LINK: Dimsie and pedantry

[feather_ghyll]

I've referred to Lucy Mangan's series of features on how to build up 'a brilliant children's library' before. Here in No. 15, she reaches Dimsie goes to School and Angela Brazils. Apparently the only difference between Fairlie Bruce and Angela Brazil is that one wrote her books a little earlier, which is unfair. Though I do appreciate that this is a short piece and she's talking about Dimsie as a representative of a genre.

But no, I cn't help but be pedantic, Fairlie Bruce wrote about Scotland as well as England, and Jean is a rubbish example of stoicism. I type as one who has four Dimsies waiting to be read upstairs. There's also a reference to 'You're A Brick, Angela' in the article, which apparatently was 'the first substantial book of criticism-cum-championing of girls' school stories'. This leads to the inevitable thought that if that's championing, who needs undermining. (I discuss that book and line of thought here.

Mangan's argument for these books is mainly nostalgic, though she makes an interesting point about how these books are no longer being passed on. Is this true? The Chalet School, Mallory Towers, St Clare's and Trebizons were easily available in paperback as I grew up, and I found others from my mother and her friends', a haphazard collection, and became a haunter of charity shops and Christmas fairs, but I was a real bookworm. But what about young girls these days? Do they get their hands on copies to beguile, entertain and confuse them?

Comments

[ramblingfancy.livejournal.com]

I noticed you via callmemadam's blog and see we have lots of authors in common! It is sad - especially when libraries could purchase reasonably priced copies from GGBP, but our library at least doesn't, and I suppose that means they wouldn't appeal nowadays to the 9-13 year old? My daugher loved them and read them avidly, but she had the Blyton, Brent-Dyer, Oxenham first to lead her along so to speak. I must say I am enjoying the Lucy Mangan series quite a bit.

[feather-ghyll.livejournal.com]

Hello, welcome, and thanks for commenting. I hadn't thought of GGBP, which are perhaps too expensive for most to consider as gifts to young girls (because they might think they might as well buy more modern and cheaper books) but, as you say, libraries could purchase them. Perhaps librarians simply don't know or haven't thought of them. And there are probably budgetary pressures. But the books were always about an experence that many readers would find exotic (boarding school, single-sex education, setting and class), and Harry Potter has shown us that the interest in boarding school stories hasn't waned, so I think they'd still have an appeal.

Blyton, in particular, is a great introduction to the genre, and then Brent-Dyer and Oxenham et al have the series factor to hook the readers in.

I'm enjoying Mangan's series too, but the pedant in me felt obliges to pipe up here :)