Top Ten Tuesday: School Freebie

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

Previous Top Ten Tuesday Topics

• 5th July: Most Anticipated Books Releasing In the Second Half of 2022
• 12th July: Book Covers that Feel Like Summer
• 19th July: Some Bookish Opinions
• 26th July: Books from my Past Seasonal TBR Posts that I STILL Have Not Read
• 2nd August: Books Set In A Place I’d Love to Visit
• 9th August: Hilarious Book Titles
• 16th August: Books I Love That Were Written Over Ten Years Ago
• 23rd August: Completed Series I Wish Had More Books

---

This week’s topic is a celebration of – or a commiseration for – the end of the Summer Holidays and return to school after the long six week summer break. As a teacher and a father, I have mixed – perhaps conflicting – feelings about this time of year. I have revelled in the chance to spend six weeks with my daughter. We have walked, talked, imagined, read, coded, built, explored, painted, played, cooked and eaten together and the thought of something as mundane as work getting in between that again is grievous!

At the same time, there is a small part of me that is somewhat looking forward to some more adult conversation! And new stationary… I do have a couple of really nice new notebooks…

I also, generally, avoid school settings and books about teachers and teaching in my own reading habits. It does happen, of course, from time to time, that a character suddenly reveals that they are a teacher but they are not books about teachers or teaching… I mean, it would feel a little like a busman’s holiday…

But that being said, teachers and schools do crop up all over the place in literature. Places where characters are formed; guides who mould and pique the interest of the young folk in their care. Somewhere between the roles of a parent, social worker, mentor, guide, facilitator, judge, role model, being a teacher is an incredible privilege.

So, let’s meet some memorable (if not necessarily good) teachers in literature and edifices of learning.

The Saxophone Teacher, The Rehearsal, Eleanor Catton

I cannot rave about this book enough! I adore it! The central character, the saxophone teacher, gives private lessons to local children and is a fantastic creation: over-the-top, sensual and sensuous, uncompromising and yet somehow deeply vulnerable and disturbing. She is simultaneously a refuge when scandal erupts in the local school – a relationship between a teacher and a pupil – and also perhaps a more malign presence than anyone else, and yet also utterly compelling. And hilarious. Just look at this snippet from her conversation with a parent:

“I require of all my students… that they are downy and pubescent, pimpled with sullen mistrust, and boiling away with private fury and ardor and uncertainty and gloom. I require that they wait in the corridor for ten minutes at least before each lesson, tenderly nursing their injustices, picking miserably at their own unworthiness as one might finger a scab or caress a scar. If I am to teach your daughter, you darling hopeless and inadequate mother, she must be moody and bewildered and awkward and dissatisfied and wrong. When she realizes that her body is a secret, a dark and yawning secret of which she becomes more and more ashamed, come back to me. You must understand me on this point. I cannot teach children.”

Catton’s language throughout this book is heavily, powerfully charged and sensual, and the intensity of the relationships that the saxophone teacher forms are incredible. Disturbing but incredible.

Mr Brocklehurst and Miss Temple, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

I suppose we could have included Jane herself as a Governess, but she doesn’t seem to do a great deal of, well, governing…. So let’s focus on Lowood School and the monstrous and hypocritical Mr Brocklehurst damning his young orphans to the fiery pit of Hell, juxtaposed with the wonderful and kind Miss Temple. This sort of juxtaposition is not unusual in depictions of schools: we shall see it again later!

St Kilda’s School, The Secret Place, Tana French

The Dublin Murder Squad series pops up on these lists pretty frequently, including last week’s. But that is because they are so good! This novel, the first I read, takes place in a posh girls’ boarding school and French was excellent at creating that intense cliquey relationship between the girls – so intense that something altogether other was sparked by it, albeit briefly. Feed into that class issues, a cold murder case and complicated relationship between the detectives and witnesses and this was a fantastic read.

Hampden College, The Secret History, Donna Tartt

It has been so long since I have read this book! I recall I read it over the weekend of my brother’s wedding… strange how those details can cling to the mind.What I do recall, however, is a dangerously charismatic professor, another intense clique of students, and violence.

Yale, Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo

I loved this book, taking the different student secret societies at Yale – Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, Wolf’s Head… – and imagining them as esoteric supernatural magical societies. And mix into that Alex Stern’s natural ability to see ghosts and affinity with the supernatural, and her recruitment into Lethe House which polices the other eight, under the tutelage of the enigmatic and charming Darlington. There is an exuberance about it – an exuberance that perhaps did not sit entirely comfortably with the trauma of Alex’s childhood – that was infectious.

Mr Watt, Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones

Another fantastic novel, of an unlikely hero: Mr Watt, known in Bougainville as Pop Eye and a figure of some mockery, reopens and maintains the school in the face of civil war on the island and, in the face of increasing levels of brutality and violence, offers refuge in his own quiet determination and in a recitation of Great Expectations.

Ava, Exciting Times, Naoise Dolan

What I loved here was the way Ava’s life reflected itself in her grammar teaching. Her meditations on class and on Ireland and Irishness, and on language are refracted back beautifully to the reader.

---

And, as schools and teachers – and the difficulties inherent in navigating and negotiating relationships with adults, friends and learning – are often uppermost in young peoples’ minds, let’s turn to some novels for younger audiences.

---

Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches, The Worst Witch, Jill Murphy

This was a series that matured over time! I personally found the first book rather staid and old fashioned – perhaps because it was first published in 1974 when I was but a year old! – but there was something charming about it and it caught my daughter’s imagination enough to continue with the series.And 6 years passed before Murphy published the second novel, nine years elapsed between books three and four, twelve years between books four and five, during which time a certain boy Wizard found his way to Hogwarts…

The relationship between the two series – The Worst Witch and Harry Potter – is intriguing: both schools are housed in intimidating castles; both series give animals to their witches and wizards; Miss Hardbroom and Miss Cackle seem to be echoed in Snape and Dumbledore rather uncomfortably directly…

Miss Trunchball and Miss Honey, Matilda, Roald Dahl

“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone”.

As I said before, the juxtaposition of the monstrous and the kind teachers is a familiar pattern: Mr Brocklehurst and Miss Temple, Miss Hardbroom and Miss Cackle, Snape and Dumbledore, and also in these two Miss Trenchbull and Miss Honey. I lvoed the energy with which Dahl builds up Miss Truchbull’s grotesqueness:

“You ignorant little slug!” the Trunchbull bellowed. “You witless weed! You empty-headed hamster! You stupid glob of glue!”

Imperial Personifate Guild Of Medlock, Wildspark, Vashti Hardy

The Guild in Wildspark is responsible for the education of its apprentices – a useful device for any writer to introduce a very different world to us alongside the plot arcs. Hardy’s personifates are machines in the shapes of different animals into which the spirits of the dead can be invited, at the expense of their memories of their first lives. It was a great and fun novel on one level, whilst exploring grief rather intently on another, and introducing a great heroine in Prue – and a STEM role model!

Deepdean School For Girls, Murder Most Unladylike, Robin Stevens

I have yet to read more than a few pages of this one. I am waiting with bated breath for my daughter to be old enough to manage murder – at the moment, the game Cluedo (which she is excellent at) can freak her out if she thinks too hard about the dead body aspect!

---

And there we shall end the list. I still have two more days of holiday to go and fully intend to enjoy them both before heading back into work, ditching shorts and t-shirt for suit and tie, swapping sandals for Doc Martins…

As always, feel free to comment and add your thoughts! Have a great TTT

---

Upcoming Top Ten Tuesday Themes

September 6: Books I Loved So Much I Had to Get a Copy for My Personal Library (Maybe you received an ARC or borrowed from a friend/the library and loved it so much you wanted your own! Or maybe you read it in one format and wanted another format, like you read it in ebook and wanted a physical copy to display on your shelves or you read it the paperback and would love to re-read it on audio. Change this TTT title to fit your post best!) (Submitted by Alecia @ The Staircase Reader)
September 13: Books with Geographical Terms in the Title (for example: mountain, island, latitude/longitude, ash, bay, beach, border, canyon, cape, city, cliff, coast, country, desert, epicenter, hamlet, highway, jungle, ocean, park, sea, shore, tide, valley, etc. For a great list, click here!) (Submitted by Lisa of Hopewell)
September 20: Books On My Fall 2022 To-Read List
September 27: Typographic Book Covers (Book covers with a design that is all or mostly all words. You can also choose to do books with nice typography if that’s easier!) (Submitted by Mareli @ Elza Reads)