Books with author Elsie J OXENHAM

This is Damaris and Rachel’s story. Damaris, a former ballerina, has been gardening at the Abbey, with the stalwart help of Benedicta, while Rachel, Damaris’s elder sister is the Abbey Guardian, responsible for showing visitors around, with a sideline in writing. Damaris has recently discovered that she is recovered enough, after what she thought was a career-ending injury, to consider returning to the stage and is in high alt about it when Brian, whose family know her, looks her up. Rachel has to fight her very natural feelings about giving her sister up to the London stage again. Brian is very taken by ‘Pirouette’ and finds himself being swept up by all her Abbey connections...

Little Cecily, of the shining read hair and volatile temper holds the centre of the stage, from the minute she is discovered behind a thorn bush piping her favourite dance-tunes on a penny whistle. That starts Maribel and Rosalind, Mrs. Raymond and Lady Marchwood, eagerly planning a musical future for the red-headed "Pied Piper" whose perfect rhythm can set their feet tapping at once. The Abbey Girls Play Up is simply full of lively and interesting people who, as well as planning Cecily's future, make the happiest discoveries about her lost French childhood.

The girls, many of whose names start with the letter J, find themselves quarantined for measles, which was and is a life-threatening disease in many parts of the world. The virulent anti-vaccine lobby should read this book to teach them what the world was like before herd immunity existed, i.e. COVID-19. But the first half of the 20th century was a time when young and old died of measles, polio, mumps and rubella. However, the quarantine doesn't stop Jen and Jackie from having all kinds of adventures!

Avril rated it it was amazing.My favourite in the whole series, the book in which we meet Rosamund and Maidlin. Some painful class-consciousness, and a promotion of noblesse oblige that sometimes sets my radicalOxenham, Elsie J. on edge—but still a wonderful escape for times when the real world is difficult.Note: This is the abridged edition from The Children's Press. We have the full edition under development.