Author: Monica Wellington with Lydia Wellington
Publisher: Dover Publications
Rating: WORTHY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new novel is reward aplenty!
Entrée
This isn’t so much a story (unless it's your kids' story, of course!) as it is a ballet log-book / scrapbook / journal / notebook / coloring book/ photo-album for the young and beginning performer, and it was too cute to pass up! Yes, even for grumpy old me!
Monica Wellington is a fellow blogspotter, and was also born in England, just like me, although I don't know her (there's millions of us all over the place, you know!), and she wrote this with her daughter Lydia (a ballerina who pretty much is a clone of Monica in terms of appearance, it seems to me!). This book is a great idea. It has a lot of pages for adding your child's name, ballet class information, with spaces for names and pictures of your friends in the class. It’s also a great checklist for things to take along with you that are essential or at least might come in handy for your lessons.
The book is also a guide to etiquette and appearance, and some ballet basics, including basic positioning, stretching, common and less common steps and forms, and it comes with plenty of space to jot down your own hints, tips, reminders, and corrections, to help make sure you’re performing at peak efficiency and in conformance with what’s being taught.
There's even a page to record your most embarrassing mistakes! I'm not a ballet performer or even a real aficionado, but to my amateur eye, this seems about as complete as you can get. There are pages on clothing, on shoes, on make-up, on dancing singly or in pairs, on other dance forms, and at the back, a two page glossary of ballet terms.
I confess that it makes me cringe to imagine what young people have to go through to achieve their dance aims - the work, the dedication, the sacrifices and the hardships - to say nothing of the inevitable pain and disappointment, but it seems to me that anyone who is willing to subject themselves to that kind of intensity needs a bit of a boost here and there - comfortable clothes, really good shoes, good instruction, and a fine journal in which to detail your challenges and triumphs, and that would be this one!
Adagio
If I have a complaint (or two, and if you follow my reviews you know I always do!), then it would be about exclusiveness. This book is fine, and I do recommend it, but it is, be warned, heavily biased towards young white girls. There are precious few images of boys, and while I admit that it's harder to convey race with simple line drawings, most of the girls appear to be white, too. I'd have much preferred it if there had been more color in these B&W drawings. We whites are in the tiny minority on this planet after all, and we need to recognize this in all that we do! But we writers tend to be very insular, and I'm sure we've all made that pas de un (if I can paraphrase a ballet term!).
Lydia Wellington is a dancer with New York City Ballet. You can see her on youtube here. As I said, I'm far from an expert, but she certainly seems like she's got moves to me. Also check out the amazing image on the opening screen for the NYC ballet. Hopefully they won't change it for a while, so you can see what I saw. The first image of the ballerinas and the snow is stunning.
Coda
So very little to complain about (and hopefully a second edition will take care of that), and lots to love, lots to explore, lots to use, and lots of helpful information. I think I can recommend this one for your youthful ballerina (or ballerino if they're none too picky!).
