The Girl Who Wanted to Dance

The call to self expression haunts a delicate, poignant tale about family and art, love and longing and the ineffable tie between parent and child. Clara lives with her father and grandmother in a little village. More than anything, Clara loves to dance, but her father has had too much sadness in his life to abide dancing. When Clara sees a troupe of dancers performing in the village one June day, she is enchanted enough to follow their wagons deep into the forest and what she finds there changes her life forever. This bewitching fairy tale by master storyteller Amy Ehrlich, tenderly illustrated by Rebecca Walsh, honors the call to the artistic life and acknowledges with compassion the pain of those left behind.

Amy Ehrlich is an accomplished author and editor of many books for children and young adults, including BABY DRAGON, illustrated by Will Hillenbrand, and the anthologies WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE, VOLUME ONE and VOLUME TWO. She lives in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.

Rebecca Walsh has illustrated several books, including HOW THE TINY PEOPLE GREW TALL by Nancy Wood and THE WELL AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Robert D. San Souci. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.