Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew 4 – The Cinderella Ballet Mystery

Carolyn Keene's The Cinderella Ballet Mystery is a Clue Crew case for 8 year olds about a pair of glass slippers that go missing days before opening night.

What happens

Nancy, Bess and George go to ballet at Mr McGuire's studio, and the whole class is rehearsing a full-length Cinderella. George is the wicked stepmother. Bess is the fairy godmother. Nancy is a mouse who turns into a coach driver (with a very quick costume change behind a fake bush).

Then the girl playing Cinderella sprains her ankle. Her understudy, Andrea, gets the part. Nadine, who badly wanted it, sends a pink ballet shoe flying into the mirror. An accident, she says.

The shoes for the ball come from a special shop in Paris. They look like glass but they're see-through plastic, covered in tiny heart-shaped rhinestones. By Wednesday they've vanished, and Andrea asks the Clue Crew to find them before Saturday.

There's no shortage of people to suspect. Nadine, still sulking. Gregory, who plays the prince, hands round fake cookies from his sister's toy kitchen and once put ice cubes in somebody's ballet slippers. And Deirdre won't stop taking photos for her website, even after she's been told to.

The clues are small and lovely. A zigzag silver hair clip that could be a Z or an N, depending which way up you hold it. A scrap of paper that just says "taille 35". A single rhinestone where it shouldn't be.

Your reader gets each one at the same moment Nancy does, so they can have a proper go at solving it. (George looks the French word up on the computer, which is a very sensible bit of detective work.)

There's plenty of real ballet in here too. Pliés, tendus and glissades all get a quick explanation. Nancy can't get over the fact that "stage right" means going left, and honestly, who could blame her?

It's gentle and funny, and what's at stake is a pair of shoes and a show. If your reader does ballet or dance, they'll recognise the rehearsal nerves and the thrill of the costumes finally coming out.

What to read next

This is book four of the Clue Crew and it reads perfectly well on its own. If they love the countdown to a big opening, A Musical Mess sits the three girls in the front row of a touring Broadway show, with a rival theatre group booing outside before the curtain has even gone up.