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inarasbooks's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
katekat's review against another edition
4.0
I have always loved Noel Streatfeild's books and as a child I got my library to ILL them for me or hunted through second hand book stores to find all of them. She tells the perfect "girls stories". I was always able to find one character in each book that was my favorite. They definitely stand up to re-reads.
bookishpixiereads's review against another edition
4.0
***4.75 Stars***
Book review: This is heckin’ adorable. “The Bell Family” is a kids book written by Noel Streatfeild (author of “Ballet Shoes” and the other Shoes books that are mentioned in “You’ve Got Mail”). I absolutely loved this family and their story. The story follows a vicar’s delightful family and their adventures -and misadventures- for about a year. To provide context, “Ballet Shoes” is one of my favorite books of all time and this might now be my second favorite of hers. “The Bell Family” was originally a very popular radio program in England. She took those stories and adventures and novelized it. I thought some sentences were awkwardly phrased and I wonder if that happened because of how the story came to be written. And the story just sort of ends. There is a sequel, but I think it is out of print. (Also, this was originally published in the United States as “Family Shoes.”)
Book review: This is heckin’ adorable. “The Bell Family” is a kids book written by Noel Streatfeild (author of “Ballet Shoes” and the other Shoes books that are mentioned in “You’ve Got Mail”). I absolutely loved this family and their story. The story follows a vicar’s delightful family and their adventures -and misadventures- for about a year. To provide context, “Ballet Shoes” is one of my favorite books of all time and this might now be my second favorite of hers. “The Bell Family” was originally a very popular radio program in England. She took those stories and adventures and novelized it. I thought some sentences were awkwardly phrased and I wonder if that happened because of how the story came to be written. And the story just sort of ends. There is a sequel, but I think it is out of print. (Also, this was originally published in the United States as “Family Shoes.”)
crazygoangirl's review against another edition
4.0
A sweet book about a poor Vicar’s family set in London that I enjoyed more than I thought I would! And such a pretty cover 😊
Alex and Cathy Bell, their 4 children and dog live in St. Mark’s Vicarage in Southeast London. They’re a poor but hard-working, talented, happy and ingenious family. I liked Ginnie best because she’s the only one ingenuous enough to ‘tell it like it is’, to the silly rich relatives, especially Veronica, who in Grandmother and Mrs. Gage’s words - I would take a slipper to if I were able! Such a silly, vain pest of a girl!
As we follow the travails of the Bell family in this heartwarming tale of family bonds & friendships, Streatfeild weaves in important lessons on honesty, hard work and self-respect. I thought it would be a simple, fluffy sort of story, but was pleasantly surprised at its depth and layers. I would love to read it again with my 9-yr-old son so that he may learn how people without privilege live, love and are happy! I’m not sure if all Streatfeild’s books feature the Bell family, but I will definitely read more from her when I’m able. I enjoyed her simple, succinct writing style.
A wonderful read 😊
Alex and Cathy Bell, their 4 children and dog live in St. Mark’s Vicarage in Southeast London. They’re a poor but hard-working, talented, happy and ingenious family. I liked Ginnie best because she’s the only one ingenuous enough to ‘tell it like it is’, to the silly rich relatives, especially Veronica, who in Grandmother and Mrs. Gage’s words - I would take a slipper to if I were able! Such a silly, vain pest of a girl!
As we follow the travails of the Bell family in this heartwarming tale of family bonds & friendships, Streatfeild weaves in important lessons on honesty, hard work and self-respect. I thought it would be a simple, fluffy sort of story, but was pleasantly surprised at its depth and layers. I would love to read it again with my 9-yr-old son so that he may learn how people without privilege live, love and are happy! I’m not sure if all Streatfeild’s books feature the Bell family, but I will definitely read more from her when I’m able. I enjoyed her simple, succinct writing style.
A wonderful read 😊
balancinghistorybooks's review against another edition
3.0
Number 87 on my Classics Club list, The Bell Family by Noel Streatfeild was first published in 1954. As I so adored Ballet Shoes when I read it for the first time a couple of years ago, I had very high hopes for Streatfeild’s other works. The Bell Family has recently been reissued by Vintage Children’s Classics, with a darling cover designed by Alice Tait, and I was able to borrow a copy from my local library.
The novel follows, as the title suggests, the Bell family, who are carrying out their ‘eventful lives’ against the busy backdrop of London. I adore the premise which is described in the blurb as follows: ‘Meet the big, happy Bell family who live in the vicarage at St Mark’s. Father is a reverend, Mother is as kind as kind can be. Then there are all the children – practical Paul, dancing Jane, mischievous Ginnie, and finally the baby of the family, Angus, whose ambition is to own a private zoo (he has already begun with his six boxes of caterpillars)’. Streatfeild sets the scene immediately: ‘The Thames is a very twisting sort of river. It is as if it had to force its way into London, and had become bent in the process… In the smaller bulge to the left is the part of south-east London in which the Bells lived. The people around where the Bells lived are not rich; mostly they live in small houses joined on to their next door neighbours. It is a very noisy part of the world. People shout a lot, and bang a lot, and laugh a lot’.
The novel is almost like a series of short stories; the family are followed throughout, but a different event takes precedence in each chapter. In this manner, I was reminded of Michael Bond’s delightful Paddington novels, which use a very similar structure, and Rumer Godden’s children’s stories, which are written in the same quaint and amusing way.
As with the other Vintage Children’s Classics, this edition of The Bell Family contains a wealth of extra information, ranging from an author biography to a quiz which you can take once you have finished reading. As a child, I would have been delighted by this interactive aspect, and it still charmed me somewhat as an adult reader.
Streatfeild is very perceptive of her characters, and The Bell Family is certainly a nice book to settle down with. However, there is not really much of substance within its pages. It did not have a memorable cast of characters such as those within Ballet Shoes, and it paled rather in comparison. Whilst the Bell children were quite sweet, there was nothing overly distinctive about them, and I doubt I will remember much about them in a year or so. I imagine that I would have enjoyed The Bell Family far more had I been a child on my first encounter with it.
The novel follows, as the title suggests, the Bell family, who are carrying out their ‘eventful lives’ against the busy backdrop of London. I adore the premise which is described in the blurb as follows: ‘Meet the big, happy Bell family who live in the vicarage at St Mark’s. Father is a reverend, Mother is as kind as kind can be. Then there are all the children – practical Paul, dancing Jane, mischievous Ginnie, and finally the baby of the family, Angus, whose ambition is to own a private zoo (he has already begun with his six boxes of caterpillars)’. Streatfeild sets the scene immediately: ‘The Thames is a very twisting sort of river. It is as if it had to force its way into London, and had become bent in the process… In the smaller bulge to the left is the part of south-east London in which the Bells lived. The people around where the Bells lived are not rich; mostly they live in small houses joined on to their next door neighbours. It is a very noisy part of the world. People shout a lot, and bang a lot, and laugh a lot’.
The novel is almost like a series of short stories; the family are followed throughout, but a different event takes precedence in each chapter. In this manner, I was reminded of Michael Bond’s delightful Paddington novels, which use a very similar structure, and Rumer Godden’s children’s stories, which are written in the same quaint and amusing way.
As with the other Vintage Children’s Classics, this edition of The Bell Family contains a wealth of extra information, ranging from an author biography to a quiz which you can take once you have finished reading. As a child, I would have been delighted by this interactive aspect, and it still charmed me somewhat as an adult reader.
Streatfeild is very perceptive of her characters, and The Bell Family is certainly a nice book to settle down with. However, there is not really much of substance within its pages. It did not have a memorable cast of characters such as those within Ballet Shoes, and it paled rather in comparison. Whilst the Bell children were quite sweet, there was nothing overly distinctive about them, and I doubt I will remember much about them in a year or so. I imagine that I would have enjoyed The Bell Family far more had I been a child on my first encounter with it.
girlwithherheadinabook's review against another edition
2.0
For my full review: https://girlwithherheadinabook.co.uk/2019/01/review-the-bell-family-noel-streatfeild.html
There was a time when The Bell Family were Noel Streatfeild's most popular creations. Wherever Streatfeild went, she was reportedly quizzed about Miss Virginia Bell and her doings. In more recent decades however, the family faded from popularity and despite attempts to rebrand them into the Shoes series as Family Shoes, their adventures went out of print until Vintage came to the rescue. Having no ties of childhood nostalgia here but being in the mood for some comfort reading, I was intrigued to see what I would make of the novel as an adult.The premise is of an impoverished vicarage family overcoming obstacles and in particular how the children of the family - Paul, Jane, Ginnie and Angus - achieve their ambitions. Regular readers of Streatfeild may notice that this situation closely resembles that of Streatfeild's own childhood, which she later fictionalised in A Vicarage Family, written around ten years after the publication of The Bell Family. Having read both books, Bell Family does feel slightly like The Whicharts to Vicarage's Ballet Shoes. Streatfeild does have form for re-using old material.
The Bell parents are idealised versions of the characters who Streatfeild presents as her own parents in Vicarage. Alex Bell is the kindly vicar who believes that there is no point in ever getting cross and who holds no grudge at being cut off by his father for entering the church. His wife Cathy is the practical and warm woman who contrasts sharply with the much colder mother who Streatfeild depicted in A Vicarage Family. Cathy's repeated assertions of how little money matters to her (A sample speech is "Do you think I'd miss one minute of watching my children grow up for all the money in the world?") seems like wish fulfilment for Streatfeild when one considers how she later depicted her mother's resentfulness about the family finances. The four Bell children are Paul who plans to be a doctor, Jane who longs to dance, Ginnie who likes get in the way as much as possible and Angus who adores animals. There is also Esau the dog, beloved by all but fed the most appalling diet I have ever read - it was a miracle the poor animal made it to the end of the book still alive.
The other thing which makes The Bell Family rather different to most of Streatfeild's other novels is that it started life as a radio serial. The book is therefore structured as a series of short stories rather than having an over-arching plot, with each episode resolved rapidly and with no major incident ever really taking place. The characters seem thinly drawn but I can imagine that might not have come across as strongly on the radio. Ginnie apparently had the breakout role, with her habit of referring to herself as Miss Virginia Bell taken as endearing over the airwaves while on the page it is rather more irksome. It was unfortunate that although she was clearly intended to provide the comedy, she grated on me increasingly as the book progressed. Between noseying in on someone who was ill and then not practising safe quarrantine standards, being rude to others, thoughtlessly promising other people's time in the hope of gaining glory for herself and then kidnapping a baby, she seemed less of a heroine and more of a brat. There are brats elsewhere in Streatfeild's fiction but they usually get a comeuppance.
The Bell Family felt rather tired as a concept. While Streatfeild often recycled character types in her other novels, somehow the situations tend to feel more fresh. Here, things just felt very repetitive. The usual fretting over what to wear, the sniping against wealthier relatives looking down their noses, grief over frocks not being what they should be, etc, etc. If anyone ever wants to start up a Noel Streatfeild drinking game, I propose that one be obliged to take a sip every time she uses the word 'gorgeous' or 'gorgeously' (you'll be hammered in no time) and then down one's glass when the phrase 'sweetly pretty' crops up (it always does sooner or later). And at that point, I feel like the Grinch, which was the last thing that I wanted when I only picked the book up because I knew that Streatfeild stories always end happily and I'm a sleep-deprived first-time parent.
Streatfeild was a commercial writer who made her living writing stories that would sell. The Bell Family had the feel of a second-rate The Family at One-End Street, which was published a decade previously. One-End Street broke ground in telling stories about a working-class family but were rather more interesting. Yet although Vintage is clearly trying to press the family Bell as a pleasing period-piece, it feels less vintage and more just ... dated. The dilemmas are never strong enough to generate real drama, the resolutions always too quick and over-the-top to be believable and the character development non-existent. In other books, the child protagonists are encouraged to make better choices - Ballet Shoes' Pauline learns not to be a diva, White Boots' Lalla suffers the consequences of being mean to Harriet, The Growing Summer children come to realise that they are not such martyrs after all - but there is no such growth for the Bells. It is not that Streatfeild is a substandard writer, it has been well over fifteen years since I last read A Vicarage Family and I still remember its painful final page, but here, the usual Streatfeild sparkle is absent.
There was a time when The Bell Family were Noel Streatfeild's most popular creations. Wherever Streatfeild went, she was reportedly quizzed about Miss Virginia Bell and her doings. In more recent decades however, the family faded from popularity and despite attempts to rebrand them into the Shoes series as Family Shoes, their adventures went out of print until Vintage came to the rescue. Having no ties of childhood nostalgia here but being in the mood for some comfort reading, I was intrigued to see what I would make of the novel as an adult.The premise is of an impoverished vicarage family overcoming obstacles and in particular how the children of the family - Paul, Jane, Ginnie and Angus - achieve their ambitions. Regular readers of Streatfeild may notice that this situation closely resembles that of Streatfeild's own childhood, which she later fictionalised in A Vicarage Family, written around ten years after the publication of The Bell Family. Having read both books, Bell Family does feel slightly like The Whicharts to Vicarage's Ballet Shoes. Streatfeild does have form for re-using old material.
The Bell parents are idealised versions of the characters who Streatfeild presents as her own parents in Vicarage. Alex Bell is the kindly vicar who believes that there is no point in ever getting cross and who holds no grudge at being cut off by his father for entering the church. His wife Cathy is the practical and warm woman who contrasts sharply with the much colder mother who Streatfeild depicted in A Vicarage Family. Cathy's repeated assertions of how little money matters to her (A sample speech is "Do you think I'd miss one minute of watching my children grow up for all the money in the world?") seems like wish fulfilment for Streatfeild when one considers how she later depicted her mother's resentfulness about the family finances. The four Bell children are Paul who plans to be a doctor, Jane who longs to dance, Ginnie who likes get in the way as much as possible and Angus who adores animals. There is also Esau the dog, beloved by all but fed the most appalling diet I have ever read - it was a miracle the poor animal made it to the end of the book still alive.
The other thing which makes The Bell Family rather different to most of Streatfeild's other novels is that it started life as a radio serial. The book is therefore structured as a series of short stories rather than having an over-arching plot, with each episode resolved rapidly and with no major incident ever really taking place. The characters seem thinly drawn but I can imagine that might not have come across as strongly on the radio. Ginnie apparently had the breakout role, with her habit of referring to herself as Miss Virginia Bell taken as endearing over the airwaves while on the page it is rather more irksome. It was unfortunate that although she was clearly intended to provide the comedy, she grated on me increasingly as the book progressed. Between noseying in on someone who was ill and then not practising safe quarrantine standards, being rude to others, thoughtlessly promising other people's time in the hope of gaining glory for herself and then kidnapping a baby, she seemed less of a heroine and more of a brat. There are brats elsewhere in Streatfeild's fiction but they usually get a comeuppance.
The Bell Family felt rather tired as a concept. While Streatfeild often recycled character types in her other novels, somehow the situations tend to feel more fresh. Here, things just felt very repetitive. The usual fretting over what to wear, the sniping against wealthier relatives looking down their noses, grief over frocks not being what they should be, etc, etc. If anyone ever wants to start up a Noel Streatfeild drinking game, I propose that one be obliged to take a sip every time she uses the word 'gorgeous' or 'gorgeously' (you'll be hammered in no time) and then down one's glass when the phrase 'sweetly pretty' crops up (it always does sooner or later). And at that point, I feel like the Grinch, which was the last thing that I wanted when I only picked the book up because I knew that Streatfeild stories always end happily and I'm a sleep-deprived first-time parent.
Streatfeild was a commercial writer who made her living writing stories that would sell. The Bell Family had the feel of a second-rate The Family at One-End Street, which was published a decade previously. One-End Street broke ground in telling stories about a working-class family but were rather more interesting. Yet although Vintage is clearly trying to press the family Bell as a pleasing period-piece, it feels less vintage and more just ... dated. The dilemmas are never strong enough to generate real drama, the resolutions always too quick and over-the-top to be believable and the character development non-existent. In other books, the child protagonists are encouraged to make better choices - Ballet Shoes' Pauline learns not to be a diva, White Boots' Lalla suffers the consequences of being mean to Harriet, The Growing Summer children come to realise that they are not such martyrs after all - but there is no such growth for the Bells. It is not that Streatfeild is a substandard writer, it has been well over fifteen years since I last read A Vicarage Family and I still remember its painful final page, but here, the usual Streatfeild sparkle is absent.
katekat's review
4.0
I have always loved Noel Streatfeild's books and as a child I got my library to ILL them for me or hunted through second hand book stores to find all of them. She tells the perfect "girls stories". I was always able to find one character in each book that was my favorite. They definitely stand up to re-reads.
singinglight's review
2.0
Unfortunately, nowhere near as charming as her more well known books. One of the characters drove me up a wall–and I think I was supposed to be sympathetic to her. [Feb. 2010]