As a child who lacked any coordination and grace, I feel quite grateful that my mum encouraged me to stick to swimming rather than pursue ballet.
But that never stopped me from dreaming of wearing those beautiful tutus and having my hair in a bun and dancing around to The Nutcracker.
As an adult, I’ve since given adult ballet classes a go. And it’s every bit as humbling as you can imagine. Needless to say that I lasted only 4 classes before I decided my ego could only handle so much.
So these days I stick to children’s ballet books.
There’s something so very magical and almost entrancing about ballet though. It really is a discipline and understanding how it works and also the mindset it takes to become a dancer might be something your little one is keen to read about.
Luckily, we’ve got a good stack of books to help with that.
These are children’s ballet books for ages 5 to 10, starting with a pair of magic red shoes. They’re stories, not how-to-dance books, and they run from the youngest up.
Ballet books for 5 and 6 year olds
Magic Ballerina
Magic Ballerina 01-06
Delphie is nine and completely ballet-mad. She’s never had a single lesson, so she learns from library books and dances everywhere, even on the street.
One snowy evening she’s caught copying a class through the window of the new ballet school on her road. Madame Za-Za invites her in and lends her an old pair of red leather ballet shoes. That night the shoes start to glitter, and Delphie lands in Enchantia, where the characters from the ballets live.
This bundle is the first six books. We also have books 7 to 12, where the shoes pass to Rosa, books 13 to 18 with Holly, and two Jade books after that. On our shelf at 5.
Isadora Moon Goes to the Ballet
Isadora Moon Goes to the Ballet
Isadora is half vampire and half fairy, and she’s ballet mad. Her favourite dancer is Tatiana Tutu, and she has the poster, the scrapbook and a black tutu just like hers.
So when her class is off to see Alice in Wonderland, with Tatiana Tutu dancing the White Rabbit, she can hardly sit still. Then Mum and Dad volunteer to help on the trip. Oh dear.
It’s a funny one. On our shelf at 5.
Ballet Stars is the shortest of the lot, a rhyming show-day story told by the dancers themselves, at a little over a hundred words. On our shelf at 6.
Ballet books for 7 and 8 year olds
Ivy & Bean Doomed to Dance
Ivy & Bean Doomed to Dance
It all starts with a book. Ivy’s grandma sends her The Royal Book of the Ballet, and the girls stop dead at the gory bits. A girl called Giselle comes back as a ghost and dances a duke to death. Brilliant!
So obviously they have to take ballet. Bean’s mum agrees on one condition. Sixteen lessons and a show at the end, no quitting and no complaining. Then they meet Madame Joy, and it’s pliés for half an hour.
Ivy and Bean like the idea of ballet a lot more than the practising. On our shelf at 7.
The Cinderella Ballet Mystery is a Nancy Drew Clue Crew case about a pair of glass slippers that go missing days before opening night. On our shelf at 8.
Ballet books for 9 and 10 year olds
No Ballet Shoes in Syria
No Ballet Shoes in Syria
Aya is eleven. She’s come to Manchester with Mumma and her baby brother Moosa, escaping the war in Aleppo, and their first claim for asylum has been turned down. It’s Aya who explains their story again and again and promises everyone it’ll all be fine.
Then she hears piano music drifting down the stairs at the community centre. There’s a ballet class going on up there, and it tugs at her like nothing else.
A moving one, about a girl who has lost almost everything except her love of dancing. On our shelf at 9.
The Dance in the Dark
Scarlet and Ivy 3 – The Dance in the Dark
The ballet class at Rookwood will dance Sleeping Beauty at a real theatre in town, and Scarlet badly wants the part of Aurora. She’s out of practice, and her old enemy Penny knows it.
So Scarlet sneaks off for secret extra lessons and won’t tell her twin Ivy where she’s going. Meanwhile something is creeping around the school at night.
It’s the third Scarlet and Ivy mystery, and so much of it rests on the first two that it’s best read after The Lost Twin. On our shelf at 10.
Back-stage
Back-stage
Anna Grimaldi’s mother is the ballerina at the Duke’s Theatre, a little London variety theatre. Anna spends her early years toddling between painted cardboard cottages and dusty velvet curtains, and by four she knows the one rule that really matters. Never step over the white line in the wings.
The theatre people are her family, from Sarah the dresser to a French dancer who performs with two tame penguins.
An older ballet story, told by Anna looking back. Just a heads up that the saddest part comes early. Anna’s mother dies in chapter three. On our shelf at 10.
Favourite Ballet Stories, chosen by Darcey Bussell, is a collection from lots of different writers, some funny, some magical. It opens with Kitty, who does NOT want to go to ballet. On our shelf at 9.
And at Christmas
Christmas in Enchantia is the Magic Ballerina Christmas book, with a bit of The Nutcracker on Christmas Eve. Christmas with Princess Mirror-Belle opens in a changing room before a children’s Swan Lake. Both are on my Christmas books for 5 year olds list.
Just so you know…
You’ll find all of these ballet books in Little Reads, a library app with 3,000+ hand-picked books for children aged 5 to 11 and no ads. There are 100+ free books on a free account. The full library is £7.99 a month after a 7-day free trial. Cancel anytime.
Little Reads is a library and not a classroom, so there’s no phonics and no learning to read here. It’s for the child who already loves books and reads them in a tutu.