A talk for the New Chalet Club AGM

I was lucky enough to speak at the New Chalet Club AGM last weekend and here’s a version of the talk that I gave. It is an approximate version because I was working from prompt cards and so, alas, don’t have an exact copy to share with you. I’ve also edited out some identifying data where appropriate. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy reading it! Please do check out what they do (it is very important stuff!) and if you’re on Facebook, do look at their Facebook group. Thank you!

Hello! My name is Daisy May Johnson and I am the author of How To Be Brave (2021); How To Be True (2022) and How To Be Free (2024). All three of my books are published by Pushkin Press and I am delighted to be here and thank you for having me.

I must now confess that I’ve already told you a lie. I am not Daisy May Johnson. I was christened X¹ but my brother did not want a younger sister at all. He wanted a Thomas The Tank Engine and the only female one at the time was called Daisy. So that’s where that part comes from. Now, you might also be wondering where the ‘May’ comes from and that’s because there’s another Daisy Johnson who writes. Which is fine but it was slightly problematic when they became the youngest author to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize and I started to get a lot of emails and private messages asking me to come on the news and talk about my books. My main response to these was a slightly baffled “I could, if you wanted me to talk a lot about Enid Blyton!?” So, I had to choose another name and Daisy May was it.

I also have one other confession: this is not my first encounter with the New Chalet Club. I was a child of the 90s and while I don’t remember my first Chalet School book, I do remember an advert in the back of one of the reprints. It was addressed to the reader and said that if you had enjoyed this book, then you might also enjoy joining one of these two clubs – Friends of the Chalet School or the New Chalet Club. Now, because I am from Yorkshire and very careful with my pennies, I decided I could join one but not two and so plumped for the NCC. I wrote a deeply heartfelt and very nerdy letter all about my love for the series and joined up.

At some point after that, I became the Junior Co-Ordinator and became responsible for the junior pages in the journal. I remember working with Joy Wotton, who was probably one of my earliest editors and this turned into some of my earliest publication credits. I remember learning a lot from my exchanges with Joy and I was very sorry to hear about her passing.

As a child of the nineties, I came of age in heady book collecting times. It was the dawn of the internet – I remember when computers arrived in my school and it lived in a cupboard and you were only allowed to touch it providing that the teacher could stare at you throughout the entire affair – and children’s books weren’t really doing anything at the time. We were just before Harry Potter and Northern Lights and we’d had things like Trebizon but children’s books weren’t quite doing anything really remarkable. But the internet introduced me to the world of sales and wants, to book collecting, and to picking up bargains off EBay (something you could do back then!).

(The nineties was also the start of ‘fill in’ Chalet School titles such as The Chalet Girls Grow Up by Merryn Williams and Visitors for the Chalet School by Helen McLelland. I remember writing a review of Visitors for the journal and Joy sent me through Helen’s compliments and thanks for my review – it was one of the first times that I kind of thought that maybe I could do something like this in the future).

And as a book collector during this time (as a stubborn reading child!), I was determined to get the entire Chalet School series. It took time and I developed skills – many of which I am sure you will be familiar with. Skills like having to pop into every bookshop that you pass, just in case there might be something good in there. Skills like being able to spot a spine a mile off – you can see the hardback spines at fifty paces, right? Skills like being able to scan a bookshelf in seconds and figure out if there’s anything there that you’re after. (I am very tempted to put these on my CV as additional skills at some point!).

I had some notable successes. I found a copy of Tom at one point in New Zealand of all places. I was there with a friend, exploring Devonport – a suburb of Auckland, and we paused briefly outside a bookshop for me to go in. I had been telling her about the books and about the rule that you have to go into every bookshop that you pass and so I did and I found Tom there on the shelf, as if it had been waiting for me. I carried that book so carefully around in my backpack afterwards! You’ve never seen anything so beautifully wrapped and cushioned. That was also the same trip that I kept buying multiple copies of Peggy because I felt sorry for it…

I wasn’t just after the books for completion’s sake – I wasn’t some sort of materialistic monster child, I promise. I was after them because I wanted to know what happened. I was interested. I enjoyed them. That’s such an important thing and I think we (adults) do sometimes run the risk of taking enjoyment away from young people and their reading. I’ve seen it a lot in libraries – people saying to young readers that they can’t read this because it’s “too easy” or “not improving” or “you should be reading something harder”. And all of this is valid stuff but it runs the risk of turning reading into something problematic and full of conflict and taking the enjoyment out of it. I am very much about enjoyment in my books. I want you to enjoy them. I will bend over backwards to make that happen. I’ll use every inch of the book in order to make that happen. Enjoyment is a good thing.

So yes! Enjoyment. I enjoyed the Chalet School books enormously but I also loved their rhythms and their patterns. Humans love a good pattern. We look out for them. Once you’ve read one school story, you kind of know how they work. You know that they start a new term at the start of the book and then it’s the end of the term and things end. There’s comfort in that. There’s a familiarity in that. You know what you’re getting and it’s a very safe, warm space to be in.

Essentially I was into the books – and I still am! You can find me on Twitter as @chaletfan and talking about the books online really did help me find my tribe. They were my earliest book reviews as well and am very slowly working through reviews of them all. I am into them and I nail my colours firmly to the mast.

Now, stupid people say that children’s books are just for children – and they are stupid people so ignore them. For me, I think that a good children’s book helps explain what the world is, what it might be, and how its reader might figure into that. This mindset requires that you sees children as people. Not as things to be talked down to, instructed or lectured but as people – and furthermore, as people who experience similar struggles and face similar issues to the stuff that we do ourselves, every day.

And this brings us to The Chalet School In Exile. I wrote an article once which described it as The Most Important Book You’ve Never Heard of and I stand by that. I find it incredible. What Brent-Dyer did was, she made a conscious political choice in her work. She told her readers that there was another way to fight. That they did not need to march to the drums, pick up a gun or stand on the front line. That they could fight at home, in their living rooms, by distinguishing between a nationality and political doctrine. That they could make a choice in how they thought about the world. She did this in complex times as well – and you have to remember that not only did she do it as an author, her publishers and editor all bought into what she was saying as well. None of it was cut. I know some of it was for later editions but I’m talking about that first edition and the achievement and skill and faith it took to get it into print by everyone involved.

(Exile is fabulous but I recently reread Highland Twins and it blew my mind – it’s a book that I’d kind of ignored a little bit when in fact, it’s entirely about love and what it can do and the importance of it).

Now, you may be thinking that so far I haven’t really talked about my own work at all and you were promised a talk about my books. Well, here’s the thing: I have been talking about my books all along. Every writer is built by the books they read and the media they consume. Every time I sit down at a desk or pick up a pen, I’m bringing all of the stories that I have come across with me, all of the things that built me and made me who I am. And I was built by Brent-Dyer, by Lorna Hill, by Angela Brazil and Bessie Marchant.

In reading these books, I was developing my own taste and aesthetic. I was learning what the page could do and what books could do. I was learning about how they could move you to tears: Jacynth’s Auntie. Dick Maynard with the big orange handkerchief; “Joey will get well”. I was also learning about what beauty could look like on the page: the bluest lake in all of Austria, for one. And I know that these aren’t Brent-Dyer but Veronica’s arabesque on the moors in one of the Sadlers Wells books by Lorna Hill and the bit where Jinny sees Shantih for the first time in Patricia Leitch’s Jinny books remain some of the most perfect pieces of writing ever to me.

So when it came to my books, to How To Be Brave, I made some very conscious decisions. I decided to write about a primarily female community – I was interested in if I could handle more than one “her” on the page on a practical level, but I was also interested in what might happen if I used that to explore ideas of power and agency. I’d spent years reading about female communities, it felt only natural to explore that in my own work. (It’s also really interesting to me that the only people who have ever picked up on this angle of the books as an issue have been adults – not young people…).

I invented a school run entirely by nuns. I have always loved a good nun in a book and none moreso than Robin in Adrienne where she swoops in and rescues Adrienne from the house of ill repute. I always wanted more of adult Robin. She really was an amazing character. If I can make my readers feel the way that I felt when I read that, then I’ll be doing well. I want them to lose their minds, just as I did. To enjoy something so immensely, so hugely, that it stays with them. (To celebrate my love of Robin, I did name one of the nuns after her and every now and then Good Sister Robin does pop in to sing a song before disappearing off stage. It is also briefly mentioned that she went to a boarding school in Austria as a child…).

These references and in jokes aren’t about pastiche. They are about understanding the genre of the school story and about knowing where it’s been and paying tribute to that and respecting that while also trying to take it somewhere new entirely. It’s also about writing as a feminist act. I find it important to pay tribute to the structures of knowledge and literature which built me and to spotlight that for others.

Children’s literature has the habit of magically reinventing the girl every few years. We saw it a few years ago with the rise of Rebel Girls. We had Rebel Girls and then things like Girls Who Rebel and then things like Rebel Girls Rebelling Again (publishing loves a trend!). But the problem with this sudden discovery of girlhood is that it makes it seem like we’ve only just figured what the girl is and what she might be within the world. When in fact we’ve been publishing things like this and having this discussion for a long time – the Victorians loved a biography of an inspiring woman! I always find this a bit problematic. It’s not that the books themselves are problematic (many of them are very good) but rather the fact that we tell readers that they are brand new people in the world and we’re only just figuring out who they can be here. It takes away a great heritage of identity from them and completely wipes out the work of previous generations of readers – and authors like Brent-Dyer and Brazil etc. How can you work out who you’re going to be in the world if nobody has ever worked it out before you?

(Also it’s dull!).

I decided that my stories would connect with other stories. Readers can read other books mentioned in them. There’s a bit in How To Be Brave where Hanna asks Calla which school stories she’s read and that’s my signal to the reader to say: here’s other things you might like, and also: you are in safe hands here. I know what I’m doing and if you already know these other authors, then you’ll know what’s going to happen here. All will be well.

I find interest in making stories conversational. I want the reader to engage and be part of it and unafraid of it. I have seen too many readers become afraid of literature because it is a space of conflict and of stress. It’s so easy to push stories at younger readers in a helpful yet terrifying fashion and completely lose the heart and the fun that should be there. I do not ever want my readers to be intimidated by my stories. I want them to be involved and in control and making active choices.

This brings us to footnotes! Footnotes aren’t really done in children’s literature (I think I have only ever come across one other book which did them) and they’re really not done in the school story. They are in the Chalet School Armada reprints but that doesn’t really count, I think, as these are just links to other titles). My footnotes are moments to make the page a bit more playful and a bit more elastic. Readers can choose whether or not to read them – they are in control of their reading.

Footnotes are an opportunity for jokes: “What do you call a French man who wears shoes?” “Philippe Philop!” (I didn’t say they were good jokes!); for the narrator to add in bits that they’ve (I’ve) forgotten; for the narrator to talk directly to the reader; and for the narrator to tell the reader what they’re eating. Food is so important in my books and I think that if a reader doesn’t understand a lot of what’s happening or is struggling to connect to a story, they will always be able to find a point of connection with food. We all know what eggs are or toast, right? Everybody has this shared language of food, of eating. So it’s about weaving threads between the page and the reader, about finding moments for them to connect and for the reader to be pulled into the story…

Food is an important theme in my stories. It’s an important theme in all of children’s books! (I’m looking at you Famous Five…). It’s important because it makes the reader feel safe and loved and secure in this world. These characters are home. They are looked after and they are safe. In my books, I have sock biscuits – biscuits that go into your sock for an emergency and are, I must emphasise, wrapped. Nobody wants a sock full of biscuit crumbs.

Everything stops in my books for afternoon tea. There are cupboards full of custard creams for an emergency biscuit and a lot of dumpling based chat. But also, I look at what it’s like to experience food poverty and do things like shopping from the bottom of the shelf. One of my characters grows up in economic insecurity and is more than familiar with overdue bills and the power being cut off. I know that a lot of readers, particularly in our present day society with food insecurity and economic difficulties, will be sadly familiar with such situations and I am here for all readers – not just some.

Both How To Be Brave and How To Be True were nominated for the Carnegie and that meant the world to me. I love librarians very much. I have been one. I still am one. I believe in librarians very much. I have seen the good stuff that they do and I admire them very much. Librarians change lives. I have seen young people from clearly vulnerable circumstances come into the library, participate in the events there, find somewhere safe to be for a few hours because of librarians. They change lives.

And so do people like you. Literary culture is often made by men who recognise and promote and celebrate the books that they want to remember. The books that they don’t want to remember don’t get remembered. Angela Brazil, for example, gets a cursory line or two in Humphrey Carpenter’s study of Golden Age literature (this irritates me endlessly!). Despite the pivotal work of people like Rosemary Auchmuty, people like Brent-Dyer and Brazil remain woefully understudied – similarly Bessie Marchant. People like you counter this narrative of erasure. You actively celebrate and make visible the written work of Brent-Dyer and her peers, and right now, because of that, there is a child somewhere in the world discovering these books for the first time.

So on behalf of that child, and indeed the child that I was, picking up the reprints for the very first time, thank you. Thank you for championing Brent-Dyer’s work, for posting about it, for talking about it, for sharing it on social media, because it is all incredibly important and it all matters, and thank you for letting me come and talk to today. I have appreciated it more than you know! Thank you!

1. Redacted for online privacy purposes! ↩︎