By Noel Streatfeild
Three unrelated orphan girls, raised as sisters in a crumbling London house, train for the stage to keep the family afloat.
Pauline, Petrova, and Posy are three babies collected from the far corners of the world by an eccentric old fossil-hunter they call Gum, who brings them home to London and then promptly disappears on another expedition. Years pass and the money runs low, so his niece takes in boarders, and the three girls are sent to a children's academy to train in acting and dancing so they can earn their own keep. Pauline longs for the stage, Posy is a born ballerina, and Petrova would rather be under a car engine than in a tutu. They make a vow to put their own name in the history books, and slowly, audition by audition, they start to.
For a dance-obsessed child ready for a real chapter book, this is the classic, and Posy the ballet prodigy will be their way in. But the book is richer than that, because it's really about three very different sisters, only one of whom loves ballet, all working to hold a struggling family together. It's from 1936, so the world is gas fires and shillings and audition licenses, but the feelings are timeless: wanting to be special, worrying about money the way children pick up on it, and finding your own particular gift. It's the first of Streatfeild's beloved 'Shoes' books, so there's more waiting.