Bearly Dancing! Ballet Cat: Dance, Dance, Underpants by Bob Shea

"LEAP, BUTTER BEAR, LEAP!

JETE'! HERE I COME."

Cat and her ballet buddy Butter Bear have stretched at the barre. They have rehearsed the positions, the steps: the eleve' and the releve'. Now Ballet Cat is ready for that money move of the balletomane!

But Butter Bear won't lunge. She won't leap! Butter Bear just will not jete'.

Ballet Cat cajoles.

"LEAPS ARE GREAT! THEY ARE SHOWY!

THEY ARE DANGEROUS!" SAYS BUTTER BEAR.

She gestures pointedly at the chandelier dangling above their heads. It's clearly hazardous to the heads of those who leap high!

Ballet Cat hauls out her ladder and tools and raises the fixture.

"NO PROBLEM!"

But Butter Bear is not ready to jete'! She needs a bowl of cereal. She needs a drink. She needs to go to the bathroom. No, not to the powder room. . . ! Bear must go in the woods!

"I AM A BEAR. I GO IN THE WOODS."

Ballet Cat tries to wait patiently. She frets as she fiddles with finishing a a puzzle. She scowls as she builds a ship in a bottle. Finally, much later, Butter Bear re-appears, yawning prodigiously.

"MY GOODNESS! IT'S VERY LATE."

Butter Bear declares that she is ready to head off to hibernate. But Ballet Cat stops her and demands to know why she is working so hard to avoid a few leaps. Sheepishly, Bear whispers something in Cat's ear that makes her procrastination perfectly clear.

Yes, it involves that item of undergarment that leaps will reveal, those unmentionables the very mention of which sends youngsters into gales of giggles, in Bob Shea's newest in series, Ballet Cat Dance! Dance! Underpants! (Hyperion Books, 2016). But Ballet Cat knows her specialty, and so does Bob Shea, who provides the reluctant Butter Bear with the proper underpinnings, a pair of rainbow underpants that wow their audience during the duet. It's a Brava! for the dueting ballerinas and a Bravo! for Bob Shea, whose illustrations, done in wide black line in pastels on pastel pages, tell the tale with just the right touch of squiggly silliness And with a text that is just right for primary grade readers, author Bob can take a bow for a fitting addition to this series.