Tag Archives: Noel Streatfeild

Gemma Alone by Noel Streatfeild – 20 Books of Summer 2022

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Gemma Alone by Noel Streatfeild was first published in 1969 and it’s the first in a series of four.

Gemma has gone to live with her cousins as her mother is an actress and is working in America. Gemma has done quite a lot of work as a child actress herself in the past, but she’s determined to make the transition to adult acting, something that doesn’t often happen.

She’s at a drama school, along with some of her cousins who want to be dancers, singers or composers. When Gemma is offered a part in a pantomime she’s thrilled to bits, but her mother isn’t so happy about it, it’s a come-down as far as she is concerned. Gemma is furious and refuses to speak to anyone when she is told that she can’t take the part, she thinks that any stage work is better than nothing.

This was quite an enjoyable read but I can imagine that it would be very popular with youngsters who are star-struck or stage-struck. I don’t think I will go out of my way to get any more of the series though.

This does let young people know that they should be able to follow their own dreams rather than do things to please their parents who might have a very different future mapped out for their offspring.

Saplings by Noel Streatfeild

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Saplings by Noel Streatfeild was first published by Collins in 1945 but it was republished by Persephone Books in 2002.

I’ve read and enjoyed quite a few of Noel Streatfeild’s books for children (of all ages) but this one is aimed at adults, however, the children are to the fore. Streatfeild certainly had the knack of getting inside the skin of young people, and it’s really their experiences that feature most in the book. The Wiltshires are a well-off upper middle class family living in Regent’s Park, London and this book is about how World War 2 impacts on them all.

Lena and Alex are the parents of the four Wiltshire children and as the war progresses and bombs start to fall in London it’s decided that they should move the children to the countryside to live with their father’s parents. It’s explained almost from the beginning that Lena has always put her husband Alex first, she never wanted to be engulfed in motherhood I suppose, the children’s governess/nurse is amused by Lena’s obvious sexual needs. Alex is frankly getting worn out as the bombs fall.

“Lena liked her children prettily dressed, good-mannered and well tended, but when she was about she liked those who saw to these things to be as inconspicuous as possible.”

When disaster hits the family everything begins to fall apart, no doubt their experiences were echoed in some way throughout the country in many families.

I enjoyed this one but I found it to be quite a sad read, possibly what is going on in the world at the moment made it all the more so.

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

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Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild was first published in 1936.

Ballet Shoes cover

Matthew Brown is an elderly palaeontologist who spends most of his time travelling the world collecting fossils which he sends to his home in London which is run by his great-niece Sylvia and her old nanny. He manages to pick up three young girls over some time in differing circumstances, the last one being a small baby, and takes them home with him where Nana and Sylvia have the task of bringing them up.

It’s a difficult state of affairs for Sylvia as her uncle, known as GUM, leaves her some money and takes off on his travels again. As the girls (Pauline, Petrova and Posy) grow up the financial situation is very precarious as GUM stays away for years and doesn’t send any more money, for all they know he might be dead as they haven’t even had a letter from him for years.

The girls are all determined to help Sylvia and when they are enrolled in a stage and dancing school they are able to contribute to the family budget. Bizarrely it’s never mentioned that Sylvia might be able to get a job to help out!

I enjoyed this one, the character of Petrova was especially good as she was so different from the usual girls of that time, she was keen on cars and how they worked and was happiest when up to her ears in oil and car parts. Despite having little interest in the performing arts she was still keen to pull her weight and earn money for the family.

I think this is the fifth or sixth children’s book that I’ve read by Streatfeild and she does seem to have been slightly obsessed with the stage and performing. The only one of her books that I have unread in the house is Saplings, one of her books for adults, it’ll be interesting to see what that one is about. Have any of you read it?

My copy of Ballet Shoes is a modern Puffin book. Although these editions have nice clear print I must admit that I generally prefer the designs of the old Puffin books.

Book Purchases from Edinburgh

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Books Again

A recent trip to Edinburgh led to my TBR list expanding by twelve books – in no time – many of them could be described as being for young people or YA as they tend to be categorised nowadays, some of them I had never even heard of but I reasoned that if a book is a Newbery Medal winner it should be a good read – for all ages.

The Giant Baby by Allan Ahlberg
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi
The Kirk of the Corrie by Isabel Cameron
White Bell Heather by Isabel Cameron
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
The Dividing Sea by Ruth Elwin Harris
The Eleventh Orphan by Joan Lingard
Cuckoo in the Nest by Michelle Magorian
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
Mail Royal by Nigel Tranter
Horned Helmet by Henry Treece
Legions of the Eagle by Henry Treece

Have you read any of these ones?

White Boots by Noel Streatfeild – 20 Books of Summer 2021

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White Boots by Noel Streatfeild was first published in 1951. The Johnson family live in London, Harriet has been ill, her brothers think she looks like a big daddy-long-legs as she’s all hair and eyes and although she isn’t so ill now she still isn’t well enough to go to school, her legs feel like cotton wool. Her father George Johnson has a shop which is stocked by the produce that his elder brother sends to him for sale. George’s brother inherited the family estate, but he keeps all the best produce for himself, and sends George vegetables that are really poor quality and nobody wants to buy, and animals that have been shot or trapped and are long past being used for food. They’re really poverty stricken and can’t afford the good food that Harriet needs to get her strength back.

The doctor thinks that maybe taking up ice-skating will help to strengthen Harriet’s legs and at the ice rink she comes into contact with Lalla who also doesn’t go to school. She is taught at home by Miss Goldthorpe, a successful teacher who wants a change from teaching in schools, but most of Lalla’s time is spent at the ice rink. Her parents are dead and she’s being brought up by an aunt who is obsessed with turning Lalla into a champion ice skater – just like her father was. Lalla’s famous father died when she was a baby.

Harriet and Lalla strike up a friendship but it’s in jeapordy when Lalla’s tendency to be a ‘proper little madam’ almost ruins things.

This was a good read, with lots of common-sense and morality in the storyline. Lalla, having been brought up by her ambitious, snooty and self-important aunt needs some lessons in real life, which her old nanny does her best to instil in her.

The Johnson family, including Harriet’s three brothers and her mother also add a lot to the story. I wish I had read these books first when I was a youngster myself.

Party Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

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The Victorian Chaise-Longue cover

Party Shoes by Noel Streatfeild was first published in 1946. The setting is wartime England, beginning at the end of 1944. Selina is living with her aunt and uncle who have six children of their own. The Andrews family have taken her in as her parents are prisoners of war in Japan.

When a parcel arrives from America for Selina it turns out to be a beautiful long cream organdie dress with a blue sash and satin shoes. It’s totally impractical for use in a small English village. Selina just has nowhere to wear it to, and she fears that she’ll have grown out of it before she gets the chance to wear it.

Selina and her cousins decide to organise a pageant where they can all do a ‘turn’ and Selina can wear her dress while doing the prologue and epilogue. It was supposed to be a very short pageant just featuring the children but the whole thing snowballs with the arrival of Squadron Leader Philip Day who has arrived to stay with family, he’s recuperating with a damaged arm. Before the war Philip had produced stage-plays and is well known in theatrical circles. In no time just about everyone in the village and some nearby villages is involved with the production which has singing and dancing and all sorts going on, including the ballet dancers from a well known school of dancing.

At times the children resent how their idea has been hi-jacked by adults and I must say I quite agreed with them. One slight drawback about Streatfeild being able to write such believable child characters is that inevitably I’ll be really annoyed by one like Phoebe who seemed always to be on the verge of tears if not actually crying, but this was an entertaining read. I enjoyed the way the wartime problems featured in the story with clothes being a particular headache for the women who after five years of clothing coupons and rationing were having a hard time clothing their children, never mind making outfits for a pageant.

It Pays To Be Good by Noel Streatfeild # The 1936 Club

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The 1936 Club is hosted by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings.

It Pays To Be Good cover

My last read for The 1936 Club is It Pays To Be Good by Noel Streatfeild. My copy is a 2015 re-print by Greyladies. This is the third book that I’ve read for the 1936 Club and and happily they’ve all been books that have been languishing on my shelves unread for quite a wee while (years).

Flossie Elk’s entry into the world had been difficult, in fact since then her mother had never felt quite right, her insides had a tendency to ‘flop’ and she was told by the doctors that Flossie must be her only child. The astonishing thing is that Flossie is such a beautiful child with white blonde curls, born to very ordinary parents. Her father George Elk is a greengrocer with an evangelical Christian leaning and he wants his daughter to grow up to be a good wife to a nice man, but her mother Fanny thinks that Flossie must be beautiful for a reason, and that she should make a career of her looks. Flossie was still a toddler when she realised that screaming her head off to get her own way was hard work, it was far easier to silently look at her father and fill her eyes with tears, no man seems to have been able to withstand her manipulative tears and hurt look for long. Flossie is thoroughly spoiled and really should come with a stamp on her forehead warning she is a danger to men, although to be fair she even manages to fool the sillier women that she encounters – such as her teacher at infant school .

At the start of World War 1 George joins the army and four years later when he hirples home the damage is done as Fanny has sent Flossie to a stage and dancing school with the result that Flossie thinks she is above everyone and she treats her poor mother like a servant. She manages to twist her father around her little finger and it’s not long before he agrees to her being on the stage.

At the age of 16 an audition results in Flossie getting a leading part in a London show, just because of her looks, in truth she’s not that talented but that doesn’t seem to matter. She’s chaperoned by Mouse who needs a lodger who will help pay her rent. Mouse has to train Flossie to seem like a well-bred young woman, not the common as muck girl that she really is. Flossie is a quick learner and in no time she has legions of men of all ages lusting after her. By this time her name has been changed to Virginia and her management have fed a rumour to the press that Virginia is the off-shoot of some sort of royalty and Virginia herself has started to believe it, she certainy behaves that way and her poor parents are completely forgotten.

There’s a lot more but I’ll leave it at that. Suffice to say that I really enjoyed this book although it’s quite a frustrating read as Flossie/Virginia is the sort of person that you would never get tired of slapping, and she doesn’t really get her comeuppance. I have a horrible feeling that there are quite a lot of her type around. Nowadays she would be described as being ‘a piece of work’ I suppose but by her own moral standards (and her father’s) she’s above everyone else in the book.

I’ll definitely have to track down more of Noel Streatfeild’s novels for adults as until now I had only read the books that she had written for young people.

Curtain Up by Noel Streatfeild

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Curtain Up cover

Curtain Up by Noel Streatfeild was first published way back in 1944. The island of Guernsey had been home for the three Forbes children Sorrel, Mark and Holly. Their father had retired from the Navy when their mother had died, but when war was declared their father had immediately re-joined the Navy and the children moved into their eccentric grandfather’s home. He is a clergyman who is far more interested in writing a book about the animals that appear in the bible than he is about the existence of his grandchildren.

When a telegram arrives saying that their father was ‘missing’ they live in hope that he has been taken prisoner and hasn’t drowned. But then grandfather dies and the children are sent to live in London with their mother’s family who are strangers to them. They’re devastated to be leaving their schools, the one stable thing in their lives.

Things get even worse when they discover that their mother had been part of a large family of well-known actors and actresses, and it’s assumed that the children will go to an acting/dancing school. The children had no idea that their mother had been from an entertainments background and they’re not exactly thrilled by the idea.

This was quite an entertaining read which follows the main rule of children’s books – get rid of those annoying parents as quickly as possible. I can imagine that many of the original 1944 child readers would have been enthralled by the storyline which has the children eventually auditioning for BBC radio.

As you would expect – all’s well that ends well.

New-to-me book purchases

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I was really getting bookshop withdrawal symptoms as I hadn’t been to a second-hand bookshop for ages, so on Monday we drove to St Andrews, a place that we used to visit almost on a weekly basis but hadn’t been to for months – for no good reason at all. Anyway, it wasn’t long before I found some books that I just had to take home with me.

More Books New to Me

I found a Beverley Nichols book that I didn’t even realise existed.
Men Do Not Weep seems to be a book about World War 2 and was published in 1941, I think it’ll be an interesting read. You never know what you’ll get with Beverley Nichols though – his writing was so diverse, from cats to gardening and home hunting, novels and his thoughts on the USA.

Still on the subject of war is another book that I hadn’t heard of. It was the fact that I noticed Antony Beevor’s name on the cover that made me have a look at it as the author is anonymous. A Woman in Berlin is a diary which was written from 20th April 1945 to 22 June 1945. Not very long at all but a grim time in Berlin I’m sure. However on the back there’s a comment from the author Nina Bawden who says – ‘It could have been an unbearable story if it had not been for the courage and, astonishingly, the humour with which it is often told.’ It sounds like a must read to me. It was published by Virago.

Then I spotted a copy of a Geoff Hamilton book called Cottage Gardens, my favourite kind of garden and by my absolutely all time favourite garden writer and Gardeners’ World presenter, still lamented by me anyway 20 odd years after his far too early death.

On Tuesday we set off for Edinburgh, well we had seen the weather forecast and knew that we should grab every good day as it looks like the rain is coming in again on Thursday and Friday. After lunch at The Secret Herb Garden (more about that in a post still to come) we drove to Stockbridge, my favourite part of Edinburgh.

My first purchase was Curtain Up by Noel Streatfeild. I wasn’t sure about this one but the inside blurb says: ‘Plucked from their old home in Guernsey and sent all the way to wartime London to stay with their dead mother’s family ….’ This sounds right up my street – even if it was aimed at children.

The next was another Virago – Good Daughters by Mary Hocking. I haven’t read anything by the author but I know she’s fairly popular. This seems to be the first of a trilogy – the story of a family during the Second World War. Do you see a pattern forming here?! Apparently Mary Hocking brings good humour and sympathy to her depiction of the Fairley sisters growing up in their close-knit West London neighbourhood before, during and after the war.

Lastly I was really pleased to find a copy of ‘In the beginning’ said Great-Aunt Jane by Helen Bradley. I love her naive style of painting which she used to illustrate her own childhood memories for her grandchildren.

Have you read any of these ones?

The Growing Summer by Noel Streatfeild

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The Growing Summer cover

The Growing Summer by Noel Streatfeild was first published in 1966 but my copy is a 1973 Puffin reprint and has illustrations by Edward Ardizonne. It was serialised for children’s TV in the 1970s.

If you’re a children’s author the first thing you have to do is get rid of the parents quickly because as we all know parents put a dampener on adventures. In no time flat the four children of the Gareth family are dispatched to Ireland to stay with their Great-Aunt Dymphna. Their father had gone to Australia for a year and had become seriously ill there so their mother went out to join him. Dymphna is a complete stranger to them but they have no other relatives to look after them and Dymphna feels it’s her duty to take them in.

They soon discover that she’s very odd, in fact the locals think she’s a bit of a witch. It’s just that Dymphna is really just a wee bit ‘away with the fairies’. She’s steeped in a certain type of children’s literature – Alice in Wonderland, Edward Lear, Kipling, G.K. Chesterton and such and enjoys quoting bits from them.

Dymphna’s house is a big ramshackle place full of broken furniture and ornaments, she loves nothing more than a sale of stuff that nobody else wants, but she thinks that by taking the children in she has done her bit, she expects them to look after themselves, wash their own clothes, buy and cook their food – and as their mother had done everything for them at home they were pretty clueless apart from being able to boil eggs. An unexpected visitor that they have to keep quiet about causes them even more problems.

I enjoyed this one and wish I had seen the TV serial of it which was made by London Weekend Television in 1968.

One of those strange coincidences that crop up amongst readers is that the poem below also featured in the Angela Brazil book (For the Sake of the School) that I read just before reading this one, and I had never come across it before.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a hunting,
For fear of little men.

by William Allingham