Authors and Books
for Children

Noel Streatfeild: If the Shoes Fit...

Often drawing on the raw material of her experiences as a stage actress, Noel Streatfeild fashioned more than eighty books for children and adults, including the famous "Shoes" series.

The daughter of a vicar, Mary Noel Streatfeild was born on Christmas Eve, 1897 (some sources say 1895), in Amberly, Sussex, England. Though her family was not wealthy, she grew up in a household that still employed housekeepers and nannies, keeping to the standards of the time.

A rebellious child who was expelled from her first school, she developed a lifelong love of theater and the performing arts. After World War I, during which she toiled in a munitions factory, she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and worked for ten years as an actress. She appeared briefly in the chorus of a musical comedy, then joined a Shakespearean repertory company. Later, she performed in South Africa and Australia with other theatrical companies.


After her father's sudden death in 1929, she left the stage to pursue a writing career; her first novel, The Whicharts--about the theater--was published in 1931. Though several other novels for adults followed, an editor encouraged a reluctant Streatfeild to write a theater-themed story for children; the result was the highly successful Ballet Shoes, about three young girls training for the stage. The book is still in print and has sold more than ten million copies.

During World War II, Streatfeild was a canteen worker for the Women's Volunteer Service in London. In the 1940s she produced books for both adults (some under the name Susan Scarlett) and children, many with wartime settings and reflecting the upheavals and scarcities of war--something she knew about firsthand; her own well-appointed London apartment had been destroyed in an air raid, leaving her temporarily homeless.

Following the war, Streatfeild continued her writing, often drawing on her travel experiences, as she did, for example, in two children's novels: 1949's Movie Shoes (British title: The Painted Garden), inspired by a trip to California during which she saw child actress Margaret O'Brien filming The Secret Garden; and 1967's The Magic Summer (1966 British title: The Growing Summer), drawing on her frequent visits to Ireland. By the 1960s, Streatfeild was no longer writing adult novels, concentrating instead on historical works, memoirs, and books for children; in 1968 and 1969 she wrote the four-book Gemma Bow series, again returning to a theatrical milieu. She again used her wartime memories in 1974's When the Sirens Wailed, about three British children during World War II.

Streatfeild was also a book critic, a lecturer on children's books, and the editor of Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Annual. She continued to write and publish books until she was in her late seventies. Noel Streatfeild died in London on September 11, 1986.