The Shoe Books Roundup

I haven't finished reading all the "shoe books" yet, but I figured I might as well start the roundup post. I'm not even sure if I'll be able to read all the books because many of them are out of print, and some are not available at our local library - not even in our library's entire consortium!

Mostly, these books are just variations on a theme: orphaned children with little money have some kind of talent. Though the basic premise may be similar among the books, it's interesting to see the different perspectives presented. Maybe a child has an obvious talent and it needs to be developed. In that case, is the child willing to train? Does the child like having an audience? Or, maybe the child has no obvious talent, but is able to discover a talent later on. In pretty much all the books, at least one talented child is sure to learn that "pride comes before a fall".

Within the series, there are only two pairs of books that are actually related, and really, those are the only ones that need to be read in the proper order relative to each other. Ballet Shoes should be read before Theatre Shoes, and Family Shoes should be read before New Shoes (though I haven't personally gotten to those two books yet). All the other books are stand-alone books that are completely unrelated to the others, so they can be read in no particular order.

• Ballet Shoes (#1) ★★★★½
• Tennis Shoes (#2) ★★★
• Theater Shoes (#4) ★★★★½
• Party Shoes (#5) ★★½
• Skating Shoes (#7) ★★★★½
• Dancing Shoes (#9) ★★★½