Ballet Shoes (A Puffin Book)

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Posy is developing into a brilliant ballet dancer. She also clashes with her sisters, as she is so focused on dancing that she is insensitive about anything that gets in her way. Petrova is not interested in the performing arts and has little talent for it but must keep attending classes and performing to help support the family. However, she holds onto her own dream of flying aircraft. Posy is brought to see Valentin Manoff's ballet by Madame Fidolia. Posy wants to attend his ballet school in Czechoslovakia. Madame has a stroke and is paralysed, leaving Posy devastated. Charles In Exile is a hit, and Pauline has been discovered. She is offered a five-year contract in Hollywood, but she is unsure she should accept it. 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. Noel Streatfeild doesn’t go into the bathroom facilities but the lodgers would have had a common bathroom, comprising bath, wash basin and lavatory, together with a separate lavatory and wash basin. Times when they could have a bath would have to be negotiated between them. Oh Jan! How nice to find a fellow-enthusiast! I agree that ‘Ballet Shoes’ gives a very clear idea of life in London in the 20s and 30s. I found myself wondering whether the Cromwell Road house had a vacuum cleaner and a fridge and things like that. Quite possibly not, and Sylvia would have needed the extra two maids – who are only mentioned in passing – to keep the house clean and to do the heavy work like scrubbing the floors.

Nana, who has been chaperoning the girls at an evening theatre performance, brings them home on the Underground.

Religious & Supernatural - 3 Incidents: Two girls are rehearsing a play that has a graveyard scene where two children hope to see/speak to ghosts. "You can never tell what's magic." "If there was anything that was sacred in the family, it was the savings books. The walk to the post office on Saturday mornings was more sure to happen than church on Sunday."

Pauline, Petrova, and Posy are inspired by the professors to "put their names in the history books" by giving service to their country. Every Christmas and on birthdays they vow to do that.According to CCSU there were about 160 commended runners up for 1936 and the 49 years from 1954 to 2002, including Streatfeild and Howard Spring for 1936.

Dr. Jakes and Dr. Smith Boarders. A pair of retired professors of literature and maths, respectively, who offer to teach the girls. Dr. Jakes first inspires the girls to think of their adoptive state as being full of potential and individuality, without any chance of their achievements being attributed to family connections.The story is that of three young girls, a few years apart, who have been taken in by Mr. Matthew Brown (Uncle GUM). Pauline is the oldest and was lost at sea after her and Uncle Gum's ship sank. Nobody knows what's happened to her parents. Petrova, the second-oldest, is the daughter of Russian high-borns that fell on hard times after the Revolution and died. Posy, the youngest, is the daughter of a dancer who couldn't take care of her. I listened with my granddaughter for a while, but the necessary setup of the narrative in the opening chapters didn't twirl her skirts.