What was your favourite Noel Streatfeild book?

[Deminism]

Have been reading some to DD and we’re loving them. I realise however she wrote loads and I had only read a few as a kid. Ballet shoes, White Boots and Thursday’s Child.

Of the others which did you love the most?

Thursday's Child because the idea of living on a canal boat seemed so exciting - in fact I still have a yearning to live on a canal boat.
I loved all her books as a child.

The Circus is Coming, which was republished as Circus Shoes. It’s one of the ones I liked as a child because it was a quality of gritty realism totally absent from Enid Blyton’s circus books where the new child joining the circus turns out to be an animal-training marvel who becomes the headline act. Streatfeild’s dislikeable children have been brought up by a snobbish lady’s maid aunt, and it takes a huge amount of work and adjustment for them to get a foot on even the lowliest rung of performing. And the circus is described so well you know NS toured with a circus to research the book.

I didn’t know there were more than ballet shoes, which I adored. I might have to get them!

@Lovelydovey

I didn’t know there were more than ballet shoes, which I adored. I might have to get them!

Loads more! And I think many still stand up to adult reading.

I adored Apple Bough, Tennis Shoes and the Painted Garden.

Oh, and The Vicarage Family, which is autobiographical.

One other one I loved was The Growing Summer. She was my favourite author for a while growing up…

I collect her books - there are many, as you have discovered, OP!
Here's quite a useful list: www.fantasticfiction.com/s/noel-streatfeild/
I think my favourite might be Ballet Shoes; it really is so charming and the different personalities of the children spring off the page.

I had the ballet ones and still have them for dd

I’m very lucky and have mine signed to me from her. Very special. I think The Circus is Coming was magical but I loved them all. I wonder if my 10 year old is too old for that? I’d love to read this to her!

@Cissyandflora

I’m very lucky and have mine signed to me from her. Very special. I think The Circus is Coming was magical but I loved them all. I wonder if my 10 year old is too old for that? I’d love to read this to her!

It went down well with my nine year old a year ago…? I actually think it’s quite sophisticated in many ways.

Ballet shoes is my ultimate comfort read and I've read it so many times, but I wasn't really aware of any others - I'm excited to discover some of these.

I loved Ballet Shoes for Anna.

I just ordered Saplings from eBay which isn't a children's book but which is really good (and a bit harrowing).

The Growing Summer. Oh these books are so beautiful. I don't know when to read them to my two - 5 and 8.

I loved the series about Gemma she wrote.

Apple Bough, the Gemma stories (which are set in the swinging sixties and hence seem dated in a different way), Theatre Shoes (I forget it's original name but it also features the same dance academy with some years later).

The Painted Garden is great but if you're reading it to a child you need to be aware that the portrayal of black Americans though well-meaning and innocent are "of their time".

I started with Ballet Shoes, but also loved Curtain Up, The Bell Family and When The Siren Wailed.

I had different favourites at different ages, but I suppose Ballet Shoes was my favourite overall, although I never liked the ending.

Looking at them now they have so many insights into the times they were set in. Even the later ones like Gemma are period pieces now, being set in one of the post war New Towns in the 1960s.

Tennis Shoes was good but I thought the part about the umbrellas unbelievably cruel. Girl sells 4 umbrellas to get money to play tennis, and so for the next 2 years doesn't get birthday or Christmas present but instead 1 umbrella is replaced each time!

Can't beat Ballet Shoes I think.

@maltravers

I loved the series about Gemma she wrote.

I was trying to remember the other day who wrote the Gemma books.

I know Gemma was meant to be a spoiled brat brought to see the error of her ways by her lovely Auntie, Uncle and Cousins but I always had more empathy for her than the insufferable family with their constant singing round the piano and cosy middle-class life.

I like to think that cousin Anne?/Jane? became a punk and caused her parents sleepless nights.

A punk! That would be a brilliant plot twist.

I liked Gemma too - and it was clear Gemma was a product of her spoiled mum, and Aunt Anne (?) was very sympathetic to her.
I was going on to secondary school around that time and there was the same debate about grammar/secondary modern, a relative taught in a secondary modern and I remember the aunt saying she didn't like the comprehensive system because it didn't suit the less highly achieving children either, which was a new perspective to me (my family are very academic and didn't like it for the opposite reason).

The first one I ever read of hers was The Children of Primrose Lane, which was written during WW2 and has a fairly standard (for the era) spy-catching plot - though it's less formulaic than most. I was quite surprised when I then came across her other books to find out they were mostly about ballet/ theatre/ etc!

Warning for anyone who looks up The Children of Primrose Lane off the back of this - I re-read it recently and it does have a very offensive word in it! So maybe don't just hand it over to your 9 year old if you come across a copy.

Ballet Shoes was my favorite as a child - bliss ! Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil , even the names can transport me back to my childhood bedroom where I'd read it over and over.

The Painted Garden is the one I remember most.

I did read a good few Streatfeilds as a child but for some reason I never loved her books. I wasn't into the showbiz thing.

I love all of these. Gemma, Tennis Shoes, and When the Siren Wailed (Blitz) are my favourites after Ballet Shoes.

I read one about Sorrel at school but can't find it now, does anyone know the title(s)?

Be warned though she recycled the same characters through her books e.g. the very handsome and conceited younger child, which is fine, just annoying if you decide to have a Streatfeild binge!