Emma Tupper's Diary

by Peter Dickinson

Emma is spending the summer with her Scottish cousins—who are wonderful material for her attempt to win the School Prize for most interesting holiday diary. The cousins, lofty Andy, reserved Fiona, and fierce Roddy, are experimenting with their grandfather's dilapidated old mini-submarine to see if they can find a monster in the family loch. Emma Tupper's Diary is a sometimes terrifying, sometimes broadly hilarious adventure novel in the spirit of From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and I Capture the Castle .

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Childrens, Adventure, Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Peter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson OBE FRSL was a prolific English author and poet, best known for children's books and detective stories.

Peter Dickinson lived in Hampshire with his second wife, author Robin McKinley. He wrote more than fifty novels for adults and young readers. He won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Award twice, and his novel The Blue Hawk won The Guardian Award in 1975.

Reviews

[Alex Bardsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dickinson's work has long been one of the things all my family agrees upon. His adult, mostly suspense fiction, and young adult and children's works share a distinctive intelligence, imagination, and an unusual ability to craft convincing protagonists of different ages, genders and backgrounds. Compare young Nicola Gore of The Devil's Children to the adolescent Princess Louise of King and Joker, to the aging detective of the James Pibble books, including One Foot in the Grave (not to be confused with the TV series). Dickinson always gives you something more, with well-realized characters, deft control of atmosphere and tone, and plot twists that surprise but are always earned, and afterwards seem inevitable.

[Moore Flannery · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved reading this book - I’ve got an old 1970’s copy with a sub and a dinosaur on the front, and my mum’s (maiden name) initials on the fly cover. She must have had it to review. It was nostalgic as anything - and I was delighted by the promise of children running wild over an unsupervised summer in Scotland, and a loch…..with something in it…..

Charming as that set up is - I simply cannot see this book working with my own children - the sheer amount of time, and nerdy technical detail spent setting out the mechanisms of a home made submarine, buoyancy and batteries, torque, tethers, propulsion….it goes on and on, with the children themselves engrossed in the detail, such that the dinosaurs - because there ARE dinosaurs, - finally get the teeniest tiniest mention in the final 8th of the book.

The book is determined to leave them obscure - and more time is spent on the family agreeing no recriminations should be spent on the sinking of the sub forever to the bottom of the loch, than raving over the discovery of fucking dinosaurs swimming around. Dinosaurs! 🦕.if this was Harry Potter those babies would be front and centre. Emma and her cousins decide to draw a veil over the discovery. People are awful, after all, and no good can come from tramping around looking for nests etc. and so almost as soon as the dinosaurs are discovered, the book ends with a firm, we shall speak of this no more.

I loved the set up - free from adults and barriers and conventions, a story that felt thoroughly 1970’s art of the (health and safety free) possible. But I would have preferred less engineering and more Jurassic Park.

[Debbie Gascoyne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dickinson really hits his stride in this one. Amazing the difference reading it now and when I last read it, which was, I think, when I was about 12 and I didn't much like it. I thoroughly enjoyed it this time round and was surprised by the amount of social commentary - an early environmental theme - but also the reflection of its time in the portrayal of the eccentric, squabbling aristocratic family. Emma herself is a strong character, thoughtful, observant, much aware of her place outside the centre of the family. I was a little unsure about the arrival of the patriarch of the family as a kind of deus ex machine at the end, but it works to bring closure to the plot.

[Alison Capey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the basic premise ("Loch Ness monster"), but like many of his books I found the middle boring. There was too much mechanical minutiae. I think it (and other books such as The Devil's Children) would benefit from a careful edit. However, this would make excellent TV - I hope it is shown one day.

[William Leight · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Emma Tupper’s Diary” has a definite family resemblance to Dickinson’s mysteries. The protagonist is a poor relation visiting an insular family of wealthy Scottish aristocrats who are suddenly facing the possibility that a good portion of their wealth could evaporate. There’s a secret from the past and a number of taut, suspenseful sequences, as well as a well-thought-out connection to larger societal themes. With a twist in the way that the McAndrews are portrayed and a murder or two, it could easily stand next to the likes of “The Yellow Room Conspiracy”. But as it’s a children’s book instead — Emma is 14, but the YA genre had not been invented yet in 1971, so Dickinson is mercifully free from its conventions — the McAndrews, though wild, are not dangerous, and the suspense is adventurous rather than mysterious. Just because it’s a children’s book doesn’t meant that it’s dumbed down, though, with the possible exception of the ending, when Major McAndrew, the head of the clan, returns home and resolves everything. Part of what makes it so exhilarating is precisely that Emma’s cousins treat her throughout as an adult: a fourteen-year-old’s quiet delight at being admitted to the adult world on equal terms is still thrilling, even for those of us who have long since been permanently transferred there. Emma is, naturally, the protagonist, though we are not in fact reading her diary (except in occasional bits and pieces): the book is told from her viewpoint but in the third person. Bookish, intelligent, thoughtful, and acutely observant, Emma is practically guaranteed to appeal: even her somewhat petty desire to win her school’s prize — she attends an English boarding school on scholarship — for best vacation diary over Sarah Davidson (who is vacationing in Portugal) merely serves to humanize her. Her cousins, though they keep her at a distance in some ways, are open and welcoming in others, and Andy and Fiona, the two older ones, are both quite charismatic in their own way: meanwhile, Andy’s pointless on-and-off feud with Roddy, the youngest, keeps them mostly grounded in reality. Plus, there’s Poop Newcombe, the dumbest of dumb blondes, who is, nonetheless, just as heroic as anybody else in the book. The plot is largely an update of the old English tradition which holds that the Scottish Highlands are a wild backwater where anything can happen: Dickinson has to do a bit of work to make this plausible in the early ‘70s, but it works out very well. The description of the Highlands scenery is also part of the book’s appeal: Emma, like Dickinson, was brought up in Southern Africa — her parents work for an NGO in Botswana — and I assume that Dickinson is giving her his reactions to his first visit to the area (according to his biography, he once worked as a tutor for a Scottish aristocratic family). Though written immediately after the Changes trilogy, Dickinson's most famous kids books, “Emma Tupper’s Diary” is quite different from it, and yet equally brilliant in its own way.

[Masha Toit · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favourite books.

It is about Emma, a girl who grew up in Botswana, who spends the summer with a group of very eccentric relatives in Scotland. Emma is thrown into a grown-up free zone, as her cousins do whatever they like and on a grand scale. For example, fixing an ancient Victorian submarine and going on risky underwater journeys in the loch.

The adventurous aspect of the book is important, but so is the process of Emma sussing out her cousins, and being judged in turn. The characters are unusual but completely believable and the situations are gripping.

I have a weakness for underwater adventures, and this one is just fascinating. It's fun to learn about the details of how the ancient two person submarine works. And the most interestng aspect of the story is Emma's moral dilemma; how to deal with the secret revealed by the submarine voyages.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was so dull and boring to read. There was way too much emphasis on the mechanics of things: Victorian submarines, photography, scaling cliffs and family decisions. These theoretically exciting things were described in their minutia, with no character development in between. The characters were hollow and annoying. A childish sibling feud was one of the running subplots. This story centres on how a wealthy family is going to support themselves once the South American market for their hair tonic falls through due to political upheaval. The idea is to fake a monster in the Loch, so then the first half of the book focuses on them getting the submarine rigged for the farce. The second half of the book is equally without soul and is incongruent with the beginning of the book. This is just so not worth your time.

[Chris Harrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

A childhood favourite that lived with me for years. A cracking goid adventure story set beside a fictional loch in the Western Highlands. Rereading it was such a delight - such a finely crafted book. And full of details 11 year old me never noticed. Now 50 years on, and living in Britain, readimg this book again has been a rich new experience.

[Sharon Buxton · Rating 2 out of 5]

C. fiction, children's fiction, grade 6, fantasy, disjointed writing style, Mom's stash, discard

[Ika Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh well I mean probably his masterpiece, so.

[Gabs · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review (and others) can be found on My Full Bookshelf Reviews

I received a free copy of this book via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

Emma Tupper's Diary was a fun read, mostly because of the cast of characters we meet in the book. It is one of those stories that won't really stick with me, but is still entertaining.

I loved the McAndrews, so much so that my favorite character was Roddy rather than Emma. They are quite the quirky family and each McAndrew sibling has a very distinct personality.

The whole plot was really like nothing I've ever encountered; not unexpected, but I could see someone younger than me just eating it up. Emma's thesis on how the 'plot twist' came to be was actually well thought out and sounded possible.

The con of this book? I just know it won't be memorable for me. It was a quick read, it helped me relax, and it kept me interested, but I was never completely 'wowed.' There's no other way to put it. This is without a personal dislike for me; I am sure that someone will read this book and fall in love with it. That person just happened to not be me.

It's more of 'It's not you, it's me,' than any real dislikes. Therefore, I would recommend it to others.

[Xander Richards · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a long time ago that I read 'Emma Tupper's Diary' but I remember enjoying the book because of my love of cryptozoology or, specifically, the Loch Ness Monster; a similar subject to that which this book explores. Oddly, I didn't like most of the characters, but I enjoyed the work from a wider perspective.

I even remember the day it was bought; the cover picture of a plesiosaur-like creature swimming past the ancient submarine totally sold it to me and my mum grabbed it, wanting to encourage me in my reading.

I would recommend this book to children and young adult readers in search of a good ol' fashioned adventure tale but with some quirks. I can't believe it hasn't been made into a movie in the last forty years.

[Jennybeast · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apparently this book is about to be reprinted, and I say, great!

Emma Tupper of Botswana goes to spend the summer in Scotland with her bizarre, hilarious, cantankerous, feuding cousins and writes about it in her journal. They launch a plan to create a Loch Ness hoax involving an ancient submarine in order to make some money to keep the family going. This leads to a fascinating discovery when the feud goes too far. Old fashion feel, a la Penderwicks or Swallows and Amazons, but with a timely environmental message that I think really resonates with kids of today.

My copy provided by Edelweiss.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was a lot I liked about this book--wonderful dialogue and great, quirky characters that felt believable, as well as a fantastic mystery in the loch. There was also a goodly amount about the submarine that the children work, which was fascinating and well-described.

However, there were some bits that felt... I don't know. A little more empty? It's hard to say. We had to wait SO LONG to get to the monsters, and that was definitely a terrifying experience, but at the same time, I wanted a little more oomph overall; maybe some foreshadowing.

I enjoyed this, but I think I'll need to re-read it to fully come to a conclusion.

[Beth E · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book started out like The Secret Garden and ended like a Jules Verne novel. In between was a romp of an adventure with a memorable cast of characters. A very fun read. I am glad it is being re-issued.

[Esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it when I was a kid and couldn't remember what it was called. I remember it was very interesting to me, with the underwater submarine and the kids looking for sea dinosaurs.

[scarlettraces · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5)

[Louise Milne]

brilliant - one of the very best books by one of my favourite authors