Dancing around the 'Problem' of Boys and Dance

Michelle Magorian and Jan Ormerod’s (1992) picture book Jump is about a young, white, middle-class boy (perhaps Ž ve or six years old) called Steven who wants to dance. Steven watches his older sister’s ballet classes and wishes he could join in, although we are told that it is the other boys in the class (Michael, Joe and Barry) that Steven wants to be like. Steven also loves to jump. He practises jumping everywhere, even in his bedroom. Steven wants to do ballet because he overhears the dance teacher tell the students that it will help them to jump higher. When he asks his mother to let him dance, she says that ‘real boys don’t go to dance classes’ (p. 6). The next time Steven is at ballet class he squeezes the boys to see if they are ‘real’. He tells his mother that the other boys in the dance class are real, but she is unmoved and suggests instead that he take up basketball. This advice doesn’t help Steven much. His family has neither a ball nor a court and he is too young to join a team. At the next ballet class, Steven is unable to just watch. Despite his father’s attempts to restrain him he runs across the  oor and joins in with the other children. The teacher is so impressed by Steven’s jump that she suggests he stay in the class. Steven asks if she can teach him a ‘basketball dance’ (p. 14). Steven is allowed to stay and eventually is the star of the dance school’s end-of-year performance, which includes a dance about a basketball match in which one team wins and the other loses. All the parents in the audience notice the boy who can jump higher than the other dancers. Steven’s father points out to another audience member that the boy with the big jump is his son. The audience member says ‘He’ll make a Ž ne basketballer one day’, to which Steven’s mother replies, ‘He’ll make a Ž ne dancer too’ (p. 23). The Ž nal picture of the book shows a joyful silhouette of Steven and his family (father, mother and sister) against the moon, running through a Ž eld on the way home from the performance, all holding hands. The four family members are in a line from tallest (the father) to shortest (Steven), all off the ground, as if jumping or  oating, except the father who is still touching the ground. Steven is highest. The picture has no accompanying words.