I have read some of Noel Streatfeild's adult novels - including those written under the pen name of Susan Scarlett, but I don't think I have read her children's stories, (for which she is more famous).

This was a delightful story of three orphan girls, Pauline, Petrova, and Posy who go to stage school, and their attempts to make ends meet for themselves and their makeshift family. Lovely, whilst still being somewhat grounded in reality.

Novel klasik anak-anak ini menceritakan ttg 3 gadis yatim (piatu) yg dipungut scr serampangan oleh seorang kakek tua yg hobi traveling. Yg pertama bernama Pauline yg diadopsi stl diselamatkan dari terapung di sekoci. Yg kedua, Petrova, yatim piatu dari Rusia. Dan yg terakhir, Posy, anak yatim yg ayahnya baru saja meninggal dan ibunya gak sanggup merawatnya. Kakek tua yg dipanggil Gum ini dgn seenaknya menyerahkan pengurusan anak-anak ini kpd Nana dan Sylvia (kelak dipanggil Garnie oleh anak² ini) dan pergi hingga belasan tahun.

Mrk dibesarkan dgn hidup sangat pas-pasan utk makan saja krn tunjangan yg ditinggalkan oleh Gum makin lama makin berkurang. Mau nggak mau, ketiga anak ini dieksploitasi utk bisa mencari duit. Berkat pertolongan orang-orang yg kenal mrk, mrk bisa mendapatkan pendidikan layak yg gratis dan bbrp potong baju yg layak. Jadi jangan heran di novel ini sering disebutkan perhitungan ala akuntansi utk beli ini itu.

Saya agak capek juga bacanya. Usia mereka belum layak utk bekerja krn mrk masih di bawah umur (walau saya gak tau batas umur utk bekerja di Inggris di tahun 1930an). Mrk diberi les balet, menari dan diajarkan literatur sastra Shakespeare. Dan mrk disodorkan ke Academy dan theatre, dan untunglah mrk semua berbakat terutama Pauline. Walaupun karakter mereka semua berbeda-beda spt Pauline yg bossy, Petrova yg cenderung kutu buku, dan Possy yg agak snob dan gila menari balet, mereka semua kompak dan mengucapkan sumpah setia mereka yg diperbarui setiap tahunnya.

Buku ini sepintas awalnya mirip-mirip gaya L.M. Montgomery dimana banyak permainan dan piknik. Tapi ya ke belakangnya saya koq makin gak demen krn anak-anak yg seharusnya masih sekolah dan bermain malah hrs jd tulang punggung keluarga. Mana pekerjaan mereka ini sbg aktris dlm realitasnya rawan pelecehan loh. Dan gw gregetan dgn si kakek Gum ini, gak tanggungjawab dan cuma bikin repot orang aja.

Yasudahlah, untung sdh kelar dibaca.

Great book!
A wonderful story of three girls choosing their own paths.
Would highly recommend.

I read this book as a buddy read for our Children’s Classics Club March read.

Pauline, Petrova and Posy were babies when they were ‘collected’ by a man known as Gum. He loved his adventures and brought the girls home with him to live in his house in London. It wasn’t long before Gum left again on one of his adventures leaving the girls with his daughter Sylvia and the no nonsense Nana.

Fast forward and the girls are soon enrolled in a dance academy where they have a very gruelling schedule. The girls all have different dreams and they are all quite determined to live them.

I loved this book and I’m not entirely sure how I didn’t come across it when I was a child. I’m so pleased I’ve had the opportunity to read this with a group of lovely ladies, all of whom have enjoyed it too.

A definite ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ from me.

Every child should have the joy of reading this book. I am so sad that most of her books are out of print and very difficult to find. I'm very glad that this one and a couple others are available. This book is charming and wholesome and funny and full of good lessons for young children. I would buy every single Streatfeild Book that came into print. And I would buy multiple copies so that my children could have their own sets.

Do you remember in that movie called "You've Got Mail" starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan where Meg is sitting in Fox Books and is sort of watching everything around her both sadly and contemplatively, because she lost her haven of a bookstore, but she loves seeing others who love books--even if it's at the corporation that she dislikes? Do you remember?

And do you remember when some lady walks up behind Meg and starts talking to the store helper and asks if they've got a book that her daughter (or granddaughter, I forget which, if either) wants and it's called something with shoes. The guy's all like, "Um...." until Meg speaks up, kind of wistfully, in the way she can, "Ballet Shoes. There's also Theatre Shoes, and Dancing Shoes, and..."

Remember?

Well, this is that book.



And it's a good book. Maybe it's not my favorite, but that's all right. I love dancing, and Noel Streatfield creates such a realistic setting, I wonder if she was a dancer herself. Her characters have a wonderful learning curve, too.

n  It was all very well to be ambitious, but ambition should not kill the nice qualities in you.n

The technical details in here are amazing, from the uniforms at the school to the licensing to the requirements for the children's paychecks. In a way, I found that stuff more compelling than the actual story, though I liked the sisters Fossil quite a lot. I just felt so bad for Petrova that she was stuck training for something she didn't want, that I buried myself in the details a little to get through.

Looking forward to seeing what the rest of these books hold! (I know they're not actually related stories, don't worry.)

A delightfully old-fashioned and very British story about the Fossil sisters as they participate in the performing arts. I recommend the audio as the British narrator really added to the experience for me. What I found a bit distracting was a piece early in the book when their first play was being described line by line. The rest of the book was just excellent.

A sweet delightful interlude that I wish I had read as a child.

Published: 1936

I didn't really dislike this book, but it definitely isn't one of my favorite children's books. I think my favorite thing about this book is how distinct and diverse the three girls' personalities are. Petrova was my favorite, because she was more down-to-earth than her sisters, and pursued interests unusual for a girl of the time. Posy was probably my least favorite of the sisters. She wasn't as well-developed a character, and toward the end of the book I found her pretty annoying.

My biggest complaint about this book is probably how the plot was so repetitive, and became confusing sometimes because the passage of time wasn't conveyed well. You could be reading a paragraph, and start on the next one only to find that the girls had aged a year or two within a single chapter. Also, the writing is a bit wordy, especially in the several confusing arguments about money. They kept going on about how much money would go into savings, be used to buy clothes, etc. This might be okay if these details had any real importance to the plot, but they really don't. I also felt that the ending was handled in a very anticlimactic way. The girls didn't really seem surprised or excited when Gum finally came home, which struck me as odd.

This was a nice enough story, but it felt sort of flat and dull to me, so I probably wouldn't reread it. I must say, however, that "Fossil" is a pretty cool last name!

Professor Mathew Brown or Great Uncle Mathew or Gum, lives with his niece Sylvia and her nurse Nana, and from time to time takes off on expeditions from where he brings back fossils, adding to a huge collection which has to be thinned down from time to time. One day he decides to travel by sea rather than land, and from three of these voyages brings back three little babies, either orphaned or whose parents are unable to take care of them, and these three little girls are Pauline, Petrova, and Posy (who comes with a pair of ballet shoes her mother gave her). They take on the surname Fossil, for that is what ties them together. But while Pauline dreams of being an actress, and Posy can be nothing but a dancer (she is one), Petrova is happiest with cars and engines. Gum hasn’t returned from his latest expedition for long nor has been heard from, and money is tight, so Sylvia decides to take in boarders, and this leads not only to the children making new friends, but also entering the Children’s Academy of Dancing, where Pauline and Posy are happy, and Petrova simply does all that is required of her so that she can begin earning and support the house as soon as possible (that is at age 12, when no other option would be available to them). We join them on their journey at the academy as their train to hone their different talents, begin their careers on the stage, and try to get their names into history books!

What a charming and lovely story this was. I loved all the characters—the three girls are all very likeable, and even when they have their difficult moments or sulks, they essentially remain nice girls; Nana is sensible, yet not too strict; Sylvia is also very young and must struggle to keep things going. The boarders—the Simpsons, a couple back home from Malaysia, Theo, who teaches at the Academy, and the two doctors (of literature and mathematics, respectively)—are very likeable too, and one loves how all of them begin to become a big family, though each of them lead their own lives. The girls’ time and experiences at the Academy reminded me very much of the other series from the 1940s that I’ve been reading, The Blue Door series by Pamela Brown. The hard work that goes into training and into the roles themselves, the fact that success can go to one’s head very easily and fall from it can be truly hard, and of course, the joys that little successes and opportunities can bring. This was a really gentle and sweet story which I truly enjoyed reading. The lovely illustrations by Ruth Gervis add a lot to its charm. Loved it!

Remember the scene in "You've Got Mail" where Colleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) is sitting in the children's section of the newly-opened Foxx Books, and a customer comes in looking for the "Shoes" books by Noel Streatfield? The clerk has clearly never heard of them, but Colleen has, and she tells the customer that "The Ballet Shoes" is definitely the one she should start with...

This is that book.

In the twenty-first century, a particularly cynical reader might accuse the book of containing certain tropes that have become so common as to be considered cliche these days: The plucky British orphans; the valiantly struggling relation; the general bonhomie of the outside world, which makes everything somehow bearable; the happy ending.... Yet note that I've awarded this an unequivocal 5 stars. That's because, sugary it may be (and is) but darn it, there are just some days when you're in the mood for sugar. And plucky British orphans. And happy endings. And if you happen to be in such a mood on the day you read this book (or listen to the audiobook version, as I did,) then you're in for a five-star treat.

Makes you believe the world is jolly good at that, old chum. Pour me another cup of tea.