We started by revisiting an old favourite – the animation as part of Disney’s Fantasia which is set to The Nutcracker Suite, Tchaikovsky’s own edited highlights of the full length Ballet.

Then we looked at some clips of different versions of the ballet. We didn’t find many where both the video and audio recordings on YouTube were high quality, but this is a clip, of the Russian Dance, the girls liked because of the costumes:

M and J did not actually know what a nutcracker was when I first brought out the Nutcracker picture books so our next activity was to try cracking some nuts of our own using a real nutcracker.

Cracking the nuts was quite a tough job for M (J couldn’t manage it at all), it was moderately dangerous (bits of shell flying all over the place) and created a lot of mess (the sound the hoover made in the evening was rather satisfying though!)

Lots of shells just shattered, but those that broke “cleanly” we used to create floating candles.

We melted candle wax in a small saucepan (you might want to use a pan you don’t use for cooking, or a bain marie) and poured the liquid was into split nutshells we had prepared by putting short lengths of string in each one.

In 10 minutes or so the wax had set in the nutshells and our candles were ready to float and light.

The girls were entranced by the tiny flames floating on the water!

Candles in the winter darkness were just magical, but other things you could do alongside reading different versions of The Nutcracker include:

If you and your kids are very familiar with Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker you could have fun listening to other versions of the music and seeing how it can be adapted:

Adults in particular might enjoy reading a current blog at The New York Times, called The Nutcracker Chronicles where the newspaper’s dance critic is documenting his travels across the United States to see different productions of the ballet

Now this is where today’s post originally ended, but the girls have been listening a lot to the CD which comes with the Schulman retelling of the Nutcracker and when they asked if they could make their own sweet palace in Toy Land I couldn’t resist.

I made building blocks out of toast which the girls then covered in icing to act as glue…

They then set to decorating the palace with all the sprinkles and cake decorations and sweeties they could find. What heaven they were in!

A palace of dreams, don’t you think

Wishing your coming days are also full of sweetness and sparkle!

The Nutcracker by Susan Chandler, illustrated by Kate Leake

A lovely version for the younger crowd (say, 2-5 years), this is a great introduction to the key characters in the story of the Nutcracker without going into lots of detail. J adored the idea of toys coming alive (perhaps primed by the Toy Story films) and enjoyed the illustrations – simple, slightly wobbly line drawings with a child-like quality in muted colours, dominated by pastel pink and purple. No explicit connection is made between this story and the Tchaikovsky ballet, but of all the books reviewed here it is this one that is most similar to the ballet rather than to the original Hoffman tale.

The Nutcracker by John Cech, illustrated by Eric Puybaret

This version (which is more loyal to the original Hoffman tale of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King rather than to Pepita’s libretto for Tchaikovsky’s ballet in that there is a second story within the first, about Princess Pirlipat and the nut Crackatook) is considerably longer than the Chandler/Leake version and so I read it to the girls in a way I’ve never read a book to them before; they both were playing with playmobil on the floor whilst I sat and read it aloud, as if they were listening to an audio story.

It felt rather strange for me as I’m used to reading with the kids in my lap, sitting more or less still, rather than moving around and getting on with other things at the same time but this approach worked really well for both children who would come up every few minutes to take a look at the illustrations and then move back to their playmobil. I’m sure J wouldn’t have sat still for a story of this length, but it was clear she still enjoyed it and got something from it. I shall try to use this technique again with other longer stories when I want to read to both children.

Although the girls didn’t pore over the illustrations I enjoyed them greatly. I kept thinking of art deco posters – lots of curves, plenty of graded colour, yet somehow restrained, perhaps because many of the forms are almost geometric rather than naturalistic.

If it were interesting and beautiful illustrations or a great book for a bedtime read for an older child this is the one I’d choose out of my selection, although if you’re looking for a book which tells the tale of the ballet per se, this isn’t it.

The Nutcracker based on the classic story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, illustrated by Julie Paschkis

Paschkis has done a marvellous job with her lyrical storytelling in this version of the Hoffman (rather than the ballet) Nutcracker with lines like like “Uncel Drosslemeier was small and thin, and his face was covered with little crisscross wrinkles, as if a spider had spun its web all over his skin.” In comparison, the Cech retelling seems a little bland, whist this sings and is full of small background, descriptive detail giving the story a sense of authenticity and freshness; Paschkis is very loyal to the Hoffman story but doesn’t ever give the impression of being constrained by retelling it.

Unfortunately Paschkis’ illustrations don’t work for me. They seem as if they haven’t been quite worked through; the wide decorative borders full of with folk-like motives could be exactly the sort of thing I love, but here they don’t click with me. Some her characters have a little of the grotesque about them – the nutcracker with the huge chin, and the rather plain Clara. Of course, you could argue that this unatractiveness is very deliberate – the Hoffman story (rather than the ballet version) makes much of why the nutcracker is ugly, but even with an understanding of Paschkis’ decision, unattractive lead characters make the pictures much harder to enjoy.

This book contains a CD with excerpts from the Ballet even though at no point is the connection made between the story told in the book and the story of the ballet.

The Nutcracker, adapted by Janet Schulman, illustrated by Renee Graef

Upon our first reading of this I was disappointed. Schulman’s text sometimes grated a little with me with its slightly jarring use of language e.g. the archaic “Godpapa Drosselmeir” and the language used by the children seeming to be very far from the sort of thing a real child would say e.g. when Marie says “You’re a hard-hearted creature, Fritz“.

I also felt the choice made by Graef to set her traditional illustrations in 19th century Germany (although a nod to the time when Hoffman wrote his original story) was a poor one as it felt that in opting for historical accuracy it was harder to capture the more fairytale-like, fantastical aspects of this story.

However, after several more readings this book has ended up being pretty popular with all of us…

M really loved the illustrations full of little small details, and the page showing Marie and Fritz seeing their bedecked Christmas tree for the first time epitomised what I think M is hoping to see at Christmas. Although I didn’t enjoy reading the story aloud, the book comes with a CD containing not only excerpts from the ballet, but also the entire story read aloud and so both girls have had this on a lot as they have played the past few days. The independence an audio CD gives the girls is something they really like – they can enjoy the story whenever and wherever they like, and how many times in a row they like.

I also really liked how Schulman mangages to weave lots of elements from the ballet into Hoffman’s story: when Marie and the Nutcracker visit the Land of Toys once the Mouse King has been vanquished there is lots of dancing – all the dances you would want to see from the ballet, including the Russian Cossack, the Chinese Tea Dance, the veiled Arabian dancer and the Waltz of the Flowers are effortlessly intertwined in the story making this a good read if you wanted to prepare a child for seeing the ballet version of Nutcracker.

So to summarize:

Have you read any other versions of The Nutcracker? Please do leave a comment if there’s a version that you particularly like. Sur La Lune has more recommendations of picture book versions of the Nutcracker – if you don’t know Heidi’s website but are interested in fairy and folk tales you should definitely check it out. I’m looking forward to the next Ella Bella Ballerina book by James Mayhew which is all about the ballet Nutcracker and due out toward the end of next year.

On Friday I’ll be posting Here’s the post about the activities we got up to alongside our reading of these lovely picture books – I know this is a busy time of year for many people but I really hope to see you then!

Here are some of our favourite clips:

This clip shows Odile and the prince dancing at the ball, performed by the Kirov Ballet.

This clip shows the Pas de Quatre, peformed by the Bolshoi Ballet. My girls particularly like this and tried immediately to copy what they had seen!

Once M and J had seen the Bolshoi’s Pas de Quatre, I showed them Matthew Bourne’s Pas de Quatre. They were amazed to see men dancing ballet!

This was perhaps my favourite clip (I watched it 5 or 6 times with the girls and each time it brought tears to my eyes!). It shows the spectacular finale to Swan Lake by the American Ballet Theater.

This clip, from the Great Chinese State Circus, isn’t one for ballet purists, but my girls just adored it – they were amazed by the acrobatics.

Having listened to lots of shorter clips of music it was then easier to put on the full length piece of music – the girls weren’t sat still whilst listening, but they were clearly paying attention, as when passages familiar from the YouTube clips came over the loudspeakers they were very excited and talked about what they had seen.

And here’s what we did whilst we listened to the full ballet: we made our own corps de ballet to perform Swan Lake, along with Odette and Odille.

We used:

M draw simple faces on the clothes pegs and then prepared the dancers’ tutus by clipping a small hole in the centre of a doily.

The doily was put over the clothes peg…

…and held in place with an elastic band.

The ballerinas were given arms by wrapping pipecleaners around their bodies.

A small piece of plasticine was used to create some hair for the ballerinas’ heads.

To enable the ballerinas to stand up M put a ball of plasticine inside a bottle lid and then pushed the clothes peg into the plasticine.

For a final flourish M sprayed the dolls with glue and sprinkled a little glitter over.

One ballerina was given a black tutu – she, of course, was Odile!

And this was Odette:

Other activities that might work well alongside listening to the music of Swan Lake and reading the picture books I reviewed about Swan Lake include:

And if (you and your kids) like dancing pretending to be swans then you should also listen to Saint-Saens’ Swan (what a tongue twister!) from Carnival of the Animals.

What ballet activities have you done with your kids that went down well?