often seen in the street without a hat

katlinel asked what more stuff would you like to write about children's books?

There are two ideas I've had for a while. The first is something I wrote an essay about at university, but would quite like to revisit and do it properly, about the representation of WW2 women's services in children's books. The essay was about WW1, WW2, Falklands and Iraq wars (with a footnote about sheep), but it was too shallow and there's only really a lot of examples in WW2. Mostly I wrote then about the hierarchies, with very few Old Girls from school stories are in the ATS, which was not considered appropriate for nice girls.

The second is about tracing the changes from the beginning to end of the longer running series - Chalet School, Abbey Girls, Dimsie. When I first started thinking about this I was even more untheoretical than now, but I had had ideas about professionalisation ofof schools, and a change from "feminine" to "masculine" values. Mostly it would be a comparison, from the early 20th century, and the values and ambitions of the novels, to their finishing points after the authors had found success, been through a world war, and changed their characters to fit the times (or not changed them, and shoved them in a world of folk dancing and aristocrats). I don't know - I think that has been done in various forms already, and is probably not all that interesting at the heart of it. I'd still quite like to do something about the first and last novels in each series. Maybe more of a personal reading project than a writing thing.

I've just remembered an lj conversation ages and ages ago where cangetmad came up with the title "funk and functionality" and I thought I could write something about fear in children's books, possibly the Marlow books iirc, but I am less sure about that. And somewhere I have a not even half finished spreadsheet containing information about what Chalet Girls do in their lessons and prep, and in what class. Fail to find predicates, mostly, I think.

Anyway, I don't think it very likely that I will write these, certainly not very soon. I am very bad at working off my own bat, so it would have to be spurred by a call for papers, and I don't look for those very often. But then I did like writing the class article, so maybe I will get to it some day.

Another meme, though this one I found on friendsfriends rather than back in the midst of time. Given my propensity for memes and books, it's likely I'll have written about these quite a lot before, but never mind, eh?

( A nice long book meme. )

A Lady of Quality - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Guides of the Chalet School - Jane Berry
The Holiday - Stevie Smith
They Both Liked Dogs - Elinor M Brent-Dyer
A Long Way from Verona - Jane Gardam
A Circling Star - Mara Kay
Miss Lonelyhearts and A Cool Million - Nathaniel West
Miss Owen-Owen is at Home - Margaret Forster
Convent on Styx - Gladys Mitchell
O Caledonia - Elspeth Barker
Blame Hitler - Julian Rathbone (actually in July)
Ten Way Street - Susan Scarlett (Noel Streatfeild)
Scenes from Provincial Life - William Cooper
The Middle of the Sandwich - Tim Kennemore
Wall of Words - Tim Kennemore

( July Books. )

Apparently I never got around to posting about what I read in April, so here are two non-consecutive months' worth.

April Books
Come Hither, Nurse! - Jane Grant
The Finkler Question - Howard Jacobson
Exchanges of Hearts - Janet Quin-Harkin (Sweet Dreams)
No More Boys - Charlotte White (Sweet Dreams)
The Lark on the Wing - Elfrida Vipont
The Spring of the Year - Elfrida Vipont
Flowering Spring - Elfrida Vipont
The Pavilion - Elfrida Vipont
The Story of Horace - Alice M. Coates
The Summer Jenny Fell in Love - Barbara Conklin (Sweet Dreams)
Penny and Aggie
Mr Wonderful - Fran Michaels (Sweet Dreams)
The Cinderella Game - Sheri Cobb South (Sweet Dreams)

( April books. )

August
Mary Francis Shura - Summer Dreams, Winter Love
Azar Nafasi - Reading Lolita in Tehran
Fiona Cooper - Heartbreak on the High Sierra
Tracey Rosenberg - The Girl in the Bunker
Jenny Lindsay - The Things We Leave Behind
Michael Arditti - Unity
Joyce Grenfell - Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure
LT Meade - The Rebel of the School (K)
Christopher Brookmyre - The Sacred Art of Stealing
Victoria Walker - The Winter of Enchantment
Victoria Walker - The House at Hadlows
Marian Keyes - This Charming Man
Kazuo Ishiguro - A Pale View of Hills
Mike Thomas - Pocket Notebook
Richard Herring - How Not to Grow Up
Mrs Stephen Fry - Mrs Fry's Diary

( August books. )

I found a piece of a quiz thing I was going to do a while ago in honour of alltheleaves, and then completely forgot about. Better late than never, eh? And hopefully it might entertain some people. Or at the very least, me, as I like comments but can't be bothered to earn them right now. Answer as many or as few questions as you choose in preferably more than one word where applicable.

Which school do Pat and Isobel O'Sullivan attend? (correct spelling please!)

What are the middle names of the Maynard triplets?

Joey Maynard produces triplets and two sets of twins over about a decade. Rosamund Kentisbury produces two sets of twins within one year. Which is the greater achievement?

You awake to find yourself in bed surrounded by incredibly posh women in country dancing frocks. Apparently you have had the temerity to be injured by some psychopathic twins, and now as a penance you are expected to stay in some sort of ruins and work unpaid.
a) How were you injured?
b) How will you escape your fate? Please pay particular attention to the correct use of gentlemen's titles.

Nicola and Lawrie Marlow are identical twins. You have captured one of them but can't work out which. What are some tests you might set to discover their identity?

What is the best ever set of twins you have ever encountered in fiction?

What is the worst ever set of twins you have ever encountered in fiction?

Which twin set would you most like to be one of?

November
Tragically, I Was an Only Twin - Peter Cook
Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett
Dimsie Grows Up - Dorita Fairlie Bruce
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Straw Without Bricks: I Visit Soviet Russia - EM Delafield
The Purposes of Love - Mary Renault
Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks: The Essential Alan Coren - Alan Coren
Dimsie Goes Back - Dorita Fairlie Bruce
Shakespeare Wallah - Geoffrey Kendal
Books do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell
Temporary Kings - Anthony Powell
Hearing Secret Harmonies - Anthony Powell
Dimsie Carries On - Dorita Fairlie Bruce
Dimsie Takes Charge - Dorita Fairlie Bruce
The Encircled Heart - Josephine Elder
The Saturdays - Elizabeth Enright
Anything Can Happen - Jane Shaw
Now and Then - William Corbett
The Trouble With Vanessa - Jean Ure

( November Books. )

It's National Poetry Day! And lots of people on my flist have also been talking specifically about women poets. I combine the two with this extract from Dimsie Among the Prefects. One of the original rules of the Anti-Soppist League was that no member should write poetry (poetry being dreadfully soppy, of course). The ASL was formed when they were juniors, but there is no less need for watchfulness in Div 1. Jean Gordon, however, was found out at the beginning of term to be a secretly budding poet. This was reluctantly allowed to pass, so long as she kept to suitable subjects like the dear old school. However, later in the term, she is discovered deviating from these clear rules:

( What's the matter with Jean's poetry? )

My bathroom book at the moment is Germaine Greer's collection 101 Poems by 101 Women, which is arranged chronologically, and I'm up to Christina Rossetti. Unfortunately the poems have got longer than I like, and since I am thankfully currently free from intestinal difficulty I am not managing to get through them so easily. I mostly like poems rather than poets, but here are my ten:

( Ten women poets. )

I don't care if the last one's a cheat, I think of it as an entity, and it's the first book of poetry I ever bought myself. I was 15/16 and on holiday in Wales with my family and my childhood best friend Chloe and her family. I had blue hair and I was sulking because if I hadn't been on holiday I would have been going to see Dinosaur Jr with my soon-to-be-boyfriend Daniel. We went to the bookshop in Machynlleth, where I spent all my holiday money on my book, and Chloe bought A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man because she loved the line "when you wet the bed first it is warm and then it is cold". We read our respective books when we went to bed that night huddled under blankets because it was technically summer but we were in a damp cottage up what might have been a mountain with no heating.

September
Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown - Jennifer Scanlon
The Valley of Bones - Anthony Powell
Spinster - Sylvia Ashton-Warner
The Best of Myles - Flann O'Brien
The Ionian Mission - Patrick O'Brien
The Reverse of the Medal - Patrick O'Brien
The Soldier's Art - Anthony Powell
No More Saturday Nights - Norma Klein
Dimsie Goes to School - Dorita Fairlie Bruce

( As ever. )