feather_ghyll

For the School Colours: Angela Brazil. Blackie & Son.

I wish I could say this was a blossomy book, borrowing the top-hole slang that its characters use, but I can’t. Well, it isn’t too bad and it doesn’t feature that dreaded chapter of made-up stories that usually dog Brazil’s books. However, I did mentally say ‘Oh, Angela’ in a ‘what are we to do with you way’ quite a lot. It is set during World War One and features a great deal of propaganda that is glaringly cartoonish and yet sincere from a century’s distance. It’s also not quite the book it seems to be in the first chapter, and perhaps I would have preferred it if it was – I’ll explain.

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The Fortunes of Jacky: Katharine L. Oldmeadow The Children’s Press (This impression 1968)

So, we come to the last of my Oldmeadows, a collection that’s increased by one since I took to rereading them (see the tags). I’ve owned this book for many a year, although it was fun to reread it as an adult, while ( Read more... )

Kits at Clynton Court School: May Wynne. Warne. (I’m presuming it’s a reprint, the picture on the dust jacket has an accidental (?) 3D effect.

Kits arrives, or rather makes her entrance, at her new school ( Read more... )

Wings: Aprilynne Pike

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Damsel in Distress: Carola Dunn (one of the Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries)

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The Cornish House: Liz Fenwick

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Skate School – On Thin Ice: Kay Woodward

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I think Damsel in Distress was my favourite out of that quartette, actually.

Carola Storms the Chalet School: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. 1951 (although I suspect this is a reprint) Chambers

A reread, this, because I brought a hardback copy - I had an Armada copy already – partly for sentimental reasons, as the secondhand bookshop I was buying it at was closing.

Anyhow, this is the story where ( Read more... )

While others DANCE: Barbara Beacham Phoenix 1991

(That is how the title is set up on the front cover, the spine and the title page, although it’s the calmer ‘While others dance’ in the British cataloguing library information.)

By the time I got my hands on this, I was already a big fan of ballet stories (having come across the Sadlers Wells series, at least, if not Drina etc) and boarding school stories (Mallory Towers, St Clare’s, the Chalet School and non-serials) so this was bound to appeal to me as a child.( Read more... )

Dimitry Drew’s First Term: Nancy Breary Newnes (sold as published in 1951)

As always with Breary, this was a lot of fun. Dimity Drew is ( Read more... )

One of these was read a stone's throw from the sea!

( The Dragonfly Pool by Eva Ibbotson / Rip Tide by Stella Rimington / The Vince-Clad Hill by Mabel Esther Allan / The Scholarship Girl by Josephine Elder )

I also read a Jillies book, which will get its own post in due course.

Dauntless Patty: E.L Haverfield Oxford, 1927 (reprint)

I’ve read some other books by Haverfield, although I see I haven’t reviewed any by her here. I must have enjoyed the first book that I read by her, because I always have positive associations with her name.

Patricia ‘Patty’ Garnett is ( Read more... )

Penny in Search of a School: E.M. de Foubert Oxford University Press 1939

This is rather a remarkable book, as the title suggests. The events that take place are extraordinary, the characters are exaggerated, but the writer seems to know it and not to care, because she just wants to tell a rollicking good story. ( Read more... )