My Ballet Journal

Entrée This isn’t so much a story (unless it's your kids' story, of course!) as it is a ballet log-book / scrapbook / journal / notebook / coloring book/ photo-album for the young and beginning performer, and it was too cute to pass up! Yes, even for grumpy old me!

Monica Wellington is a fellow blogspotter, and was also born in England, just like me, although I don't know her (there's millions of us all over the place, you know!), and she wrote this with her daughter Lydia (a ballerina who pretty much is a clone of Monica in terms of appearance, it seems to me!). This book is a great idea. It has a lot of pages for adding your child's name, ballet class information, with spaces for names and pictures of your friends in the class. It’s also a great checklist for things to take along with you that are essential or at least might come in handy for your lessons.

The book is also a guide to etiquette and appearance, and some ballet basics, including basic positioning, stretching, common and less common steps and forms, and it comes with plenty of space to jot down your own hints, tips, reminders, and corrections, to help make sure you’re performing at peak efficiency and in conformance with what’s being taught.

There's even a page to record your most embarrassing mistakes! I'm not a ballet performer or even a real aficionado, but to my amateur eye, this seems about as complete as you can get. There are pages on clothing, on shoes, on make-up, on dancing singly or in pairs, on other dance forms, and at the back, a two page glossary of ballet terms.

I confess that it makes me cringe to imagine what young people have to go through to achieve their dance aims - the work, the dedication, the sacrifices and the hardships - to say nothing of the inevitable pain and disappointment, but it seems to me that anyone who is willing to subject themselves to that kind of intensity needs a bit of a boost here and there - comfortable clothes, really good shoes, good instruction, and a fine journal in which to detail your challenges and triumphs, and that would be this one!

Adagio If I have a complaint (or two, and if you follow my reviews you know I always do!), then it would be about exclusiveness. This book is fine, and I do recommend it, but it is, be warned, heavily biased towards young white girls. There are precious few images of boys, and while I admit that it's harder to convey race with simple line drawings, most of the girls appear to be white, too. I'd have much preferred it if there had been more color in these B&W drawings. We whites are in the tiny minority on this planet after all, and we need to recognize this in all that we do! But we writers tend to be very insular, and I'm sure we've all made that pas de un (if I can paraphrase a ballet term!).

Lydia Wellington is a dancer with New York City Ballet. You can see her on youtube here. As I said, I'm far from an expert, but she certainly seems like she's got moves to me. Also check out the amazing image on the opening screen for the NYC ballet. Hopefully they won't change it for a while, so you can see what I saw. The first image of the ballerinas and the snow is stunning.

Coda So very little to complain about (and hopefully a second edition will take care of that), and lots to love, lots to explore, lots to use, and lots of helpful information. I think I can recommend this one for your youthful ballerina (or ballerino if they're none too picky!).

This is an all-in-one journal for all your little girl's ballet needs. Various key ballet positions were illustrated throughout the book. The book also included sections fro hair and makeup. A must-have for all budding ballerina out there.

copy/paste link: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1080999730

A beautiful, sweet and extremely girly journal.

As a former ballerina myself i appreciate books that help you keep your schedule intact.

The interface is very cute and appeals to all ages. I really loved it.

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE BOOK

- At the end there is a glossary with all the ballet terms.
- It helps trackig your progress.
- There are even some tips and pointers.

As the title says, this is a journal and not a story book. It enables the user to record information over a year about their ballet class, friends, dress codes, ballet positions as well as giving reminders on different aspects of ballet - steps, moves, ways to stretch and the like. It also has space to record most embarrassing moments, dance roles, make up used and performances. Additionally there is a dictionary of Ballet terms. This could easily become a keepsake to remember key moments in that young ballerina’s year.

What a fantastic book for any ballet dancing young ladies (sorry, not really appropriate for boy ballet dancers as all illustrations are of girls - unless they like wearing leotards, their hair in a bun, tiaras, etc though much of the rest would be fine for either gender)! It is a great guide to new ballet dancers, offering tips and guidance. It is also a colouring book enabling the user to totally personalise their journal by both their art work and their entries. It could easily be used to record progress throughout its use. Sad it doesn't do more to promote positive images of boys who may also appreciate the opportunity to keep a journal like this.

This journal is prefect for little ballerinas! This allows girls to track their progress through lessons and so much more!

I liked this book, but I didn't love it. Like 'All About Marvelous Me!', 'My Ballet Journal' is one that children can fill out as a way of documenting where they are at this point in their life. As the name suggests, however, 'My Ballet Journal' is specifically targeted to little girls who do ballet.

While this is a cute book that would be fun for children to look back upon years later, I do have a few problems with it. Firstly, it called itself "My Ballet Journal" but it should really be called "A Ballet Journal for Little Girls that are Very Serious about Ballet." Why is this? There are a couple reasons.

1) This book is targeted specifically at girls.
While females are the majority of the people that do ballet, especially at a young age, there are still boys that dance ballet as well. This book is not geared towards them, talking exclusively about tutus and lipstick and what-not.

2) Things mentioned in this book are not things the casual ballet class addresses This book is geared towards girls who dance ballet on point and go to dance schools that do productions like "Swan Lake."

Despite my criticism, there are things I like about this book. In addition to the time capsule quality of it, it also doubles as book about ballet. It gives definitions and examples. The ten-year-old in me that had been doing ballet since I was three would have loved that aspect of this book, although she would have felt very ostracized and inadequate about the large part of the book that I was unable to relate to, despite the fact that I considered myself a ballet dancer and had been doing it for years.

All-in-all I liked this book, but would consider very carefully the person I was gifting it to before deciding whether to buy it.