{"id":1310,"date":"2025-09-05T16:44:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T16:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/?p=1310"},"modified":"2025-09-08T01:25:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T01:25:40","slug":"meet-keira-shes-learning-the-cost-of-a-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/meet-keira-shes-learning-the-cost-of-a-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Keira. She\u2019s learning the cost of a dream."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Keira is sixteen and she wants to be a dancer. A ballet dancer. But that takes training and training costs money, which her mother doesn\u2019t have. They can\u2019t afford to continue her lessons. But Keira refuses to give up on the dream she\u2019s had since first grade. So she gathers the money she\u2019s stashed away, stuffs some clothes and her dancing shoes into a duffel bag, and gets on a bus to New York City.<\/p>\n<p>Keira\u2019s got big plans\u2014studying with Martha Graham, becoming a Rockette to make extra money\u2014but very little understanding of how easily New York can tear up your plans and leave you with nothing. Before her day in the city is over, she\u2019ll have to choose between something bad and something that could be even worse.<\/p>\n<p>When I wrote \u201cThe Beginner,\u201d the teenager I had in mind was one of my sisters, an extraordinary dancer who never made it to the stage. But the character is named after my sister\u2019s granddaughter, yet another extraordinary dancer, who\u2019s been taking lessons since she was a toddler.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Keira is sixteen and she wants to be a dancer. A ballet dancer. But that takes training and training costs money, which her mother doesn\u2019t have. They can\u2019t afford to continue her lessons. But Keira refuses to give up on the dream she\u2019s had since first grade. So she gathers the money she\u2019s stashed away,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1422,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1311,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions\/1311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/maryannmcguigan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}