The Naughtiest Girl Again

Enid Blyton's The Naughtiest Girl Again is the second book about Elizabeth Allen, a school story for 9 year olds about a girl trying very hard to stop being who she was.

What happens

Last year Elizabeth arrived at Whyteleafe determined to behave so badly they would send her home. It did not work. She liked it. Now she is helping her mother pack the trunk and looking forward to going back, which she finds a bit embarrassing to admit.

She is honest about her chances. She is not going to be the best girl in the school. She flies into tempers and she says things before she thinks them. But she means to do her best rather than her worst this term, and she says so out loud on the platform.

The trouble is that nobody will let her forget. Her friend's mother greets her by the old nickname before she has even got on the train. Nora says they will need a whole new set of rules for her. It is all meant kindly and it still stings, and you can feel Elizabeth deciding not to snap back.

Whyteleafe itself is the best thing here. The children run it. There is a School Meeting every week where the Head Boy and Girl are judges, twelve monitors chosen by the pupils are the jury, and any complaint gets brought and dealt with by the children themselves. Grown-ups barely punish anybody. Last year Elizabeth was up in front of it constantly.

So the stakes are small and completely real. Tuck boxes, rabbits with babies of their own, a promised gardening book, piano duets with Richard, and a weekly meeting where your classmates decide what you deserve.

Then someone new arrives who has decided Elizabeth is still the same girl she was, and would rather like to prove it.

What your reader will probably enjoy most is how much Elizabeth wants to be good and how bad she is at it. She takes the new children under her wing on the first afternoon, and she is also the girl who got sent out of class for flipping her rubber at people. Both of those are true at once.

There is no caution to give you on this one. It is gentle, and the worst thing that happens is unfairness.

What to read next

If your reader wants to see just how appalling Elizabeth was to start with, The Naughtiest Girl in the School is where she puts earwigs in her governess's bed and gets sent away for it.