Ellie and the Bunheads

The author of the highly acclaimed Dog Years and Some Friend returns with a timely look at the highly competitive world of professional dance. Thirteen-year-old Ellie Lane isn't sure she's cut out to be a bunhead--one of those girls with their hair tightly knotted in a bun and leg-warmers fashionably scrunched around their ankles. She loves to dance but with ballet class every afternoon there's hardly any time to see her friends or pursue other interests. Competition is so intense that her best friend has a private coach and another is seeing a shrink. And then there's her mother who's pressuring her to audition for the prestigious Philadelphia Dance Theater. It's just too much! But by the time audition day arrives, Ellie finds a way to take her life and its decisions into her own hands. Dealing frankly but humorously with real-life issues like self-esteem, depression, parental problems, and young love, Sally Warner proves once again that she has her finger squarely on the pulse of the middle-grade reader.