Just re-read Ballet Shoes as an adult

[heron98]

Someone answer me this - if they are so poor they can't even afford new clothes, why don't they get rid of the flipping cook and the maid? Why doesn't Garnie get a job instead of staying up all night stressing about money?

also does anyone remember 'Caldicott Place'? - it was very good.

The Growing Summer is where they stay with their aunt but she doesn't do any domestic stuff and the older daughter (of course!) has to find money, shop and cook for the 4 of them. Then at the end their aunt's friend gives them a bollocking for expecting anything of their aunt other than the physical space, because they are invading her privacy by even being there. They end up looking after another kid as well... that really would be a spoiler to say what happened there!

I liked Gemma (series) at the time but perhaps because it hasn't dated so much as the others it feels a bit less like a classic. At least the parents in that are nice, and competent! And they treat their children like individuals. I love Ann, who loves singing but has no interest in fame or stagecraft, and wants to study. Robin and his swirling are a bit less interesting - and the descriptions of the "black plastic" frocks are mind boggling. I guess they mean nylon! - but when I read them as a kid I imagined a kind of black Dusty Bin outfit...

Love the "dusty bin outfit"

That's how I pictured them too, or like something you might buy in Ann Summers which I'm sure isn't what she meant .

LOL at Ann Summers! Can you imagine slightly nerdy Ann in a black plastic Dusty Bin/Ann Summers outfit, with a top hat....

Then didn't they get updated white and silver versions the next year?

Actually I do love Gemma, this has brought it all back. I was absolutely fascinated by Gemma's life at the stage school, again treating the kids according to their individual needs.

This is a lovely thread! I remember one Christmas being so delighted at getting a NS box set. It had Ballet Shoes, White Boots, The painted Garden. THe circus is coming, white Boots and my all time favourite Apple Bough. I still wish I could buy back my childhood home that I was devastated to move out of as a young teen so really get the attachment to the house in that story.

The Lady Doctors. About 20 minutes 'til Beaver Time.

Yes, I imagined them being made out of bin bags.

Closer in modernity to Gemma than the Fossils are the Jean Ure books. Not all of them were staged, but I loved A Proper Little Nooreyev about a working class boy who, before Billy Elliott, is discovered by his sister's ballet teacher and trains as a dancer. And the one about the girl whose mum takes in a blind piano teacher as a lodger. They both had good sequels, too.

LOL what WAS 'Beaver Time'?
They are patently lesbians!

This is the cover of my 1970s Puffin copy of Ballet Shoes. My absolute favourite, by the way, is Party Frock. Anybody else read that one? Set during the war.

I have that edition, Gasp0de - and I have read Party frock too.

Brat - it was elevenses. A short Google to try and find a quote about it tells me that it comes from the term used for labourers/farmworkers elevenses in south east England - Beever or Bavour. So I've learned something!

Party Frock isn't another name for Curtain Up/Theatre Shoes, is it?

Curtain Up was my favourite, but I haven't read it for years.

Of course they're lesbians. It's one of the things I enjoy about that book - there's no explanation of the fact they come as a pair, rent rooms as a pair, and obviously live together.

(Though, isn't the image Dr Jakes and Garnie? Or am I imagining?)

Broomstick, no its the one where Selina (who has been living with aunt/uncle and their children) gets a parcel with a beautiful dress in it from American relative and the children organise a play so that she can wear it

I think that the original illustrations for some of NS novels were done by her sister, I don't know if that was one of them.

I had Party Frock when I was younger, never met anyone else whod even heard of it. My all time.e favourite comfort read though is Sallys Family by Gwendolyn Courtney, set just after the war when eldest of the family Sally gathers up her younger siblings who've all been split up during g the war. Makes me want to do something about a veg patch every time!

I must have missed Caldicott Place Brat, is it worth buying? I always pictured the black plastics as really heavy, shiny, raincoat style material although it does sound a bit unlikely now I come to think of it :) I loved the shuttle Orlanda, have you read the Head of the House of Coombe? Or the White People?

Ruth Jervis, her sister, did the original illustrations for BS. I think the ones on the cover above are by the same artist that did my copy of The Painted Garden but the name escapes me!

I've just ordered Sally's Family from Amazon :) love comfort reads.

I have not read the book.

I fully expected that people on this thread would talk about things that happened in the book.

There is no need to declare "spoilers within" when discussing a book published decades ago, when the title says "just re-read" (so the OP has finished reading).

Yes! Pauline WAS rescued from the Titanic!

Have you read the cazalet chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard? The first two really give lots of insight into life for all classes from about 1920 onwards. Middle class women couldn't even boil an egg, let alone cook meals.

Yes I was thinking of Miss Milliment, the governess who has to live in awful lodgings. Her father was a minister and her fiancée died in the Great War. She lives with the family in the end.

Loving this thread!

I loved Ballet Shoes so much. ( I wanted to be Petrova.) Read all NS books, was talking to DD1 about Vicarage Family the other day, she's not read it, I'm going to get it for her, it had a huge effect on me when I first read it as a child.

Oh, and the girl who played Posy in the old BBC series went to my school.