Ballet Cat: Dance! Dance! Underpants!

PreS-Gr 2—Ballet Cat wants all of her friends to love ballet as much as she does. In this second book in the series, Butter Bear seems to be a willing participant. That is, until Ballet Cat asks Butter Bear to do some superhigh leaps. Then suddenly Butter Bear comes up with a lot of excuses not to do the leaps at all. When the excuses reach a new high of ridiculousness, Ballet Cat finally clues in to what's really going on. When Butter Bear confesses her worry, it involves one final funny surprise. As in The Totally Secret Secret (Disney, 2015), Ballet Cat's love of dance blinds her to her friends' trepidations. Ballet Cat continues to insist on the leaps as Butter Bear throws obstacles in her way—cereal, ice pops, hibernation. This book has the quirky humor that readers have learned to expect from Shea. And he finds a clever way to combine this humor with the other qualities new readers need to succeed. Each page has solid, bright colored backgrounds. The backgrounds help the dialogue bubbles pop, and the bubbles themselves are colored so that readers can identify the speaker and follow the flow of the story.