Dancer

Like Martha Southgate's Another Way to Dance, this contemporary novel revolves around an African-American girl's often vexed encounters with the ballet world. Sixteen-year-old Stephanie does not fit the traditional image of a ""stick figure"" ballerina with skin ""the color of a freshly peeled apple,"" but she is still one of the best students at her ballet school in a Denver suburb. She is determined to make a career in ballet, despite her parents' misgivings: ""Even if you are good, even if you are the best, do you really think you have a chance to be treated fairly?"" asks her father, a janitor at the private high school Stephanie attends on scholarship. Stephanie's confidence wanes considerably when she is upstaged by two promising new students: blonde, fair Anna, who wins the role of Princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, and Vance, a boy with ""deep brown"" skin, who is cast as Anna's prince. But Vance's Aunt Winnie, who once studied dance with George Balanchine and with the founder of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, offers herself to Stephanie as a teacher and role model. The characters, a bit standard-issue, fall into a predictable triangle: dedicated Stephanie, unmotivated Vance and Miss Winnie, who tries to recapture her own lost dreams through her two star pupils. Hewett (Soulfire) gets the dance terminology right, but lacks the persuasive, insider's tone of Southgate's novel. This work is driven by issues, not a passion for dance. Ages 12-up. (July)