Rating: ★★★
This was an utter disappointment in terms of the writing and story development. The message should be impactful illustrating that someone can accomplish their lifelong dreams with hard work and dedication but the writing ruins it and it feels like they are trying to shove it down my throat. It does not help that I didn't read the book title properly because I thought I was reading about who is Alvin Ailey.
I have never heard of Robert Battle and I do not know how impactful he is in the dance world so please excuse my ignorance. Since I do not know his biography beforehand I treated this book as a normal children picture book and this is where I was disappointed with the book. We see him as a baby and then the next minute he becomes a dancer and then poof he's in dance academy and then the Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey.
You do not see any of the struggles of being a dancer, if he suffered any prejudice for being black or a male dancer, and I felt as though it was too simple for him to become a famous dancer whereas if you show the struggles and the hard work put into training and dancing for hours it can showcase to children that yes it is hard to become gifted and talented in your area of expertise but the reward for your hard work out weights the struggles. Plus they do not explain the significance of his position in Alvin Ailey.
Alvin Ailey is a famous dance company in New York and extremely difficult to get accepted and usually all the Artistic Directors are fellow alumnus of Alvin Ailey until he got accept the position because he attended Juilliard which shocked the dance world that someone outside the company is the head Artistic Director. The illustrations is great and I believe it's the sole purpose as to why I rated this book three stars instead of two. I would not recommend this book to anyone.
I have never heard of Robert Battle and I do not know how impactful he is in the dance world so please excuse my ignorance. Since I do not know his biography beforehand I treated this book as a normal children picture book and this is where I was disappointed with the book. We see him as a baby and then the next minute he becomes a dancer and then poof he's in dance academy and then the Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey.
You do not see any of the struggles of being a dancer, if he suffered any prejudice for being black or a male dancer, and I felt as though it was too simple for him to become a famous dancer whereas if you show the struggles and the hard work put into training and dancing for hours it can showcase to children that yes it is hard to become gifted and talented in your area of expertise but the reward for your hard work out weights the struggles. Plus they do not explain the significance of his position in Alvin Ailey.
Alvin Ailey is a famous dance company in New York and extremely difficult to get accepted and usually all the Artistic Directors are fellow alumnus of Alvin Ailey until he got accept the position because he attended Juilliard which shocked the dance world that someone outside the company is the head Artistic Director. The illustrations is great and I believe it's the sole purpose as to why I rated this book three stars instead of two. I would not recommend this book to anyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment