Holabird had originally written Angelina as a little girl, but Craig had already had some success illustrating books with mice - like The Mouse House ABC - so they decided Angelina should be a mouse. Today, there are more than 25 Angelina Ballerina books - Holabird and Craig's creation has been adapted into a television series, as well as for the stage, and the ballet. "It was a lucky break," says Craig, for both of them.Īngelina was a human ballerina - at first "And then later on they decided it would be great to do a picture book with Helen," says Holabird. "It just seemed to me this was a wonderful story about little girls and how empowering dance and music can be," says Holabird.Īt the time, she was working for her husband's publishing company - writing copy and doing interviews - when he introduced her to illustrator Helen Craig. Later, when she was a freelance writer living in London, she had two young daughters who also loved to dance. She grew up in Chicago with three sisters, and they spent hours dressing up and dancing around the house in ballet costumes, made by her set-designer father.
Holabird - like a lot of children - loved to dance as a kid. "She's feisty and she has a lot of emotion. "She's this marvelous character," says Holabird of the little white mouse in a pink tutu. "She danced all the time and she danced everywhere, and often she was so busy dancing that she forgot about the other things she was supposed to be doing." "More than anything else in the world, Angelina loved to dance," writes Katharine Holabird on the first page of her classic 1983 picture book, Angelina Ballerina.
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