Dancing Shoes (by Noel Streatfeild)

(Amazon UK link)

Ever since my teenage years, Noel Streatfeild’s novels have been an important part of my comfort reading. I suppose I was about nine when I first came across some of them on my grandparents’ bookshelves. I acquired a few in my teens, and borrowed many more from libraries. In the past twenty years or so I have been gradually collecting them, and am thoroughly enjoying re-reading them again, in between others of my favourite authors, and some new books.

‘Dancing Shoes’ was originally entitled ‘Wintle’s Wonders’. I managed to get hold of a second-hand edition about ten years ago, and when I read it then I had no memory of having read it previously. Re-reading it in the past couple of days, I recalled only the vaguest idea of the plot, but I liked it very much.

Rachel and Hilary are the main protagonists of this novel. Hilary is Rachel’s adopted sister, and they are both ten years old when the story opens. It starts with a tragedy in their lives, as happens quite often in the Streatfeild world. Rachel’s father had died some years earlier, and now her mother also dies after a nasty accident.

Rachel and Hilary are very different. Hilary is quite an extravert, a talented dancer, and somewhat allergic to hard work. Rachel is serious, loyal, and quiet, mostly keeping her feelings to herself. Rachel’s aunt Cora runs a dancing school and offers the girls a home, but they have to attend her school and be trained as dancers. Which Hilary is happy to do - she wants to be in a showy dance troupe, doing handstands and tap dancing as well as ballet. But Rachel has no talent for dancing and hates being on stage.

Rachel is also worried about Hilary getting into bad habits. She was about to audition for the Royal Ballet School when their mother died, and supposedly had a glittering future ahead as a ballet dancer. A lot of the story is about Hilary’s determination to be a ‘Wintle’s Wonder’ dancer, while Rachel tries to coerce her into taking ballet more seriously.

While there are some caricatures amongst the minor characters, I thought both Rachel and Hilary were very well created and quite three-dimensional. They are both likeable girls with very different personalities. They are in stark contrast to Aunt Cora’s daughter Dulcie, who is a couple of months older than Rachel. Dulcie is a talented dancer but is very arrogant about it, not helped by her mother’s over-praise and adulation.

Most of Noel Streatfeild’s books have talented children in them, usually dancers. So it’s unusual to find that the ‘promising’ ballet dancer, Hilary, has very little interest in taking her talent seriously. Will she be wasting her life if she abandons ballet for other kinds of dance…? The question is considered from various perspectives. I felt a bit sorry for Rachel at first, but she becomes almost compulsive in her determination to make Hilary do something she really doesn’t want to do.

In a way, it’s Rachel’s story as she is the one who gradually matures, listens to other people’s opinions, and starts her own career path in the final chapter. Although I had forgotten the story as such, it was fairly easy to see where the plot was going in the last couple of chapters. And, as with most of Streatfeild’s novels, once everything is settled, the book ends very quickly.

‘Dancing Shoes’ was written for girls of around eight to twelve, as were most of this author’s books. But I think I like them even more now than I did when I was that age, seeing the children’s development from the perspective of several decades on. They make excellent read-alouds, and while they’re inevitably dated (as is obvious from some of the comments related to money) the personalities and issues covered are always topical.

Highly recommended if you like children’s fiction of this kind, or if you know of children who like stories about dancers and stage schools.

Review by Sue F copyright 2019 Sue's Book Reviews