Toby At Tibbs Cross

Published in 2008 in paperback by Girls Gone By Publishers, this is a 225 page reprint, complete and unabridged, of the 1942 original (OUP). Toby at Tibbs Cross is the third and last book in the short series featuring Tabitha ('Toby') Barrett, and the only one in which we see her in a grown-up role. When the story open she has completed a year's course in farming and, with the country at war, is-like so many young girls in both fact and fiction-bursting to do her bit! The author establishes rapidly a compelling authentic 'Home Front' wartime atmosphere during the period of what is Spring 1940 with Toby living a rather solitary life in Devon. Her father is away in France working as an artist in the War Records Press (which in real life would equate to the War Artists Scheme, which employed artists to make pictorial records of many aspects of home and service life). Two of Toby's former school friends, Nell Connor and Jane Trevor, play small parts in the story, but it is a girl from Maudsley, the Grammar School of the Nancy books, who shares the limelight with Toby. We are here talking about Charity Sheringham, who having inherited a small arable farm on the South Coast, is determined to make it a thriving concern. Charity employs Toby as her farm manager and they being a relaxed and strong friendship... Storyline from back cover: Toby Barrett settled down quickly to the running of Charity Sheringham's small farm in Southshire. This, she felt, was a really useful piece of war work. All went well in the farming world until there broke out in the county a strange disease which attacked all kinds of livestock. The one vet of the district - Major Harper - seemed unable to do anything about it; in fact, cows and horses had a habit of taking a turn for the worse after he had injected them. Toby became very suspicious, and told her friends, Jane and Dick Trevor, that she felt something was wrong. On their advice she went to the police, but still the strange disease spread...


Genre: Children's Fiction