Biddy Makes Her Mark: Mary Gervaise, Nelson, 1956

This is a slim volume - well, I zipped through its hundred and teen pages - but a vivid story. Perhaps if ( Read more... )

I couldn’t quite work myself up to a full review of these books, but I wanted to mention them. ( Six in a Family by Eleanor Graham; Evelyn Fleet by Lily Tobias; and The Flash Children by Mabel Esther Allan )

Happy Easter!

A Term on Trial: Mary Gervaise Cassell (First published in 1929)

It’s been far too long since I’ve read a proper girls own book, by which I mean a boarding school story, and this one features a lot of staples of the genre.

Barbara ‘Bobby’ Laurence ( Read more... )

I meant to post this sooner, but things have been rather busy.

( Featuring The Peal Book of Girl Guide Stories, Deeanne Gist's Love on the Line, Olive L. Groom's Holly of Swanhouse, Josephine Elder's Erica Wins Through and Angela Brazil's An Exciting Term )

I have just returned from my first ever trip to Paris, where I was staying at a hotel that did not have Eurosport, sadly, so I couldn't watch the men’s US Open final. I really, really wish I’d been able to see it ( Read more... )

Elizabeth at Grayling Court: Margaret W. Griffiths. Warne, 1947

When you start reading a book with the above title and the first thing that happens is a discussion about whether a girl named Diana is to go to school, you’re entitled to some shock. Even to double check the cover and flick through the pages. ( Read more... )

Stage Mum: Lisa Gee Hutchinson 2008

(I read this on 1-2/7/11).

I felt I had to write about a book that references Ballet Shoes here. Lisa Gee's daughter Dora was cast as one of the Gretls in the original run of the current production of The Sound of Music. ( Read more... )

I got a chance to go into a proper, if tiny, second-hand bookshop over the weekend. I don’t recall whether I’ve written about thi particular shop before here or not. It’s the sort of shop where you have to be willing to devote time to searching and even literally kneel down if you’re a children’s book collector or, er, a bookish child. I had a bit ( 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 ( Read more... )