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?

I am potty about Noel streatfeild books. Love them.

I read the usual ones myself when young, but discovered all of them with dd. How we loved the Gemma series. I really enjoyed the warts and all aspect of the characters.

There was a good thread a few years ago about The Painted Garden. How awful was the father?! And the mother?! And the entitled son?! All using the mother’s old school friend (and her dosh). All against a very interesting background of a trip to the US.

Ballet Shoes is always a little off for me because they aren’t that poor . Get a job, Garnie, and stop pimping out your charges! Same with The Railway Children: no jam and butter, maybe, but otherwise no, you are not poverty-stricken!

Yes, The Swish of the Curtain! I also have Maddy Again in an ancient hardback which is falling apart I've read it so often

[quote CMOTDibbler]@ChristinaRussell if you'd like to read the biography of NS, I'd be happy to lend you mine[/quote]
Oh that's really kind of you! I'm going to investigate the local library but if they don't have it I'll DM you, thanks

I liked Apple Bough because the less talented sister was shown to be just as valued as her talented siblings. She was very attached to her childhood home which I could relate to.

The biography by Angela Bull is really good, would recommend.

Curtain Up very much my favourite. Also like The Painted Garden, but can't get over the treatment of Peaseblossom who is utterly exploited by the family.

Apple Bough is equally horrifying for its portrayal of poor lonely Myra, forced to traipse all over the world with her ghastly siblings and provide the emotional support her parents are incapable of.

I love Ballet Shoes, I lived to read it and as a small child I had it on Audio Book read by Moira Shearer. I listened to that audio book every single night for years. I had a little red tape machine and I vividly remember the music.

DH managed to find it on record for me, but I don’t have a record player

I’m sure it wouldn’t be as “good” now but I’m pretty sure that 1979 version would help my insomnia!

She's quite good at different levels of talent. Sebastian in Apple Bough is a prodigy. It's interesting that in Ballet Shoes 2 of the children are highly gifted, but the ballet one somehow has a different and superior sort of talent. And then there are the ones who are talented in more modern and off-putting ways, but may end up making lots of money.

And GUM and Petrova were always my favourite. Garnie was a little weak and Posy might have been talented but I did want to slap her at times 🤣

And no, Sebastian isn't ghastly - he's portrayed very sympathetically.

Apple Bough is equally horrifying for its portrayal of poor lonely Myra, forced to traipse all over the world with her ghastly siblings and provide the emotional support her parents are incapable of
Lol JoanOgden shows how differently I saw it as a child! Nowadays I would probably agree with your assessment of her situation. It does have a happy ending for her though as she gets her cottage back.

That's fair, Sebastian isn't ghastly. Wolfie and (?) Ethel are a bit grim, though.

@FatLabrador

Apple Bough is equally horrifying for its portrayal of poor lonely Myra, forced to traipse all over the world with her ghastly siblings and provide the emotional support her parents are incapable of Lol JoanOgden shows how differently I saw it as a child! Nowadays I would probably agree with your assessment of her situation. It does have a happy ending for her though as she gets her cottage back.

Yes though what she needs is some nice friends and a good school (tbf, when I was a child I thought the same as you)

I do like the fact that, while Streatfeild gives her characters talent, she always shows that it also takes a lot of practice/effort to make that happen. It's a great example of work ethic for kids at a time when so many people are getting famous for doing so little.

Loved them all but Thursday's Child, White Boots and the Gemma series probably my favourites. I liked Ballet Shoes more before I attempted to dance myself [am talentless].

My copy of Thursday's Child had a still from a BBC production of it, probably in the 70s.

Closely linked in my mind is Kitty Barnes' She Shall Have Music, which has a similar ethos and message that 'talent will out if you work hard enough and never for a moment imagine you have talent, it must be entirely for Love of Art. But I like that in both they make it rather brutally clear that the quality of teaching you can get really matters.

A Vicarage Family is excellent and is really a thinly disguised autobiography. Vicky, the ‘difficult ‘ middle daughter, is really Noel. Warning: the ending is quite heartbreaking!

There are two more volumes after that - After the Vicarage and Beyond the Vicarage. They can be found on second hand books sites.

DottyHarmer

I'm not sure that Garnie was qualified to do anything, work wise and she was probably one of the women that never met anyone to marry due to the huge losses in the officer class during WWI.

@drspouse

I never quite got over her inability to spell field. I only discovered this in the last month when I was ordering Saplings.

I was in my 50s…

Ballet Shoes is still one of my favourite ever books. Sharing it with my daughter now 19 who also loves it just as much was a highlight of her childhood for me!

@Doubleraspberry

I do like the fact that, while Streatfeild gives her characters talent, she always shows that it also takes a lot of practice/effort to make that happen. It's a great example of work ethic for kids at a time when so many people are getting famous for doing so little.

That’s so true. In Ballet Shoes Pauline gets to be a film star and Posy a prima ballerina, but they have to work really hard to get there. And in White Boots it’s conscientious hard working Harriet who gets to be the champion, not the more laid back Lalla. Equally in Tennis Shoes Nicky has to train really hard to succeed, even though she’s temperamentally disinclined to do so.

Ballet shoes
Thursdays child

[quote Doubleraspberry]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.

[/quote] The girl who played Posy was at my school!

I loved all these books. I think the one I went back to most often was A Vicarage Family.

Ballet Shoes, The Growing Summer and Apple Bough.
But my daughter loved White Boots the most.

Ballet shoes always the most loved for me.
I remember living Curtain Up, Apple Bough and The Painted Garden, but I don’t remember much about them - hurrah, time for a re-read!
Thursday’s child I remember as rather romantic somehow. And White Boots I loved - “cotton wool legs” :-)

When I reread ballet shoes recently ish, it really jumped out at me at the end of the book when they say that obviously being a film star or a ballet dancer is all very well, but obviously they wouldn’t get their names in the history books that way - and that it was engineer pilot Petrova that could most likely do that. What a wonderful way of looking at it, and a refreshing view of “celebrity” vs actual history.