Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool

Sometimes, when you read a debut novel that also wins a Newbery, your expectations for next novel by the same author are way too high.  That was exactly what I was thinking when I picked up Navigating Early at the library and I must say I was very pleasantly surprised when I began reading and realized that I was not to be disappointed.

The book begins just after World War II has ended in Europe and 13 year old Jackie Baker's father, a Navy captain, has returned home to Kansas, not because of the end of fighting, but to bury his wife.  Not knowing what to do with their son Jackie, he enrolls him in the Morton Hill Academy for Boys, a boarding school in Maine.  

Not happy about this and somewhat of a misfit in the school, Jackie discovers a boy living in the janitor's workshop instead of the dormitory.  Early Auden, that strangest of boys, as Jackie describes him, is also a misfit, a boy who uses rituals to organize and navigate the world.  He also has an extraordinary ability for mathematics.  Numbers, Early tells Jackie, tell a story, specifically a story about Pi, that most mysterious of numbers: "The numbers have colors - blues of the ocean and sky, green grass, a bright-yellow sun.  The numbers have texture and landscape - mountains and waves and sand and storms.  And words - about Pi and about his journey.  The numbers tell a story." (pg 66)  

Early and Jackie becomes friends.  And it turns out that Early, like Jackie, has suffered a loss of someone important to him.  Fisher Auden, a hero and a rowing legend at Morton Hill, was Early's older brother who went to war right after graduation.  But after a dangerous mission, Fisher is declared Missing in Action, presumed Dead.  Early, however, is convinced that Fisher is hiding in the Maine woods and has decided to find him during a school break.

Jackie, disappointed that his father couldn't come to get him for the break, decides to join Early on his quest along the Appalachian Trail to find Fisher.  

And what a quest it is.  It is a story about how Jack, Early and Pi lost heir direction in life and how they tried to navigate their way back to it.  And along the way, they meet all kinds of strange people, like the  pirates searching for treasure, a Norwegian still pining for his first love, a 100 year old woman stilling waiting for her son to come home.  As the boys travel along the Appalachian Trail, Early narrates his story about Pi's journey in an attempt to earn the name Polaris which his mother had given him.  

And as the boys travel along, there are lots of coincidences, lots of twists and turns in Navigating Early, but never a dull moment.  In the most enchanting language, Vanderpool weaves a taut, complex, entertaining story.  I found myself anxious to get back to Jack and Early whenever I put the book down and, like Jack, I wanted to hear more and more of Pi's story.  

Whenever a book is set in or after WWII, I ask myself why that time period.  The war impacted everyone in some way or other.  It brought Jackie's father home before it was over.  But more importantly, it showed how lost some people were when it was over.  Jackie's father knew the Navy, how the operate, organize, control his ship.  But in Kansas, after his wife's death, he was faced with an inability to navigate his world there.  And this led to his inability to guide Jack, who without mother and father, also has difficulty navigating the world.  Fisher was also a lost soul because of the war, and Early completely lost his way of navigating the world when Fisher went missing.  And so while Navigating Early is about navigating, it is also about finding your direction again, just as Pi must.  Some many had to grapple with that after the war.  

A lot of people have used the words autistic or Asperger's to describe Early.  Yet, it is not for us to diagnose him and to her credit, Vanderpool does not label Early either, but merely has Jackie call him "that strangest of boys" which would be more apropos for the time.  

This is a wonderful novel, and I think it is not to be missed.

This book is recommended for readers age 10+

This book was borrowed from the Webster Branch of the NYPL

Spying on Miss Müller by Eve Bunting

I always enjoy a good school story and Eve Bunting's somewhat autobiographical novel Spying on Miss Müller is not exception.  It is 1941 and Jessie Drumm, 13, and her friends Lizzie Mag (really Elizabeth Margaret after the English princesses), Ada and Maureen all attend the co-ed Alveara boarding school in Belfast, Northern Ireland.  And so far, the war has not affected them much.  Still, it doesn't prevent them from convincing themselves that their formerly favorite German teacher, Miss Müller, is really a spy who is somehow sending coded signals to the Nazis from within the school.  The fact that Miss Müller was only half German and that she was also half Irish didn't seem to factor into their thinking.   Now, as the war progresses,  they are giving her the cold shoulder, despite the kindness she had shown her students in the past.

Certain they are right, all the girls need is some concrete proof of her spying.

But how to get that proof?  After Jessie gets up one night to go to the bathroom and sees Miss Müller leaving her room, she decides to follow her.  The only problem is that Jessie loses her on the stairs leading to the roof right near the 'coffin' room, so called because the girls believe it it haunted by the ghost of Marjorie.  Not willing to go further in the dark, Jessie turns back.  No sooner does Jessie return to her dorm and the air raid siren goes off.

What a coincidence, the girls think, that Belfast should be bombed for the first time on the very night Miss Müller is seen heading towards the roof.  Surely she must have sent a signal to the waiting Nazis to send planes and bombs.

As the four friends plan their strategy to follow and catch Miss Müller, Jessie lets their scheme out of the bag to loner Greta Ludowski, a Jewish refugee who got out of Poland before the Nazi invasion, though her parents were not so lucky.  Now her father was dead at the hands of the Nazis and Greta wants vindication.  She demands to be let in on the action to get Miss Müller and make her pay for what her countrymen did.  Then Jessie discovers that she may have something more to worry about.  Her extremely sharp metal nail file is missing and she later discovers it in Greta's possession.  Could Greta be planning something very sinister?

Despite what she says, Jessie still has doubts about whether or not Miss Müller is really a German spy, after all, she had always been so kind to the girls.  But when the opportunity to search Miss Müller's room comes her way, Jessie loses the modicum of doubt and sympathy she may have felt when she finds a picture of her teacher's father, - dressed in a Nazi uniform.

The girls are more determined than ever to catch Miss Müller and expose her as spy masquerading as a teacher, but in the end, Miss Müller has one more lesson to teach her students and it just may be the most important lesson of all.

One of the nicest thing about this novel is the sense of realism that Eve Bunting has created.  She has written that this school story was based on her own experiences at a Belfast boarding school during World War II: "I remember the good times and the bad times.  I was homesick.  There was a war on and our city was bombed.  We listened for air raid sirens, carried our gas masks everywhere, ate food so bad it was indescribable."   All of this and more has been captured so well in Spying on Miss Müller, making it sad, funny, historical, important.

Nazi hysteria gripped much of Britain for quite a while when the Second World War began.  Understandably, people were afraid of invasion, Fifth Columnists, spies and saboteurs and sometimes went a bit overboard with thinking someone was a Nazi.  Kids heard adults talking about this stuff and often got caught up in the fervor.  It is easy to see how a group of students at a boarding school could easily transfer that hysteria onto a half German, half Irish teacher as a way to contain their fear.

This is a tight, well-written novel, as well as one very few novels written for young readers that show what life was like in the war in Northern Ireland.  However, you can get more information about Northern Ireland in World War II here.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was borrowed from The Bank Street College of Education Library

From the Archives #17: The Chalet School Goes To It by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer

When last we left the staff and students of the Chalet School (see my review of The Chalet School in Exile, they were fleeing Austria just ahead of the Anschluß and heading for the Channel Islands.  The school was then closed for a year, and then reopened on the island of Guernsey.  Yet, after only two terms, the world is at war and the Chalet School is forced to move again, this time, fleeing to England just ahead of the Nazi invasion of the Channel Islands.

Wondering what to do and where to go once they reach England, the Chalet School is rescued when Rev. Ernest Howell offers his estate, Plas Howell on the Welsh border, while he serves as a Naval chaplain, providing the school accept his younger 13 year old sister, Gwensi.  

Chalet School owner Madge Russell is first to cross the Channel and travel to Howell Village.  Next to go is her sister Jo Maynard, with her triplets, accompanied by Nell Wilson, science and geography mistress.  While crossing, their boat is attacked by a German U-boat.  Realizing the war is coming closer to home, the school move is expedited.  

The school reopens at the beginning of summer term and staff and students settle into their new location and routine quite smoothly.  Like everyone in England, the school wants to do its bit for the war effort and chose to Dig for Victory as their project.  Even Gwensi, angry at having her home invaded by a school full of strangers, settles in, making friends and having a wonderful time.

But of course trouble arrives when lights are spotted on the school’s grounds during blackout hours.  A Colonel Black comes to the school to see who might be sending light signals to the enemy offshore.  Even though he questions students and staff individually, no one owns up to doing this treasonous deed.

Much to everyone’s chagrin, Colonel Black has the posted around the school, severally curtailing everyone’s movements.  But all that is pushed aside when their first air raid occurs.  And though the bombing is aimed at Cardiff and Newport, South Wales, it feels too close for comfort to everyone as they take shelter in the basement of the house.   

During the raid, the headmistress goes out to see if the house has been hit at all and while she is looking things over, something lands just six feet away from her.  Expecting a bomb, she finds metal container with a streamer that says Schule Chalet.  Thrown by a passing Luftwaffe plane, it is a note from he brother of a former student telling her they are all well, and being forced to do what is demanded by the Reich because they are German, but by no means do they support the actions of their country

I was surprised at the depiction of some of the prefects laughing at stories about some evacuees in the area.  These were described as around 6, 7 and 8 years old, from London and didn’t have any idea what a farm was like.  Among the things they were laughing at was that one child thought eggs came out cooked, another thought a pig had a ring in it’s nose because it was married.  This episode just seemed out of character to me.

Aside from this slightly far-fetched event, I found The Chalet School Goes to It to be an interesting novel.  Doing without because of food, walking or riding a bike great distances because of gas rationing, soldiers stations in the area, suspicions that quislings and saboteurs are a foot all reflect life in Britain during the early days of World War II.  There is even an incidence of former student and friend of Jo’s, Frieda von Ahlen (formerly Mensch) being put into a internment camp on the Isle of Man, a not very well publicized practice in Britain for dealing with aliens.

Elinor Brent-Dyer wrote a number of books set in the war besides The Chalet School in Exile and The Chalet School Goes to It, though the war begins to take more of a back seat. Yet, she never wrote about the end of the war and the Allied victory. A fill-in book, Peace Comes to the Chalet School by Katherine Bruce was published in 2005.  Bruce does a pretty good job picking up Brent-Dyer’s characters and bring closure to the Chalet School war years.

So, if  you like school stories as I do, you can’t go wrong with The Chalet School series.

This book is recommended for readers age 11 and up.

This book was purchased for my personal library

The Chalet School Goes to It

Elinor Brent-Dyer

Chambers

1941, 1952

A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson

The choice for the third week of the German Literature Month challenge was to pick an Austrian or Swiss writer to read. So I chose A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson.  Most people think that Eva Ibbotson is a British novelist and she was.  But she is also an Austrian novelist, and though she left Vienna in the early 1930s because of Hitler and the Nazis, her love for Austria is almost always evident in her novels.

A Song for Summer is no exception.  Londoner Ellen Carr has been raised by her mother and two aunts, all intellectuals and suffragettes, who desired Ellen to follow in their footsteps.  But Ellen’s heart lies outside academics; she is much more attracted to the domestic sciences.  So, after graduating from the Lucy Hatton School of Cookery and Household Management, Ellen takes a job as matron in a rather unconventional boarding school in Halllendorf, Austria.

The school is completely at sixes and sevens, but within a week Ellen has set it to rights.  And because this is an Ibbotson story, all the characters, teachers and students, are extraordinarily eccentric, who succumb to Ellen’s ministrations without sacrificing any of their personality.  And Ellen finds that she herself is attracted to the quiet, mysterious gardener, Marek Tarnowsky.  

But Marek, it turns out, had more than one secret.  For one, he is a resistance worker.  He and his friend Professor Steiner drive around in Steiner’s van to various countries rescuing Jews and smuggling them to safety, doing this under the guise of collecting folk songs from these places.  Marek has been searching for another old friend, Isaac Meierwitz, a Jewish music conductor who had been put into a concentration camp and had managed to escape.  When a rescue is finally attempted, it ends in two gunshots.  Each man believes the other has been shot.  Meierwitz wanders for hours looking for Steiner’s van, but ultimately, after days of walking and hiding, he makes his way to the school, finding succor there – Ellen hides him in plain sight by pretending he is her new chef apprentice.

Marek’s other secret is that he is a world famous composer, pursued by an aging, jealous, possessive soprano, Brigitta Seefeld, with whom he had once had an affair.  But Marek has now decided to live in America, causing heartbreak in both Ellen and Brigitta.  If the road to true love is rocky, for Ellen Carr the road is strewn with boulders and Nazis. 

Whenever I read an Ibbotson novel I feel as though I have entered not a fantasy world, but a parallel universe.  A Song for Summer is not exactly conventional historical fiction.  Yes, the threat of Nazism hangs over Europe and she acknowledges this repeatedly, but the school in Hallendorf seems to be devoid of any kind of direct Nazi threat, as there was in The Dragonfly Pool, and though there certainly were Austrians who supported Hitler early on, they did not live near Hallendorf.  One would at least expect some representative of the Reich to be throwing his weight around, even though the majority of this novel is played out prior the Austria’s annexation to Nazi Germany (the very short Part II is set during the war and the even shorter Epilogue is in 1945, just after the war’s end.)  

I have always enjoyed Ibbotson’s unconventional cast of characters and A Song for Summer doesn’t disappoint on that score.   And I have also always enjoyed the way Ibbotson plays around with opposites in her characters – such as the soul sucking behavior of renowned singer Brigitta Seefeld, the shy, weak Kendrick Frobisher’s pretentiousness, the untalented FitzAllen stealing a Brecht property to gain fame, and the self-important behavior of people who think they are better than others when they clearly are not.  Ibbotson’s portrayal of these characters is totally spot on.

A Song for Summer is a wonderful historical romance novel, something I seldom read, but enjoyed thoroughly.  It was originally written in 1997 and marketed as an adult novel, but was recently reissued as a Young Adult book.  And I believe it is a novel that won’t disappoint adult or YA readers.

This book is recommended for readers 12 and up

This book was purchased for my personal library

This is book 3 of my German Literature Month challenge hosted by Lizzie's Literary Life and Beauty is a Sleeping Cat

A Song for Summer

Eva Ibbotson

Speak

2011

397 Pages

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

I haven’t read this small novel since I was in the 10th grade, so it was interesting to reread it now, with oh so many more years of experience behind me, much like the narrator, Gene Forrester.

Gene has returned to his private prep school, The Devon School, 15 years after graduation and begins to recall his friendship with his roommate, Finny, beginning in the summer of 1942. On the surface, they present a facade of being best friends, getting along so well, no one would suspect anything could ever be wrong. Yet, they couldn’t have been more different. Gene is quiet, serious, intellectual, and not terribly athletic. Finny is boisterous, impulsive, not a good student, but a great athlete. Finny believes that people are innately good; Gene believes people have ulterior motives. That summer, their differences cause cracks in their facade of friendship.

At school for an unprecedented summer term, due to the war, all school rules seem to fall by the wayside. One afternoon, after jumping out of a tree into the Devon River, Finny pushes the unwilling Gene into doing it also. The jumping becomes a ritual of the summer for Finny, Gene and a few other friends. But when Finny forms the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session with nightly mandatory meetings, Gene begins to suspect that Finny’s motives are to take him away from his studies and he begins to resent his roommate.

Gene and Finny continue in this pattern behavior, with Finny proving his athletic ability and pulling Gene away from his studies, and Gene always giving in to Finny's demands and resenting it. Even after Gene explains that he is aiming to be the best student of their year, Finny still manages to persuade him to come to the river for the ritual jump. This time, though, Finny wants them to jump together. Out on the tree limb, Gene bounces it ever so slightly, but enough to cause Finny to fall and shatter his leg on the river bank.

Gene’s feelings of guilt cause him to confess to Finny that the fall was his fault, but Finny refuses to believe him. It is only later that Finny does become convinced of Gene’s culpability and the idea that this is so proves to be too much for him.

The underlying theme of war is present throughout this novel, but the main theme is the idea of a separate peace, a peace that is made separate and apart from the world at large. Devon provides it by keeping the war at bay, out of the lives of the students, despite on campus training of senior for combat. Finny’s separate peace is the state of denial he lives in, refusing to admit that the world can be full of hostility. Gene’s is more complicated, but he too makes a separate peace. The question is with whom- Finny or himself?

Knowles wrote A Separate Peace in 1959 and it didn’t take long for it to find its way on to high school and college reading lists. It is, after all, a classic coming of age story that stills stands up in today’s world.  But it is also a challenged novel. In 1980, the Vernon-Verona-Sherill, NY School District deemed it a "filthy, trashy sex novel." In 1985, the Fannett-Metal High School in Shippensburg, PA challenged it because of its allegedly offensive language. In 1989, the Shelby County, TN school system thought it was inappropriate for high school reading lists because the novel contains "offensive language." In 1991, A Separate Peace was challenged, but retained in the Champaign, IL high school English classes despite claims that “unsuitable language” makes it inappropriate. That year it was also challenged by the parent of a high school student in Troy, IL citing profanity and negative attitudes. Students were offered alternative assignments while the school board took the matter under advisement, but no further action was taken on the complaint. And in 1996, it was challenged at the McDowell County, NC schools because of "graphic language.

Oh dear! I forgot to notice this stuff when I reread A Separate Peace, especially the filthy, trashy sex parts. But I did notice Knowles’ lovely writing style, the way he structured the story to create a wonderful unreliable narrators in Gene. After all, he is presenting only his version of the story, which is the nature of first-person narration and should always be suspect. (Oskar Matzerath from Gunter Grass’s The Tin Drum still remains my favorite unreliable narrator.)

Apparently the people who awarded John Knowles these well deserved honors also forgot to notice what an unsuitable book it is:
1961 The Rosenthal Award
         The William Faulkner Award
1961 National Book Award nominee

If you liked Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye, it is a pretty safe bet you will also enjoy A Separate Peace.

This book is recommend for readers 14 and up.
This book was purchased for my personal library.

The Glencoe Literature Library has an excellent online study guide for A Separate Peace

A Separate Peace
John Knowles
Scribner
1959, 2003
208 Pages

From the Archives #13: Pamela G.M, by Florence Gunby Hadath

Dustjacket image courtsey of
Lasting Words Ltd.
Northampton, UK

I was really in the mood for a 'jolly' school story, so I pulled Pamela G.M. off the shelf and reread it. It was published in 1941 and is the fourth book on Hadath’s Pamela series, but the only one I have read and, as far as I know, the only one set during the war.

The story opens sometime after the war has begun, but Miss Grammett’s boarding school for girls’ in the village of Chinbury, England is going to carry on as usual and resist evacuation.

The school has been given a mobile canteen, to be used for driving around to where troops are located and selling them cups of tea and biscuits, along with other necessary items like soap, shoelaces and razor blades. It was assumed that Miss Grammett’s husband would drive the canteen, but he has no interest in doing it. Pamela, a student who has already learned to drive, manages to finagle the necessary documentation allowing her to drive the canteen, even though she is underage.

But this is not just Pamela’s story, and the book skips around and tells of the adventures of different students, which are separate but still connected to each other. Each schoolgirl is given a job to help the war effort and Fanny Gates is made the treasurer of the War Savings Fund. Her job is to collect money from the people for the fund, and her trials of getting money from the other girls are recounted in one chapter. In another chapter, a student is sent to deliver a message to chair of the Chinbury Food Week campaign and manages to capture a German spy. Later, one of the younger students inadvertently ends up taking an airplane ride with a famous woman flyer modeled somewhat on Amy Johnson. Other girls are assigned to do knitting or land work for a neighboring farmer.

All of these chapters are quite humorous and entertaining except for the last one, which is quite serious. Pamela, along with her partner Martha Tydd, are driving around the countryside in their mobile canteen, trying to find out where the soldiers have been relocated, when they hear the sound of airplanes. Soon, they see bombs being dropped on the small village of Combe Edge. As they drive into the village, they see some shops burning and a badly injured woman being carried out to the street. Pamela hears the doctor say the woman must get to the hospital quickly or she will die, but the hospital’s ambulances have already been dispatched and nothing is available to transport her. Pamela tells them she can do it, and has the canteen emptied of everything, including the shelves and tea urns. The woman is laid on the floor of the canteen and Pamela whisks her off, getting to the hospital just in the knick of time. Returning to Combe Edge, they see more bombs falling in that vicinity. Arriving again, they discover that a bomb has fallen on a school and trapped two children and a teacher under the rubble. The rubble can’t be moved without causing further collapse, but there is a small opening. Pamela manages to slip through, and is able to drag the kids out and then help the teacher escape. The book ends with Miss Grammett receiving a letter telling her that Pamela has been elected to receive the George Medal.

The George Medal (pictured left) introduced on September 24, 1940 and was given by the King to citizens in recognition of their acts of bravery during the war and looks like this:

The King is, of course, George VI, whom we are all familiar with now thanks to Colin Firth’s brilliant portrayal of him in The King’s Speech. Curiosity about the George Medal is actually what prompted me to buy this book in the first place.

Like Frank Baum of Oz fame, who had earlier written the Aunt Jane’s Nieces and Mary Louise series under the name of Edith Van Dyne, the Pamela series was actually written by John Edward Gunby Hadath (1871-1954) under the name Florence Gunby Hadath. Hadath had previously written a number of books for boys before embarking on Pamela, all with the same great humor. Hadath’s sense of irony and wit is what I liked most about his writing. He follows a character’s line of thought from beginning to end, as the character rationalizes to him/herself how and why the thing they shouldn’t do can safely and justifiably be done. How many times have we all done that?

The Pamela series is not really readily available, but I am hoping that maybe sometime soon they will be reprinted. But, alas, I doubt that will ever happen, even though Pamela G. M. is, in my opinion, an example of British School Stories at their best, and if you like the Chalet School series, this is definitely one to try.

This story is recommended for readers age 12 and up
This book was purchased for my personal library

This is book 12 of my British Books Challenge hosted by The Bookette
This is book 14 of my Forgotten Treasures Challenge hosted by Retroreduxs Reviews

Back Home by Michelle Magorian

Michelle Magorian is probably best known for her excellent book Goodnight, Mr. Tom, but she also wrote several other World War II novels for adolescent readers. One of those other books is Back Home.

It begins in the summer of 1945. The war is over and 12 year old Virginia Dickinson is returning to England. Virginia had been a scared, timid 7 year old when she was evacuated to an American family in Connecticut. Five years have passed and she is confident 12 year old who now goes by the name Rusty, the nickname her American family gave her because of her red hair. Rusty isn’t very happy about her return. She barely knows her own mother, who is now a talented mechanic with the Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS.) She has a four year old brother Charlie that she has never met and who dislikes Rusty from the beginning. And, she has acquired an American accent, which is greeted with disdain and she is constantly told that she must lose it.

Rusty is temporarily taken to Devon, where her mother and brother have been living with an elderly woman named Beatie. There she meets Beth Hatherly, a girl whose own family seems to resemble the rather bohemian American family Rusty stayed with. She is just beginning to enjoy herself in Devon, when she, her mother and brother move back to her grandmother’s house in London. For Rusty, the move is again temporary, she has been enrolled in a girls’ boarding school, Benwood House, in part to become re-anglicized and hopefully to help her lose her accent.

Rusty’s paternal grandmother is strict, critical and condescending. She intensely dislikes Rusty’s accent, her confidence and her behavior. She also feels Charlie is too coddled by her daughter-in-law and needs to learn to behave like a big boy.

But, if living in her grandmother’s felt like hell on earth, boarding school is worse. Benwood House is definitely not the Chalet School. It is cold, unfriendly, condescending and highly critical of Rusty’s American experience and, of course, the ‘despicable’ accent. Everything Rusty does seems to result in a mark against her and her house, which has the unfortunate name Butt House.

One day, on a trip into town, Rusty overhears some boys calling one member of their group Yank, and she begins talking to him, not realizing that speaking to boys is against the rules. For this infraction, Rusty receives a discipline mark and is called up in front of the whole school and publicly humiliated. The next day she receives the sad news that Beatie has died. Feeling sad and alone, that night, Rusty discovers that she can climb down some scaffolding outside her window, and escape into the woods surrounding the school, feeling free for the first time since arriving in England. She manages to get a note to Yank on her next visit to town, telling him where and when to meet her that night.

The boy, Lance, shows up and they continue to meet at night, exploring and talking. Eventually, they find a bombed out house and Rusty begins to decorate it with the carpentry, painting and stenciling skills she learned in the US. Gradually, however, Lance begins to be accepted by the boys in his school, while things only get worse for Rusty, especially after her father returns home from the army.

It is clear that Rusty’s parents have grown apart during the five years of war. Her mother has become quite independent and refuses to give that up even though she is expected to by both her husband and his mother. Rusty, who has been coming home on weekends, is told by him that she will remain in school from now on. This is unbearable and when Rusty returns to school after Christmas vacation, she decides to run away.

Back Home is not just a war story; it is also a classic misfit come of age story. The level of bullying and intolerance directed at Rusty was, well, almost intolerable as a reader. The girls at school seemed to think she had it easy in the states, while they were left to live through the war in a much more up close and personal way; others resented her open, friendly American ways, and her more colorful, stylish American clothing. This theme of bullying and intolerance is still relevant in today’s world, especially given the fact that there seems to be, probably not in increase in bullying, but rather a crueler, more public presence of it, thanks to social media.

Her mother wanted Rusty to be the same little girl she was before she was evacuated. Her father and grandmother expected Rusty to conform to their idea of a proper English young lady and cast off her five years in the US as though they were nothing more than worn out old socks. Rusty and her mother have to learn to accept that they have changed and to be true to themselves, not what others wanted them to be.

But can a leopard change its spots? Maybe, maybe not.

I also thought Back Home was a very good example of an aspect of evacuation that, really, I haven’t run into before and I wonder how many kids returned home to find the same kind of difficulties Rusty faced.

As always, Magorian has crafted a well written story and one that I would highly recommend. It is by no means the tear jerker that Goodnight Mr. Tom is, but that doesn’t make it any less compelling.

This novel is recommended for readers age 11 and up.
This book was borrowed from the Juvenile Collection at the Hunter College Library.

For more information on Michelle Magorian and her other novels, including the 2011 30th anniversary of Goodnight Mr. Tom see her website Michelle Magorian

This is book 3 of my YA of the 80s and 90s Challenge hosted by The Book Vixen
This is book 3 of my British Books Challenge hosted by The Bookette
This is book 4 of my Forgotten Treasures Challenge hosted by Retroreduxs Reviews
This is book 8 of my YA Historical Fiction Challenge hosted by YA Bliss

From the Archives #3: The Chalet School in Exile by Elinor Brent-Dyer

Elinor Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School series is about an international school set on the fictitious lake Tiernsee in the Tyrolean Alps of Austria and narrates the adventures of students and staff. The series begins in 1925 with the novel The School at the Chalet. and The Chalet School in Exile is number 14 in the series. The Anschluß or annexation of Austria into the German Reich on 12 March 1938 provided Brent-Dyer with some new and exciting material with which to continue the series. Altogether, she managed to write six books in which the war forms a part of the story to a greater or lesser degree.

The Chalet School in Exile begins in February 1938. Concerned about the widespread attraction of Nazism among Austrian youth, Madge (Bettany) Russell, the founder of the Chalet School, and her husband, Dr. James ‘Jem’ Russell decide to move the school across the lake near his sanatorium on the Sonnalpe for safety.

A plebiscite vote was supposed to be held in March to determine whether Austrians wished to remain independent or become part of the Reich, but it never happens. When the Nazis march in and take possession of Austria, parents start to make arrangements to remove their daughters from the school. Before anyone leaves, however, the students get together, form a peace league “and vowed themselves to a union of nations, whether they should ever meet again or not.” (55) The vow is signed by every girl at the Chalet School, but creates a problem of where to hide it, since it could put so many girls at risk should it somehow fall into the hands of the Gestapo:

“Many of the girls were well on in their teens, and, from all accounts, Hitler and his crew were perfectly capable of punishing them. Already there were whispers of concentration camps.” (56)

They decide to hide the paper in a cave and a picnic excursion to it is arranged, which includes Joey Bettany, Madge’s younger sister and former Chalet School student, Dr. Jack Maynrd from the sanatorium, and several students including Robin Humphries, the Russell’s ward. On the way, they meet Frau Eisen and her son Hermann, who gives them the Heil Hitler greeting instead of the traditional Tyrolean Grüss Gott. Hermann notices an envelope in Robin’s pocket and decides it might be important. After a while, Hilary and Robin decide to slip off to the cave. When they don’t return, the group begins to get very worried. Joey finds Hermann at the cave, who admits he had followed the two girls and had seen them enter it. Though they search the cave, they find no evidence of Hilary or Robin having been there. The Peace League Pledge was definitely not in the place they had intended to hide it in.

Once in the cave, Hilary and Robin realize that they have been followed, decide not to leave the Peace League Pledge there and find another way out of it. On their way back to the picnic area they meet Dr. Gottfried Mensch, who drives them home. Two hours later Joey is carried into the Russell’s home by Dr. Maynard and that night, they become engaged.

In late April a man from the Gestapo shows up with an arrest warrant to take everyone from the picnic to Innsbruck, where they have been accused of espionage against the Reich. Joey refuses to go and the British Consul is called in to deal with the Gestapo agent. Ultimately, only Jack Maynard goes to Innsbruck. The Consul, however, suggests that they close the school or move it elsewhere, and warns that it is only a matter of time until the sanatorium is closed by the Nazis.

The Gestapo detains Jack Maynard for a week and when he returns, Jem tells him of the plan to move the school again, advises him to marry Joey quickly and get her and Robin out of the country. Before leaving, a group of girls, including Joey and Robin, along with science mistress Nell Wilson decide to do some shopping in town. Everyone is careful about what they say and do after the incident with the Gestapo until late afternoon. While having coffee in a Gasthaus, Joey notices a skirmish out on the street and sees

“an old man with a long, grey beard, plainly running for his life. A shower of stones, rotten fruit and other missiles followed him. Stark terror was in his face, and already he was failing to outdistance his pursuers.” (119)

Robin, recognizing the man as Herr Goldmann, the Jewish jeweler, runs out of the Gasthaus, followed by Joey and the rest of the party. They surround Herr Goldmann,, but when Joey reminds the leader of the gang of the kindness he was shown by Goldmann and his wife in his time of need, he retorts

‘He’s a Jew! Jews have no right to live!’ declared Hans Bocher sullenly. ‘Give place, Fräulein Bethany, and hand over the old Jew to us! Better take care, or you’ll be in trouble for this. Let him go! We’ll see to him!’ (120)

Miss Wilson, meanwhile, drags Robin and Goldmann into the Gasthaus and persuades the owner to let Goldman escape through his back door. Then she pushes Robin at the owner and tells him to get her to the Sonnalpe at once. When Miss Wilson returns to the street, she sees the girls surrounded by an angry crowd, but the parish priest, Vater Johann, is also there and indicates that they should all to follow him into the church. Once inside with the door barred, they all know they are safe only for a moment. Vater Johann leads them to a hidden trapdoor, tells them to go down and follow the path which leads to the mountain-side. After wandering through the tunnel for hours, they finally come to what Joey recognizes as the cave that Robin had discovered. All are much relieved, but to everyone’s amazement, and as if to underscore the danger of the fearful situation they have all been in, Miss Wilson’s rich chestnut hair has turned snow white. It is decided that it is too dangerous for this group to stay at the Sonnalpe and that they, along with Jack Maynard and Gottried Mensch as guide, must flee Austria as soon as possible and the adventures continue from here.

The Chalet School in Exile is a novel full of adventure and surprises and accurately conveys the cruelty of Nazism and the Gestapo and the fear they could instill in people who opposed them. But it also sent a message of courage and solidarity in troubled times, in the form of strong friendships among the girls, pride in being Chalet School girls and the Peace League Pledge in defiance of Nazism.  After writing thirteen novels with such a beautiful, tranquil setting as the Austrian alps, it must have been terribly difficult for Brent-Dyer to have her idyllic if imaginary school setting ruined by the Nazis, but she went on to invent other settings almost as lovely.

Although it is part of a series, The Chalet School in Exile can be read as a standalone novel and is probably one of the best in the series, though I liked the next one, The Chalet School Goes to It just as much. The series was popular among adolescent girls when it was written and today still has a very large fan base of readers of all ages. The novel was first published in 1940, and there are lots reprints, some terribly abridged. Girls Gone By Publishers reissued the original text in 2003 and again in 2009 for the 70th Anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.

This book was purchased for my personal library.