DARE YOU TO DANCE

A ballet dancer finds rivalry and friendship at a prestigious summer workshop.

When Gracie gets the opportunity to attend New York Ballet Company’s Youth Dancer Summer Workshop, she’s thrilled at the chance to advance her skills and meet her ballet idol, NYBC’s principal ballerina. Not on her list? Making friends. After all, to achieve her dreams, she’ll need to focus on being the best, not getting boba after class with the other girls. Soon, however, Gracie finds that her expectations need adjusting. She may be the best dancer back in Ohio, but next to the other, more experienced students from around the world, she might as well be invisible. Demanding teachers, critical classmates, and the incessant noise of New York City shake her confidence and fill her with self-doubt. Still, kind Jazmin’s whispered help in class and a bet with talented Sariah reinvigorate Gracie and make her rethink her “no friends” stance. Mock’s solo debut sensitively grapples with what it means to pursue dance or any other activity at advanced levels. Readers on the cusp of getting serious about their own passions will find Gracie’s story relatable and appealing. The art, a mix of densely packed traditional comic panels and more dynamic layouts, wonderfully captures the movement and chaos of classrooms and city streets in warm, soft tones, joyfully disrupted by explosions of onomatopoeia. Gracie and Jazmin read white, and Sariah presents Black.

A beautifully illustrated story full of angst, humor, and heart.