Bibliography: Flack, Sophie. (2011). Bunheads. New York: Little Brown Books for Young Readers.  ISBN: 978-0316126533

Plot Summary:  All 19 year old Hannah has ever wanted to do with her life is dance.  And she is so close to living her dream.  Dancing with the prestigious Manhattan Ballet, she and her friends, all fellow dancers, eat, drink, and sleep ballet.  When they aren’t dancing, they are getting ready for a show, attending dinners and galas to fund raise for the company, gossiping about other dancers, taking yoga and Pilates classes, and hoping to make soloist.  But when Hannah meets musician and non-dancer Jacob, everything starts to change.  What has she given up in order to be a ballerina?

Critical Analysis:  I feel in love with ballet when I saw The Nutcracker on television.  Up till that point, I had been studying clogging (which was lots of fun in its own way.)  I begged my mother to let me switch to ballet classes.  There was something so graceful, so beautiful, so perfect about the dancers I had seen.  Bunheads shows all sides of the ballet world.  The beautiful glitzy innocent perfect side of performance is exemplified through Matilda, the young daughter of a stage hand who is enthralled with ballet and adores Hannah.  The intense competitive sometimes dark side is shown through Hannah and her friends, who comfort and confide in one another but always compete and never fully trust.  There is rejoicing in compliments, getting cast in certain parts while at the same time jealousy and despair.  How did that dancer get chosen over me?  There are even horrible scenes where Hannah is told to lose weight in her breasts and a star dancer collapses.

Even when Hannah starts to question her world and her devotion to dance, there are still moments where the reader can see that she loves ballet–a dancing a combination in a quiet moment, going up into the flies to have the best view of the performance.  Flack does an excellent job of communicating Hannah’s emotions to the reader.  We see her eyes opening and her world expanding.  We feel her being pulled in many directions, her struggle to return to her dream once she realizes that there might just be more out there for her.

I loved this book for it’s realistic portrayal of the world of professional ballet, all the glitz and the glam and the dirt.  Rather like Hannah’s description of her costume for dancing Rubies in Balachine’s Jewels: “The costume is a cherry-red cropped Lyrca dress that hits just below the hip.  The bodice is adorned with glittering ruby crystals all the way down to my belly button….The costume is old and not easy to clean and has a distinctly human smell….If I look closely, I can see where the fabric has been bleached by the sweat of other dancers and places where missing jewels have been replaced with ones that don’t exactly match” (p. 273).

With the popularity of movies such as The Black Swan and television shows such as So You Think You Can Dance?, even girls who aren’t dancers will enjoy this book.

Readalikes: For more books featuring dance:  So You Think You Can (Read About) Dance

Review Excerpts: ”A multi-layered and absorbing good read by a promising debut novelist.”–Kirkus Reviews

“Exhilaration and drudgery, passion and exhaustion, exist side by side for dancers in the exalted Manhattan Ballet, a world unto itself, which Flack (a former New York City Ballet dancer) brings vividly to life in this strong debut.”–Publisher’s Weekly

“…[A]n entertaining read, shedding light on a world most readers know nothing about. After the success of the Oscar-winning Black Swan, this title will appeal to dancers and those with two left feet.”–School Library Journal

Reviewed from publisher provided advanced copy.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.