The Audition

August 1, 2017

Gr 4-6-Twelve-year-old Harper's has just moved to Florida and joined a new dance team in this first installment of a planned trilogy. Fans of reality TV's Dance Moms will be familiar with the ensuing drama, mean-girl bullying, and roller coaster of competing egos. No surprise there-Ziegler rose to fame on the show and penned a memoir about her dance experiences (The Maddie Diaries). Ziegler even writes herself into this fictional narrative: Harper mentions watching YouTube videos of the real-life Ziegler. Along with dance rehearsals are pillow fights, social media betrayal, triumph in the dance studio, and a subsequent embarrassing parade incident in front of a rival team. It all culminates in a dramatic dance-off. The story line is pretty formulaic, and though most of the characters are not terribly likeable, they do feel authentically tween-aged. Catty and self-absorbed characters decide they like each other just enough to work together at the last minute. VERDICT This book will appeal to Ziegler's fans and readers looking for a window into the all-consuming world of competitive dance.-Mary Dubbs, Hennepin County Library, Minneapolis, MN

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2017
Ziegler (The Maddie Diaries, 2017), dancer and reality TV star, channels her experience into a new middle-grade novel. Twelve-year-old Harper McCoy is a young, white girl who loves to dance. Her life's thrown for a loop when her family picks up stakes and relocates from Connecticut to Florida. Leaving behind the dance studio that has been her home away from home, she is nervous about joining a new team in a new town. Unfortunately, her new team has a well-established clique, the Bunheads, who make Harper's transition to the new studio that much more difficult. Harper must find it in herself to empathize with her new teammates, to ingratiate herself with them, and come together as a team with them before their first competition. While the themes of loyalty, teamwork, and perspective-taking are all laudable, other more insidious themes are present and fail to be addressed in the text. For instance, Harper regularly struggles with perfectionism, yet this is treated as neutral if not positive rather than a potentially pathological trait that could be harmful to her mental well-being, interpersonal relationships, and even to her dance career. The ubiquity of social media and the behavior of highly competitive stage moms are likewise never addressed. While the story of girls coming together over their love of dance is wonderful on the surface, the failure to acknowledge many negative features within the story is concerning, particularly as this is likely to appeal to many aspiring young dancers. (Fiction. 8-12)

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