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?

@DoYouRememberTheInnMiranda I tried Ballet Shoes with dd a few years ago and she was not into it but she is 11 now and it is brilliant. Maybe helped because I said Emma Watson is in the film and we’ll watch that after the book, and she is a big Emma Watson fan via Harry Potter

Also I have seen the Emma Watson film of Ballet Shoes before and it is lovely. Doesn’t ruin it at all

This question has made me really think, and although Ballet Shoes is probably the top one, I do also love White Boots. I read the Painted Garden a lot too, and appreciated The Circus is Coming for the same reason as a PP - it's so very different to Blyton's Galliano's Circus, not patronising or rose tinted at all.

@Jellycatrabbit

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!

Sorrell is in Curtain Up.

@Deminism

Also I have seen the Emma Watson film of Ballet Shoes before and it is lovely. Doesn’t ruin it at all

My daughter, who has ASD, found it really upsetting as the story was wrong! I think some people might need to take it as a separate piece of fiction, as so many details are changed.

I also loved the Gemma books but they felt really different. Maybe because they were so 'modern' compared to the others?

Other than White Boots and Ballet Shoes, I liked 'Ballet Shoes for Anna'.

I wasn't remotely interested in ballet otherwise but the stories gripped me.

I must have read Ballet Shoes and White Boots at least once a year until well into my 20s. I'm feeling very silly to learn now (in my 30s) that there are so many other books!

The BBC drama of Ballet Shoes was excellent. I wonder if you can still watch it?

For Ballet Shoes fans, 'The Whicharts' is an interesting read - it's the adult novel Streatfeild recycled to write it.

@drspouse

The BBC drama of Ballet Shoes was excellent. I wonder if you can still watch it?

I found it on YouTube a while ago - don't know if it's still there.

Ballet Shoes, Ballet Shoes for Anna and also the Gemma books. I liked as Gemma as well and found the cousins (except Lydia?) annoying especially sensible Ann and her lovely voice. Loved the one where Gemma plays Juliet in a university production and falls in love with Romeo

There's an 80s version of a BBC Ballet Shoes that's more faithful to the original (with a faintly terrifying Madame Fidolia). That's almost certainly on YouTube.

I found the Whicharts a really interesting insight into NSs thinking behind Ballet Shoes. If you read an NS biography, you see how her very difficult relationship with her parents, and her life comes into the books.
My favourite of her childrens books are White Boots and The Circus is Coming, but I do have a full set of her childrens and adult books

The original film version of Ballet Shoes is a billion times better than the EW version. (I think that is the BBC version actually).

Ballet Shoes is my all time favourite book ever.
I also loved the Gemma series, Apple Bough, Party Frock and the Painted Garden.

I hate how they've renamed so many to make them into a 'shoe' series.

The 'shoe' thing was the American publishers. It's awful, isn't it? It doesn't remotely make sense.

I've found the earlier Ballet Shoes on YouTube - it dates back further than I though, to 1975.

EastEnders fans might like to know that Petrova is played by Tracey, the non-speaking barmaid in the Queen Vic.

I remember my mum handing me a copy of Ballet Shoes when I was about 7-8 like it was something very special. It was my absolute favourite from that point on. I found the Painted Garden at a church jumble sale not long after that and I love that too. I read White Boots when I found it in the school library. Ballet shoes will always be my favourite, it’s my total comfort book.

My absolute fav is Dancing Shoes-with the fabulous Dulcie Pulsie as the villain.

Also also loved Ballet Shoes. Re-read them all endlessly

Was Apple Bough the one where Pauline Fossil meets one of the children in Hollywood?

I still have copies of all of them-some are the American versions and some the English.

@Jellycatrabbit

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!

She really did recycle characters Gemma’s Lydia is Ballet Shoes Posy!

I've read all Noel Streatfeild's children's novels with my daughter, some several times over. We loved most of them, but best of all, The Bell Family, which is such a warm and happy story and deserves to be better known.

Pauline Fossil in Hollywood is the Painted Garden.

I think the Painted Garden was my favourite. My grandmother was a great Streatfeild fan, but I never quite got over her inability to spell field.

@Doubleraspberry thank you!!

Great thread! Ballet Shoes is my absolute favourite. Thinking about Pauline, Petrova and Posy today is actually making me feel a bit tearful. Might be time for a re read