Book: Grandmother’s Gift
Author: Colleen Cavanaugh, Stillwater Books, April 2026.
Glittering rhinestones, a sweeping romantic score, a certain enchantment of the moving body meeting carefully crafted aesthetic elements; pointe shoes leaving toes bloody, sweaty dancewear in a messy ballet bag, the cruel realities of rejection and perfection sought remaining unattainable…the art form of ballet holds both of these qualities of being, both the enchanted and the gritty. Colleen Cavanaugh’s Grandmother’s Gift, a coming-of-age ballerina novel bursting with magical realism, vividly paints a picture of this dichotomy.
The book tells the story of Celia, a teenage dancer from Rhode Island (just like the author, and yours truly!). Her journey started with a formative summer intensive, which led her to New York City: first as a runaway, then with the cautious support of her family. Following her 17th birthday, she discovered that she had a unique gift: she could fly.
Yes, you read that right; she could fly like a bird. Over the course of the story, she learned that she is part of a lineage – through her grandmother, a former professional dancer – of dancers who could fly (in addition to related gifts, such as communing with other flying dancers via dreams). That is the magic within this story.
Yet, the story is also very much grounded in gritty realities: teenage romance and heartbreak, friendship challenges, grief of elders passing, self-doubts about one’s own artistry, and competing desires pulling one’s heart in varied directions.
The work is suitable for readers of all ages. The prose is straightforward and accessible (although also, at times, beautifully poetic), and feels like it would be highly relatable – even instructive – for teenage readers. With a keen literary eye, one can spot deeper layers. Thus, more mature readers can also find a lot to appreciate. Clocking in at just over 240 pages, it’s also a quick, efficient read. Black-and-white sketch illustrations from Carolyn Winter are both whimsical and evocative.
An effective and intriguing way of evaluating the text seems to be looking at its varied themes, motifs, and elements. First is the enchantment. The text opens with one of Celia’s flying dreams, where she was a bird (often in a flock of birds, and in one comical scene, facing off against a rowdy squirrel).
Her grandmother woke her up, and because she was ill, offered her alphabet soup. The letters flew around the kitchen; they “darted, circled, and dipped across the room.” As the story progresses and Celia became more connected with her flying gifts, she woke up to little souvenirs of her bird dreams: feathers.
There is, of course, the flying. In one scene, with (eventual love interest) Tony, Cavanaugh viscerally describes their “sky-born pas de deux”: “They started to release each other with more force. Their arcs widened. They carefully learned to control their speed and direction.”
Interestingly, on the following page is the more realistic magic of a (grounded) pas de deux with Tony that flowed, just clicked: “He easily lifted her high in the air and their promenades were effortless…It was so easy with him. He was a magician. The movement just seemed to happen.” Cavanaugh thus underscored the enchantment within such moments between moving bodies – no literal flying required.
Closer to earth (literally and figuratively), Celia faced typical teenaged challenges. Her parents, but especially her father, questioned the practicality of her dancing dream – and she had to prove that she could make it work for herself. She experienced confusion with young romance, with one boy dashing and debonair (but clearly morally questionable) and another who was good to her and good-hearted (that’s Tony – who, yes, can also fly!).
Something brewing with Tony threatened her friendship with Alicia, who she met at that early summer intensive and with whom she quickly became close. Celia missed her terribly until they were reconnected. Alicia ended up starting on a path apart from professional performance – an example of the different directions that dance can lead us, and the ways young people must negotiate those choices for themselves.
Celia experienced the anxieties of auditioning, nervousness as a rookie company member, and the packed scheduling of a young dancer. Clear also in the text is the tension between rigor and abandonment inherent to dance artistry. Cavanaugh depicted the kinetic immediacy humming from a ballet class: accessible and potentially compelling for non-dancers, familiar and relatable for dancers.
One lovely example: “[Celia] imagined beams of light shooting from her center, through her arms and into each finger, reaching into space and helping her to balance. When she jumped, these beams radiated into the space around her.”
Counterbalancing that magic, however, are the common doubts and naivetes so many young dancers experience; Celia believed that “if she could achieve physical perfection, she would be beautiful and finally land a job in a ballet company.”
Cavanaugh offered the same with rehearsals, this one with Teri, the first choreographer Celia danced with as a professional:
Teri started to manipulate the phrases in space and create patterns. She eventually added music and the dancers played with the cadences of the new movement, integrating it with the new sound. The tempos of some of the phrases changed because of the music. It was challenging but fun, like putting together pieces of a puzzle. Phrases sped up or slowed down as they tucked themselves into melodies of the music. At the end of the rehearsal, Celia was grinning.
The backdrop of all this was New York City, which Cavanaugh painted in vivid imagery. Driving through the city with her mother, Celia saw “three-story brownstones and tall apartment buildings…streets alive with people of all ages,” energetic dogs on walks, and shoppers weighed down by big bags of purchases.
The holiday season brought “displays of fat, jolly Santas, cute dancing elves, children opening presents, blazing fireplaces, fake snow, and steaming hot chocolate.” The holidays in NYC really do resonate with a unique glow, a certain magic!
Celia’s relationship with her own flying also brought compelling social and emotional dynamics. Her learning about the gift, and learning to manage it, was a gradual process – one that wasn’t done for her as the story closed.
Her first discovering her own flight: “whenever the ballon of a jump was discovered, the jump always seemed to hover a little longer in the air, escaping gravity. It was a part of what made dancing so much fun. But this…”
The young woman feared that if her flying were to be discovered, it could change her dancing and her life forever – perhaps for the worse. Would it bring fame, and would that be positive? Would it change her dancing, altering the progress she’d made in beginning a performance career and even precluding it entirely? Learning that her grandmother gave up flying for love of her family, and dancing, added weight and dimension to this complex matter.
Like any young person facing unique challenges, she made mistakes. After class at her home studio over holiday break, a young student saw her flying. She even let a bit of her flight go during one performance. All of her loved ones impressed upon her the danger and folly of that choice – admonishments she accepted and learned from.
Crucially, however, Celia did not face these issues alone. She had Tony and Alycia – and some of her hardest times within the narrative were when communication with them was paused. She even described sharp loneliness during these periods. Yet even more meaningful, arguably, were her connections with the elders in this community of flying dancers: her grandmother, her teacher “Mr. A” and his wife, her NYC housemate Bea, and (later in the narrative) Mia.
These elders helped her sort out her confusions and anxieties about the path ahead – chiefly, her relationship with her flying gift and how she’d reconcile it with her dancing goals, but also all that teenaged drama of young romance, friendships, and beginning to work towards her dreams.
The prevalence of these relationships underscores the importance of lineage within dance, as well as communal support. The dance life is not for the faint of heart, and such support – embodied in sweaty hugs and heard in dressing room chatter – is essential for making one’s way through it.
This unique connection is clear in the book’s ending scene, a gathering of flying dancers at Mia’s Connecticut barn home, as well as in the relationships between dancers of Celia’s first company: warm, supportive, and welcoming to her.
Whether through dancers in a corps or birds in a flock, within the magic or the realism, such unity sings from the pages of Grandmother’s Gift. That’s a poignant reminder to enjoy the enchantment, enjoy what’s a bit more rough and real, enjoy both – but enjoy it in good company.
By Kathryn Boland of Dance Informa.
