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Post by Claire on Feb 11, 2014 14:32:41 GMT 1
Hi all, I don't think we have ever really discussed this in a dedicated thread before. Do you like school stories and if so why/why not? What are your favs? I may add a poll for a top 10 if we get enough suggestions.
Despite not liking school much I strangely liked school stories. Not sure why really, possibly cos the schools in them were a lot different to mine! I suppose in some ways the books, especially the boarding school ones, are a little like the pony and holiday adventure type books where the parents have been spirited away so the action can concentrate almost solely on the children's interaction. Yes the teachers are there but they are somehow set apart. It may be that I enjoyed the interaction of the many different types of characters you get in school stories.
My favourites are probably the Malory Towers and St. Clares books by Enid Blyton, The Melling School books by Margaret Biggs and the Trebizon series by Anne Digby. I've only ever read one Chalet School book tho.
We've already discussed horsy books which are school stories too in another thread (where there was also a poll) but you can talk about them here too, tho this poll will concentrate on the non pony school stories.
BTW I have concentrated on girls school stories cos I don't think I ever read any boys ones but feel free to talk about/nominate them too.
Be interested to hear what others think.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2014 17:59:47 GMT 1
I don't like school stories at all. Probably because I hated school myself. I have read some of the spot and Georgie series by Mary Gervaise but that's it.
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Post by Haff yfan on Feb 11, 2014 18:52:05 GMT 1
I loved the St clares and mallory towers books when i was in primary school, also the naughtiest girl ones, although not quite as much. I so wanted to go to boarding school after reading them as they made it sound so exciting and fun...not to mention all those midnight feasts!
A little later i came across Trebizon at the library and they remain my favourite school stories by far, maybe ebcause they were actually modern at the time so very easy to relate to. I've read a few Chalet school, and whilst I can't say i didn't enjoy them i didn't really get into them either (not such a bad thing considering how much some cost now!) Maybe the whole boarding/finishing school in another country was a little too outside my experiences?
Apart from the Trebizon stories, my school stories were all inherited from my Mum, she loves St Clares, especially, and Mallory towers too. We read many of them together in the evenings.
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Post by Darkhorse1 on Feb 12, 2014 12:09:20 GMT 1
I haven't actually read many school stories. I did like the Enid Blyton ones, especially Malory Towers. I agree with haffy: I also wanted to go to boarding school after reading them! I doubt it would have been as much fun in real life however!
Are you having trouble logging in too haffy?
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Post by Charlotte on Feb 13, 2014 19:31:54 GMT 1
I like school stories, even though I mostly hated secondary school. Never liked Enid Blyton ones, but they may also have made me more enthusiastic about moving to boarding school. The Naughtiest Girl series is an unusual idea. I first read some Trebizon ones from the library as a teenager, liked them though they're not very in-depth, the series was sadly never completed. I've gradually got online/read them all. It's fairly easy/cheap to find them. Only got into the Chalet School recently, by chance because there happened to be a copy at home. The amount of books there is daunting, some are so expensive, especially unabridged ones but I'd like to read them all eventually. Other less popular old series are often much easier to get. I like Winifred Darch, prewar day girls' high school stories. The 1980s Balcombe Hall ones by Harriet Martyn are worth reading but somewhat hard to get. Melling sounds good, must try that sometime.
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Post by Claire on Feb 13, 2014 20:58:14 GMT 1
Yes the Melling ones are pretty good. The characters have more depth than in a lot of the school stories and the books are character driven rather than relying on rather unlikely mysteries and such as lots of school stories do. The author wrote quite a lot of other school stories but haven't got round to reading them yet. Must do some time. While on the subject just found this book by Margaret Biggs which has been published by GGB and it has a horse on cover - does anyone know if there is much horse content in it (or indeed any!) www.ggbp.co.uk/forthcoming-books?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=1886&category_id=4 |
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Post by haffyfan on Feb 17, 2014 19:54:46 GMT 1
I can log in ad hoc darkhorse but some days it just loads forever so the guest posting is an easier option than the 'angry bear' proboards page...please don't tell me i'm the only one that gets that!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2014 7:42:08 GMT 1
I've never had that one! it is slow to load sometimes and then I just get the usual boring "can't display the page" thing.
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Post by Charlotte on Aug 9, 2014 14:09:07 GMT 1
BTW I know there are probably no other fans here, but the Chalet School fanfic site is:
The stories can be good, often have totally different themes to the actual books. Also don't necessarily involve school life itself, just the characters in whatever situation.
BTW I liked A Fourth Form Friendship by Angela Brazil where the school dramatically catches fire at the end, there are several by her on Gutenberg.
Also got a hardback of Bride Leads the Chalet School. It's one of those set on an island off the Pembrokeshire coast. It's ok, but not one of the best IMO. It would have been nice to see the pupils on horseback, but even in Austria or Switzerland, AFAIK they never ride. |
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Post by cloud on Aug 10, 2014 15:11:31 GMT 1
Being in the I loathed school category myself (spent more time working out how not to be there than anything else lol)haven't read many school stories BUT do remember loving one called Princess Anne (nothing to do with royalty so a very silly title) about an orphan from Dartmoor sent to boarding school on the Yorkshire moors. Think it was by someone Oldfield?  |
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Post by trixiepony on Aug 21, 2014 9:39:57 GMT 1
I haven't actually read many school stories. I did like the Enid Blyton ones, especially Malory Towers. I agree with haffy: I also wanted to go to boarding school after reading them! I doubt it would have been as much fun in real life however! Are you having trouble logging in too haffy? Yes the real thing is nothing like the story's I did go for a year . I never liked school story's as a child but I don't mined them now as a adult. And the Marlory Towers story's where not bad there was the horse mad girl Bobby I think in it but most others I don't have much time for them. |
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Post by Charlotte on Aug 21, 2014 18:06:27 GMT 1
I haven't actually read many school stories. I did like the Enid Blyton ones, especially Malory Towers. I agree with haffy: I also wanted to go to boarding school after reading them! I doubt it would have been as much fun in real life however! Are you having trouble logging in too haffy? Yes the real thing is nothing like the story's I did go for a year . I never liked school story's as a child but I don't mined them now as a adult. And the Marlory Towers story's where not bad there was the horse mad girl Bobby I think in it but most others I don't have much time for them. I don't think real boarding (or day) schools are absolutely nothing like fictional ones. Some old school stories are more realistic than others, but of course they all reflect what establishments were like then to some extent. Enid Blyton is one of the least realistic perhaps. Modern boarding schools are almost totally different, Trebizon is based on them but it too is pretty dated now and the plots are'nt usually very plausible. Day school stories are less common. Hard to imagine what boarding must be like now with risk assessments for activities, modern technology and so on. Even in the 90s don't think there was that much health and safety, like how I nearly fell off a ruined castle on a trip to Greece. Perhaps other schools were more careful, mine generally had a very laid-back attitude about protection. Anyway some of the things that happened were very story-like, such as a geography lesson prank where everyone wore balaclavas and sat in different places from usual. |
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Post by Claire on Aug 21, 2014 22:16:24 GMT 1
I remember playing lots of tricks on our teachers a la Malory Towers. Once we made a recording of various noises such as a bloodcurdling scream then a toilet flushing etc and hid the tape recorder in a cupboard in the classroom. The teacher nearly had a heart attack! There was one poor teacher who was not quite all there who got most of the tricks. Kids always sense the weakest link don't they?!
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Post by korm on Aug 28, 2014 14:43:22 GMT 1
I wasn't overly keen on school myself but for some reason I enjoyed reading school fiction.
Read and re-read EB's St. Clare's, Malory Towers, Naughtiest Girl books as a child. Never really got into The Chalet School collection (thankfully; the whole series would have cost an arm and a leg, there are oodles of them), think I read a couple of them but decided they weren't for me. I absolutely loved Anne Digby's Trebizon collection, so much so I bought all of them on kindle to read recently. The series hadn't been completed when I was a child, so the last few (5th year ones) were new to me.
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Post by Charlotte on Jan 16, 2015 9:55:07 GMT 1
Has anyone read Antonia forest, who wrote both school and family stories? Or the Abbey books by Elsie Oxenham? I havn't read either but wonder what they're like.
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Post by Claire on Jan 16, 2015 16:25:54 GMT 1
I haven't read the Abbey books at all, not sure why as I have had loads of them for sale. I have read a couple of Antonia Forest's ones which were pretty good.
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Post by rallycairn on Jan 23, 2015 2:53:09 GMT 1
Not a series, but And Both Were Young by Madeleine L'Engle is a great read set in a Swiss boarding school just after WWII = all about the protagonist learning to cope with boarding school and to fit in with her peers. With a depth of emotion, as you'd expect from L'Engle, not madcap pranks type stuff (not that there's anything wrong with that).
The Drina books qualify as school stories, I would guess -- they all go to the school that combines intensive ballet training and regular education curriculum. Day school for most of the series, but there is the one with Drina at Chalk Green, the company's boarding school, and the year she spends abroad at a finishing school sort of place.
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Post by susanb on Jan 23, 2015 18:10:20 GMT 1
I always thought of the Drina books as more performing art than boarding, but you're right Rally, they are in their way school stories! I've got the series and enjoyed them all very much.
The Dana Girls series by "Caroline Keene"* would probably be the longest running US school series, though it's generally thought of more as a mystery series. It was out of print by the time I got to that reading age, but I read whatever my library had. They were ok, but I never had the urge to collect them.
I've got a few books from various British school series that I just haven't got round to reading yet...one each of the Chalet School, Mallory Towers and Abbey for sure, possibly others that I'm not thinking of at the moment.
I have to admit (sheepishly) that as a child my view of British boarding schools was heavily influenced by the St. Trinian's movies. It looked like absolute heaven! I saw myself playing poker and betting the ponies and generally raising hell. Sigh.....
*an aside, Carolyn Keene a pseudonym for various authors, several of whom also wrote the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boysbooks. The earliest books in the Dana Girl series were written by Leslie McFarlane (male), the author of the early Hardy Boy books, from book 5 or so, Mildred Wirt, author of the earliest Nancy Drew books picked up the series.
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Post by Claire on Jan 24, 2015 4:44:54 GMT 1
I have to admit (sheepishly) that as a child my view of British boarding schools was heavily influenced by the St. Trinian's movies. It looked like absolute heaven! I saw myself playing poker and betting the ponies and generally raising hell. Sigh..... I've always loved St. Trinians and the pranks in the Malory Towers and St Clares books were great. I must admit there was a bit of St. Trinianish behaviour in me and my friends at school, especially in the 6th form. We played quite a few tricks on the poor teachers, played Poker in the common room and even got drunk once with some smuggled in booze. Got suspended for that antic! Oh dear I suppose I was a bit of a wild child.  |
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Post by Charlotte on Feb 14, 2015 18:56:51 GMT 1
Well I've posted about the St Triniansish aspects of my school and my behaviour before, as opposed to the parts I thoroughly hated. Poker is the kind of thing people might well have done, if not strip poker among boys anyway. I think truth and dare was played occasionally, sometimes I rode to the village on a borrowed bike with faulty brakes/no lights and eventually got caught by the head for something while cycling with someone. Despite having prefects and so on, it had stopped being a very strict boarding school before my time. There were one or two teachers who were not quite all there as you say, so got picked on. Did your school have prefects Claire? One other especially odd thing was the swimming pool in a former sawmill log pit and heated by turbines from the adjacent stream. So it was noticeably warmer when the stream was full. Swimming in the stream was nice though, the loch not that much because of mud and the sewage outfall. Anyway, this is an interesting article about Angela Brazil: www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/14/angela-brazil-pioneer-of-girls-boarding-school-fiction |
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Post by Claire on Feb 14, 2015 19:16:13 GMT 1
We did have prefects in my school but I can't say they ever did much, not like the ones in all the school stories. It wasn't a boarding school tho just a comp. Yeah we had a teacher who wasn't quite all there. Called Mr. Hall, we soon dubbed him Albert! He was the butt of a lot of our jokes, poor bugger. Kids are terrible - they can always sense weakness!
I haven't read any Angela Brazil as yet. I quite like the Mary Gervaise Spot part school/part pony series - tho I am in a minority here.
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Post by foxglove on Mar 3, 2015 14:33:34 GMT 1
I can only recall reading Malory Towers and St Clares as a child. I liked school (apart from IT and PE, at which I was irredeemably rubbish) and was a girly swot. There are plenty of girly swots in Enid Blyton.
More recently I've read two Angela Brazils and found them very well written. Dated in some obvious ways, but surprisingly modern in others; scenarios where a girl goes along with something she knows to be wrong for fear of being left out for example.
I did see a boys school story at a car booty once, called That Scholarship Boy, but didn't buy it.
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Post by Charlotte on Apr 2, 2015 9:35:04 GMT 1
Yes the Melling ones are pretty good. The characters have more depth than in a lot of the school stories and the books are character driven rather than relying on rather unlikely mysteries and such as lots of school stories do. The author wrote quite a lot of other school stories but haven't got round to reading them yet. Must do some time. While on the subject just found this book by Margaret Biggs which has been published by GGB and it has a horse on cover - does anyone know if there is much horse content in it (or indeed any!) www.ggbp.co.uk/forthcoming-books?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=1886&category_id=4I've just got that book, Dilly Goes to Ambergate. There's plenty of horse content sections in it. |
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Post by Claire on Apr 2, 2015 21:01:12 GMT 1
Thanks Charlotte, I will definitely have to check that one out.
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Post by ginslinger on Aug 10, 2015 13:21:29 GMT 1
I have just read all the Malory Towers books since the collection was on sale in the discount book place. I think I only read the first one or two which were my aunts when staying with my grandmother as a child. They didn't stand up to re reading which was a shame. Partly the characters never age even in the sixth form - not much in the way of hormones yet at that time it would have been quite unremarkable for girls to marry before twenty. Any way some unintentional hilarity in various girls wanting threesomes and knowing that the scoldings used to be spankings!
I did read some Trebizon which was ok but Rebecca was a bit too good at everything however I lover the Antonia Forest books that I read - her characters do age (although the books go through more time) and there are believable scenarios. The characters are multi dimensional and develop. Would love to read the ones I missed but soooo expensive
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Post by ritz23 on Mar 14, 2016 9:59:03 GMT 1
I have a collection of school stories. I just love them. I tell these stories to my Phoenix pre-k students and they too really love listening to stories. I have bought various storybooks for them and keep telling them new stories now and then. |
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Post by kirstcurry on Nov 29, 2016 18:52:34 GMT 1
I love the Malory and St Clare's books (actually just Enid Blyton in general lol) but also have a large collection of Angela Brazil and L.T. Meade on ebook as well as about 20 Chalet School books that I pick up when I see them going cheaply! There are sone lovely 'old fashioned' school books that I have in my e-library like the Grace Harlowe books, the Tucker Twins and the Arden Blake series by Cleo Garis. Am a bit of a sucker for school stories apparently!!! Also, has anyone read the Chestnut Hill books by Lauren Brooke? I have about 5 but only read the first one... a horsey boarding school. Best of both worlds!
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Post by Claire on Nov 30, 2016 0:09:22 GMT 1
I've read a couple of the Chestnut Hill ones but I didn't get along with them much, I think I'm too old for all that teen stuff! I do like some of the older combined horse/boarding school ones like the Georgie series by Mary Gervaise, and Peggy Cannam also wrote a couple too which were quite decent. Have you read No Ponies for Miss Pobjoy by Ursula Moray Williams kirstcurry? If not I'd recommend it. Ponies, donkeys, boarding school japes and it's a humourous read too.
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Post by Charlotte on Jun 24, 2017 19:26:29 GMT 1
The last book I read was Catherine Head of the House by Joanna Lloyd. It's written more like a series of anecdotes than a connected plot, but is very funny and I liked it. Much more of a comedy than most boarding school stories I've read.
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Post by Charlotte on Jan 7, 2018 20:30:14 GMT 1
The Sally books by Dorita Fairlie Bruce were some of, if not the last, she wrote. I haven't read too much of her other books, but the Dimsie ones I have seen weren't that great, a bit twee and perhaps too far-fetched sometimes. Never got far into Prefects at Springdale, but looking through suggests that it isn't terribly interesting. I do also have That Boarding School Girl which is supposed to be one of her better ones, should read it.
Anyway the Sallies are rare and usually very expensive, it's a shame as they have rather different themes and plots to the rest and feel a bit more modern perhaps. I was lucky to find Sally's Summer Term (including dustjacket) for an acceptable price online (have nearly finished reading it), and got Sally Again (no dustjacket) for Christmas. Only missing Sally Scatterbrain, unfortunately not much possibility of getting that anytime soon. As in some of her other books, some of the girls do a little riding, but it doesn't look like the writer knew much about it. And incidentally the worst school story I have ever read (not recently) is Helmie at St. Swithuns by Winifred Norling. It's terribly written, the characters are all total cut-outs, and so on. Utter rubbish IMO.
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