Trouble for Two by Hubert J. Robinson

This book was written by the same person who wrote The Impossible Prefect, which I reviewed quite a while ago. That book is one of my favorites of the British school story genre. One of the elements that most endeared it to me was that the main character was a very gifted, if somewhat mischievous boy, who grows into his role as a prefect, but doesn't lose the spark that makes him so likeable.

This book also features a boy who has a knack for mischief - two of them in fact. Twins. Identical Twins. As the book begins, the boys have just brought home very bad reports from their school and their father decides that the only way to cure them of their frivolity and lack of application is to separate them and send them to two new schools. So the boys are sent off to two new schools that are actually only about two miles from each other. Leslie has a good start at his new school, but Basil, through some rather bad luck, gets into scrapes right away. They meet in the town, as they had planned, and it is decided that Basil, to escape his predicament, will take Leslie's place at his (Leslie's) school, while Leslie will take a week off and then Basil will get a turn at a week of leisure. But just as Leslie is finishing his week of fun, he is discovered by some boys belonging to Basil's school and is packed off to that school after being judged to be a lunatic - as he is claiming that he does not know the boys and that he is really Basil's brother, whom the boys know nothing about.

There isn't quite as much sport in this book as in most of the British school stories, but I, for one, don't mind that too much, since I still don't really understand cricket. Nor is there as much emphasis on points of honor. Of all of the school stories, this one strikes me as being more like modern stories - with more emphasis on extricating themselves from predicaments. In the end, both boys do learn their lesson - that they really should try harder to do a good job at school.

I think one of the reasons the British school stories were so successful is that boys could see other boys like themselves in many ways - playing sports, playing tricks, getting caught in predicaments - but the stories also speak to their higher selves and the necessity of actually learning lessons and eventually being an honorable member of society.

I liked this book, but because of the tie to giftedness, which is a special interest of mine, The Impossible Prefect is still my favorite of the two.