Synopsis
At first Eliza is happy with her new life at boarding school, settling into the Yellow Dorm, making new friends, learning the rituals of school life and doing well in her classes. But a bond begins to develop between Eliza and Helen, a mischievous, unpopular girl who defies authority, plays practical jokes and doesn't seem to care what others think of her. It is Helen who starts the daring game among the first girls in the Yellow Dorm.
School Library Journal
Gr 5-8 Eleven-year-old Eliza Chapman has chosen to go to Ashdown Academy, a boarding school in Vancouver, for seventh grade. The year is 1964. Eliza has high hopes for her year at Ashdownher ideas about boarding school having been formed by British novels. The first term goes well, but by the second term, Eliza has doubts about her desire to live away from her family. Matters are further complicated by Eliza's friendship with Helen, an unhappy and mischievous girl who involves Eliza and her dorm mates in the ``daring game.'' The game begins innocently enough with a midnight supper, but soon escalates into an involved scheme that causes Helen to be threatened with expulsion. This is a novel about friendship and life in the dorm. The story centers mostly around Eliza and her four dorm mates. Besides Eliza, Helen is the only fully developed character, but the slowly developing friendship between these two girls is carefully explored. When Eliza fully realizes the reasons for Helen's unhappiness, she becomes such a loyal friend that she jeopardizes her standing at Ashdown. The novel moves slowly, but girls who are fascinated, as Eliza is, by boarding-school life, will find the story enjoyable. Judith L. Olson, Lansdowne-Emrath Branch Library, Lexington, Ky.