A very beautifully written book with heartwarming messages that adults and children will enjoy.

I loved listening to this audiobook, from start to finish, and recommend this book very highly.

First sentence: The Fossil sisters lived in the Cromwell Road.

Premise/plot: Pauline, Petrova, and Posy are the Fossil sisters--not related by blood, perhaps--but sisters all the same. Each was adopted by gum--Great Uncle Matthew. He is an ADVENTURER. And on three of his trips he brought home children--babies--instead of just fossils. While he is away, the children are being raised by Sylvia (Matthew's great-niece), Nana, and Cook. When money runs low, it's decided that they will take boarders. As the children grow they enter a special school that teaches acting, singing, dancing, performing. The children can begin earning money when they're twelve by performing...

The children have vowed repeatedly throughout the book to make the name of FOSSIL famous....will they?

My thoughts: I enjoyed rereading Ballet Shoes. It's been nine years since I've last read it! I definitely appreciated it more this time. That is one reason why I love to reread books. Sometimes once isn't enough.

Quotes:

They went to church--even Posy--and sang, "Hark, the Herald Angels," "O Come, All Ye Faithful," and "The First Noel." They had been afraid that perhaps they would only get one that they knew and the rest some dull tune that was supposed to belong to Christmas and did not really. (69)

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read https://www.theguardian.com/books/200... and on the Realini’s Best 250 Novels list available at http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u...
More recently, they have been placed at the 927th place on The Greatest Books of All Time site
9 out of 10


Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil are children in this impressive narrative and yet they could be role models for so many adults, with their formidable arsenal of character strengths – courage, resilience, munificence, temperance, modesty – yes, Pauline and Posy have a very high opinion of their talents, but that is for good reason, and the former does have a phase during which she is quite arrogant, but that will pass – appreciation of beauty and excellence, humor, creativity, love of learning, sagesse, curiosity…

They have each been found as a baby by Matthew Brown, the Great-Uncle Matthew, nicknamed Gum, the latter starts as an important role model – who will find one baby, deciding to take him or her home, then a second infant and the same willingness to protect is displayed, only to have a third one more or less adopted- only to become a figure that displays some recklessness and may end up as a negative personage, if not altogether horrid, in spite of the baffling treatment he receives from the author.
In other words, this is where standards have surely changed from one hundred years ago to today – it is evident throughout the saga that we have come a long way, children were allowed to work at the age of twelve, officially, after they had received a permit, and many others would start even before that in farms, factories, on some counts, while on others, things are really bad…the Divided States of America is going backwards, with a bunch of fundamentalists, vile, repugnant ruffians (think Cavanaugh) on the Supreme Court, they have ruled against abortion, against that article in their constitution which separates religion from state (for the scoundrels take what they want from the book and reject what they do not like), allow guns in New York state to be carried without the need for a justified cause (although a former justice from the right had said that this is ‘the biggest fraud perpetuated on the American people’, the article about guns talks of a ‘well-regulated militia’ which was needed at the time) and the last case of yesterday, they deny the right for the administration to diminish the polluting emissions…goddamn idiots and Taliban, they have lied in their depositions and it shows now…

Gum takes these three children home, where his niece, Sylvia, and her nanny will take her of the orphans, together with cook and maid, and he will have no care, expect to provide the money, the means for all of them to have food and the necessary basics, only the man starts on an expedition, leaves enough funds for five years, and he does not return in time for the whole family to avoid despair and poverty, they are forced to have the little girls get to work, face ignorance, because they would not be educated and then when the Gum shows up, he is celebrated as a well deserving patriarch…

He would be arrested these days for neglecting his duties and allowing the children under his responsibility to face adversity and trauma, at such a tender age…they would indeed have been destitute, had it not been for divine intervention – in the view of those who take that path – the idea of the two women to open a boarding house in the lodgings they had, then the arrival of two doctors, Doctor Jakes and Doctor Smith, offers the solution to the until then unsolvable problem of tutoring the children…
Theo Dane is also looking for a room, and she talks to the head of the Children’s Academy of Dancing and Stage Training, Madame Fidolia, the latter had escaped the Russian Revolution – the arrival of those fucking goons that would bring calamity and Armageddon to our parts, and their direct descendants are now invading Ukraine, provoking crisis, inflation, hunger and death around the world – because she had been a favorite ballerina of the czar – something that Putin sees himself as being, he compared himself these days with Peter the Great (and we could agree on some counts, the loathsome Peter had killed and tortured his own son, so there you have role models for tyrants and lunatics) who had taken land from Sweden – and then she opened a school for children to use her talents…

Pauline has a passion and talent for theater – eventually, she would be taken for audition to act in a motion picture, she would succeed and then her performance is so marvelous that she is (maybe a spoiler alert here would be needed, I am not sure) offered a contract in Hollywood, which would bring wealth and benefits for the whole family, albeit Pauline is one that wants to be on stage, as a theater actress and not a movie star, only circumstances and her magnanimity might concur to have her travel to California…
Posy is the youngest, the last baby to be brought home by Gum, and attached to her were the Ballet Shoes from the title – I guess, though I do not see why she is the one to be isolated from the others, there might be a case to take Petrova and single her out, because the latter was neither interested in acting, nor in dancing, and the hopes of the Fossils to make their name an important one in history books rest with her, actors and dancers are not relevant to history, or so they think at that time, now it looks like celebrities, their scandals and innuendo are flooding the airwaves and internet, what Amber Heard did in Johnny Depp’s bed, the Will Smith slap at the Oscars, vileness of the rapper who has been sentenced to spend thirty years in prison for sex trafficking and more, then the ascent of the vile showman Trump, mentioned and dismissed in the majestic Girl, Woman, Other, Co-Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize by Bernardine Evaristo http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/06/g... where we find that ‘It's so crazy that the disgusting perma-tanned billionaire has set a new intellectual and moral low by being president of America’ which is so damn well said

Petrova takes part in the acting and dancing lessons, when she is twelve, gets a permit to work, in order to help the family survive, but her passion, probably her calling would have her work with engines, cars and eventually airplanes, the suggestion being that she will be so good at this that her name will be remembered by future generations, just like the under signed, who was a participant in the 1989 December revolution might be celebrated some time, Insha’Allah!

http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...

“It might have all the same; you never can tell what's magic.”

This book is how I learned to imitate the english dialect. We got a two-cassette TB of this (probably not this edition) when my family visited the country in 1990 and I listened to it nonstop for years. My perceptions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, early cinema, and Alice in Wonderland are forever shaped by their depictions in this story. As well as adopted families, dance instruction, and the way to say "citroen cars" in british. My brain is partially wired by this story.

Reseña completa: https://fiebrelectora.blogspot.com/20...

Pauline, Posy y Petrova Fossil son tres huérfanas que fueron adoptadas por un misterioso benefactor y ahora conviven en una mansión de Londres; las tres muy diferentes las unas de las otras, y con intereses de lo más variados. Sin embargo, con la desaparición de su benefactor, los problemas económicos no tardan en aparecer, y pronto su tutora deberá alquilar habitaciones de la casa, lo que desemboca, de alguna manera, en la entrada de las hermanas en una escuela de danza... y las tres están dispuestas a sacar a la familia adelante cueste lo que cueste.

Se trata de una novela muy sencillita y tierna, uno de esos clásicos que se podría mandar sin problemas leer a los más jóvenes, ya que es ágil, y resulta muy sencillo empatizar con las tres hermanas, cuya relación es de lo más verosímil: cómo se pican, cómo se apoyan, sus sueños, miedos, enfados... son absolutamente reales.

When I was in my first grade, a teacher took our class to the children's library next to school to be registered. I couldn't believe so many books could exist in just one place. After 2-3 years it turned out that this was not enough, so I got my card in the adults' library next to mine and, unfortunately, my old librarian got offended.

This teacher discovered a totally new world to me. I would be before the doors at 8 am waiting for it to open at 9 or wait for about 2 hours and find out it was Sunday, and they didn't work. I didn't even reach the return dates, and librarians were always trying to give me 3-4 instead of 1 or 2 books. They were just fetching my card without asking my details. They were even letting me dig the closed sections as they shortly got lack of any suggestions.

And I wish these librarians could recommend me this book when I was little. I wish all the librarians were like Kate from You've Got Mail (well you can't read this book without thinking of her sitting in the Fox bookshop).
Recently I found quite a lot of books I should have read while a teenager or younger. I now have a good collection of "missed" books.

It was just a right book in every way. Right message, right characters, right plot. Everything was perfect. Some books just create the Christmas mood, even if they are not entirely about Christmas.

And I hope there is at least one librarian somewhere who hands this book to every child she meets and says "you'll love it".

This is probably the first book ever where I cannot say 'The book is better' straight away. First of all, it is clear that the book is for children and the film is for the grown ups. But the beauty remains in both.



Pauline, Petrova and Posy are sister by 'accident' as they were all adopted by a wealthy and nice uncle Matthew (whom they called Gum, because Great Uncle Matthew. G.U.M.). After he brought the youngest Posy home, though, he disappeared. There was enough money in the bank for a couple of years, but it was not enough and soon, they ran short of it. The sisters were all talented. Pauline could act and recite and Posy wasn't very far from being a professional ballerina. And Petrova was incredibly clever, although she was interested in cars and engines instead of performing arts. As the girls grew up, they decided to act for money, so they could support their poor household. They have made a vow regularly, because they believed they could achieve great things. And because their names were unique, no one could say it was because of their grandfathers. But the way towards their dreams isn't always easy.

It is fairly obvious that some changes were required, so the film could be a family-friendly one. So that parents would not be too bored. But to be honest, I liked the change. I enjoyed the relationship and the mild romantic tension between Garnie and Mr Simpson and I really missed that in the book. But I do understand that children might really not find that very interesting. On the other hand, I'm really sad the part with the Blue Bird play wasn't in the film as I think it could have been done in a really nice way.

To conclude, I would say that the book is probably as good as the film, but it's still leaning towards the statement that the film is a little bit better. But it is a purely subjective view, because I'm very sensitive towards films like this...and come on, this one has even got Emma Watson in it!

Super cute! It was nice to read a children's book from the 30's without it being, like, weirdly racist or anything.

I needed to listen to something quick and chose this mostly because there’s a character named Sylvia in it. It was pleasant with likable characters and a lovely little family. There were some fat phobic parts I could have lived without. And it’s so strange to read about little kids having to work to keep the family afloat! But the time period makes sense of that and it feels pretty relatable to read about a family struggling financially throughout the novel. Heck, I might even pick up the sequel.

Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) in You've Got Mail made me read it.

I picked this up because it was my partner’s favourite book as a child, and I can see why.

It’s a very sweet tale. Not enough drama, tension and danger for my past and younger self, but a sweet and uplifting book, that I think many children would still appreciate these days.

Definitely a book for younger readers and an uplifting one at that.