Starred Review In picture-book format, Tallchief's story begins with her childhood on an Osage Indian reservation in Oklahoma, where she took her first piano and dance lessons. After moving to Los Angeles, her parents found excellent teachers for the young dancer, who loved expressing the music with her body and worked hard to fulfill her aspiration to dance with the best, the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo. The book ends with 17-year-old Tallchief leaving for New York to follow her dreams. In addition to the people and places remembered from childhood, Tallchief discusses the gift of music, which she and her parents recognized early as a driving force in her life. The joint authorship may cause some readers to wonder whose words are whose, yet the voice of the text speaks with great clarity, dignity, and power, occasionally lit by flashes of imagery and memory. Equally powerful and well crafted are the illustrations in heavily applied pastels. Gary Kelley grasps forms with a cubist's awareness of the solidity of people and objects, then arranges them to make an effective representational picture in two dimensions. Despite the book's large format and many illustrations, the length of the text and sophistication of the artwork indicate an older readership than the usual picture-book audience. A stirring choice for children (and perhaps some adults) who take their ballet seriously. (Reviewed November 1, 1999)

Kelley uses pastels to capture the drama of the dance, both in its studio discipline and in its evanescent beauty, while the frankly honest, even immodest, Tallchief reflects on her gifts in the first-person narrative. Her single-minded passion, conveyed in a clear, occasionally poetic text, will hold appeal and meaning for an audience beyond that of hopeful ballerinas.

"I was born with music that flowed through my body as naturally as blood in my veins," explains Tallchief, who, with Wells, describes her early life in lyrical and compelling prose. This brief biography follows Tallchief from her earliest dancing memories at age three until she begins formal training at seventeen. The narrative is skillfully crafted, using Tallchief's words to give voice to the whole; the authors highlight not only the early years of an artist, but the difficulty of growing up Native American in a culture that made it illegal for Tallchief to practice the language, religion, or ceremonies of her ancestors. Soft pastel illustrations in a style that recalls Degas are a luminous, often astonishing addition to this moving and joyful introductory biography; balletomanes will hope that a continuation of Tallchief's history is in the works. (Picture book. 7-10)

This volume, relayed in what <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">PW called "metaphorical language," follows Tallchief through her adolescence, on the way to joining the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">PW wrote, "Kelly's softly focused paintings underscore the lyrical tone, enveloping the characters and settings in gauzy, dreamlike light." Ages 5-9. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Oct.)