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This is a story about a Swan who loves to dance, especially ballet. She struggles with the feeling of nervousness throughout the story. The big ballet is coming up and she is afraid to get on stage. Luckily she has a wonderful teacher that encourages her to push on. She keeps practicing, but she is still nervous. This book will teach a child that it is ok to feel nervous, but to never give up.

  This book is about a famous sculpture in an art museum of a little ballerina girl.  The book is told from the museum guard's perspective. He tells the people that visit the museum that the statue is a girl named Maria.  Maria was a little girl who dreamed of being a ballerina at the Paris Opera House.  Her poor parents saved all their money to send her to ballet school.  At ballet school she encountered a famous artist named Degas. Maria got an opportunity to dance in the Paris Opera House but only if she took lessons everyday. Her father became very ill and since he could not work they couldn't afford it.  Then Degas offered to pay Maria to pose for him, but she only made enough to pay for her father's doctor and not dance lessons. The artist reveals that he is going blind and must sculpt her because he can no longer paint.  She never got to perform at the Paris Opera House but two years later the sculpture became very famous. This is a brilliant tale of an actual sculpture of a ballerina by sculpture/painter Edgar Degas. It displays all types of art; dance, performance, sculpture and painting.  This is an excellent book that incorporates fact and fiction of the arts all in one.

This book is about a hippo named Hilda who loves to dance. However, Hilda's dancing is very destructive. All of her friends wish she would take up a less destructive hobby. They recommend knitting and singing, but Hilda didn't like either one, so she sticks to dancing. Finally, the water buffalo recommend swimming to Hilda. It is then that she discovers her passion for water ballet dancing. Hilda was good at water ballet and she didn't destroy anything in the process. Best of all, her friends loved it and told her to keep dancing. This book will communicate a passion for the arts, specifically dancing, to the students who read it. The illustrations are bright and colorful. The one weakness of this book is that it shows Hilda's friends not supporting her dancing on land. As a teacher, this book would be good to recommend to students who like dance, or just enjoy the arts in general.