Friendships & High Jinx

Third Year At Malory Towers by Enid Blyton is a superb girls’ book set in a boarding school. It is the third book in the Malory Towers series but can be read as a stand-alone. I recommend reading the books in numerical order for character and timeline progression.

The girls are now fourteen as they head back to school in Cornwall. It is the spring term and there are two new girls – an American who is an aspiring actress, and a tomboy who loves her horse.

Once more we join in for lessons and pranks. There are friendships and squabbles; highs and lows; good behaviour and high jinx.

We see the kindness of a teacher when a beloved horse is in trouble.

We learn the lesson of being yourself and do not think of yourself as above others.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book as much today as when I first read the series fifty years ago.

Malory Towers is timeless and will appeal to a new generation of girls.

I will leave you with my favourite quote:

“The girls didn’t come to Malory Towers only to learn lessons in class – they came to learn other things too – to be just and fair, generous and brave, kind. Perhaps those things were even more important than the lessons.”

JULIA WILSON