Ann Stalcup 
The Ballet Dress 

A barefoot Mary has danced to soaring ballet music from an old gramophone, in her back garden ever since she learned to walk. Her head is filled with dreams of someday becoming a ballerina. Even when she is old enough to go to school, she rushes home everyday and with brown paper wings pinned to her shoulders, she dances and dances until darkness falls. When, at last,  a dance teacher comes to her small town, she learns to arabesque and plié and leap gracefully through the air. After a while she is chosen to perform a solo in a town hall concert. She is filled with both pride and anxiety. She needs a ballet dress. But there is a problem: it is wartime. When she visits a draper’s shop, she learns that there is no fabric suitable for making her dress. She is devastated. Can her dream of becoming a ballet dancer ever come true? And will her mother somehow find a way to make her a ballet dress?