Taking a Bite of the Big Apple! Angelina's Big City Ballet by Katharine Holabird

ANGELINA WAS ON HER WAY TO MOST FAMOUS CITY IN MOUSELAND.

"WOW! I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO SEE THE BIG CHEESE!" SHE SAID.

ANGELINA WAS GOING TO PERFORM AT THE BIG CHEESE DANCE SHOW WITH HER COUSIN JEANIE.

Aunt Violet and Jeanie are there to meet them when the S.S Mousetania docks and to whisk them away in one of those famous yellow cabs to their downtown apartment. Angelina is dazzled by everything. She's never seen an elevator or someone's home on the tenth floor. Soon they are off on a whirlwind tour of the Big City sights--Parmesan Park Avenue and the Empire Cheddar Building! I'm not in Chipping Cheddar anymore, Angelina thinks to herself.

But it's not long before Cousin Jeanie starts talking about their performance. She has it all choreographed in her mind, and she tells Angelina something disturbing!

"TRY MY TAP DANCING! IT'S SO MUCH BETTER THAN BALLET!"

But in the best spirit of "the show must go on," Angelina diplomatically suggests to her cousin that perhaps they can pool their talents and come up with a unique two-way routine to wow the crowd, in Katharine Holabird's newest Angelina Ballerina saga, Angelina's Big City Ballet (Angelina Ballerina) (Penguin Group, 2014).  Holabird's text handles this danseuse dilemma with her usual empathetic writerly footwork, and Helen Craig's delicate pastel watercolor illustrations fairly sparkle, as the mouse cousins face the footlights in their fancy flapper costumes and deliver a stellar retro routine that brings the crowd to their feet.  Jeanie and Angelina are the toast of  Big Cheese Town as Angelina, still a ballerina, sails for home, a star of the Great Mouse Way.  This Angelina tale has a delightful dose of la danse for young ballet fans, especially in the season of The Nutcracker.