Speaking of Noel Streatfeild, one of the reasons I like the movie "You've Got Mail" so much is that it mentions two sets of books that were among my childhood/teenage favorites. In one scene, Meg Ryan's character shows a Betsy-Tacy book to the girl played by Dr. Green-from-ER's daughter. I discovered the Betsy-Tacy (and Tib!) series by Maud Hart Lovelace in high school or thereabouts, and I've read the books frequently ever since. (Okay, beginning with Betsy's freshman year; I don't read the younger ones.) The Gibson Girl-like illustrations are delightful, and it's fun to experience teen life in the early 1900's through Betsy and her fun-loving, good-hearted friends.
Later in the movie, after Meg Ryan's character has lost her bookstore, she's sitting disconsolately in the big Fox Books store and overhears a woman asking a salesman about the Shoe books. The salesman has no idea what she's talking about, but Meg Ryan, through her sniffles, tells her that the Shoe books are by Noel Streatfeild, and she would recommend starting with Ballet Shoes, which is her favorite, although she also likes Skating Shoes but it's out of print. Ballet Shoes is probably my favorite too. It and Dancing Shoes and Theatre Shoes, which also feature orphans, are the only ones in print in the US. When I was in Scotland a few years ago, I picked up Skating Shoes and Party Shoes. I have a few other Streatfeild books (not all Shoes) that I've picked up at used book sales. Most of her books are about children involved in the performing arts in England in the 30s and 40s. A lot of my random bits of knowledge come from novels, and from Ballet Shoes I learned about different characters in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," I became acquainted with "The Blue Bird," which made me a little more knowledgeable than Judy in Daddy-Long-Legs (Jean Webster) who thought Maurice Meaterlinck was a student at her school, and one day I sat down and, based on various things the characters said dealing with money (and there are a lot, since they don't have much money but still have to find enough to buy things like nice audition frocks, because if you don't look nice, you won't get selected), deciphered the British monetary system. Well, that's what it felt like to me, as I sat there doing equations on a pad of graph paper, although all I really did was figure out how many shillings were in a pound.Oh, and one of my favorite movie lines ever is when Meg Ryan is telling Tom Hanks that her store is closing and will soon be replaced by something depressing, like a Baby Gap.
In one of the All-of-a-Kind-Family books by Sydney Taylor, about a Jewish family living in New York's Lower East Side before WWI, one of the girls wants to check out Anne of Avonlea from the library. In Anne of the Island, one of Anne's housemates says that reading Dickens' Pickwick Papers always makes her hungry. It makes me happy that modern books like Love Walked In continue the celebratory tradition of making allusions to older literary favorites. In the recent Penderwicks books (Jeanne Birdsall), there are mentions of Sense and Sensibility, Emily of New Moon and The Enchanted Castle but also the more modern The Exiles in Love (which I haven't read, but I like Hilary McKay's Casson family series) and Eva Ibbotson's books. Maybe future books will refer back to the four Penderwick sisters.
It's such a cozy feeling to run into your favorite books while you're reading, to discover a shared literary like between you and the author. It's like being in a book club that crosses place and time. The members never meet, but they still manage to pass their knowledge and love of books to one another.
Thanks for sharing! I never knew what I was missing all those years when I was a solitary reader. I'm so grateful for book-loving friends! :)
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