Review of the Day: The Ribbon by Tessa Blackham

The Ribbon
By Tessa Blackham
Atheneum (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)
$19.99
ISBN: 9781665971683
Ages 3-6
On shelves September 29th

When I was a child I didn’t read a lot of nonfiction. Not because I disliked the genre or anything, but because I lived in the 1980s. Nonfiction? A rarity on children’s bookshelves. But there were exceptions, as there are always exceptions, and one of them was a book called A Very Young Dancer by Jill Krementz. It was a kind of Day In the Life of a 10-year-old ballerina, auditioning for The Nutcracker with the New York City Ballet and, ultimately, performing in a show. Like a little mini documentary for kids, it was filled with photographs. I danced ballet myself, but I held no such ambitions in my own life. For me, the book was simply a window into something that was simultaneously fun and beautiful. Since that time I’ve seen a lot of ballet-related children’s books, each one attempting to capture something of the spirit of the form. I have admired many of them, but it wasn’t until I read The Ribbon by Tessa Blackham that I got to experience something akin to that feeling I had when I read A Very Young Dancer as a kid. Practically wordless, this author/illustrator debut title manages to capture the beauty, pathos, and sheer wonder of ballet while, at the same time, touching on the joys and anxiety of performance AND pulling off some visual acrobatics in the art. It is difficult to put your finger on precisely why a picture book works as well as it does. I’ve explained my own bias. Now let’s delve into some of the title’s less obvious charms.

A young dancer stretches in her bedroom with only a kitten for company. “Time to go,” says her mother. Next thing you know she’s backstage and in a costume. “Time to go?” she asks her ballet teacher nervously. “Time to go!” the woman encourages as all the other dancers leave the backstage area. Next thing you know she’s sniffling behind the costume racks (“Time to hide”) and is found by an older dancer. The bigger girl removes a red ribbon from her hair and hands it to the little dancer. Reliant upon it now, she’s able to enter the stage area and dance with the others. Time passes, and the girl becomes a young woman. So what happens when she loses that ribbon right before a big show?

Sometimes there is a moment in a picture book that you can point to and say, “There. That. That’s the moment when I realized that this book was special.” Not every picture book has that moment, but The Ribbon most certainly does. Picture it. The little ballerina is older now. She’s lost the ribbon that has given her such confidence over the years. Backstage she frets. You then get a page that’s just three sets of her eyes. In the first set she’s weeping, worried. In the second set, notice that the crease between her brows has smoothed out. Her eyes are still closed but they don’t look quite as fretful. Finally, in the third set, the eyes are open and they look… determined? Determined. And I’m just staring at this image and wondering to myself, “How the heck do you illustrate determined eyes?” But there’s no other way to interpret them and, indeed, the next thing you know she’s leapt onto the stage into the spotlight. It’s this wordless, clear cut turning point for the dancer, yes, but also for the viewer. You watch it and you realize all at once how incredible this book truly is. And all it took was three pairs of eyes.

It’s not the only occasion where the art impresses, of course. Blackham appears to have a unique ability here to combine technical prowess with fun and whimsy. For people looking for impressive, artistically significant elements in the book, you will not want for them. The publication page says that the art consists of, “charcoal, watercolor, rolled ink, pressed leaves, and fabric and digitally compiled.” The leaves are a particularly interesting element. Thematically they don’t make as much sense as the occasional bit of tulle Blackham has incorporated into her scenes. When they appear, though, it’s as a silent acknowledgement of the little dancer’s headspace. When she (and, later, another little girl) feels the most like herself, that’s when the leaf prints begin to appear on the page. Only then. I also couldn’t help but notice that Blackham has the wherewithal to include little kid-friendly details for sharp-eyed spotters. The kitten, for example, is fun to watch. You can see it grow up with the ballerina over the years, but it’s hidden in other areas as well, like the publication page (plus if you remove the dust jacket, there’s a furry little someone waiting for you there). And the missing red hair ribbon almost winks at you from its hiding spot, while the ballerina searches and frets.

It’s a pity that it’s not mentioned directly in the book, but apparently the ballet danced in this book by the young woman near the end is Balanchine’s “Serenade.” This dance is best known as one in which the “Waltz Girl” undoes her hair and it cascades down. I was unfamiliar with the ballet, and the moment, prior to reading this book and learning the backstory. Of course, this is the absolute perfect ballet to have selected. The ribbon is, by this point, gone, and our dancer is literally spotlighted in a sequence of different moments. She takes down her hair in the course of the dance (I had some fun going down a rabbit hole discussion of how dancers can do this quickly while on stage) and you get to experience how joyful she feels, and how free. Blackham credits the Pacific Northwest Ballet School fro “letting me go backstage to gather inspiration.” That experience is reflected in every spread, right down to the cover image where the dancer stands in the fifth position.

This book manages to combine kid-friendly elements, heart (shut up, I’m not crying reading a picture book, YOU’RE crying!), beautiful art, and a story that loads of young readers could identify with. Oh, and did I fail to get into the ways in which the page-to-page transitions flow? Look at how the book uses its borders (or lack thereof sometimes). Look at when there are multiple images of the same person on a page versus a single image that traverses the two-page spread. Look at the use of the red color, but also when Blackham chooses to make one element or another in a sequence pop. The choice of words. I could probably launch into another fifty paragraphs to describe everything that’s happening all at once in this book but you know what? A kid is going to care about this book only because this book makes its subject matter worth caring about. And if you can enrapture a young reader, there lies your success. This is a book worth loving. Deeply.

On shelves September 29th.

Source: Final copy given by publisher for review.

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2026, Reviews, Reviews 2026