The Young Person's Guide to the Ballet: With Music from The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and The Sleeping Beauty (Book & CD) - Hardcover

Anita Ganeri is an award-winning author of more than 100 children's books. She lives in northern England with her husband, children, dogs, and cat. She enjoys reading, walking the Moors, playing tennis, and dreaming of winning Wimbledon.

Grade 3-6-An overview that is simplified to the point of being misleading and inaccurate. Brief sections touch on technique, famous dancers, choreographers, composers, and other topics. Although the black-and-white and full-color photographs are clear, they are sometimes poorly placed or randomly chosen. For example, two kinds of arabesques are described, but the four photos show only the simple arabesque. The introduction promises readers "ballet's history, from the early Romantic period to the Dance Theatre of Harlem's modern productions" but delivers only a quick survey. For example, an unidentified photo of Dance Theatre of Harlem's production of "Giselle" and a line in Arthur Mitchell's brief biography stating that he formed the company do not provide any meaningful information about it. The section on choreographers includes five people, only three of whom are historically important. No one who is still active today is profiled. Two precious pages are given over to "Dance of the World," which includes three sentences about modern dance that are simplistic and irrelevant in the context. An inordinate amount of space is devoted to Tchaikovsky's ballet music, possibly to justify the inclusion of a CD with selections from his work. For information on ballet and its history, try Darcey Bussell's The Young Dancer, (Houghton, 1994), Trudy Garfunkel's On Wings of Joy (Little, Brown, 1994), and Leslie Spatt's Behind the Scenes at the Ballet (Viking, 1995).
Amy Kellman, The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.