Laurel Snyder

This is less biography & more a poetic ode to Anna Pavlova's artistic life. For biographical information, you must look to the author's notes & the sources in the bibliography. Pavlova is a lovely and interesting person to read about, and Julie Morstad's illustrations are wonderful to look at, but I find Laurel Snyder's appraisal of Pavlova's thinness & frailty a bit troublesome. The world of young girls could do with a lot less inculcations of snow- & feather-lightness as aspirations in the media they consume, seeing as how many grow up to lose body-confidence & fall prey to pressures to be thin & perfect. Snyder paints Pavlova's litheness as having paved the way to today's standards of thinness in the modern ballet, as if it were a groundbreaking accomplishment in itself! What a tacky message to send to young girl readers.… (altro)