Two lost books I'd love to identify

[Bekabeech]

Okay there are two books I read as a child and would love to identify.

A) a group of young people are putting on a play/performing at a festival (not sure). Anyway some misfortune strikes. They are stranded at some random town and penniless. They meet a benefactor, who only can lend them enough to get the girls back to London/home. The boys instead stand on a bridge and choose which of two rivers/streams to follow, and the follow it acting at villages to earn their keep. (They don't realise until the end of the Novel that the town was Oxford and I believe they choose to follow the Cherwell rather than the Thames).

B) WWII a young boy escapes; possibly from a concentration camp/ on the way to one, he's possibly been previously in the Warsaw ghetto. He has various adventures, but ends up in Franco's Spain and gets into Portugal.
This is not "I Am David" or "The Silver Sword".

(A) sounds like it could be one of the Pamela Brown 'Blue Door' books, but I don't know the series well enough to say for certain...

It sounds like Blue Door Venture by Pamela Brown.

I thought it could be but I just reread it and there is none of the Oxford bit.

It's not Blue Door Venture.
That's the Blue Door Theatre company have all their panto profits stolen. The boys set off to try and find the person who stole it and (I think) the girls work to pay for their search.
It does sound very Pamela Brown though-she did write other than the Blue Door series. I wonder if it might be "Summer is a Festival".

Oh I used to love Pamela Brown books!

Me too!! Totally forgot about the Blue Door theatre company!!

I am also trying to name two children's books! Sorry to hijack!

One is American or Canadian. Its a diary - the author rates each day with a shape depending on how good or bad it is - circles and triangles and squares. She is with a single mother. She messes up cooking potatoes and has to throw them away, though her mother says she could have made soup with it. The neighbour boys are quite rough - she teaches one to read, they stand up to the bullies for her.

The other is more vague. Its kindof Lord of the Ringsy - I thought it was called the Queens music but I cant find it. The music is magical and helps them through times of struggle. It had a pale blue cover in hardback!

I'm going to try to investigate "Summer is a Festival", not much about it on the web.

No idea, but I think I'd like to read both of those! Loved Pamela Brown books (was anyone else agog that the 'kids' were deemed old enough to go out and earn money like that??). And the second book sounds right up my street.

Okay it wasn't Summer is a Festival - although I seem to have read most of Pamela Brown's books as a child, as I remembered the smoking in bed scene.

That was one thing that shocked my dc when reading Pamela Brown. The amount of the children who smoke. I can see she used it to imply that they were now older teens rather than children, but I can't think of any other author who has "good" children smoking regularly.

There is smoking in the Chalet school - although it is seen as ideally something you do after you leave school/go to the finishing branch.

At one point Madge tells frail delicate Joey to have a cigarette and settle down.

Yes there is, and various teachers do too, Mrs Wilson for one. But it is when they are portrayed as adults, whereas in the Swish of the Curtain they are still at school.

Joey also tells the triplets that she's a cracker of a punishment if they take it up before they leave school.

Wasn't there a scene in one book where the prefects, accompanied by Joey who has left school, discover some of the Middles have been smoking up on the roof after lights out.

I think being out of bed was seen as a bigger crime than smoking!

No, they weren't smoking, Fields, they were putting on a play!
I was also shocked by Joey smoking as a young adult despite her history of frail health. I guess times have changed!