Ballet Besties: Yara's Chance to Dance

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Author(s)

Yasmine Naghdi

Publisher

Candlewick

Genre(s)

Age Range

Release Date

September 09, 2025

ISBN

978-1536243796

Buy This Book

Pirouette your way to the Shimmer and Shine dance studio! This first offering in a fun, inclusive, and accessible early chapter-book series brings the joy of dance to young readers.

When Yara joins a community dance school, she meets lots of other children her age who are there to start their training or just for the fun of it. Soon she has a group of ballet besties she loves to dance with—until their grumpy landlady, Dame Clougston-Willmott, threatens to close the studio. Suddenly it’s up to Yara and her new friends to keep Shimmer and Shine open! Will putting on a performance of The Sleeping Beauty reawaken the Dame’s love for dance? Could Yara have a chance to dance her dream role of Aurora? And most important of all, can the ballet besties save their studio? From a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet and an award-winning children’s author comes an engaging story of friendship, responsibility, and teamwork, with back matter explaining the various dance techniques and more. Black-and-white illustrations bring a diverse group of characters to life.

Editor review

1 review

Great New Ballet Series

October 06, 2025 (Updated: June 04, 2026)

Overall rating

4.0

Plot

4.0

Characters

4.0

Writing Style

4.0

Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)

4.0

Yara Madani's father is an eco-engineer who travels to different countries to help set up factories. She's always loved dance, and has taken some private lessons, but is very excited to be settled in one town and enrolled in a ballet academy with other students. Her mother, who is from Belgium, has set up a new patisseries called Cake Stop. Miss Diamond has opened the Shimmer and Shine studio not far from her new home, and Yara is all set with new shoes and leotards. Some of the other students include Momoka, who also likes to play the violin, Charlie, who is into baking and drawing, Dante, who plays soccer, and Indu, who prefers science to dancing. When the group overheard Dame Clougston-Wilmott ("Mrs. C." ) threatening to close down the studio, Yara is so upset that she goes to visit the older woman, whose son rented the space to Miss Diamond when Mrs. C. was abroad. Yara finds out that Mrs. C.'s own dancing career was cut short by an accident after her brilliant performance in Sleeping Beauty. Yara works with Miss Diamond and her fellow students to stage a performance of the same ballet in hopes that Mrs. C. will change her mind. Will they be able to keep the school open?

Good Points

This book includes lots of good descriptions of dance, as well as a glossary of ballet terms and even diagrams on how to perform some of the positions and moves. There are many middle grade readers who are involved in dance, but very few books on the topic. There is even a recipe from Yara's mother's bakery!

I loved Yara's passion for dance, but even more than that I loved that her parents would only let her participate if she paid attention to her school work. Yara does not turn in all of her assignments, and her parents do impose some strictures, which brings home the message that school is important even if one does harbor not-so-secret desires to be a prima ballerina, for which, of course, school is not necessary.

There are occasional illustrations throughout this shorter novel, which will make it very appealing to upper elementary age readers.

Hand this one to a young ballerina who is interested in all things dance related, along with Ziegler's The Audition (ballet), Mendez's The Reel Wish (Irish step dancing), and Sutton and Hannuniemi'sThe Song of the Swan (retelling of Swan Lake as a fantasy novel).