Do children still read Noel Streatfield?

[shreddies]

I'd love to buy my niece Ballet Shoes, but I wonder if it's very dated. Ditto E Nesbit. She's eight and a half and a big reader but I don't want to buy her something that isn't quite right.

am late to thread but bought myself a copy of Saplings with my Christmas book tokens
excellent

No19, 'Clover' is available to download free here, AND ALSO THE SEQUEL, In The High Valley

RosaIsRed I have read both (Eight Cousins online here) and have a first edition of Rose In Bloom (£2 Cancer Research)

Rosa - I've read both but unfortunately only own Rose in Bloom, so am still searching for my own copy of Eight Cousins. I do love them.

In fact the whole of this thread has got me wondering what I will do if my DD ends up only liking crap Rainbow Fairy stories...

MrsBadger - Have never read In the High Valley . I have been priding myself on owning Clover but have now been totally outdone.

I have just been reading "Ballet shoes" with my 11 year old (SHe's a fab reader but still enjoys being read to and I love it too.) But I feel 8 would be a little bit young. The sentence construction is quite difficult to follow at times and quite old fashioned. Probably better to leave it until she is a little older even if she is a good reader.

F&Z - I think Blythe might be a bit cruel, but Laurie for a DD would be lovely.
I think you might beat me on NS - but to count I would have to actually rearrange all the books in the house to find them all. And as we have (as the removal men said) TOO MANY books, this might take a while. Do you have any of her books for adults ?

And Little House in the Big Woods is one of my favourite books ever. I've just reread the whole series, and although I know the arguements about them being part fiction and possibly part written/edited by Rose Wilder,I still think they have an honesty that is touching.
The bit where she has the doll that is actually a corn cob makes me think - as does the bit in 'On the banks of Plum Creek' where Pa walks 300 miles in boots with holes in to find work.

I have found my cheque book. So will be purchasing this . Have seen on the website that they are away until the end of the month (from 5pm today ).

Very excited to see the downloadable Clover there Mrs B. How soon can I make sure DD shares an interest with me?

A first edition Mrs B! Lucky you, what a find.
Re Ballet Shoes I read it aloud to my DD2 recently, she just turned eight. She understood it and loved it, but couldn't have read it by herself. DD1 on the other hand, did read it at eight and has reread it several times since, so it is still very much relevant to modern girls.

I loved Little House on the Prairie and I agree about the simplicity and honesty of them, even if Rose Wilder did touch them up a bit.

Emily of New Moon (even better than Anne I think). And She Shall Have Music (Kitty Barnes)?

I like Saplings - Sorrel is from that book isn't she?
I would really like one of N Streatfeild writing pulpy stuff as Susan Scarlett

Sorrel is a good name.

Or what about Rowan from Antonia Forrest?

My dds (7 and 6) enjoy Noel Streatfield and E Nesbit, they enjoy the dated aspect of the books. "Oh Albert, do stop snivelling..." They particularly like old books with corporeal punishment or other draconian old-fashioned habits. Such as in The Naughtiest girl in the school (Enid Blyton) where monitors are permitted to spank naughty children with hairbrushes.

No 19, Clover is a lovely book, but Clover seems to be greatly admired for her homemaking skills, there is a lot of housework in the book!

There is another title that follows on, it's called In The High Valley, I read it online somewhere, but couldn't really concentrate, online books don't work for me.

Doh! Mrsbadger got there first, sorry.

I have recently tracked down all the Little House books on amazon and via library, and they are fabulous, gosh what a hard life, though. Pa always seened to be dragging them from pillar to post, didn't he?

My DS likes old books for that reason, too. He is fascinated in a horrified sort of way that people used to spank children, and also amused by the idea of children doing chores around the house like sweeping and doing the washing up! (mental note, make him work harder...)

I was thinking about this thread today and how influential the books were. I actually first discovered Shakespeare via Noel Streatfeild, also the story of Lady Jane Grey (Gemma), and Maeterlinck's Blue Bird, and a lot of - well, some - social history relating to WWII.

Mine are also very interested in a world in which children are too poor to go to school (E Nesbit's Treasure Seekers, Ballet shoes girls), yet have servants. They find this quite bizarre.

Yes for that reason Clover and I could never be really intimate friends! All that plain sewing. Online books don't do it for me either but I am delighted to hear about In the HV and will find a copy.

In fact though I loved Little Women, and know it inside out (didn't you loathe Winona Ryder in it) my sister and mother and I used to parody it when I was young

• Oh Marmee when will dinner be ready?
• If you are patient, and sit, and wait, and hope, and pray, something will arrive on the table. It may not be what you expect, but it will nourish and sustain you.
• I think I have the courage to wait, Marmee. I've made up my mind to try.

etc etc

NS's father was called William Champion Streatfeild. Imagine the thread on here - Baby names: Friends are criticising our choice of middle name but dh and I love it

Franny the girl in Saplings is actually Laurel, which is lovely.

There are Sorrels in [thinks] Curtain Up and The House In Cornwall

Emily of New Moon . I think I liked her even better than Anne. And the books were a touch more gothic and eerie which I really enjoyed. And were a little more romantic, in a way.

Yes, ProP. and Ilse was such a good character too.

I wanted to call dd Clover, too, but my sister said it was only all right for a cow really and I suppose she was right. I love the beginning of Clover, when Rose Red comes to Katy's wedding.

Wow, it's great to see so many totally abnormal people here. And no Aitch, I had no friends, don't you feel sorry for me? Seriously, I did have friends, but I read a great deal. And I still have a lot of my children's books, and have bought replacements of some that I've discovered to be missing. My Noel Streatfield collection is split up but at least I know where the books are that I don't have now, they're in my little sister's bedroom at our mum's house in Ilkley.

I also loved Pamela Brown (have several sequels to Swish of the Curtain where Maddy appears in a film, goes to stage school etc), Antonia Forest and Joan Aiken (Black Hearts of Battersea is one of a whole series, and the last two or three appeared long after I grew up).

Any other Diana Wynne Jones fans here? I took ds to visit my cousin (mid 40s) the other day and asked if the DWJ book on the table was her teenage daughter's. No, said my cousin, hers. I should have realised, as her mum likes reading children's books.

My first thought at my 20 week scan when we were told we were having a son was, "but he won't read all my old books" (!)

Well at least you can read them to him Elkiedee until he is too old to protest.
Have any of you friendless ones managed to read 'Before Green Gables' yet? They were talking about it on R4 this morning and it sounded very good.

Has anyone mentioned The Growing Summer yet?

Barbarian I first read Clover as a little girl but couldn't find it again for almost 30 years - it was so satisfying to read it again when I found it in a charity shop.

I read children's books all the time - in fact my comfort reading swings between terribly violent crime, Georgette Heyer and all the children's books I have left after my mother gave them away when I was 15 . (She is very repentant now.) I'm not sure what my reading matter says about me, though.

I mentioned the Growing Summer

I was entranced to find a book by NS which was set in Ireland. Because Ireland was my reality, it somehow set the rest of books into someone else's reality, and made them real. Which seems daft looking back when all along it was the realness of the characters which made them so compulsive.

The thing I find strange is that even though all the NS characters were in a way stereotypes (the plain, difficult middle child; the gifted, single-minded youngster; the gifted, single-minded father; the uninvolved mother; the sensible mother stand-in nanny figure) and recurred throughout all the books, they never became unbelievable and never lost their interest.