Dicket: A Story of Friendships

by Jane D. Abbott, Katharine W. Hayes (Illustrator)

"What is so glamorous to young girls as life at boarding school? Here is the story of Dicket Dalburton, her trials and her triumphs at such a school."

285 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1933

About the author

Jane Ludlow Drake Abbott (1879-1962) was an American author who began her career writing for adolescent girls, and went on to write adult romance. Born in Buffalo, New York, to a family involved in the shipbuilding industry of the Great Lakes region, she was educated at Cornell University, and married Buffalo attorney Frank A. Abbott. Most of her twenty juvenile titles were published under the name Jane D. Abbott, although a few were released under the name Jane Abbott. Her adult titles were all released under the name Jane Abbott.

Reviews

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fifteen-year-old Theodora Dalburton, nicknamed Dicket, is sent to Crestwood boarding school by the three maiden aunts who have raised her in this American school story from the 1930s. Meeting the alluring Fern Wyckoff on the train ride to school, Dicket falls immediately under the spell of this senior student, who runs Crestwood's secret sorority, the Owls. Once at school, Dicket finds herself befriended by Jean, a fellow Junior who is intent (much like Dicket) on becoming one of those Owls. What follows is a first year away at school in which our eponymous heroine must learn who her true friends are, and what really matters. Through her relationships with Fern and Jean, on the one hand, and that with her roommate, Anne Britton, and some of the other girls in the school on the other, the inexperienced Dicket eventually comes to a better sense of herself, and what she believes...

Published in 1933, some four years before Jane Abbott's A Row of Stars , which is also a school story, and which I happened to read first, Dicket: A Story of Friendships features the same kind of heroine as that later book. Much like Dinty, the protagonist of A Row of Stars , Dicket does not have a particularly successful first year of school. Both girls have some mistaken ideas about who they want to befriend, both neglect their schoolwork, and both fail to capitalize on all the advantages and opportunities offered to them. I found the parallels between the two characters quite interesting, as I was reading Dicket's story, and was conscious of a feeling, very similar to the one I had with Dinty, of impatience with the heroine's seeming obliviousness and lack of moral strength. I did appreciate that, toward the end, she finally saw Jean and Fern for who they were, but it took most of the book. That said, this was still an engaging tale, one that fans of the girls' boarding school story will no doubt find appealing. The details of school life and customs, the sports rivalry between the Blues and Reds, the social issues raised, are all quite engrossing. Recommended to fans of the genre, and to those readers interested in Jane D. Abbott's work.