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Ella Bella Ballerina and The Nutcracker

This book continues a successful series about a girl’s adventures with ballet. The series is concerned with stimulating in children an interest in classical music. The magic of the music by famous composers (in this case, Tchaikovsky) transports the character, Ella Bella, into the story of the Nutcracker where she meets and interacts with the characters of opera.

The original story of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is a complex tale, which needed unpicking and carefully constructing for young children. Mayhew researched the original tale by E T A Hoffmann, and then compared this to the original 1891 step-by-step choreographed synopsis of Tchaikovsky’s ballet (which has itself been presented and reinterpreted many times) before reaching conclusions on how to structure the story.

A key concern was to create a visual aesthetic appropriate to the classic feel of the subject. The illustrations were prepared in three separated layers of art to recreate the effect of lithographic printing techniques of the 1940s.

Visual research involved studies of set designs and costume designs for this particular ballet, visits to toy museums to studyearly 19th century wooden German toys, and indeed nutcrackers in all shapes and sizes, before deciding on how to illustrate this story.

The book was launched with concerts in Hatfield, with the de Havilland Philharmonic Orchestra, and in London, with the Docklands Sinfonia.

These concerts incorporated a retelling the story of the Nutcracker, and illustrations of scenes created by Mayhew live in time to the music, which was a performance of extended extracts from the ballet score. The images were projected in real time onto a large screen above the orchestra.

The Ella Bella books are published in the USA, Japan, Italy, Finland and Brazil.