Enid Blyton’s Summer Term at St Clare’s is a boarding school story for 9 year olds, and Pat and Isabel miss the first week of it because of mumps.<\/p>\n
Not their mumps. Somebody else’s. They played a tennis four with a girl called Winnie Ellis who went down with it that evening, and that is quite enough to put the twins in quarantine.<\/p>\n
So everyone else goes back without them. The best desks get bagged. The tuck boxes get eaten. All the holiday news gets told, and the new girls get looked over, and Pat and Isabel sit at home in the garden prodding their own jaws to see if anything hurts yet.<\/p>\n
When they finally arrive there is bread and butter and jam and a lot of shouting, and five new girls staring at them wondering who on earth these two are.<\/p>\n
The new girls are the whole term, really. Sadie Greene is American, rich and entirely occupied with her hair, and she has attached herself to the twins’ feather-brained cousin Alison. Carlotta Brown is half-Spanish, speaks her mind, and has a temper that everyone is quietly looking forward to. Prudence Arnold is in their dormitory too, and Prudence is the sort who finds things out about people.<\/p>\n
Carlotta has a past she has not mentioned. Prudence is going to make sure the whole form hears about it.<\/p>\n
It is all very small and very absorbing. Who sits by the window. Who has been moved up a form. Matron shaking an enormous bottle of medicine at you and offering a dose. Nobody has to save anything, and it is still difficult to put down.<\/p>\n
The twins are good company now because they were awful before. Everyone still calls them the stuck-up twins when they want to wind them up, and Pat goes red every single time.<\/p>\n
One note for a parent. This is an old book, and the American girl exists largely to be laughed at for her accent and her polished nails, which reads a bit oddly now. It is more thoughtless than cruel, and Sadie is written as good-tempered and generous underneath. Some readers will not notice at all. If yours does notice, it is a fair thing to talk about.<\/p>\n
If the new girl who refuses to fit in is the bit they love, Claudine at St Clare’s does it all over again with a French girl who breaks every rule she meets and charms the twins completely while she is at it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Enid Blyton’s Summer Term at St Clare’s is a boarding school story for 9 year olds, and Pat and Isabel miss the first week of it because of mumps. Not their mumps. Somebody else’s. They played a tennis four with a girl called Winnie Ellis who went down with it that evening, and that is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11138,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7094,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Claudine at St Clare's","lr_seo_hook":"Two girls miss the start of term, and five new girls arrive without them."},"book_tag":[25],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[309],"class_list":["post-8749","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-friendship-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-enid-blyton"],"yoast_title":"Summer Term at St Clare’s by Enid Blyton | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"Two girls miss the start of term, and five new girls arrive without them. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n