Lisa Gee's six year old daughter, Dora, has been playing one of the Gretls in the Connie Fisher production of "The Sound of Music in the West End". She had a fantastic time and, Lisa writes, is coming out the other side of this experience much the same girl, though Lisa hints there was the possibility that this might have gone otherwise. Dora didn't attend stage school, and they went to the first set of auditions as a lark, so there is a compelling narrative of the open audition process, from not taking it seriously at the beginning to gradually realising that Dora has won the part.The book is organised by the successive stages of Lisa's own and her daughter's initiation into the trade, to delve into the experiences of other parents and children, not only in her child's cast but in the entertainment industry generally. The thrills were all there, but there were some alarming moments as well. Lisa Gee writes in the first person, in an extremely lively, approachable voice, as far removed from that of the traditional pushy stage mother as you can imagine.

Lisa Gee is the author of Friends: Why Men and Women Are From the Same Planet (Bloomsbury, 2004), the editor of Bricks Without Mortar: the selected poems of Hartley Coleridge (Picador, 2000) and of the Orange Prize for Fiction website. She writes book reviews and features for the national press (including the Independent, the Guardian and the Telegraph) and lives in Harlesden, north-west London, with one performing child and her husband, a children's party entertainer.