Marjorie Dean, High School Senior

1917, undated probably 1920s A. L. Burt edition
Pauline Lester
Marjorie Dean, High School Senior
Bought used (of course) for $7.00
Hardcover with stains, broken spine, and loose pages
B

So there I was, more than twenty years later, and I found this book in a thrift store.  I was very amused.  But would I be able to follow it, having missed the middle of Marjorie's high school career?  At the time (and this was only a year or two ago), there was online text of the sophomore year, but not the junior.  (Now there are even her college years, although I don't think anyone's put up the "post-graduate" series yet.)  I went ahead and read about her sophomore year, and pieced together what happened in the next year, based on the senior book.  Anyway, I can't say I'm a huge enough fan to read that much online text, and this blog is just for the print books I own.  (If I ever succumb to Nook or Kindle or what-have-you, I still consider that a different type of reading than turning pages.)  I just want to explain the gap here, and note that I will try to judge MD, HSS on its own merits, as well as as a sequel.

I think it's better than the first book.  It does deal less with school, hardly a mention of the classes, and despite the cover of Marjorie surrounded by her basketball teammates, it seems that the team has been disbanded based on issues that came up in the previous year.  The three things that are improvements are Mignon's becoming a more complex villainess (if still somewhat falling into stereotypes about the French and the rich), the way that economic class is dealt with, and Jerry becoming even more wonderful than before.

Mignon, under the influence of an absent friend named Rowena (a character from the third book), becomes more Machiavellian than usual.  Sometimes her schemes backfire on her, but mostly she causes misery for others.  In the first book, she accused Constance of theft, while here she uses rumors, half-truths, full lies, and fake repentance to get what she wants.  She genuinely repents in the end, in gratitude to Marjorie, who has tried to befriend her, based on a promise to Mr. La Salle.

In the first book, Mignon disliked Constance because the latter was poor.  (She gets adopted by a rich aunt at some point in the middle years.)  Here Mignon dislikes not only Lucy, who works as the school secretary, but Veronica, whom she assumes is a servant.  Veronica plays along with this, although she's actually rich.  (Another name that has new connotations in the years since, Veronica Lynne is much nicer than Veronica Lodge, although she's also nicknamed Ronny/Ronnie.)  The main plot is that the girls have formed a charitable organization, the Lookout Club, whose biggest project is free daycare for the children of local mill workers.  Mignon of course disapproves but pretends to go along with it.  (Among the names considered for the club is "The Happy Hustlers," speaking of things with different connotations these days.)

And, yes, Jerry is great.  Tired of Mignon's schemes, she resigns as President of the Lookouts, but she proves her loyalty to Marjorie and the others by playing sleuth and speaking truth.  All the while, she wisecracks and speaks slang.

It's worth noting that the girls spend more time at the local soda fountains than in the first book.  I think An Old-Fashioned Girl was the first of my books to mention eating ice cream in public, but it's definitely more of an archetype of the first half of the 1900s.  And in the frozen-in-time world of Veronica Lodge of course.

The endpapers this time include not only the Marjorie Dean College Series, but such titles as The Blue Grass Seminary Girls on the Water, or, Exciting Adventures on a Summer's Cruise Through the Panama Canal; The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border; The Golden Boys and Their New Electric Cell; The Boy Allies in the Baltic, or, Through Fields of Ice to Aid the Czar; Our Young Aeroplane Scouts at the Marne, or, Hurrying the Huns from Allied Battle Planes; and The Boy Scouts Down in Dixie, or, the Strange Secret of Alligator Swamp.  See, this could've been Marjorie Dean, High School Senior, or, Final Showdown with Mignon the Minx. 

Or a suggestion of your choice, left in the comments.