Volume I, Issue 1
February 2006
 main page :: picture books   
Everybody Dance Now
by Susan Thomsen, Chicken Spaghetti


Books can’t replace a good dance party. Everybody knows that. There is nothing quite like turning up “Hey Ya!” on the stereo and shaking a tail feather, even if it’s just in your own living room. When my son was a toddler, he would perch himself right by the sub-woofer and drop his bottom to the beat of whatever was on.

Books can inspire an interest in dance, however. Bill T. Jones and Susan Kuklin’s aptly titled Dance features Kuklin’s clear-eyed photographs of Jones, an African American dancer and choreographer, as he performs different dance moves, the kind that even a child can do. As we were reading, my boy leaped up, exclaiming, “I can do that!” The text is simple, with only eight or so words on each page or spread: “When I am dancing,/I can make lines,” Jones and Kuklin write; a photograph shows Jones creating a straight line with his arm and hand. The clean page design highlights the photography with plenty of white space, and the beauty of what Jones creates with his body will captivate a reader.

Dance is great for preschoolers, and beginning readers can read the text with confidence. Paired with the following book, Dance would work well for an early-elementary classroom talk about the performing arts. But please incorporate a dance shindig into the lesson.

Susanna Reich’s well-written picture-book biography José! Born to Dance tells the story of José Limón, who grew up to become a modern-dance pioneer. Parents of active boys will take heart from the book’s opening page, which shows a willful bouncing baby, captioned by the words, “In 1908 a baby boy was born in Culiacán, Mexico, kicking like a roped steer. BAM! BAM! BAM! His name was José Limón.” The young José eventually moves with his family to California, where school children make fun of his difficulties with English. “I will learn this language better than any of you,” José thinks, and his determined outlook leads him to art and eventually dance. This is a boy who was going to be somebody from the beginning, as Reich demonstrates with the help of Raúl Colón’s watercolor and colored-pencil illustrations. Named to the New York Public Library’s “Recommended” list for 2005, José! Born to Dance is a great read (and read-aloud) for 5- to 8-year-olds. (Beginning readers will need assistance.) Helpful bonuses include a glossary to the occasional Spanish words, and a bibliography of further text, film, and video references. For additional information, also check out the web sites www.billtjones.org and www.limon.org.

Okay, kids, now it’s time to bust a move.

Dance, written by Bill T. Jones and Susan Kuklin. Photography by Susan Kuklin. Hyperion Books for Children, 1998. ISBN: 0-7868-0362-2.

José! Born to Dance, by Susanna Reich. Illustrations by Raúl Colón. Paula Wiseman Books/Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2005. ISBN: 0-689-86576-7.