Tag: boarding school stories

Book of the Week, books, Children's books, Forgotten books

Book of the Week: Film Stars at Riverlea

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It’s only right that the week after Book Conference, my book of the Week pick is a bonkers Girls Own boarding school story. So buckle up, this has got a lot of plot to get though…

I was going to say that I don’t know where to start on the plot, but I do: the start, because this opens on a twin arriving at Riverlea having run away from the boarding school she was attending after the parents decided they would be better apart from each other. And it only gets wilder from there. It’s got (not in order and not exhaustive) film stars, vindictive PE teachers, hidden talents, missing treasure, salvation through cricket, missing heirs, near drowning and a shipwreck. And those last are not at the same time. And it’s only just over 200 pages long.

Now I normally like my school stories a little saner – if by saner we mean the realistic (in comparison) boarding school in the Alps where you might get lost up a mountain that Elinor M Brent Dyer offers. But sometimes you just need something crazy. This was a great way to spend an evening and I thank my friend for letting me read it first.

I can’t even tell you where to get this – it’s long out of print and I’ve never seen it before – but I’m also not expecting many of you to want to read it because it’s niche. So niche. But also hilarious.

Happy Reading!

books, Children's books, series

Children’s series: Wells and Wong

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The second book in Robin Stevens’ new series is out this week, so I’m taking the opportunity to talk about her Wells and Wong middle grade mystery series this Friday.

So Hazel Wong and Daisy Wells meet at Deepdean School for Girls in the 1930s. In the first book, Murder Most Unladylike, they’re desperate for adventure and form their own secret detective agency in the hope of excitement, but it’s all pretty boring until one of their teachers is found dead in the gym and they start to investigate. And then across the next nine books they keep stumbling across bodies and intrigue in a variety of settings inspired by the best Golden Age mysteries. It’s doing Agatha Christie crossed with Enid Blyton.

I read these as they came out – and various of them were reviewed here at the time. I think my favourites are First Class Murder (Daisy and Hazel do Murder on the Orient Express), A Spoonful of Murder (Hazel on getting home advantage over Daisy in Hong Kong) and Death in the Spotlight (Daisy and Hazel do an Inspector Alleyn theatre mystery) but the books are a lot of fun and I think if I’d read them at the right age (if you know what I mean) it would have been a delightful gateway to Agatha Christie and Peter Wimsey. As it was, I went straight to Miss Marple when I was about eleven and loved it right up until the point I scared myself! I’ve bought these as gifts for the middle graders in my life – and loaned them out to the middle graders in my work colleague’s lives (although I’m still not sure how I ended up with Jolly Foul Play in ebook *and* paperback!

By the end of the series, Daisy and Hazel are almost grownups and it gets a little bit melodramatic in the Death on the Nile Homage, but I forgave it because I had enjoyed the series so much – and it was also setting up the Ministry of Unladylike Activity series, which you can also see in the picture above, where the new main character is Hazel’s little sister May.

I’ve read both of the new series too – which are World War Two-set spy adventures. I liked the first one better than the second but I think the premise of the new series is fundamentally a little harder for an adult to get on board with than the first series is. But if you are looking for a Christmas book for an older primary age child this Christmas (and they’ve already read Wells and Wong) they would be a safe bet. And they have cameos from Daisy and Hazel too.

You should be able to get these basically anywhere with a children’s section because they’ve been hugely successful – and the ebooks go on offer from time to time too.

Have a great weekend!

not a book, tv

Not a Book: Wednesday

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Back at Halloween last year I wrote about the Addams Family films from the early 90s and now I’ve watched the new Netflix series about Wednesday and can report back!

So the premise of this, as you can probably tell is Wednesday Addams Goes to Boarding School – and it’s a boarding school for outcasts. Now given my fondness for boarding school stories I could very much get on board with this. And obviously because this is Wednesday we’re talking about – allergic to colour, incredibly morbid, not really into emotions – this is going to pose some challenges. On top of that, this is the school her parents attended and to say there is some history there is to understate the situation. And then there’s the fact that there appears to be a monster killing people and the pupils of the school, with their special powers/skills are the prime suspects. So a fish-out-of-water school story with a murder mystery/thriller twist, brought to you by Tim Burton. Sounds good right?

There is also good news for those of you who are as sentimentally attached to the Julia/Huston Gomez and Morticia as I am, that although the parents appear in the show, they are only in a couple of episodes. And though I have a few issues with Catherine Zeta Jones’ Morticia (not least the wandering accent), Luis Guzman’s Gomez is brilliant in a different way to Raul Julia and I really, really liked it. And as Wednesday, Jenna Ortega is fabulous, she’s got the creepy, disconnected affect down as well as the deadpan delivery. And the plot and script are really clever too. There are nods and winks to the various different incarnations of the family previously (not least Christina Ricci as Wednesday’s dorm mother) whilst still making it feel its own thing.

Wednesday has Thing with her at school – which shows how far CGI/Special effects have come in the last 30 years that it’s now super easy to have lots and lots of Thing, and Uncle Fester pops up too. But for most of the characters are new – Enid, Wednesday’s roommate, a crowd of popular kids including a siren and a pupil whose drawings come to life and a group of townies who have a very, very mixed relationship with the boarding school on their doorstep which adds another level of tension to everything. And then there is Wednesday’s special gift – which causes her even more issues. In short – plenty of plot strands to keep everything moving along and to keep you guessing about how it all might tie together.

We watched it across about four days – there are eight episodes – and were really sad when it was over. And clearly we’re not the only people who have made it to the end of the series (which seems to be the metric which Netflix bases stuff off) as they announced a second season last month. I’m interested to see where they take the show next, as the plot for this was self contained enough that it wouldn’t have left viewers mad if it didn’t get a second series but equally left you with a tease for what might happened next. And don’t worry, the teaser trailer below doesn’t give any spoilers away.

So if you need something to binge watch, and you haven’t already, I recommend this for your next duvet day on the sofa.

Happy Sunday everyone!

Book of the Week, Children's books, new releases

Book of the Week: Top Marks for Murder

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Another old friend for this week’s BotW: the eighth in Robin Stevens’s middle grade Murder Most Unladylike series. It was between this and the new Tessa Dare for this week’s pick and although the Dare is a lot of fun, I have a lot of thoughts about this book, this series and the importance of Hazel and Daisy.

Cover of Top Marks for Murder

We rejoin the detective society as they return to Deepdean after their extended break visiting Hazel’s family in Hong Kong and then their appearance in a play in London. And they’re back at school just in time for the anniversary weekend, which proves to be a rather more dangerous time for the girls than you would hope, after one of the gang sees what she thinks is a murder from their dormitory window.

The girls are back on the trail and are happy to be distracted from the things that have changed at school while they’ve been away. But this isn’t the first time that there’s been a murder at Deepdean, and Daisy and Hazel are older now and are seeing more of the consequences of what’s going on as well. After all how many parents want to leave their children at a school where murders happen. So the girls may not need to just solve the case, they might need to save the school as well.

What I’ve always loved about this series is the way that it takes familiar tropes from the school stories that I loved when I was little and update them so that they will work for kids today. I’ve spoken before about revisiting old favourites and realising they’re now problematic (to say the least in some cases). I’m lucky with the Chalet School – LH Johnson recently wrote a lovely piece about the Chalet School Peace League and Elinor M Brent Dyer quietly advocating peace and cooperation – but I’ve bought and read a couple of Shirley Flight books over the last few weeks and although they’re mostly fun adventures, there are some horrible attitudes towards non-Brits and especially non-Westerners. One of them is downright racist to a point where I now wouldn’t want to lend any of them out to a modern child of the age I was when I read the first book in the series. But if you want to give the next generation the sort of warm feels you had from Girls Own books but without the nasty undercurrents, this series will do that for you.

And that’s not to say that these are populated by perfect exemplars of modern day life sticking out like sore thumbs in the olden days. They’re not like that. You see the nastier side of 1930s boarding school life because because you’re looking at it from Hazel’s point of view and nothing she can do will change the way some people look at her just because she’s Chinese. Daisy definitely isn’t perfect – she doesn’t handle the fact that while she’s been gone a fascinating new girl has taken her place very well at all. And she’s still dealing with the fallout for her family after the events at her house in book 2. This is full of realistic characters learning real life lessons as well as solving a tricky mystery. As a grown up, I really appreciate and enjoy what Robin Stevens is doing – but it does works for its actual target market too, as my niece as well as several of the ten year olds my sister taught last year (who lent her copies of books in the series) prove. And when my niece is a bit older, I’ll lend her the Golden Age mystery stories these are influenced by and she can read the grown up versions of some of these plots (this one is very Sayers inspired). But with a few caveats about old fashioned attitudes.

Now, I’m going to be very careful how I phrase this section because: spoilers, but in the last book we learned an important piece of information about one of the main characters. A piece of information that both is and isn’t a big deal. Inside the last book it was treated exactly right by the character who learned it and in this book nothing has changed about that piece of information but it is absolutely not an issue or a Big Deal. And that is exactly as it should be. If you’ve read Death in the Spotlight you’ll know exactly what I’m talking abut and if you haven’t, then I’m sorry for that impenetrable paragraph, but go and read it and you’ll understand.

I had First Class Murder pre-ordered (and had to remember to change the delivery address to the new house!) but you should be able to get hold of it easily from any shop with a children’s section. It’s also available online – from places like Book Depository – as well as on Kindle and Kobo.  And you can read some of my previous posts about the series here and here.

Happy Reading!