Any Noel Streatfeild fans here?

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I love her books about children on stage, at Madame Fidolia's Academy - have done since I was very young and Mum first handed me Ballet Shoes and The Painted Garden.

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@listsandbudgets I love the Gemma books - set only just before my own school days, I really wanted to be a member of that family.
I read her adult novel - Saplings I think. I loved it but it's got mixed reviews.

This is both boring, and boastful. But I am sharing nevertheless.

Back in February of this year, I was in a second hand bookshop and saw a first edition of Ballet Shoes, for a tenner. I took a punt, and bought it. My parents took it to a specialist auction house, near their house, where it fairly recently sold for £320.

Last time I sold a book was 18 years ago. Firat edition of Lion, Witch and Wardrobe, bought way back in the early 1990s for £3. The auctioneer was the same man. He instantly recognised my parents (& remembered he'd sold L, W & W) when they came in with Ballet Shoes. He told my parents that I clearly have an excellent eye for books. I am very smug about this, but can't really share this with most people in RL.

Well done, @Matildatoldsuchdreadfullies! you can’t go wrong with a modest £10 punt, either. I’ve had a couple of exciting buys like that but haven’t quite brought myself to sell them yet.

@CynthiaF23 the plot of your half-remembered book sounds very similar to Ruth Adam's So Sweet A Changeling. But I guess there must be several novels using aspects of that story.

I think Pamela Brown was about 14 when she wrote the swish of the curtain!

She was. I think it was a bedtime story she told her younger brother first, so she actually originally wrote it when younger.

They're all good (as I said upthread) and you wouldn't guess her age except for Maddie Alone which does read as a 14yo's fan fiction, along the lines of "Mary Sue goes to Hogwarts and is immediately accepted as the best ever witch, with Hermione in awe, everyone, including all the Slytherins, think she's amazing, and Harry promptly falls in love with her and she defeats all the bad witches and wizards and saves Hogwarts...."

The rough story, if I remember rightly, is that there's a film company coming to film locally, on a local legend when all the other Blue Door Theatre Company are off at drama school. Maddie manages to:

1. Persuade the director that the main part needs to be taken by a child not the famous actress who is down to play her
2. Persuade the famous actress down to play the main part to resign the part because she agrees with Maddie
3. All other famous actors/actresses involved also threaten to resign unless Maddie gets the part
4. Everyone loves Maddie so much and can't do enough for her
5. Maddie discovers they're not filming it where the original story takes place because the owner won't let them
6. Maddie holds filming up for several days while she has a strop about #5
7. Maddie finds the owner of said place (who is remarkedly like the antiques' dealer from Swish of the Curtain) and persuades him to let them have the place
8. Maddie purrs with triumph and tells all the famous people who have just been sitting around waiting for her to finish her strop that they should have let her sort it in the first place
9. Everyone (especially all the Blue Doors older ones) are in awe of Maddie and says how the film would be nothing without her.

Bad fanfiction sums it up.

It's a pity because the rest are really well written. I'd guess she saw herself in Maddie (fair enough) and couldn't resist giving her an amazing second story. It may have been written in a bit of a hurry to get another story out after the first success.

I love the Blue Door series. The kids growing up going to drama school then getting their first jobs on stage, film and TV.

I've just been having a look through (I've got a number of her adult books on the Kindle) and it's 'Grass in Piccadilly'.

I loved the Circus is Coming. The girl was called Santa?

Not boring nor boastful @Matildatoldsuchdreadfullies !

That plot sounds a lot like Emily in Paris @MargaretThursday!

I love her books! Wintle's Wonders and Curtain Up are probably my favourites.

I've just re-read Curtain Up.

Love how the Fossils are threaded through the books as years go by and the war intervenes but children are helped to get onto the stage ... 🤗