Buy this book from hive.co.uk to support The Reading Agency and local bookshops at no additional cost to you. The girls and Sylvia go camping. Mr. Simpson comes to tell them that Pauline will be auditioning for a movie, Charles In Exile. She gets the part, but finds film acting difficult and initially dislikes it. After the filming, Pauline and Petrova act in a pantomime of Cinderella. Even with the money from the film and play, Sylvia cannot afford to keep their house, and decides to sell it. Although this report shows 24 "incidents" for "Attitudes/Disobedience," the majority of these are all lessons the girls work through and learn from. On the whole, the main characters are very loving towards each other, wish to work hard to help with the bills and want to make their guardians proud. Posey, the youngest girl, is, in several instances, an exception as she cares more for ballet and her achievements than people sometimes. This book is not just about ballet, but theater, motorcars and other interests as well, so can be appealing to any girl. Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil are sisters – with a difference. All three were adopted as babies by Great Uncle Matthew, an eccentric and rich explorer who then disappeared, leaving them in the care of his niece Sylvia. The girls grow up in comfort until their money begins to run out and nobody can find Great Uncle Matthew. The book ends with Pauline going off to Hollywood to make a film, accompanied by Sylvia. Posy is going to a ballet school in Prague, accompanied by Nana. Petrova wonders what will become of her, as she is still too young to live on her own and doesn't want to dance or act. At this moment, Gum arrives. He has been away so long that he doesn't realize who the three girls are at first, but after recognising that they are the three babies he left all those years ago, he decides he will take Petrova under his wing and help her achieve her dream.

When I was about 6 I was staying with my Gran in her little cottage in St Ives, and caught ‘flu. A friend of Gran’s brought in a bundle of books, including Ballet Shoes – which I devoured, and enjoyed, and have several times since. The book was an immediate success – copies were rationed and even Streatfeild was only allowed to buy two. It received numerous awards and has been listed by the Library Association as a book that “should always be in print”. Two film adaptations have been produced by the BBC, and the book has also been re-imagined as a children’s ballet.Ballet Shoes: A Story of Three Children on the Stage (first edition). Library of Congress Catalog Record. Retrieved 22 August 2012.

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). During the Great War, in 1915 Noel worked first as a volunteer in a soldier's hospital kitchen near Eastbourne Vicarage and later produced two plays with her sister Ruth. When things took a turn for the worse on the Front in 1916 she moved to London and obtained a job making munitions in Woolwich Arsenal. At the end of the war in January 1919, Noel enrolled at the Academy of Dramatic Art (later Royal Academy) in London. I'm fond of all Noel Streatfeild's books, but this one, being the first I read, has a special place in my heart. It introduces Pauline, Petrova, and Posy Fossil, orphans who are adopted by an eccentric geologist who then disappears for years, leaving the girls in the care of his niece Sylvia and her old nanny, Nana. When the money he left Sylvia runs out, they decide to send the girls to stage school. Gum Great-Uncle Matthew Brown, an elderly geologist and professor, who finds the three sisters during his travels. Gum is Sylvia's great uncle and later guardian after her parents die.The book concerns three adopted sisters, Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil. Each of the girls is discovered as a baby by Matthew Brown (Great-Uncle-Matthew, known as "Gum"), an elderly, absentminded palaeontologist and professor, during his world travels, and sent home to his practical great niece, Sylvia and her childhood nanny, Nana who live in London, England. The other thing which is very much of its period is that poor Sylvia has been left on the shelf. She’s quite a young woman, probably in her mid-twenties when the book opens but, towards the end of the book, Nana notes sadly that her hair is going grey and that her face is lined with worry. We realize that Sylvia is one of the generation of young women whose possible future husbands were killed in World War I. According to Angela Bull, Ballet Shoes was a reworked version of The Whicharts. Elder sister Ruth Gervis illustrated the book, which was published on the 28th September, 1936. At the time, the plot and general 'attitude' of the book was highly original, and destined to provide an outline for countless other ballet books down the years until this day. The first known book to be set at a stage school, the first ballet story to be set in London, the first to feature upper middle class society, the first to show the limits of amateurism and possibly the first to show children as self-reliant, able to survive without running to grownups when things went wrong. Keller, Louise (18 December 2008). "BALLET SHOES: DVD". Urban Cinefile . Retrieved 30 November 2009.

The family might be struggling financially, but, when they were small, the Fossil girls were taken regularly to the nearby Victoria & Albert Museum. Culture is important – Dr Jakes is a Shakespeare fan and determined that Pauline should learn to speak his verse with confidence. And this, of course, helps her future career. The two doctors also take on the girls’ education (for free) when the cost of the private Cromwell House School becomes too much for Sylvia to pay. We note that it never crosses her mind to send them to a local school.

Petrova Fossil The middle sister, adopted from a young couple who died in Russia. Petrova is a tomboy, hardworking and diligent, but interested only in engines and airplanes and cars. When money gets tight, three adopted sisters (Pauline, Petrova, and Posy Fossil) take to the stage to earn their keep. Pauline soon shows talent as an actress, and Posy as a dancer, while Petrova holds on to her dream of flying planes. The story follows their successes and struggles as they strive to uphold a vow to put their names in history books. Romance Related - 4 Incidents: Double-breasted in reference to a uniform. Not sexual. A girl comes into the room "with nothing on but a bathmat." It is noted that a girl has a rather "big behind." "Posy, even with nothing on, and dripping with water, was quite amazingly like Theo."