I love ballet and love reading about it. This fiction portrayal of what ballet is like and how you live when are training to become a ballerina is pretty close to what it's actually like. Not many stories about ballet are very realistic, but this one is! This book was pretty darn good. Although I read this book in third grade, I remember it really well now as an ingoing seventh grader and growing ballerina!

This book is excellent for parents or teachers of young children. It gives easy instructions with illustrations for completing projects in the areas of drawing, painting,collage, yarn craft and sculpture. The book is divided into two sections: ages 2-5 years and 6-10 years. As a primary school teacher, and a mum of four children, I found the book to be an excellent resource for Art classes and general art activities for a fun session. The exercises range from very basic ideas to more complex projects and suit the different age groups well. I have used the book with children older than 10 years with similar success and personally have improved my artistic skills by tackling the projects with the children. The book also was useful as a stepping stone for other creative ideas. Anyone with no artistic talent or knowledge will find this book useful as well as the more experienced Art teacher looking for new ideas. I initially borrowed this book from the local libraray but found it to be such an invaluable resource that I wanted to buy my own copy.

This book as a story is well written, contemporary and for the most part fun to read. My interest in the book was to see how it dealt with the topic of bedwetting. Overall I was disappointed. Lily is described as an occasional but frequent bedwetter. So, while this story might help children to feel more sympathetic towards peers who wet and enable them to empathize with children who share a similar experience, the conclusion does not offer hope to the many children who have never been dry at night and for who bedwetting can be characterized as a chronic problem. In fact Ms. Warner furthers some misconceptions and stereotypes about bedwetting by suggesting that Lily's troubles have a psychological basis (which statistically may be true in about 3% of children who wet) and that withholding fluids might be a viable treatment approach.

The conflict in the story identifies a crucial moment which almost all bedwetters face but the resolution (though not uncommon)does not offer the possibility of a long term solution.

I am happy to see any book which helps raise awareness of the common and often distressing problem of bedwetting. For readers looking for another Lily adventure this book might fill the bill. For readers looking for a book to help their child better understand his or her own wetting or offer some insight or help in resolving wetting, Accidental Lily is not much help.