The Primary English Encyclopedia: The Heart of the Curriculum, Third Edition
See also history of children’s literature
School stories are an important category of children’s fiction, popular throughout the twentieth century. There are stories for boys about boys’ schools but it is a genre that appeals mainly to girls from about eight to thirteen. In 1925 the very successful Chalet School series of books by Elinor Brent-Dyer began and the books remain in print. In the 1940s and 1950s Enid Blyton’s adventures of Malory Towers, a girls’ school in Cornwall, dominated the reading choices of many girls.
School stories are often in series: this is not unconnected with their marketing success, as Victor Watson points out in Reading Series Fiction. He goes on to show us the development in the school story and other books in series as they made their way through the twentieth century. I have found Gene Kemp’s stories about Cricklepit Combined School appeal to both boys and girls.
The comic situations in The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler continue to amuse each generation of children (Puffin, 1977). Boys and girls seem to like Tyke’s adventurous spirit combined with a genuine concern for the less bright Danny and the surprise at the end never fails to amaze the first-time reader of the book.
As schools reflect wider cultural changes, the school story will also change. Sheila Ray examines these changes in an excellent account (Ray, 2004).
Auchmuty, Rosemary and Wotton, Joy (compilers of 2000 edition) The Encyclopedia of School Stories published by Ashgate (two volumes: one on girls’ school stories, the other on boys’ school stories).
Ray, S. (2004) ‘School stories, in P. Hunt (ed.) International Companion Encyclopaedia of Children’s Literature. London: Routledge.
Watson, Victor (2000) Reading Series Fiction: From Arthur Ransome to Gene Kemp London: Routledge Falmer.
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