Tallulah's Toe Shoes

Tallulah's Toe Shoes by: Marilyn Singer, Illustrated by Alexandra Boiger

1. Tallulah was a little girl that wanted to be a ballerina, she thought that if she could stand like ballerina she could also move like a ballerina too. Her dream was to be able to dance in the Sleeping Beauty performance and play the Lilac Fairy. However, Tallulah didn't dance, she only swayed in the background. Tallulah wanted ballerina shoes but her teacher told her she was not old enough and her feet were not big enough so one day in the dressing room when a girl threw away her old pointe shoes Tallulah got them and started practicing in her house. After trying multiple times, disappointment filled her heart and instead of seeing a beautiful ballerina in the mirror she just saw a rat. Tallulah, however, was filled with dedication and with the help of her brother she was able to stand on point but her feet hurt very much after she did. After her fail attempt Tallulah became very sad because she though her dreams of becoming a ballerina had been crushed, she thought she wasn't good enough. A week later she went back to the studio and threw away the shoes, while she was doing this the girl that had thrown them away in the first place caught her in the act and confronted her. Instead of being mad the girl showed sympathy and told Tallulah that she and started out the same way, she too was once a rat in a mirror, however that didn't stop her. The girl told Tallulah to keep working hard so that one day she could dance on stage. Tallulah took this advice and used it as motivation with her future dancing.

2. In this book parabolas and concaves are present in the body of the ballerinas as well as the hoops used by the girls swaying in the background, their bodies form arcs which could represent the shape of a parabola in a graph. Upward and downward concavity is present in the studio mirrors, in the arms of the ballerinas when forming an arc above their heads int he routines, and in the leg positions for certain dances. Rate of change is present in the ballerinas pirouette because they are spinning faster and slower. Symmetry is present in the studio mirrors and in the dancers alinements.  Transformations, more specifically shifts, are present every time a dancer switches position in the routine. This book presents how a normal activity, such as ballet, can be used to represent various real world examples of mathematical concepts.

3. Literature is an effective way to teach mathematical concepts because it allows you to learn math without realizing in terms of real world examples. As I was doing this homework, I read the book to various people on my floor, after finishing they all commented saying how they didn't realize how much math was involved in an act such a ballet and that by reading a story with mathematical applications they were able to understand the concepts easier. Also, reading is more straightforward than math for most people due to the fact that math is mainly complex equations that have to be memorized and understood.