Mighty Mara: Dancing with Dante

Gr 1-3–On the heels—make that “wheels”—of Mighty Mara, the students of Sametown are once again rocked by a wheelchair-riding dancer with an intense personality. This time Mara has a special challenge: for a class report on a favorite animal she’s paired up with Dante, a new student who is so infuriatingly distractable that it’s impossible to get any work done. But when at last he admits that he sometimes gets in trouble because it’s really hard for him to sit still and pay attention, the penny drops; rather than recite a boring, conventional report on honeybees when their turn comes, the two appear in front of the class in costume and deliver such an exuberant dance routine that on the spot the teacher asks them to form a competitive dance team for the school. The theme of celebrating individual differences, physical or neurological, rather than treating them as problems carries over into the illustrations as both Mara and Dante are more expressively posed and depicted in brighter colors than their teacher and classmates. Saturated hues overall and a graphic design that mixes in wordless and fancifully composed scenes crank up the visual energy even further.