At her birth, the youngest daughter of the mouse family Pianissima, born in a broken grand piano backstage at a huge theater, decides she will not only be a dancer of the Ballet Rodente, the dance company of mice her aged grandmother, Madame Mouiselle, has headed in a little-used box seat in the theater since she came from Paris, but a dancer for people and other creatures. This decision leads her into many harrowing adventures, and to a friendship with a human child, Kristen, who can understand Prima’s speech, and who takes her, in her pocket, literally around the world as they travel with Kristen’s mother, the Prima ballerina Antoinette Brown — Prima’s namesake. It is a story of friendship, loyalty across age and species, and of loss and acceptance, for Prima is a grown mouse and a mother before Kristen even becomes a teenager. Called my best novel by some critics, it is a book that even older children find funny and punny, as well as moving. The sweet line drawings are by Tricia Tusa.
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