The "Shoes" series, of which ["Dancing Shoes"] is the sixth, is greatly enjoyed by girls of eleven or so, and "Dancing Shoes" will be no exception. It has many popular ingredients, orphan sisters in an unsympathetic home, details of the life of stage children being prepared to do chorus work in musical comedy or television, the exciting rivalry for possible solo parts in pantomimes, plays or movies and the pleasure of seeing the "good" rewarded and the "bad" discomfited….

To an adult this story, although it is as well written … and organized as the others, seems the weakest in the series not only because of the triteness of the Cinderella plot (complete even to the embarrassment of the hard-hearted mother and sister) but because the career described seems unappealing. The reader cannot help feeling with Rachel that it is a mild ambition indeed to become a "Little Wonder...