OVERVIEW: Girls own reading over Easter

[feather_ghyll]

Campfire Girls in the Country (or The Secret Aunt Hannah Forgot): Stella M. Francis

For much of this book, I was disappointed in that it could have been about any set of girls out camping. Granted, there’s a lot of them, twelve, but it’s only when they decide to hold an extraordinary meeting at night, so that they can be in the right place at the right time for adventure, that there is much about the Campfire Girls organisation’s ways. However, published in 1918, it’s very much an American girls book, starting with an eventful fourth of July celebration, referring to the European War, featuring guns and a black servant who might as well have been called Mammy. Those aspects were interesting. It’s got a round-the-houses, even didactic style for a generic adventure story. The main girl character is Hazel Edwards, who’s Aunt Hannah invited the Flamingo Camp Fire to stay on her grounds, and her two friends Harriet and Violet.

Doctor Noreen: E.E. Ellsworth

I admit I picked up this book because I thought it might be a career story, but its heroine Noreen is a schoolgirl who wants to be a doctor for romantic reasons, even though her academic strengths seem to lie in the arts. A convalescent, Sylvia, has come to live with Noreen and her mother in Sussex from cold Edinburgh. Sylvia is as pleased about the arrangement as good-natured Noreen, and joins into school life at nearby St Margaret’s. The only clouds are the threat to their short cut and another girl who seems set against Noreen.

There’s a Christian theme, it’s written for girls who are younger than the main character, but that’s no excuse for the plodding dialogue or the contrivances towards the end. The story also features three dogs, which may be an attraction for some readers, but wasn’t for me!

The Mascotte of Sunnydale: E.L. Haverfield

This is yet another ‘first term, worst term’ story where schoolgirls’ welcome towards new girls falls very short of Chalet School standards. Olive Hamilton, the head girl of Sunnydale, is prevented from returning to school at the start of the term due to an accident. This means her second in seniority, Ella Barnett must sub for her, but Ella has never seen why Olive bothers so much about other girls. This all means that sixteen-year-old new girl Sybil Tunstall gets an unfortunate welcome. Sensitive and nervous about attending school for the first time in her life, she’s made deeply unhappy, especially as she begins to become aware of how strange her upbringing has been. Unfortunately, she turns out to be well-educated and clever, cleverer than plodding Ella, and much more musical than her. The school sides with Ella and nobody but the French mademoiselle has an inkling of how Sybil is suffering, until…well, you can guess the rest, and, you’ll guess why Sybil is ‘peculiar’ too if you read the book. Even if a lot of it is contrived, Sybil’s plight is very sympathetic.

My copy is inscribed 1928, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the story is older from the social context and the illustrations. It’s notable that the girls’ only exercise seems to be walking; they might have benefited from organised (team) sports! The author is forthright about most of the senior girls’ stupidity.

Alas, there’s a mistake in a snippet of Welsh quoted – ‘Arglwydd (Lord)’ is misprinted.


Of the three, I preferred the latter.

There was another book that I read over my Easter holidays that I want to review, but it deserves a post of its own.