Needing to support herself and her sister Josephine "Jo", Madge Bettany decides to open a school in an Austrian chalet in a location she and her sister enjoyed visiting in the past. A lot of time in this first installment was spent introducing readers to the girls attending, but readers are alerted to potential problems brewing when a couple of students show disregard for rules earlier in the book. Most of the big problems occur near the end of this installment, and readers know they'll be introduced to a few more students in the next installment. I don't think this book will translate well for 21st century girls, but older readers will appreciate the reminders of simpler times. ( )

A young woman with no parents, a brother abroad, and a sickly younger sister decides to open a boarding school for girls in the Austrian Tyrol. A little too heavy on the saccharine and too light on everything else for me. ( )

This is the first in Brent-Dyer's long boarding school series. I read these when I was a little girl in India and I loved them. Going back to them decades later, I wondered how it would hold up. Answer: not that well. The jolly-hockey-sticks tone and dialogue feels more forced now (although it didn't then and probably didn't in the 1920s when it was written). And even though I read a cleaned-up version, the ethnocentrism and emphasis on cultural traits (rather than individual attributes) was discomfiting and at times cringe-inducing. The story is told in episodes which don't really hang together or build toward anything. On the plus side, the relationships are believable and so are the schoolgirls. As trips down nostalgia lane go, it's not bad, but I wouldn't recommend it to new readers. ( )

I've read this many times, both in hardback and paperback. Having recently acquired a hardback version for myself, I re-read it for the first time in over ten years, and very much enjoyed it. I

t's the first in a series of over 60 books, and introduces us to Madge, who starts a school for girls in Austria, and her young sister Joey. It seems quite dated now, yet the personalities of the people are realistic and the story quite exciting in places.

Re-read ten years later, and struck by what an excellent role model Madge would have been, and how forward-thinking and assertive she was, given that the book was first published in 1925.

Latest full review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2019/11/school-at-the-chalet-by-elinor-m-br... ( )

The first in a long-running popular series of stories centered on an English girls school in the Alps. Plenty of drama and fun characters to keep modern young readers interested, I think, with a Nancy Drew-like feel. 1001 Children’s Books You Must Read. ( )