Synopsis
Ballet Kitty wakes up in the pink—ballerina pink, of course—until she realizes she can’t find her slippers anywhere. Suddenly her leaps aren’t as lighthearted or her pirouettes as pretty. Where could they be? she mumbles and grumbles. How can she dance in her clunky old sneakers? But very quickly Kitty discovers that as long as she’s doing her most perfect plies and cutest curtsies, she’ll always be happy…right from her head to the tips of her little pointed toes!
Bernette Ford’s delightful dance-loving story and Sam Williams’s charming pas de deux of pussycats will inspire every little ballerina!
Children's Literature
Ballet Kitty is getting ready for her friend, Princess Pussycat, to come over and play. She wants to wear her ballet clothes, but cannot find her ballet slippers. When Princess Pussycat comes over, the two felines have a day of fun and Ballet Kitty finds out that she can still do perfect pirouettes and curtsies, even without her ballet slippers. The incredibly simple story lacks plot or interesting characters, appealing only at a most basic level to the average little girl who loves to play dress up. The illustrations are also simple but attract more attention than the story itself, with muted watercolor paintings that maintain the book's sweet and gentle feel, but they are not enough to liven up this story. An educator's use of the book in the classroom would take quite a bit of imagination, best used perhaps in early childhood classrooms to teach the color pink (the most prominent color in the illustrations), or as a practice book for early readers in first or second grade. With such a wide variety of beginning reader books on the market, however, there are many more to choose from. Recommended is the "Green Light Readers" series, a collection of early level reading books that have simple words along with interesting plots and humor to boot.