End of Term by Antonia Forest was first published in 1959, but my copy is a re-print by Girls Gone By. This is the first book in the series that I’ve read and I must say that it would have been better if I had begun the series at the beginning and worked my way through them in order, but I enjoyed it anyway.

This is the fourth book in a ten book series which features the Marlowe family among others, and it begins at a railway station where the Marlowe girls are waiting for the train to take them to their boarding school. It’s the Christmas term so there’s a nativity play to look forward to and of course netball games, who will get into the team, who will be captain, who will have a decent part in the nativity play? There are lots of expectations and lots of disappointments, which the girls attempt to rectify.

It’s unusual for a 1950s book for children in that it features the divorce of a girl’s parents and how it is affecting her. There are teachers who are less than fair to their pupils and have bad judgement, and are being duped by a girl that they should have realised was less than honest.

But the most important aspect for me was the subject of religious factions, something which was usually avoided in this genre apparently, but with the Church of England, Roman Catholic and Jewish pupils within the school the casting for the nativity play parts was an opportunity for the author to show how things should be done, with no anti-semitism involved.

There was one part of the book which did rather annoy me. The eldest sister of one of the pupils comes back to visit the school and her sisters. She had been in the sixth form the previous year and she had driven herself to the school. She’s just taking driving lessons but has put on some make-up in an attempt to make herself look older so that she won’t be stopped by the police. Presumably the girl’s personality had been a bit of a rebellious one when she was at the school, but there was no comeuppance and there should have been. That’s me being po-faced I suppose but I dislike people who think the rules don’t apply to them!