To Dance

A beautifully refreshed and expanded special edition of the Sibert Honor-winning graphic memoir about the dreams and realities of becoming a ballerina.

Ballerinas are young when they first dream of dance. Siena was six-and her dreams kept skipping and leaping, circling and spinning, from airy runs along a beach near her home in Puerto Rico, to dance classes at the School of American Ballet, to her debut performance on stage with the New York City Ballet while working with ballet legend George Balanchine.

Part family history, part backstage drama, this beautifully updated graphic memoir-which features a refreshed design and a brand-new scrapbook of Siena's mementoes-is an original, firsthand look a young dancer's beginnings.

Review: "Even more effectively than the original, this special edition of the 2006 graphic memoir about Cherson Siegel's youth as a School of American Ballet student embodies the paradox of ballet: that every moment of seeming effortlessness on stage is the product of years of grueling work. . . . A spacious redesigned layout heightens the emotional effect and nicely echoes the memoir's closing line: 'Dancing fills a space in me.'" -- The Horn Book