Ballet shoes. Noel Streatfeild

[Orangeanddemons]

Wow! It is fantastic isn't it? I'd forgotten how good it was!

Dd got some book vouchers for Christmas. Took her to get some books and found this. I bought it for me, and M reading it again. It wad my best boom ever when I was little, and it's still great now.

This version even has a bow on the cover! Dd hasn't even been able to get near it!

They were spoilt rude children really weren't they? I kept pausing to think "entitled much?"

So many books on here that I loved. However, I was somewhat disillusioned by meeting Noel Streatfield who turned out to be (at the time) a very grumpy old lady whom I am sure Puffin regretted bringing to a book signing.

Notalondoner- there was a film of ballet shoes which I must have watched a billion times. Literally once a week for years. watched it for the first time in decades last christmas and suddenly realised that petrova went on to be in east Enders! I also realised it uses some of sleeping beauty in the sound track which still gives me goosebumps whenever I hear it.

Morris- I read both Rebecca and little women as an adult and adored them. Do try!!

And whoever mentioned carbonel and the family at one end street. I've never come across anyone who knows them!!!!!!

Am going to have to rebuy all of these now, plus all the other NS I never read.

Did anyone else love little house on the prairie? And the flicka books?

My DD introduced me to Carbonel - I like it when she wants to read something a bit more interesting than Rainbow blooming magic fairies

Oh yes, also loved all the Little House on the Prairie books. There are follow up books to Carbonel too which I also had.

Carbonel and Callidor (sp)

I have such fond memories of my mum reading to us as we ate tea.

Wind in the willows
Alice in wonderland
Carbonel
Little Women
Etc.

I loved The Family At One End Street and managed to get two of the three (?) books on eBay for my dd a while back. She loves them too

I still have loads of my Noel Streatfeild books from the 1980s. Just finished reading The Growing Summer. The Circus is Coming was the first one I was ever given, aged about 9 or 10 - old edition from a charity shop. And I still love Ballet Shoes & Painted Garden.

I also found a copy of When the Siren Wailed in a charity shop recently - I'd read it a long time ago but was probably a library book. Really good to read it again.

Yes, recently bought My Friend Flicka, also enjoyed Green Grass of Wyoming. Loved all the Laura Ingalls Wilders, Anne of Green Gables, Emily of New Moon.

You can get all of the hodgson burnett works free on kindle. Secret garden, little princess and more.

Adult convert to the Antonia Forests. Liked the Abbey School too, all those twins.

Party Shoes is in the kindle monthly deal for 99p

Afaic, the entire point of having children was to read them Noel Streatfield. Started when they were 4 and 6, too young, but now they're 9 and 7 and reading them Ballet Shoes again (they'd totally forgotten the first time) and they're adoring it. They also loved Tennis Shoes, which I read to them during Wimbledon and is my all-time NS favourite (signed copy, smug).

I loved her so much I did a dissertation on her as part of an A level project. The teacher was nonplussed, but I didn't care, it meant I got to re-read all the books again and really analyse them. I met her once and she was OK with me, but apparently horribly grumpy to some other child. When I heard this I was traumatised.

Like many, I moved on to Antonia Forest, who I really believe is one of the great novelists of C20, far more than "just" a children's writer.

I loved all the NS books I read, but it helped that I loved anything about dancing or the ambition around it. Wonder if mine are still in my mum's loft. We have to go and clear it out and I know some books are in there. I'd love to keep all my old series of books, but the OH will go spare if I bring them to our house...especially as we've got a boy and he's unlikely to be into ballet books!

I'm going to try D's off with some ns. curtain up, ballet shoes for Anna, apple bough and when the siren wailed being the ones that I think will suit.

I would have called DD Posy but DH vetoed. I think my sister might call hers (due in a couple of weeks) Posy if she has a girl.

This was the copy I had. Well read by both me and my sister. I also read White Boots but none of the others. When I have more money I will invest in some of the others mentioned. I've just bought Party Shoes for kindle for 99p :)

Oh and we had the film(?) on VHS which was very well watched too, in fact I think we could both recite it word for word!

This one!

Only just realised that the Ballet Shoes illustrations are by NS's sister - "Isabel" in A Vicarage Family

This has made me absurdly happy

Are you there, really? Isn't that lovely. So Nana white possibly looked liked Grandnan ( though I think Grandnan was tiny and Nana always looks comfortable).

Good to meet another AF fan.

Oh I haven't read any Antonia Forest books, I'll put them on my wishlist...

I also loved the magical and slightly eerie Green Knowe books by Lucy M Boston - The Children of Green Knowe - anyone else?

A modern author I recommend is Kate Saunders, my dds love these:
Beswitched
and the latest two The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop and The Curse of the Chocolate Phoenix

Will look at those, thanks Jules Jules. Antonia Forest is amazing but most of her books are now insanely hard to find and sell for crazy prices, good luck. I treasure my copies and keep on a top shelf where dds can't mess them up!

I have greatly enjoyed reading this thread and having happy memories of so many books and characters. I first read Ballet Shoes aged 8 and then acted out scenes from the book and also the parts from The Blue Bird. I think my desire to go to stage school came from Noel Streatfeild! My favourite character overall was Sorrel in Curtain Up (later Theatre Shoes) and I adored Jane in The Painted Garden. Thursday's Child inspired me to write a heartbreaking novel at nine - an orphan who had to sell watercress to keep her younger siblings! And then When The Siren Wailed took me into the Second World War.

Loved Apple Bough, The CIrcus Is Coming......Gemma books, Ballet Shoes for Anna and White Boots. I think the charm of the books for me was they are character driven in situations I could believe. So well written and with great scenes to act out as a child.

I just looked up Antonia Forest's books on ebay! Wow! I never read those unfortunately. I feel I missed out and wish I'd read them as I loved school books.

Reading the thread a bit late but I have ballet shoes and white boots as ebooks if anyone wants. I've been looking for the others as id love to re-read without the danger of dd tearing the pages out. (I do own them but am not quite keen enough to type them up..)

Since someone else has revived it, feel ok adding that if any Noel streatfield fans haven't read gran-nannie, you should seek it out. It is the biography of her father's family nanny and is very moving, not to mention a good complement to 'a vicarage family'. Although it gives her family a slightly different list of brothers and sisters and I've never found out which is right!

I've just re-read this thread in its entirety. I feel a NS reading session coming on.