Really enjoying the Shoes series - they're a great read with one's daughter :) (Skating Shoes still my favorite but this one is lovely too!)

I like this book a lot. It isn't one I read as a child (looking back, I only read half a dozen or so of NS's books in childhood), and I wish I had. But it was still a good read.

The arrival of the most beautiful dress, and how one family solved the problem of finding an occasion to wear it, is a simple idea, and it is brilliantly executed here. I particularly love the way the pageant evolves and grows until Selina is almost the only person who remembers why the idea was first proposed.

It's NS, so full marks as usual for the sibling squabbling and family situations (probably my favourite aspect of her books). Bonus marks for the clarity of the plot - not all of NS's books have a definite middle and end but she achieves it here. Further bonus marks for capturing the end of WW2, and the ability of small communities to co-operate on big projects, so well.

The characters are good fun (Mrs Andrews is my favourite, we mums should stick together) and, while not heavy on description, enough scene-setting that I can imagine the Vicar and his roses, and the Abbey and its grounds. Also, the central character is not a gifted actress or aspiring ballerina or a truculent middle child: she is a practical person who finds she has a talent for organising. There are not role models of this type in children's fiction, so a big 'yay' for Selina. Highly recommended.

I really wanted to give this a greater rating, but it wasn't up to the standards of the other "Shoes" books.

Not my favourite Streatfeild...

Charming (in a British sort of way). I liked this a lot more this time round, but I still wish that the war was a more important part of the story--I mean, you don't have Victory in Europe every day but it's passed over in just a few pages. Still, it's a Streatfeild, even it isn't her best.

The Andrews' children are downright beasts to Selina, though. I wanted to seriously reach into this book and slap them.

I am re-reading my Noel Streatfeild collection and realised I had only read this once!

Selina is being brought up by her uncle, aunt and cousins The Andrews as her mum and dad are missing in World War Two. She receives a lovely party frock and shoes from her godmother in America but there is no occasion for her to wear them as it is 1944! She and her cousins come up with the idea of putting on a pageant in the summer which will enable her to wear her frock and shoes.

I upgraded my rating as I could understand the adults a bit more now I am one myself! This one started a bit slowly but accurately captured the planning and trauma putting on an amateur production takes. I often felt sorry for Selina and Mrs Andrews as the rest of the family were a bit entitled and clueless. As the book went on I think her cousins realised how useful she is and they all learned it is very difficult to write and stage your own scenes without a proper producer.

A lovely story about a community coming together to put on a production and again Streatfeild shows how much hard work goes on behind the scenes as well as the reward we all feel when it has gone well.

This book... let me paint you a picture: I am sitting at work, which is boring because it's winter and no one buys furniture when it's icky out, and I'm reading Party Shoes. I've read it so many times before that I can put it down quickly if a customer stops in. So I'm reading, and the whole book my stomach has been in knots because I know what's coming and I can see the embarrassment building. And finally there is a resolution(!)and I breath a sigh of relief, only to have the most moving part of the book sneak up on me (I let it do this, of course). So I start bawling. I mean, tears streaming down my face, small chocking noises, the whole bit.

This is what Noel Streatfeild does to me. Her writing gets at what it feels like to be a child, and for that matter an adult, in such a beautiful way, that time after time I am drawn to re-read these stories.

I put this into my historical-novels shelf because at this point, for young readers, I think that is what it reads as. It is set at the very end of WWII in a country village. Everybody knows everybody, especially because the main-character-family has a doctor for a father and six children, plus one niece. You could easily say that the niece, Selina, is the main character, but I hate to pin one down in a Streatfeild book. Selina's parents are prisoners of war in Japan (not sure how they came to be there, but Selina mentions she was in Hong Kong before the war), and so she lives with her cousins, but she also has an American Godmother who sends her a package... which starts the children on the adventure of putting on a show.

This book, like most of her writing, falls into the sub-genre my mother has labeled which is "Working Class People Who Find Redemption and Purpose through Creativity" (it's a mouthful, I know, but it's really a good genre to seek out!)

Not as good as the other shoes books I’ve read

Well, it's no Ballet Shoes - but a pleasure all the same.

Party Shoes isn't quite what I expected it to be. It started out with great promise, I thought. We meet Selina, a girl living with her British cousins through the war (World War II). One day she receives a present from her American godmother. The parcel contains a beautiful though inappropriate for the times dress or 'frock' and some lovely shoes. Selina knows, as does her cousins and aunt and uncle that there will never be a suitable occasion for her to wear the dress and shoes. Not with the war on, not with the economy being what it is, etc. So the cousins have a meeting. Every person has to suggest at least one idea of how Selina can wear her dress and shoes before she outgrows them. After many ideas are presented, everyone concludes that they will have a pageant on the neighbor's lawn. They set the date for September 20, 1945. And then they each begin writing their piece.

Selina does learn through the process that she is more capable than she ever thought, that she can do things, that she is good at many things, that she is great with working with people, solving problems, etc.

Over half the book is focused on the tiny details of the pageant, each scene of the pageant. We're there for what feels like three hundred rehearsals. Of course, that's not really the case. Probably more like forty. But still. As their scenes are changed, arranged, rearranged, scripted, directed, etc. I found most of the book tedious. I didn't want it to be tedious. I wanted it to be a delight. But most of the delight happened in the first hundred pages.

After reading so many Streatfeild books and loving them, this one was a disappointment. The pageant details and fusses were very repetitive, and would have been much better as a side plot.

One of my favourite Noel Streatfeild books, the whole book is centred around the children putting on a concert so thier cousin has somewhere to wear this beautiful dress and everything gets a bit tangled.