Essentially this book is about a 9-year-old girl called Bella going through a dance audition. But somehow this fits across roughly 100-pages with a proper story arc too.
The audition is for the Strictly Dance Academy and Bella is one of many hopeful girls wishing to be successful on the day. Along the way we have nerves, disappointment, dancing, self-doubt, excitement, triumph dressing up, make up, a dance partner boy with a"Justin Beiber-style cut", making of friends and an enemy too.
Bella Jones goes through a lot of emotions, but running through the book is a sense of awe and excitement at everything to do with the "Strictly Come Dancing" programme. She also just loves dancing and the smile on her face and her general happiness shows in the writing.
What also shows through the writing is that the author is familiar with dancing, yet the book is still accessible by non-dancers such as myself and my 6-year-old daughter.
It's true that the characters in the book don't correspond with the real life Strictly Come Dancing people (bar a brief Flavia profile at the beginning which is separate from the story), but this book would ideally be read whilst the TV show was running.
In terms of faults the chapter-numbering missed out number 5, and perhaps colour pictures (great pictures by the way, even in black and white) would have made the book even better, but young girls will love the book.
It is the first of a series of books. A little preview of the next one, Samba Sensation), is given at the end which my daughter implored I read to her. That just shows she couldn't get enough of this book.
(This book is listed at Amazon HERE.)
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