Girls at Boarding School

Three books.

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, the latest Flavia de Luce novel from Alan Bradley.  I’ve missed a few things in not reading all of this series — I read the first 2-3 and then skipped some until this book.  But this one’s a hoot.  Flavia, now 12, unwillingly gets sent to boarding school where she discovers secrets, mystery, and a corpse in her chimney.

The School For Dangerous Girls by Eliot Schrefer.  It’s been a long while since I read this, but I still remember some scenes.  I don’t remember that much about it, but I remember liking it, and I think people should read it and find out whether they like it too.

The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman (argh, why are all these books by men?  Fail.).  This is a book that #2 should read!  On the first page of the book, Amy is unceremoniously packed off to boarding school when her mother finds her sleeping on the ceiling.  At school she meets many girls who are friends, enemies, acquaintances, co-conspirators, classmates, etc., as well as teachers with secrets.  Magic and saving the world from creepy danger.  I would read a sequel.

I know that “girls at boarding school” used to be a genre in, say, the 1940s and before.  Does anyone have any good suggestions for recent books?

#2 has loved this genre forever.  She liked the worst witch series and carol beech york’s extended Miss Know it All/ good day mice series (Good Charlotte is a great one).  These series are both full of slim volumes with higher reading levels than such skinny books usually have.  She wishes that Diana Wynne Jones had written a book with Millie as the main character during her boarding school days instead of her just showing up as a supporting character in the chrestomanci series (we meet her in the Lives of Christopher Chant, but don’t see her again until she’s an adult).  Oh man, I loved boarding school stories so much, and it turns out I also loved boarding school!  These aren’t recent books, but the 70s/80s had a little middle-grade reader renaissance of boarding school for girls books.

Oh, and recently: GUNNERKRIGG COURT.  DC1 is also enjoying some fairy tale boarding school stories… um… what were they… Flunked was one.  The school for good and evil is another.  These tend to be coed but female protagonists.  (Just like Hermione should have been…)  Gotham Academy is also a good coed boarding school adventure.  (And if you want an all-girls summer camp, LumberJanes really is about “friendship to the max”.)  And I’m sure there’s more I’m not thinking of right now.  Maureen Johnson also has a series of boarding school murders, but it’s more of a library check-out rather than a purchase.

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