Brown Girls Do Ballet

Celebrating Diverse Girls Taking Center Stage

by TaKiyah Wallace-McMillan
words by JaNay Brown-Wood

Review posted September 28, 2024.
Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2024. 40 pages.
Review written September 26, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

This picture book is about the photographs, and that is reflected in the cover, where the photographer is listed first and as the main creator.

And the photographs are pictures of brown girls doing ballet, exactly as the title says. And they are stunning! We've got big girls and small girls, lighter-skinned and darker-skinned girls, beginners and proficient ballerinas, even a disabled girl in and out of her wheelchair. Some of the girls are actively dancing, others are hanging out with friends in their dance gear.

The text that goes along with the photographs is affirming, and specifically addressed to Brown Girls.

Here's a sample:

Brown Girl, b e n d --
your knees, elbows, neck - and send
awe through each of them so blessed
to witness you in motion,

the vibrance of your beauty
as it glows and grows and flows

from the top of your poised crown to
the tip of pointed toe.

Do you even know the power
that you hold?

So I enjoy this book because of looking at the pictures of beautiful girls, joyful and dancing. I've read more than one testimony of a brown ballerina that they began dreaming of dance when they saw a dancer who looked like them. This book brings that experience to many more girls and strongly affirms that they belong. And it's beautiful to see.