Customer Reviews

Barbie: On Your Toes (Barbie) (Step into Reading)

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4 star:		(2)
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Of course these books are not plot rich, they are instead for beginning readers...however this one is harder than others we have read and I felt they did not do a great job of keeping the words repetitive and predictable. Words like costume, album, swan, magic... not the best step into reading level 1.

My little girl loves Barbie and ballet, so getting this book was a no-brainer. I was a little disappointed with the illustrations - they are not as detailed and realistic as in order books in this series. They are, however, more stylistic, which worked well with the second half of the book, which is a "photo album" of Barbie performing different roles in ballet. I was pleasantly surprised to realize that they were iconic roles from different ballets: Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Nutcracker Suite, Firebird and Petrushka (I hadn't heard of those last two; none of the ballets are named in the book, but they are immediately recognizable by her costumes, even the ones I had to look up).

Regarding what another reviewer said about words not appropriate for Level 1, perhaps she is right, but most of the words *are* simple (eg, "She loves to spin" and "'Do you like one best?'"), and there is nothing wrong with stumbling through a few words. But the fact that it was a jumping off point for talking about and looking up stories from the cultural arts - real, famous ballets - was a huge plus for me.