School stories you read as DCs (Malory Towers/Chalet/Trebizon/Sweet Valley!) - fond memories plus in hindsight what impact did they have?

[ForkfulOfEasterEgg]

Inspired by this thread where some of us started reminiscing about school stories we'd read when we were younger and maybe still sometimes -reread--.

So partly a fun thread for discussing these books but I am interested in working out what messages you think you unconsciously took on from them.

The Chalet Shool series of which I was am a massive fan. It is really old - was written between ?1930 -1950 ish so I think I saw it as being part of a different era. Education for girls was seen as very important but all the female teachers were unmarried and stopped work if they married.

All the best characters were reserved the honour of marrying a doctor!

I went to a girls school so it was normal for me to think of girls being educated without boys.

Probably the Sweet Valley series had a bad impact on me. I loved reading these books - for escapism - I knew they were of no great literary value. All the slim girls/make up/impressing boys probably had a negative impact.

Did anyone's mums take a dim view of your reading material? Even if my Mum had read a Sweet Valley I don't think she'd have criticised it from a feminist point of view mainly as she is not a- feminist!

Are there any modern school story series featuring feminist messages ?

The Sweet Valley books were beyond awful, even as a 'tween' I remember being a bit at all the tiny waists and perfect boobs and flawlessly tanned legs and long sunkissed blonde hair, and being somehow repulsed by the whole thing. Could not like or relate to any of the characters at all.

I did love Malory Towers as mentioned on the other thread, and of course Chalet School which I read obsessively. It's amazing how much better they are from a feminist perspective than the 'modern day' Sweet Valley, considering when they were written. Yes it was fine for the Malory/Chalet girls to be pretty or rich if that's what they happened to be, but those things were very much portrayed as less important than being kind and smart and brave and 'honourable' (and being good at sports!).

And not French, Ephiny, because the French are just not honorable!

Enid Blyton did have some funny ideas about 'foreigners', I'd probably be horrified if I read her stuff now actually!

The Chalet School books were wonderfully international/cosmopolitan as I remember though, I definitely felt inspired to want to travel and learn languages!

My sister liked the SVH books and I read a couple, but they were so vapid and shallow compared to the Chalet books that I couldn't read very far into them at all.

The chalet Girls grow up read more like a lot of fanfiction would, because the characters were so out of character. Visitors for thee chalet school, set between Princess and Head Girl was much more true to the characters, probably because EBD left that outline.

We need to campaign for a reprinting of the Chalet School books. They are so hard to get hold of. I much bemoan the fact mine have "disappeared".

Some of them are being reprinted by a small company called Girls Gone By, Porto - and you can find quite a lot of them on ebay too, though there are some titles that are hard to get hold of, and quite expensive as a result. I've also found some through Abe Books (a second hand and antiquarian book site).

Abe Books are Great!!! They found The Chewy Toffee Man story for me YEARS after it went out of print!

Good point about the "best" Chalet girls getting to marry a doctor. And if you were so beautiful that you were the School Beauty you swept a member of the nobility off their feet instead.

I think i was influenced by Antonia Forest's Marlowe books. They actually made me think about Nicola's ideas of what could and couldn't be done, in morally ambiguous situations. And the contrast with how Ginty and Lawrie acted at times and the implicit criticism from the author. I couldnt have worked that out as a child but I certainly sensed the author's approval/ disapproval at times and it was thought-provoking.

And how did Anne of Green Gables come to have a cousin? Weren't both her parents only children, leaving her alone in the world etc?

Girls Gone By is fantastic. link to their site

Did anyone read the Cheerleaders series? Not as twee as they might sound. There were all sorts of girls - and boys - in the team, and they covered some fairly gritty topics. Well, gritty compared to SVH anyway (which I loved, even though I knew they were all trash :o )

Yes, another vote for GGBP - I have bought quite a lot from them. And one of my mates has had a Chalet fill-in book published by them, which I thought she made a really good job of.

I loved the Chalet School books - I had the whole set. I am glad I am not the only one who didn't like the Chalet Girls Grow Up. I thought the unrelenting misery was a bit OTT - surely one of them would have managed a not-too-miserable life?

Random piece of trivia - my great-aunt lived next door to Elinor M Brent-Dyer and apparently had a whole set of signed first editions.

I loved Enid Blyton, ranging from Famous 5 to Naughtiest girl in the school.

I liked Nancy Drew too. Although all that has really stayed with me is being slightly haunted by the description of her "plump" friend, who as far as I could gather just wasn't as stick thin as Nancy. I also remember being shocked when I realised they were written in the '50s - they seemed so relevant in the '80s.

Are You There God its me Margaret - Brilliant!
It made me ask my mum what a period was and that really upset her. She said its something older girls have and suspiciously asked why. Somehow I managed blag it so that she didn't take the book off me. I wasn't a child genius so surely if I was old enough to read a novel it might have been time to tell me? No wonder it took me several days to tell her when I actually did get my 1st period (luckily I'd been filled in by Just 17 by that point)!

SpringChicken - which fill-in Chalet School book is by your friend? I have several of them, so might have it - pm me if you don't want to name names on here - pleeease!

SDTG: It's the one about Guides and Brownies, set during the first year or so of the school. I was hugely impressed when I read it by the way she had (IMO) managed to get the tone and feel of the canon books absolutely bang on.

Actualy (head swells) I'm mentioned in the acknowledgements, too...

Oh, I loved the Chalet school books too! I liked the way that the girls all ended up speaking 3 languages and being actually quite academic/talented.

Since Anne of Green Gables has been mentioned and it's not exactly a school story, what about the Laura Ingalls books? I remember the ones when she's a teenager and her teacher is really spiteful and also crap at discipline - you're meant to dislike her. Then when Laura gets married she tells her fiance she doesn't want to promise to 'obey'. I remember that making a big impact on me but re-read it recently and what passed me by is that her fiance asks her if she's for 'women's rights' like his sister, who was the horrible teacher, and she says no, she doesn't want to vote. There's a slight 'these crazy women's rights people, they're all nuts' tone that annoys me now.