This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme from The Broke and the Bookish is “Back to School,” so I’ve come up with a list of ten of my favorite books that are set in schools, both realistic and fantastical.
This list focuses on children’s and YA novels; I could do a whole different list of books set in colleges and universities, or of adult memoirs of childhood, and maybe I will soon.
With those exclusions in mind, here are my picks. What would yours be?
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Maida’s Little School by Inez Haynes Irwin
There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom by Louis Sachar
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones
Sabriel by Garth Nix
Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey
Heaven To Betsy by Maud Hart Lovelace
Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery
The Emerald City Book Review Archive 
The Anne of Green Gables series is always a lovely choice.
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I always love to visit Prince Edward island with Anne.
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As a schoolteacher myself I was loathe to read school-based fiction since I must have felt real-life teaching revealed as much angst as I could manage. But somehow I managed the Harry Potter books and Witch Week, perhaps because they had that extra magical dimension, and all the Garth Nix Old Kingdom tales that features schools on either side of the Wall.
Maybe I’ll get round to ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’ sometime and all those American classics you mention. Where college is concerned, Eva Ibbotson’s ‘The Morning Gift’ is a probable candidate for inclusion. Roald Dahl’s autobiographical ‘Boy’ — which dramatises key episodes in his schooldays, only slightly leavened with humour the horrific treatment at British all-boys schools that I recognised from my own experiences in the mid 20C.
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Good suggestions! I’ll keep track of those for my next list.
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I only ever read the first in the Anne of Green Gables series, I was too obsessed with the Little House series to read anything else. Great list!
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Maybe you will get into the Anne series at some point. It’s another world you can immerse yourself in.
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I hope too. She’s such a charming character!
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A great list! So many fun classics; I don’t know that I’ve ever read the Anne of Green Gables novels, but someday I MUST. I’m sure “A Little Princess” and “Ballet Shoes” are excellent reads as well. I love the stories (as seen in films), so the books must be as good if not better. 🙂
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A Little Princess and Ballet Shoes were iconic books from my childhood. I desperately wanted to go to Madame Fidolia’s Academy, and even Miss Minchin’s would have been fine if Sara Crewe were there.
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Ooh, please do another Back to School list of books that are set in a college or university, because I love reading those! 🙂
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I’ll get to work on it!
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Aww, Heaven to Betsy. Is that the book about her sophomore year? The book about her sophomore year was the one that always stuck with me as a very back-to-school kind of book, because I thiiiink that’s the one where they all have to read Ivanhoe prior to class starting. And nobody does it except Betsy, and she can’t write an essay about it properly because she loves it too much.
With the benefit of hindsight, this is insane. Ivanhoe is terrible and Betsy is a beautiful lunatic.
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Heaven to Betsy is the freshman book; the sophomore one is called Betsy in Spite of Herself, and yes, that’s the one where they have to read Ivanhoe. Betsy describes it so well to the boys (who have not read it) that they get top marks on their papers, while she gets tangled up in her own purple prose and the teacher mocks her in front of the class. Obviously that scene made a strong impression on me too – although I have not yet read Ivanhoe to judge whether Betsy’s love for it was truly insane.
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Sabriel! I love that book so much…Wonderful list 🙂
My TTT
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I remember enjoying it quite a lot. Need to do a reread at some point.
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I’ve never read any of the Green Gables books. Maybe that’s why they wanted me out of Canada and I had to move to the States? My TTT lists sci-fi cats to read about instead of doing homework.
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Not reading Anne of Green Gables would certainly be grounds for expulsion from Canada. I hope you will see the light one day. 🙂
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What reader doesn’t love a list? I second Lark’s request for you to generate a list with books in high school and university. I have read a few of the books listed, my favorite being probably Harriet the Spy which I first read while in Elementary School. I am curious to try Maida’s Little School and Heavens to Betsy. They look like they would be retro fun to read.
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Retro fun is exactly what they are!
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Great take on this week’s theme, Lory! I loved the Chrestomanci series when I was in school, I must have read the books at least ten times. 🙂
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Any fan of the Chrestomanci books is a friend of mine.
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I would have to pick Harry Potter 🙂 I also took part in this week’s topic but I chose 10 books I read at school.
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I did leave out that obvious choice. 🙂 Books read in school is a good topic too.
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What a great list! I’m especially fond of the Betsy-Tacy books. My fave back-to-school book is prob Tam Lin, but since I have both written about it multiple times (and you wrote that terrific post), I dare not blog about it anymore.
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You will never see me complaining about you writing too many times about Tam Lin. Some other benighted souls might find it too much, perhaps.
Mentioning the Betsy-Tacy books has set me off on a reread, as always seems to happen when i make a list.
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Oh my God, so many of my favourites on this list! The Malory Towers and St. Claire’s series’ by Enid Blyton are also my favourites! I’d also add Erich Kastner’s Flying Classroom to the list. (Oh, nostalgia..)
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Not being a Brit, I have never read anything by Enid Blyton – I don’t know why she never caught on here to the same degree. I should really seek something out though. I hadn’t heard of that Erich Kastner title – sounds like fun!
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