Books like Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses — picked by fans

Another classic, Angelina Ballerina, follows the story of Angelina, a mouse who loves ballet.

As a child, I too wanted to be a ballerina just like Angelina and found myself dancing along, twirling with this imaginative mouse in her adorable pink bow! The illustrations are so detailed and truly draw you into the world of Angelina.

When Angelina received her own ballet dress and slippers, I felt such a whimsical joy and would dress up along with her. This is a wonderful choice for children who have a dream and dancing feet that just won’t stop!

Such a charming book, I could recite almost all of Madeline with its fun, memorable rhyming.

I wanted to be Madeline and live in her world of Paris, have her dog Genevieve, and (to my mother’s dismay) walk along the top edge of a bridge, balancing like an acrobat!

Returning to this book as an adult, I didn’t realize that the author was actually the illustrator as well, and I found that the unique illustrations brought the story to life. Madeline helps children see the world in a different way, with imagination, whimsy, and creativity.

I also had a Madeline sticker book, and returned to her fun story again and again (not to mention watching the TV show regularly). 

This is such a charming children’s book, one of my favourites as a child, that I would read again and again.

I remember being captivated by the beautiful illustrations and feeling myself just like the princess as she searches for the fairy who lost her bag of jewels. There are also sparkly stickers included that can be used to decorate the pages, and stickers are a MUST for kids!

The writing is enchanting, and it brings children into a warm, imaginative fantasy world of their own.

Jillian Jiggs is a fun girl whom I could relate to so much as a child. She dresses up, makes her own stories, and sometimes makes a mess!

My friends and I loved to play similar activities as Jillian, making crafts and using everything in my house and dress-up trunk to create stories where we were princesses, witches, fairies, and more.

The rhyming in the book drew me into the story and meant that returning to the book became more memorable as the rhymes stuck in my mind.

Books like these are more important than ever in an age of technology, for playtime and make-believe are so important for children to express themselves as they grow up.

If you remember reading "maze stories" as a kid and wondered what it would be like to read one that was sexually explicit, this is the book for you!

It centers around two British ex-lovers, Barney and Barbie, at a party. At the start, you can either be Barney or Barbie, but each faces a variety of choices about whether to hook up with new people, go to different parties, or try to rekindle a romance with an ex.

All the characters are great and hilarious, and so is the witty (and sexy) dialogue. This impeccably written maze story offers a variety of endings – including many unexpected ones. This book always left me guessing… and laughing.

This book has become a kind of Bible for those with hearing loss, certainly it has for me. Both authors share their own personal experiences with hearing loss, but this book is primarily a wonderful handbook for self-advocacy.

It is chock full of valuable information about how to navigate the hearing loss world; from the latest hearing technology to how to communicate more effectively in the world. I learned new things that I’ve now applied to my life.

I love movies, but unless they are foreign films with subtitles, I’ve always struggled to understand what is being said. But I discovered there are captioning devices that will download in real time what is being said. Just recently, I watched Barbie with a captioning device that fit into my seat’s cup holder. To my delight, I was able to glance down periodically and read all the dialogue. 

This is just one… show more.

I could have put the entire Sandman series on this list and called it a day, so if you are unfamiliar with it, then please consider this an invitation to start with the first volume and go from there. Sandman is one of those special things that feel like a threshold into a much larger world. A strange and mysterious realm of dreams and magic, but whose doorway remains a secret to all but those who’ve cracked its cover. 

As I was limiting myself to only one collection in the series, I chose “A Game of You” as it’s very much a fantasy tale. It follows a princess named Barbie who navigates a dreamworld with a talking rat, a monkey in a suit, and a dodo bird while her friends in the “real” world contend with hurricanes, falling moons, and a dismembered talking head. Despite the Narnia-like feel, this is… show more.

This book came by recommendation from Jonathan Siegel, the brains and brawn behind Xenon Partners, a private equity firm that I joined in 2018. This book summarizes several profit models presented by a fictional mentor coaching a business executive. It’s clever, poignant, and was helpful to me in thinking about other profitable business models. For example, in my side-hustle life, I use the Profit-Multiplier Model: running multiple small SaaS businesses in parallel using the same tech stack (make money off the same good or skill in different markets).

The 19th-century Scottish writer George MacDonald is said to be the father of the modern fairy tale, inspiring C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and many others. I chose The Light Princess because I find it his most charming tale: it's about a princess under a wicked spell who has been made weightless, unable to obey the laws of gravity. As in all good fairy tales, a prince eventually comes along to drag her back down to earth. He must sacrifice himself for her, but in the end, it is she who rescues him – from a feminist perspective, a most gratifying conclusion.

This is a fairy tale. I’ll state this upfront because at first glance, it’s a bit of a hard read. And why is it a hard read? Because—to me, anyway—it feels like wish-fulfillment fantasy on steroids. It’s like the rantings of a terribly abused boy. Of course, much fiction—especially fairytales which is this book’s genre—is wish fulfillment. But the story feels very uncomfortable. Mio is so over-the-top happy about having been transported into the kingdom of his father the king that one feels as if one is listening to a pitiful delusion.  I found myself reading the book with two minds. One mind kept saying, “Dive into the reverie and joy of a boy who has found his dead father in a faraway land and who discovers that he’s important to the world.” And simultaneously, my other mind was thinking, “Oh my heavens! This little boy… show more.