Ballet Shoes

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

Ballet Shoes begins by introducing the three Fossil sisters, Pauline, Petrova, and Posy, who live in a house on Cromwell Road. Their home is close enough to walk to the Victoria and Albert Museum to look at the dolls’ houses “every wet day. If the weather [is] not too wet, one [i]s expected to ‘save the penny and walk’” (3). The sisters critique the decision of their great uncle Matthew (affectionately called Gum) to buy a house at the end of such a long road. The book then tells the story of how each of the Fossil sisters came to live at the house.

Gum is an adventurer that the sisters never knew well but has a significant role in their lives. Having “collected some of the finest fossils in the world” (4), he needs a home large enough to house them and someone to look after everything while he’s on voyages. He takes in his nephew’s widow; her young daughter, Sylvia; and her nurse, Nana. By the time Sylvia is 16, her mother has passed; Sylvia and Nana must look after Gum’s home.

After losing a leg in an accident, Gum can no longer excavate fossils on land.