Noel Streatfeild - White Boots

First published in Great Britain by Collins in 1951

Published in this ebook edition by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2020

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Text copyright © Noel Streatfeild 1951

Postscript © William Streatfeild 2001

Why You’ll Love This Book © Cathy Cassidy 2008

Inside illustrations © Piers Sanford

Cover illustrations © Sarah Gibb 2020

Cover design copyright © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020

All rights reserved.

Noel Streatfeild asserts the moral rights to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007580460

Ebook Edition © July 2020 ISBN: 9780007380763

Version: 2020-07-09

Cover

Title Page

Copyright First published in Great Britain by Collins in 1951 Published in this ebook edition by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2020 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is www.harpercollins.co.uk Text copyright © Noel Streatfeild 1951 Postscript © William Streatfeild 2001 Why You’ll Love This Book © Cathy Cassidy 2008 Inside illustrations © Piers Sanford Cover illustrations © Sarah Gibb 2020 Cover design copyright © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020 All rights reserved. Noel Streatfeild asserts the moral rights to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780007580460 Ebook Edition © July 2020 ISBN: 9780007380763 Version: 2020-07-09

Why You’ll Love This Book by Cathy Cassidy

1. The Johnsons

2. Mr Pulton

3. The Rink

4. Lalla’s House

5. Aunt Claudia

6. Sunday Tea

7. Inter-Silver

8. Christmas

9. Skating Gala

10. Silver Test

11. Plans

12. Loops

13. The Quarrel

14. The Thermometer Rises

15. The Future

More Than A Story

Postscript by William Streatfeild

Did you know?

Skating Firsts

Know your skating jumps

Figure skating and beyond…

British Skating Champions

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Books by Noel Streatfeild

About the Publisher

When I was growing up, books were an escape, a passport to a whole new world. Nothing very exciting ever seemed to happen to me, but I could open the pages of a book and imagine myself as a ballerina or an ice-skater or a lonely orphan at a strict boarding school… and I loved that! Books seemed like a kind of real-life magic to me, back then.

Ballet Shoes was the first Noel Streatfeild book I read and loved, so when I discovered White Boots , I devoured that too. The story is not just about Harriet learning to skate, but her friendship with rich, spoilt skating star Lalla Moore. It explores the themes of jealousy, loyalty and dependency within a friendship, things I now write about in my own books! Friendship is something that matters to all of us, whatever our age, but it takes hard work and determination to make a friendship strong, as Harriet and Lalla find out.

I loved the ice-skating background of White Boots – as a child I had never been on the ice at all, and that whole world of cute little skating dresses and white boots seemed impossibly cool and glam. I never did get the hang of ice-skating, even as an adult, but I still love to watch those who can and dream of what might have been!

Re-reading White Boots again now, I was fascinated to find it was written in 1951, just 11 years before I was born… yet as a child, the time and setting of the book seemed very distant. Again, it was another world to me – a post-war world of genteel poverty, with nannies and governesses and nurseries. I was fascinated. It couldn’t have been more different from my own life, and I think that 21st century readers will feel the same… some things have changed so much, yet some not at all!

Apart from the romance of the skating scenes, some of my favourite parts of the book were those with Harriet’s brothers – they were kind, practical, lively boys who welcomed Lalla into their lives. I especially liked Alec, and his shopkeeper friend Mr Pulton who tells him to follow his dreams. That’s a message that has always stayed with me – and one that crops up in just about every book I write.

White Boots is a little slice of the past, which still captures my imagination, and its themes of friendship, family and staying true to yourself are timeless…

Cathy Cassidy

Cathy Cassidy is a bestselling author of fun and feisty real-life stories for girls, including Dizzy, Indigo Blue, Lucky Star and Ginger Snaps . Cathy wrote and illustrated her first book at 8 years old for her little brother and has been writing and drawing ever since. She has worked as an editor on Jackie magazine, a teacher and as agony aunt on Shout magazine.

EVEN WHEN THE last of the medicine bottles were cleared away and she was supposed to have “had” convalescence, Harriet did not get well. She was a thin child with big brown eyes and a lot of reddish hair that did not exactly curl, but had a wiriness that made it stand back from her face rather like Alice’s hair in “Alice in Wonderland”. Since her illness Harriet had looked all eyes, hair and legs and no face at all, so much so that her brothers Alec, Toby and Edward said she had turned into a daddy-long-legs. Mrs Johnson, whose name was Olivia, tried to scold the boys for teasing Harriet, but her scolding was not very convincing, because inside she could not help feeling that if a daddy-long-legs had a lot of hair and big eyes it would look very like Harriet.