Cream Buns and Crime: Robin Stevens, Puffin 2017

This book is subtitled ‘A Murder Most Unladylike Collection’, and reminded me of annuals and that types of books, but it’s in the same paperback format as the longer mysteries in the series. The conceit is ( Read more... )

Edited on 10/12/2022.

Swallows and Amazons (2016) (PG)
Directed by: Philippa Lowthorpe
Adapted by: Andrea Gibb
From the book by: Arthur Ransome
Starring: (Grown-ups): Rafe Spall, Kelly Macdonald, Andrew Scott
(Swallows): Dane Hughes, Orla Hill, Teddie-Rose Malleson-Allen, Bobbie McCulloch,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1227183/?ref_=nv_sr_1

This feels a little like a natives’ take on the adventures of the Swallows and Amazons. ( Read more... )

Out of Sight, Out of Time: Ally Carter. The Gallagher Girls, Book Five Orchard House 2011 – it looks as if this was published in the UK before the US.

'Everyone was watching, staring, waiting for...something. I wasn't sure what.' (p.24)

Not that I mentioned it in my review of Book Four of this series, but at its end ( Read more... )

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.

( Read more... )

The Head Girl at the Gables: Angela Brazil Blackie (the inscription on my copy suggests that this was published in 1931 or earlier)

The story begins with the headmistress of the Gables and her lieutenant considering who to appoint to the titular post of head girl of the school. ( Read more... )

I hope everyone had a happy Easter! I had a chance to catch up on some reading and quite a few were Girls Ownish-type books, so I have a backlog of reviews to post. First, a tale of an intra-school feud, spy hunting, a dash of hockey and alarm clocks under pillows.

The Denehurst Secret Service: Gwendoline Courtney Girls Gone By 2005.

( Read more... )

I thought I'd mentioned beginning this, but I had it mixed up with the last annual I read, The Big Book of School Stories for Girls. The British Girl's Annual was 'compiled by the editor of Little Folks' and published by Cassell and Company Ltd in 1918.

I've been reading no more than a story a day, and actually less frequently than that, so I'm edging two thirds of the way through. I've just finished my second Violet Methley story, 'Her Wits' End', which is less noteworthy than the first of Methley's stories in the annual, 'A Daughter of the Legion'. ( Read more... )