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Silent Night
Ragley-on-the-Forest School - Book VIII
Jack Sheffield

Bantam Press (Transworld UK)
5 December 2013 / ISBN: 9780593069714
General Fiction

Reviewed by Rachel A Hyde

 

It is the eighth year that Jack has been headmaster of the Ragley-on-the-Forest primary school, and it is clear that change is in the air. As the autumn term starts it is now 1984, the year of the miner's strike and also where there is an air that soon a national curriculum will be introduced that will change teaching forever. However, in this peaceful corner of rural Yorkshire some things never change…

This is a heartwarming series and one I look forward to each year. It manages to be equal parts nostalgia, humor, poignancy and social history and manages it better than most. As with all series it is part of the fun not to just meet new characters and read about their experiences, but also find out what the series characters are getting up to. Ruby misses her husband very much, but has a new friend; Vera is involved with a flower show, the school choir sings carols for a televised service in York. Dorothy has a new man, Petula worries about her husband's absences and the binmen tie the knot, among other things. It is a wonderful look back at the way we were thirty years ago with Cabbage Patch dolls, Trivial Pursuit, Dallas and what now seems to be a sort of wistful but fast vanishing innocence. In short, there is a lot to enjoy in here and long may this series continue.

 
Reviewed 2014
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