Nancy Pembroke #3 Sophomore at Roxford and #4 New Orleans

In Nancy Pembroke #3, Nancy Pembroke, Sophomore at Roxford, Nancy and Jeanette have transferred to Roxford.  Nancy cannot bear to stay in Eastport with Uncle John gone for a year, which is why she switches schools.  I personally don't see the difference, since Nancy is away from her uncle either way.  Furthermore, Nancy loses all of her friends when she changes to a new college.  Nancy makes some strange decisions.

On page 21, the reader is introduced to Philip Spenser.  Philip's friend tells him, "[Y]our family has made a perfect ass out of you."  I have to say that I greatly enjoyed the entrance of Philip.  It's also a bit odd, since up to this point the series has been told from Nancy's viewpoint.  This book alternates between Nancy and Philip.

Nancy is absolutely horrible to Philip in this book.  It's quite distressing.

On page 44, Nancy tells Jeanette about how she sent a picture in the mail to her father.  The picture and its outer wrapping arrived separately.  This is apparently the most amazingly funny story that the girls greatly indulge in repeating.  My problem is that this same story is in the first book of the series on page 169, told a little differently.  The author even uses the same poem again.  This story must have been too short, so the author stuck in some filler.  The A. L. Burt Company was more concerned about the length of the text than the quality of the story.  Read this post for more information.

These books are a tad bit more old fashioned than typical books of 1930 and later.

This series sends the message that hazing is just fine.  The girls are informed that hazing teaches them good life skills and that they should put up with whatever is done to them and accept their punishment with good spirit.  The girls are also told that whenever they are not being hazed that they will be on friendly terms with the perpetrators.

Some of the hazing includes making a girl walk ahead of a car on the road while the car's bumper pushes her along.

Philip is hazed by being forced to escort pedestrians back and forth across a busy intersection.  A crowd forms, and traffic is completely blocked for quite some time.  I find it amazing that law enforcement doesn't care that the college students shut down roads while they haze each other.

I enjoyed this book.

In Nancy Pembroke #4, Nancy Pembroke in New Orleans, Nancy and her friends discuss what to do over the summer break, and this includes going to New Orleans to visit dear Uncle John.

I could not read this book.  I figured that it would be something of another travelogue, and the beginning of the story is boring.  I did skip through a few parts of it, but I read very little.

I should note that near the end of the previous book, Nancy Pembroke, Sophomore at Roxford, Uncle John gets married!  Yay!  Nancy, of course, is utterly devastated.  The good news is that by the fifth book in the set, Uncle John is no longer of any importance to the series.  I am very glad of that.