I thought the reason I did my books was to win medals and awards. Now I have received the Caldecott Honor and awards from the Society of Illustrators, the New York Times, the Boston Globe-Horn Book, and many international organizations. And what really matters to me is not awards but what children--and my own children in particular--think of my books. Now I do my books just for them. My children like my books, but they do not really know I am the author. I like it that way...."
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