This holds up.

Angelina loves ballet, she is always dancing until one day Angelina's parents send her to ballet school where she works very hard for a long time to become a professional ballerina. The story highlights the hard work and determination needed to succeed in what you love. The book could, therefore, encourage children to work hard to reach their dreams. Interesting discussions could be started from this book such as, 'can boys do ballet?', to promote inclusivity in the classroom as there are some old-fashioned views in the book as it is quite old. I loved the Angelina ballerina books as a child and I'm sure any young child who loves dance will also enjoy them. I would read this book with FS and KS1 children.

A stroy about a pretty little mouse who loves to dance so much that she never does any of her chores.

It is a good book targeted for 4-6 yr olds to follow your dreams but I wonder if the children are gonna take away the fact you can do what you want to achieve your dreams after reading the book. A minor point maybe but something that made me think.

i love this book i love this book i love it. made me want to do ballet and also...be a mouse

I first heard of Angelina Ballerina by Katharine Holabird through the animated series. We were in Bend, Oregon on a trip. Harriet was getting over a stomach bug and I was coming down with one. We were holed up in our hotel room eating take out and watching kids television. Harriet was just learning to walk at the time. I don't know if her first exposure to Angelina Ballerina made any lasting impression or not.

Fast forward two and a half years to Harriet being in preschool. She started taking a dance class that teaches both tap and ballet. She loves her dancing class and even participated in the recital. She'll be doing that again this year.

Around the same time we started getting Netflix through our Wii. There were the Angelina Ballerina episodes. Harriet started watching them and fell completely in love with them, both the older traditionally animated ones as well as the weirder CGI version.

So with Harriet so passionate about her dancing and interested in the Angelina Ballerina episodes I decided to check out the book that inspired the series. Despite her love of the series, we read the book only once. I guess once was enough.

In this first book, Angelina is just a young mouse but she's passionate about dancing. She desperately wants to take dance lessons but her parents think it's just a passing phase. Of course it isn't and eventually the parents give in, allowing her to take lessons with Miss Lily.

The ending of the book explains why it is that Angelina is so often the lead in the school performances. She does grow up to be a star ballerina.

Although it's a simple story, it was nice to see where everything began.

I read this to prepare for working at the live stage show 'Angelina Ballerina - The Mousical' this week. I can't remember if this book was part of my childhood, but ballet definitely was. In fact, my strong aversion to ballet as an adult stems from leaving my ballet bag on a bus in Edinburgh when I was 3 and having to do the class in my underwear. I hated it ever after. The book is cute and the illustrations packed with detail, but I don't agree with Darcey Bussell's endorsement on the back that 'Angelina is a magical character who fulfils every little girl's dreams'. Not all little girls dream of being pretty in pink.