St Clare's reread

[Hannah]

Thanks for your (and your daughters) thoughts, Debbie.

One thing that I was surprised at when I read the book as a child was that Sadie knew German so well... only when I became older I realized that she's an American in England and not an American in Germany.
Regarding changes: Surprisingly one slap ("She would make faces, turn her back, even slap") has survived the censors as has "Carlotta handles horses better than a man" - both still there in 2016.
Annoyingly in the German translation the whole tennis match and the plot about Bobby and the match are missing.
The animals in the vivarium underwent a transformation too - the snails are snakes in the German book. The white mark on the shell becomes a white mark on the head and the animals aren't named after the dwarfs. These changes are so unnecessary . When they change the n-word or spankings at least there's some agenda behind it (even if I don't agree with them on most points) but why change snails to snakes?

And again I've got a question: What's the "oral exam" in this context? I know oral exam as an exam where questions are both asked and answered orally. But it is impossible to test a whole form within 10 minutes and find out if they get at least half marks? So was it an exam where questions were asked orally and answers (probably calculated without writing steps) written down?

At the end of the lesson there will be a ten minutes’ oral test—and I warn you, no one is to get less than half-marks, or there will be trouble.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I'm not sure about the oral exam. Maybe it's some kind of dictation exercise, with the girls either replicating (on paper) what Mam'zelle reads out or translating (on paper) what Mam'zelle reads out? That would be more aural than oral though, with only Mam'zelle doing the speaking.

Thinking back to oral tests at school, I remember them being individual tests. The teacher would start up a series of conversations in French and the pupil would respond. Some of these consisted of role-play, e.g. being at the doctor's or grocer's or asking for directions to somewhere. We also had aural tests, where the whole class would listen to a French piece on cassette and then answer questions (individually, on paper) based on the piece. I disliked aural tests as the pace of the French speech was generally too fast for me.

I'm always interested to hear of textual alterations, but the change from snails to snakes is puzzling. Maybe snakes were felt to be more fashionable in Germany, or more exciting for readers, at the time the change was made?

[Hannah]

The oral exam in the book is in maths with Miss Roberts.

We had aural tests in English (maybe in French too, I can't remember) and the quality of the cassettes was bad and it was really hard to understand. But maybe I'm blaming the cassettes unfairly - I still find spoken English difficult to understand with most accents .

I really don't know what got into the translator. "The author wrote snails but I prefer snakes so lets change it"?
At first I thought it was a simple error (I've confused snails and snakes myself in the past as snail somehow sounds similar to me to "Schlange" which is the German word for snake and it didn't help that my first encounter with snail was probably in this book and of course I was convinced it was a snake as I knew the German book so well...). But as the location of the white mark was changed that doesn't really explain it. Surely the translator would have stopped to think when a snake suddenly has a shell (and could then have corrected the mistake)
But maybe you're right and snakes seemed somehow cooler.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Sorry for not realising you were talking about a Maths oral, Hannah! Yes, it's hard to see how the whole form could be tested in ten minutes, with each individual being given a mark.

[Anita Bensoussane]

So was it an exam where questions were asked orally and answers (probably calculated without writing steps) written down?

I think you must be right about that. When I was in junior school (aged 7-11) we had a Maths exercise like that every day after lunch, but it was known as "mental arithmetic". The teacher would read out Maths questions and we had only a few seconds to work out the answer to each one in our heads, and write it down. We had ten questions per day so it was called "Daily Ten". We didn't have anything like that in secondary school though.

[Hannah]

I'm nearing the end of the third book - Prudence and Sadie have just left the building at night so the excitement is to begin.

I certainly agree with Bobby in this one:

‘And I never can remember when to use this stupid subjunctive. Ugh!’

There are only few things that I find difficult to learn or understand in languages (at least the languages I know so far), but when to use the subjunctive is one of them. I also sometimes thought in a different way than the teacher when it came to simple past vs. present perfect (both in French and English) and couldn't always see the difference between gerund and gerundive in Latin.

All the teachers suspected that Tessie’s sneezes were not at all necessary, but only Miss Jenks knew how to deal with them properly.

Don't the mistresses talk to each other?


Regarding people with eyes set too close together there is a second one in the book - the criminal that hands the letter to Pam and Prudence. "Very dark" seems to be a bad thing too. I wonder if this is a point that critics would see as racist? That passage has been changed from

He was not a pleasant-looking fellow, for he was very dark, and his eyes were set very close together.

to

He was not a pleasant-looking fellow and his eyes were set very close together.

So the "very dark" is out and the "for" too.

[Yak]

Other times people being dark is used as a compliment .. Miss Quentin is described as 'very dark and extremely good looking.' Carlotta too is 'dark' and Hilary is at one point described as being 'dark and smiling' .. although in the first book she was blonde and cheeky looking . The twins too were described as having 'dark heads.' I think that when it pertains to skin colour it is quite often used negatively though.

[Hannah]

I've finished the third book.

Prudence doesn't always seem to know what she wants... first she tells Pam that she has to come with her at night (even though Pam doesn't want to) but later - when Pam is in the san - she's "quite pleased to think she would not have Pam with her that night after all".

Carlotta calls the circus. She looks up the number in the dictionary. I'm surprised that a traveling circus would be found in it.

I understand that circus people don't like the police but I would have preferred the kidnappers to be tied up and handed over to the police. They'd certainly deserve it.

There's a mistake in both my third edition and the Kindle 2016 edition:

‘That’s good,’ said Janet, afterwards. ‘We shall all keep together now—and the two we like least, Sadie and Prudence, won’t be here. I overheard by accident something Mam’zelle said in her loud voice to Miss Roberts. Well—I must say it’s good news that Prudence won’t be back.’
‘Won’t she really?’ said Janet. ‘Well, I vote if that’s so, we’re a bit nicer to her then. She’s looking pretty miserable lately.’

In my German book the second Janet has been changed to Pat.

I've started the fourth book and am wondering if this is another little mistake? There were exams in the other books too.

“Remember we shall no longer be in the bottom form. We’ve got to work for exams. and pass them!”

Last thing one remark regarding a change in the translation: While Mirabel plans to stay until half-term in the original book she only wants to stay a month in the German book. We don't know half-term in Germany and it is usually translated as "visitor's day" so it would have been easy to say that Mirabel stays until then. Especially as she stays "for a month" but the date she plans to leave is given as November 1st (the visitor's day) which implies that school didn't start until October (it starts in August or September depending on the region you're in).

[Yak]

I mentioned the thing about Carlotta calling the camp earlier on but you're correct - even if they had a phone wired up it would not have been in a phone book.

[Irene Malory Towers]

Finished the last one last week in fact but got held up with a bad cold. I enjoyed them much more that I thought I would but still maintain the last 2 are the best - the humour is great and Claudine injects both humour and .perceptive truths. Also there is more continuity and development of characters, ie Claudine, Angela, Alison, Mirabelle and Gladys. The scene at night with Mademoiselle padding through in her big slippers is one of her funniest and best written night scenes.

I had also noticed that thin people, thin lips and eyes too close together are associated with "bad" characters and plump ones (not fat though apart from the wonderful Fatty) are good characters. I think this probably very common for children's books written at that time and even some adult books I daresay and it doesn't worry me. it would be interesting to know when this was phased out - probably decades after EB. I am sure even in the 80's childrens' books still had .stereotypes, even if the stereotypes were slightly different. The metamorphosis of Clarissa is understandable though - she does blossom - both physically and mentally. The removal of the braces and glasses give her confidence and that can change her character or at emphasise the good parts. I think that is fair enough. 80 years later my 18 year old son just had finished his stint with braces and it has given him confidence. He even trialled out contact lenses instead of glasses but found them too fiddly. Most people will do something to improve their appearance - that is human nature - and if it works - then they can become more confident and happier.

Couple of other comments - quite poignant that Ann-Marie thinks that sleep walking is a sign of being a genius and I wonder if that belief was common in those times. There is probably a serious medical reasons for that instead of being a sign of greatness.

I think is fitting that the series end on the promise of the O'Suillivan twins being joint head. I don't feel the same affection for them as I do with Darrell as they are so poorly fleshed out - and not much to distinguish between the 2 - other than Pat is slightly more hot tempered than Isabelle. Plus it would have been impossible to better the last book.

Conclusion - I enjoyed St Clare's series, and the 5th and 6th books are by far the best. I prefer Malory Towers though as there is much more development of a main set of characters and the plot lines are more believable.

[Yak]

The scene at night with Mademoiselle padding through in her big slippers is one of her funniest and best written night scenes.

That is my favourite scene in the whole of Enid Blyton

[Hannah]

I'm not sure if I have "the one favourite scene" but it is certainly amongst the top of my list too.

[Yak]

Hmm favourite scenes in all the books might be a good new thread idea (though it could have been done before). Goon stuffing the ventriloquist doll's down Fatty's neck is another favourite..

[Moonraker]

Chimney tennis sounds fun too .

Like others, I played hours of "wall tennis" - I always considered I was the only child who did this. Seemingly not!

[Boodi 2]

Most definitely not, as I played it for hours too!!!