Gillian of the Guides: Winifred Darch, Oxford, 1929.

This is the best girls own book I’ve read so far this year. It’s much more thoughtful about human nature and depicts it rather more credibly than the last couple of books I’ve reviewed. Also, ( Read more... )

Nelson’s Budget for GirlsI very rarely buy annuals or collections of stories like this as I generally dislike short stories, so the balance of stories I like to the ones I don’t makes me wish I hadn't bothered to purchase a book that takes up more space than a more satisfactory long story would. This book is massive. Put this purchase down to a ( Read more... )

Diana Takes a Chance: Catherine Christian Blackie
'First appeared a a serial in The Guide under the title of ‘London Venture’.

I actually prefer the title ‘London Venture’ to the more generic and not strictly accurate ‘Diana Takes a Chance.’ Diana Tremaine is( Read more... )

The Marigolds Make Good: Catherine Christian

St Bridget’s Guide Company is to be temporarily disbanded is the edict of the school’s new headmistress, Miss Nesbitt. ( Read more... )

If you click on the ‘katharine l. oldmeadow’ tag below, you'll see that I’ve been gradually and deliberately rereading my incomplete set of Oldmeadows. Reading Mrs A.C. Osborn Hann's 'The Redhead Patrol' reminded me to come to this next.

The Pimpernel Patrol: Katharine L. Oldmeadow, CollinsOn the face of it, this is Oldmeadow’s most conventional ( Read more... )

The Redheaded Patrol: Mrs A.C. Osborn Hann The Girl’s Own Paper (published before 31 July 1938)

I don’t do this often, but I’ll quote the opening and closing lines of this book:

It really was a most extraordinary coincidence. All the girls in the Scarlet Pimpernel Patrol had red hair! And nobody could manage them! Leader after leader had tried ( 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 just watched the hour-long documentary 100 Years of the Girl Guides, which aired on BBC4 on Sunday on iPlayer, where it can still be watched by residents of the UK until Sunday night. Past experience suggests that it will be repeated on BBC2 at some point ( 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... )

Of course, I always seem to come across Ethel Talbot, Bessie Marchant and Angela Brazil books because there are so many of them. I had some preconcieved ideas based on the title, Peggy's Last Term, that it would be about a prefect saying goodbye to her school and setting some young'uns right. But that wasn't the story at all. As I've reread Harry ( Read more... )