Puffin Books edition. Literary significance and reception John Rowe Townsend describes The Circus Is Coming as Noel Streatfeild's best-known and possibly her best pre-war book. Townsend commends the detailed personal research which gives the book so much authenticity and compares it with Streatfeild's perceptive writing on family, suggesting that the circus is a "super-family". Roger Lancelyn Green mentions the novelistic skill and meticulous accuracy typical of Streatfeild's exceptional career books. In her biography of the author, Angela Bull notes that while "most reviewers praised it warmly", the Time and Tide reviewer thoroughly disliked Peter and Santa, wishing that Noel had "killed them off, instead of trailing them through the book and nearly spoiling her excellent material". Noel Streatfeild received the Carnegie Medal for The Circus Is Coming in the award's third year. Her Ballet Shoes had been considered for the medal in the first year, as had Howard Spring's Sampson's Circus. The Circus Is Coming combines the circus setting of Spring's adventure story (which also had illustrations by Spurrier) with the artiste training of Ballet Shoes. It also has main characters of both sexes, like the winner of that first year's medal, Pigeon Post. References External links The Circus Is Coming at the White Gauntlet Noel Streatfeild site 1938 British novels British children's novels Carnegie Medal in Literature winning works Circus books 1938 children's books Novels by Noel Streatfeild J. M. Dent books