For this novel, Streatfeild was awarded the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's outstanding children's book by a British subject.

[2] After an unusually sheltered upbringing by their old-fashioned and snobbish aunt, 11-year-old Santa and her 12-year-old brother Peter are faced with the prospect of separate orphanages when she dies.

Before the drawings were finalised, Spurrier fell ill, and the book was issued with reproductions of the original sketches, "full of swift and lively observation".

[5] 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.