Childhood loves

When I was a little kid, I got ear infections a lot. Not enough to have tubes, but enough that my mom didn't have to bring me to the pediatrician's office to get a prescription for ear drops. I even had my own special heating pad that I had to lie on with my sore ear. By the fourth grade, an in-school hearing test revealed that I had lost some of the low tones in my hearing.

Point being, I spent a lot of time in bed sick as a kid. Good thing I loved to read. And one of the things I really loved to read were the "Shoes" books by Noel Streatfeild. These books were about industrious kids in post-WWI or WWII England who, for one reason or another, found themselves in some sort of situation where they would become professional performers. There was Ballet Shoes, Dancing Shoes, Theater Shoes, Circus Shoes (shown here) and a ton of other ones that Dell Yearling published and sold to my parents (for me) at the local Caldor.

The one we never found on the shelves was Skating Shoes, which I really wanted to read, with my little Dorothy Hamill haircut and the Lake Placid Olympics not a too distant memory. But it was never there, so we never got it, and I never read it. The "Shoes" books kind of disappeared from the cultural consciousness - I guarantee my younger sisters didn't read them, even though they read the entire Baby Sitters Club collection. Meg Ryan's children's book shop owning character makes a quick reference to them in the film You Got Mail, and I know that several of my friends knew about them from their childhoods, but you couldn't find them in stores.

But lookee what I found today during a quick browse through Amazon.com: the Shoes books are back - including Skating Shoes!! Hurrah!! I am going to finally get the chance to read it and save it on bookshelf I have created for the daughter I don't have (yet)!

It's the little things, people; it really is the little things.

(The image of the book is from Amazon. Doesn't the little girl really look English? I always thought so.)