![]() For starters, Gum (Great Uncle Matthew) doesn't choose their surname - the girls do. ![]() ![]() The Fossils' self-determined destinies are key to the book and it is this that is fudged in the latest adaptation. The oft-quoted line that sums this up is the birthday vow of 'We three Fossils vow to try and put our names in history books because it's our very own and nobody can say it's because of our grandfathers'. These kids are sturdy little individuals working out their own relations with those around them at the same time as dreaming about their futures and what they will be in the world. The three adopted Fossil sisters - Pauline, Petrova, and Posy - are very different with very different talents, and the story revolves around how they grow into and shape the world in which they find themselves. I read Ballet Shoes as a kid in the 1970s and even though I was all flares-and-Multi-Coloured-Swap-Shop to Ballet Shoes' twin-sets-and-high-teas, I loved it. But my real beef is that Heidi Thomas' adaptation got the one thing wrong that for me, as child and adult, is special about the book: the family. I loathed Posy-the-Precocious, a bitching Bonnie Langford, who hardly dances at all - she dances all the time in the book and it's her obsession with dance that makes her so interesting. I have several gripes: Winifred came across as a horrid backstabber, not the talented, earnest but dowdy kid of the book. ![]()
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