Author: Sophie Flack
Year Published: 2011
Publisher: Atom
Pages: 294
Price: USD 4.34 Book Depository
"My name is Hannah Ward. Don't call me a ballerina.
Ballerinas are the stars of the company. They dance center stage under the spotlight, and they get their own curtain calls. Their head shots are printed in the program, with their names in large print. Me, I'm a dancer in the corps de ballet, just one of the dozens of girls who dance in graceful unison each night. My mother think I'm a star, but she's biased."
Meet Hannah. She had spent her teenage years doing ballet. She joined Manhattan Ballet Academy when she was 14 and now she was 19. Hannah loved ballet from her heart, but life as a ballet dancer was not easy. Dancers had to maintain their body to be slim and stick to certain weight. They had to train all day. Their body were sore but they couldn't complain because those were all they had to do to be able to perform their dances effortlessly and gorgeously on the stage. And that's what Hannah exactly did. But when Hannah met Jacob, an NYU student and also a part time guitarist, at her cousin's restaurant, Hannah quickly fell in love with him, a pedestrian (what the dancers called the non-dancer).
Hannah loved spending time with Jacob but as she spent more time with him, the less time she cared about ballet and gradually she lost her focus on ballet. But Hannah still want to compete with other dancers to get the solo part, and she couldn't do it if she still had Jacob in her head.
Would Hannah choose ballet over Jacob? Would Hannah succeed to reach her dream as a ballerina?
