Small Readers: Dance, Dance, Dance! by Ethan Long

It’s funny how many funny easy readers feature dancing animals - Ballet Cat, Elephants Cannot Dance, and now Ethan Long’s quirky addition, Dance, Dance, Dance! Horse is really putting down the moves, when Buggy shows up and asks what she’s doing. How can Horse be dancing if there’s no music? The music is in her head! Buggy decides she wants to dance too - and she can be just as good as Horse - but she is having trouble getting going. Fortunately, Horse has a solution!

Long’s cheerful cartoons show a long-legged horse and a fluffy fly with long eyelashes. The two dance across brightly-colored pages, their text in square speech bubbles.

Verdict: Hopefully this new series will continue; it’s sure to be popular with emergent readers, although the characters don’t have quite the unique pull of more long-running pairs like Elephant and Piggie. At least not yet!

ISBN: 9780823438594; Published 2018 by Holiday House; Purchased for the library