OVERVIEW: Ballet Shoes for Anna
Apr. 20th, 2008 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThe seed of this comes from my thinking that I've read somewhere that JK Rowling said that Noel Streatfeild was a favourite writer of hers. I don't know if it would have occured to me to see Ballet Shoes for Anna as an influence on the Harry Potter series otherwise. Probably.
Ballet Shoes for Anna: Noel Streatfeild. Collins Modern Classic 1998
This edition feature an afterword by a relative of the author's, which gives context for the writing of the book, the author's attitude about characters like one of the protagonists and a flavour of her.
Otherwise, what really struck me as I read this book was that it must have been an influence of Rowling, more so than the similarly titled, earlier and more famous Ballet Shoes. What all three sets of stories share is orphans with extraordinary talents making their own way - and new family unit - in the world. But the similarity between BSfA and HP rose more in the characters our orphans (Anna and her elder brothers Francesco and Augustus) meet, than the orphans themselves. For here be proto Weasleys and Dursleys. The similarity is more in the way they treat the orphans than exact dynamics. There's only red-headed Wally and his parents, but they're not well off - except in love, and the understanding that comes of it, which the three have need of, having been handed off - well-meaningly - to their only living adult relative. Uncle Cyril's mind is as conventional and narrow as Vernon Dursleys, and is completely the wrong sort of person to take in three artistic children, brought up to travel to wherever the light was best for their father to paint. His 'castle' is fabulously named 'Dunroamin'. Cyril is a miser and a bully, living in Extreme Suburbia and his wife, Mabel, - not quite so much similarity with Petunia - is a doormat who does what little her squashed nature allows to protect and help the children. No wonder they go to the Walls' for their kindness and homeyness, with Wally becoming a good friend to the boys in particular.
To the Docksay children too, having had a decidedly bohemian upbringing - their parents were killed in an earthquake in Turkey, and all three of them were born in different countries, a normal 1970s English state school is as weird as Hogwarts is to Harry. Anna, as the title suggests, is as driven a dancer as Posy Fossil - I can't see a link with the Ballet Shoes series in terms of belonging to the same world, but there are similar elements. Getting her ballet shoes is symptomatic of the struggles for the children after they lose all the adult family they've known. I found it an entertaining enough tale, it doesn't well on the sense of loss although it isn't glossed over, and it was shot through with caustic, sharp observations of adult behaviour which I always forget to expect in Streatfeild's books, but am pleasantly surprised by. And of course, as I read it, there was the growing surety that this was an influence on Rowling and her creations.
Ballet Shoes for Anna: Noel Streatfeild. Collins Modern Classic 1998
This edition feature an afterword by a relative of the author's, which gives context for the writing of the book, the author's attitude about characters like one of the protagonists and a flavour of her.
Otherwise, what really struck me as I read this book was that it must have been an influence of Rowling, more so than the similarly titled, earlier and more famous Ballet Shoes. What all three sets of stories share is orphans with extraordinary talents making their own way - and new family unit - in the world. But the similarity between BSfA and HP rose more in the characters our orphans (Anna and her elder brothers Francesco and Augustus) meet, than the orphans themselves. For here be proto Weasleys and Dursleys. The similarity is more in the way they treat the orphans than exact dynamics. There's only red-headed Wally and his parents, but they're not well off - except in love, and the understanding that comes of it, which the three have need of, having been handed off - well-meaningly - to their only living adult relative. Uncle Cyril's mind is as conventional and narrow as Vernon Dursleys, and is completely the wrong sort of person to take in three artistic children, brought up to travel to wherever the light was best for their father to paint. His 'castle' is fabulously named 'Dunroamin'. Cyril is a miser and a bully, living in Extreme Suburbia and his wife, Mabel, - not quite so much similarity with Petunia - is a doormat who does what little her squashed nature allows to protect and help the children. No wonder they go to the Walls' for their kindness and homeyness, with Wally becoming a good friend to the boys in particular.
To the Docksay children too, having had a decidedly bohemian upbringing - their parents were killed in an earthquake in Turkey, and all three of them were born in different countries, a normal 1970s English state school is as weird as Hogwarts is to Harry. Anna, as the title suggests, is as driven a dancer as Posy Fossil - I can't see a link with the Ballet Shoes series in terms of belonging to the same world, but there are similar elements. Getting her ballet shoes is symptomatic of the struggles for the children after they lose all the adult family they've known. I found it an entertaining enough tale, it doesn't well on the sense of loss although it isn't glossed over, and it was shot through with caustic, sharp observations of adult behaviour which I always forget to expect in Streatfeild's books, but am pleasantly surprised by. And of course, as I read it, there was the growing surety that this was an influence on Rowling and her creations.
