Children's books you still love..

I think the reason why Antonia Forest’s books faded into obscurity is that they were easily dismissed, mostly by those who hadn’t read them , as boarding school- and- pony books about middle class children at a time when these things were becoming unfashionable in the world of children’s books. Whereas her superb characterisation lifts her into a different class from Malory Towers etc, readable though these are. Ironically following the success of HP boarding school stories are now quite popular again, though they usually feature magical academies of some sort.

Definitely The Dark is Rising sequence, The Hobbit, Diana Wynne Jones, Charlotte Sometimes, Tom’s Midnight Garden and some of Alan Garner and Narnia. I also liked some Sci-Fi, including a book called Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein (I think).

School stories: Chalet School, Malory Towers and without a shadow of a doubt, Antonia Forest. I can’t believe someone who has so clearly made such an impact on children has been allowed to fade into obscurity. I did like Spring Term!

Ballet books: Sadler’s Wells, Drina and most Noel Streatfeild books, particularly The Painted Garden and Curtain Up. I liked the Mara Kay book, A Circling Star, mentioned earlier. The description of a Russian ballet school was like entering another world. Jean Ure’s, Hey There, Supermouse and all the Pamela Brown books about the Blue Doors.

Holiday at the Dew Drop Inn was my favourite as it described such lovely parts of a country life. Anne of Green Gables would be my chosen classic.

Has anyone read The Stone Cage by Nicholas Stuart Gray?I always ask and no one ever seems to have read it. It’s an amazing retelling of the Rapunzel Story, very Diana Wynne Jones in style. The author also wrote the Grimbold books. And now I’m adding the Carbonel series to my list!

Thank you SerafinasGoose - that sounds an excellent story.

It’s been a while since I read it. But from memory another girl tips off the principal that Elizabeth has never even heard of Dickinson. So the principal has the would be plagiarist in and says - something you want to tell me? The cheat doubles down. So she brings in the other girl and asks the suspected plagiarist to recite the poem from its first line. Importantly she goes first. Plagiarist recites the newly created version. The second girl continues from the first line quoting the original Dickinson. Ergo cheat couldn’t have written that poem if she had no idea where its first line came from.

I always liked that book because Emily Dickinson is one of my favourite poets!

The Principal catches her out because the first line is by Emily Dickinson and only one of the two girls will recognise it. That girl must be the author.

How did the Principal know only one of the girls will recognise it?

I remember that one! The author recites the Emily Dickinson poem, whereas the plagiarist recites the "updated" one.

Her books are still in copyright - I wonder how many sell nowadays.

Anne Marie Longden.

There's a similar storyline in Trebizon when Elizabeth plagiarises Rebecca's poem and publishes it as her own in the school magazine. The Principal catches her out because the first line is by Emily Dickinson and only one of the two girls will recognise it. That girl must be the author.

Poor old Alison was always having crushes on teachers and fellow-pupils and being rebuffed.

A lot of Enid Blyton (and other authors) are available free on Faded Page:
https://www.fadedpage.com/

I’d forgotten about poor Alma Pudden. I used to have so many books by Enid but after my parents died I guess they were given away or chucked out.
Presumably they’re all available on kindle.

@EmptyCan impressive memory skills!

No, Alison does have a crush on the same new ‘artistic’ English teacher but the girl who sends in the Arnold poem is called Ann-Marie, I think, and wants to be a poet, and is rather tiresome and obsessed with being misunderstood, and when the teacher humiliates her in public by criticising a poem she’s read out in class, she hands in the Arnold poem to humiliate the teacher by making it clear she’s biased against her. .

I think it’s the final St Clare’s book. Which is a bit nasty. It’s the one where a girl called Alma Pudden is fat-shamed by all the ‘sympathetic’ characters throughout, and blamed because she doesn’t just laugh along.

I absolutely loved Lois Duncan. There was one about a girl who could levitate and pretended to be her twin sister. It was terrifying! I’m going to look that up now.

Stranger With My Face!

Isn't that Alison at St Clare's?

I can’t remember which books I remember a particularly enjoyable episode in one of Enid’s school stories, in which a girl wants to be a poet but her English teacher is very scornful of her efforts.
One day, the class is told to write a poem for homework and the aspiring poet copies a lesser known poem by I think Matthew Arnold (but I could well be wrong).
The teacher is extremely dismissive of the poem and then the girl reveals the truth…….

Jacqueline Wilson wrote some remarkable stuff before she went rather lowest common denominator and unchallenging Waiting for thr Sky to Fall, Amber, This Girl …. She seems to have redacted them from her own story now, which is a shame because they were much better than all those interchangeable girls who hanker after felt tips in her more recent stuff

I absolutely loved Lois Duncan. There was one about a girl who could levitate and pretended to be her twin sister. It was terrifying! I’m going to look that up now.

Also Mary Downing Hahn.

I loved American children and teen fiction, Judy Blume, Paula Danziger, Beverley Cleary, the Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley High (although even back then I could tell they were rubbish but enjoyed reading them with my best friend.), Christopher Pike, RL Stine, Lois Lowry (loved the character of Anastasia Krupnik!)

Tyke Tiler! That twist/reveal at the end has never been bettered.

I much preferred the St Clare's series, too. It was rougher round the edges and less polished in the writing and structure, but also less militaristic than Malory Towers. That headmistress actually seemed to know her girls. There was some revolting snobbery in there - of course, it's Blyton - and the treatment of Sheila and Eileen was particularly galling. But the way poor Gwen is singled out and has a life of misery doesn't sit easily with my adult self. Her mean, underhand tricks in the first form are pretty dreadful but there's never a repeat of those. And what's so wrong with wanting to be friends with girls who have the same values as you?

The twins were boring, as a PP points out upthread, but the new girls always provided good value for money. Rude, sulky Margery Fenworthy who didn't give a fig for authority was my favourite. She was fab!

On the face of it Theobald and Grayling look like the archetype of the wise, dignified headmistress but on closer examination they're very different. Grayling trots out the same tired cliche to new girls on arrival - 'be kind! Don't worry about passing exams! Be the wives and mothers of the future!' and after that they barely see her again. She practises favouritism and lets all manner of bullying behaviour fly. Theobald is more discerning and insightful. Alison is the prototype Gwen here. She is a decent girl but Blyton hangs on her vapid qualities and she's never allowed to grow and develop from the Miss Quentin episode.

I must just love school stories. I also liked Joan Lindsey's Picnic at Hanging Rock, where nothing much happens but poor Sara and the rapidly unravelling headmistress interest me - and Gene Kemp's The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler. That one is really undersung: you can tell its author was once a teacher.

I'm stopping typing before I drown in a tsunami of nostalgia!

So thank you to the poster who reminded me it's in a KS2 SATS paper test! I will make a point of finding and reading it as I don't want something as depressing as a SATS test to be my only reference point for a book that is clearly worth reading.

I read Great Expectations because it featured in my Eng.Lang GCSE paper.

I was more of a St Clare's girl than Malory Towers, but I do like the last Malory Towers book, where they all go off to uni and conservatoires, and setting up their own businesses, rather than just marriage.

The Flambards trilogy, anything by Penelope Lively, Carries War

I can still do this occasionally. That is why my house has more dust than it should 😉

I had the Eyes of Karen Connors by Lois Duncan but swapped it on a book swap site years ago!

@bookworm14 I still have almost all these books. As you know!

I haven’t read DLL for at least 30 years but suspect as others say that it’s aged badly. Loved it at the time though.

This is such a lovely thread which has renewed my faith in Mumsnet at a time when I’d virtually given up coming here! So many wonderful books being discussed. Other favourites from my own childhood/teen years include Joan Aiken, Jean Ure (particularly the ballet books and Play Nimrod For Him), Anne Fine, Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden, Adele Gerasʼ Egerton Hall trilogy, and the US authors Lois Duncan and Mary Downing Hahn. Lois Duncan wrote I Know What You Did Last Summer, which was (pretty loosely) adapted into the film of the same name.