By Marilyn Singer
A girl who's sure she'll get a tutu after her very first ballet class, and quits in a huff when she doesn't.
Tallulah just knows she is going to be a great ballerina. She signs up for lessons certain that any day now they will hand her a beautiful tutu. But class is plies and first position and practicing the same steps over and over, and no tutu comes. So Tallulah quits. She flounces off and decides ballet is silly anyway, until she starts to miss the dancing itself, tutu or no tutu, and finds her way back to the barre.
This one is about patience, but it never lectures. Tallulah wants the tutu, the reward, the proof, right this second, and the slow work of practice frustrates her the way it frustrates a lot of small children. Watching her come back on her own, because she misses the dancing and not the prize, is the gentle lesson under all the pretty pictures. Alexandra Boiger's watercolors are airy and lovely, and any child who has ever quit something in a sulk will recognize themselves in Tallulah.