By Michaela DePrince, Elaine DePrince
The true story of a girl who lost her parents and grew up in an orphanage in wartime, and found a photo of a ballerina that showed her who she could be.
Michaela is a little girl in an orphanage in Sierra Leone. Her parents have died, and the other children call her names because of the pale spots the skin condition vitiligo leaves on her arms. One day she finds a torn magazine blowing in the wind, and on the cover is a woman on her toes in a pink costume, smiling and beautiful. Michaela keeps that picture and holds onto the dream it plants. She and her best friend are adopted by an American family, and in her new home Michaela finally gets to take the ballet lessons she'd only imagined, and grows up to dance on real stages. Photographs of the real Michaela are woven in at the end.
This is a true story told in the short, clear sentences of an early reader, so a child around seven can read a real ballerina's life largely on their own. It doesn't hide that Michaela's start was hard, but it's shaped as a story of holding onto a dream through it, and the ending is triumphant. For a dance-loving child, it's powerful proof that a ballerina can begin with nothing but a picture and a fierce wish, and there's a helpful pronunciation guide for the ballet words too.