Carbonel by Barbara Sleigh: cats, magic & theatricals

Carbonel by Barbara Sleigh published 1955 On a recent post, blogfriend Jan W put this in the comments: The first book I bought for myself (by Book Token) was Carbonel by Barbara Sleigh. Rosemary and her mother live in a boarding house , the latter is a seamstress who goes to peoples’ houses, sides to middling sheets and other dull sewing, but she gets a tray of the same food as her employer to eat in the sewing room. The Browns lives are transformed when the leader of a theatrical troupe (wearing good but shabby clothes) at a garden fête offers Mrs B work designing and making costumes. There are many insightful comments on clothes, class, economy etc to the point it reads like a early version of a Clothes in Books bingo card. BTW it is a children’s book with a magic cat, too. I may have missed a bit...JanW Sooo – as she says, a book designed for CiB, and one I would have loved if I’d read it when I was a child. Somehow it escaped me. Rosemary is a little girl on her summer holidays,…