Books, life the universe

Sunday 10 May 2009

More children's books

I was reading some posts on an Amazon forum today about favourite children's books and was reminded of the Chalet School stories by Elinor M Brent Dyer and the Abbey School stories by Elise J Oxenham. I think I read pretty well all of both series though I no longer have the books after various purges of my totally out of control book collection.

Of the two series I think my favourite was the Abbey School series with all those queens dressed in their hand made robes. If I can't sleep I sometimes try and recall all the queens and what their particular flowers were. It must be about 40 years since I read them! I think somewhere on the internet there is a complete list of them which I must try and find.

The Abbey School seemed to exist in a time warp but the Chalet School did reflect the world a bit more as it was, with some books being set during the last war. But it was still a charmed life with money in most cases being no object and all those huge families including sets of twins and triplets.

What I think was paramount in both these series was the very definite division between right and wrong which would probably be regarded as old fashioned today. Children were children and discouraged from behaving like adults. It is still possible to obtain many of the books in both these series second hand - some of them at huge cost.

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