general – Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories

Posted on May 10, 2026 by TracyC

The Wheel on the School

The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong, pictures by Maurice Sendak, 1954.

The story takes place in a small fishing village in Holland called Shora. Because the town is small, the local school is also very small, with only six children in the village old enough to attend. Five of them are boys: Jella, Eelka, Auka, and Pier and Dirk (a set of twins). The sixth student is Lina, the only girl. Lina is the one who gets the other students thinking about storks because she writes a story/essay about them. It wasn’t a school assignment. Lina just wrote it because she thinks that storks are interesting. It’s supposed to be good luck if a stork nests on your roof. Lina also notes that, while storks nest in other towns around them, like the one where her aunt lives, they never nest in Shora, for some reason. This starts a class discussion about storks, and the students generally agree that they know very little about storks because storks don’t live in their little village. The teacher says that, even when people don’t know much about a subject, they can still wonder about it, and he challenges the students to wonder about storks and why they don’t nest in their village. He is sure that, if the students wonder about it and think about it, they will learn the reason why the storks don’t come to their village. In fact, he lets the students out of school early so they can spend some time thinking about it. He mysteriously says that their wondering may cause things to happen.

The children are thrilled at being let out of school early, but they feel bound now to wonder about storks and why storks don’t nest in their village. They’re not sure exactly how to begin thinking about this subject or how to figure out the answer, but they take a good look around their village. They find themselves looking at familiar places like they’ve never seen them before, but after a while, some of them become restless. Eventually, the boys all run off to play, leaving Lina to wonder by herself, to her annoyance. However, while wondering by herself, Lina notices something important: that all of the roofs in town are steep and that the school has the steepest roof of all. She realizes that the steep roofs are the reason why the storks can’t nest in Shora. When she realizes that, she also realizes that she knows what to do about it. Her aunt has a wagon wheel on top of her roof, and the storks nest there. Lina realizes that, if they put a wagon wheel on top of the roof of the school, the storks would have a place to nest.

Lina is thrilled that she’s managed to figure out the answer all by herself, but since all the boys ran off, she has nobody to tell about it. Then, an elderly lady who everyone in the village calls Grandmother Sibble sees Lina and asks her what she’s doing. Lina is a little shy about talking to Grandmother Sibble, but she finds herself talking to Grandmother Sibble about the storks and what she’s realized. Grandmother Sibble says that what Lina has realized is true, but she also points out that houses in other towns have trees around them, too. That’s important because Shora doesn’t have trees. Grandmother Sibble says that, if Lina wants to really understand what storks want and need, she has to imagine what it’s like to be stork and consider how a stork would think. Lina likes that idea and starts thinking about what storks would want.

Grandmother Sibble says that, when she was Lina’s age, she was the only girl in Shora, just like Lina is now. Back then, they used to have trees in Shora, and they also had storks there. What changed Shora was that there was a terrible storm that destroyed the trees. Grandmother Sibble says that the storks haven’t returned to Shora since. Lina is surprised about Grandmother Sibble’s story, but it helps explain more about why their village is the way it is. Grandmother Sibble says it’s important to consider the whole picture of the village and everything that’s there and look at it from a stork’s point of view. Grandmother Sibble says that she’s missed the storks ever since they stopped coming to Shora, so she will think about it with Lina and consider what to do. Lina is pleased that Grandmother Sibble is as interested in the storks as she is, and she also realizes that this project has changed the way she looks at Grandmother Sibble. She now sees Grandmother Sibble, not as an unapproachable old lady but as a friend, as someone who used to be a girl very much like herself and who understands how she thinks and what she cares about.

The next day, the teacher asks the students who spent time wondering about storks and what they learned from it. Lina is irritated that the boys say that they thought about storks, too, when they all ran off to play, but the boys tell her and the teacher that they did do some thinking. Jella says that he asked his mother about storks, and his mother says that there were never storks in Shora and that there’s nothing they can do about it. Lina contradicts him, telling the class what Grandmother Sybil said. Jella is forced to admit that his mother was wrong. She probably didn’t know storks had ever been in Shora because she isn’t as old as Grandmother Sibble and wouldn’t remember when they were there. Eelka says that he also thought about trees, partly because he got wet when he was playing with the other boys and wished that there was a tree to hang his clothes on. It made him think that maybe the storks wish there were trees, too. The teacher asks them if that’s their firm conclusion that the lack of trees is the main reason why storks don’t come to Shora, but Lina says that she still thinks that the lack of wheels on the roofs is important because storks nest on the roofs, not in the trees. She thinks that, when the trees in the town died, everyone just assumed that the storks were gone for good and stopped trying to put wheels on their roofs like they used to and like people in other towns do.

As the students argue and debate about the importance of trees and wheels on the roofs, the teacher asks them what they can do to test their theories. The students realize that growing trees would take a long time, and some of them think it might be impossible because their village has too much wind and salt in the air and soil from the sea, which is why the trees they used to have died. Someone points out that one person in town has a cherry tree, but it’s small, and he won’t let anybody near it. He has a fence around it to keep people and animals away, and he scares away birds who try to take the cherries. The teacher says that the cherry tree is evidence that at least some trees can survive in Shora, if they are cared for and protected. He also tells the children that making changes and making dreams come true does take time and work, so they can’t expect results from the theories they test immediately. Still, by trying different approaches, he believes that they will learn more and that they can get storks to nest in Shora again. If they can get even one pair of storks to build a nest in Shora, they will know that they’re on the right track.

Since the idea of putting a wagon wheel on a roof is one that they can do more quickly than growing new trees, they decide to start by testing that theory. The nesting season for storks has already started, so they want to get started right away, or they’ll miss the season. Their teacher agrees to give the students time away from school to work on the project, as long as they’re willing to make up the study time later, and they agree. The teacher helps them to coordinate their search for a wagon wheel they can use. The children are sometimes distracted or tempted to go play instead of working on their project, but they quickly realize that, if they don’t focus on their task, they’ll miss their opportunity.

In the children’s quest to find a wagon wheel they can use, they learn a little more about some of the people in their little community and come to a new understanding and appreciation of them. When a big storm comes, the children worry that all of the storks will be killed and that their efforts have been for nothing, but reassurance and help comes from an unexpected source.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

The author of the book, Meindert DeJong, was born in the Netherlands, and the tradition of putting wheels on roofs for nesting storks is real. If you Google it now, it’s difficult to find a mention of it that isn’t also about this book. I have found some pictures of stork nests on wheels (including some in Alsace, where they apparently have a similar practice) and some up on special poles. It’s a fascinating tradition that, admittedly, I wouldn’t have known about or thought to look up if the book hadn’t described it. There is also another children’s book, Wheel on the Chimney by Margaret Wise Brown, that also describes this type of nest for storks.

What I really enjoyed about this book was how the teacher encouraged the students to work through the issue of why there were no storks in their town in their heads, collect observations, brainstorm different possible explanations, and test their theories. Basically, he was teaching them a simple version of the scientific method, although he never calls it that. When Lina raises the question of why there are no storks in Shora when other towns around them have storks, the teacher encourages the students to put their minds to the question, collect some observations about their town, conduct research (like asking the adults what they know about storks in their town), develop a working hypothesis (the storks need a place to nest), and conduct an experiment to test their theory (provide storks with a place to nest and see if they can get a pair of storks to build a nest there).

The teacher provides some guidance as the children go through these steps, but then, he allows the children to approach the project by themselves, only stepping in when they run into problems. In some cases, the children do run into serious problems, even putting themselves in physical danger, which shows the dangers of not drawing some limits ahead of time or providing more direct supervision, but the children do manage to work out their problems, and fortunately, nobody is seriously hurt. By the end of the book, the children have also drawn many other adults in the community into their project, often in ways that help the adults as well and bring the community closer together. In the process, the children also learn a few things about themselves and their own abilities. In some ways, it reminded me of the Christmas story Starlight in Tourrone, where a community comes together to re-create an old ritual that people in a small village have otherwise abandoned.

I appreciated how the children develop some better understanding for the adults in their community by bringing them into the project or approaching them for help, and parts of the story actively encourage the children to be empathetic and look at different situations from someone else’s point of view.

Grandmother Sibble, the first adult Lina talks to, tells Lina that, to think what would attract a stork, she has to think about the village from a stork’s perspective and consider what a stork would want and need. Lina is fascinated at the idea of thinking like a bird would, but she also comes to think a little like Grandmother Sibble when Grandmother Sibble recounts her memories of how the village used to be when she was a little girl and the great storm that destroyed their trees. Lina comes to realizes that Grandmother Sibble wasn’t much different from herself when she was a girl and that the two of them understand each other better than she thought.
Jella angers a nearby farmer by taking a wagon wheel without his permission, and the teacher helps to soothe the farmer’s feelings by getting him to remember something he did as a boy Jella’s age, so he can understand why Jella did what he did. It’s a bit eye-opening for Jella as well, to see that adults around him were once very much like himself. The teacher also persuades Jella to give the farmer some help to make up for the inconvenience he caused the farmer, and Jella and the farmer bond over a shared love of archery.
Later in the story, when the children consider approaching Legless Janus, an intimidating man in a wheelchair who has lost both of his legs and who has a reputation for having a nasty temper, Pier pauses to consider what it must be like to be Janus, how hard it would be to be confined to a wheelchair, and how that might make a person angry and temperamental. When Pier and his twin try to sneak into Janus’s garden to see if has any wagon wheels, there’s a confrontation between them and Janus, and Pier reveals to Janus some of the thoughts he had. Janus is surprised at how the children see him and the stories that they tell about him. He tells them the truth about how he lost his legs and reveals a shared interest in the children’s project that turns them from mutual antagonists into friends.

Besides the children in the story learning to think about situations from other people’s perspectives and getting to know other people better, the children also learn a few things about themselves that give them some different perspectives on their own futures. Lina often feels a little left out of things because she’s the only girl among the children old enough to go to school in their village. The boys don’t always include her with things they do because they say that girls don’t like to get their clothes wet and messy and that they cry or giggle too much. Even Lina at times wishes that, like a boy, she had less of an impulse to cry at times, and modern readers may roll their eyes at some of the story’s old-fashioned attitudes about boys and girls. With the exceptions of Lina and Grandmother Sibble, women in the story often play subordinate roles in the story, and the story refers to a male stork as being his mate’s “lord and master.” However, there are also parts of the story that prove some of those assumptions wrong. Lina does some daring things in her pursuit of the wagon wheel, and isn’t afraid to get wet or dirty while doing it. The women urge their husbands to help the children in their efforts, even in bad weather, and their support proves important and is appreciated, even when they’re not the ones leading the project. There are also times when the boys get a bit emotional or on the verge of tears, showing that the boys also have emotions, even when they try to fight them or hide them. The roles of boys and girls and men and women in the story aren’t what we typical want or expect in 21st century America, but I liked it that all of the characters are shown as being capable and that their contributions are appreciated.

Grandmother Sibble also helps Lina to see herself and her future from a new perspective. She reveals that, like Lina, Sibble was also the only girl in the village at her age. As the eldest girl of her generation in the village, Grandmother Sibble eventually became the eldest woman in the village, the “grandmother” of everyone, and eventually, Lina herself will someday be Grandmother Lina, the eldest woman in the village, telling stories about what used to be and how things have changed to younger generations. Lina isn’t just a girl but a kind of future village wise woman in the making, actively bringing about some of the changes that will later become part of village lore.

Some of the boys learn a few things about themselves, too. Eelka is a big boy who is often slow and clumsy, which is why some of the other boys, like Jella, are reluctant to let him join in games. Part of his difficulty is that he doesn’t always think things through all the way before he does them, which is how he gets into trouble in the story. Another issue is that, as the youngest of all of his brothers, he’s used to the idea that other people can do things that he can’t do. When Eelka rescues Jella from a dangerous situation, partly brought about by Eelka’s impulsiveness and the need he feels to try to tackle big jobs by himself to prove himself and partly caused by Jella’s own impulsiveness, Eelka comes to fully appreciate that he’s a lot stronger than even he knew. When he and Jella talk about it, Eelka says that his family is in the habit of thinking of him as the “baby” of the family who doesn’t know anything and can’t do things, but the truth is that people grow. Eelka isn’t a baby anymore, and he has developed strengths he didn’t know he had until he is forced to use them. He just needs to learn how to use them wisely.

The village’s shared participation in the project and the quest for a wagon wheel also brings out sides of the adults that some of them haven’t shown for years, giving them new confidence in themselves as well as greater appreciation from the village children. 93-year-old Douwa shows Lina that elderly people are sharper and can do more than she thinks they can and gets the opportunity to relive one of the most heroic escapades of his own youth. Legless Janus enjoys the most exciting adventure he’s had in years and shows that, even though he is now disabled, he has nerves of steel and an ability to take charge in an emergency. He also knows carpentry, so he creates the mount for the wheel on the school and later, he begins making new wheels for other roofs, finding a new trade to practice. He is also the one who reassures the children that reports of storks killed by the storm are exaggerated or made up because he has spent years watching birds and knows their behavior. He says that the storm probably scattered them over land, but they have instincts that would have prevented most of them from being over water when the storm was coming and that they will come resume their journey as the weather clears.

A few other concepts in the story are consideration for the environment, problem-solving, and time management. All through the story, the children are confronted with problems of various kinds, and they have to figure out how to solve them, using their own wits and whatever they have to work with. They also learn the importance of time management because they know that they don’t have long before the storks’ nesting season will be over, so they must use their time wisely, putting aside playing or other distractions to accomplish their mission. I was particularly interested in Grandmother Sibble’s description of how Lina needs to look at the whole picture of the village, what it has, and how it has changed over the years in considering why storks no longer nest there. Essentially, what’s she’s describing is the ecosystem of the village, how all of the different elements work together to either make it a hospital place for the storks or an inhospitable one. The wheel on the roof is one of the factors, but the trees (or lack of them) are also a factor, and the windy and salty conditions are further factors in the growth of trees and how friendly the environment is too wildlife. The story doesn’t use the term “ecosystem”, but that’s what this interplay of different environmental factors is. Changes to one part of the ecosystem will bring about other changes, just as the terrible storm that happened when Grandmother Sibble was young radically changed the character of the village.

There are a couple of things that readers might want to be aware of. First, there is some corporal punishment of children in the story. Janus spanks Jella badly when he tries to steal cherries from his tree, and the farmer hurts Jella’s ear when he takes his wagon wheel without permission. In 21st century America, we don’t generally encourage physical punishment, although Jella does get over these incidents and doesn’t hold it against either of them in the end. Admittedly, Jella was doing something he shouldn’t have been doing both times, and they don’t abuse him beyond the immediate incident either time. Each of them also admits after the fact that each of them might have gone a little too far in their punishment, and both Janus and the farmer do Jella favors, helping him with the wheel on the school project and teaching him how to make arrows for his bow, so the negative experiences are balanced with positive ones. Sometimes, adults in the story also use harsh insults to rebuke children, like “idiot” and “lunkhead”, which we also don’t encourage.

The presence of Janus in the story also leads both the children and readers to consider the feelings of people with disabilities and how people with disabilities would like to be treated. The children are afraid of Janus at first because he has a temper and can be pretty fierce in defending his cherry tree, but they later learn that he actually does care more about the children than his defense of his property makes them think. What Janus really wants the most is to feel useful and to show that he is still smart, strong, and capable, in spite of his disability. Later in the story, when the other men in the village get tired of Janus barking orders at them while they’re putting the wheel on the school, and one of them calls Janus a “slave-driver”, saying that he just needs a whip. Janus retorts that he doesn’t need a whip when he has a sharp tongue. He’s only slightly embarrassed at being called a “slave-driver.” It would be a very negative thing to say about someone in the 21st century US, but in some ways, it actually makes Janus feel a little better that the other men see him as being tough and not someone to be coddled or treated too carefully because of his disability. They even feel comfortable enough to joke with him about it. There is a moment when he’s a little unsure how to take a man’s comment that maybe the “shark” that got his legs should have taken his tongue instead, but when Janus sees that the man isn’t serious about it, he responds in the same bantering way, bragging that his tongue was too intimidating for the “shark”. (His legs weren’t really lost to a shark. That’s a kind of joke/village rumor.) Janus is also thrilled when one of the men makes a thoughtless comment that, if Janus isn’t satisfied with the way they’re working, he should come up on the roof and do it himself. It was a thoughtless thing for the man to say, and there’s an awkward moment when everyone remembers that Janus can’t climb up on the roof without legs. However, Janus tells the children that he’s actually pleased because the way the man made that comment shows that, for a moment, he completely forgot that Janus has no legs. Janus thinks that’s a good sign because it means that people are no longer thinking of him only in terms of his disability. He doesn’t want his disability to define him.

Toward the end of the story, the children do find some drowned storks, showing that an article the children saw in the newspaper about storks being killed in the storm wasn’t all “fake news” as Janus made it sound. At least some storks were killed in the storm. The adults in the story aren’t always right about everything. However, Janus is correct that the storks weren’t all killed. He helps the children to stage a daring rescue of a couple of exhausted storks off a sandbar before the tide comes in, saving them from drowning.

Overall, I though it was a very positive story that provides many things for young readers to think about. Sadly, as of this writing (March 2026), it is out of print. Used copies are still available, although some are a bit expensive, and libraries still have it. There is also an unofficial reading of the story on YouTube.

Posted on May 5, 2026May 5, 2026 by TracyC

The Children of Noisy Village

The Children of Noisy Village by Astrid Lindgren, 1947.

The story is told from the point-of-view of nine-year-old Lisa, a Swedish girl who has two older brothers, Karl and Bill. She and her family live on a farm that people call Middle Farm because it’s between two other farms, North Farm and South Farm. The three farms together are called “Noisy Village” because there are so many children around. The children who live on South Farm are Ulaf and his little sister Kirsten, who is only a year-and-a-half old, and North Farm has two girls, Britta and Anna, who are Lisa’s friends. Ulaf is friends with Karl and Bill. Sometimes, Lisa tries to play with her brothers, but they often tell her that she’s too little, and she sometimes thinks of the boys as a nuisance. Ulaf will sometimes play with girls, although Karl and Bill sometimes tease him about it, but there are also a limited number of children in the area to play with, so being willing to play with whoever is around is a good thing. Through the story, Lisa tells little stories and talks about the things that all of the children of Noisy Village do together.

When Lisa was younger, she used to share a room with her brothers before getting a room of her own. At night, Karl used to tell ghost stories, while Bill likes to talk about adventures. Lisa tells a story about how her brothers scared her one night with a ghost story and how they rigged up a trick to make it look like their room was haunted. Although Lisa sometimes misses the stories that her brothers used to tell her at night, she’s also relieved that she has a space of her own so she doesn’t have to put up with their pranks or them bossing her around all the time. Bill and Karl like their room because their window is close to Ulaf’s window, and the boys like to use the tree between their houses to go back and forth between the two rooms. The room that Lisa has now used to belong to her grandmother, before her grandmother moved in with an aunt. Lisa’s family remade the room for her as a present for her seventh birthday. Lisa’s room faces North Farm and Britta and Anna’s room, so the girls can send each other notes or signal to each other through their windows.

Some of the children at Noisy Village have pets, and Lisa explains how Ulaf got his dog, Skip, from the mean shoemaker, who was mistreating him. Britta and Anna don’t have any pets, but their grandfather lives with them, and the other children at Noisy Village like to visit him. Britta and Anna’s grandfather tells the children stories. One of his stories is about how he ran away from home as a boy. Inspired by the story, Lisa and Anna decide that they should have their own adventure, running away from home temporarily. However, they think that they have to run away during the night, and they both miss their opportunity because they fall asleep.

The children like to play games of pretend on their way home from school, which makes their mothers wonder what they’re doing and sometimes get them into trouble. Anna and Lisa accidentally get on people’s nerves one time, when they try too hard to follow their teacher’s advice about doing things to make people happy. They often end up doing the wrong things because they don’t know what other people really want or what people say they want doesn’t seem like enough. They finally succeed in making someone happy when they share some of their things with a girl from school who is sick.

The children’s adventures continue through the year. The people of Noisy Village have a charming, old-fashioned Christmas. At a Christmas party at a relative’s house, they play old-fashioned party games and tell stories. Lisa also describes a Swedish tradition of finding an almond in porridge, which is supposed to be a sign of marriage in the coming year. The children are allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. The boys scare the girls with some firecrackers, and Britta and Anna’s grandfather teaches the children the tradition of pouring melted lead into water to see what shapes it will form to predict what will happen in the new year. On Easter, the children paint eggs and make egg nog.

Eventually, school lets out for summer vacation. The children go swimming and catch crayfish during the summer. When they go fishing for crayfish, they camp out in the forest, near the lake, with Lisa’s father and the other men. The children make little huts to camp in. The boys try to scare the girls with stories about goblins. The children appreciate their idyllic lives in Noisy Village!

My Reaction

This book is a series of pleasant, gentle, slice-of-life stories about the children who live on a collection of small farms outside of a Swedish town, probably some time in the mid-20th century. Because there is little mention of any form of technology in countryside, it could set almost be any time in history from the 19th century to the time when it was written in the 1940s. The one thing that identified it as the 20th century for me is when they mentioned “turning on lights” in the house rather than lighting lamps. Even into the mid-20th century, not all farm houses had electricity, but it seems that these do. Other than that, these children seem to be living an idyllic, “unplugged” life in the countryside that people who are into cottagecore would aspire to! I think it would be a nice book to read children at bedtime because it’s very gentle.

I enjoyed reading about the games that the children play with each other and with their families. The children like playing games of pretend that seem to be inspired by books they’ve read. The girls play at being princesses, while the boys play at being Indians, probably American Indians (Native Americans) because one of young Bill’s ambitions is to be an Indian Chief when he grows up. We don’t really encourage playing at being “Indians” today in 21st century America because that can devolve into caricatures of someone else’s racial group (cowboys are still fair game because that’s a profession, not an ethnicity), but that sort of thing was pretty common in the mid-20th century, even outside of the United States. I’ve read British books from around the same time period that also refer to children playing at being American Indians, so it was something that seems to have captured children’s imaginations, even internationally. The children also pretend that they’re marooned or shipwrecked on a rock at one point, something else that often appears in children’s literature and is based on older books.

I particularly enjoyed some of the descriptions of Swedish holiday traditions through the year. Some of them are very similar to traditions in the United States and Britain around this time and even earlier, like in the 19th century. They have a charming Christmas with friends and family and a party with old-fashioned parlor games. I’ve heard of the tradition of finding an almond in porridge or pudding before, but I think that’s more common in Scandinavian countries than in the United States. In Britain, there are traditions associated with finding things (like a coin or a bean) in porridge or pudding, but it’s not really common in the US. Another thing that stood out to me was that Lisa said they made egg nog at Easter. In the US, people typically have egg nog at Christmas, but when I thought about it, it does make sense for Easter because of the association with eggs.

One other thing that stood out to me in the book was the little huts that the children make when they’re camping out by the lake. It reminded me of the huts that children in The Secret Summer (Baked Beans for Breakfast) made.

Posted on April 25, 2026September 25, 2025 by TracyC

Emma’s Afternoon

Emma’s Afternoon by Pamela Sykes, 1970.

Six-year-old Emma has to stay home from school during the summer term because she has measles. By the time her quarantine period is over, Emma is feeling better but is bored and restless, eager to get back to school. However, the doctor thinks she should take an extra week off school to recover further.

As Emma continues to sit at home, she knows the other children are back at school, and she can’t help but think about all the things she’s probably missing and wonder if anybody there misses her. Her mother urges her to find something to do so she’ll be happier and the time will pass faster, but Emma is in a disappointed mood and doesn’t feel like trying to make herself happy. She resists all of her mother’s efforts to cheer her up or get her involved in some activity.

Finally, her mother suggests that she could go to Streamcross, a little area with stepping stones across a stream, where Emma has been with her father before. Emma loves the spot, but she’s never been there alone before. Now, her mother thinks she’s old enough to go alone. Emma takes along her doll, Annabel, and some biscuits (cookies, because this is a British book).

Along the way, Emma has adventures. She has to rescue Annabel from a farm dog. She picks wildflowers. She falls when trying to get a look at a bird’s nest, and she gets stung by nettles. When she tries to clean her doll and the doll’s dress in the stream, she ruins the dress and almost loses Annabel in the stream!

Then, Emma meets up with, Billy, a boy from school. She hides from him because of the state she and Annabel are in, but he spots her because she’s left a few things behind, and Billy plays detective, following the clues. Fortunately, Billy doesn’t laugh at her or her doll. The two of them discover that they share a love for this special spot in the stream, and they trade secrets about it. Emma shows Billy a bird nest she found, and he shows her a hidden spring. Then, he helps Emma to get home, past the farm dog, and stays to tea at Emma’s house.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. The American title for this book was Betsy’s Afternoon. The only part of the story that was really changed for the American version was the name of the little girl.

My Reaction

At the end of the story, Emma looks back on the afternoon as being lovely. Not all of it was lovely, like her frightening encounter with the dog or ruining Annabel’s dress and almost losing her completely. During the course of the afternoon, Emma falls down, gets muddy, and is stung by nettles. Still, even when things go wrong, Emma enjoys having an independent adventure, and when she has a friend to share it with her, it gets even better. She also learns that people did miss her at school.

Emma’s adventures are relatively low-key, slice-of-life adventures, but they’re the kind of small adventures that are meaningful, especially to a young child. None of the problems she encounters are very serious, and Emma doesn’t really have any lasting consequences from them, except for ruining her doll’s dress. The dog part was a little scary at first, but Emma isn’t bitten, and Billy later explains that he knows the dog, and it never leaves its farm, so they’re in no danger. Billy is a nice friend, and the two of them appreciate the natural beauties of their favorite spot. In the end, Emma’s adventures and her meeting with a friend who feels the way she does about Streamcross are just what she needs to cheer herself up!

I enjoyed the way the author connected with Emma’s feelings and thought processes. Readers really see through the eyes of a young child – her thoughts, her frustrations, the way she solves problems, and her joy at small discoveries and accomplishments. This is a short chapter book that would be appropriate for children in early elementary school but can still be pleasing to adults.

Posted on April 20, 2026 by TracyC

The Flash Children

The Flash Children by Mabel Esther Allan, 1975.

The Briggs family moves to a new house in July, and the three Briggs children are upset about leaving their old home and friends. Their father tries to reassure them that they’ll make new friends in their new home, but ten-year-old Dilys isn’t so sure. She knows that her mother is also not happy about the move, but it can’t be helped. Her father used to be a cowman on an estate in their old town, but the estate has been sold to be turned into an army training camp, so he has to go somewhere else for a new job.

Their new home will be a cottage near a “flash”, which is a kind of salt lake. Flash Cottage, as their new house is called, turns out to be an ugly modern brick house, not at all like the charming old cottage where they used to live. Their old cottage had a beautiful garden, but this little house doesn’t have much at all. Most of the views from the house are also ugly. The embankment behind the house, where the train tracks are, makes parts of the house dark and blocks the view, and there’s a chemical plant a couple of miles away. There isn’t much else in the area to see. The bright spots of their new home are the lake and the train tracks that run near the house. The fast-moving trains make Dilys a little nervous and they also make the house kind of loud, but eleven-year-old Arthur finds them fascinating. Arthur takes a yellow bedroom at the back of the house, where he can see the trains. Dilys shares a blue bedroom with their little sister, Megan, with a view of the chemical plant in the distance. All three of the children find the house strange and ugly and wonder how they’re ever going to feel at home there.

Dilys doesn’t think she’ll ever like the new house, although she thinks it might be nice if they could go rowing on the lake. Their mother worries about the children falling in the flash because they have to travel across an unfenced causeway when coming to or leaving the house. The children will have to catch a school bus to go to the local school, and Arthur wonders what the other children in the area are like. The children hope to find some friends because, if they don’t, they don’t really know what they’ll do with themselves. There doesn’t seem to be much in the area to do for fun.

The Briggs children meet a boy and girl about their age on their first day at the new house, but the meeting doesn’t go well at first. Arthur stops the other boy and girl from throwing rocks at some ducks. Dilys warns him about making enemies of people because they need some friends in their new home, but Arthur can’t stand to see people being cruel to animals. The other boy and girl already know who the Briggs children are because they were told they would be coming, but Arthur surprises them with a Welsh phrase. The Briggs children’s mother is Welsh, and they grew up near Wales. The boy, whose name is Dan Brown, thinks at first that Arthur was speaking French, but his sister, Edith, recognizes the phrase as Welsh because someone told her that the family was part Welsh. Dan and Edith argue about it, and Arthur asks them if they often argue with each other. The Brown kids admit that they do because there just isn’t that much else to do in the area. Boredom is also the reason why they tease animals, and because they tease animals, they’ve been banned from Colonel Melling’s farm, where Mr. Briggs will now be working with the cows. Sometimes, when they have money, they can take a bus to town to find other things to do, but they don’t always have the money to do that.

Mr. Briggs tells the children that the Brown children are the nearest children in the area. Their mother is dead, and they have an aunt looking after them. Their father also works at Colonel Melling’s farm. The Briggs children aren’t sure that they like the Brown children or want to be friends with them, but they might be their best or only option for friends at all. Their father persuades them to give the Brown children a chance, but Dilys wonders if, before long, they’ll all be so bored that they’ll start throwing rocks at ducks, too.

School isn’t too bad once it starts. Dilys meets another girl she likes, but unfortunately, the other girl lives too far away to see easily when they’re not in school. Some other kids at school tease another new boy named Brian because he’s partially blind. Dan and Edith turn out to be among the worst bullies, and Arthur and Dilys get so angry with them that they get into a fight. Dilys tells Edith that she’s ashamed of how she acts, she thinks it’s disgusting, and she wishes Edith would turn deaf so she can see what it’s like to live with a disability. The other kids back down rather than fight Arthur, and surprisingly, Edith is actually a little embarrassed when she sees how angry and disgusted Dilys is with her. It seems like the behavior of the local kids is as rough and ugly as the area where they live, but Dilys finds herself interested in Brian because he seems to be a different type of person.

Mrs. Briggs is as homesick as the kids for where they used to live, but she starts to make friends with Miss Brown, the aunt looking after Dan and Edith. Mrs. Briggs says that Miss Brown is a nice lady, but she doesn’t entirely know how to cope with the children, and Dan and Edith often misbehave and make trouble. She’s only been living with her brother and the children since their mother died last year.

One day, Dilys and Arthur go exploring, and they find an unexpected green area down a road that makes them feel more like home. They get caught in a sudden storm, so they take shelter under a railway bridge, where they meet Dan and Edith, also taking shelter. They start talking more about the area and places to explore, and Dan and Edith say that they can’t go down by Mr. Lowe’s farm anymore. Arthur asks them why, and they admit that they stole some plums from him and left his gate open, so the livestock got out. Arthur and Dilys can see why Mr. Lowe would be angry, but Dan and Edith defensively add that they didn’t leave the gate open on purpose. They just forgot to close it because Edith got stung by a wasp and was upset, but Mr. Lowe won’t believe them. They say it’s a pity because the area is much more interesting over there. There’s an old manor house, a stream, and a ruined mill over that way.

Things change for the children when Dilys, Arthur, and Megan befriend an artist who lives in a cottage nearby, John Zachary Laurie, and he’s a friend of Colonel Melling. He takes them out rowing on the flash and talks to them about how they like their new home. The Briggs children confide in him how unhappy they’ve been since they moved to the area because everything is so ugly, but the artist points out that it’s not really an ugly place. He says he finds it fascinating to paint because it has certain “dramatic effects.” When he shows them his pictures, they’re very different from the kind of pictures that the children are accustomed to seeing. Rather than conventional flowers and pretty landscapes, they are filled with angles and a lot of grays and browns, but with unexpected dashes of color. They’re unmistakably pictures of the area, but not in a way the children usually see it. The landscape in the paintings is familiar but strange, ugly but also oddly enchanting. John Laurie even gives them one of his paintings, the one he did of their new house, Flash Cottage. He says he knows the children hate the house now, but he thinks it has interesting angles, and if they learn how to look at things a little deeper, they’ll see more than they do now.

Although Dilys isn’t quite sure that she understands it, she begins to feel what the artist is talking about. Things that are strange start to feel familiar, and even in the ugliness of the landscape and the picture of their house, she begins to feel a sense of fascination and attraction. It’s not exactly pretty, but it is compelling.

When school lets out for the summer, the Briggs children once again find themselves bored and lonely. The few other children they like don’t live close to them, like Dan and Edith, and the Briggs children still think Dan and Edith are pains and troublemakers. Looking for something to do, Arthur, Dilys, and Megan decide to explore the old manor house that Dan and Edith mentioned.

It turns out to be a beautiful place, although it’s old and deserted. To their surprise, they discover that the property actually belongs to Brian’s family, the Pelverdens. They live in a little cottage behind the old manor house. Brian has a little sister, Mellie (short for Melinda), who would be a good friend for Megan, but Brian seems less than pleased that Arthur and Dilys have discovered where he lives. Brian’s father explains that they haven’t been living here long. The manor house has been in the family for generations, but it’s fallen into ruin because they haven’t had the money to maintain it for a long time. They only recently inherited the place themselves when Brian’s grandfather died. The Pelverdens don’t expect to ever live in the manor house themselves, but their hope is that, if they get it sufficiently repaired, they might have it registered and preserved as a historic building and get a grant to maintain it. The Briggs children eagerly volunteer their services to help with the project over the summer. They have nothing else to do, and they still miss the garden from their old cottage, so helping to replant the manor garden would be fun for them. The Pelverdens’ cottage and the crumbling old manor house are more beautiful to them than anything else they’ve seen since they moved, and they feel more like home.

Mellie is immediately happy to have found a friend in Megan, but Arthur and Dilys find it harder to make friends with Brian. Brian has known all of his life that he’s different from other kids because of his vision problems, and he’s used to people treating him differently or making fun of him. He tries very hard to be as “normal” as he can and prove to everyone that he can do things other kids can do. Because he feels like he has something to prove to everyone, he’s often less friendly than he could be, but Dilys is determined to earn his trust.

However, Dan and Edith are still problems. The Briggs children fight them off one day when they catch them teasing the Briggs’s cat. Edith is offended that the other kids keep telling them everything they do is wrong. Then, another day, they show up at the old manor house and break a window by throwing rocks. When the Briggs children and Mr. Pelverden confront Dan and Edith about what they’ve done, Dilys come up with a plan that might solve the Dan and Edith problem and prevent them from making further trouble.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. There is a sequel to this book called The Flash Children in Winter, which is about the children experiencing their new home in autumn and the lead up to their first Christmas there.

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

I thought this book was interesting because it has aspects of a cottagecore style story, but there are parts of it that contrast with the typical cottagecore aesthetic. The main characters in the story, the Briggs children, have come from an environment that would be like a cottagecore dream: an actual old cottage with a beautiful garden attached to an old manor house, where they were allowed to help out. Then, they have to move to a far more plain and conventional house in an ugly area with a view of a chemical plant. It’s understandable that they would feel badly about the move. Moving and starting over again would be difficult for anybody, but most people would find their new environment downright depressing, especially after hearing what their old home was like.

When they find out that Brian’s family lives in a cottage and is renovating their old manor house to turn it into a historic site, the story goes back to the charming sort of environment the children come from. However, it’s not just about the children finding a way back to the kind of environment that has the beauty and charm they crave but also learning to see what makes different types of environments fascinating, even enchanting. The Flash Cottage isn’t a real cottage, and it’s not as pretty as their old home, but after talking to the artist and looking at things from an artist’s viewpoint, taking into account the features of a place that make it unique, Dilys comes to see how a shift in perspective can make many different environments more attractive, in their own way.

Learning to get along with Dan and Edith also involves finding a different perspective and a different way of dealing with them. It’s not just about seeing the good side of Dan and Edith as they are. Frankly, the two of them are pain-in-the-butts. Dilys realizes that their problem is that they are thoughtless. They don’t think about other people, how the things they do affect anyone else or make them feel. Their thoughts begin and end with themselves. They’re bored and feel unwanted at home since their mother’s death, so they cause trouble because they just can’t seem to think anything else to do. Personally, I don’t think either Dan or Edith is very intelligent or imaginative because intelligence could be used to reason out why people react to them the way they do and a little imagination would help them put themselves in other people’s position or help them think of different things to do or ways to approach other people. However, Dan and Edith don’t do any of those things on their own. It never even seems to occur to them that they could. They only get upset when other people are unhappy with them and seem totally unable to understand why.

Even though Dan and Edith don’t seem either very bright or very considerate, it does occur to Dilys that they could learn to be helpful if someone actually set them tasks to do to keep them busy. At her persuasion, Mr. Pelverden and the other children allow Dan and Edith to join their efforts to clean up the manor. Dan and Edith are actually eager to accept the opportunity to help out with the others because they are incredibly bored and seriously need something to do and people to be with. When the others are dubious about whether they’ll actually do any helping or if they even know how to help, they try to prove that they can do things that are useful for a change. It also proves educational for Dan and Edith because, in helping to clean up the manor, they’re also forced to face damage they have caused themselves and begin to realize how things they’ve been doing have caused trouble and made extra work for other people. They’re not used to seeing themselves as other people see them or dealing with the consequences of their actions, and it’s an eye-opening experience for them. Later, they all have to face off against a motorcycle gang that comes to vandalize the manor, and Dan and Edith have come to see where their loyalties really lie and what menaces people can be when they act like they used to.

The story ends happily for the children and for the manor, which is going to be preserved. The Briggs children feel more at home in their new home, Dan and Edith have greatly reformed, and Brian has learned to be more open with people about his disability, so other people come to understand him better and treat him more kindly. Some of the people who made fun of him before admit that they didn’t understand just how bad his vision was, so they didn’t know why he seemed to struggle so much. Dilys still tells off those kids for not having figured it out, but at the same time, she is the one who tells Brian that he has to make things clear to people and not try to pretend that his condition doesn’t exist or that he doesn’t need some help when he actually does.

The author, Mabel Esther Allan is also a very interesting person. During her life, she wrote more than 100 books for children, under different pen names. She struggled with vision problems of her own when she was young, which was part of the inspiration for Brian in the story. During WWII, she worked was part of the British Women’s Land Army, and she also worked as a teacher.

Posted on December 7, 2025December 7, 2025 by TracyC

Winter Cottage

Winter Cottage by Carol Ryrie Brink, 1939, 1968.

The Vincents own a summer cottage in Wisconsin. It was once an old farmhouse, so it is well-insulated and can be heated during the winter, but the Vincents only use it for about 2 or 3 months in the summer. The rest of the time it is empty and used by animals, like mice and woodchucks. However, that’s about to change.

The year is 1930, the Great Depression has started, and many people are out of work and desperate to provide for their families. One such family, a father with his two daughters, happens to be passing near the Vincents’ empty summer house in the middle of October, when the Vincents have already long left the house, when their car suddenly breaks down. They were originally on their way to an aunt’s house to stay with her, but with their car broken down, they’re unable to continue their journey. Mr. Sparkes is a pleasant and easy-going man but impractical and a failed plumber. His eldest daughter, Minty, tends to deal with the practical aspects of things. Minty’s younger sister, Eglantine, called Eggs as a nickname, is the first to notice the empty summerhouse and suggests that, if they could get in, they could make some food. Needing a place to stay for the night and finding a window unlocked, they decide that they’ll go ahead and stay in the house. Although Minty has some reservations about staying in a house that belongs to someone else without their permission, she doesn’t have any better options, and she soon gets caught up in the excitement of exploring this unfamiliar house.

Mr. Sparkes feels like a failure because he’s been in and out of work, and typical jobs just don’t seem to suit him. Their Aunt Amy, the sister of the girls’ deceased mother, thinks that Mr. Sparkes is a failure and a silly, impractical man because he’s always quoting poetry, and his main talent seems to be making his special pancakes. There is some truth to what Aunt Amy says, and Mr. Sparkes acknowledges it. It seems like his only real talent is for making incredible pancakes, although his daughters reassure him that they love him and don’t see him as a failure. They were traveling to stay with Aunt Amy because they have no one else to stay with, but it’s clear from Aunt Amy’s letter that she isn’t looking forward to their arrival, and she also would not welcome their dog, Buster. Eggs says that she wishes they could just stay in this lovely cottage all winter, and Minty wishes the same thing, although she knows it isn’t really right for them to stay in this house without the owners’ permission. Mr. Sparkes likes the cottage, too, because it has a wonderful collection of books, including books of poetry.

The next day, Mr. Sparkes tries to fix the car, but he’s a terrible mechanic. He takes the engine apart and doesn’t know how to put it back together. The girls go to a neighboring farmhouse and ask if anybody there knows anything about cars. Mrs. Gustafson sends her son Pete with the girls to look at the car, and he manages to put the engine back together again, but he isn’t skilled enough to figure out how to fix the original problem. He says that they had better call a mechanic in town to tend to it and that it would likely cost them about $10. The girls are worried because they know that’s about how much money they have left, and if they spend it all fixing the car, they won’t have enough left to buy more supplies and travel all the way to where Aunt Amy lives.

When they explain the situation to their father, Mr. Sparkes says that he thinks they should just stay in the cottage for the winter. Minty says that isn’t right because the house doesn’t belong to them, but their father says that it isn’t doing the owner any good to leave it empty all winter. To make it right, he suggests that they could rent it, so the owner would profit from their stay. The girls ask where he would get the money to rent the house, and their father says he doesn’t know, but he’ll have all winter to think of something. When they leave the cottage in the spring, he plans to leave the money in the cottage with a note, explaining why they stayed there. The girls are relieved that they don’t have to go to Aunt Amy’s house, but Minty is concerned that, by spring, her younger sister and impractical father will have forgotten all about the rent money for the cottage, and she makes up her mind that she will think of a way to get the money herself.

Eggs comes up with a possible way to make some money when she shows her father a contest magazine that she found at the last place where they camped. There are various contests in the magazine that offer prizes, like prizes for solving puzzles or adding the last line to a limerick. Mr. Sparkes is intrigued by the contests, and he says that they can pass the winter by trying them. He’s particularly interested in the contest to write a poem to advertise butter because he loves poetry and the prize is $1,000, which is an enormous sum to them.

Life in the cottage is idyllic. They have some groceries with them to get themselves started, and their father enjoys fishing in the nearby lake for more food. The girls find nuts and cranberries, and their father cuts wood for the stove in the cottage. Minty takes charge of the house, making sure that they keep it neat for the Vincents. The girls learn that the Vincents are the ones who own the house and that they have a daughter called Marcia when they find some of Marcia’s belongings. Sometimes, Minty and Eggs think of Marcia as a friend, and Minty sort of idealizes her in her imagination. Minty likes to imagine the comfortable life she thinks Marcia lives, wherever her family lives in the winter, and she is determined that they won’t let her down by not taking care of the cottage or finding a way to pay the rent.

Then, Mr. Sparkes gets sick, and the girls are frightened because they don’t have much medicine and don’t know what to do. They try to get help from Mrs. Gustafson, but she’s away from home. As Minty is leaving the Gustafson farm, she happens to meet a boy who’s been hunting partridges, and in her desperation, she begs him for help. At first, he is surly and suspicious with her, but when he begins to understand the situation, he agrees to come have a look at her father. The boy, whose name is Joe Boles, is carrying a professional-looking medical kit and seems to know what he’s doing as he attends to Mr. Sparkes. The girls are grateful for his help, and they invite him to spend the night in a spare room in the cottage.

It turns out that Joe is also down on his luck. His father was a doctor, and the medical kit Joe carries used to belong to him. He gets his basic knowledge of medicine from his father and from his grandmother’s home remedies. Joe also wants to be a doctor, but he’s alone now and doesn’t know how he’s going to manage to get the medical training he really wants. Although he’s initially reluctant to explain how he came to be alone, he explains that his father was killed in a car accident. His mother is still alive, but she remarried to a man Joe can’t stand. Eventually, Joe just couldn’t take living with him anymore, so he ran away from home. Joe tells the family that he’s been camping in the woods. Running away from home may not have been the best decision Joe could have made, but he’s determined not to go back, and the family can’t criticize him too much because they’re also sort of running away and hiding out right now.

Joe seems to know what to do to help prepare the cottage for winter, and Mr. Sparkes says that they could use his help around the place. However, Mr. Sparkes admits to Joe that he can’t do much more for Joe than just give him a place to say for the winter, and a borrowed place at that. Joe says that’s fine, and he would like to stay with them for the winter, and he would be willing to pay for his room and board with his labor. The Sparkes family is thrilled to have Joe stay with them and help them. The only point that Mr. Sparkes insists on is that Joe write a letter to his mother to tell her that he’s safe so she won’t worry about him. He says that Joe doesn’t have to be specific about where he’s staying right now, but he knows that Joe’s mother will feel better, knowing that he has somewhere to stay for the winter.

With Joe, Minty and her sister explore the area more and visit the nearby Indian (Native American) reservation. Eggs is a little nervous about the Indians (the term the book uses) at first, worrying about scalping, but Joe tells her not to worry and that the locals are just curious about them. Joe worries less about people recognizing him as a runaway in the reservation village than in the town nearby because it’s a little more remote, although they do accidentally meet the local sheriff in the reservation store, who recognizes Minty from an earlier shopping trip to town. Joe does his best to stay inconspicuous.

While they’re in the reservation store, they learn that the reason why the sheriff is there is that the storekeeper’s son is in trouble. The son, who is a young man in his 20s, got drunk, broke into somebody’s house, ate some of their food, and fell asleep in their bed. The young man’s father argues with the sheriff that the son didn’t actually steal anything from the house, but the sheriff says that what he did was trespassing and that it’s illegal to break into someone’s house, stay there, and use their things without permission. He says that, for that charge, the son will have to spend a week in jail. This incident is troubling to Minty because she knows that she and her family also don’t have permission to use the house where they’re staying, and they’ve been there longer than this young man was in the house where he trespassed. When the sheriff points out that the weather is getting bad and offers to take the kids home, Minty panics at the idea of him finding out where they’re staying and tells him that they plan to spend the night at the reservation.

Of course, the kids don’t really have a place to stay on the reservation, and the weather is bad for camping. They are rescued by the village priest, who says that Joe can stay with him, and the girls can stay with Sister Agnes, one of the nuns who runs the mission school on the reservation. (“Indian schools” like this have a rather scandalous reputation these days for reasons I can explain below.) Minty says that they don’t have any money to pay for a place to stay, but Sister Agnes says that doesn’t matter because “God is your host.” In other words, they’re offering the children a place to stay out of kindness and Christian charity and don’t expect payment. There are some Native American children who also board at the school, some because their houses are too far away for them to travel back and forth between home and the school daily and a couple of children who are orphans and live at the school full time.

There is a scene where some of the Indians are playing drums and dancing, but not the ones living at the school. One of the nuns says that the dancers are “heathen Indians” and that “our Christian Indians don’t dance,” although Minty can tell that the Indian students at the school are feeling the rhythm of the song and enjoying it. Joe takes Minty and Eggs to see the dancers, and they find it fascinating. I didn’t like the “heathen” talk (although I think it’s probably in keeping with the historical setting of the story), but I did appreciate an observation that Minty makes, “Indeed it seemed to be a not entirely un-Christian gathering, for here and there among the gaudy beads was the gleam of a cross on the neck of some forgetful dancer.” That observation contradicts the idea that the dancers aren’t Christians because at least some of them seem to be. That and Minty’s observation that the girls at the school were interested in the dancing and drumming but were being careful not to show it hints at more complex feelings and social dynamics in this village. The people who run the school have some strong opinions about how proper Christians should act, but the Native Americans are still maintaining some traditional practices, and some people are walking a fine line in what they practice and believe.

One of the Indian girls at the dance invites Eggs to join in, and she does. Minty finds that amusing, and Joe tells her to let Eggs have fun because she’s enjoying herself. Sister Agnes asks them later if they enjoyed the dance, and Eggs says she did. Eggs later says that it seems like they don’t have much to do on the reservation, with no “picture shows” (movies) to see and not many toys, so she thinks that the dancing is part of their entertainment. Sister Agnes says, “They are heathen, but God will forgive them.” Minty isn’t too concerned about whether or not the dance might be “heathen” or sinful, but what Sister Agnes says makes her think about what God must think of her family for living in someone else’s house. She hadn’t given it much thought before, but she knows God must know what they’re doing, even if nobody else does, so she prays that He will forgive them, too, and thanks Him for being their host. Before they leave the reservation the next day, a girl Eggs befriended gives them a basket of wild rice, and Eggs give the girl her doll in trade.

When the kids return to the Vincents’ cottage, Mrs. Gustafson is there, visiting with Mr. Sparkes. Mrs. Gustafson seems to accept the idea that they’re renting the house from the Vincent family, although Minty is nervous when she mentions that she writes to them sometimes. Mrs. Gustafson also warns them to beware of strangers because, sometimes, gangster and criminals hide out in the isolated cottages in the area when things get too hot for them in Chicago. Joe has heard stories about that, too.

When the family starts getting replies to their contest entries, the results are disappointing. Many of the contests have catches because they expect entrants to buy things or subscribe to things. There is another contest that they hear about on the radio from a flour company, offering a large cash prize for the best breakfast recipe. Minty thinks that sounds better than any of the other contest options because of her father’s wonderful secret pancake recipe, although her father has become disillusioned with contests. They don’t have much time left to enter that contest, and Mr. Sparkes is reluctant to share the secret recipe. The kids end up spying on Mr. Sparkes to learn his recipe so they can enter the contest on his behalf.

Then, one night, they see a man lurking outside the cottage in a blizzard. Minty warns her father not to let the man in, remembering Mrs. Gustafson’s warnings about criminals hiding out in the area and how they shouldn’t open the door for strangers. However, Mr. Sparkes worries about anyone who might be lost in the blizzard, and he has the children invite the man in. The man has a young girl with him, who is half-frozen and dressed as a boy, for some reason. When Minty realizes that the child is a girl and not a boy, the girl asks her not to tell anyone right away. Minty can tell that there’s something strange about this father and daughter pair, and it makes her uneasy. Then, Minty hears a report on the radio about a stolen car and a reward for information leading to the thieves. Is it possible that this man and his daughter are the ones who stole the car? Minty might consider turning them in for the reward money that her family badly needs, but with the blizzard, they’re now trapped in this cottage with this strange man and the girl. The girl, who goes by the name Topper, is fun and good at planning entertainment, but can she or her father really be trusted?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

This book isn’t a Christmas story, although the title and some of the themes would have set it up well to be a Christmas story. It fits well with cottagecore themes, with the family, down on their luck, staying the winter in a cozy cottage and getting by as well as they can, enjoying simple pleasures. There’s a line in the story that I particularly liked, toward the end of the book, when the children put on a shadow play for their fathers:

“What a lot of fun you could have, Minty discovered, if you made unimportant things seem important and went about them with enthusiasm!”

I think that sentiment embodies the spirit of cottagecore. To really enjoy some of the simple pleasures of life, you do have to put yourself into the mindset that you’re going to enjoy them to the fullest! I read a book about Victorian parlor games that said something similar. A lot of old-fashioned entertainment and games are quite silly when you analyze them, but if you just throw yourself into them whole-heartedly, they can be great fun!

The family in the story is down on their luck and has their troubles, but their stay in the winter cottage is still an adventure, and they enjoy it. Their consciences do trouble them throughout the story because they’re aware that they’ve been using the cottage without permission of the owners. Minty in particular considers the morality of their actions and has a desire to make things right with the owners of the cottage. Fortunately, the story ends happily for the family, with their lives changed for the better. The people who own the cottage find out about them staying there, but they forgive them, and Minty finds a way to repay them for letting them stay.

Native Americans

The part of the story that I think is most likely to cause controversy for modern readers is the part where the children visit the reservation and the mission school. “Indian schools” have a sinister reputation in modern times because of their harsh treatment of their students and deliberate attempts to eliminate Native American culture. In the book, the nuns at the school make it clear that they don’t approve of traditional Native American practices, like the dance the children watch, because they don’t consider them to be Christian. They call such practices “heathen.” Their focus on discouraging their students from participating in traditional cultural practices is based on religious differences and a desire to convert people strictly to Christianity. However, I appreciated that Minty and the other children see both sides of the story and that Minty observes that some of the Native American dancers are wearing crosses, showing that the actual beliefs among the Native Americans are more nuanced than the nuns’ attitudes suggest.

This part of the story has some use of the word “squaw“, which is problematic because it has vulgar and derogatory connotations. The exact definition of the word varies in different Native American languages, but because it is considered vulgar and derogatory, modern people avoid it. At the time this story was first published, in the mid-20th century, many white people had the idea that “squaw” was sort of a generic word for women among Native Americans and didn’t realize the more vulgar side of the word, which is why it appears in some old children’s books, like this one. The word isn’t meant to be intentionally insulting here, although modern readers should understand that this word isn’t polite or appropriate. Apart from that, I appreciated how the main characters, especially Minty, see some of the prejudiced ways people, especially the nuns at the school, look at the Native Americans and their traditions and their realization that there are sides to their culture and practices that the adults have overlooked.

Posted on September 15, 2025 by TracyC

A Sweet Girl Graduate

A Sweet Girl Graduate by Mrs. L. T. Meade, 1891.

Don’t let the cover of this book fool you! Yes, it’s a 19th century novel for young girls, and there’s a strong morality aspect to the story, which is common for Victorian novels, but the story is not nearly so sweet and flowery as the cover indicates. This book is Dark Academia over 100 years before the term “Dark Academia” was coined and the genre/aesthetic became what it is today.

The story begins on an autumn evening. Priscilla (often called Prissie as a nickname) lives in a small country cottage with her aunt and her younger sisters, and she is packing to go to a college for young ladies. Her aunt isn’t sure about this recent trend of girls getting an education, but she is still proud of her niece. They discuss some last-minute advice for Priscilla, and although her aunt doesn’t have much money, she promises her a little extra as an allowance while she’s away. Priscilla says that she’ll write to her aunt, although probably not very often because she will be busy studying.

Priscilla’s three younger sisters will be remaining at the cottage with their aunt while she is away. Aunt Rachel, called Aunt Raby, is very strict, and the girls aren’t allowed to have much fun, so Priscilla’s sisters will miss her while she is away. Priscilla says that she will be at college for three years, and that she will visit when she can, at least once a year. Then, when she graduates, she will look for a good job so she can make a home for herself and her sisters together.

The younger sisters don’t entirely know it yet, but the stakes are high in the success of Priscilla’s education. Their father died when Priscilla was only 12, and their mother died when she was 14, which is when they moved in with their aunt. That was four years ago because Priscilla is now 18. There was a bank failure before their parents’ death which wiped out their savings, so the sisters have been entirely dependent on their aunt and her farm for support. The aunt works hard and has provided for their basic needs, although the family has no luxuries, and there was never really any expectation that the girls would have any education at all. However, Priscilla loves to read and has a talent for learning, so she has been teaching her younger sisters as best she can. The local minister, noticing Priscilla’s talent for learning and feeling fatherly toward her, has given her some extra tutoring in the classics, and he is pleased at how well she has managed the material.

The problem is that the girls’ aunt is now ill. She will not die from her illness immediately, but there is no cure for what she has (which is never explicitly named), and she and Priscilla know that she will die from it eventually. Over a period of two or three years, she will gradually become weaker, and she is already showing signs of that weakness. The aunt’s farm is legally entailed for another relative, so Priscilla and her sisters will not inherit anything from her and will have to find some way of making their own living after their aunt is gone. Priscilla goes to the minister and explains the situation, saying that she will have to stop her lessons and begin seriously learning skills that will help her find a job and support her sisters. She regards learning as a luxury that she will now have to go without.

Her first thought is that she should improve her sewing and become a dressmaker, but the minister can see that she doesn’t have much talent in that direction. He tells her that, besides being a pleasure, learning can also be a means of making a living. He thinks that Priscilla has the talent to become a teacher because of her learning ability and her skill in teaching her sisters. However, to become a teacher, Priscilla will need to attend college and graduate. At first, Priscilla doesn’t see how she can afford college, but her aunt sells her watch and the little jewelry she has, and the minister helps her take out a loan to pay for her education. He also helps Priscilla to study to pass the entrance examinations at St. Benet’s College for Women. Priscilla will need to do well in college for her sake and for the sake of her sisters’ future. People are depending on her, and she doesn’t want their help and sacrifices for her to have this chance in life go unrewarded.

The rest of the book is about Priscilla’s first year at college. During that time, she suffers from homesickness and social awkwardness because she has not been schooled in the intricacies of social manners and social classes. She confronts prejudice from the other students because she is poor, and they pressure her to act like they do and spend money as recklessly as they do. Priscilla has to learn to resist these pressures and temptations. It isn’t too difficult for her because she finds many of the girls at college to be shallow and not serious about her studies, and she doesn’t really admire them. However, she is soon befriended by a girl named Maggie, who is outwardly charming but inwardly miserable and complex.

Maggie’s friendship is often toxic to other girls, and Priscilla can see that she isn’t always honest and that she is not as devoted to other people as they are to her. She uses people for attention and affection, but Priscilla becomes fascinated with Maggie because she comes to realize that Maggie has layers and some of them are genuinely noble. For reasons that Priscilla doesn’t fully understand, Maggie is deeply troubled by the death of another student who once lived in the room that Priscilla now has at their boarding house. It seems like everyone at the boarding house is haunted by memories of Annabel Lee, and Maggie was once Annabel’s best friend. Maggie is moody and fickle in her temperament, and she hasn’t been truly close to many people since Annabel died, although she can charm people into do giving her attention and doing things she wants them to do. Priscilla has to be careful not to let Maggie manipulate her into getting into trouble, but she also benefits from Maggie’s friendship and has a way of bringing out Maggie’s better side.

During the course of the story, Priscilla has to face girls who don’t really want her at the college and who try to sabotage her socially and pressure her to leave. She also has to remind herself of her goals and the reasons why she came to college. When Priscilla is accused of a theft, both she and Maggie receive help from some mutual friends to realize the truth of what happened and the identity of the real thief, and Maggie is forced to confront a painful incident from her past that is still haunting her and which is the major reason why she acts the way she does.

There’s a lot more to unpack here, and I want to cover the story in more detail. If you’d like to stop here and read it for yourself, you can skip the rest of this.

The book is now public domain. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive (multiple copies, including an audio version). Later versions of this book were published under the title Priscilla’s Promise.

First Evening in The “Haunted” Boarding House

When Priscilla gets to college, she settles into her boarding house, which called Heath Hall and is run by Miss Heath. It isn’t until she gets to the boarding house that Priscilla realizes just how nervous and homesick she is. Because of her nervousness and the strangeness of living in a new place, she doesn’t present herself very well to the other students at first.

When she clumsily drops a coin, another student, Maggie, picks it up for her, and this is their first introduction. Maggie can tell right away that Priscilla is nervous and frightened, and her immediately impulse is to take Priscilla under her wing. Nancy, Maggie’s best friend, cautions her about how she treats new students. There are other students Maggie has been friends with when they first arrive, but she treats them like novelties. She acts like a friend and mentor for a couple of weeks, winning the girls’ confidence and making it seem like the start of a lifelong friends, and then tires of them and simply drops them. Nancy doesn’t think it’s right for Maggie to do this to the new girls, although Maggie brushes off her concerns. Nancy likes Maggie because she can be very sweet and fun, but she also recognizes that Maggie can be trouble, and she is sure that Maggie is going to recklessly cause some problems before she is finished with her education.

Maggie and Nancy notice that there is someone moving into the bedroom next to Maggie’s in the boarding house, and Maggie is upset because that room belonged to Annabel Lee. Annabel Lee was another student at the boarding house who was very popular with the other girls, but she tragically died of an illness. Nancy is practical and says that they couldn’t very well expect that room to be simply left vacant now that Annabel is no longer there. It’s just natural that the boarding house would rent it out to someone else eventually. Maggie is more emotional and says that they ought to have left it as a shrine to Annabel and that she is sure that she will hate the person who lives there. Nancy sighs, and when Maggie goes into her room, Nancy decides to introduce herself to the person who now occupies Annabel’s room, who turns out to be Priscilla.

Priscilla is unaware of who Annabel was, and she is still struggling with her nervousness and homesickness. Because Priscilla is trying to cover up for how nervous and awkward she feels, her manner just strikes Nancy as being cold and awkward, which makes Nancy feel awkward while talking to her. Nancy briefly introduces herself but doesn’t stay to chat long, although Priscilla secretly wishes that she had.

Priscilla continues to make mistakes through her first evening at the school. When she goes down to dinner, she enters the dining hall through the door that is normally reserved for the dons (teachers), and she sits at a table where the higher level students normally sit instead of with the other freshmen. Other students in the dining hall start talking about the nerve of some freshmen, getting above themselves, but Priscilla nervously isn’t sure what they’re talking about. Fortunately, Maggie decides to step in and help Priscilla.

Maggie sits next to Priscilla and gently explains to her what she did wrong. Miss Heath gave Priscilla a list of rules when she moved into her new room, and there was nothing about any of this in those rules. Maggie explains that there are certain, unspoken rules and customs among the students. Even though the students are supposed to be modern, liberal, and democratic by the standards of their day as part of this new generation of women seeking a higher education, Maggie admits that, deep down, they are still very conservative. She says this classist side of themselves shows itself whenever someone breaks their unspoken rules and social customs or steps out of their proper place. Priscilla thinks that the students at this school are cruel if they expect someone new to know rules that aren’t written or spoken about and that she is starting to wish she hadn’t come. Maggie hurriedly soothes her, saying that they’re not really that bad, and she invites Priscilla to her room to talk later so she can explain some things to Priscilla that she will need to know.

Nancy also steps in and tells Priscilla that most of the students take their tea up to their rooms after the meal, asking her if she would like to do the same. Priscilla, still nervous, decides that she will skip the tea tonight. Nancy says that, since this is the first night, she will want to spend the rest of the evening unpacking and that other girls in the boarding house will come to call on her. Priscilla asks her why they’re going to do that. Having lived on a farm, in a family that wasn’t very socially active, Priscilla knows less about social manners than she does about anything else. She isn’t accustomed to informal visits from people. Visits for her are usually more formal occasions, and she particularly has no idea what she’s going to say to these strangers who will be coming to call on her. Nancy, seeing that Priscilla is nervous and doesn’t know how to cope with the social aspects of the school and life in the boarding house, tells her that these are simply informal visits so the other students can introduce themselves to the new person in the boarding house. Nancy offers that, if Priscilla would like, she can spend the evening with Priscilla and help facilitate these introductions. Priscilla nervously murmurs that she would like that.

The boarding house is more luxurious to Priscilla than anywhere that she has previous lived, but it also feels cold and un-homelike to her. The other girls are bright and chatty, and Priscilla finds them a little overwhelming. When the other girls come to visit Priscilla, they also comment about Annabel, who used to live there, and how the room looks more bare without her and her things. It seems like the other girls are there mostly to see the room and remember Annabel than to see Priscilla, and Priscilla is too shy to know what to say to any of them. One of the girls kindly says that the place will seem better once Priscilla has really moved in and has a chance to add her own decorations. Another girl says it will never be the same as when Annabel was there, but the kind girl suggests some shops where Priscilla can find some room decorations and offers to go shopping with her.

Then Nancy arrives and intervenes, seeing how overwhelmed Priscilla is and encouraging the other girls to leave. Nancy offers to help Priscilla unpack and goes to borrow some matches from Maggie because Priscilla doesn’t have any to light a fire. Priscilla accepts the matches but tersely declines the offer of help unpacking because she doesn’t want Nancy to see how meager her possessions are. Nancy awkwardly says that she will wait in Maggie’s room and that Priscilla can join them for cocoa later. It’s a custom of the boarding house for the girls to have cocoa in the evening, and they often invite friends in the boarding house to their rooms to share cocoa and chat before bed. Maggie later calls Priscilla to join them for cocoa but refuses to enter Priscilla’s room herself, still too affected by the memory of Annabel.

Priscilla goes to Maggie’s room, and the girls have cocoa together. Nancy isn’t there because she has gone back to her room to do some work, and Priscilla finds Maggie charming. Maggie has a way of putting people at ease, and Priscilla finds herself telling Maggie about herself and her reasons for wanting an education. Before she leaves, Priscilla asks Maggie about Annabel because of what the other students have been saying about her. To Priscilla’s shock and surprise, Maggie immediately becomes distressed and refuses to talk about Annabel, bursting into tears. Fortunately, Nancy arrives and reassures Priscilla that Maggie will be all right. As Nancy walks Priscilla back to her room, Priscilla asks her about Annabel. Nancy doesn’t really want to talk about Annabel, either, but she tells Priscilla that Annabel was a very popular girl at school who is now dead, and she says that it’s better if Priscilla doesn’t talk about her now.

All the same, the other students at the boarding house won’t stop talking about Annabel Lee. Although Priscilla doesn’t really believe in ghosts, it feels to her like Annabel still haunts the boarding house and her room in particular. Everyone seems to have memories of her, and Priscilla’s presence and her occupation of Annabel’s old room brings them out. Priscilla is often left with the awkward feeling that she has somehow usurped Annabel’s place, or at least, that other students feel like she has. She wishes that she had been given some other room in the boarding house. Even Annabel Lee’s name reminds her of the song by Poe, which is familiar to Priscilla and which is about a love that survives beyond death. (I think the author picked that name on purpose because of the song.)

Before that first evening is over, Priscilla realizes that she has misplaced her purse somewhere. This is serious because it has her key in it and the little money she has. She goes looking for it, and she overhears Maggie and Nancy talking about her. Maggie assures Nancy that Priscilla will not replace Nancy in her affections. Maggie calls Priscilla “queer” (in the sense of “strange”) and admits that she is nice to younger girls at college because she craves their affection. Maggie says that it gives her “kind of an aesthetic pleasure to be good to people.” She knows that she has an ability to inspire affection in other people, and she absolutely craves seeing the look of grateful affection she gets from the younger girls she helps at school. Nancy asks her if she ever returns the love that she receives from other people, and Maggie says that she does sometimes. She says that she is very fond of Nancy and kisses her.

(Note: This conversation isn’t necessarily proof that this is a lesbian relationship, which would have been not only shocking but actually illegal in England during the time period of this story. The book was published in 1891, and later in the 1890s, Oscar Wilde was tried and convicted for homosexual acts, although part of his conviction was also that he committed acts with underage boys, which would still get him a conviction by modern standards.

Certainly, lesbians did exist during this period of history, and it’s possible the author might know more about it than she could explicitly state and may be basing the characters’ feelings off of people she knew or met herself. However, modern readers might want to hold off firmly deciding what the real relationship between Maggie and Nancy is because there are other factors that are revealed later in the story. In particular, Maggie is a complicated character, who cultivates relationships for attention and to fill some dark emotional needs, and these relationships are not honest because there is not necessarily any real affection or romantic interest behind them. Maggie does have a male admirer, who we hear more about later, and we also eventually learn why her relationship with him is complicated.)

Priscilla, who is a sincere girl of strong morals and deep affection, is shocked at the way that Maggie and Nancy talk to each other and about her, and she quickly returns to her room without finding her lost purse. She is angry about what she’s heard because, although both Maggie and Nancy have been friendly to her and helpful that evening, Priscilla can see that neither of them really likes her or cares about her. Maggie was just pretending to be nice just to get attention, and Nancy is jealous of her for the attention that Maggie has given her. Although these types of feelings are completely alien to an inexperienced and unsophisticated girl like Priscilla, she has just had her first taste of toxic friendship, and she is about to learn more.

Life at College and the Other Students

When Priscilla is unpacked, and her meager personal belongings begin to fill her room, she starts to feel a little more at home, and she even begins to enjoy some of the newness of the college experience. She has more freedom at college than she ever has before, although she realizes that there is still a routine to college life, and conscientious girls follow the routine and both the written and unwritten rules of college society.

The book explains that life at college is somewhat like life at school, but much less restrictive because the students are considered young ladies rather than little girls. The freshmen are about 18 years old and are expected to graduate at about age 21, so all of the students are expected to behave as young adults. They are not closely monitored, and no one hands out punishments to students for neglecting their studies or misbehaving in minor ways. (What happens when students misbehave in major ways is addressed later in the book.) Basically, as long as the students are not breaking any laws or explicit rules and are not causing anyone serious harm or seriously disrupting the life of the college, there is little intervention. The students are expected to manage their time at college and organize their social lives and relationships with others by themselves. They are also not restricted to the college or boarding house. They may leave the college at any time for shopping or social engagements, although it is considered polite to let Miss Heath know where they are going and when they will be back, and they must be back before lights out. Priscilla has never been to school before, and she finds the unwritten social rules and the personal machinations of the other girls the most difficult part of her education.

Every morning, the girls in Heath Hall get up and start the day with prayers in the chapel. Nobody makes them go to chapel, but they generally do anyway because it’s expected, and participation in the routine activities helps them get along better. Then, they go to breakfast, where they select the foods they want to eat because the meal is served in the style of an informal buffet. Then, the students look at the notice boards. There is one notice board for announcing the lectures for the day and another for student clubs and social activities. The students use these announcements to plan their day. The mornings are always for educational lectures. Sometimes, there are more lectures in the afternoon, but there are also sports, gymnastics, and social activities. Nobody checks attendance at any of the lectures or activities, and if someone chooses not to attend something, nobody checks up on them. They can have lunch whenever they like, between noon and two o’clock in the afternoon, and the students typically have their afternoon tea in their own rooms, sometimes privately and sometimes with guests. Students study privately in their rooms whenever they like, and there are club activities between tea time and dinner, for those who wish to participate.

Priscilla has difficulties with the other students because she refuses to participate in the social activities of the college or go shopping with the other girls when they invite her. She even turns down invitations from other girls to have cocoa with them in the evening and chat, like she did with Maggie that first night at the boarding house. Having learned more about what Maggie and Nancy are really like, she becomes cold and distant with them, discouraging their friendship, but she also turns down possible friendships with the other students.

One day, two of the students criticize her for being unfriendly and not participating in the social life of the college. Everyone has noticed that Priscilla hasn’t even put up pictures or decorative knickknacks in her room or even purchased comfortable easy chairs for visiting, like the other girls have. Nancy tries to defuse the building arguments and criticism by saying that they mustn’t criticize the “busy bees”, the serious, studious students at the college because they are the foundation the college was built on. However, the other girls complain that college is also for fun and socializing, and if Priscilla is smart, she’ll stop fighting it and start participating with the other students.

The other students are about to walk out on Priscilla during this argument, but Priscilla stops them and shows them what she really has in her room. She shows them her empty trunk and explains that she has no pictures or knickknacks to put up in her room. She also shows them the contents of her purse (which she did find after she lost it) and how little money she actually has. She hasn’t gone shopping with the other girls or bought things for her room because she simply can’t afford them. She is from a poor family, and she is serious about her studies because she has to be, and her future depends on it. She acts the way she does because this is the life she lives, and this is what is right for her and her situation. The other girls just don’t understand because most of the girls at college are from wealthier families, and they’re not in her position. Priscilla has realized that she’s different from the other girls, but she doesn’t admire the other girls because she has already seen that there are problems with their behavior and priorities. She openly lets them know that she isn’t intimidated by them and will not be pressured into acting like they do because she simply can’t. It wouldn’t help her with her life or goals. The other girls are embarrassed and a little ashamed of themselves for not realizing her situation and for their shallowness and frivolous privilege. They leave Priscilla without saying anything else.

Nancy reports this conversation to Maggie and says that she admires Priscilla for her bravery in standing up to the other girls. Nancy never liked those particular girls because they are shallow, but she never had the nerve that Priscilla had to tell them off in that matter-of-fact way. Maggie asks Nancy if she’s going to worship Priscilla now, and Nancy says no but that she still admires Priscilla’s bravery. Maggie says that she doesn’t want to hear more about it because she doesn’t like hearing things about “good” people and their virtues, something which bothers Nancy. Nancy tells her to stop pretending that she doesn’t like goodness and morality, but Maggie says she really doesn’t. Hearing about Priscilla especially bothers Maggie because, although Priscilla initially opened up to her, she has not shown that grateful admiration toward her since that first evening, when she overheard Maggie talking to Nancy.

Maggie also has an unhealthy attachment to the memory of Annabel, and it still seriously bothers her that Priscilla has Annabel’s old room. Maggie can’t bring herself to look into Priscilla’s room or be reminded about Annabel, for reasons readers still don’t fully understand. Everyone liked Annabel at school, and people are still haunted by her memory, but for some reason, it’s worse with Maggie than with anyone else. She privately thinks that she cannot really feel love since she lost Annabel. It seems like Maggie had a similar sort of unhealthy attachment to Annabel as Nancy now has to Maggie.

This is where we begin to learn what is really going on with Maggie and what makes her tick. Maggie is not a happy person on the inside. In fact, she thinks of herself as the most miserable student at the college. Inwardly, she doesn’t think of herself as being either a good or lovable person, in spite of her outward charm and ability to inspire people to love her. She doesn’t really love herself. That’s why she always craves expressions of love and devotion from others but doesn’t seem able to really form relationships with others and maintain them.

However, there is one thing that really makes Maggie come alive. She loves the intellectual life of college. She forgets her misery when she loses herself in reading and translating classical works. Even her joy of classical studies can’t entirely distract her from her worrying love life. It’s a somewhat open secret that Maggie has a male admirer who writes to her sometimes, and this is a source of jealousy for the other students, especially Nancy and Rosalind (another younger girl that Maggie has been cultivating as an admirer), who both view this young man as a rival for Maggie’s attention and affection.

Toxic Friendships and Social Manipulation

Although Priscilla recognizes that Maggie is a false person who is mainly nice to other people for some selfish fulfillment, she can’t help but be fascinated by her charm and intelligence. Maggie tries harder to get Priscilla’s attention because she still craves attention and affection, and she views Priscilla’s reluctance to give her what she wants sort of like her playing hard-to-get. Priscilla’s attempts to ignore her just make her want to try harder to win the prize she craves.

Miss Heath, who doesn’t seem to understand some of the unhealthy admiration other students have for Maggie, encourages Priscilla to not burn out on her studies and to give herself time to make friends like Maggie and to enjoy the social aspects of school life. She says that she has seen other serious students take on too much, burn themselves out, and fail to finish their education before. Priscilla, who has never been to school before, takes Miss Heath’s advice seriously.

Maggie discovers that Priscilla loves flowers, and she uses them to appeal to Priscilla’s love of beauty. She uses aesthetics and intellectual discussion to appeal to Priscilla’s love of study and the pleasures of learning. Gradually, Priscilla finds herself become more of a friend to Maggie. She confronts Maggie about what she heard Maggie and Nancy say to each other on their first night in the boarding house, but Maggie brushes away Priscilla’s concerns. She claims that she only said those things to punish Priscilla for being naughty by eavesdropping. Soon, Maggie and Priscilla are doing many things together, from going to church services together to having cocoa in Maggie’s room in the evening and talking about their studies. It seems harmless enough, and some people are a little relieved because Maggie had given up doing many things that she used to do with Annabel, when she was alive, because they reminded her too much of Annabel. It seems like Priscilla has somehow inspired Maggie to do things that had become emotionally painful to her, and some people think it’s nice that Maggie has found a new best friend and is moving on.

However, as I said, not everyone understands Maggie’s toxic friendships, the unhealthy attachment some of the other students have had to both her and the deceased Annabel, and her manipulation of other people. The ones who do understand these things are some combination of jealous and troubled, and Priscilla, who is still relatively naive, hasn’t grasped the precariousness of her social situation. She has to learn to walk a delicate line between staying true to herself and her goals and between staying on good terms with her new friends. It’s fine for her to like other people, like Maggie, but not to be led astray by them. She has also attracted attention from some other students who resent her and feel threatened by her.

The two girls Priscilla told off earlier about their wanting her to participate in frivolous social activities and spending money are bitter about their embarrassment and how Priscilla made them them look shallow by demonstrating her poverty and virtue. They’ve been going around the school, telling everyone the story of what Priscilla said, but casting Priscilla in a bad light. They try to make Priscilla seem like a self-righteous prig who is trying to shame them for participating in normal social activities. Their fear is that, if other girls at college like Priscilla and decide to imitate her, austerity will become the fashion of the day. They think that they will either not be allowed to participate in their social activities and forced to keep their noses to the grindstone from now on or will be shamed for having nice things in their rooms while Priscilla doesn’t. They don’t want to be pressured to give up these things or forced to study as seriously as Priscilla does, so they do their best to ruin Priscilla’s social reputation, discourage other girls from being her friend, and try to get other students to gang up on her.

Their efforts are partly foiled because Maggie is popular, and Priscilla has become Maggie’s special friend. Nancy is also Priscilla’s supporter because she was present during their confrontation with Priscilla and stands up for her against the other students. Although Maggie and Nancy seem to have a toxic friendship with each other, and Maggie develops a series of toxic friendships with other students, Maggie and Nancy become Priscilla’s protection against even more toxic students. Miss Heath and the teachers at the college also appreciate Priscilla and her work at the college. However, unbeknownst to Priscilla, the more shallow girls still resent her and are plotting against her.

Rosalind knows of the unhealthy attachment other girls at college have to Maggie because she also shares it. Rosalind is one of the younger girls Maggie has cultivated as an admirer but has largely neglected since she became tired of her and more interested in Priscilla. Maggie and Annabel were once the college’s power couple/friendship duo, although Annabel was the more popular of the two. Other girls even save pictures and autographs of Maggie and Annabel as souvenirs, like they’re celebrities, and Rosalind herself has a picture of Maggie that she sometimes kisses.

Since Annabel’s death from a sudden illness, Maggie has been the undisputed social queen, although Maggie’s thrill at the attention she receives is somewhat dampened by her sense of loss because she was truly attached to Annabel herself. She craves attention and admiration and can’t help but pursue it, but she doesn’t feel like she really deserves it. Not all of the other students really admire Maggie. Some of them see her for the manipulative girl she really is, and they get sick of hearing the others rave about her or talk about poor, tragic Annabel.

However, Rosalind’s resentment of Maggie’s indifference to her after manipulating her affections has made her admiration of her turn to hate. She tells another girl that she’s thinking that she should tell Miss Heath about the unhealthy attachment other girls have to Maggie and get her to put a stop to this Maggie admiration cult. (I would have been in favor of this, but sadly, that’s not what Rosalind does.) Then, Rosalind and the girls who resent Priscilla get the idea of ruining Maggie’s friendship with Priscilla and bringing them both down this way.

Rosalind tries to find ways to embarrass Priscilla socially and drive a wedge between Priscilla and Maggie. One day, she convinces Priscilla to go into town with her to pay her dressmaker, insisting that the dressmaker needs her money for her sick mother and that she wants company on the errand. Nancy tries to discourage Priscilla from going because the weather is bad and Priscilla has a cough, but Priscilla says that Rosalind talked her into coming. Since she promised, she has to go. Rosalind makes Priscilla wait in the cold and drizzle while she goes inside to pay the dressmaker and then takes Priscilla on another errand to see a friend before they go back to the college.

When they get inside this friend’s house, Priscilla realizes that Rosalind has tricked her into attending a party instead of just paying a short visit to a friend. Priscilla is under-dressed for this party and damp from her time outside, which is embarrassing. To make matters worse, Rosalind simply abandons her in a corner. Priscilla can’t bring herself to leave the party without Rosalind because she would be in trouble for returning to the college without her when everyone knows that they left together, and she can’t bring herself to search the party for Rosalind and demand that they leave because she feels out of place in her shabby clothes. She hears the fancy, catty women at the party gossiping about other women and the frumpy “girl graduates” of the college. Fortunately, the hostess of the party realizes that Rosalind has been treating Priscilla shabbily and makes her comfortable with some tea.

Then, Geoffrey Hammond, the young man who has been writing to Maggie, recognizes Priscilla and comes to talk to her. Priscilla explains her predicament and how Rosalind tricked her. Not only has Rosalind deprived her of study time by getting her to come to town on her errand and to this party, but if they don’t leave the party soon, they won’t get back in time for dinner, which would break one of the written rules of the college. Taking pity on her, Hammond goes to find Rosalind and talk to her. When he returns, he says that Rosalind has told him that she already told the principal of their college that they would be late for dinner, so they are excused. Priscilla is angry that Rosalind did this without talking to her, and she starts to create a fuss, but Hammond quiets her down, realizing that she is making a scene. He knows that she was nastily tricked, but he says, since they can’t get back to the college in time for dinner now, it would be more socially graceful for her to enjoy this party as best she can and then have words with Rosalind when they get back to college.

The two of them spend the rest of the party discussing The Illiad and The Odyssey. Priscilla shines in intellectual discussions about the classics, so Rosalind is a little jealous when she sees how well Priscilla is doing. She tries to ruin the moment by pretending that Maggie gave Priscilla a letter to give to Hammond and that Priscilla has either lost it or is withholding it. However, Hammond knows that Priscilla didn’t even know she was coming to this party and doesn’t fall for Rosalind’s story, disapproving of her. On the way back to the college after the party, Priscilla lets Rosalind know exactly what she thinks of her mean trick.

Later, at a cocoa party at the college, Rosalind tells the other students about the party, emphasizing Priscilla’s awkwardness and disdain of the fun. Then, she accuses Priscilla of flirting with Geoffrey Hammond. Everyone knows that Geoffrey Hammond is Maggie’s young man. The other girls don’t think Maggie treats him well, and some of them think they would be better for him, but they know that he’s devoted to Maggie. Rosalind is trying to make Priscilla look like a boyfriend-stealer.

The Auction

Meanwhile, one of the girls at the college, Polly, has gotten badly into debt. Although most of the girls at the college are pretty well-off, compared to Priscilla, even girls from wealthy families can get into trouble with money, if they’re not careful. Polly admits that her father told her not to spend above her allowance, but she is accustomed to spending freely. Now, she owes a considerable amount of money, and the only way she can think of to raise what she needs without telling her father what she has done is to sell some of the lovely things she’s bought to furnish and decorate her room and some of her fancy clothes. Her friends at the college, who all admire her nice things, are all eager to buy things from her. Their only concern is to remind her not to sell anything that would belong to the college, only her own belongings.

All of the girls at college, except for Priscilla, are invited to attend the auction. They exclude Priscilla because they know she doesn’t have money and they think “Miss Propriety” would snub the event and perhaps tell the principals about it. Really, the other students don’t think the principals of the college would approve of this auction, so they’re careful to keep the event secret from them. Originally, Maggie wasn’t planning to attend the auction, although she was invited, because she doesn’t know Polly and doesn’t care for this kind of auction. Then, Rosalind badgers her into going, saying that she has become too proper, self-righteous, and basically, no fun anymore. Maggie cares about her social reputation, so she decides to go to the auction, and to Priscilla’s surprise, she drags Priscilla with her. This turns out to be a bad thing for Rosalind because now Maggie is angry with her and determined to teach her a lesson.

Maggie doesn’t really want anything at the auction and resents being pushed into going, but because she is one of the richest girls at the college, she can afford to bid much higher for anything there than the other girls. She knows the things that Rosalind wants to buy for herself, so she purposely bids on the items that Rosalind wants. It’s bad enough when Maggie wins the bid for a sealskin jacket that Rosalind really wanted by bidding higher than Rosalind ever could, but it’s worse when Maggie intentionally ups the bid for some coral jewelry and then lets Rosalind win it at a price that’s higher than Rosalind can actually afford. Now, Rosalind owes money to Polly. Even worse, when Rosalind writes to her mother to ask for more money, her mother tells her to return the jewelry she bought and to send the money she’s already spent back to her. It was really more money than her mother could afford to give her, and she only lent it to Rosalind because Rosalind said that she could get a bargain on a sealskin coat, which is a valuable garment. The jewelry is more extravagance than Rosalind’s family can afford.

All of the girls who attended the auction get into trouble for being there because the activity wasn’t sanctioned by the college, and the heads of the boarding houses find out about it. That means that Priscilla is in trouble for attending, too, even though she didn’t buy anything. Nancy asks Maggie why she went when she knew it would probably be trouble, and Maggie says that Rosalind brings out her worst side.

Maggie hates herself partly because she knows that she has a good side and a bad side to her nature, and she finds it hard to manage or cover up her bad side. Sometimes, she just gets moody and temperamental. She doesn’t want to pretend to be good all the time, even though she knows she’s supposed to restrain her worst impulses to get along in society. That’s why she finds virtuous people so trying. She has a hard time struggling with her inner nature and doesn’t like herself. She can’t understand people who aren’t the same, who seem to find it easier and more pleasant to be good all the time and who aren’t subject to the same dark moods and temptations that she has. Even so, Maggie still considers good and proper Priscilla her friend because Priscilla is sincere in her friendship for Maggie and brings out more of her better side, and Nancy, who respects virtue, still loves Maggie, even knowing her complicated nature and how she feels about herself. So, while Maggie’s friendships with Nancy and Priscilla seemed toxic at first, when she was looking at it from the perspective of how she uses them to bolster her self-esteem, we start to see that there are positive sides to these relationships. Both Priscilla and Nancy care about Maggie, even when she struggles to care about herself or them, and they encourage Maggie to be a better version of herself.

The episode of the auction, while getting the girls into trouble is actually a turning point in Maggie’s character development. Polly, Maggie, Priscilla, and other girls from the auction are called before Miss Eccleston, the head of Polly’s boarding house, Katharine Hall, to explain themselves and the auction. Polly explains how she got into debt and couldn’t bring herself to ask her father for more money. Miss Eccleston lectures Polly about the need to manage her money better and avoid spending more than she can afford. Then, she questions Maggie about why she was at the auction because, as one of the senior students, she should know better. Maggie takes responsibility for her presence at the auction and also Priscilla’s, saying that Priscilla is only a new student at college and that she insisted that Priscilla come with her. Miss Eccleston asks Maggie what she bought at the auction and if she paid a fair price. Maggie admits that what she paid for the jacket was less than its true value. Maggie accepts responsibility for her actions and tries to shield Priscilla as much as possible from the fallout of the situation, not wanting her impulsive decisions to negatively affect her.

Miss Heath and Miss Eccleston lecture the girls about the importance of moral principles at the college, but Maggie stands up for herself and the other girls. She honestly admits that she is not proud of herself and her role in the situation. However, she points out that, although Polly’s debt was shameful and her abuse of the allowance from her father, her dishonesty about her spending to her father, and the secret auction were all improper, none of the students have actually broken any explicit rules of the college. Miss Heath and Miss Eccleston are concerned with disruptions to the the boarding houses and how the students’ behavior reflections on the college. Maggie’s argument is based on the fact that none of the students are children, and how they conduct their personal affairs isn’t the business of the college, even if they haven’t conducted themselves well here. Arguing with the heads of their boarding houses goes against their authority and is disrespectful, but Miss Heath and Miss Eccleston say that they understand Maggie’s point and will take it into consideration when they decide how they will proceed and what they will say to the college authorities.

The students themselves appreciate Maggie speaking up on their behalf, but they’re also divided in how they feel about the auction and even about Maggie’s defense of what they’ve done. Some of the students, who never took the auction seriously, think that Miss Heath and Miss Eccleston were making too much of the situation and that Maggie was right to tell them so. However, the more serious girls have realized that what they did was improper, and even though Maggie was trying to defend them from consequences, her defiance and disrespect of authority in the situation has broken one of the unspoken social rules of the college.

The social order that keeps everyone at college more or less in harmony has been shaken by the incident and by the students’ mixed feelings about the situation, and they’re not sure how to make it right. Some students think that the residents of Heath Hall should stand behind Miss Heath and Maggie and their position that, while the auction was inappropriate, the students have learned their lesson from the experience and should be treated leniently. Others think that it was all beyond the bounds of proper behavior, and they no longer wish to associate with Maggie because of her defiant attitude. The students who never attended the auction are irritated by the students who did because they think they are bringing scandal on the college, and by extension, on them. They don’t want to risk their families criticizing them or removing them from the school because they find out what happened and are scandalized by it. The students who weren’t at the auction didn’t do anything wrong, and they look down on the other girls for causing trouble. Everyone is unhappy that the harmony of the school has been shattered, and students are pressuring each other to take sides in the controversy.

Rosalind is even more vindictive toward Priscilla after the auction incident and tries again to blacken her name around the college. She tells the other students that Priscilla was the one who told the faculty about the auction and got them in trouble, even though Priscilla was there with them and is now in trouble, too. She also repeats the story of Priscilla flirting with Geoffrey Hammond at the party. Maggie knows that Priscilla said that Hammond was nice to her at the party, so she tries to ignore what Rosalind says, and Nancy makes it clear that she doesn’t want to hear Rosalind’s sour gossip.

The Fallout and Geoffrey hammond

The fallout of the auction incident causes some students to change their minds about their relationships with each other and some to change their behavior. Rosalind tries to ingratiate herself to Geoffrey Hammond because she likes him and tries to blacken Maggie’s name to him to ruin their relationship. Maggie’s affection for Priscilla sours when Priscilla insists on speaking privately with Geoffrey Hammond and that she doesn’t want Maggie to hear what she has to say. Maggie thinks that maybe Priscilla has designs on Geoffrey Hammond, but that isn’t the case. Really, Priscilla wants to have a frank talk with Hammond about both Rosalind and Maggie.

Priscilla likes Maggie, but having gotten to know her, she has a realistic sense of what Maggie is really like now, both her good side and bad side. She recognizes that Maggie is a flawed person, and this is what she doesn’t want Maggie to hear her say to Hammond. She tells Hammond that she finds Maggie fascinating because she has never before seen such a flawed person who also has such a sense of nobility. She doesn’t want Maggie to hear her speaking of her flaws, but like Nancy, Priscilla knows that Maggie has them and yet has likeable and honorable qualities, like the way she admitted her faults at the same time as she defended her fellow students to the heads of their boarding houses. Hammond understands what Priscilla means because he feels the same way about Maggie. Both of them also understand that Rosalind is dishonest, and Hammond believes Priscilla when she says that Rosalind is saying untrue things about Maggie to ruin her reputation.

Maggie’s behavior toward Priscilla becomes colder because of the suspicions that she harbors about what Priscilla said to Hammond. She continues to act as a friend, but she’s not as warm as she was becoming with Priscilla before. Hammond sees what’s happening between the girls, and he is critical with Maggie about the sealskin coat that she bought too cheaply from Polly. Maggie didn’t really want the coat originally, and she’s a little ashamed of having it, so she returns it to Polly. Polly says that she can’t afford to repay Maggie for it now because she really needs the money, but Maggie tells her not to worry about it. If she likes, she can consider the money a loan and repay her during the next school term, which pleases Polly. This is part of Maggie’s nobler side.

When Priscilla goes home for Christmas break and sees her aunt and sisters, they welcome her. Priscilla is astonished when she sees how rough and cramped the little cottage seems to her now that she has become accustomed to the beauty and comfort of the boarding house at college. When she notices how her aunt has become more sick, she feels guilty for her feelings. Her little sisters are upset about her returning to college, and one of them accuses her of forgetting about them and having fun in college rather than making any money. It’s true that Priscilla has been studying and not earning money yet, and she feels guilty that she hasn’t thought much about her aunt or sisters while she was away.

She confides all of this to the minister, and he says that he understands. He thought that she might have feelings like this because of all of the changes she’s been experiencing in her life and her new glimpse of the wider world and the possibilities of life that lay ahead of her. He says that what she is feeling is natural and that she’s over-analyzing it. Priscilla is just currently preoccupied by all the new experiences that she’s been having. She’s been adjusting to all the changes she’s experiencing, and her view of the world is wider now than the narrower one she had when she just lived on the farm.

Priscilla also tells him a little about her friendship with Maggie and how much influence Maggie can have over her, that sometimes she feels like she would do anything for her. The minister reminds her that she would also do anything for her aunt and sisters. This new relationship, like the new experiences she’s been having in college, is fascinating to her for its newness, but he doesn’t think that it has replaced her older and deeper affections. She may have temporarily found herself overwhelmed and preoccupied with everything that’s new to her, but what is deep and most important to her is what will last.

Priscilla worries whether it’s right for her to be away at college with her aunt so sick, but the minister insists that she go back to college and her studies because it’s still important to her future, and her aunt wants her to continue. Her aunt confirms this. She understands that Priscilla is bookish person, like her father. While she appreciates her niece’s care and devotion, she knows that her niece has a future ahead of her, and she wants her to build her future.

Ghosts of the Past and Paths to the Future

In spite of the now-strained friendship between Maggie and Priscilla and Rosalind’s resentment against them both, Priscilla must return to the college and finish her studies. Priscilla tells Maggie that she needs to give up the classical Greek studies that they both love and focus on modern languages instead. It pains her, but Priscilla knows that she has almost enough education for a teaching position, and she must focus on the most practical studies for getting a job as soon as possible for her sisters’ sake. For the first time, Priscilla fully explains to Maggie the true circumstances of her family. This revelation and their shared love of classical studies brings out Maggie’s better nature once again, and she is inspired to find a way to help Priscilla and her family.

However, Rosalind still has not returned the coral jewelry to Polly, has not paid Polly the money she still owes her, and has neither returned the money she borrowed from her mother nor obtained any more money from her. Rosalind is determined to keep the coral jewelry even though her mother has urged her to return it and get her money back, but she still can’t fully pay Polly for it. Polly has now gotten more money from her father during the Christmas break and wants her jewelry back, so she would be happy to buy it back from Rosalind for what Rosalind paid for it. It’s Rosalind’s pride and resentment that keeps her from returning the jewelry. When she has an opportunity to steal the money she needs to pay Polly what she owes from Maggie and frame Priscilla for it, she takes it, thinking that she can solve her money troubles and get revenge on the girls she hates.

Because Priscilla isn’t popular at college, many of the other students are inclined to believe the suspicions about Priscilla being a thief when the theft is discovered. Maggie initially worries that Priscilla might be the thief because she knows that Priscilla was in her room earlier and that Priscilla’s family badly needs money, but after observing Priscilla’s reactions and thinking it over, she regrets her suspicions. Nancy staunchly insists that she’s on Priscilla’s side. Even so, Priscilla is so embarrassed by the accusations that she wants to leave college, but Hammond persuades her to stay. He says that, if she leaves now, not only would she be depriving herself of her education, but running away would seem to confirm everyone’s suspicions. Hammond knows more about Priscilla than he has admitted because the minister who has been helping her is his uncle, and Maggie has told him things about Priscilla’s situation.

Maggie does some soul-searching and must confront her remaining feelings about Annabel’s death and about Geoffrey Hammond to resolve her feelings about Priscilla and herself. The truth is that Geoffrey Hammond was once a childhood friend of Annabel’s. Although Maggie is in love with him and everyone at college thinks of him as being her young man, she hasn’t felt free to express that love because, in her mind, she still thinks of him as being Annabel’s young man. Maggie is an orphan and an only child who is not close to her guardian, and before she met Annabel, she felt like she hadn’t truly known what love was. She just never had anyone to be close to before Annabel. Now that Annabel is gone, Maggie feels like she can’t truly love anyone else and has felt like it would be especially wrong to love Hammond, even though he expressed his love for Maggie before Annabel’s death. Maggie revealed to Annabel that Hammond had proposed to her shortly before Annabel’s death from typhus, and Maggie has felt guilty about it ever since, thinking that the shock of this revelation contributed to Annabel’s sudden death. This is a major root of Maggie’s self-loathing and rejection of budding relationships and real love. Maggie feels like she can’t accept Hammond and his love any more than she could originally accept Priscilla moving into Annabel’s old room. She almost wants to leave college herself because of it.

However, Maggie now can’t stand the idea of Priscilla giving up her classics studies, where she is sure she could shine as a scholar, and she tries to enlist Miss Heath in persuading Priscilla to continue. Meanwhile, Priscilla is not interested in Hammond for herself and tries to enlist Miss Heath in persuading Maggie to accept his marriage proposal because Hammond understands Maggie better than she thinks and genuinely loves her for it. Miss Heath says that she can’t make up the girls’ minds for them any more than the girls can make up each other’s minds. She knows that Priscilla has good reasons for focusing on practical subjects, and she doesn’t want to interfere with that, but she decides that she should talk to Maggie about Annabel. Fortunately, some of the other girls at the college are starting to suspect the truth about the theft of Maggie’s money, and an invitation to another party at the same house where Rosalind tried to embarrass Priscilla before reveals the truth to Maggie. Miss Heath’s final revelation about Annabel straightens out many things.

My Reaction and Spoilers

Early Dark Academia

One of the reasons why I wanted to cover this book was because it’s an early example of Dark Academia from over 100 years before this genre/aesthetic gained a name and became popular in the 2020s. Although people think of Dark Academia as a modern genre/aesthetic, it was built on Victorian aesthetics and very old concepts that have previously appeared in literature:

The value of education (with the apparent conflict between learning for pleasure and learning for a profession and students who attend college for purposes other than education, like social activities)
Class differences among the students (a major reason for the differences in the students’ purposes for attending college and what’s behind many of the unspoken social rules of college life)
The nature of the friendships and relationships among the students.

Modern Dark Academia novels have all of these, but Mrs. L. T. Meade did it about 100 years earlier. Some aspects of human nature and education just haven’t changed much.

L. T. Meade was the pen name of Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith. She was born in Ireland and was the daughter of a Protestant minister. Later in life, she moved to London. She started writing at age 17, and she wrote more than 280 books in different genres. She was also a feminist and the founder and editor of Atalanta, a popular late Victorian literary magazine for girls. Although her writing was extensive, Meade is best known for her books for girls, especially school stories. Her school stories continued to influence school stories for girls after her death.

Modern readers of Dark Academia will appreciate all the literary references in A Sweet Girl Graduate, from classics like The Iliad and The Odyssey to Edgar Allan Poe and his poem Annabel Lee. Priscilla quotes the poem in the story, and I’m sure that the poem inspired the author to write about the memories of the dead student, which is why she gave the character that name.

From Toxic Relationships To Helpful Friends

In a modern Dark Academia book, a girl like Priscilla might be led astray by a girl like Maggie. However, in this book, Priscilla is not tainted by Maggie’s toxic friendship because she realizes that Maggie has toxic qualities, and she is determined to resist them. Early into her time at college, she makes it clear to the other girls that she won’t be pressured by them into changing herself, and that attitude is part of what keeps Priscilla from being too manipulated by Maggie. She does find Maggie’s charm harder to resist than the catty peer pressure of the other girls at college because it has more pleasant and helpful aspects. However, Priscilla has some very definite limits, and her knowledge that she has to be responsible and take her future seriously for her sisters’ sake as well as her own keeps her from doing anything too irresponsible.

Because Priscilla makes it clear that she won’t change herself to fit in for the sake of friendship or social cred, Maggie actually finds herself changing more to fit in with Priscilla. It isn’t harmful for Maggie to change because she is already unhappy with herself and truly needs to change the way she acts and the way she looks at life and love. She craves Priscilla’s attention and affection because it is harder to get than most people’s and also because, deep down, Maggie still craves a replacement for the love and support she had from her deceased best friend, Annabel, and someone who can help her redeem herself from the guilt she has felt ever since Annabel died.

Toward the end of the story, we learn that Maggie hates herself and cannot truly bring herself to feel affection for other people because she blames herself for Annabel’s death. Annabel died of a sudden but natural illness, but the day she fell ill was the day when Maggie told her that Hammond proposed marriage to her. Since Hammond was Annabel’s childhood friend, Maggie worried that maybe Annabel harbored feelings for him and that the shock of hearing that he really loved Maggie might have been too much for her in her weakened condition. So, although Maggie still craves love and affection, she has purposely shut herself off from returning affection to anyone, especially Hammond, since Annabel’s death.

By being her sincere self, Priscilla brings out Maggie’s better nature, reminds her that she has lovable qualities in spite of her imperfections, and shows her that not all relationships end in death or tragedy. Although Maggie starts out by being a toxic friend, Priscilla is the antidote to the toxicity, turning this story into one of redemption rather than corruption. Miss Heath completes Maggie’s self redemption and reconciliation with Annabel’s death by telling her that she spoke to Annabel shortly before she died. At that time, Maggie herself was sick, although she didn’t get as sick as Annabel did. Annabel told Miss Heath to tell Maggie that she was happy for her and Hammond. If Miss Heath had told Maggie what Annabel said immediately, it would have spared Maggie and the people around her a lot of pain. She just didn’t pass on the message because Maggie was sick at the time and because she didn’t fully understand what Annabel was talking about until Priscilla explained Maggie’s feelings to her.

When Maggie finds out that Rosalind was the thief, she confronts her and makes her apologize to Priscilla and leave the college. Maggie admits to Miss Heath that it was a bit high-handed of her to impose these consequences on Rosalind. Maggie may have overstepped her authority by sending her away from the college, but Miss Heath says that she approves of the way she handled the situation. If Rosalind had remained at the college instead of leaving quietly, Miss Heath would have had to take the matter to the college authorities, who would have publicly expelled Rosalind for her theft. A public expulsion would not only have embarrassed Rosalind and her family and brought legal consequences on Rosalind, but it would have also publicly embarrassed the college. It’s better for everyone if they can manage the situation quietly. Priscilla tells Rosalind that she forgives her before she leaves, and at the same time, because Victorian novels tend to deliver moral messages in strong terms, Priscilla also gives Rosalind a guilt trip about how “you have sunk so low, you have done such a dreadful thing, the kind of thing that the angels in heaven would grieve over” and reminds her of how her mother is going to feel when she finds out why Rosalind had to leave college. Rosalind says that she regrets not being Priscilla’s friend instead of her rival. She would be in a much better situation in the end if she had let Priscilla influence her for the better rather than becoming her worst to try to get the better of Priscilla.

I was left partly thinking that Maggie never really apologizes to Rosalind for the way she treated her. Maggie does feel guilty about what she did at the auction, driving up the prices so Rosalind would end up owing money. If she hadn’t done that, Rosalind might not have been motivated to steal the money. However, even before that, Maggie toying with Rosalind’s feelings, leading her on to get her attached to her and then dropping her, was messing with Rosalind’s mind. This was the sort of situation that Nancy feared and tried to warn Maggie about because Nancy understands even better than Maggie how strongly Maggie influences other people’s feelings. Maggie assumes that her temporary pets among the students will get over it when she leads them on, gets them somewhat emotionally dependent on he,r and then drops them, but some, like Rosalind, are damaged by the experience.

Nancy has a strong moral center, so even though there are times when she is too attached to Maggie and jealous about Maggie’s attention, she would never stoop to Rosalind’s kind of petty revenge. At first, Nancy’s relationship with Maggie seems more devoted than is healthy, but Nancy’s moral center is what keeps her from being corrupted by Maggie’s toxic friendship in the way that Priscilla’s knowledge of herself and her goals and situation save her from corrupting influences. Nancy loves Maggie, but even though she loves her, she’s not blind to Maggie’s flaws and not afraid to tell her when she thinks that she’s done something wrong or is taking a bad outlook. Victorian novels emphasize morality, and Nancy is one of the moral voices in the story. She sometimes acts as Maggie’s conscience and tries to help Maggie understand other people’s feelings, although Priscilla is the one who truly motivates Maggie to make changes to her life for the better. Nancy’s moral outlook and admiration for virtue also leave her open to admire other people besides Maggie, like Priscilla, and her admiration of Priscilla’s virtues is what soothes Nancy’s jealousy for her and makes her look at Priscilla as another friend instead of a rival.

The Atmosphere

The boarding house has a cozy, old-fashioned atmosphere, with fireplaces and stoves, tea and cocoa in the evening, and some charming room decorations. I thought it was interesting that the students all have beds that are meant to look like sofas, basically day beds. Priscilla is right that even the basic rooms are fairly luxurious. There are electric lights at the school, although the students also use fireplaces and candles.

However, Priscilla’s room also has that “haunted” quality because of the memories of the popular student who used to live there and died tragically young. When Priscilla first moves in, other students, especially Maggie, find it upsetting, and Priscilla gets the creeps because of the way the other students talk about Annabel and Annabel’s room. That haunted quality wears off as Priscilla makes the room more her own and asserts her own identity over it and her situation. Annabel’s haunting presence in the story ends when Maggie realizes that she did not contribute to Annabel’s death and that Annabel was her faithful friend to the end. She finally becomes reconciled to Annabel’s death and ready to move on with her life and accept the love of other people, including her new friends and the man she really loves and who has loved her all along. The story starts out Dark Academia but ends with Light Academia because the characters have learned important things about each other and themselves and are headed in better directions in life.

For part of the story, I had wondered if Maggie was going to go down the dark path in the story and if Geoffrey Hammond would turn his attentions to the equally intellectual but more virtuous Priscilla. However, I was relieved in the end that Maggie resolved her inner turmoil and that Hammond stayed faithful to her. Priscilla never tried to steal her friend’s boyfriend and was only concerned for their mutual welfare and happiness as her friends. I liked the happy ending and how the story ended with more cozy feelings than angst and regrets.

So, Were Any of the Characters Lesbians?

I don’t really think so. I can’t completely swear to it, but based on the time period, the habits of people at the time, and the ending of the story, I don’t really think that the author was trying to imply that. If they were lesbians or bisexual, there is nothing that states it explicitly, although modern readers could read that into the situation. I can’t 100% declare it’s impossible, but the original Victorian readers of this book probably wouldn’t have drawn that conclusion themselves because they were probably not inclined to think that way about people in general since that sort of thing would be a taboo subject that young Victorian women reading this story might not have fully understood.

The characters’ interactions can be open to that interpretation by modern readers, but there are factors of the time period and the characters themselves to take into account. It’s important to acknowledge that the ways people spoke to each other and interacted were different during this time period. For modern people, kisses between teenagers or adults who are not related to each other are almost always romantic, but this book shows that this is not necessarily the case. Many people kiss each other in platonic ways during the course of this book. It seems to be a general way for women in particular to greet each other or express affection. Many friends kiss each other, and there are even times when Miss Heath will give students a kiss, which college staff and faculty would never do in the 21st century because for fear of giving people the wrong impression. We don’t regard that kind of exchange as appropriate or professional in modern times.

Various characters are enamored of Maggie because Maggie is a charismatic character who knows how to attract attention and get people to admire her. However, in the end, Maggie accepts Hammond’s offer of marriage and admits that she really loved him all along. We don’t know whether Nancy, Priscilla or Rosalind end up with boyfriends/husbands or not. The story ends with Priscilla determined to finish her studies and support her sisters, and Rosalind leaves college in disgrace because of her theft.

What might look like romantic crushes between females in this book ultimately turn out to be extreme girl crushes or cult of personality/toxic friendships. It seems to me that Maggie’s charisma helped her build a kind of cult of personality among her fellow students, where she was almost hero-worshipped or treated as a kind of school celebrity. Some of her friends are jealous of rivals for her attention and possessive of Maggie, which could indicate something deeper, but it’s not definite. Many of the girls are inwardly insecure at this time of their lives and separated from family and other friends while they’re at college, and a major part of Maggie’s appeal is her ability to put people at their ease, soothe ruffled nerves, and get people to depend on her for a boost of self-confidence, affection, and reassurance. Maggie fulfills people’s emotional needs, when she isn’t too preoccupied with her own emotional turmoil, so the attachment the other students experience to Maggie may be a reflection of their need for that type of emotional support rather than romance.

I’m pretty sure this is the explanation for Rosalind because Rosalind is not particularly happy and confident by herself. She attaches herself to Maggie because she craves her support and possibly envies her for the money and social status. Rosalind gets in over her head at the auction because she’s trying to buy status symbols. She tries to embarrass Priscilla and blacken her reputation to make herself look better by comparison, but it ultimately fails because she goes too far and commits an actual crime. Even before then, not everyone liked her underhanded behavior and toxic gossip. I’m pretty sure that Rosalind was after Maggie’s friendship and was upset at being snubbed by her because she felt dependent on Maggie for her own popularity and insecure emotions.

Only three people in the story seem to see Maggie for what she is, both her good and bad sides, and love her for it. Those people are Nancy, Priscilla, and Hammond. Hammond’s interest is definitely romantic love. Priscilla is fascinated by Maggie’s complex and contradictory character, and she wants to see Maggie happy. Nancy might come the closest to romantic love, but even that’s not definite. It could still be devoted (and occasionally excessive) friendship. Like Priscilla, she seems to appreciate Maggie’s complex character, although she also tries to do a little damage control when she sees that Maggie is likely to leave some emotional messes behind her because of the way she handles her relationships.

If this book were made into a movie today (entirely possible because it’s public domain), it wouldn’t surprise me if at least some of the characters were interpreted as lesbians or bisexual. Personally, I just think that the author was trying to make more of a statement about charismatic personalities and emotional manipulation.

Posted on September 11, 2025September 11, 2025 by TracyC · 1 Comment

Tom Brown’s School Days

Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes, 1857.

This classic children’s book from the mid-19th century is famous as the story that popularized the concept of British children’s boarding school stories, although many people in the 21st century haven’t read it themselves.

Young Tom Brown was brought up in a very close family, although they are often given to quarrels and drama among each other. He is the eldest of his parents’ children and spends his early young life in the vale where he was born, raised by his family and his nursemaid, Charity. Tom’s mother has a talent for training young servants. She is kind and patient with servants in training, treating them almost like older children of the family. Charity is rather clumsy and not too bright, and she has her hands full with young Tom. He is a strong and rebellious little boy. Charity’s relatives have a farm nearby, and she takes him there to pick up supplies for the Brown household. The people on the farm are kind to Tom, and they also help raise him. Because Tom resists training and supervision from women, the Brown family eventually hires an older servant, Benjy, to take care of Tom from about age four. Benjy takes little Tom fishing and tells him stories about the history of the Brown family. Generally, Tom’s early childhood is pleasant and easy.

As Benjy gets older, he is troubled more by arthritis and finds it harder to keep up with young Tom. Tom gets a governess at home, and when Tom begins lessons at the local school, he begins to calm down at home because he spends his energy at school and playing with the local boys in the village. Being friends with other boys his own age is good for Tom because they share the same interests and levels of energy. They play games and wrestle with each other for fun. Then, when Tom is nine years old, his family sends him away to boarding school. There are some sad goodbyes from the local boys in the village, and the other boys give him some little toys as going-away presents. This is the first time that Tom has ever been away from home, and this is where the story of Tom’s education really starts.

First Boarding School Experience

Tom spends about a year at a private school before going on to a public school. The author pauses here to explain the differences between British private schools and public schools. Unlike in the United States, “public” schools are still schools that require school fees, but private and public schools differ in who is accepted as a student and how the students are treated in their time outside of class. In the author’s time and young Tom’s time, students at private schools are more closely supervised in their off hours, with the idea that molding the students into good citizens (which is considered a higher goal in their education than the subjects taught in the classroom) cannot be adequately accomplished in classroom time only and that most of it takes place outside of the classroom. At public schools, the author says, the boys have more freedom and less supervision outside of class.

The boys at the private boarding school Tom attends are supposed to be supervised by school ushers, who monitor their behavior, resolve quarrels, and set a good example for them. Unfortunately, the ushers at Tom’s school aren’t very well educated or good at their job, and they have little interest in doing their job properly. As a consequence, the older students bully the younger ones, students are encouraged to tattle on each other, and physical punishments are used to keep the students in line. In spite of this and some homesickness, Tom actually has a pretty good time at school with his new friends at school. They have some adventures (some of which involves cruelty to animals they find, and the author makes it clear that he doesn’t endorse this and thinks that the bee stings they get are earned) and delight in scaring each other with ghost stories at night. However, this school isn’t really the best treatment or education Tom can get, so it’s just as well that he is sent to a public school after this.

Tom’s change in school comes when there’s an outbreak of disease in the area, and the schoolmaster of the private school is one of the people to become ill. All of the boys are sent home to their families. Since Tom has already told his father that he would rather attend a public school and since school at the private school is canceled for the rest of the term, Tom’s father decides to send him to Rugby. When Tom goes to Rugby, his father talks to him about his school experiences. Tom’s father says that he is going to Rugby at a younger age than he had planned to send him, and if schools are still like they were when he was young, he’s going to see people doing many cruel things and will hear bad talk from other people. He urges Tom, whatever happens at school, to be brave, kind, and truthful and, no matter what other people say, to not say anything he wouldn’t be willing to have his mother or sister hear him say. If he does these things, he won’t have to feel ashamed to see his family when he comes home from school, and they won’t be ashamed of him. This talk and the thoughts of his mother make Tom a little emotional, although he tries not to show it too much.

Tom’s father privately reflects on the reasons why Tom is going away to school. Partly, Tom is going to school because Tom really wants to go and have that experience. The fact is that Tom’s father doesn’t really care too much about Tom learning subjects like Latin, and his mother doesn’t care too much about academics, either. Tom’s parents aren’t too concerned about what kind of scholar Tom is. What Tom’s father really wants for Tom is what he has already told him to be. He wants his son to be brave and truthful, and he wants Tom to be a good and helpful English gentleman and a Christian. Basically, he’s more concerned with his son’s character and life choices than with his son’s grades. He thinks about whether or not he should warn Tom about various temptations he might experience at school, but he decides not to because Tom is still just a boy, and he thinks he wouldn’t understand.

Going to Rugby

Tom takes a stage coach by himself to school, nervous about what the school will be like but excited about the the experiences he is about to have. When Tom arrives at Rugby, a more experienced student, Harry East, helps Tom get settled and acts as a mentor to Tom about school life. East’s aunt is an acquaintance of Tom’s family, and she knew Tom would be coming to Rugby, so she asked East to hemp Tom. He explains the school grounds and uniform pieces to Tom, describes student activities and sports to him, and answers his questions.

Tom loves sports and is eager to play Rugby football, but East tells him that he won’t be able to play until he learns the game. Football is different at Rugby, and it’s a much rougher game than other schools play. East says players often get hurt and break bones. There is a match that day, and Tom finds it exciting to watch, especially since their house wins! After the match, East says that he doesn’t have any allowance money right now, so Tom buys some food they can have for tea, and they share some of it with some of the other boys from their school house. Tom starts making friends with the other boys, and they all talk about the match together.

After tea, East says that it’s time to join their house for singing. Tom is surprised, but East says that group singing among the students is a regular school activity. There are also speeches from other students at the school singing. Today’s speech is about their house’s victory at the football match. One of the students speaking, Brook, praises the players and congratulates them for their victory on behalf of the house, with all the other boys cheering. He says that their house won the match because their house has the best house spirit and team spirit, and they know they can depend on each other. However, he also issues a warning to the students about bullying in the house. Some of the older students have been picking on the younger ones. He doesn’t want to encourage tattling among the students, and he says that learning to deal with bullies is a valuable skill that makes a boy tougher, but at the same time, bullies are cowards, they encourage cowardly behavior among others, and they break up house spirit and bonds of teamwork among the students. He cautions everyone that too much bullying and allowing bullying to continue will destroy the house spirit that helped them win today, so if they want to continue winning and enjoying house victories, they’d better cut it out. Some of the younger students look at the older students have been doing the bullying, especially a boy called Flashman.

Brook also cautions the other students against drinking in the local pubs and talks to them about their new headmaster. Some of the students haven’t been happy with him because he’s changing some of the school customs. Students have been grumbling and would like to see the new headmaster gone, but Brook points out that Brook isn’t going anywhere and that the “customs” he’s been changing have been destructive pranks and other habits that were also causing problems. The new headmaster hasn’t touched some of the customs that really matter to the students, like their sports, and in fact, the headmaster was also watching the match today. There are mixed feelings among the boys at this part of the speech because they like the idea that the headmaster, who they call “the doctor”, was watching the match, but at the same time, the boys don’t really know him or trust him yet.

The author notes that the new headmaster found the school in a state of disorder and mismanagement when he took his position, and the changes he’s been making are about restoring order to the school. The boys, not knowing the difference between a more orderly and well-managed school and the one they got to know when they first arrived, don’t appreciate the doctor’s wisdom of kindness yet. Tom first encounters the doctor when he leads the students in prayers.

Before bed, Tom and the other younger boys meet with some bullying from Flashman and Flashman’s cronies. Some of the other boys are terrified, but Tom and East allow themselves to endure the bullying, being “tossed” by the older boys so the other boys will be spared. The other boys are grateful to them for this, so they start to hold Tom in high regard.

Getting Into Trouble

This eventful first day is a good introduction for Tom about what life at Rugby School will be like for him. Sports, bullying, pranks, fighting, camaraderie among the other students, singing, speeches, and the new headmaster are going to be major themes for him in his education. Like other younger students, Tom has to act as a servant and do chores for older students, part of a tradition called “fagging” (more about that below in my reaction). Tom does well in his classes at school because he has already had a good grounding in his subjects, and he is generally positive about his life at school, in spite of the bullying. He loves participating in the school sports and physical games, like Hare and Hounds.

However, things do get harder for Tom at school. Because he is doing so well at his grade level, he is quickly promoted to the next. When he gets there, with some of his new friends, like East, Tom becomes less studious and more unruly, like the others. Also, the older boys who were trying to set a good example for the others and protect the younger students from the bullies graduate from the school, leaving bullies and less conscientious students as the senior students. The bullying gets worse, and as Brooks had predicted, it breaks the spirit of teamwork in Tom’s house. The students in the house start dividing into factions of bullies and bullied, the younger students against the older.

The younger students get increasingly resentful of the ill treatment and bullying of the older students and start getting rebellious against the system of “fagging” at the school, with Tom and the others declaring that they simply won’t serve the older students anymore. When students like Flashman the bully call for them, they just pretend they don’t hear and refuse to answer them. Flashman and the others try to physically break into Tom and East’s room when they refuse to come, but Tom and East barricade themselves inside. Their success against the older students encourages other students to rebel. Tom considers going to the headmaster about it, but the others discourage the idea. None of the students want to go to the schoolmasters unless absolutely necessary because the students think that the right thing to do is to work out their own problems with each other.

Diggs, one of the older students who is nicer tells the others that, when he and Flashman were younger students, the students in their grade also rebelled against the older students to teach them not to bully them, but Flashman didn’t rebel with the others. Instead, he ingratiated himself to the older students, continuing to serve them and bribing them with treats he got from home. He has evaded discipline and consequences for his behavior by making himself into a useful toady for the students with more authority. Now, Flashman and his cronies increasingly bully the younger students and use physical hurt to subdue them. The younger students retaliate against them with pranks. Tom and East become Flashman’s particular enemies because they live close together in their house and because Tom and East started the rebellion and have been open and accurate in their criticism of his cowardice, refusing to be subdued by the beatings he gives them.

Matters with Flashman come to a head over a lottery, when Flashman pressures other students to turn over their tickets to him. Tom refuses to part with his, and Flashman and his cronies beat him and burn him, hurting him so badly that Diggs intervenes, worrying that they might kill Tom. Diggs shows Flashman to be a coward when he confronts him over the incident and hits Flashman, but Flashman doesn’t fight back because he’s afraid of getting hurt himself. This doesn’t end Flashman’s aggression against the younger boys, and when he starts getting worse again with Tom and East, Diggs urges the two boys to gang up on Flashman. For them to fight him singly wouldn’t be a fair fight because Flashman is several years older than they are and bigger, but Diggs considers it fair for both of them to stand up to Flashman at once. To Flashman’s shock, the two boys do gang up on him. He’s much bigger than they are but not as good at fighting and pretty cowardly about fights where he doesn’t have some obvious, overwhelming advantage. Tom and East win the fight, giving Flashman a cut on his head that bleeds. At first, Tom and East are worried about whether they’ve hurt Flashman badly, but Diggs has a look at the wound and tells Flashman off for being dramatic about how hurt he is. Flashman has only skinned his head a little, and he’s done much worse to the younger boys. Flashman never physically fights the boys again. He eventually leaves the school, being sent away by the headmaster after he becomes disgracefully drunk at a nearby pub one evening. The headmaster was already displeased with Flashman, and this was the last straw. The younger boys are glad to see the bully gone, although some of the older students bear some resentment against the younger ones for their rebellion and their triumph over someone from their level.

Tom and East are emboldened by their victory and for moving up at school, and they become regular rule breakers. They never consider the justice or reasons behind school rules, taking them more as challenges. They get into trouble for trespassing on someone else’s land to go fishing, and the land owner’s gamekeeper brings Tom before the headmaster. Later, Tom and East climb onto the roof of the school and carve their names on the minute hand of the school clock. They are caught because they accidentally change the time on the clock, and when someone investigates why the clock is wrong, finds their names.

Later, they sneak into town against the headmaster’s orders and get caught. They are both taken before the headmaster for this, and they receive floggings for their stunts. The headmaster also gives them a lecture about the dangerous nature of some of their stunts, pointing out that they could have fallen and broken bones from the clock stunt. He points out that they never think about the reasons why rules exist, thinking of them only as whims of the schoolmasters, which isn’t the case. The rules exist for good reasons, and they apply to everyone at the school, including Tom and East. The headmaster says he doesn’t want to keep giving them floggings for their stunts, and if they can’t gain some maturity and reform their behavior, he’ll send them both away from the school. Tom and East are shocked because they never thought that they might have gone far enough to risk their positions at the school. They love their lives at the school and don’t want to be sent home in disgrace. The headmaster tells them to think about their futures at the school seriously when they go home for a term break.

The Headmaster’s Solution

Privately, the headmaster has a word about the boys with one of the other schoolmasters. The headmaster is concerned that, if they continue their irresponsibility and recklessness, they will fail their studies, get into some really serious trouble, and possibly turn into thoughtless bullies of the younger children as they get older. The other schoolmaster acknowledges that they are not the best students and they are a problem, but he thinks that they’re not really bad boys and could still be turned into decent young men. He says to the headmaster that what these boys need is something to give them a sense of responsibility and suggests making each of them responsible for a younger boy at school. Protecting a new boy from the older bullies could settle them and make them more serious and responsible and prevent.

When Tom returns to school for the next term, he expects that he and East will be allowed to share a room and study, which is something that they’ve hoped for. They’ve been making plans for all the ways they can have fun and goof off in their own space. Instead, the school matron introduces Tom to a new boy who will be sharing his room and who will be Tom’s responsibility. George Arthur is a pale, timid, skinny boy, and Tom can see that he’s just the sort of boy who would be picked on by the others. Tom is annoyed at having his plans with East spoiled, but the matron stirs his sense of sympathy by telling him that George Arthur’s father is dead and that he has no brothers. Tom can see that young Arthur will probably be made miserable at school by bullies unless someone stands up for him and teaches him how to handle life at school, so he agrees to take responsibility for him.

The schoolmaster is correct that looking after little George Arthur changes the way that Tom looks at himself, his fellow students, and his education. The change starts when Arthur says his prayers openly at night, getting him a teasing from the other boys, who take any sign of weakness or sentiment as an opportunity for teasing. Tom defends Arthur from them. He also feels a twinge of shame because he remembers, for the first time in a long time, that he had once promised his own mother that he would always say his prayers at night, and he has become neglectful about this, specifically because he wanted to avoid the teasing or bad opinion of the other students. It shames Tom a little to think it, but he realizes that, although Arthur may be physically weaker than he is, he has displayed more moral courage than Tom has simply by saying his prayers, regardless of what the other students think.

Looking after Arthur gives Tom a sense of responsibility, as the schoolmaster hoped, and Tom appreciates feeling like he has a purpose. He enjoys seeing timid Arthur beginning to develop as a student and start to make a new friend on his own. However, Arthur also has things to teach Tom. Tom’s friendship with Arthur helps his own personal development and causes him to consider sides of himself he hasn’t thought about much. As Arthur opens up more to Tom, he explains that he is serious about religion because his late father was a clergyman. When he was alive, his father used to read the Bible with him. Inspired by Arthur’s example, Tom becomes more serious and starts exploring his religious side, although he takes some teasing and criticism from the other students over this budding sentimentality and defense of little Arthur. Tom and East start participating in Bible readings and study with Arthur, considering some of the deeper questions of life and religion that they’ve never considered before. They begin to think even more deeply about life and death when a disease spreads through the school. Arthur becomes ill and another boy dies. Tom is relieved when Arthur recovers, but his near death and the other boy’s death cause Tom to really consider life and death seriously for the first time.

As Tom develops a deeper understanding of life and religion, he finds himself a little at odds with East, who still doesn’t take life seriously. Fortunately, the two of them respect each other enough as friends to talk about their views seriously with each other. Tom doesn’t consider himself as knowledgeable about the subject or as good as explaining it to others as Arthur, but through their conversation, East realizes that he does actually care about the subject and goes to talk to the headmaster about his feelings and about confirmation. The headmaster’s kind understanding and reassurance is an inspiration to the boys, and they come to respect him, although Tom doesn’t fully understand the headmaster and what he’s done for the boys until he is a young man.

At the end of the story, Tom is with some college friends when he hears that the old headmaster has died, and he feel compelled to visit Rugby School again to pay his respects and reflect on his old headmaster.

The book is now in the public domain. It is available to read for free online through Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive (including an audiobook version). Tom Brown’s School Days has been made into movies and tv films and miniseries multiple times. There is also a sequel to this book called Tom Brown at Oxford, which focuses on Tom Brown’s university experiences.

My Reaction

Although it was not the first book set at an English boarding school, this 19th century book is famous for being the book that popularized the trend of British boarding school stories, which has continued for over 150 years since! There are also references to this specific story in other books, and I have to admit that it gave me a giggle to recognize the scene that Terry Pratchett parodied in his novel Pyramids. The story is semi-autobiographical, based on the experiences the author, Thomas Hughes, had when he attended Rugby School as a boy during the 1830s. There is now a statue of Thomas Hughes outside the Rugby School Library.

The headmaster in the story is only called “the doctor” for most of the story, until the very end, when Tom learns of his death and his last name is given as “Arnold.” Tom’s headmaster is based on Thomas Arnold, who was the real, historical headmaster of Rugby when the author of the book was a student there himself. The real Thomas Arnold did die suddenly of a heart attack at age 46 in 1842, and this book is an homage to his memory as well as the recollections and thoughts of the author on the subject of education. The real life Thomas Arnold did reform the habits and organization of Rugby School, like the headmaster in the story, focusing on the religious and character development of students and creating a system of prefects called “praepostors” as student monitors, something that is referred to in the story. Other British boarding schools copied and built on his ideas and practices. (Added fun fact: Thomas Arnold was the great-grandfather of the author Aldous Huxley, known for Brave New World.)

The book requires some patience for modern because the author spends some time setting the scene and explaining the background of Tom’s family and early childhood before really getting into the story. Part of the reason for that is that the author, Thomas Hughes, based the story on his own childhood and youth, and he spends some time comparing the childhood and conditions of life in young Tom’s time with life at the time he wrote the story.

Hughes admits that he doesn’t like the direction the social situation has been heading in his time, and he feels that his time period is at a changing point. He sees many of the old ways of life falling aside, and he partly blames the new upper classes, who take advantage of the working class, using them to enrich themselves (“buying cheap and selling dear”). He’s describing an increasingly industrialized and urbanized society with a significant wealth gap between the wealthiest members of society and the working class, which was characteristic of Victorian society. Hughes notes that some members of the upper classes profess to be trying to reform the lower classes, but the author says they don’t really understand the working classes at all. There is part of the story, early in the book, after he describes young Tom’s experiences at a local fair, where he delivers a lecture to the younger members of these rising upper classes on the subject. Hughes was a social reformer in the Victorian era, so he has many thoughts about how to improve society and a pretty accurate understanding of social conditions during his lifetime, and he works them into the story of Tom’s education.

A Victorian Boarding School

It’s interesting to see Thomas Hughes’s descriptions of Rugby School and boarding school life and education in the 1830s. I’ve never been to a boarding school before, and neither have most of the other readers who enjoy boarding school stories. It’s getting to see a type of school that most of us will never attend that makes stories of this kind fascinating. Seeing them as they looked in the past is especially fascinating. I’ve read other books and seen documentaries about boarding schools in Britain, and it was interesting to note the aspects of school life that are the same or different from what someone might encounter in a modern school. From what I’ve learned about British boarding schools, extracurricular activities, like sports and singing, are still major features of British boarding schools that have stood the test of time. However, modern schools have cracked down on bullying and abuse from older, higher level students.

A couple of words that appears in the story, “fags” and “fagging” sound like derogatory terms from modern times, but it has nothing to do with homosexuality in this context. “Fagging” was a tradition at British public schools of this time and earlier, where senior students used younger students as servants, giving them menial chores to do. The “fags” described in the story are younger students, who are described as performing various tasks, like fetching things for the older students, cleaning, carrying messages, or arranging furniture for singing. The problem with the tradition of fagging was that it often led to bullying and abuse of younger boys at the hands of the older students, and this is something that’s addressed in the story. The bullying and abuse associated with this tradition is what led to the end of the tradition in modern times.

There are also other student habits which would seem odd by modern standards, including some which would definitely not be allowed for boys of this age. The students at the school are about 11 to 19 at the oldest, but they routinely drink beer, even the younger boys, although I think it’s probably a weak version. The ways the students are treated with regard to money and how they spend their money are also odd by modern standards. Their allowances may be withheld from them as a punishment. There are times in the story when students in need of money auction off some of their own belongings, a subject that appears in A Sweet Girl Graduate, although the boys don’t get in trouble for this as the girls in A Sweet Girl Graduate did. The older boys also impound the allowances of the younger boys for a lottery at one point, using the funds to purchase sweepstakes tickets on a horse race. The younger boys are not consulted about their participation in the gambling, and the only problem that arises from it is when Flashman tries to bully them out of their tickets to get ones he thinks are likely to win.

Education and Manhood

As the author reflects on his time at school, his experiences with friends and classmates, and the inspiration of his old headmaster, he also offers advice to other boys and his thoughts on what it means to be a man and to take charge of ones own development. I don’t think modern parents and teachers would agree on all of his advice, but he makes it clear what experiences from his school days have led him to believe what he does about how boys and men should conduct themselves.

At one point, he says that he has no problem with the idea of boys fighting with each other because he sees fighting and struggling as just part of the role of men in life. He says his only concern is whether or not they’ve chosen the right side to fight on. Flashman serves of an example of how bad people can actually be quite popular, at least among their cultivated cronies, and are often supported by the social system or know how to use the system to their advantage. The author warns other boys not to see another person’s popularity or social position as a sign that they are good people or that they are in the right in a situation because the opposite is very often true. What is good and right is independent of popularity, power, and money and is determined by other factors. He admits, through the character of Tom, that he has developed a soft spot for underdogs and says, even if you think the underdog is wrong in his beliefs, he shouldn’t be scorned but respected for his willingness to fight for what he believes, even knowing that he doesn’t have popular support.

At the end of the story, when the headmaster dies, the character Tom despairs because, although he has moved on from Rugby School, and he realizes that many of the boys who are there now don’t know who he is and wouldn’t recognize him as one of them, the headmaster was a guiding light in his life and spiritual development. He still feels ties to his old school and headmaster because his time there and the headmaster’s influence set him on the course for his life and development. The author reflects that Tom the character was still someone self-centered at this age, and in the first shock of hearing about the headmaster’s sudden death, he thinks of the loss of the headmaster as a personal loss that no one else would understand. However, when he returns to Rugby and thinks about it further, he realizes that he is not the only one whose life was touched by the man, remembering that he left behind a wife and children and that the headmaster cared about all of his students and influenced them all in different ways. Tom the character sheds some of his self-centeredness and realizes that it’s time to move on in his life. The author also says that there is a flaw in looking to mortal men, even the kindest and greatest among them, as the ultimate source of guidance because no mortal man lives forever. Tom the character will tend to his own spiritual development from this point forward and look to God Himself for guidance. In this way, it seems that young Tom the character has developed into the kind of young man his father wanted him to be in the beginning, making his education successful.

Before Tom learns of the headmaster’s death, he discusses his future ambitions with an old schoolmaster, saying that he wants to make a difference in the world as well as earn a good living. The schoolmaster cautions him to be certain of his priorities and know which of those two goals is more important. There are many people who spend their lives making money but do nothing of lasting importance for the world and other people, and there are many people who do good in the world without making much money. If Tom focuses too much on making money, he may sacrifice the goal of doing good in the world, so he needs to remember what he really wants to accomplish in his life and what he wants to prioritize.

Thomas Hughes went to Oxford after his time at Rugby School, like his character, and he became a lawyer, social reformer, and member of Parliament as well as a writer. Among his books are books about religion and the nature of manliness. The themes of Tom Brown’s School Days really were the themes of his life, and he genuinely means the advice that he offers to young men in the story.

Posted on June 28, 2025 by TracyC

Lucky Dog Days

Pee Wee Scouts

Lucky Dog Days by Judy Delton, 1988.

Mrs. Peters tells the scouts that it’s Help-a-Pet month. The kids start talking about the kinds of pets they have, and Mrs. Peters asks them if they would like to do something to help a pet. She suggests that they could walk dogs at an animal shelter or raise money for homeless pets.

Mrs. Peters takes the scouts to an animal shelter. The kids like seeing all the animals, although Tracy turns out to be allergic to them. The other kids walk the dogs around the shelter yard. This turns into chaos because Rachel decides to walk a dog that’s really too big for her to handle, a St. Bernard. (The adults should have stopped her, but they never do in this series when a kid is about to do something they shouldn’t. They take Rachel’s word for it that she can handle a St. Bernard because she has walked her uncle’s Great Dane. However, even dogs of the same size don’t have the same temperament, and I think a real shelter worker would know the individual animal’s temperament and not offer an oversized dog with a lot of energy to a six-year-old child.) When her dog starts running and dragging her, the other dogs get out of control, too. Fortunately, they’re all in a contained yard, so none of them gets away. The incident ends with Rachel crashing into a lily pond in the yard.

Mrs. Peters tells the children that they will have a rummage sale to raise money for the animals at the shelter. All of the scouts will donate things to sell and collect donations from others. Tracy tells Molly and Mary Beth that she will help them collect donations. Molly is annoyed that Tracy is coming with them because she thinks Tracy is bossy and that her sniffling is gross. However, it turns out to be a good thing that Tracy comes because she brings a wagon with her to collect donations, which the other girls hadn’t thought to do. Unfortunately, their wagon disappears when the girls try to visit one last house to ask for donations and leave it unattended.

It turns out that some of the other scouts, Roger, Sonny, and Tim, found their wagon and try to claim the donations as their own at the next scout meeting. The boys say it’s theirs because they just found it on the sidewalk, but the girls tell Mrs. Peters what happened. Mrs. Peters smooths things over, saying that it doesn’t matter because these items will be sold to help the animals. Molly doesn’t think it’s fair for the boys to get credit for the work the girls did gathering donations, though. (I think Mrs. Peters should also have had a word with the boys about not taking things if you don’t know who they belong to and don’t have permission to take them. The adults in this series never explain things enough.)

There is one particularly fancy necklace that looks like diamonds among the donations. Mrs. Peters says that, rather than putting a price on it, they will auction it off to the highest bidder. They also have some adoptable dogs at the sale to attract people who might adopt them. It was Molly’s idea to have adoptable dogs there to sell because a lady expressed interest in Mrs. Peters’s big, black dog, Tiny. To Molly’s surprise, the lady who eventually buys the fancy necklace and pays a thousand dollars for it is the woman who donated it. When they ask her about it, she explains that it is a real diamond necklace and that she donated it by a mistake. However, even though she paid a lot of money to get it back, it’s still only a fraction of its real value, and she’s happy to make a big donation to a worthy cause.

In the end, Mrs. Peters congratulates the scouts on how much money they raised and how many animals were adopted that day. There is just one puppy left from the animals who were at the sale. The kids are attached to the puppy and don’t want to send him back to the shelter, so Mrs. Peters decides to keep him as a mascot for the troop. They name him Lucky, and Mrs. Peters says that they can take turns keeping him at their houses. (Except for the kids with allergies, like Tracy.)

My Reaction

The name of the book comes partly because the month is August, and Mrs. Peters explains to the kids what the “dog days” of summer are, although she just describes what the weather is like rather than explain why they’re called “dog days.” The term comes from the period after the rising of the dog star Sirius, but then again, I suppose that could be difficult to explain to six-year-olds. Not all adults would necessarily know it, either. I had to look it up myself to get the explanation. Even so, the name is appropriate because the theme of the book is pets, and it is set during late summer.

I still think that the adults in the story could explain some things to the kids more. That’s often a part of books in this series, although that’s also where much of the excitement of the story comes from, things going wrong because the kids don’t entirely know what they’re doing. Any lessons learned are more implied than spelled out.

The kids also keep insulting each other, even though they’re also kind of friends in the stories. We don’t really know why Molly thinks Tracy is bossy because she doesn’t really explain that. It just seems to her that Tracy tends to tell other people what to do and get her way. Molly relents a little in this book, though, because it turns out that Tracy has some good ideas, and even when she thought Tracy screwed up because they lost the wagon, everything worked out for the best.

Posted on June 24, 2025 by TracyC

Camp Ghost-Away

Pee Wee Scouts

Camp Ghost-Away by Judy Delton, illustrated by Alan Tiegreen, 1988.

The Pee-Wee Scouts sell powered sugar donuts door-to-door in their neighborhood to raise money for their trip to camp, and there is a special badge for the scout who sells the most. The kids all brag about how much they’re going to sell, each claiming that they can sell the most. Rachel teases Sonny because his over-protective mother will probably go with him while he’s going door-to-door. She calls him a “mama’s boy”, and he calls her “stuck up.” (There is some truth to both of these insults, but they’re still nasty, and no adult comments on it.) Molly and Mary Beth decide to do their selling together because they’re best friends.

In the end, Rachel and Sonny are the biggest sellers, each of them selling more than 100 boxes, in spite of Rachel’s teasing about his mother’s involvement and Rachel’s mother’s objection that donuts aren’t very healthy. However, there are some objections about how fair that is when Rachel and Sonny reveal the secrets of their success. Sonny’s mother sold 80 of his boxes at her workplace, and some kids object that it isn’t fair because Sonny didn’t sell them himself. He gets more teasing about being a “baby” and having his mother do things for him, but Mrs. Peters, the scout leader, says that it’s fair for a mother to sell on their behalf because the most important thing is the money they raise for camp.

Similarly, Rachel explains that her family went to a family wedding, and she sold most of her boxes to her relatives. Her family seems to have money, and her aunt and grandmother each bought 20 boxes. Jealously, Molly says that her relatives will get fat if they eat that many donuts. Rachel says that they won’t because they plan to donate the donuts to hungry people. Again, Mrs. Peters doesn’t say anything about the insults the children trade, just saying that the money they raised is important because they will now be able to afford to go to camp.

The camp is called Camp Hide-Away, and Mrs. Peters gives the children information about the camp and what to pack. They will go to camp next weekend, and Lisa’s mother will come with them on the trip. Rachel brags about how she has two swimsuits to bring, while the other kids only have one each, and she also shows off her new gold bracelet.

When they get to camp and Rachel discovers that they will be sleeping in tents, she isn’t so sure she wants to go camping after all. She doesn’t like bugs, and she worries about bears. The other kids call her “sissy” and “scaredy cat.” Mrs. Peters assures them that it will all be fine, and she has her large dog with them.

That night, they hear a strange sound, which sounds like the moaning of a ghost. The kids debate about whether it’s a ghost or some kind of wild animal. Either prospect is terrifying. When it starts talking, they’re sure it’s a ghost, but Mrs. Peters’s dog saves the day!

My Reaction and Spoilers

I’ve commented before that the kids in this book series do a lot of name-calling. In a way, it’s realistic for young children, but it’s also really annoying. Sonny inevitably gets called “sissy”, “baby”, and/or “mama’s boy” in every book I’ve read. It also bothers me that no adult ever tells the kids not to talk like that. The kids in the story are only six years old, so this kind of name-calling could be considered realistic, but adults telling kids not to talk like that is also realistic. I feel bad for Sonny because he often gets picked on in these books, and I think it’s unfair. Maybe his mother is a little over-protective, compared to the other parents, but at the same time, these kids are only six years old. Things like having a mom who walks to a six-year-old to school and doesn’t want a six-year-old to go door-to-door, selling things to strangers all by himself, are not outrageous. Even Rachel admits that she heard her mother saying that the kids were rather young to be away from home overnight for an entire weekend, and I think that’s true. There is some trouble with homesickness in the story, and I’m not surprised.

Like other books in this series, there are also multiple parts to the story, almost like short stories put together. The first part of this book is about selling the donuts to raise money for camp, and the second part is about their camping trip, although that part also has some smaller episodes. The highlight of the book is the spooky noise that the kids hear at night and think is a ghost. It is pretty quickly revealed that it’s just a couple of the scouts playing a prank on the others. The prank gets foiled by Mrs. Peters’s dog and the pranksters crashing into things because they have sheets over their heads.

There’s also a third part of the story, where Molly has more trouble with camp activities than the other kids. She can’t swim or row as well as they can, and when they look for interesting things, like rocks and wild flowers, on their hike, all she finds is poison ivy. But, she isn’t the only one having problems. Rachel doesn’t like bugs and the camping food, and Sonny gets homesick. Sonny’s mother comes to pick him up because he’s so upset. The other kids tease him again, but the truth is that other kids are also homesick and cry at night. Even Lisa cries, even though her mother is there on the trip. Molly realizes that she is the only one who isn’t homesick. Although she doesn’t get the badges for the standard camp activities, Molly does get one for not being homesick and another for finding Mary Beth’s lost ring. I was surprised that Rachel’s bracelet wasn’t the thing that got lost since she made a big deal of introducing it, but it was Mary Beth’s ring that got lost instead.

Although I often think that the adults don’t explain much to the children in this series, Mrs. Peters does tell the children that homesickness is natural. I think she could have given them a little more advice about it and defended Sonny from the teasing more, though.

Posted on June 20, 2025June 20, 2025 by TracyC · 3 Comments

Cookies and Crutches

Pee Wee Scouts

Cookies and Crutches by Judy Delton, 1988.

This is the first book in the Pee Wee Scouts series. The children in Troop 23 meet after school on Tuesdays, and their leader is Mrs. Peters. One Tuesday, they meet at Mrs. Peters’s house to bake cookies. Mrs. Peters says that, to earn their cookie badge, they must each bake cookies at home without help and have their parents write a note that they have done it. She teaches the children an easy cookie recipe that they will use.

Roger White doesn’t want to bake cookies because he thinks that baking is for girls. Sonny Betz argues that it’s not just for girls, but many of the other children think that Sonny is a sissy because his mother still walks him to school. Sonny thinks that Roger is a creep. Mrs. Peters says that cooking is for everyone who eats. If boys can eat, they can also cook.

Mrs. Peters demonstrates making a recipe for chocolate chip cookies (and the book provides the recipe). Molly and Mary Beth ask if they can make their own batch of cookies for their badge together. They are not supposed to have adults helping them, but Mrs. Peters says that it is fine if they work with each other. In spite of their earlier argument, Roger agrees to make cookies with Sonny as a team.

However, when Molly and Mary Beth try to bake cookies by themselves, they don’t think the cookie batter looks right. It looks too pale, and when Mrs. Peters made her cookies, the batter was more brown. To fix the color problem, they decide to pour in some root beer, which is not part of the recipe. Then, they decide that the batter is too runny, so they add some gravy mix to thicken it. Because they added things they shouldn’t have, the cookies come out all wrong, and the girls worry that they won’t get their badge.

At their next meeting, though, they learn that nobody’s cookies look like they should. Mrs. Peters has the kids make cookies together while she supervises, although she doesn’t help them directly, so they can say that they did it themselves. This time, the cookies work out, although some of them are oddly-shaped. However, all of the kids get their cookie badges together.

The scout troop then organizes an ice skating party with the kids’ fathers. It’s a little awkward because not all of the kids have fathers living at home. Most of the kids without fathers bring an uncle or brother instead, but Sonny doesn’t have either, so his mom comes. The other kids tease him about it because they think he’s already too much of a mommy’s boy.

Some of the kids are also nervous because they don’t know how to skate, and they’re not even sure that their fathers know. Molly gets into trouble because Rachel makes a big deal about her fancy skates, which she owns so she doesn’t need to rent any, and about her dainty little feet. Molly rents a pair in the same size as Rachel’s, trying to prove that her feet aren’t too big, but they’re really too small for her. She has to take off her socks to put them on, and even then, it’s a hard squeeze. She ends up spraining her ankle badly because she’s wearing the wrong skates, and she has to use crutches. Molly doesn’t get her skating badge, but she does get one that’s almost as good as a consolation.

My Reaction

This is one of those children’s books/series where the kids in the story, although they are part of the same troop and seem to be friends for the most part, still say insulting things about each other, like when Roger called Sonny a sissy and Sonny called Roger a creep. I know that kids do things like this sometimes, but I don’t really like books that seem to promote or are permissive about that kind of talk. What bothered me is that, even though the boys were insulting each other in front of Mrs. Peters, she didn’t tell them to stop, which makes it seem like she tacitly thinks those insults are fine. I liked it that she contradicted Roger’s assertion that cooking and baking are only for girls, but I wish that she had said something about the way the kids were insulting each other.

I knew from the beginning of the story that the way Mrs. Peters was teaching these young children to make the cookies, just by watching her, and then expecting them to do it right completely on their own, with no adult supervision, was probably going to lead to a disaster of some kind. Of course, that’s because I’m reading this from an adult perspective. Nobody learns anything complex from only having seen it done by somebody else just one, especially if they just watched and didn’t actively participate. These kids are also young, just in the first grade of elementary school. They can read, but they don’t have advanced reading skills or much experience with cooking anything before. What I’m saying is that they really needed adult supervision, and I didn’t think that telling them that they had to do this completely by themselves wasn’t a great idea. Although, it’s possible that Mrs. Peters assumed that the kids would get more supervision than they actually got, even if the adults didn’t actively help. I think a lot of adults assumed that not helping meant no supervising and no advice or intervention when the kids were about to do something wrong. I have to admit, though, that there wouldn’t be much of a story if they did everything right, and this activity went as expected.

The story has two parts to it, which aren’t directly related. I thought, at first, that the kids would be serving cookies they baked to the dads, and that would be the tie-in between the cooking baking and the party with the fathers. They didn’t, though. The skating incident and Molly’s injury are unconnected to each other. The only connection I can see to the two incidents isn’t explicitly stated, but both of this incidents involve the kids doing something they’ve never done before and not really doing it right. They need to have experiences where things go wrong to start figuring out how to do things right. Although Rachel brags about her skating ability and her skates, after Molly is injured, Rachel admits that she fell down a lot when she was younger and was first learning. Molly feels a little better, realizing that nobody does things perfectly the first time. Although getting hurt isn’t great, learning to use crutches is also something new that Molly experiences that none of the other kids have experienced before.

The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong, pictures by Maurice Sendak, 1954.

My Reaction

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The Children of Noisy Village by Astrid Lindgren, 1947.

My Reaction

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Emma’s Afternoon by Pamela Sykes, 1970.

My Reaction

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The Flash Children by Mabel Esther Allan, 1975.

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

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Winter Cottage by Carol Ryrie Brink, 1939, 1968.

My Reaction

Native Americans

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A Sweet Girl Graduate by Mrs. L. T. Meade, 1891.

First Evening in The “Haunted” Boarding House

Life at College and the Other Students

Toxic Friendships and Social Manipulation

The Auction

The Fallout and Geoffrey hammond

Ghosts of the Past and Paths to the Future

My Reaction and Spoilers

Early Dark Academia

From Toxic Relationships To Helpful Friends

The Atmosphere

So, Were Any of the Characters Lesbians?

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Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes, 1857.

First Boarding School Experience

Going to Rugby

Getting Into Trouble

The Headmaster’s Solution

My Reaction

A Victorian Boarding School

Education and Manhood

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Lucky Dog Days by Judy Delton, 1988.

My Reaction

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Camp Ghost-Away by Judy Delton, illustrated by Alan Tiegreen, 1988.

My Reaction and Spoilers

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Cookies and Crutches by Judy Delton, 1988.

My Reaction

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