Ella Bella Ballerina and Cinderella is a quaint picture book about a young ballet student who goes from learning the dance for the ballet Cinderella to actually being sucked into Cinerella's reality. The little one helps the fairy godmothers and Cinderella get her happily ever after. The water color and ink illustrations complement the type, and make it a wonderful story to read aloud at bedtime with your budding ballerinas or ballerinos. ( )

My two year old loves this book. I think it's okay, but not my favorite, and not really the book I want to read night after night. ( )

Ella Bella, the eponymous little ballerina in author/illustrator James Mayhew's picture-book series devoted to her adventures, is swept off into the fairy-tale world of Cinderella in this story. Listening to the music from Prokofiev's ballet, she suddenly finds herself encountering Cinderella's fairy godmother, as well as the Fairies of the Four Seasons, and getting involved in Cinderella's visit to the Prince's ball...

As with the other titles in this series that I have read, Ella Bella Ballerina and Cinderella pairs an engaging text, one in which the young heroine gets to experience a world-famous ballet firsthand, with colorful, appealing illustrations. I mentioned in my review of Ella Bella Ballerina and The Nutcracker that I think these books make a good introduction to famous ballets. That said, they are less focused on actually learning to be a ballet dancer, as the children in Madame Rosa's class seem never to practice different positions, as beginners would do, but rather, flit around to the music of whatever ballet is the subject of that book. For stories about young people actually learning ballet, I'd recommend the Tallulah books - Tallulah's Tutu, Tallulalh's Solo, etc. - which make a nice counterpart to Mayhew's series. Recommended (with the limitation mentioned above) to young ballet lovers, and to those who have read and enjoyed the other Ella Bella Ballerina books. ( )