By Katherine Reynolds

Ideas4writers (2007)

The charming tale of Dylan the dancing horse and his loyal feline companion, Red Tabby, is a delightful and well-structured children’s adventure that captures the magic of the circus and the thrill of being out on your own in the world.

Born to Dance begins with the sale of Dylan, who is pulling a milk wagon despite a show business heritage, to a nefarious dealer in horseflesh, Dangerous Dennis. Realizing his friend is in peril, good friend Red Tabby rescues him, and in the process of their escape, the pair discovers the down-on-its-luck Happy Days Circus, which has been abandoned by most of its human staff in an apparent pay dispute and left in the care of the circus animals.

Dylan and Red Tabby join the circus and merriment ensues, as the animal ensemble strives to bring the circus back to glory, thanks to the help of a cast of characters that seem torn from the pages of a Ringling Brothers version of “Harry Potter.”

The big dilemma in the third act of the novel revolves around the mysterious cancellation of a series of dates booked for the struggling show. It is soon revealed that Dangerous Dennis has returned and is up to no good.

However, the big surprise at the end of the story reforms and redeems all the major characters, and a touching reunion of Dylan and his long-lost mother should warm the heart of every reader.  The characters are poised for a long run of adventures, as the thrill of hitting the road and discovering new challenges proves to be too strong a lure to resist for Dylan and Red Tabby at the end of the story.

THE WRITING:

Katherine Reynolds’ strong voice and skilled plotting was honed in years of professional endeavors in television, film and journalism.  Unlike many writers, her work does not bog down in the third act, and the ingenious twists offered in her tale never pander to its intended young readership. This is a series that could potentially grow in stature as more readers take hold, and Reynolds’ main challenge is to stay true to the characters and her Bible for the series.

The initial book of the series eschews overt magic in its storytelling, if one can accept the basic anthropomorphous ways of the main characters. This is a good sign for the series, as too many young adult works get caught in a gumbo of sword and sorcery that shuts down the simple enjoyment of reading, instead requiring a Talmudic scholar level of attention to most plot details.  Bravo, Ms. Reynolds, for avoiding such overkill.  We look forward to more.

MARKETING:

The current web sites for Born To Dance are a Wordpress blog that focuses on the business aspects of the book and its marketing, and a brochure-ware publisher’s site intended for the trade.  Clearly, young readership will not be interested and demand more.  In fact, having an inviting web site where the COMMUNITY that will build behind the Born to Dance characters can linger may be the most important step taken in promoting the book next to writing a solid sequel.

It is suggested that the author visit some clever and well-designed children’s web sites for ideas, (i.e, pbskids.org) or others that gather a community. The web site constructed to serve Born To Dance absolutely has to allow for communication between readers, offer novel ways to get color print-outs of the characters, take readers behind the scenes for further glimpses of the characters and their intimate lives, and most assuredly allow copyright-free passing of images and text from the book.  While such a site may sound imposing and expensive, there are many shops in India and other highly technological companies that can do an amazing job producing a state of the art web site that will serve as the home for BTD’s readership in between books. Simply use Google to identify them, or place an ad in your local Craigslist looking for someone to manage the site. They will find you, trust me.

Once a community is established and growing, maintain momentum through a series of free online or phone webinars.  It is vitally important that the readership for this series be kept in the loop on new developments.  Doing so will build word of mouth exponentially at very little cost.

Although it may seem counter-intuitive, it might also be advisable to stage several free shows at various campuses in your local area and give away the book. Again, looking at the bigger picture, the goal is to build a community that will respond and recruit.  Any lost sales will be more than compensated by added web traffic and the anticipation for more news on the BTD characters.