Mermaid Academy, Cora and Sparkle, by Julie Sykes and Linda Chapman

 

2023 

The Mermaid Academy is in many ways like any other school. Students learn and friendships are important. There are challenges. Cora and Issy are twins but are forced to attend different classes.  Issy is the older twin and Cora is worried when her magic appears before Issy’s. Cora’s closest companion is Sparkle, her dolphin.

There is also adventure and mystery.  Cora and Sparkle seek to join Cora’s friends who are trying to work out what has damaged the coral reefs. This brings them into danger as well. They discover the terrible secret about what has been happening.

All is well in the end. Issy and Cora are reconciled.   When dolphins and mermaids bond their tail fins match.  This happens for Cora and Sparkle at the end of the story.  Cora is also reconciled with her twin sister and at peace with her friends. Then she decides to do what she had always really wanted to to do:  she joins the music group. Her friends, her twin and Sparkle are all happy about this.

The book is 107 pages long. It has a blocked text and uses a serif font with difficult ‘a’s and ‘g’s. It is, however, double- spaced. Monochrome illustrative pictures are integrated into the text from time to time.  Each chapter heading has a decorative border.  

This is part of The Mermaid Academy Series 

Find your copy here  

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The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

2014, first published 1974  

The story is set in a Catholic boys’ school. In the introduction to this edition Robert Cormier describes tis as “a metaphor for the world” (vii).  Certainly he offers the reader much to think about in how power shifts within society. The Vigils control both the masters and the boys and yet establish a type of harmony.  This isn’t always easy and in this case ends in violence.      

The language is quite sophisticated in this novel so readers may need to study the text rather than read it for pleasure.  Nevertheless Cormier establishes a good narrative balance and gives a strong voice to the young adults involved. 

The text isn’t that easy to read. It has a huge cast. The boys are known by their first or their second name or both and it is easy to think that one character is three people. The masters are sometimes named just by their name and sometime as Brother. Where the name alone is used one can mistake them for students.     

The point of view shifts frequently, often mid-chapter. 

The book is 274 pages long with most of the chapters being short though there are one or two longer ones.   

The Witch of Turlingham Academy by Ellie Boswell

2013, first published 2012

Witch-hunter Katy befriends witch Sophie at the Turlingham Academy.  Sophie did not know that she was a witch until she finds a birthday present and letters from her grandmother hidden in her mother’s office.   

In this story we have many of the school story tropes: midnight feasts, overzealous prefects, new students. However this is tempered by there being a girls’ school and a boys’ school on the same premises and the reference to modern day year, 7, year 9, Year 10 etc.

This differs from the Harry Potter and the Worst Witch books in that Sophie is a lone witch in an ordinary school.  

There are love interests- girls have crushes on boys and boys are fascinated by the girls.  There are  also  delicate relationships we normally see in texts for teens.    

It is 244 pages long, with blocked text and an adult font but double-spaced.  

The School at the Chalet by Elinor M Brent-Dyer

This story brings at once the familiar and the exotic.  1920s’ readers will be familiar with school and relationships between school girls. Some aspects of school life will also be familiar to the 21^st century reader. We have the story lines of several differently aged girls but as children like to read “up” – often reading about youngsters aged about two years older than themselves, this will appeal to the upper primary reader. Few of them ’ however, will be familiar with boarding school and even those that are and who are 1920s’ middle class or even upper middle class will be less familiar with Austria and the Alps.

For the 21^st century reader the exoticism comes in another way.  There is perhaps nothing so exciting about the Tyrol anymore.  Yet the way of life will be alien to them – shared dorms, cold baths and a strange language. Even the young reader may marvel at the relatively young headteacher Madge.  She is only in her twenties.      

There is plenty of tension and pace.  There are complex relationships between the girls. Headteacher Madge Bettany perhaps offers a role-model for the readers to aspire to, offering food for thought as they transit form primary school to secondary school.

The text is 204 pages long, blocked and in a tight font.  A real book, but not too long.