Dotty, a spotted dachshund, longs to dance ballet on stage, but Ms. Austere (her owner) just doesn't understand her. After Dotty responds to the command "roll over" with a quick pirouette, she finds herself enrolled in obedience school. After class, she runs off whimpering to the park. A friendly squirrel acrobat offers to train her in the discipline she needs for ballet. She practices long and hard until one day, accompanying Ms. Austere to an outdoor pavilion, she slips away, sneaks onto the stage, and wows the audience with her dancing. Ms. Austere replaces Dotty's obedience lessons with canine ballet classes. For readers who don't speak French, the phonetic pronunciations of terms for basic ballet moves are readily available on the endpapers, along with drawings of tutu-clad dachshunds performing each action. The story is well paced, and the lively pictures, created with gouache, watercolor, ink, pencil, and digital elements, portray Dotty as a determined ballerina, performing impressive feats while balanced on her tiny yet strong back legs. A picture-book romp for children who dream of ballet.

For a dachshund with dancing feet, "sit" and "stay" are just so passé.Possessed with the soul, if not the body, of a ballet dancer, Dotty would much rather pirouette and glissade down the sidewalk than heel like her polite poodle sisters Jazzebelle and Miffy-and so when her severe trainer Ms. Austere sends her to obedience school, she runs off in tears: "All I want to do is dance." Despair is transformed to delight, however, after she meets Louis-Pierre, an acrobatic park squirrel whose offer to teach her a thing or two about training and discipline leaves her well prepared to walk onstage at the canine Golden Bow Talent Show and wow the crowd with her grand jeté and pas de chat. Even Ms. Austere is impressed…enough to allow Dotty to transfer to l'Académie de ballet aux pitous. In the delicately drawn illustrations, Bender puts long-bodied Dotty on comically stubby hind legs and, along with joie de vivre that shines from the pages, kits her out in a red tutu and, oddly but as befits her name, a stylishly mottled hide. Ms. Austere is White, but the other dog owners at the show, all depicted (unlike their colorful pets) in monochrome, show a range of skin tones. (This book was reviewed digitally.)A grand addition to the animal corps de ballet. (Picture book. 6-8)

Dotty, a piebald dachshund with a warm brown tummy and face, loves classical ballet. “She chasséed down the sidewalk, stepped in glissade at the park, and pranced in pas de chat by the fire hydrant,” writes Bender (the Giraffe and Bird series). But Dotty’s owner, Ms. Austere, portrayed with paper-white skin, prefers her dogs to perform conventionally, and hauls Dotty off to obedience school. Fleeing to the park (“All I want to do is dance”), Dotty meets a Balanchine-like squirrel, Louis-Pierre, who encourages her passion while demanding rigorous practice: “Look how much discipline you’ve gained, Pitou! The more focus you have, the better you dance.” This insistence on diligence and commitment propels Dotty to a triumphant performance at the dog talent show, which shows Ms. Austere the error of her ways, and infuses freshness into a familiar-feeling beat-of-one’s-own-drum story (Dotty even realizes why Ms. Austere’s other dogs practice unceasingly). The gouache, watercolor, pencil, ink, and digital illustrations brim with joie de vivre as the wiry pooch spins, leaps, and pursues her dream—readers may find themselves becoming budding balletomanes as the story unfolds. Ages 4–7. (June)