Our final book review for our weekend of reading upcoming children’s books releases!

My daughter has been dancing ballet since she was 3-years old. This season, she decided she wants to take a break to focus on gymnastics, but I see in her heart that she still has a love for it. Nothing better than a ballet book to end the night on. I’m also trying to teach my son how to recognize numbers, so I thought this book could reach both kids for different reasons!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This story is told in a countdown fashion. There are 10 kids in a ballet class, but one by one, they leave the class with different ballet moves, leaving only the teacher behind for a nice surprise. There is a page in the back of the book that provides the pronunciation for each ballet move mentioned in the book.

My 5-year old daughter’s review

If there are ballerina’s dancing in a story, there is a good chance she will love it. She corrected my pronunciation on many of the ballet terms, and proceeded to stand up after every dancer left the room to show me what the move was. I asked her how she felt about the book, and she said “it was good! Can I dance now?” Motivation to dance? Where was this book when I needed her to practice for her last recital!

My 2-year old son’s review

While my son loves dancing, he didn’t seem as excited by the pictures of people dancing, as much as my daughter did. He enjoyed shouting out numbers, but he quickly realized he was in over his head and didn’t know a lot of the numbers. He just started shouting “two!” not realizing he would have to wait until the end of the book to get to his magic number. Oh well. Can’t win over every kid.

Mom Review

As I read to my kids, I noticed that the writing felt a bit clunky. There was a line that didn’t rhyme with anything, to be followed by 2 lines that did rhyme. It threw the rhythm of the story off, as you expected each line to flow a bit better. The last line of the book was there, and it felt like there should be one more to rhyme. It ended a bit abruptly. My daughter kept staring at me as though I was reading it wrong. I can’t be trusted since I couldn’t pronounce the dance moves after all.

The illustrations though were beautiful and captured the dancers with each move. She soaked those pictures in, and those helped remind her of what dance move she could do. Or try to do before crashing into her brother, or a dog, or just fall on the floor giggling.

I would give this book 3 out of 5 book stacks, but my daughter wanted to give more. We agreed to give 4 out 5!