Second Form at Malory Towers

Second Form at Malory Towers by Enid Blyton is a boarding school story for 9 year olds about who ends up in charge and whether they deserve it.

What happens

Darrell Rivers is thirteen and heading back down to Cornwall for her fifth term. Four terms in the first form are behind her. She is a second former now and she feels grand about it.

She and her best friend Sally spend the entire drive doing the thing every child does on the way back to school. Working out who will be running things.

Alicia is the obvious candidate. Cleverest girl in the form, top marks in everything. Sally is not convinced. Alicia plays the fool, will not take responsibility, and she is a bit hard with people. You want more from a head girl than someone who gives orders.

Then Sally suggests Darrell, and Darrell lets herself picture it for one wild moment before she remembers her temper.

That temper is the honest heart of these books. Darrell knows precisely what she is like. She flung her racket down at tennis last term and stamped off over nothing, and she still cannot explain what came over her.

The arrival is the best bit. Girls bellowing across the drive about pet mice and health certificates, lacrosse sticks tangling in everybody's legs, four grey towers with a creeper going red right up to the roof. Darrell calls it their castle without a shred of embarrassment.

There is a new girl too. Ellen Wilson, pale and worn out, with a line cut so deep between her eyebrows that she looks permanently cross. Darrell does not much like the look of her and is kind to her anyway, which tells you plenty about Darrell.

One thing to expect. This was written a long time ago and it sounds it. Girls say hols and jolly and woe betide you, everything happens by letter, and the worst crime available is losing your health certificate. If your reader only ever reads modern stories, they may need a chapter to tune in. After that it is the same thing they already love, which is other people's business, minus the phones.

What to read next

If they want to start where Darrell starts, First Term at Malory Towers has her at twelve in a brand new brown and orange uniform, clutching a ten shilling note that has to last the term, hoping very hard that she makes a friend.