White Boots

Noel Streatfeild's White Boots is a warm skating story for 9 year olds about a poorly girl sent to the ice rink to get her legs working again.

What happens

Harriet Johnson is nearly ten and has been ill for months. Her legs feel like cotton wool (her word, and she uses it a lot). Her brothers say she's turned into a daddy-long-legs.

Money is very tight. The family live above Dad's shop, which sells whatever Uncle William sends from the country. Uncle William eats the best bits himself. So the shop gets tough old grouse and seven hundred cabbages in a single week!

When the doctor suggests skating, the next question is how to pay for the hired boots. Harriet's big brother Alec quietly takes on a paper round to cover it. Isn't that lovely?

The boots are brown, with a band of green paint so nobody can steal them. Harriet is NOT impressed. She'd been hoping for white boots like the girl in the middle of the rink.

That girl is Lalla Moore, and she's been skating since she was pushed to the rink in a pram. She sweeps across the ice and tows Harriet out by both hands. Their friendship is the heart of the book.

It's a cosy, chatty read. The Johnsons are such fun to be around, from Toby doing furious sums about the shop to little Edward, who enjoys being good-looking a bit too much. You'll probably end up quite fond of all of them.

There's sadness in Lalla's story, though. Her parents fell through thin ice when she was a baby, and her aunt has decided Lalla will be the greatest skater in the world. That's all in the past by the time we meet her, and it's told gently.

It's an older book and it feels it, with prices in shillings and pence. One man at the rink uses an old word for the Japanese that we wouldn't use now. It's said once, in passing.

Does your reader love a story about practising something hard until you get good at it? This is a real treat.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, try No Ballet Shoes in Syria. It's a much more serious story, but Aya is another girl who hears a dance class going on upstairs and simply cannot keep her feet still.