Do you have a budding performer in your family? What better way to inspire their love of the stage (or help quell their fears) than with a book about their craft! Check out these great titles from the New Orleans Public Library to grow their passion for dance, music, acting, and more.

Children

In ¡Mambo Mucho Mambo!: the Dance that Crossed Color Lines by Dean Robbins & Eric Velasquez, young readers travel to 1940s New York City, where they’ll meet Millie, a jazz dancer living in an Italian neighborhood, and Pedro, who loves dancing to Latin songs in his Puerto Rican neighborhood. The two are forbidden to dance together until everything changes when one band decides to break the rules.

Told through real-life characters who feature in an afterword, ¡Mambo Mucho Mambo! portrays the power of music and dance to transcend racial, religious, and ethnic boundaries.

Young singers suffering from a touch of stage fright can find comfort and confidence in Piper Chen Sings by Phillipa Soo, Maris Pasquale Doran, & Qin Leng. Readers follow Piper Chen, a singer who is suddenly riddled with doubt when she agrees to sing a solo in her school’s Spring Sing. Luckily, Nai Nai, her grandmother, helps her overcome her nerves and shine her brightest.

Middle Grade

Camp Prodigy by Caroline Palmer is a heartwarming middle-grade graphic novel that follows two nonbinary kids as they navigate anxiety and identity while having fun and forming friendships at their summer orchestra camp.

In Upstaged by Robin Easter, a theater camp is where best friends Ashton and Ivy have spent every summer together. Now, it’s their last year before they part ways for high school, and Ash is determined to end it on a high note.

The Unbeatable Lily Hong by Diana Ma follows the title character as she and her fellow students try to save the Clarktown Community Center, which houses her parents’ Chinese school. To do so, they must master a traditional Chinese dance in time for the center’s first showcase. Along the way, Lily receives some unexpected help from her rival, Max Zhang, in this smart, funny, and heartfelt novel.

Teen

In The Notes by Catherine Con Morse, a reserved Chinese American teen at a Southern performing arts boarding school comes into her own under the tutelage of a glamorous new piano teacher while grappling with her first love; adolescent and academic pressures; and mysterious, personal notes.

The graphic novel, Wandance vol. 1, by Coffee, introduces readers to Kaboku Kotani as he’s starting high school with a plan to do what he’s always done: go along with his friends, keep quiet, and not draw too much attention to himself. But then he sees another first-year, Hikari Wanda, dancing like no one is watching—or like she doesn’t care who sees her. It makes Kaboku wonder: Could he reach that same freedom? To find his way to Wanda, he does something he never thought he could: he joins the dance club.