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.