Children's Literature Has always been produced by radicals and reformers. Critical analysis of their views and methods is a fascinating and increasingly contested new field. Bringing together a range of perspectives from established academics, well-known children's writers and students of children's literature, this collection provides an unusual and challenging read. Whether you are interested in how writers present the lives of working children in nineteenth-century America, how picture books challenge and subvert the political stance of contemporary Australia, or how issues in Kenya or Palestine can become the material of children's fiction, there are plenty of ideas to explore. --

Bride Leads the Chalet School follows the adventures of a group of schoolgirls at an English boarding school. When the school gains an influx of new students who are used to more relaxed rules, tensions arise between the prefects trying to maintain order and the rebellious newcomers. Smart and mischievous Mary-Lou finds herself at the center of several antics, while studious Bride struggles to establish her authority as the new Head Girl. After multiple clashes with rude new girl Diana, the prefects turn to a former Head Girl for advice on how to handle Diana's refusal to follow the rules. This classic school story featuring likeable heroines and plenty of misadventures will appeal to readers young and old who enjoy tales of boarding school life.

"The English girls' boarding school novel was staple reading for girls, not just in England, through the first half of the twentieth century. Generally dismissed as sentimental hack writing, these stories were immensely popular. Humphries, who had loved the books as a child, discovered in adulthood that she was still enamored of them. Her search for why the books still hold up turned into a dissertation. She concentrates on the genre as a whole, finding several important similarities. The most important ones involve the independence and strength of young women living in an all female environment. The chapters elucidate the positive messages that the books contain: a respect for intelligence and learning, women as self directed, women active in sports, women in authority and, importantly, the bonds of female friendship. Humphries makes it clear that although some attitudes have changed, too many girls still see themselves as incomplete without a boyfriend and always secondary to him."--GOOGLE BOOKS.

In this book, Rosemary Auchmuty looks at school novels with popular female heroines, such as the Abbey Girl books and the Chalet School series. She questions their ability to portray strong, independent women, and asks why the female authors often resort to the conventions of society, marrying the characters off into a life of domesticity.

This book examines school and college fiction for girls in Britain and the United States, written in the first half of the twentieth century, to explore the formation and ideologies of feminine identity. Nancy G. Rosoff and Stephanie Spencer develop a transnational framework that recognises how both constructed and essential femininities transcend national boundaries. The book discusses the significance and performance of female friendship across time and place, which is central to the development of the genre, and how it functioned as an important means of informal education. Stories by Jessie Graham Flower, Pauline Lester, Alice Ross Colver, Elinor Brent-Dyer, and Dorita Fairlie Bruce are set within their historical context and then used to explore aspects of sociability, authority, responsibility, domesticity, and possibility. The distinctiveness of this book stems from the historical analysis of these sources, which have so far primarily been treated by literary scholars within their national context. Winner of the History of Education Society Anne Bloomfield Prize for the best book on history of education published in English 2017-19

Katharine Gordon joins the Chalet School and becomes involved with the tennis team. But why is she there and not the school she was originally supposed to attend? Meanwhile, one of her new friends, Blossom, disappears on the day of an important tennis match. Who or what is behind the mystery?