Just a bunch of misfits in ballet slippers.
L to R: Rocky, Mary, Gwen, Zan, and McGee.
L to R: Rocky, Mary, Gwen, Zan, and McGee.
"I hate ballet!"
—McGee's (and the series') opening line
Bad News Ballet is a series of middle grade books published first in 1989 and written by Jahnna N. Malcolm (the Pen Name of married couple writers Jahnna Beecham and Malcolm Hillgartner), focused on a set of five girls who are misfit dancers in their beginning professional Ballet lessons in the fictional town of Deerfield, Ohio.
McGee (who goes by her last name), Zan Reed, Rocky Garcia, Mary Bubnik, and Gwen Hayes all have different reasons for not wanting to be in ballet at all. But their mothers, insisting ballet is good for them for one reason or another, enroll them together in the local Deerfield Academy of Dance. The five of them make fast friends, as outsiders to the more posh and skilled dancers who often bully them (and who the group derisively call the "Bunheads" for their trait of pulling their hair into tight dancer's buns for class), and get to know ballet and each other.
Like many girl-focused book series of the era, it was Quietly Cancelled after only ten books and is mainly a fond memory of Gen X and Millennial girls who read Paperback Crush and went "Hey, I remember this series!" The series was published under the name Scrambled Legs in Britain, republished again in 2000 partially, and the first eight are also available as e-books.
Compare the more well-known The Baby-Sitters Club, (which the authors served as ghostwriters for) aimed at the same demographic (and sometimes advertised in the back pages); Sleepover Friends, which is centered on a group of girls who bond at slumber parties; The Saddle Club, a Pony Tale series; and The Gymnasts, which focuses on another sport heavily aimed at girls.
Completely unrelated to The Bad News Bears.
Titles in the Series:
- The Terrible Tryoutsnote : The five girls meet, all skeptical of ballet—and hating it even more when they're cast as rats in the school's performance of The Nutcracker.
- Battle of the Bunheads: A famous ballerina is choosing who will be her flower bearer—and it's a clash between the gang and the snooty Bunheads, who pick on Mary Bubnik to go up against Courtney.
- Stupid Cupids: A boy enrolls in their ballet class, and the gang worries about finding their dance teacher a date for Valentine's Day.
- Who Framed Mary Bubnik?: Mary Bubnik's family has financial problems that may mean she'll have to quit, and a thief is stealing things from the dressing room.
- Blubberinanote : Gwen is considered too heavy to fit in toe shoes, and the Bunheads insult her for it—so she's determined to lose weight. The girls also become entranced by the Amber Stone of Anastasia, a stone they believe to be magic.
- Save D.A.D!: The Deerfield Academy of Dance is at risk of closing—and breaking the gang up.
- The King and Us: The gang try out for parts in The King and I—and then screw up their roles and have to earn them back before the Bunheads make fun of them for it.
- Camp Clodhopper: The gang attends a summer ballet camp—which is not all that was promised.
- Boo Hoo?: The girls practice their parts in a ballet performance of Dracula and try to find out who's been snatching purses in town.
- A Dog Named Toe Shoe: The girls find a stray dog outside their ballet school who needs a home—but none of them can keep him.
The Bad News Ballet book series provides examples of:
- Alpha Bitch: Courtney Clay, a skilled dancer and most prominent of the Bunheads. She's snotty to all the other misfits and thinks she's better than them because she's a skilled dancer who's studied for years, is one of Miss Jo's best students, and her wealthy influential mother sits on the Board of Directors.
- Arranged Friendship: Gwen and McGee are this at first as they're only "friends" because their mothers are, and have been reluctantly dragged together to attend things like mother-daughter teas and fashion shows with their moms. They don't initially like each other, in part because they're constantly compared to one another by their mothers.
- Artistic License – Art:
- Part of Mary's clumsiness in class initially is that her ballet slippers are too big for her feet, since her mother hopes she'll grow into them. However, she wouldn't be allowed to dance at all in oversized slippers—ballet slippers, even for beginners, must be snug to the foot and well-fitted both to avoid tripping and to make sure the foot is holding positions properly. She would be expected to get correctly sized shoes by the dance teachers, and would almost certainly be forbidden from taking class for safety reasons without them.
- Covers often show the characters in the main group with their hair down loose, in braids, or just free, and descriptions in text talk about hair being at best, pulled back. (This is why the girls make fun of the Bunheads—for having their hair in tight buns when they don't.) However, no ballet teacher worth their salt would permit anyone to take class without their hair pinned up in a neat bun or, for shorter hair, secured back away from their faces; this is for safety as well as to be able to correct technique. Even adult students and professional dancers keep their hair up and back, although for class and rehearsal their buns are often considerably more messy than you'd see on ballet students.
- Artistic License – History: Miss Delacorte describes the deaths of the Romanov family as the Bolsheviks breaking into the royal palace and killing everyone in the family (except Anastasia, who had the bullet bounce off an amber stone Miss Delacorte now owns). The Romanovs were taken from the palace and initially imprisoned, but later murdered (along with several servants) at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg by being shot and bayonetted—Anastasia included.
- Asian Store-Owner: Chinese Hi Lo, the owner of the gang's Local Hangout Hi Lo's Pizza and Chinese Food to Go (situated right across from the Deerfield Academy of Dance).
- Badbutt: Rocky is implied to be the toughest, meanest girl in her entire sixth grade—but the most she does is be snarky (a trait she shares with Gwen), give the Bunheads their insulting nickname, and get in fights off-screen.
- Black and Nerdy: African-American Zan is described as preferring a book to ballet; she's read tons of books including the entire (fictional) Tiffany Truenote series, and at the audition is able to explain the plot of The Nutcracker excellently. She's this way in part because, as the tallest girl in fifth grade, she feels that books let her be "any height" she wants. She's also a skilled speller with a large vocabulary, and in Blubberina, wins the town's spelling bee.
- Braids of Action: McGee, who plays hockey, is almost always described as wearing her brown hair in two braids.
- Break the Haughty: Zan and the others decide they need to make the Bunheads embarrass themselves in retaliation for them being embarrassed at practice. They decide to convince them to put detergent on their ballet shoes in place of rosin and to lace the ribbons up their calves. The Bunheads—who were cast as flowers—do so and end up ruining the floor of the dance studio by coating it in a layer of soap—and get lectured by Mr. Anton for it and the bad lacing.
- Camp Wackyname: Zigzagged in Camp Clodhopper. The gang attends summer dance camp at Camp Claude Harper, but the poor conditions of the camp and its reputation as being for bad dancers have the rival Bunheads calling it Camp Clodhopper. The gang retort by calling their camp (Camp Scotsvale) Camp Snotsvale. The real names for the camps are normal, but the insulting nicknames aren't.
- Closet Shuffle: McGee and Gwen try to take off from their audition and hide in a closet to not be found and get out of it entirely. They instead run into—and out—Rocky Garcia, and they're all three escorted back to the auditions.
- Did Anastasia Survive?: Blubberina has the gang introduced to—and later obsessed with—Miss Delacorte's "magical" Amber Stone of Anastasia, which Miss Delacorte says saved Anastasia from dying because when the Bolsheviks broke into the royal palace and murdered the Romanovs, the bullet meant for her heart glanced off the amber stone and she was the only one who lived.note
- Down on the Farm: McGee's family lives on the edge of rural Fairview in what's called the farming community; she lives in a house surrounded by pasture. She hates it.
- Embarrassing Animal Suit: The gang, as the Rat King's mice, wear old flannel mice costumes with padded bellies and tight hooded headgear with ears. The costumes are the only ones remaining from a production ten years ago (unlike the rest of the costumes, which are all brand new) and don't fit them well at all.
- Embarrassing First Name: For all the girls except Mary.
- Tomboy McGee refuses to be called by her first name, Kathryn—even by her own mother.
- Rocky Garcia does not like being called "Rochelle."
- Gwen hates being called "Gwendolyn."
- Zan prefers to be called that instead of Suzannah.
- Everyone Meets Everyone: The girls are introduced one by one in the ballet audition tryouts, starting with McGee and her mother picking up Gwen and her mother to go there.
- Everytown, America: The books are set in the town of Deerfield, Ohio which is near the Curtiss-Dobbs Air Force Base—both are fictional, though there are many places in Ohio called "Deerfield Township" and the real Wright-Patterson Air Force Base located there.
- Failed a Spot Check: The news reporter who makes a story of the five girls protesting the potential closing of the ballet school and chanting "save D.A.D." mishears it as "save dad" and reports that the gang are are a family with a dad in trouble. He clearly overlooked that Zan (who is African American) and Rocky (Hispanic) are among the five girls.
- Feminine Mother, Tomboyish Daughter: McGee and her mother. Mrs. McGee has hauled her youngest daughter to fashion shows and mother daughter teas, things McGee finds dull and uninteresting—she wants to play hockey. She initially only takes ballet because her mother will leave her to do what she wants outside of ballet class, and is being dragged to the audition because her mother finds the idea of her daughter being in The Nutcracker to be romantic. (It's implied her older sisters also took ballet and loved it.)
- Funetik Aksent: Miss Delacorte is said to have a Russian accent, which has her saying "lee-tle" for little and "-ink" for -ing at the ends of words
- Full-Name Basis: The book descriptions always call Mary Bubnik by her first and last name. Mary doesn't always call herself that, though.
- Geek Physiques: Gwen is described as a straight A student since first grade, a piano player, and a model child—and is fat for her age.
- Girl Posse: Courtney and the rest of the Bunheads—her best friend Page, fourth grader Alice Westcott, and several others—are the equivalent of this at the academy. They always wear their hair up in buns for class.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Mary Bubnik—the only one of the girls with blonde hair—is sweet, bubbly, and friendly to everyone, even if they don't truly deserve it.
- Huge Schoolgirl: Zan is the tallest girl in her entire fifth grade and the whole of her elementary school, and is shy and embarrassed because of it, constantly comparing herself to a lanky, awkward giraffe.
- I Am Big Boned: Mrs. McGee describes Gwen politely as "plump," but McGee (and Gwen) consider this a nice way of saying she's fat.
- Iconic Item: Unless she's performing somewhere—and on all the covers besides—Rocky is always pictured in her red satin jacket with Rocky written on the back and front.
- I Have Brothers: Rocky is the youngest and only daughter in her family, with four older brothers who are as tough as their military father. However, they all picked on her when she was small. She's considered the toughest girl in the sixth grade, and the reason she got sent to take ballet in the first place was because she got caught fighting a neighbor boy and her mom said it was that or being grounded for a month.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Mary Bubnik, who has recently moved to Deerfield after her parents' divorce, is desperate to make new friends. This is in part because she's worried that if she doesn't find a way to fit in, she'll be sent back to Oklahoma to live with her dad, brother, and her dad's new wife.
- Intergenerational Friendship: The fifth- and sixth-grade gang makes friends both with the elderly owner of Hi Lo's, Hi Lo, and with Miss Delacorte, the elderly Russian receptionist of the Deerfield Dance Academy.
- In-Series Nickname: Rocky nicknames Courtney and the rest of her Girl Posse "Bunheads" for their trait of wearing their hair up in tight buns for class, which the rest of the gang adopts. This term is used not only in-book for them, but on the book blurbs—starting with the second book, Battle of the Bunheads.
- The Klutz: Mary Bubnik introduces herself by tripping over her feet in too-big dance shoes and falling across the floor. She's frequently described as the most klutzy student in their class—even by her friends—and didn't make it in gymnastics or cheerleading. She was last in the tryouts for cheer.
- The Lad-ette: Rocky, due to a mix of her military father and bullying big brothers, is tough and gets in fights often; her mother worries about her being rowdier than her brothers. Funny enough, she's the one of the group to get a boyfriend.
- Last-Name Basis: McGee goes by her last name; she hates her first name, Kathryn. This results in the ballet teacher, Miss Jo, referring to her as "McGee McGee" at the audition, which she has to then clarify.
- Little Miss Snarker: All of the girls except Mary Bubnik have snarky attitudes about them and mutter things under their breath—though McGee, Gwen, and Rocky are the three most sarcastic.
- Local Hangout: Hi Lo's Pizza and Chinese Food to Go, run by Hi Lo. The girls meet there—since it's across from the dance academy building—and start to greet Mr. Lo with "hi, Hi!" after the first few meetings.
- Military Brat: Rocky lives on the fictional Curtiss-Dobbs Air Force Base with her military father, Sergeant Richard Garcia. He's a strict father who always barks his orders and runs the house like a miniature branch of the military. When any of her or her four older brothers get in trouble, they all get punished, and this can result in being "confined to quarters" (sent to your room) or "KP", which means washing dishes for a week.
- Misfit Mobilization Moment: The gang get cast as mice in the school's ballet performance of The Nutcracker and at first are horrified and ashamed—but bond over their bad costumes and not only embrace their role, but decide they can't quit ballet afterwards.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Zan (Suzannah), Gwen (Gwendolyn), Rocky (Rochelle), and McGee (Kathryn). Mary's the only one who goes by her full first name.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The five main girls—each for a different reason—do not mesh well with the snooty Bunheads or ballet initially. By the end of the first book they've bonded to the point they all want to remain in ballet class together—even if only for each other's sake.
- Redheads Are Uncool: Along with her Weight Woe, Gwen complains about her glasses and her thin, stringy red hair.
- School Forced Us Together: Ballet auditions, but yes. The girls all meet each other after being taken to the auditions for the dance academy's performance of the Nutcracker, and all of them but Mary Bubnik have taken some form of informal ballet class ballet prior to the auditions. They remain together afterwards in the class, in part for each other and in part because they can't let their rivals the Bunheads think they're quitters.
- Secret Snack Stash: Gwen doesn't actually change clothes for her original ballet class she'd been taking—her canvas tote her mother bought her for class has snacks inside it as well as a decoy set of tights and a leotard.
- Shrinking Violet: Zan, who is tall and shy and hates being the center of attention. She doesn't speak much to the others until she warms up to them, preferring books to people. She's sent to ballet class in the first place because her mother thinks she needs fresh air and friends outside of books.
- Slobs Versus Snobs: The gang stands out in major contrast to the more upper class and snooty Bunheads—every book is a conflict with them, especially against Alpha Bitch Courtney.
- The Smurfette Principle: In-Universe; McGee is the only girl on her junior ice hockey team, the Fairview Express.
- Solomon Divorce: Mary Bubnik's parents are divorced and while she and her mother live in a suburb outside of Deerfield, her brother and father—and his new wife—still live back in Oklahoma.
- Stepford Snarker: Gwen, along with being "plump", is a snarky-mouthed unfriendly girl to start. McGee initially hates the idea of spending more time with her as she thinks she's unfriendly (and they're mostly forced together because their mom's are friends) and she's constantly being compared to her, while Gwen thinks that McGee is pretty in looks and perfect compared to her red hair, glasses, and overall fatness and she's constantly being compared to her, and Gwen is unhappy about her constant Weight Woe. (They start to come around to each other along with making friends with the other three.)
- Stern Teacher:
- Miss Jo, head of the academy, establishes herself as this at the audition when Rocky and McGee start fighting—she coolly informs them that they are not in a boxing club and need to behave if they wish to stay. She doesn't even have to yell to get them to simmer down.
- Mr. Anton, the other head of the academy, does not take playing around or shenanigans well. The Bunheads aren't immune to him either—when they coat their slippers in soap and end up wrecking the floor for practice, he gives them a stern talking to about it—and the fact they laced their slippers improperly up to the knee.
- Straight to the Pointe: Averted. The girls are not into toe shoes until the fifth book of the series, and they have to practice hard to be allowed in them at all. However, they do seem to get into them very quickly, having only taken ballet full time since December and only taking one class a week (when working up to toe shoes require extensive training).
- Tomboy with a Girly Streak:
- McGee (who goes by her last name since she hates her first name of Kathryn) is a massive tomboy who starts the series off by stating she hates ballet and much prefers hockey. She's attending ballet because it's an agreement with her mother, who will leave her to it if she does ballet class formally at least once a week. By the end of the first book (having bonded with her fellow misfits) she's a bit more accepting, and—though she retains her tomboy ways—she remains part of the class through the full run.
- Rocky is rough and tumble and the toughest girl in her grade, but likes to try on her mother's formal gowns and dress up. (She's sure her bullying older brothers would make fun of her if they ever found out she likes pretty clothes.) One of her hopes—before they're cast as mice—is that maybe they'll get to wear nice costumes in their ballet roles.
- Weight Woe: Gwen constantly worries about being fat, drinks diet cokes, and frets that she looks stuffed and overweight in her ballet leotard and tights. She frequently sucks in her stomach to look smaller around any boys that are around, and insists on dieting, making a big deal of her size. Granted, so does almost everyone around her.
- Why Couldn't You Be Different?: McGee and Gwen both get this. McGee's mother wishes she was more feminine like her older sisters (and a model student like Gwen). Gwen's mother also wishes she was more feminine—but also slimmer and more "pretty" instead of a sarcastic nerd.
- You Are Fat: When Gwen isn't considered slim enough to start en pointe dancing with the rest of the class, the Bunheads nastily call her "Blubberina".
