The Haunted Underwear by Janet Adele Bloss, 1992.

Things have been rough for ten-year-old Kelly Towser since her parents decided to adopt a four-year-old boy named Stevie.  For the first part of her life, Kelly was an only child, and now she misses that peaceful period of her life.  Now, her parents don’t have as much time to spend with her.  Everyone showers little Stevie with attention and presents.  Although she doesn’t say so, Kelly worries that maybe her parents adopted Stevie because they were disappointed in her or secretly really wanted a boy instead.

To make things worse, Stevie’s little-kid antics get on Kelly’s nerves.  Stevie keeps making messes, throwing his toys all over the place.  Kelly’s parents tell her that she used to make a lot of messes when she was little, too.  Kelly doesn’t remember doing it, but her parents say that she used to like to throw her clothes all over the place, even hiding her underwear in random locations in the house.  They used to joke about her “haunted underwear,” mysteriously showing up in strange places.

Because Kelly complains that Stevie is getting all kinds of presents, and she isn’t, her parents agree to give her a special present to celebrate her getting a new brother.  After thinking about it a little, Kelly decides that she wants a new puppy.  The family already has a dog named Star, but Kelly thinks that the new puppy could be a friend for Star while she’s at school.

At the pound, Kelly selects a cute brown puppy.  One of the workers tells her that the puppy was found abandoned at the side of the road, dirty and hungry.  Stevie is excited about the new puppy and wants to play with him, but Kelly is determined to keep the puppy for herself, something that she doesn’t have to share with Stevie.  When Stevie insists that the dog’s name is Boscoe because he used to have a dog named Boscoe, Kelly insists that the dog’s name is Jingle.  Stevie gets upset that she isn’t sharing the dog, but Kelly doesn’t think that Stevie would be careful with the puppy because he has already pulled Star’s tail.

As older readers might guess, Kelly soon finds herself in a similar position with Jingle as her parents are with Stevie.  Star gets jealous of the new puppy in the same way that Kelly is jealous of Stevie, feeling like she’s been replaced in her own house.

Kelly does try to get her parents’ attention with some silly stunts, but when her clothes and underwear mysteriously start appearing around the house, she has no explanation.  Her parents punish her, thinking that this is just another attention-getting stunt, but Kelly knows it’s not her.  She starts thinking that the real culprit is Stevie, trying to steal her parents’ attention and affection more than he already has.  However, there is another explanation for the mysterious underwear ghost, and as Kelly investigates, trying to catch Stevie with her underwear, she learns a number of important things.

I figured out pretty early who was responsible for the underwear around the house, although it helped that I’ve had experience with dogs. Star, feeling neglected because of the new puppy, was trying to get Kelly’s attention in the same way that Kelly was trying to get her parents’ attention. Stevie does look guilty for a while because Kelly discovers that he is a sleepwalker and has been having nightmares.  However, when she gets up in the night to catch Stevie sleepwalking with her underwear, she finds Star taking it instead.  Understanding Star’s feelings help Kelly to better understand her own feelings, and she resolves to spend more time with Star so she’ll feel less neglected. When her parents discover the truth, they apologize to Kelly and reassure her that they didn’t adopt Stevie as a replacement for her and that they don’t love her any less.

Kelly’s mother also talks to Kelly about what she knows about Stevie’s history.  Although they don’t know the names of Stevie’s birth parents, Kelly’s parents know that Stevie’s mother wasn’t married and had no money and gave up him for adoption in the hopes that he would be raised in a more stable home.  Stevie has not seen her since he was two years old, two years ago.  Stevie is troubled by nightmares because his young life has been very chaotic, and he has been moved from foster home to foster home, with people always giving him up.  He deeply fears that his new family will also give him up and is terrified when they seem like they’re going to go somewhere, afraid of that they’ll never come back.  That is what his nightmares are really about.  Kelly comes to realize that his situation is very much like Jingle’s, that the fact that someone gave him up doesn’t mean that he’s bad and that all he needs is time, attention, and love to grow out of his problems.

Even though things work out okay, this is one of those books where I found myself getting impatient with the parents.  I think that some of Kelly’s bad feelings might have been resolved much sooner or avoided altogether if Kelly’s parents had spoken more honestly with her in the beginning, preparing her to be patient with Stevie and to understand when he has problems.  Apparently, they did tell her at least some of what they knew about Stevie’s past in the beginning, but they don’t seem to have spoken to her much about how that might influence his behavior and how he will need a lot of time and reassurance to get over his fears. 

When I used to volunteer at an animal shelter, we used to tell people who were adopting dogs that they would have to expect that their new dog would destroy something that they owned, especially if it was an energetic young puppy. When you bring a new dog into your house, it doesn’t know the area, it doesn’t know you very well, and it doesn’t know the rules that go with you and your house. It’s almost certain that, soon after arriving, it will relieve itself in the wrong place or pick the wrong thing to use as a chew toy. Something is likely to get ruined or some mess will be made. The best you can do is to take some preemptive measures, like securing valuables, closing the doors to rooms with things that the dog shouldn’t get into, and taking the dog to the place where it should relieve itself immediately on arriving at the new home. These steps can help head off problems, but at the same time, something is still likely to go wrong because the dog needs time to learn what you find acceptable and unacceptable and will probably do something wrong while learning. We didn’t tell the new owners this to scare them off from adopting but to help manage their expectations so that they wouldn’t panic and try to return the new pet at the first sign of trouble. I think that Kelly needed a similar warning about her new brother to help manage her expectations.

Early in the story, Kelly says that when her parents first started talking about adoption, she thought that it would be great because she’s always wanted a little brother that she could teach to do fun things like roller-skating or flying a kite.  Her attitude toward her new brother only soured when he seemed to be taking all of her parents’ attention and crying all the time and making messes.  She thinks at one point that it’s hard to love someone who seems determined to get you in trouble, which is what she thought Stevie was doing with the underwear.  My thought is that, if Kelly’s parents had explained more to her that Stevie might misbehave or be nervous in his new home and would need time to be taught how to live in their family, perhaps Kelly wouldn’t have been so upset and the parents would have been less quick to blame Kelly for the underwear issues. Knowing that there might be some problems that would be temporary would have been reassuring to Kelly that there were better things ahead for her and her new brother.

Also, even though the parents seemed to understand that Kelly was seeking their attention, they didn’t really do anything positive about it at first, just punishing her for leaving the underwear around.  If they had told her, straight out, in plain English, that even though they’ve been very busy with Stevie that doesn’t mean that their feelings for her have changed and that she doesn’t need to pull stunts to get their attention because they would be spending some quality time with her soon, it might have helped to head off Kelly’s bad feelings.  The closest they get to that at first is when they tell her that she’s old enough to know that there are better ways to get their attention than silly stunts.  They don’t mention what the better ways are, and they don’t follow it up with much of an attempt to give her a little attention. What annoyed me most was that Kelly’s mother waited for Kelly to approach her to talk, but in her place, I think I would have taken the initiative, especially after Kelly’s stunts included some potentially dangerous bike stunts. I’m a great believer in direct communication. I tell people if there’s something I want them to know, and if I want to know what they’re thinking, I ask. Over the years, I’ve discovered that if you leave people guessing what you’re thinking or what you want, you discover that most people aren’t good at guessing.  I won’t say that Kelly’s parents are the most clueless ones I’ve seen in children’s books because they made more of an attempt to tell Kelly things and talk to her than some other parents in books do. All the same, it always gets to me when problems in books could be avoided with just an extra conversation or two.  There were a couple of times in the book when I wished that I could step into the scene, call “Time!”, and make the characters just stop and really talk to each other and take a real look at the situation.

The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.