Book Review: Barefoot Book of Ballet Stories

Title: The Barefoot book of Ballet Stories

Written by: Jane Yolen, Heidi E.Y. Stemple

Illustrated by: Rebecca Guay

Age Recommendations: 6 and up

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Ballet has never been a passion of ours, but I have always loved The Nutcracker and was excited to be able to share the Nutcracker ballet with my daughter for Christmas 2017. I was even more excited that she loved it, too! So when we learned that this book includes the Nutcracker, it became a definite must have for us! We couldn't wait to dive in and read the collection of stories, though of course we were most excited about the Nutcracker! 

What is it about? 

This collection of some of the most famous ballets from around the world begins each story (Coppelia:The girl with the Enamel Eyes, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty and Daphnis and Chloe) with a brief history of the earliest days of the ballet and it's completion with highlights leading up to today. These stories tend to provide a story unlike one you may expect as they are heavily centered around the original stories rather then the more modern versions we may be more familiar with. Each fairy tale like story holds it's own collection of magical moments as well as dark undertones, which may not be as welcomed for the younger reader.

What did we think?

My daughter and I seemed to have different opinions throughout most of this book. While my eight year old ball of sunshine disliked the amount of dark story lines and undertones we came across while reading this book, I enjoyed them. I loved getting the chance to learn about some ballets I had never even heard of before while getting a fresh look at some stories I thought I knew well. I also enjoyed that not every story was all love and happily ever afters, which can be common for stories like these. 

However, my daughter did feel like the stories were good fairy tales (though I suspect she didn't quit understand all of them yet) and particularly enjoyed the writing style and, on that note, I would have to agree with her. I was instantly sucked in by the writing style, often falling in love with the specific choices in wording that were made which heightened the magical feeling of possibility, enchantment and that anything could happen.

Of course, our favorite story was the Nutcracker, however that fact kind of surprised me. By the time we reached the Nutcracker, I expected that the story would be different then the story I was used to and anticipated disliking it for the changes that would be made. The truth was, however, that I actually loved it more, happily welcoming the slight additions to the story, many of which I often wondered about myself and my daughter even complained that the story was too long and she wished that the story had gone on for longer because she enjoyed it so much, happily agreeing to my suggestion that we make reading this version of the story every year around Christmas, though less happy about the fact that Christmas is so far away (It's only March).

However, I thought that upon finishing the book, the Nutcracker would be my favorite by far, and I can't say that that's true, either. While Coppelia:The girl with the Enamel Eyes was easily my least favorite addition to this collection, I found myself really enjoying Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake exceedingly more then I had ever imagined. So much so, that they are close runner ups to The Nutcracker. 

Yet, the truth is, I didn't hate Coppelia:The girl with the Enamel Eyes. Actually, in some ways I was really intrigued by it, it just didn't strike a cored in my heart quit like the others did, however I'm really glad that I had the opportunity to experience the story. 

What do we rate it?

My daughter gives this book, very enthusiastically, a 

5 out of 5 toe shoes

I give this book a 

4.5 out of 5 toe shoes

So now that we've shared with you, we want to know: What is your favorite ballet? Is your favorite Ballet included in this beautiful collection of stories?