Tuesday Storytime: African American Dancing Dreams

Chalk another one down for my absurdly specific storytime themes!

It's not my fault, really.  I ordered Firebird, and then A Dance Like Starlight came through as a new addition the same week, and I've loved Amazing Grace since forever (blame Reading Rainbow).

We started with Amazing Grace, because that one really is at the length-limit for my age-group, then I put Firebird in the middle, and A Dance Like Starlight at the end.  The entire storytime was a little on the long side, but they all went together so well that I felt it was worth it.  I did end up "abridging" Amazing Grace and Dance Like Starlight a little bit on the fly.


Amazing Grace
Mary Hoffman, illustrated by Caroline Binch
ISBN: 0803710402
Classic Reading Rainbow book about sexism, racism, and the power of acceptance.

Grace is an imaginative, dramatic girl who loves to act out stories.  When her teachers decides to do a class performance of Peter Pan, Grace wants to be Peter - but her classmates disagree - she can't be Peter because she's a girl, and she can't be Peter because she's black.  Her mother and grandmother disagree, and take her out to see a beautiful black ballerina performing in Romeo and Juliet.  Grace learns her lines, auditions with her whole soul, and the whole class ends up agreeing that she will be a perfect Peter Pan.  The final image of her in her costume is one of my favorite illustrations in a picture book.


Firebird
Misty Copeland, illustrated by Christopher Myers
ISBN: 9780399166150
Reviewed here,

I liked how it was so conceptually different from Amazing Grace, and the way the art and colors are so vivid and wild and surreal, but at the same time, very clear and understandable.


A Dance Like Starlight
Kristy Dempsey, illustrated by Floyd Cooper (A Beach Tail)
ISBN: 9780399252846
Reviewed here.

The sepia tones in this story felt much more drab compared to Firebird and Amazing Grace, but I don't think it detracted from the story.  The text doesn't seem very long on the page, but when reading, it goes a lot more slowly, and it isn't very intuitive and flowing (at least it wasn't for me).  I ended up eliding or abridging sections, especially because it was the last book and the wiggle-worms were out in full force.