Trying to channel Elsa

I’ve just recovered from a nasty bout of influenza–followed by a nasty bout of spring cleaning and decluttering. I singled out about two hundred books, I think, for disposal or donation.

I also made a resolution: I would read and review each of my school stories, and then donate them. There are always new books to read. I don’t need to hoard them.

Then, of course, today I pulled out the first of the pile, The Fifth Form Rivals by Winifred Darch, and a few pages in I am remembering why it is one of my very, very favourites of all time. The pangs! (And look at that cricket bat on Pat’s shoulder: it’s a metaphor.)

This is why I love ebooks. They take up no space, so you never have to face getting rid of them.

Review: Penelope’s Prefects (1950) by Judith Carr

Penelope’s Prefects by Judith Carr
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half-ish stars.

School Story Type: Madcap Schoolgirl.

Given a scholarly, vague and forgetful Prefect for the ill-reputed Middle School, the Middle School monitress, Penelope, decides to reform her form with the help of her self-appointed “prefects”, her best chums. Given that Penelope is not exactly a model schoolgirl herself–it’s beyond me why she’s monitress in the first place–her gang’s efforts to bully the form into line only cause more chaos.

The plot is predictable enough: ill-advised attempts to improve things, followed by rebellion by other girls, pitched physical skirmishes and predicaments and furious mistresses and seniors. Detention and punishments inevitably follow, including the fairly barbaric one of being locked in a cupboard for half an hour a day. But you know all will be well in the end, and Penelope and her “prefects” will win out.

The girls often seem too young and idiotic for their age, and there is a preoccupation with stockings and suspenders, including trying to wrestle them off each other to put the seams straight, which feels quite strange out of historical context. All the manic energy is a bit tiring after a while, too, and I found myself wishing Penelope was just a wee bit more self-reflective, and that her schoolfellows had a wee bit more personality. But these are prettyy minor complaints.

All in all, this is an amusing and sometimes sparkling example of the madcap schoolgirl subgenre.

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Girl's Own School Stories on Amazon

An American reader of Pegasi and Prefects just asked me for recommendations for school stories. At first I didn't know what to suggest: my own collection has for years existed of books inherited from my mother and aunts and random volumes found at antiquarians and charity shops, always choosing the cheap foxed ones over the valuable editions. I ended up with everything from St Trinian's to evangelical school stories, and a lot of annuals and collections. Some of them had never been read, with pages still uncut: from the inscriptions, unloved birthday presents and Sunday School prizes.

That works in Australia and the UK, my two homes, but I wasn't sure if British school stories ever caught on much in the home of Nancy Drew and the Little House.

However, I checked Amazon, and I was in for a wonderful surprise. Since I last checked, there has been... well, let's say I might be broke for a little while. Plenty of free reading too, though!

I already knew that a lot of Angela Brazils were available on Kindle and Project Gutenberg; I have been gradually giving away my hardbacks and replacing them with free digital editions (unless I really, really like the covers.) Brazil is always a good choice. In a lot of ways she is the quintessential school story writer. In practice, her books range from brilliant to phoned in, but she formed the tropes of the slangy, less than perfect schoolgirl, and her heavily flawed heroines are some of my all time favourites.

A Fourth Form Friendship is the very best, and will be reviewed here properly at some point. Other Angela Brazil (free!) recommendations, all stand-alone novels:

The Luckiest Girl in the School
The Girls of St Cyprians
A Popular Schoolgirl
The Youngest Girl in the Fifth

If Brazil formed the tropes, though, Enid Blyton distilled them into some of the purest forms, as was her genius. Malory Towers, St Clare's and the Naughtiest Girl books (younger children, and co-ed, at a progressive child-centred school) are all available as inexpensive ebooks these days. There are also much more recently written tie-in novels, of which I will cautiously say some are very enjoyable, some less so. (I vehemently object to the renumbering of the series to include the tie-ins, though, and I can remember how cheated I felt as a kid when my new Famous Five book turned out not to be by Blyton at all.)

There are also some Chalet School books up as ebooks  from Bettany Press and Girls Gone By but, disappointingly, the ones actually written by Elinor Brent-Dyer aren't up there, just novel length fanfic. If you are a hardcore fan, though, they might be fun, if IMO over priced. The price factor is why I can't recommend any by experience, as it happens. There is also an unrelated book by Brent-Dyer called The School by the Sea, which I haven't read, but seem to have purchased at some point.

What is annoying is that some Chalet School books (and other books by school story authors) are reprinted by specialist publishers, but they don't make them available as ebooks rather than as limited print runs.  Seriously, on the tiny chance that anyone from Girls Gone By etc is reading this, please let me throw my money at you. There's no way on earth that I'm going to spend A$55 on an airmail copy of a Lightning Source reprint, but price them all at $4.99 as ebooks and I will have spent hundreds of dollars with you before I even realise what I've done. Okay, rant over.

Anne Digby's Trebizon series is also up as ebooks. They never really caught my attention, being too late for me (starting in the late 1970s), but they are so inexpensive I may well give them another shot. She also wrote the Naughtiest Girl fill-ins, which admittedly I don't like much.

The best news (for me, at least) I've saved for last: classic school stories by Evelyn Smith, Dorothea Moore, E. M. Channon and Bessie Marchant, put out by a company called Books to Treasure. THIS is why I may be pinching pennies for a bit. Of that list,  Dorothea Moore and Evelyn Smith are two of my favourite, most solid school story writers ever, reliably fun, and E. M. Channon wrote one of the best (and most unusual) school stories I have ever read, The Honour of the House.  (Not on Kindle yet, but I can hope, and I will review at some point!)

Bessie Marchant I am less sure about; she sounds familiar, but I would have to dig around the boxes in my garage to see if I can fit some books to the name.

Anyway, Smith, Channon and Moore are enthusiastically recommended, and I have some reading to do!

If you have any other recommendations of school stories readily available, please let me know. Top of my wish list is for some of Dorita Fairlie Bruce's non-Dimsie books... I live in hope!

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Eleanor Beresford is the author of the Scholars and Sorcery series of LGBT YA fantasy novels. Find out more here.

Scholars and Sorcery Book 1, Pegasi and Prefects, is released!

Pegasi and Prefects is finally out! I am excited, and thrilled to my core. This story has been with me a very long, time, as has the desire to write a Girl's Own book with a romance between girls at its core, and it's finally being released to the world. It's only the start of the story, of course. Elves and Escapades is out in March, and Mermaids and Misadventures is to follow.

Here's where to buy (or sample) on different platforms:

Amazon Googleplay Nook/B&N Kobo Inketera/Page Foundry Smashwords. . . and iBooks. I have yet to figure out how to link to iBooks.

And now, as it is bedtime here in Australia, good night!

Review: Good for Gracie (school story, 1938)

Good for Gracie--Dorothy Vicary, 1938, Blackie & Son

“Good for Gracie” is one of the school stories I feel intensely conflicted about. On the one hand, it has some of the most vivid characters I can remember in any school story. (More on them later.) On the other, it is set around a trope I particularly dislike: a girl doesn’t fit in, in other words shows too much individuality, and “has her corners rubbed off”. Not only do I find that trope uncomfortable at the best of times, “Good for Gracie” takes it to extremes rarely seen in the genre.

First, the good. Talking about tropes that are relevant to my interests, “Good for Gracie” has one of my very favourite pairs of characters, the gallant tomboy with a masculine nickname (in this case, Billie) and her more feminine inseparable friend (deliciously known as Bubbles, and what a fey creature she is.) They are a delight, especially how handsome Billie is in male clothing at a fancy dress party.

Unfortunately, the bad is very bad indeed. (Break to link to blog)The plot centres around, not Billie or Bubbles nor the protagonist (who is so very dull I forget her name, and can’t be bothered fetching my copy it look it up), but the Gracie of the title. Gracie is a big fish in a small pond at her first school, accustomed to hanging around the Seniors and being treated as a pet. Then, when she and the protagonist transfer to a bigger school, she takes her “special” status with her and fails to show proper humility as a new girl. All hell breaks loose, and I’m not kidding.

The book revolves around Gracie being snubbed, humiliated and actually physically bullied into submission, by everyone from the Head Girl to the otherwise charming Billie. Sure, Gracie breaks cardinal rules of school stories, like giving unsolicited advice to the Games Captain and reporting younger members of her class to the form mistress, or refusing to play for the school, but the sheer brutality of the response seems out of all proportion. You don’t usually get descriptions of the new girl’s bloodied wrists and complete mental breakdown. Well, unless this is supposed to be misery porn, which I really don’t think this is.

Still, in this trope, it’s all for for own good, and supposedly we are meant to cheer the sadism on. In the end, Gracie gives in entirely, submits to the girls who have treated her so cruelly, and is allowed to be friends with Billie & Co. “Good for Gracie”!

It’s hard to hate this entirely, given Billie and Bubbles, but even they show a nasty, sadistic edge. Read this one for the shippiness and one of my favourite tomboys, only.