![]() ![]() She puts on a dressing gown and steals back to the schoolroom with an electric torch. ![]() She is exhausted that night and goes to bed, only to be woken by moonlight shining through her window. She opens a large empty cupboard and sees three sets of old pencil marks on the door showing the heights of four children, one of them, appearing only in the first set, named Jessamy, like her. Once Jessamy has reassured her – "I'll try not to be a menace" (p. 13) – she is allowed to explore the house and comes across a schoolroom. I don't know any other way," she is told (p. 14). ![]() Jessamy is taken aback by the old Miss Brindle, who in turn is wary of children: "I daresay you won't mind being treated like a grown-up person. Jessamy has to be farmed out for the summer to Miss Brindle, the childless caretaker of an empty Victorian mansion: Posset Place. ![]() The book begins with her arrival unaccompanied by train, to find that her "holiday" aunt's uncongenial children have caught whooping cough. Both aunts are superficially affectionate, but neither pays heed to her as a person. She lives with one aunt during school term and another during school holidays. The story is about an orphaned girl called Jessamy, whose unstated age is about nine to eleven. It sheds light on English life and childhood in the First World War, through a good-natured pre-adolescent female character, presented in detail, and a realistically written time-slip narrative. Jessamy (1967) is a children's book by Barbara Sleigh, author of the Carbonel series. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |