"Once Upon a Time” Lasts Forever

Writing Turning Points was a little different from the previous Yuletide stories I've done, because the original story is very firmly fixed in its real-world historical era. I felt I needed to research the time in which my future fic took place. In addition to re-reading Noel Streatfield's Ballet Shoes, I also re-read Curtain Up (a/k/a Theater Shoes), and The Painted Garden (a/k/a Movie Shoes), which mention the sisters' later lives. I also looked up information on clothing (because clothes were always important in the book - the girls were not well-off and had trouble getting appropriate clothes for various occasions) and U.S. food of the era (because food was discussed in specific a number of times in the original), and I nailed down a number of details of the canon timeline and my fanon's details about the sisters' "current" lives, just for my own comfort.

FYI: see this also for samples of the original Ruth Gervis illustrations for Ballet Shoes.