By Katharine Holabird
A little mouse who dances everywhere she goes gets her own ballet lessons and finally has somewhere to put all that twirling.
Angelina is a little mouse who cannot stop dancing. She dances instead of doing her chores, dances instead of getting to school on time, dances all the way down the lane and knocks things over doing it. Her parents are at their wits' end, until they hit on the idea of ballet lessons. And once Angelina has a real class to go to and real steps to learn, all that endless twirling has somewhere to go. She practices and practices and grows up to be a dancer, which is all she ever wanted to be.
Some children dance down the hallway and pirouette in the kitchen; this is their book, because Angelina is that child, in mouse form. It gently tells a story a lot of small dancers live: you have this thing bursting out of you, and then someone finally hands you a class where it belongs. Helen Craig's tiny, detailed mouse world is a delight to pore over, and the book has stayed a favorite since 1983 and grown into a whole series, so a child who loves Angelina has years of her ahead.