Originally published as The Painted Garden

Loved it of course, but was also easily annoyed by it - Jane was such a brat!

Everyone in this book was unlikeable in one way or another. And the ending was super abrupt.

This felt like a slightly different Streatfeild book. Of course, it's also (I think) the first one I've read for the first time as an adult. But, mostly, it's that it's about the untalented sibling. And, unlike characters like Petrova, she is not happy being untalented. Which I thought was very realistic! She's written with sympathy, but the narrative still make it clear the poor girl isn't that talented, despite the movie role!

Anyway, it just felt a little less . . . fun, I guess. But you get to see adult Fossils!!! And I liked Rachel. She has a quiet kind of journey. (I like Tim, too, but I guess he felt less distinct. I guess Streatfeild's boys have never stuck out to me much.)

But I am sad the book ended before Jane and Chewing Gum's reunion!

This one is my favorite of the shoes books. You have to read the Secret Garden first.

A long-time childhood favourite. Nice to reread it again. One of the things I like most is that Jane is recognised as plain and no one tries to convince her that she’s actually beautiful: there’s a line about how not everyone can be beautiful or talented, but everyone can be kind. Quite refreshing in today’s “everyone is special” era.

An interesting children’s book. The three children all have their moments of unlikability and acting spoilt or jealous and that makes the trip to california really quite interesting to read about.

I was bought this novel as a Christmas present in 1976. It was actually this very edition. I love the cover as it continues the picture on the reverse. I really enjoyed it then and so I have again.
It is the story of a child playing the part of Mary in a film of The Secret Garden which is my favourite children's book.
I had also forgotten that this pictured edition has beautiful illustrations by Shirley Hughes.
I won't do a review of the story as there are plenty of those to read.
The family travel to America on board The Mauretania and as a child I wasn't really wondering about that but this time I wanted to place when it might have been written rather than when this edition was published.
As usual it is Noel Streatfeild at her best.
If you like stories about theatre and dancing then this is one for you.

I have always loved Noel Streatfeild's books and as a child I got my library to ILL them for me or hunted through second hand book stores to find all of them. She tells the perfect "girls stories". I was always able to find one character in each book that was my favorite. They definitely stand up to re-reads.

Really lovely world and character building. Delightful to see New York and LA through an English lens in the 1940s. Unfortunately, since it was written in the 1940s, it has some very well-intentioned but extremely problematic depictions of Black and Italian characters. So I wouldn’t give it to a kid to read to themselves; would be ok if you read it with them and discussed.

The very worst Streatfield I have ever read. None of the characters is remotely sympathetic, and I didn't feel at all empathetic with any of the three self-involved children. Tim was obnoxious, Rachel oblivious and Jane flat-down unpleasant. Their parents just kind of hang around waving their hands admiringly and saying, "Well honey if that's what you want to do, go for it." The Americans are cardboard (did Streatfield ever visit America?) with stupid made-up sounding names like "Sneltzworther"--and seriously, "Bee Bee Studios"?
Streatfield certainly wasn't trying very hard. I found it very hard to believe that even in 1949 an American child actress in Hollywood would go around curtseying to guests at her own party! Shaking hands yes, being polite certainly--but not curtseying. But then Streatfield has a "thing" about curtseying in her "dancing stories."

Posy Fossil makes a reprise performance from an earlier book--as I thought, going to Czechoslovakia in 1938 didn't work out, though we are never told how she and her dancing master made it to the US before WW2. But even she and her entourage are background. I trudged to the end, willing it to be over, just to see if Streatfield could redeem this thing. She couldn't. The ending was tacked-on, just to sweep the family back to England loaded down with presents and satisfying éclat, having got what they wanted--money and a free vacation, I guess. The final scene with the train had me rolling my eyes.

If you haven't read any of Streatfield's "Shoe" books--don't start here! If I had, it would have put me off her for life. Maybe that's why the author worked in so much about "The Secret Garden"--maybe she knew it wasn't very good, so she tried to ride on a better book's coattail.

Not nearly as good as Ballet Shoes or Dancing Shoes, primarily because, while the two oldest children are likable, and the father is a sympathetic character, everyone else is fairly horrid. And we're supposed to come to like Jane, and really, I just wanted to smack her, even as a child, throughout most of this. Still, I would have given this a 3.5 if that option was available.