My reading count for 2025 is now up to 12. That’s nothing to brag about, but should I not read anything else this year, at least I’ll have already reached the “one book per month” level and won’t have to feel like a total loser. My three most recent reads (Chambers’s The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet; Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes; and Novik’s Buried Deep) went quickly. That’s reassuring. Maybe I’m finally getting out of my reading slump.
I read Ballet Shoes because it’s on the BBC’s list of Top 100 Children’s Books. I’d probably read it before but couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t want to cross it off the list until I could do so in good faith. It’s the story of three adopted children who are compelled to train in the arts of dancing and acting in order to earn money for their own upkeep. It doesn’t sound very romantic put that way, but it’s a fair description. (The back-cover blurb describes it alternatively like this: “Pauline, Petrova, and Posy are orphans determined to help out their new family by joining the Children’s Academy of Dancing and Stage Training.” Note: Posy is not technically an orphan.).
My take is a more negative because I’m not trying to sell the book, but also because the premise of the story pisses me off. It all begins with Gum (Great Uncle Matthew), who is a world traveler known especially for collecting fossils. I imagine we’re supposed to be charmed by Gum and how he whimsically starts bringing home babies, too, but I think he’s a colossal A-hole. He dumps the babies, one after another, in the care of Sylvia (his fully-grown great niece) and her old nanny, without even asking if that’s OK. Then he heads out on yet another journey of indefinite length, leaving them with limited financial resources and no other means of supporting themselves. The story takes place long before the invention of cell phones and the Internet, so they have no way to locate or contact him, and they end up living on the edge of poverty. Not only do the children have to work once they turn 12 and can legally do so, but Sylvia has to take in boarders and sell some of her personal belongings, and she’s clearly stressed out the entire time.
There were some other things about the story that I didn’t care for, but I grew up reading many books along the same vein, and it speaks to me in a certain way. I can’t help but also kind of love it. Pauline, Petrova, and Posy take the surname Fossil for themselves and then they take a special vow (“We three Fossils . . . vow to try and put our name in history books because it’s our very own and nobody can say it’s because of our grandfathers.”). They repeat this vow frequently over the course of years, and they work hard to fulfill their promise. It’s sweet. So I accept Ballet Shoes as a classic in children’s literature and even give it a good grade (A-) and a home on my bookshelf, but I will never forgive Gum. He can “go die in toilet,” as we say around here.
Currently Reading: His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik. This is the first book of a series, and the simplest way to describe it is as Dragonriders of Pern set in the Napoleonic Wars. Novik’s take on dragonriding is so similar to McCaffrey’s that it’s impossible to avoid that comparison. I’ve also been struggling with the action sequences. I don’t always understand exactly what’s going on during the aerial battles, for example. However, the main characters–Captain Laurence and his dragon Temeraire–are likeable, and I’ve been enjoying reading about them.