Ada doesn't like ballet - but her jumps and spins are perfect for karate! (And on the final page/title page, a cranky-looking boy in Ada's karate class thinks, "I hate karate." Readers will leap to conclude that he should try ballet!) ( )

Love the humour, the word balloon dialogue, the commentary from Ada's stuffed toy peppered throughout and the message that sometimes it takes a crash to find the right place to direct raw talent. Ada may have been a terrible ballerina but she's great at karate. Gender-breaking goodness and inclusivity all over. ( )

Ada hates Saturdays because it means she has to wake up and go to ballet class, where she isn't good at absorbing the lessons. But then one Saturday, she stumbles upon the karate class across the hall ... Could karate be the thing at which she excels?

I absolutely adore this book. It provides a great message about how you may not be good at one thing, but that doesn't mean you'll be bad at everything. Instead, you just have to find the thing that is right for you. In particular, I love that this book showed that a more traditionally "girly" thing was not what the female protagonist enjoyed; rather, she proves herself to be very good at the more traditionally "boy" activity. At the very end, one of the boys in the karate class is depicted with a thought bubble reading "I hate karate," providing an implication that he might end up enjoying ballet instead...

The book's illustrations include a diverse cast of supporting characters, which was nice to see. My only quibble with the book is that I didn't really care for the little monster (possibly a toy?) that follows Ada everywhere and pipes up with little thoughts that just reiterate what was previously said. ( )