White Boots

[Suncottage]

Any Noel Streatfield fans?

Where is the child fiction thread on MN?

I do agree that House in Cornwall was not great. Still like Ballet Shoes for Anna though .

Love, love LOVE Joan Aiken - pure magic. I wanted to be Dido Twite. Noel Streatfield was always a bit of a guilty pleasure especially when I thought I was Too Old for her books.

I've recently been rereading my Nina Bawdens. I have been transported back to the best bits of my childhood.

I loved Ballet Shoes and White Boots and read them hundreds of times. Is it too embarrassing to admit to also liking the 'Gemma' books - Lydia who sneaks off to a dancing audition and Robin and his 'swirled' music.

I loved the Gemma books, in fact ive still got them i think, read them over and over again.

I also liked the Gemma books (although they were admittedly pretty awful )

I didn't realise she was still alive when I was first starting to enjoy her books

Wiki here. Or that she wrote books under the name Susan Scarlett.

There's a Noel Streatfeild discussion board

Has anyone read The Vicarage Family? It is her autobiography in novel form. Very good indeed, though v sad at the end.

I loved the Gemma books - sadly so did my little sister and they're battered to the point of destruction after so much affectionate reading. I also loved The Vicarage Family, and there are two more volumes of memoirs - perhaps I should try to reread/read them all this year. I'm trying to collect all the ones I don't have or can't find again.

Persephone reprints one of her books for adults, Saplings, about a family which falls apart during WWII. Very sad, but recommended reading.

Greythorne as an adult I was shown how to skate a bracket and it took me right back to White Boots. Still like to read it occasionally now.

Oh her memoirs are great. I still remember the bit where she lives alone and doesn't realise the nice bedsit is in a brothel, until a friend makes her move.

Oh god. Thanks LaurieMarlow for sending me off to yet another website where I will be tempted to waste vast amounts of time.

I too adore(d) Noel Streatfield. I was so chuffed when DS was persuaded to read my treasured, battered paperbacks from my childhood when he was 10 or so and wanted what I called a 'cozy read'. As an only I think he really enjoyed the lovely way in which siblings are portrayed in the books. There were never any complaints about not following the stories. I think you mostly can work it out from context. n.b. I introduced him at the same time to the Saturdays, Four-Story-Mistake etc Melendy Quartet by Elizabeth Enright. Wonderful. And so strange to see how children then (I think 1950s East Coast US) were able to roam free. Mind you, so did my husband in late 1960s outer London suburbs .

Agreed Elizabeth Enright's Melendy books are brilliant.

My almost 14-yr-old DD1 still rereads her Noel Streatfeilds over and over. Her favourite is Apple Bough. Mine is White Boots. DD2 likes the Gemma series. She has something for everyone - though none of us really likes Tennis Shoes and Party Frock is stupendously dull.

DS (8) came home from school one day with 'Five Children and It' as his reading book and now I am reading The Phoenix and the Carpet to him as his bedtime story - and he is loving it! So much so that I might have to hunt down a couple of other Nesbits for him - I remember loving The Enchanted Garden, The Magic City and Wet Magic as well.

Has anyone read The Story of the Amulet? I think it's about the same children as the ones we're reading now and I wondered whether it was any good...

I always imagined Robin's 'swirled' music to be fairly dire....