An Invitation to the Ballet - by Charlotte Guillain (Hardcover)

About the Book

Open the envelope to discover your very own invitation to the ballet theatre, asking you to take a tour and peek behind the scenes to see what goes on between performances.

Book Synopsis

"A well-rounded look at life in the theater."-Booklist
Open the envelope to discover your very own invitation to the ballet, asking you to take a tour and peek behind the scenes to see what goes on between performances.
Explore the lesser known areas of the theatre, such as the shoe room, the rehearsal studio and the healthcare suite. Open the gatefolds to display the costume department, the set-building workshops and a performance live on stage.
Learn about famous ballets such as Romeo and Juliet and Swan Lake as you turn the pages. With beautifully intricate illustrations, you'll discover more wonderful details each time you read the book.
Special items include an envelope containing your pull-out invitation, and 3 large gatefolds.

Review Quotes

Readers interested in dance will enjoy this informative backstage tour of a ballet theater, which
shows dancers training, a variety of jobs, and the specialized spaces needed to produce a ballet
on a grand scale. Bustling cartoon illustrations are the star of the show here, as each doublepage spread--and even a few double gatefolds--reveals different areas of the theater and the
activities occurring in each. The text appears as labels and a scattering of small paragraphs
placed near the person or feature they are describing. The book begins with a glimpse of the
lobby and empty auditorium before venturing through the costume department, shoe room, wig
room, and makeup studio. Readers will also get a sense of the dancers' schedules, visiting them
in different dance studios, the health center, and the canteen. The set-building workshop, lighting
department, and orchestra pit also get their due. Five classic ballets are described during the
tour, which reaches its pinnacle with the evening's performance of Swan Lake. A well-rounded
look at life in the theater. --Booklist

About the Author

Charlotte Guillain (Author)
Charlotte says she doesn't come from anywhere because she moved around a lot when she was growing up. She always wanted to be a writer and worked as a bookseller before training to teach English as a Foreign Language. This took her to the Czech Republic and Ukraine, before she headed to Zanzibar to teach English to student nurses. On her return to the UK, Charlotte moved to Oxford where she started working in publishing before going freelance and writing children's non-fiction. She now writes picture books and young fiction, both with her husband Adam, and on her own.

Helen Shoesmith (Illustrator)
Helen has a degree in Graphic Arts from Liverpool John Moores University and a Masters in Illustration for Children from the North East Wales School of Art. Helen lives and works in the North West of England with her partner and two young children and when she's not drawing she's planning adventurous family days out and cosy nights in.