Giveaway - Sugar Plum Ballerinas: Plum Fantastic by Whoopi Goldberg

UPDATE: Grace is the winner! Thanks everyone for your comments.

Here's the first of two reviews and giveaways I will have this weekend on great books for tweenage girls. And I'm not being anti-feminist or genderist when I say these books are for girls only - the covers of these titles are blindingly pink and frilly.

Sugar Plum Ballerinas: Plum Fantastic by Whoopi Goldberg, yes, Whoopi!, and Deborah Underwood is a great book for all girls age 6-10. This first book in the series about best girlfriends at a Harlem ballet school was engaging and fun for me to read and reminded me of The Babysitters Club books I loved as a girl [aside: Amanda sent me the BEST LINK EVER: What Claudia Wore, a nostalgia blog for BC devotees.] But back to the Ballerinas - The characters are real, sweet, believable, utterly un-boy crazy and focused on friendship, teamwork and wholesome passions like dance and ice skating.

And the best part? It's about young black and multi-racial girls but is it's not overly focused on their race. They're just girls having fun and living their middle school lives, with pals and problems and parents, just like other fun series reads that feature mainly white girls with maybe a token friend of color. In this book, the African-American girls get the leading roles, with a token friend that is "part Puerto-Rican, part-Italian and all fabulous." Love it! Whoopi herself describes the novels as “wonderfully inclusive stories about little girls being little girls. They’re gentle and warm and funny.”

Thanks to Disney Books and Jump at the Sun for sponsoring this great giveaway!

Leave a comment below for a chance to win one hardcover copy of Sugar Plum Ballerinas: Plum Fantastic for the darling dancing queen in your life.