Hope in a Ballet Shoe: Orphaned by war, saved by ballet: an extraordinary true story

Product Information

Sitting in my comfortable UK home, I was instantly transported to war torn Sierra Leone and to a better understanding of what effects war have on children, who have no-one to speak up for them. One day when Michaela DePrince - then Mabinty Barunga - was outside and was caught in a severe wind storm, a page from a magazine blew into a her face. But when a mortar blast outside the hospital where he worked as an orthopedic surgeon sent him home from Afghanistan with devastating injuries, the dilapidated cabin he'd inherited from his grandfather seemed as good a place to regroup as any.

Soon after the discovery of the ballerina, Michaela was adopted by an American family that encouraged her to pursue her passion for ballet. Michaela is now a professional ballerina, who danced principal with The Dance Theatre of Harlem, in guest principal roles in South Africa and the Netherlands. She currently lives in New York City with her husband and five of her daughters, including Michaela.It is a good book to read with a (grand) child of 11/12y as there is a distressing killing early on. After the deaths of her parents, she moved to an orphanage from which she was adopted and taken to the US in 1999.

Racial prejudices present not only in the world of dance but also in modern day America makes it more difficult for her to become a professional ballerina. View image in fullscreen Michaela DePrince: First came the African mother, who loved me enough to give me her food while she was starving.

We wouldn't even know that at least her mother and perhaps her father were Jewish, if Hannukah presents weren't mentioned just in passing. News from Nowhere will not obtain personal information from other organisations, and will not share, pass on or sell personal information that we hold about individuals to anyone else.

But ultimately, it didn't really matter because we all know what she will go onto, we know that she already has the career that she's aspiring to for so much of the book.And then Michaela and her best friend are adopted by an American couple and Michaela can take the dance lessons she's dreamed of since finding her picture.

Michaela provides a fascinating insight into a world I know of something of, competitive ballet, and a world I knew nothing of, a childhood in Sierra Leone. The book shows the extraordinary journey she took from an orphan who appeared to have no future, to one of the most wonderful ballerinas now, the sacrifices she made, the prejudice and racism she endured, the hours of dancing she partook in. For as John Donne, the English poet once wrote, “No man is an island entire of itself…” In other words, you can’t make it alone in life. The murder of Mabinty Bangura’s father, the death of her mother from disease and starvation, the beating by her uncle and then her sale into an orphanage are all told in a matter of fact way.There are moments that will cause your heart to contract with anxiety as you rush through the book with baited breath, needing to know how things turn out for this wonderful, inspirational dancer, moments where your heart explodes into a frenzy of joy and moments where you feel yourself being uplifted, feeling as if you can accomplish anything, feeling as if - now that you've read Michaela's story - anything is possible, anything at all.