I went back to a novel in verse after a long time with A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman. It’s a lovely tale of grit and ambition, about finding one’s path and learning what it is to be a dancer. More than once, I had a pebble in my throat as I read Veda’s story of discovery and rejoiced in the way she discovers and defines herself.
Veda’s mother doesn’t want her to dance. She would rather her daughter spent time on more useful, lucrative things, like mathematics. But Veda knows what she wants, and her father and grandmother support her, celebrating her wins and urging her towards excellence.
And then, Veda suffers a nightmarish accident. She wakes up to discover that her leg has been amputated from the knee down. Her dreams come crashing down around her, and worst of all, her dance teacher Uday Anna counsels her to choose another path.
What follows is a journey of questions. What does dance mean? What drew her to dance in the first place? Has she forgotten what dance used to be, before competitiveness made the sound of applause the sweetest music of all? As she forges new relationships and mends old ones, Veda discovers how much she needs to grow to find the dancer inside her again.
While I would have liked the spiritual messaging to be a little subtler, A Time to Dance touched me with its poignant depiction of loss and self-discovery.
| Title | A Time to Dance |
| Author | Padma Venkatraman |
| Tags | Young Adult, Verse Novel, Dance |
| Ages | 12+ |
| Rating (out of 5) | 4 |
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