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
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Text copyright © Noel Streatfeild 1951
Postscript copyright © William Streatfeild 2001 Why You’ll Love This Book © Cathy Cassidy 2008 Illustrations by Piers Sanford
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Source ISBN: 9780007580453
Ebook Edition © October 2012 ISBN: 9780007380763 Version: 2018-05-16
CONTENTS
Why You’ll Love This Book by Cathy Cassidy
Postscript by William Streatfield
Why You’ll Love This Book by Cathy Cassidy
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