Angelina Ballerina

YMA recommendation

	Approved as non-violent media, with caution. Accidental harm
Most suitable age range: 5-7

Availability

About the program

Synopsis

Angelina Mouseling is a talented ballerina, who loves being centre stage. She is determined, ambitious and imaginative and often finds herself getting into scrapes. Angelina is also kind-hearted and helpful and it is these qualities that lead her, and her friends, out of trouble and keep them in the good graces of the rest of the mouse community.

Points to consider

Words of caution

• A grouchy neighbour’s cabbage and flowers are destroyed when one of the mouse-lings plays a prank on Angelina and her friend Alice.
• While trying to make a special effect for a play, characters keep getting dirtied by what appear to be bags of exploding flour. While no one was hurt, it became potentially dangerous at one stage.
• Priscilla and Penelope, two mouse-lings, frequently do or say thing that are unkind to Angelina and her friends.
• While on a special trip Angelina and her teacher, Miss Lily, have a motorcycle accident and crash in heap among the bushes. They are unharmed but Angelina is devastated that her special ballet costume is ruined.

Positive aspects

• Despite being treated horribly by Priscilla and Penelope, Angelina is both creative and determined and sets a good example as to the benefits of practicing hard and working towards what she wants to achieve.
• Angelina takes responsibility for her actions and for her mistakes even when she knows that punishment awaits.

Questions to ask

• Do people sometimes say things that make you feel sad or upset? How can you let them know that you are upset while still being respectful of the other person? If that didn’t work, what else could you do?
• Should Angelina have told her neighbour straight away that she was the one that had stepped on her cabbage? Would it have made any difference? What would you have done?