Midge Bennett of Duncan Hall

Midge Bennett #1

by Marjorie B. Paradis

Midge Bennett is sent to Duncan Hall at great sacrifice, because it is her mother's alma mater. Her sister Adele is attending Conway College nearby. Midge enters in her sophomore year which makes it difficult for her, because all the other girls in her class already know each other well.

Genres: School Stories

271 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Marjorie Paradis' affection for her home town, New York City, was a part of many of her books. She attended high school in Manhattan and Columbia University, and began her writing career. She wrote adult novels, plays, one movie, and a great many short stories and books for children. She and her husband Adrian were enthusiastic travelers.

Marjorie Bartholomew Paradis

Reviews

[CLM · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Midge's parents send her from public school (Erasmus Hall) in Brooklyn, NY to Massachusetts for fabulous boarding school at Duncan Hall, she does not expect to fall completely in love with the school but she does. Somehow, unassuming but endearing middle-class Midge manages to make a place for herself among the exclusive student body (based on real life Dana Hall). Will she have to leave after just one year if her parents cannot continue to pay the expensive tuition?

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Midge Bennett's family contrive to send her to Duncan Hall - the Massachusetts boarding school that her mother attended - the high school sophomore, after an initial period of homesickness and awkward adjustment (the other girls all already knowing one another), soon finds her feet, and discovers that she has become an important part of the life of the school. Despite being a newcomer, and despite being decidedly more middle class than many of the other girls, Midge finds herself elected to the Student Council, and popular with her peers. She also finds a "boy-friend" in Tin (Quentin) Hamilton, attending a boys' prep school nearby, and has many amusing adventures with him, and with her older sister Adele, attending nearby Conway College. But just as Midge comes to truly love her new school, she discovers that she won't be able to stay, her mother having lost the job that has been paying for her tuition. Unless, that is, she can win the Mary Shenstone Porter scholarship...

An enjoyable cream-puff of a story, Midge Bennett at Duncan Hall features a winsome heroine - friendly but plain-spoken, kindhearted and utterly lacking in any snobbery - that is the epitome of "girl-next-door" appeal, and an engaging set of secondary characters, from the silly and rather snooty Adele, who has a good heart underneath it all, to the jolly Tin, always ready to take Midge's part, while also seeing the humor in her various predicaments. The school setting is fun, but so are the various holidays adventures - the ski trip to New Hampshire, the Christmas and Easter visits with the Bennett family in Brooklyn - and although there is the tension of Midge's impending departure from Duncan Hall, so soon after she has come to love it, the reader can never really be in much doubt that things will turn out well. This is, after all, a teen novel from the 1950s (published in 1953), and has, in addition to lots of slang from the era, that lighthearted sense of optimism that seems to characterize children's literature from that decade. Recommended to reader looking for American school stories, and to fans of 50s young adult books!