LINK: Dimsie and pedantry

[feather_ghyll]

I've referred to Lucy Mangan's series of features on how to build up 'a brilliant children's library' before. Here in No. 15, she reaches Dimsie goes to School and Angela Brazils. Apparently the only difference between Fairlie Bruce and Angela Brazil is that one wrote her books a little earlier, which is unfair. Though I do appreciate that this is

Comments

[ramblingfancy]

I noticed you via callmemadam's blog and see we have lots of authors in common! It is sad - especially when libraries could purchase reasonably priced copies from GGBP, but our library at least doesn't, and I suppose that means they wouldn't appeal nowadays to the 9-13 year old? My daugher loved them and read them avidly, but she had the Blyton, Brent-Dyer, Oxenham first to lead her along so to speak. I must say I am enjoying the Lucy Mangan series quite a bit.

[feather_ghyll]

Hello, welcome, and thanks for commenting. I hadn't thought of GGBP, which are perhaps too expensive for most to consider as gifts to young girls (because they might think they might as well buy more modern and cheaper books) but, as you say, libraries could purchase them. Perhaps librarians simply don't know or haven't thought of them. And there are probably budgetary pressures. But the books were always about an experence that many readers would find exotic (boarding school, single-sex education, setting and class), and Harry Potter has shown us that the interest in boarding school stories hasn't waned, so I think they'd still have an appeal.

Blyton, in particular, is a great introduction to the genre, and then Brent-Dyer and Oxenham et al have the series factor to hook the readers in.

I'm enjoying Mangan's series too, but the pedant in me felt obliges to pipe up here :)