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On my bookshelf 6

Fifth Formers of St Clare’s is not the fifth book in the series, even it it sounds like it should be. It is actually the sixth and final book, after three books in the first form, one in the second and one in the fourth.

There are three new girls this year; Anne-Marie Longden who considers herself a great poet, Felicity Ray who is actually a great musician who has moved up a form, and Alma Pudden who has been kept down from the sixth form. Further down the school there is also Antoinette, a sister of Claudine’s.

Each of the new girls creates some sort of drama or interest; but the star of the book has to be Mam’zelle who, upon thinking the school is full of burglars ends up locking several girls in cupboards.

Naomi Barlow lives at Ring O’ Bells Cottage in Ring O’ Bells Wood. When the Lyntons (and Barney) meet her they are immediately taken with how she resembles an elderly Red Riding Hood. They think she is perhaps a witch, as she has green eyes, and Ring O’ Bells is the sort of place where you could easily believe in witches. She is a descendent of Old Mother Barlow, who, as the legends say, was once threatened by a pack of wolves. She was saved when the bells of Ring O’ Bells hall rang out and alerted the villagers to the danger. So, perhaps there is some magic in her family!