Shelf Control #226: Auntie Robbo by Ann Scott-Montcrieff

Wednesday, the 3rd of May 2023, and time for Shelf Control once again! Shelf Control is a weekly feature created by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies, and celebrates the books waiting to be read on your TBR piles/mountains. Since early January 2023, Shelf Control has moved base here to Literary Potpourri. To participate, all you do is pick a book from your TBR pile, and write a post about it–what it’s about, when/where you got it, why you want to read it and such. If you participate, don’t forget to share your links in the comments. I’ll check out your picks of course, and also add you to the list of participants in this post.

Today my pick is from my ebook pile, and another of those books which I can’t quite remember whether I read though I have read books with people going adventuring in caravans in different stories. Anyhow, even if I might have, it would have been long long ago, and so this one can safely come back onto my TBR (I hope it doesn’t count as cheating). The book is Auntie Robbo (1940) by Ann Scott-Montcrieff and is a children’s title. Ann Scott-Montcrieff was born in Kirkwall, Scotland, and was an author of children’s books and also contributed to the making of BBC programmes.

The story is of eleven-year-old Hector, who lives with his great aunt Robina or Auntie Robbo, over eighty, feisty and eccentric, near Edinburgh. But one fine day, a stepmother turns up to claim him, something Hector and Auntie Robbo don’t like at all. So the pair do the only thing they can, they take off, going adventuring all over the north of Scotland (I think in a caravan), trying to stay one step ahead of Hector’s stepmother, and along the way also picking up some stray children.

Sounds good fun doesn’t it? Its description didn’t remind me at all whether I’ve read it, but what I have is a public domain copy downloaded via project gutenberg. I like the idea of the feisty great aunt and little boy going about having adventures all over the countryside (a children’s version of sorts of Travels With My Aunt perhaps). So a book which I certainly do want to read (or reread, if it all I did read it). At below 200 pages, this one also qualifies for Novellas in November.

Have you read this one? Would you like to? Any other fun children’s adventures on these lines that you are reminded of?

If you join in with Shelf Control this week, do share your links below so I can add you to the participants list!

As always, cover image and book description via Goodreads and author information via Wikipedia

This Week’s Participants

Amy from A Novel Start: Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Advertisement