White Boots
1951 novel by Noel Streatfeild
White Boots is a children's novel by Noel Streatfeild. It was first published by Collins publishers in 1951. The book was published under the title Skating Shoes in the US, also in 1951. White Boots tells the story of a poor girl and a rich girl who meet as a result of figure skating and is the tale of their unlikely friendship.
Plot summary
Harriet Johnson has been ill and her doctor arranges for her to take up ice skating in order to build strength in her legs. When she gets to the rink Harriet meets Lalla Moore, a young skater who has been training since she was three years old; Lalla's parents were killed in a skating accident, and her Aunt Claudia is determined that Lalla will be the greatest figure skater in the world. Harriet and Lalla soon become friends and as Harriet is still not well enough for school, it is arranged that she will share Lalla's governess and her various dance and fencing lessons.
Harriet soon shows herself to be a talented skater, and she starts to take, and pass, the same skating tests that Lalla does. Lalla, on the other hand, is much more of a performer than a figure skater and starts to have trouble with various figures she needs to learn for tests. Lalla becomes jealous of Harriet and tells her that if she takes and passes her next skating test, Lalla will tell her aunt that she does not want Harriet to have lessons with her any more.
“White Boots” enters the record as 1951 novel by Noel Streatfeild. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what White, Boots and novel can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7994488. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1951.
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This entry incorporates text from “White Boots” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.