This is a childhood favorite, it's so good

This gets rounded up to 4 because it's a childhood favorite (and I do love that Victor Ambrus cover illustration on the old Puffin edition, our family copy which I still have in my possession). The figure skating background is interesting, and Harriet's story arc satisfying. I'm old enough that I dimly remember being bored and puzzled by the figure part of the figure skating competition of the Winter Olympics (could that have been 1980?). It's interesting that were the story taking place today, the outcome might be rather different. I can easily imagine Lalla becoming the first female competitor to land triples in competition..

Here is some inconsequential grousing about a really minor part of the premise. It makes no sense at all that the Johnson family's store makes no profit because Uncle William eats all the nice things from the country. If the Johnsons were able to sell each day what one person eats per day, no matter how gluttonous that one person happens to be, that still wouldn't come anywhere close to bringing in enough money to support a family. Noel Streatfeild clearly didn't trouble to think this out, so I'm going to do it for her. My theory is that Uncle William sells the best things locally, going against the agreement he made with his brother, and the Johnson parents, in an effort to shield their kids from how dastardly Uncle William is, allow them to think he's just a great greedy guts. In addition, I see no reason why public school educated (in the British sense) George Johnson can't just get some office job somewhere. But, you know, plot. I did enjoy the gardening part of the story as a child.

I decided to buy some of the “shoe books” after watching You’ve Got Mail for the umpteenth time. (Thanks, Kathleen Kelly!) This was a very sweet book with quirky characters who I really grew to love. I look forward to reading more of the shoe books.

I didn't care much for this book. I was interested to read it but found few of the events and characters engaging. There were too many situations and even phrases drawn from earlier books and too little actual explanation of what "brackets" or "edge work" was, for people like me who have never ice-skated (or rollerskated, come to that.) In the afterword, the author's son talks of the hours of painstaking research done at rinks--and yet none of that shows up in the text. It took me awhile to figure out that a "one foot three" is a figure 3 done with only one foot. I mean, all the author had to do was say that Lalla didn't want to do her brackets "which involved doing this" in one sentence. Did she assume that all her readers knew as much as she discovered?

Streatfeild continues her tradition of girls with odd names (Lalla? What is that?, "Santa" from Circus Shoes, "Posy and Petrova ", etc). The parents are present in this book but the fathers act like children--George (why couldn't she call Harriet's parents Mother and Father so as not to get him confused with the other boys?) can't do sums, earn enough to feed his family, or stand up to his selfish brother, and no one, particularly not her own husband, seems to be able to tell Aunt Claudia where to get off--though they all seem to be very good at manipulating her, which is odd considering what a control-freak she is. Lalla isn't a nice kid, and she doesn't improve on acquaintance. The governess, like David, is more interested in her cosily-feathered little nest than anything else.

I found it extremely hard to believe that Aunt Claudia would pay for eeeeverything for Harriet, or that the rink owner and skating teacher would allow H. to continue to use their services free if Claudia decided to cut off the source of the freebies. But it's all wish-fulfillment fiction for little girls, rather like Ballet Shoes. Who wouldn't love to be let off going to school for over a year due to an unspecified illness, and find herself with free skating classes, free dancing classes, free fencing classes, and even all-expenses-paid vacations? And if she's well enough to dance AND fence AND skate, how is she not well enough to attend school?At least there is a good message about talent not being enough unless you put in the work to make it happen. I knew a lot of little girls who took dancing classes, baton twirling etc and coud have been contenders--but way before secondary school they were off to the next thing. Me, I've never had much in the way of talent, so I guess I have fewer regrets about the should-have-beens.

Harriet Johnson is recovering from a serious illness and is still very weak. Her doctor recommends that she take up ice skating to strengthen her legs. The Johnsons are very hard up, but the doctor knows the manager of the local ice.rink and says he will let Harriet skate for free, she will only have to pay for the hire of the skates and boots. Even that is too much for the Johnsons to manage, so Harriet's oldest brother Alec does a paper round to pay for the hire or the boots and skates. At the first day at the rink, Harriet is dismayed to find the hired boots are ugly brown boots with a green stripe painted on them, not the beautiful white boots she sees others wearing. But sh e has a bit of luck, she meets pretty, high spirited Lalla Moore, the daughter of a famous figure skater. Since his death, Lalla's ambitious Aunt Claudia has brought Lalla up to be a figure skater, dreaming of when her niece will be a champion like her father, and she, Aunt Claudia, will bask in her reflected.glory. Lalla helps Harriet with her skating, and the two girls become friends. Meanwhile Alec is saving the leftover money from his paper round to buy fruit and vegetables.for his father's provision store. The father, George Johnson, sells things that his brother William sends from the country, the trouble is William is greedy and keeps.all the best things to eat himself. Alec hopes to.improve the stock. George Johnson is pretty hopeless. Devoted to his brother, he won't hear a word against him, despite the fact that the shop is stocked only with things William doesn't want. You wonder how the charming Olivia Johnson came to be married to such a hopelessly ineffectual type. However ,George aside, the Johnson family are delightful, and it is easy to see why Lalla is happy to know them. Lalla.even begins to wonder if there might be more to life than skating after all. My favourite character in the book is Lalla's governess, Miss Goldthorpe, who doesn't care much for skating: "She thought skating rinks nasty, cold, damp places, and she could not.imagine why anyone, unless forced like Lalla to do so, wanted to spend their time going round and round on ice, when they could spend it reading interesting books.". A delightful story, you don't have to love skating to love this book.

Ballet shoes was one of my favorite books as a child. It gave a warm-blankety feeling to go back to Streatfeild after many years - a world where people from diverse social classes become friends, unexpected kind patrons help you discover your potential and fulfill your dreams, goodness is rewarded, and well, badness does not really exist. It felt nice. Nice is good.

Thinking of reading some Enid Blyton family adventures next.

I loved all of the Shoe books as a child, and it makes me sad that they are becoming harder to find on library shelves. The characters are substantial enough to chew on- there are flaws that give them rounding, but they remain likable. I loved the connections between some of the stories, also- like when the Fossils made cameos. As an adult, I appreciate the glimpse into a world that has long-since disappeared...as a child, the skating/ballet/theater world that Streatfield was no more or less real than the country house in which the Pevensie children found a wardrobe. I look forward to reading these with my daughter.

It's a cute read for a younger audience about the importance of friendship ☺️❤️

A cute book that I definitely took my time reading. Because I was working on other things, this book did begin to feel a little long. I thought the middle just slogged on when the pace could have picked up a bit. Just when things start to get interesting again, the book ends!



We start with Harriet, the poor girl in recovery who gets prescribed ice skating to strengthen her legs (who is her doctor and why did I never have him?). Then, once we meet Lalla, child wonder and protégé, the book quickly becomes the Lalla book. And to be honest, Lalla isn't that great of a kid. Because her aunt over-inflates her ego and Nana indulges her to make up for it. Her tutor silently passes judgement and helps when she can and unfortunately, Uncle David who probably has the best mind and temperament to raise a child isn't allowed or allowed to have an opinion because Lalla is only his niece by marriage. I was longing for more Harriet, I could identify with the poor girl with no prospects and large family.

I also think Aunt Claudia was the worst type of guardian, pushing Lalla into a life she may not have picked if left to discover herself. Because Claudia probably struggled to mourn her brother and was terrified of raising his child, she raised Lalla in his ghostly shadow. And worst, Claudia was so stubborn and domineering, no one felt free to speak their minds for Lalla's sake.

I'm happy that Aunt Claudia won't exactly get her way and has no choice to accept Lalla's move into professional skating instead of competing. Lalla will have fun free skating and playing for audiences. Meanwhile, Harriet gets to be the competition star.



I remember Ballet Shoes spanning a few years in Pauline, Petrova and Posy's lives and Skating Shoes covers about two years in Lalla and Harriet's lives but I wish it went further. I would have liked to see Lalla and Harriey embark on their future plans but I think that may be the charm of the Shoes books: little girls, friendships and goals.

I think I drop this book lower than some of the other shoes books because I came to it later in life, so I didn't re-read it over and over and over like I did theater, dancing, and ballet shoes. I love the Johnson family. I think they are a great family, and you see other ways and dreams with them. I like Lalla and Harriet, and their friendship. I like the talk about skating, and yet it makes me sad, because some of the issues pointed out in this book are still issues in the skating world, and nothing has changed with them.

I skated as a teenager, and took it up again this year almost 35 years later. My mother-in-law gave me this book for Christmas, and I adored it! I loved the postwar England setting (where my MIL grew up), and all the skating references were very accurate, although now outdated (since figures were dropped from competitive skating in 1991).

I had never read any of Streatfeild's books although I was aware of them because of the references in "You've Got Mail."

Lovely book that reminds me a lot of Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy series.

On its own, Skating Shoes is a beautiful book that definitely holds up. I enjoyed it as much as I did as a child.
However, I think the book suffers a bit from it's formula. All of Noel Streatfield's books have a similar concept/formula and after reading many of them this book felt rather trite.
This book is charming and quite pretty. That familiar formula also adds to the charm so I can't rationalize giving it less than 4 stars haha