June 2016 Theme - School Days School Days

June 2016 Theme - "Realistic" School Fiction or Non-Fiction

Nothing to do, Nellie Darling
Nothing to do you say
Let's take a trip on memory's ship
Back to the bygone days
Sail to the old village school house
Anchor outside the school door
Look in and see, there's you and there's me
A couple of kids once more



As the school year ends . . .
Loads of possibilities here. A few examples:

• boarding-school novels (Frost in May, Little Men, The Chinese Garden)
• day-schools novels (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Claudine at School)
• or focus on fictional teachers (Villette, Anne of Avonlea)
• or read a play (The Children's Hour)
• or search out some non-fictional "teacher memoirs"

Just two restrictions. Let's keep it to fiction that's reasonably "realistic," staying away from fantasy (no "Harry Potter" or "Vampire Academy"). And let's get something that's predominately school and not just a few chapters (Jane Eyre). Personally, whatever I pick will be elementary or secondary school, but I don't want to be too restrictive, so feel free to choose college (e.g., Daddy-Long-Legs) or university if you prefer.

And for want of any better idea, there's always good ol' . . .



Guess who?

And I thought I was fast with putting up my thread! ;)

Are we counting tutors/home-schooling in this theme or only traditional schools?

I personally would be inclined to avoid home-schooling and tutors because that gets us into governesses as well like Jane Eyre and The Chalk Garden, which might be getting us a bit far afield. If folks would really like to include tutors/home-schooling, though, I'm not really averse to it.

Wow, I just about fell off my chair when I saw the theme for June 2016 has been posted! Luckily, I know exactly what I will read for this theme as I am reading a series about a English teacher set in the 1970's!

I will tentatively plan on something by Miss Read - perhaps Celebrations at Thrush Green, which is the only one the public library has in audio that I haven't already read.

Wow! I just got on the computer to set up the February thread and found this one. You are super-organised CurrerBell. I have no idea what I will read yet. I'll keep my eye out for something.

I'm re-reading the Little House Books...have read 8/10. Will use book 9 for this challenge, as Laura teaches in this book. I'm also reading Anne of Avonlea for a category challenge but didn't now it was about school!

This is a category with lots of possibilities! I've already read it, but Up the Down Staircase is an excellent look at urban U.S. schools in the 1950s. A similar book that I haven't read yet is The Blackboard Jungle, and it was written by one of my favorite writers to boot, so I'll try to track down a copy of that one.

Here's a suggestion. I read The Lions of Little Rock (4****) for the December civil-rights theme (and it also fits the fourth quarter '15 time-period of 1946-to-present), but it would also fit an education theme. Fairly quick read since it's a middle-reader/YA novel.

I'll be reading Looking for Alaska by John Green, about a young man attending boarding school and meeting a young women named Alaska.

Cute bookends I just bought a couple weeks ago on eBay. $75+ but worth it. Old-fashioned school desks aren't complete rarities on eBay, but this is the first I've seen where they've been made into good sturdy bookends.

Those are fantastic!

>11 CurrerBell: I absolutely love those! My Aunt Clara had an actual old school desk at her house and I loved playing school as a little girl. I would give anything to have it now, though I have no idea whatever became of it.

>13 rosalita: I've got two actual old school desks exactly like those! They're out in my garage. They're both desk-and-seat combos like the two bookends. In actual use, there would be a final seat-without-desk that would be at the end of the aisle.

My mother bought those desks from the nuns when our new school was built and opened in 1963 and they got slightly more modern desks. One of these days I keep meaning to bring them inside and get them stripped down and re-varnished. The ironworks, I think, are still in good unrusted condition. They might make nice endtables, although I'm not sure whether those desktop writing surfaces may have been slightly slanted for ease of writing, which could make things fall off.

You know, you can buy those actual desks from various sellers on eBay and the price isn't exorbitant. Usually somewhere between $100 and $200 apiece, and you could probably negotiate with the seller using the "Best Offer" option. The problem's with delivery. The sellers almost always require local pick-up, and in the rare cases where the seller is actually willing to make delivery, the delivery cost may be a whale of a lot more than you'd want to pay.

It seems to me that "Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America," by Geoffrey Canada touched on urban schools and the struggle to learn. I read it when it first came out and it was extremely well written.

I'm thinking of reading The Girl who Married an Eagle a story of a woman teaching at an all-girls boarding school in the Belgian Congo comprised of runaway child brides. It's a mystery. I have reserved it at the library so hopefully it comes in next week.

The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig begins with: "Can't cook but doesn't bite." So reads the ad for a position as a housekeeper which catches Oliver Milliron's eye. Widowed with three sons, Oliver is hard pressed to keep up with the farm and his drayage business--forget house work and don't even mention his efforts at cooking.

The one-roomed school house is the center of the community and the story as narrated by Paul, the eldest and brightest of the three boys. The story is sad, funny and ironic, with a clear-eyed view of life on the plains with too much work and too little water.

I just finished a book that I didn't know was set in a convent school until I started it. Quiet as a Nun is the first of Antonia Fraser's Jemima Shore mysteries. Jemima is called back to the convent/school she attended as a child to look into the circumstances of an old school friend's death. The friend had become a nun. Almost all of the action takes place in the school/convent or on its grounds, but it's all outside of class hours.

>18 cbl_tn: That's very interesting. I didn't know Fraser wrote mysteries on top of her histories and biographies.

I'm just starting on Poison for Teacher by Nancy Spain, whom I'd never heard of but who kaggsy on the Virago group says is interesting. I'll be reading a good bit of school books of course since this is my topic! But somehow or other I found Poison for Teacher sitting a pile of books and I didn't even know it was there. I probably got it because it's a school book that someone on the Virago group mentioned way back because it's in Virago's "Lesbian Landmarks" series (not a VMC).

It's a mystery novel, but I'm given to understand that the mystery isn't such a big deal as compared with the camp. It was written back in 1949 and the school's name is "Radcliff Hall" so that gives some idea of Spain's play on words.

Spain was panelist on a couple of TV shows, including What's My Line? She and her partner, Joan Werner Laurie, were killed in a plane crash in 1964.

Second for June, The Getting of Wisdom (4****) by Henry Handel Richardson, penname of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson. I suppose Laura Tweedle Rambotham may be somewhat the Anne ("Green Gables") Shirley as the girl-heroine of Australia, but Anne's impulsive outwardness becomes stunted in Laura's school life. Still, The Getting of Wisdom is more "lighthearted(?)" than Frost in May or The Chinese Garden (and sharing some of the latter's novels lesbianism, but more undertoned than expressed).

Next coming up, I think, will be Antonia White's four-in-one-volume translation of Colette's The Complete Claudine (which starts with Claudine at School). I have Claudine à l'école around somewhere, but I think I'll just do the White translation for now.

I read Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, who did a fine job portraying the situations of bullying, rape and being the outcast.

I finished Kipling's Stalky & Co., set in a boarding school in England. Quite interesting, actually, although the schoolboy slang had me baffled occasionally.

I have completed my book for this theme. Mister Teacher by Jack Sheffield covers the school year of 1978 - 1979. Set in a small village in Yorkshire, this is really a collection of stories, each chapter detailing another aspect of the school year. The stories touch upon the political upheaval during this time, and the strikes that affected so many that winter. Margaret Thatcher came into power as prime minister that spring.

My fourth, The Moth Diaries (4****), "vampirism" in a girls' boarding school in the Viet Nam era. This isn't a Vampire Academy urban fantasy but rather psychological study that's been compared in style to The Turn of the Screw for its highly unreliable narrator-diarist.

I had a hard time finding something to fit the theme of school days that was also historic until I realized that my latest ER book fit the category. Once was a Time is about best friends, Lottie and Kitty. They are school girls in war time England. Lottie is bookish and unpopular in school but, at a critical moment, Lottie leaps into a time portal and ends up in an American town in 2013.

But even time travelers of a certain age are expected to go to school. Only thing is, this time Lottie is part of the cool group. But will she be able to live up to their expectations. This is an interesting story that shows the timelessness of school behaviours and cliques.

>25 Familyhistorian: That sounds really interesting! Somehow – the wartime time-travel theme – it reminds me of Charlotte Sometimes, which I really love. Even though I really should be concentrating on ROOTs this year, I'm going to get hold of it, especially since it seems like a middle-reader that should be a quick read.

>26 CurrerBell: It is a pretty quick read and a good one as well. I hear you about the ROOTs. Somehow the book stacks keep growing and I am spending too much time reading library books lately.

>25 Familyhistorian: And a "Thank You" for the suggestion, which I just finished and posted with a 3½*** review. My only problem was that it didn't always come off quite credibly — one particular example being the portrayal of the contemporary 21st century U.S. child welfare system! Incidentally, readers of Once Was a Time might also find it interesting to read Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer.

ETA: Note that I deliberately avoided a link on that earlier book because even giving its name could be a SPOILER to Once Was a Time. It seems any kind of linking bypasses the SPOILER tag.

>28 CurrerBell: That was fast work. Thanks for the new book to hunt for (I think).

>28 CurrerBell: >29 Familyhistorian: It's the third book in a series, but not to worry, it can be read completely independently of the other two. One thing, try very much to get an edition published before 1985, because in the 1985 and subsequent editions there was some material that was very unfortunately dropped from the ending.

Just under the wire I finished the book I had planned to read for this month's theme, Time Remembered by Miss Read. It's the second volume of her memoirs and covers the three years she attended a village school in Kent in the 1920s, from age 7-10. These were formative years for her, and it provided the foundation for her popular Thrush Green and Fairacre novels.