For fans of ballet, Wellington City Libraries has a great selection of fiction and non-fiction books for you to enjoy. Here some of the best recent books about ballet. Make sure you check them out, or reserve them for free on your children’s card, after coming along to the Angelina Ballerina School Holiday Storytimes.
My First Ballet Book by Kate Castle
Covers all aspects of ballet from: What is ballet? What to wear, warming up, arms and feet, at the barre, spinning around, dancing together, on your toes, let’s make a ballet, from studio to stage, famous ballets, behind the scenes and at the ballet.
How to: Ballet by Jane Hackett
Includes step-by-step photographs, easy-to-follow instructions and tips from the professionals help the reader (both female and male) prepare for class, do warm-up moves, and basic positions. Further information includes how to look the part, prepare for a performance and ballet stories and famous ballet dancers.
The Orchard Book of Stories From the Ballet by Geraldine McCaughrean
Enjoy reading the classic ballet tales: Swan Lake, Coppelia, Gisele, Cinderella, La Sylphide, The nutcracker, Romeo and Juliet, The firebird, Petrouchka, and The sleeping beauty.
Ivy + Bean #6: Doomed to Dance by Annie Barrows
Friends Ivy and Bean are opposites, but in this installment of the series, they agree on one thing. They want to take ballet lessons. Their parents, having been through their enthusiasms before, insist the girls must not quit and must not complain. This is easier said than done when, after the girls realize ballet is not all spins and tutus, they are cast as friendly squid in the underwater-themed recital. Another pleasing adventure, engagingly illustrated and fun for new readers.
The Twinkling Tutu by Gwyneth Rees
Ava puts on a beautiful twinkling tutu and finds herself magically whisked away to Victorian times – where she has an important part to play in an extravagant ballet show – and making a girl’s dreams come true.
Royal Ballet School Diaries #1: Ellie’s Chance to Dance by Alexandra Moss
The Royal Ballet School Diaries jets to a spirited start with this tale of a 10-year-old who moves from Chicago to England with her widowed mother, who has taken a job as a professor at Oxford. Ellie shares her thoughts through diary entries interspersed throughout the narrative, and readers learn that she is anxious about starting a new life yet thrilled that she has been accepted as a Junior Associate at the Royal Ballet School.
What a treat! Come and meet a real Ballerina at your local library during the school holidays.