Books Monthly April 2024
Nostalgia books for 2024
Mabel Esther Allan: Over The Sea to SchoolPublished 4th March 2024
This is the first of three titles about Dundonay House school, set on Skye, a place Mabel Ether Allan knew well, and loved. (We shall be publishing A School in Danger and At School in Skye in 2025 and 2026.)
Dundonay House is one of MEA’s progressive schools, and as well as school life, we get to know Skye well. Dillion Harvey is very reluctant to go to the school, but by the time the term ends, she has of course settled down.
Jennifer Shelley has written the introduction. Short story-wise, we shall be including Sylvie in Skye which led to the writing of Over the Sea to School.
Over the Sea to School was published on 4 March 2024.
Mabel Esther Allan is one of my absolute favourite school story writers, although she could turn her hand to other genres of children's story, as we saw a couple of months ago with SHADOW OVER THE ALPS, which was more like Malcolm Savile than EBD and was in fact part thriller, part love story, exactly the sort of tale I would have lapped up as a young teenager back in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Mabel's chief character in Over The Sea To School is Dillion, who attends the local high school, and really, really hates the idea of going across the waters to Dundonay House School; so much so that she sets out to behave so badly at Dundonay House that the Headmistress will have no alternative but to expel her and send her back to the mainland. I don't know if this is the first example of someone not wanting to attend boarding school, but even if it isn't, it's brilliantly written and beautifully told. I was captivated by it, and can't wait for my favourite publisher, GGBP to reprint the remaining titles in the Dundonay House series. Absolutely superb, took me back to my childhood, when all I could think about was settling down with my boarding school stories after school.
The small print: Books Monthly is published by Paul Norman. 2023 is the 25th year of publication. You can contact me at paulenorman1@gmail.com