Rivals of the Chalet School

The Chalet School #5

by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer

When another school opens on the other side of the lake, it seems there will be a rival for the Chalet School. But will the girls of St Scholastica's be friends or foes? There are misunderstandings and practical jokes between the girls and soon the two schools are at daggers drawn.

Genres: School Stories, Childrens, Fiction, Boarding School, School, Historical, British Literature

Paperback

First published January 1, 1929

About the author

Elinor M. Brent-Dyer was born as Gladys Eleanor May Dyer on 6th April 1894, in South Shields in the industrial northeast of England, and grew up in a terraced house which had no garden or inside toilet. She was the only daughter of Eleanor Watson Rutherford and Charles Morris Brent Dyer. Her father, who had been married before, left home when she was three years old. In 1912, her brother Henzell died at age 17 of cerebro-spinal fever. After her father died, her mother remarried in 1913.

Elinor was educated at a small local private school in South Shields and returned there to teach when she was eighteen after spending two years at the City of Leeds Training College. Her teaching career spanned 36 years, during which she taught in a wide variety of state and private schools in the northeast, in Middlesex, Bedfordshire, Hampshire, and finally in Hereford.

In the early 1920s she adopted the name Elinor Mary Brent-Dyer. A holiday she spent in the Austrian Tyrol at Pertisau-am-Achensee gave her the inspiration for the first location in the Chalet School series. However, her first book, 'Gerry Goes to School', was published in 1922 and was written for the child actress Hazel Bainbridge. Her first 'Chalet' story, 'The School at the Chalet', was originally published in 1925.

In 1930, the same year that 'Jean of Storms' was serialised, she converted to Roman Catholicism.

In 1933 the Brent-Dyer household (she lived with her mother and stepfather until her mother's death in 1957) moved to Hereford. She travelled daily to Peterchurch as a governess.

When her stepfather died she started her own school in Hereford, The Margaret Roper School. It was non-denominational but with a strong religious tradition. Many Chalet School customs were followed, the girls even wore a similar uniform made in the Chalet School's colours of brown and flame. Elinor was rather untidy, erratic and flamboyant and not really suited to being a headmistress. After her school closed in 1948 she devoted most of her time to writing.

Elinor's mother died in 1957 and in 1964 she moved to Redhill, where she lived in a joint establishment with fellow school story author Phyllis Matthewman and her husband, until her death on 20th September 1969.

During her lifetime Elinor M. Brent-Dyer published 101 books but she is remembered mainly for her Chalet School series. The series numbers 58 books and is the longest-surviving series of girls' school-stories ever known, having been continuously in print for more than 70 years. One hundred thousand paperback copies are still being sold each year.

Among her published books are other school stories; family, historical, adventure and animal stories; a cookery book, and four educational geography-readers. She also wrote plays and numerous unpublished poems and was a keen musician.

In 1994, the year of the centenary of her Elinor Brent-Dyer's birth, Friends of the Chalet School put up plaques in Pertisau, South Shields and Hereford, and a headstone was erected on her grave in Redstone Cemetery, since there was not one previously. They also put flowers on her grave on the anniversaries of her birth and death and on other special occasions.

Reviews

[Beth · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is exactly as terrible as I remembered. It's full of catastrophes - repeated ones, at that! - and it's got too much of Joey being glib and irresponsible and almost dying - and it's casually racist to boot. I don't even know how to address the students considering reading about the KKK (!) to plan their schoolgirl revenge. Geography is a poor excuse - ignorance is a poor excuse - their "shock" at reading about the KKK is poorly done ("Only we can't go round beating people or sticking up coffins against their back doors" - yeah, that's not the takeaway) - and the most charitable framing would be amazement at how dated this is.

Basically: this is why school stories have a bad reputation. I should have gone with my gut and skipped this one.

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m not sure if the abridged Armada edition is to blame, but this Chalet School instalment is a mash-up of plot, characterisation and general mayhem.

The opening of a rival school nearby offers far too many predictable possibilities and weaknesses and Brent-Dyer uses almost of all of them. The climax (another almost fatal illness for Joey - yikes) comes far too early and the whole book is brought to an abrupt and unsatisfying close, reflecting a somewhat heavy-handed approach the whole rivalry scenario. Imagine if they had actually begun as allies and then problems had arisen - it could all have been so much more satisfying.

Still, Brent-Dyer can’t achieve a winner every time, and having lost many of her earlier characters to post-school activities (read marriage), ‘Rivals’ is probably best read as an interim set of events in the history of the still-loveable Chalet School.

[Daisy May Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I realised recently that I have a handful of books left to do before I have reviewed the entire Chalet School series and so, I headed off to Rivals to start ticking them off. It had been a while since I'd read it and so I'd sort of forgotten some of the finer detail of it. And then I remembered that it's the one with the Klu Klux Klan references. And "still, grey and to all appearances dead". And the singing of the Red Sarafan. And the poison pen letters.

Which.
Is.
A.
Lot.

So. Yes. Where on earth does one begin with reviewing that? The KKK stuff is a startling and weird thing to find in a series so heavily concerned with multinationalism and cultural integration (albeit with certain 'as long as you're middle class or upper, thank you very much' caveats), so I guess the best I can do here is to go "that is a hideous reference EBD " and acknowledge how horribly it's dated and this is a book from a certain period and time and there we are, ick, bleurgh, the end.

And the rest of it! The highest highs, the lowest lows, and somewhere in between the chaotic melodrama that is this series at its best! There is a deathbed scene that always makes me cry even though it is, if you study it very very critically, slightly ridiculous. There is an other school who we must DISLIKE and then LIKE, an anonymous letter episode which is OUTSTANDING drama and features quite the mean girl, and there's even a bit where Frieda who is a bit gentle and wet sometimes (sorry) goes all Action (wo)Man. Epic, ridiculous, amazing, melodramatic, and then there's an infectious illness as well!

I am EXHAUSTED.

(Banging cover, though. Good work Nina K Brisley).

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-read on 27/10/2011. This book is simply marvellous!! I'd quite forgotten how hilarious it really was - one of my favourites, perhaps. I don't know, I'd have to read ALL of them over again to determine which are actual favourites and which I just remember the most fondly... I didn't think this one would be so up there because the girls were not really my favourites - my 'era' is that of Bride Bettany and I never loved Joey as much as you're meant to, and the Robin just annoys me. But this book - oh, this book!

So, silly Miss Browne decides it would be a fantastic idea to move her English school to the Tyrol - within walking distance of the established Chalet School. (Three years it's been there, yo!) At first she tries to poach Joey, not knowing who she is, and manages to insult the Chalet School in the process... oops. Then, the term starts and within seconds the two schools have the most amazingly bitter rivalry going on, which makes for SO MUCH FUN. See, the new girls (the 'Saints' of St. Scholastika's) don't realise that the CS girls speak any English - they just think they're all silly foreigners (which is a bit rich, considering they're an English school that's just moved to Austria). So they make snide remarks about the CS girls in English within the CS girls' hearing. At one point one CS girl remarks to her friend in French how rude these newcomers are, which of course the Saints hear. So one Saint says to HER friend, in French, that the CS girls ought to be taught better manners, and then the CS girl comments to her friend how dreadful the other girl's French is... it's so fabulously bitchy!! And then, later on, the Middles decide to look to to the Ku Klux Klan for "tips" on how to deal with their enemies. OMFG. The CS girls are kind of hardcore...

I kept laughing out loud and having to bother Beth with awesome lines and stuff for the whole 272 pages. Another fantastic part was when horrible Elaine, one of the Saints, said something mean about Miss Wilson. Mary Burnett, CS head girl, retorted hotly, and then:

Elaine glanced at Mary. "Oh! Keen on her, are you? Sorry - didn't know, of course!"

Her tone implied more than her words did...

HAHAHAHA! Laughing out loud here! And then there was the brief return of Grizel with her "friend" Gerry. I don't like Grizel so I'm not just shipping them for fun - they were SO a couple, lol.

I also loved how sub-prees Joey et al decided to get back at the middles (who'd sewed up all their pyjamas) by sprinkling flour on their hair as they slept. I didn't really love the whole omg-Joey-might-die drama and then the Robin totally singing her back to health, wow that was too overly sentimental! (I guess it's much less dramatic too when you're reading these after the next 57 have all been written so you know that Joey obviously doesn't die.)

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of St. Scholastika's school opening nearby. Some of it really hasn't aged well. The middles decided to have a feud with the incomers, and compared it to the Ku-Klux-Klan!?

We are told throughout the book about how cold and bitter the winter is. Yet the cover I have (Armada 1968) has a skater with bare legs.

A Chalet school book isn't without a near death experience, and some pranking by the middles. Both are here, Joey with her nine lives, and some amusing cornflour in the hair. Enjoyable to read, but not the best in the series.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read the Chalet books more times than I can count.
This is less of a favourite as I don’t like feuding storylines, however it’s one of the few stories about the Chalet School in its original location by the lake, so I like it for that reason.
It also has the dramatic ice rescue and the cornflour in the hair incidents, both which pass into Chalet School “legends”, later on!!

[Donna Boultwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another lovely book. Some funny stories with the rival school. Sad there's less of Joey and Madge in the stories now though. I couldn't stop laughing about the corn flour in the hair!! Hilarious.

[Geraldine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Utterly classic Chalet School/EBD.

The underlying theme of this book is that a new English school opens across the lake from the Chalet School and an almost deadly rivalry springs up.

There are the usual mix of escapades and pranks, life-threatening illnesses, physically tough adventures and casual racism, all told in inimitable EBD style.

Please don't misunderstand me: I loved this series as a child and am loving them on adult re-read, but I can't avoid applying adult critical thinking.

There is an incident which involves pupils, including, of course, delicate Joey, being in the freezing cold water where the ice broke on the lake. I may be wrong, but it's actually quite unlikely that anybody would survive such an ordeal, and I'm not entirely sure that the first aid given to them would have helped eg heart massage during hypothermia? If they did have hypothermia, okay, we know they would, but it doesn't get mentioned.

Instead, they get pleuro-pneumonia and rheumatoid fever. Almost instantly on being rescued from the lake (and given hot baths and schnapps to recover). EBD was obviously blissfully ignorant of the germ theory of disease. It just disappoints me that Dr Jem, Gottfried Mensch etc were equally ignorant. I know it's easy to mock the pre-antibiotic age, especially when we have the internet to look up symptoms, causes and cures, but I just don't think EBD and her Editor were really that bothered about medical accuracy.

I also liked how a group of young teenagers, cut off by a landslip, hiked through a forest, up an Alpe and onto the Tiernsee Pass, in freezing cold winter weather. A casual aside that, on arrival at the Chalet School. the St Scholastika girls would rest before their 4 mile walk back to their own school. Yeah, that whole scenario was likely.

Casual racism - people behave according to their national 'types'. Non-British Europeans are seen as a different 'race' from Brits. A different race who can't really play games, like the Brits...oops, the 1928 Olympic Medal Table and the 11930 World Cup suggest otherwise - although, obviously we're talking mainly about men there, not jolly schoolgirls.

But if you have doubts about EBD's genius, I was taken aback by her description of Vera Smithers. I have read several books and many articles that attempt to explain sociopaths and psychopaths; EBD manages it just a couple of pages, in a description of this girl's character. She never mentions the word psychopath or sociopath; she probably didn't know them - I don't know when they came into common usage - but I feel that she was getting something off her chest, probably some awful girl she remembered from her own teenage years. That character description is EBD at her best!

[Samantha · Rating 1 out of 5]

Synopsis: Joey Bettany returns to the Chalet School and finds herself reluctantly forced to become a little more grown up as she is promoted to Prefect this year. However, she and many of the girls find their patience tested with the arrival of a new school on the opposite site of the lake it doesn’t take long for misunderstandings, assumptions and rivalries to spring up with the girls they call The Saints.

Review: Unfortunately my rating is low due to an error of judgment made by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer in deciding to surprisingly include a reference to the Klu Klux Klan as some of the Chalet School girls ‘emulate’ the tactics of that group against the Saints saying that it isn’t a feud “It’s fighting for our rights”. This book was published in 1929 and the Klu Klux Klan had been revived in 1915 so their reputation was already established as the heinous organisation that they are. I know that she didn’t have the internet in those days nonetheless surely a bit of research on her part would have established that their inclusion as a group to emulate was not a good idea. It is especially strange as on the whole the Chalet School books were predominantly multi-cultural in their inclusion of girls from many different nationalities and this was established early on in the series.

Such a shame as a generally interesting story is let down by the inclusion of this idea. The rivalry between the groups shows that when girls are in a group how quickly differences of opinion can escalate and they egg each other on and level heads are abandoned. Later on in reflection they realise their behaviour was wrong.

[Todayiamadaisy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A recent visit to a second-hand shop yielded a few Chalet School titles to re-read, including this one in which a new school opens on the other side of the lake to the Chalet School and the two sets of students immediately start a feud. I'd forgotten what a weirdly paced book it is, with two big action pieces (the climb up the mountain and the skating accident) early on, only to end with an in-school prank and a rushed ending with a poison pen letter. Featuring: nobody falling off a mountain (although they nearly fall in one when a giant crack opens in the path); people falling through ice; Joey nearly dying; Robin singing her back to health; a piece of advice I have always remembered about bending your knees more than normally when climbing a hill; some spectacular insults ("a set of pie-faced owls"); people being Really Into Guiding; an odd argument about church collection plates.

Also featuring: the Middles deciding to take their feud with the new school up a notch by reading about the Ku Klux Klan and lamenting that they won't be able to beat people up or nail coffins to their doors. Which, even in 1929, is... quite a choice, and not a good one.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings about this one - in some ways it's classic CS, with alarums and excursions in every other chapter, and Joey having a (very close) brush with death. The introduction of another school across the lake is a bit of a clumsy plot device and the casual racism from its pupils is.... well, very much of its time I suppose.

I'm not someone who is particularly offended by books reflecting the period in which they were written (this might seem a strange thing to say, but there are, amazingly, people who are. And, even more amazingly, people who are offended by the lack of feminism and of financially independent women in Jane Austen. Go figure) so the racism didn't faze me much.

I did, however, find myself extremely fazed by the mention of using the Ku Klux Klan as a model for behaviour. I don't know much about the way the KKK was viewed in the UK in the 20s and 30s, but I'm honestly surprised that it would have been considered at all appropriate by EBD or her readers.

That aside, I enjoyed this book - I don't remember reading it before and it was the usual rollicking yarn.

[Sonia Gomes · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Tyrol …

Whenever Joey rushes to save someone about to drown in a frozen lake with ice breaking on all sides, I have this tremendous urge to yell out…

‘Don’t Joey, don’t do it, don’t fall in the freezing water, this is 1929 and there are no antibiotics’

But Joey does fall and nearly dies, saved by Robin singing a lullaby, ‘The Red Sarafan’ which brings her out of a deep sleep. Who knows what love can achieve?

In the 20’s the only remedy to save you from hypothermia were hot water baths, well warmed bodies and lots of sleep.

I read the Chalet series, they were rare and far between in Goa, when I was a child, absolutely impossible to get.

Besides, I love the description of the Tyrol, the snow, the starkness of the landscape, so alien to me.

[DocNora · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a re read and I had forgotten how lovely this was!
I know I didn't finish the whole series as a child so I got myself the whole collection and I'm reading them. I don't want to rush through them for the sake of finishing and I'm really savouring the atmosphere and incredibly it is very atmospheric. I was compelled to go on to the next book & am planning a trip to the Austrian alpine village where the Chalet school is set. Apparently the Kron Prinz Karl is still there 😍

[Felicity Stanton · Rating 4 out of 5]

An early Chalet School book of the best

An early Chalet School book which involves a new school established at the Tiensee. A feud speedily develops between the Continental girls and the All British school who naturally asserted their superiority over the foreigners.
It is a product of that era and is fascinating for the inherent biases and implicit social mores of the period.

[Deyara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very dated, and a bit disappointed to see books I enjoyed when I was young were actually full of casual racism (“rotten foreigners” and looking to the KKK for inspiration in their school rivalry!). A shame to have started the year on this note :(

[Jen Pritchard · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was lots of amusing little incidents in this chapter of the Chalet school. My favourite was the long hike after the split on the path.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

(memo to self, this is one of the Yikes Even For Its Time ones; cw: KKK mentions)

[Rex Libris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two private girl's schools in the Swiss alps. The rival schools do not get along with each other.

[Nix]

Regarding the part with a certain repeated trio of Ks… what the actual fuck did I just read?

[Molly · Rating 3 out of 5]

My least favourite Chalet book so far, wasn't a fan of the saints or Joey having her 3rd or 4th (lost count honestly) deadly illness.

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books where I laughed very hard, in all the wrong places. Oh dear oh my. It's one of the shortest in terms of the timeframe it occupies, only the autumn term. The Chalet School has competition from "outsiders"! Someone has had the face to come and open another school on the opposite side of the lake--and not only that, they have transplanted an existing English school wholesale! Not a single "foreign" (ie national) student! To top it off, they have "appropriated" the name of a local saint, who just happens to be Saint Scolastika!

Of course Joey isn't about to put up with this, so she and her cohorts decide to put the "Saints" firmly in their places. The tropes come thick and fast in this installment:
1. Refusal on the part of the new school students to "buck up and play the game" (ie act like us)
2. Rebellion against the rules
3. Escape from the school grounds--after dark!
4. Accident, in which one girl faints from fright (of course). Accident requires Joey to go to the rescue (of course).
5. Consequent illness on the part of all involved, including (of course) delirium and coma for a week. "Delicate" Joey comes out of her adventure "stronger than ever." Of course. Did you know that being highly-strung makes you run a higher fever and longer than if you were easy-going? Ah, the joys of 1920s medicine! I do wish that someone would take me "by slow stages to the Riviera for a year" to convalesce! Which neatly disposes of a character the author apparently didn't take a shine to.
6. In this case, an epidemic lays both schools low at one point. Because after all, they haven't been very ladylike. And they thought the KKK would be a good place to find tips on how to get back at their rivals. !!! They even looked it up in a book--well, in Elsie's Motherhood. They brought it on themselves. Of course they did. And let it be a lesson to them!

And it's only October! Once again the fall term is arbitrarily ended weeks early to give everyone time to recover. Of course. Christmas doesn't even get a look-in (sorry about that, Grossmutter, hope you didn't die before the holidays), and the important alumna wedding that is much talked of and built up to throughout the book doesn't happen before the story is chopped short. Volume 6 will take us to a new character and term, so forget hearing about the holidays or the wedding party. Brent-Dyer must have disliked weddings as much as I do.

At least there's a little more (a very little more) natural, bratty behaviour on the part of some of the girls. One thing that gets me is that Brent-Dyer's schoolgirls (and adults) always refer to groups of girls as "you people." "Say, you people, what are we going to do about (event)?" Not "girls," not "ladies," not "friends,"--no, "you people." Maybe the author didn't like schoolgirls much, either.

[Shawne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winter terms at the Chalet School are always filled with incidents. There's just something about snow, frost and ice that lend themselves particularly well to disaster, and we all know how much Elinor M. Brent-Dyer loves to land her characters in disaster - from which, of course, they will always recover, little the worse for wear. She takes the threat of winter to its most ridiculously and enjoyably extreme in Rivals Of The Chalet School: a book which not only sees the girls deal with snow blizzards, cracking ice and collapsing cliff-faces, but introduces a new school across the lake. The girls of St Scholastika's a.k.a. the Saints are, of course, the bitter rivals of the title.

A few years after Madge Russell (nee Bettany) established the Chalet School in the Tiernsee, a certain Miss Browne has the same idea. The latter immediately starts things off on the wrong foot by attempting to poach Joey Bettany for her new school: a crime for which she can never be forgiven. In short order, the girls from the two schools are at daggers drawn. Much of this anger and resentment arises from their differences and prejudices, and, so we are told, also because the Saints do not have Guides. All in all, it makes for a tremendously bitchy term, as the girls ignore or insult one another on walks. The Saints' failure to understand their local surroundings also leads to great trauma in the form of a almost-tragic ice-skating accident.

It would be easy to focus on and criticise the considerably more melodramatic aspects of this book - the author herself admits through one of her characters that this is the most "troubled" term the Chalet School has yet faced. Indeed, there are hugely dramatic moments which stretch credibility to the extreme, specifically Joey's umpteenth battle with the killer flu - and how it is won by the angelic Robin Humphries singing her to sleep. Considering the number of traumatic incidents the girls suffer in the book, it should come as a surprise that they haven't all packed it in and gone home to their parents.

The saving grace, however, is - as always - Brent-Dyer's tremendous skill with characterisation. She finds such clever, welcome depth in her characters that it's a joy to watch them bicker and muddle their way through the various calamities of the term. She even draws out various girls amongst the Saints, giving them personalities beyond the stereotypical and allowing them quite reasonable and genuine grievances against the Chalet girls. She even makes the antagonists of the piece - Elaine Gilling and Vera Smithers - more compelling than you might expect.

As a result, although Rivals can often feel like a bit of a soap opera, it remains one of the more entertaining books from the Tiernsee era.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet another Chalet School book that I now own in hardback. Fifth in the lengthy series, which I first read in my teens. It's more than ten years since I last read this and I'd pretty much forgotten it.

I knew the overall plot was about a rival girls' school that opens at the other end of the lake, and the rivalry that develops between the two schools. However the many sub-plots seemed new to me, and as ever the characterisation is very good. There was one chapter where I had more than a few tears in my eyes too.

Much of it seems dated, particularly the medical aspects of the story and the serious worries about diseases which we now treat as mild. The idea of 'delicate' children seems rather old-fashioned too. But the educational and medical methods were probably radically modern in the late 1920s when this was first written.

All in all, great nostalgic reading :-)

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/...

[Celia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um, I actually teared up while reading this today. Yes, I am pre-menstrual. And also pathetic.

***

A new school of English girls, St Scholastika's, is opened on the other side of the lake, and the girls from both schools enter into a rivalry. An ice skating incident results in Joey almost dying, and everyone staggers around weeping for a few chapters (hence my prickling eyes mentioned above).

We get to see a little bit of Madge's parenting skills, in which she gently exerts the discipline she uses on the girls in getting her baby son to go to sleep at his usual hour. All those exhausted mothers out there merely need to take some lessons from Madge's firm discipline, apparently.

Eventually the two schools come to a fairly fragile peace. I really enjoyed this one - I haven't read it before, and it was fun filling in some gaps (like how the Saints were established and so on).

[Carolynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the more entertaining Chalet School books, featuring Joey and her pals Frieda and Marie. A new English school is established, right there on the Tiernsee! What nerve! Naturally there are hijinks and rivalry that lead to a near-disaster (as always). The most interesting aspect is the way the girls of St. Scholastika are developed, especially open-minded Gipsy and the evil Elaine. Turns out, Elaine just needed to join Girl Guides for everything to come out all right in the end!

2016 Re-read: I find it holds up well in a second reading, this time the Girls Gone by edition. The unabridged editions really are superior.

[Tassiemouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

No 5 in my 1st complete read through in order ever! Since acquiring all the books at last a couple of years ago. Lockdown seemed the perfect time for it, albeit hindered somewhat by the toddler, hence 4 months later just finished book 5! However this book I really enjoyed much more than I thought I would from memory! (Princess was the other I loved much more than anticipated) A really great romp with plenty of schoolgirl bitchy moments between rival schools and the best Joey -near-to-death moment pulled back from the brink by the Robin singing a Russian folk song of course!

[Margaret Conmey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re - reading the Chalet series for the first time in order as later this year I will own the complete set thanks to GGBP
More like 3.5-3.8
Good solid read
Exploring different character traits of girls now rather than just a series of events
Another term when Joey in particular spends little time on lessons or in school at all
Interesting that EBD found an excuse to bring Madge back to the school for a few weeks to act as Head
I noticed that at the end of HeadGirl some regret that Madge had given up Headship so soon

[^ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very much a story of growing-up; the transition between school-girlish pranks and the beginnings of responsible adulthood.

Just reading a few Chalet School books is more than enough to form an opinion that EMBD was obsessed with storylines of infectious diseases. In this book it's chicken pox. But there again, in EMBD was writing in an age where microbiology as a science was in its infancy, and antibiotics unknown. Something that's too easy for us to take for granted today.

[Jane Irish Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I've read this many times through the years, this is the first time I've read the original unabridged version.

The pupils at the Chalet School ought to be thrilled to hear that another school is opening on the shores of the Tiernsee, finally they will have opponents to play hockey, cricket, tennis, and more against. But instead they resent the newcomers. And the bad blood between the two schools quickly escalates. Will it end before a terrible tragedy occurs?

[Sarah A · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of my favourite books as a child and I enjoyed it again as an adult. It is so easy to feel the emotions of both sides - Elinor does such a great job at making sure you know who is in the right and who is in the wrong whilst not hating anyone too much so it can all (mostly) turn out all right in the end.