What was your favourite Noel Streatfeild book?

Ballet Shoes for Anna.

For me Party Frock and Apple Bough.

Like others I am annoyed that they renamed them to be ....Shoes in the titles. OK the party frock does have matching shoes, but there are no shoes at all in Apple Bough. I didn't really get on with Ballet Shoes, not having read it until after some of the others.

As for EB and the Put-Em Rights. I read that when I was about nine, thought it ghastly then, and never want to read it again.

Ballet Shoes
Party Shoes

I remember cringing with secondhand embarrassment over Santa's violin solo and really struggled with parts of the book as a child - I just wanted them to settle in and be happy. As an adult I was far more impressed by the characterisation!

Your post reminded me about the magic of The Circus is Coming. And I will start reading it to my two primary children this evening. I hope they are not too old.

My nine year old declared he preferred Enid Blyton's Mr Galliano's Circus books, the little horror. I think he liked the wish-fulfilment 'ordinary boy all animals love joins circus and is immediately acclaimed as new circus star with genius' dog that barely needed training stuff rather than the 'snobbish misfit spends months gradually getting better at horse-riding and will eventually be good enough to go into the ring' storyline.

Many thanks for the explanations about Sir Garnet.
I’ve never come across that before.
It’s like “shipshape and Bristol fashion”

This one in fact.

www.abebooks.co.uk/9780583300322/Twins-St.Clares-Dragon-Books-Blyton-0583300324/plp

There was a Field Marshal in the British army (just pre WW1?) called Sir Garnet Wolseley who was very successful and very keen on efficiency in the military organisation. 'It's all Sir Garnet' came to mean 'It's all in order'.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garnet_Wolseley,_1st_Viscount_Wolseley

@Stookeen I was thinking the same; Blyton needed to create the 'new girl' situation somehow. I remember being very puzzled by the O'Sullivan twins, not helped by the PB cover I had in which they looked about 17 in their first term!

Am probably being a bit dense, but I don’t get the “Sir Garnett” references.

[quote mumsiedarlingrevolta]@SorrelForbes You are probably right based on your user name alone I wasn't sure which one-wonder if it is said by the Nana/Peaseblossom character that appears in every book more than once?

But I love the little nuggets of info on the background and the changes.

DD and I watch Ballet Shoes (the one with Emma Watson) as a Christmas tradition.

You def have to get back the ridiculous plot changes but some of the casting brilliant -like the brilliant Academics Miss Smith and Miss Jones but I find Petrova's casting so wrong I apparently according to DD mention it throughout.
I had a quick look at the early BBC version on youtube and thought that Petrova wrong as well. I think she was so well described in the book I wanted her to be more like the character.

Am def pulling my books out and having a visit!!![/quote]
The casting in the 70s version was so much more appropriate.

[quote Doubleraspberry]@SuperSocks I don't remember the exact amount of time, but Felicity was definitely late to school, wasn't she? A bad cold can be so debilitating![/quote]
I thought EB regularly did quite odd things with school chronology in order to avoid having her main characters arrive at school in the autumn term of the lowest form with all the other girls also being new.

In the St Clare's series, Pat and Isabel go into the first, and lowest form in the autumn term, aged 14. The vast majority of their classmates, people like Janet and Hilary, have already been in the first form for some time but are somehow staying on in the first form again. I think we're actually told that Miss Roberts scolds Janet for something saying she's already been in her form for two terms -- and yet she stays another full year in order to go up into the second form with the twins, having apparently been in the first form for two entire years!

It makes more sense in Malory Towers (though Darrell is only twelve starting in the first form), because Darrell doesn't start until the summer term, so it makes sense that Alicia, Mary-Lou, Irene and co have already been at the school for a while.

Presumably she wants to concentrate on her POV characters being new, and everyone else being old hands.

I think the elderly Nanny (Gran Nannie?) also says It'll all be Sir Garnett in The Vicarage Family? It is a while since I read it though...

Possibly inspired by this thread, I have been re-reading Ballet Shoes, and have just realised how odd it is that when they run out of money to pay school fees they don't even consider sending the girls to state school. Even though Garnie doesn't want to teach them and in fact can't. It's never suggested as an option.

@SuperSocks I don't remember the exact amount of time, but Felicity was definitely late to school, wasn't she? A bad cold can be so debilitating!

@SorrelForbes You are probably right based on your user name alone I wasn't sure which one-wonder if it is said by the Nana/Peaseblossom character that appears in every book more than once?

But I love the little nuggets of info on the background and the changes.

DD and I watch Ballet Shoes (the one with Emma Watson) as a Christmas tradition.

You def have to get back the ridiculous plot changes but some of the casting brilliant -like the brilliant Academics Miss Smith and Miss Jones but I find Petrova's casting so wrong I apparently according to DD mention it throughout.
I had a quick look at the early BBC version on youtube and thought that Petrova wrong as well. I think she was so well described in the book I wanted her to be more like the character.

Am def pulling my books out and having a visit!!!

That is so interesting about the cuts from TPG! I must have read the original hardback at some point, because I remember the scene when Jane is photographed with the lamb.

[quote mumsiedarlingrevolta]@Latenightreader

thanks so much for that link-really interesting!!!

I think I have a couple of copies-always want the original-for example Painted Garden versus whichever shoe book this one was so I am going to dig it out and have a look.

I adore the old illustrations as well and have spent ages googling to see what their overalls would look like in Ballet Shoes etc.

I remember having an old copy of one-must be ballet shoes where Nanna says " it will be all Sir Garnet" which obviously does not appear in later American editions.[/quote]
I remember "it will all be Sir Garnet" from White Boots but might have been in Ballet Shoes as well.

Latenightreader I stand corrected! Well I never! I've been on that site many times and just spotted that information. Right, off to get a hardback copy (if I can!).

Many thanks for that link! I am now engrossed in all the detail.

By ‘snob’ in that extract, EB means ‘someone who thinks himself above his actual social class’.

Yes - she actually sounds really bitter - 'it made him a stupid little snob'.

Social climbing and/or nouveau riche characters are almost always punished — Pauline Bingham Jones (fake wealthy background, fake name, ashamed of her poor, elderly mother), Sheila Naylor (doesn’t wash her neck, poor grammar showing through despite her family’s newfound wealth, Jo (the second former with the ‘road hog’ h-dropping father, who keeps money up the legs of her knickers) in the school series, for instance.

By ‘snob’ in that extract, EB means ‘someone who thinks himself above his actual social class’.