STORIES FROM THE CLASSICAL BALLET

A book about ballet that tries to do many things—and succeeds at most. In her first book, Hollyer admirably accomplishes the equivalent of novelizing movies based on books—adapting back into stories eight ballets originally inspired by stories. Irina Baronova—one of Ballanchine's ``baby ballerinas''—provides an introduction that is part autobiography, part engaging discussion of ballet. She also pens introductions and performance notes for each story, full of personal—at times comic—experiences and pithy observations. Everything about the book orients readers toward an appreciation of the ballet except the opulent, eye-filling illustrations; Williams treats the material only as stories and doesn't make the link to the ballets that her collaborators do. It's a minor misstep in an otherwise smoothly choreographed work. (Fiction. 8-12)