29 May 2010 BRONTORINA by James Howe and Randy Cecil, ill., Candlewick, August 2010, 32p., ISBN: 978-0-7636-4437-6

"There will come a time when everybody who is lonely will be free to sing and dance and love.

There will come a time when every evil that we know will be an evil that we can rise above."

-- Frank Zappa

“It is just a fact. The men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and build and test them. The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order."

-- John Glenn (1962) as quoted in ALMOST ASTRONAUTS by Tanya Lee Stone

"Each Junior/Senior may invite one guest.  Your guest should meet the following criteria:-may be in grade 9 or 10 at Itawamba Agricultural High School-may be in grade 9-12 at another high school-may be a college-age student-must be of the opposite sex."

-- School district policy (2010) on prom dates in the Mississippi high school where Constance McMillen wanted to take her girlfriend to the prom.

"That four hundred acres is good land, all right, but it's a white man's kind of land, too expensive for you.  Why, it wasn't so long ago it was against the law for a negra, I don't care how white-looking, to even own farmland in the state of Mississippi, and here you are talking about buying Hollenbeck land?"

-- the white banker, B.R. Tillman, in THE LAND by Mildred Taylor

As he spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, might Martin have really dreamed that some young child of color toddling around out there at that very moment would come to embrace The Dream and grow up to become President of the United States?  I can only imagine that he did. 

Barack's election is unquestionably an inspiration.  And, yet, the path to self-actualization -- to becoming everything that a child is capable of becoming, irregardless of his or her gender, skin color, sexual orientation, family economic condition, or physical limitations -- remains a path that is so often booby trapped every step of the way with the nonsense of naysayers and the accumulated prejudices built of ignorance that are passed down from generation to generation. 

"Brontorina had a dream.

"'I want to dance!'"

And so it is, that BRONTORINA, a whimsical picturebook tale about a dinosaur who has hopes of becoming a ballerina, is a marvelous story through which children can similarly come to imagine achieving what others might claim to be the impossible.

"'She is too big!'

"'And she does not have the right shoes!'"

I know these two girl characters at Madame Lucille's Dance Academy for Girls and Boys!  They are the naysayers.  I bet anyone who has lived through middle school and high school will readily recognize the pair.

Fortunately for Brontorina, Madame Lucille is not a one-size-fits-all ballet teacher.  After things don't at first work out, Madame comes to the realization that accommodations are necessary in order to have an enormous dinosaur succeed in doing those leaps and poses.

Illustrator Randy Cecil contributes huge dollops of humor and heart to the story with his depictions of the humongous tangerine-colored apatosaurus banging her head on...err...through the ceiling, and narrowly averting various other potential disasters as she strives to dance amidst the other students.

And in the end -- thanks to the support of those characters who believe in acceptance and inclusion -- hope triumphs and potential is fulfilled.

"Now Madame Lucille's dance academy had room for everyone.

"And it all began with a dream."

Bravo!

Richie Partington, MLIS
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