HOW CAN YOU DANCE?

You don’t need to be enrolled in ballet or tap classes to dance; with Walton’s (That’s My Dog, see below, etc.) encouraging book, anyone can dance like a fox or a cloud or the king of the kangaroos. Each double-page spread repeats the “how can you dance” question with a different rhyming conclusion incorporating an emotion, limitation, location, or comparison with an animal or plant. “How can you dance when you can’t move your knees? / Dance like a tree as it waves in the breeze.” Each rhyme (printed in black) is followed by several nonrhyming lines of motion directions printed in red. A few of these are clever and some are clearly clunky, but as beginning rhymes they all dance along energetically, and it could do without the motion directions. López-Escrivá’s bold, stylized acrylic paintings show a different child for each sort of movement, with dancing animals incorporated into each illustration and marching across the endpapers. Preschool and primary-grade teachers will find this book useful for creative movement (P.E. teachers deserve books, too), and children’s librarians will find it just the ticket to get out those wiggles during storytime. (Picture book. 4-8)