| Books for Students |
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Dance!
Elisha Cooper
Greenwillow Books, 2001
In richly descriptive text and whimsical figure drawings, Cooper gives us an inside look at a dance company preparing for a performance. This is a great introduction to life in a professional company and is highly recommended for students coming to a Behind-the-Scenes Field Trip. |
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The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of an Amazon Tree
by Lynne Cherry
Harcourt Children’s Books, Later Printing edition March 1990
Available at: www.amazon.com
Grades K-5 In this breathtakingly beautiful picture book, Cherry combines illustrations that reveal a naturalist's reverence for beauty with a myth like story that explains the ecological importance of saving the rain forests. |
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Eyewitness Dance
Dr. Andree Grau
DK Publishing, 2005
This book, part of the popular “Eyewitness” series, introduces various dance forms from around the world along with traditional western concert dance forms such as ballet, modern, and musical theatre. It provides many colorful photographs and captions, but can be dense and is recommended for upper elementary readers |
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Nature’s Green Umbrella: Tropical Rain Forests
by Gail Gibbons
HarperCollins Publisher
April 1997
Available at: www.amazon.com
Grades K-5A colorful, informative look at tropical rain forests. Gibbons has drawn and labeled about 50 animals and numerous plants and trees on double-spread illustrations. Complementary text appears in the margins. The striking watercolors evoke the mood of the forests, while the text contains simple definitions for italicized scientific terms. |
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Savion: My Life in Tap
Savion Glover and Bruce Weber,
Foreword by Gregory Hines
William Morrow, New York, 2000
An autobiographical scrapbook of young tap dancer Savion Glover. This book is great for independent reading in upper grades, while sections can be read aloud to younger students. |
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A Moving Experience: Dance for Lovers of Children and the Child Within
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More Moving Experiences: Connecting Arts, Feelings, and Imagination
Teresa Benzwie
Zephyr Press
Available at www.zephyrpress.comProvides a collection of creative movement exercises to integrate with elementary curriculum. |
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Dracula
by Bram Stoker
Barnes & Noble Classics, April 2001
Available at: www.amazon.com
Grades 6-12 Dracula chronicles the vampire's journey from Transylvania to the nighttime streets of London. There, he searches for the blood of strong men and beautiful women while his enemies plot to rid the world of his frightful power. |
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Physics and the Art of Dance
by Kenneth Laws
Photographs by Martha Swope
Foreword by Francia Russell of the Pacific Northwest Ballet
Hardcover edition (2002)
Grades 6-12
Available at: www.amazon.com
Physics and the Art of Dance gives all who enjoy dance - whether as dancers, students, teachers, or fans - an opportunity to understand what happens when human bodies move in the remarkable ways we call dance. How, for instance, do dancers create the illusion of defying gravity? Or of starting to spin when in the air with no source of force to act on their bodies? You may observe some dancers using their arms in a way that allows some to jump higher than others. What is that technique, and why does it work? |
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Writing About Dance
by Wendy Oliver
Human Kinetics; 1 edition January 2010
Grades 6-12
Available at: www.amazon.com
Writing About Dance guides students through various processes of writing about dance, from the informal (journal writing and free writing) to the formal (critiques, essays, and research papers). When students learn both practical and artistic aspects of writing, they become better critical thinkers and writers as they deepen their understanding of dance technique, dance creativity, and dance as an art form. |
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Exploring Dance Forms and Styles
by Helene Scheff, Marty Sprague, Susan McGreevy-Nichols
Human Kinetics; Pap/DVD edition, February 2010
Grades 6-12
Available at: www.amazon.com or www.humankinetics.com
Exploring Dance Forms and Styles: A Guide to Concert, World, Social, and Historical Dance introduces students to 60 dance forms across the four categories. It features worksheets and teacher information sheets in the book and as printable PDFs on the bound-in DVD, and it includes 39 dance performances |
