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Enid Blyton's The Twins at St Clare's is a boarding school story for 9 year olds about two girls who turn up at a new school absolutely determined to hate it.
Pat and Isabel have just left Redroofs, where they were head girls, tennis captain and hockey captain and a hundred girls looked up to them. Now their parents are sending them to St Clare's instead of the smart school their friends are going to.
They are NOT happy about it.
Their dad tells them Redroofs made them conceited and that starting at the bottom again will do them good. Which is more or less guaranteed to make a fourteen year old dig her heels in harder.
So they arrive with a plan. Let everyone know who they are and what they can do. Turn their noses up at the plain beds, the lacrosse, the fact that you have to mend your own clothes now because there are no sewing maids.
It goes about as well as you would expect.
The pleasure of reading this is that you can see what is coming and the twins absolutely cannot. Janet says straight to their faces that she has a feeling they will not fit in. Hilary keeps giving them another chance. The twins keep making it worse, then go off and feel hard done by about it.
There is a lot of cosy detail to settle into as well. Dormitory number seven with its eight identical white beds and curtains you can pull round your own. Tuck boxes with rules about what goes in them. A matron with very sharp eyes who will make you darn every hole yourself.
If you have got a reader who loves school stories where the drama is friendships, showing off and who gets found out, with no villain and no world to save, this is a great one to put in front of them.
One thing to flag is the age of it. This was written in the 1940s and it sounds like it. Everything is jolly and golly, the teachers are mistresses, and there is a lot of talk about good families and money. Some of the snobbery is the thing the book is laughing at, since the twins are the snobs and they are heading for a fall. Some of it is just how people wrote then. Your reader might want a word about that, or might sail straight past it.
If the twins win them over, The O'Sullivan Twins picks things up the following term. This time it is their spoilt cousin Alison arriving at St Clare's with permed hair and airs and graces, and Pat and Isabel are the ones who have to sort her out.
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