Customer Reviews

Portraits #1: Dancing Through Fire

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This book is part of a new historical fiction series called Portraits. This series imagines what the lives of young girls in famous paintings might have been like. This particular book is based on one of the ballet paintings of Degas.

Sylvie Bertrand is a young girl who is studying to be a ballerina at the Paris Opera Ballet School in 1870. Due to poverty, her mother had to leave the ballet to marry years ago and now she is living through her hopes and dreams for Sylvie - if she could not become a famous ballerina, then Sylvie must. Although Sylvie likes the ballet, sometimes she wonders if she will ever have a life beyond her mother's dreams. Her older sister, Chantal, hated the way her mother lived through her and decided to rebel, pretending to be lazy so she would be forced to leave the ballet. When the Franco-Prussian War breaks out and Paris falls under siege, Sylvie gets a glimpse of the real world where there is sickness and starvation. She struggles with how it contrasts with the perfect fantasy world of the ballet. As the situation in Paris worsens, Sylvie decides she must do something to help and in her quest learns even more about the harshness of the real world, but she also learns that ballet is not just her mother's dream but hers as well.

I really loved Kathryn Lasky's books for the Dear America and Royal Diaries series, and this book was just as good. This is a very promising new historical series and I definitely look forward to the other books. I'd recommend this book to readers who enjoyed the author's other historical novels, and to new readers who like historical fiction as well.

When I first picked up Dancing Through Fire I thought it was going to be about the girl who posed for the artist Degas, but it was not. It did mention Degas and Marie (the girl who actually did the sculpture posing), instead the story was about a girl named Sylvie who also danced in the Paris Opera Ballet and who was inspired by the unnamed ballerina on the cover. I guess I got Dancing Through Fire mixed up with a book called Marie, Dancing by Carolyn Meyer.Dancing Through Fire is a short, but very detailed novel of a young ballerina during the French Reign of Terror in the 1870s. I liked this book mainly because it explored historical events and life behind the Opera stage. I danced for several years (had to stop because of a foot injury) and I know all too well the the pains of pointe shoes, fiddling with costumes, and standing still on stage for half and hour. Though ballet hasn't changed much in the past hundred years except for the invention of tights, we have it so much better when it comes to pointe shoes. Ugh. Can you imagine there just being cotton stuffed between your toes and hard block of wood? Now we have all kinds of padding, but of course it does not take the pain away.The only thing that I disliked about Dancing Through Fire was that Sylvie was a bit too shallow and did not act like she was thirteen but much younger. The other characters though were much more realistic and with the tragic setting you got to see a whole different side of Paris. Forget the sparkling Effle Tower; during the Reign of Terror the whole city turned ugly and dangerous. Lasky had a great setting to play with, but I think she was holding back to try to make the story simple for a younger audience. I can understand that and even if some of the characters' personalities were a bit muffled, I still liked reading this book. Plus, the story behind the painting makes it even more intriguing.Overall, Dancing Through Fire is a great book for historical fiction fans and both teens and tweens alike.

|Pages: 176|Year Published: 2005|Publisher: Scholastics||Genre: Historical fiction, 1800s|
|Series? Yes, Portraits series|Age Group: Ages 11+||Content: Mild sensuality/graphic detail|Recommend?| Yes
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What an unexpected treasure I found, I picked up this book as a possible gift for one of the young girls I know, and I discovered the most enjoyable story I've read in a very long time.
The author has shown the reader a pre-world war I France through the eyes of a young French girl / ballet student-artist juxtaposing a world of art with a world of a city in war. It's a rich experience for the reader that inspires appreciation for the arts especially in times when the arts are most difficult to support and perform.

The story is so well written that I could "see" it unfolding vividly in my own mind's eye.

What an excellent historical fiction book. Set during the French and Prussian War. What a wonderful book about a girl who follows her heart and helps many people.