Siena and her artist-husband Mark revisit her 2006 young readers memoir To Dance in Tiny Dancer, a new and more expansive autobiographical work for older readers, which returns to her early and teen years, and the beginnings of her passion for ballet as a talented student at the School of American Ballet in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s. Mark’s spare, elegantly expressive drawings bring her early years in Puerto Rico vividly to life, in counterpoint to stories of her parents’ divorce, the intricacies of ballet and the life of a dancer (including being at SAB during George Balanchine’s years at New York City Ballet), and ultimately the story of the injury that ended her dancing career, though not her love of, and subsequent involvement with, classical dance. In this eight-page excerpt, we meet 15 year-old Siena in 1982 in New York City as she studies dance at “the best ballet school in the world.” Tiny Dancer by Siena Cherson Siegel and Mark Siegel will be published by S&S/Atheneum this month