White Boots
The author of children’s classic ‘Ballet Shoes’ delights with a best-loved story of ice skating rivalry…“If you pass your inter-silver, I’ll tell Aunt Claudia that I don’t want to work with you any more.”Harriet is told that she must take up ice-skating in order to improve her health. She isn’t much good at it, until she meets Lalla Moore, a young skating star. Now Harriet is getting better and better on the ice, and Lalla doesn’t like it. Does Harriet want to save their friendship more than she wants to skate?
Читать White Boots онлайн беплатно
Noel Streatfeild
Illustrated by Piers Sanford
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1951
This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2008 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is www.harpercollinschildrensbooks.co.uk
Text copyright © Noel Streatfeild 1951
Postscript copyright © William Streatfeild 2001 Why You’ll Love This Book © Cathy Cassidy 2008 Illustrations by Piers Sanford
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. 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 e-books.
Conditions of Sale
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780007580453
Ebook Edition © October 2012 ISBN: 9780007380763 Version: 2018-05-16
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 Streatfield 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
