Ballet Shoes

One of the boarders helps the girls get places at a children's academy of dance and stage training, where they can earn their own keep. Pauline, the eldest, turns out to be a gifted actress who has to learn not to let success go to her head. Petrova, practical and mechanically minded, would much rather be fixing cars and dreaming of airplanes. Posy, the youngest, is a born dancer with total confidence and very little tact.

Streatfeild had trained as an actress herself, and the backstage details are vivid and unsentimental: auditions, licenses, rehearsals, the need for decent coats, the constant worry about money. What makes the book endure is its respect for different kinds of talent. Petrova, who hates performing, is treated just as seriously as her sisters, and the story never suggests that only one kind of dream is worth having. The boarders, from two retired doctors to a young dance teacher, form a lovely surrogate family.

Some period attitudes now feel old-fashioned, and the plot is gentle rather than dramatic, but its warmth has kept generations of readers coming back. About 352 pages in the Puffin paperback.