Move over Darcey Bussell - here comes Angelina! (Angelina, Ballerina - Katharine Holabird)

Member Name: kingfisher111

Product:	Angelina, Ballerina - Katharine Holabird
Date:	20/11/07 (128 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: lovely story and illustrations

Disadvantages: none!

If you know any litle girls who love dancing and anything pink, then you really must introduce them to the world of Angelina Ballerina. Angelina is a character created by Katharine Holabird and Helen Craig and has become quite a phenomenom in her own right! There are dolls, magazines, DVDs, a stage show and even her own web site - and this is the book that started it all.....

In this story we meet a pretty little mouse called Angelina. Angelina loves to dance - in facts she loves dancing so much that she ends up getting into lots of trouble because she is dancing when she is meant to be doing other things like tidying her bedroom or getting reday for school! (Strangely enough, I have a litle girl just like that!)

Angelina's parents, Mr and Mrs Mouseling, really despair of her but eventually come up with an idea. They surprise Angelina by presenting her with a large box which contains a pink ballet dress and a pair of pink ballet shoes. They are going to send Angelina to ballet classes at Miss Lily's Ballet School. There are lots of other little girls there but Miss Lily singles Angelina out for praise and tells her that if she works really hard then she will grow up to be a great ballerina. The great thing is that Angelina is so busy dancing at the school that she doesn't need to dance all the rest of the time so she manages to do all the other things that she was supposed to do in the first place!

And guess what! Years later she does grow up to be that famous ballerina that Miss Lily promised!

To my mind this is a lovely quaintly old fashioned book with lots to talk about. All of the illustrations are greatly detailed. Angelina is a very endearing excitable little white mouse with a pink bow on her head, whilst her parents look quite eccentric and old fashioned. The drawings of the house have so much detail and give the whole place a cosy cottagey feel. The clothing that the mice wear is quite strange as most of the time they are only semi-clad! They might wear a hat or a shawl yet have nothing covering their bottoms! I have to say that both my daughters find this very amusing!

The story is very gently paced and you get a real sense of the family as you read it. All the characters are nicely developed and the parents' despair over their scatty daughter feels quite familiar to me! The fact that it is about a little girl who loves ballet is certainly likely to attract many small girls to this story and it really is a favourite with my ballet loving daughters.

I also like the fact that there are many other Angelina books to be read, so the characters we meet in this first book, will be met time and time again in all the others. Although we have read other Angelina books since reading this, both my daughters really enjoy coming back to this book lots of times too.

'Angelina Ballerina' is published by Puffin. We have a hardback version which has a RRP of £10.99 although I do know that it is also available in paperback!

Summary: A lovely read for ballet loving little girls!