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Lisa and Lottie

LisaLottieLisa and Lottie by Erich Kastner, 1969.

First, a note about the copyright: the date I give is for the edition I own, which is an English translation of the original German book.  The original copyright date for the story is 1949.  This is the story that was the basis for Disney’s The Parent Trap, both the version with Hayley Mills (1961) and the later Lindsey Lohan version (1998).  Neither movie completely follows the original story (although some of the dialog in the Hayley Mills version is almost word-for-word from the English version of the original story) because the settings are shifted to new locations, but both of them capture the concept of twins who were separated as infants by their divorced parents only to meet again years later by accident.  As in the book, each of the twins has been living a different kind of life with one of their parents, but they decide to switch places so that each of them can meet the parent they’ve never known.

Lottie Horn is a very serious little girl.  She can’t help it because she lives with her single mother, who spends much of her time working, and she relies on Lottie to take care of a number of household chores.  But, her mother feels badly that Lottie has been growing up so quiet and serious, so to help her relax and make more friends her own age, she decides to send Lottie to summer camp at Bohrlaken on Lake Bohren.

Shy Lottie thinks that her summer is going to be horrible when she meets up with boisterous Lisa Palfy, a girl who strangely looks exactly like her.  Lisa is shocked at the sight of this girl who looks so much like her, and after some teasing, joking, and staring from all the other girls, she loses her temper and kicks Lottie in the shin.  The camp leaders decide to give the two girls beds next to each other, saying that they’ll just have to get used to each other.  Lottie thinks that it’s going to be awful, but when Lisa sees how unhappy Lottie is, she apologizes and starts being nicer to her.

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The two girls discuss their lives and their strange resemblance with each other, and some unsettling details are revealed.  First, they learn that they not only share a resemblance but the same birthday.  They also realize that they were both born in the same city, although Lottie now lives in Munich and Lisa lives in Vienna.  This strange coincidence is troubling enough, but then each girl reveals that she lives with only one parent: Lottie lives with her mother, and Lisa lives with her father.  Lottie has no memory of her father and no knowledge of what happened to him, where he might be, or even if he’s still alive.  Lisa also has no memory of her mother, but she did once see a picture of her, a picture which her father hid somewhere after he found her looking at it.  The girls start getting suspicious, so Lottie shows Lisa a picture of her mother, and Lisa confirms that it’s an identical copy of the picture of her mother she saw before.  Lisa and Lottie realize that they are long-lost sisters.

LisaLottiePic2Through the rest of the summer, the girls discuss their lives and parents in great detail and continue speculating about the reasons for their parents’ separation and why they were never told about each other’s existence.  They are somewhat angry at their parents for not telling them the truth, but they each also want to know more about the parent that they have never really known and perhaps to learn the truth behind their parents’ separation. They begin hatching a plot to switch places so that Lottie can go to Vienna to meet their father and Lisa can go to Munich to be with their mother.  They get little notebooks and fill them with as many details of their lives as they can think of so that each girl can seem to behave like the other, although they know it won’t be easy because they’ve lived very different lives.  They don’t like the same foods, and Lottie knows how to cook, but Lisa doesn’t.

Still, the girls proceed with their plan.  When it is time to leave camp, the girls dress as each other.  Lisa puts her hair in braids as Lottie always does.  Lottie lets her curls hang loose, like Lisa usually does.  Then, each of them boards the train for the other’s city at the station.

LisaLottiePic3Lisa is overjoyed to finally meet her mother in Munich.  But, her mother has to work very hard as a photographic editor for a newspaper, and they don’t have much money.  Lisa isn’t as good at cooking or taking care of household chores as Lottie is, so she finds it difficult to help, although she learns quickly.

In Vienna, Lottie meets her handsome but somewhat reclusive father.  Her father is an opera conductor, but he’s also a composer who needs to spend much of his time alone in order to compose his music, which was the primary reason for the divorce.  He always wanted to devote his life to the arts, and he felt that marriage and family life got in the way, although he dearly loves his remaining daughter and dotes on her.

But, life in Vienna isn’t that great for either Lottie/Lisa or her father.  Rosa, the housekeeper who often looks after “Lisa” and takes care of their apartment only pretends to like her when her father is around and steals from the household funds.  Also, in spite of finally having plenty of time along for composing music (which is successful), her father is lonely and unhappy.  Although he doesn’t want to admit it at first, he misses the comforts of family life and the company of his wife.

Each girl, because of her different personality, manages to make changes in the life of the other and in their parents which are for the better, but the charade cannot continue forever.  Lottie finds out that their father is considering marriage to a woman who doesn’t like her.  Then, Lottie falls seriously ill.  More than ever, she needs her mother . . . and her twin.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive (they have multiple copies).

My Reaction and Spoilers:

LisaLottiePic4The book is much less of a comedy than either of the two Disney movies, although there are some funny parts, like when Lottie (as Lisa) takes over the household accounts to stop Rosa’s stealing and ends up turning her into a much better housekeeper with her practicality.  Surprisingly, Rosa actually starts respecting her more and even liking her better because of it.

Much of the focus of the book is how divorce affects children as well as parents, although there is room for debate on how each side views the issue, and some modern families may disagree with some of the points characters in the story make.  The point of view of the story shifts between each of the girls and also between their parents and other characters to show different reactions to the situation.

The children are understandably upset at the entire issue and believe what their parents did was wrong.  The girls admit that they do not think of either of their parents as evil or cruel, but they view the separation and lies that were forced on them without their consent as cruel.  Lottie even has a nightmare which is a twisted version of Hansel and Gretel in which her father threatens to cut both her and her sister in half because it would only be fair for each parent to get half of each child.  At camp, the girls see one of their friends crying, having just found out that her parents are going to get a divorce.  Other girls at the camp call her parents mean for making the decision while she was away at camp and just springing it on her with no warning at all.  For the children in the story, the worst part about parents divorcing is when they give little or no thought to how the children will feel or be affected by the decision and don’t even talk about the situation with them.

Some of that sentiment is echoed by adults in the story, although the adults are a little more ambivalent on the issue, knowing that different people and different circumstances must be judged on an individual basis.  The adults try to do what they think is best for the children, but they make mistakes, partly because they are too absorbed in their own concerns to understand the entire situation, and they come to realize it.  The overall sentiment of the book seems to be that, while marriages are made up of only two people, families are made up of more, including the children.  When a couple divorces, it not only affects the marriage, but the whole family as well, and parents need to remember that.

Like the movies, the book also ends happily, and the father finds a way (with the help of Lottie) to balance his work life with his family life.

Posted on by TracyC

Susan’s Magic

SusansMagicSusan’s Magic by Nan Hayden Agle, 1973.

Susan Prescott believes in magic, although her mother tries to tell her that it’s all imagination.  Susan gets feelings about things and sometimes seems to have the ability to make things work the way she wants them to.  That’s part of the reason why she can believe that old Mrs. Gaffney is really a witch.  People say that Mrs. Gaffney used to be a fortune teller but had to stop when one of her predictions became frightening true and people got scared of her.  Now, Mrs. Gaffney runs an antique shop, living in a small apartment above it.  But, whether Mrs. Gaffney is really a witch or not, Susan’s life soon becomes entangled with hers through a series of unforeseen events.

Susan lives with her mother, who is a practical, down-to-earth woman, and her older brother Mike, who likes to play football.  Her parents are divorced, and her father lives in another state, only visiting occasionally, often at unpredictable times.  Susan’s father is known for not being very dependable, and he apparently left the family to be with another woman, although the story doesn’t provide many details.  Susan misses her father and is hurt by his absence, lack of dependability, and that he is more interested in being with someone else, somewhere else, instead of with her, her mother, and her brother.

The story begins when Susan sets out one day to buy a present for her mother’s birthday, and another girl she knows from school tells her to have a look at the flea market being held that day at a church.  Susan doesn’t have much money, and even most of the used items at the flea market are beyond her small savings.  Then, she foolishly spends what little money she has on cupcakes and lemonade.  Susan is angry with herself for her  foolishness, but her mistake leads her to greater adventures.

SusansMagicPic1One of the things at the sale which especially captures Susan’s attention is a small stuffed toy elephant.  The elephant is very worn, and Susan feels sorry for him, wanting to take him home and take care of him.  However, her money is gone, and she still has no present for her mother.  Then Mrs. Gaffney spots her looking sad and offers to lend her the 25 cents she would need to buy the elephant.  Although Susan has reservations about accepting such a loan, she does anyway, telling Mrs. Gaffney that she’ll pay her back.

Susan brings the elephant, which she names Trunko, home, and when her mother thinks that Susan meant to give it to her for her birthday, she doesn’t correct her although she has become very attached to him herself.  Her mother, sensing Susan’s attachment to the toy, says that they can share it and that Susan can sleep with it.  Susan thinks this is a good arrangement until someone calls the house to say that the toy elephant was donated by mistake and that the original owner is sad and wants it back.

At first, Susan can’t bear the thought of giving up Trunko. But when she learns that the real owner is Hugo, a member of her brother’s football team, that he has had the toy ever since he was small, and that he really misses it, she realizes that she has to let him have it back.  To thank Susan for giving him back Trunko (originally named Stanley), Hugo gives Susan a stray cat that had been living under his porch.  Susan loves the cat immediately and names her Sereena.

However, Susan’s mother says that they can’t keep the cat because the hill nearby is a bird sanctuary.  Susan tries to persuade her mother otherwise, but she says that they’ll just have to find another home for Sereena.  Susan tries to get an older girl from school to look after the cat for awhile while she tries to persuade her mother to let her keep her, but the other girl refuses.  Then, unexpectedly, the cat runs into Mrs. Gaffney’s shop as Susan is walking past it.

In Mrs. Gaffney’s shop, Susan accidentally breaks a teapot, increasing her debt to Mrs. Gaffney.  However, Mrs. Gaffney turns out to be a cat lover and agrees to look after Sereena for Susan.  This is the beginning of a new relationship between Susan and Mrs. Gaffney as Susan offers to work for her in order to pay off her debt.  Mrs. Gaffney could use some help in her shop because sales haven’t been good, and she’s worried about losing it.

Sereena herself turns out to be good for Mrs. Gaffney’s shop, attracting customers’ attention to the items for sale.  Susan feels jealous about how much Sereena likes Mrs. Gaffney and her shop, as if Sereena has abandoned her like her father and Trunko have.  But, when a beautiful dollhouse in Mrs. Gaffney’s shop catches her eye and it turns out to be even more valuable than Mrs. Gaffney believed it was at first, Susan has to decide whether she is willing to give it up to help Mrs. Gaffney earn enough money to fix up her shop or if she will hold Mrs. Gaffney to her earlier promise to sell it to her for much less.

SusansMagicPic2In spite of the talk about magic and witches, this is not a fantasy story at all.  Susan’s concept of magic has more to do with a way of living, dealing with change, and solving life’s problems.  For the first part of the book, Susan’s “magic” focuses on getting what she wants for herself and getting things to work out the way she wants them to.  But, as the book goes on, Susan matures in the way she deals with the complications in her life.

Toward the end of the book, Susan thinks about reality and fantasy: “The magic part of living was how you fit yourself around real things, she guessed.  A magician was extra good at fitting. That’s why being one was important.”  What Susan really wants and the kind of person she wants to be change.  She comes to realize that, while she can’t get and keep everything she wants in life in the sense that it’s always with her all the time, caring about people and things is also a kind of ownership.  Giving up the toy elephant and sharing the cat with Mrs. Gaffney do not mean losing them completely because she still cares about them and the people connected with them.

Susan also realizes that, even if she doesn’t get exactly what she wants in the beginning, as long as things work out for the people she cares about, she can still be happy.  Although she has to make sacrifices at times for the people she cares about, she earns the love and respect of the people who mean the most to her.  Susan says, “Anyway, magicians don’t lose. They win. Dad, Trunko, and Sereena are mine still in a way.”  She will always be close to her mother and brother, even without her father’s presence, and Hugo, Mrs. Gaffney, and Sereena are all her friends.  Susan is a winner not because she gets what she wants for herself but because she knows how to make things work out in the best possible way for everyone she cares about, and that’s a kind of magic.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

In some ways, this story reminds me a little of the Miyazki movie Whisper of the Heart, which also features a young girl who likes making up stories and who is led to an antique store by a friendly cat and meets an older person who helps her to learn about the person she wants to be and the kind of life she wants to live.  The two stories are not the same, though, and Whisper of the Heart was based on Japanese manga, not this book.  In some ways, however, both this book and Whisper of the Heart are the kind of stories that take on a new life when you read them as an adult because, at that point, you understand some of the feelings behind them better.

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Mandie and the Forbidden Attic

MandieForbiddenAttic#4 Mandie and the Forbidden Attic by Lois Gladys Leppard, 1985.

Mandie is unhappy because her mother and Uncle John are sending her to a boarding school in Asheville. It is the same school her mother attended years ago, and her grandmother lives in the same town. Mandie is upset about leaving all of her friends and family behind, but Uncle Ned says that he will still visit her.

By the time that Mandie arrives at her new school, everyone else already knows each other, and none of them seem interested in making friends with her. One girl in particular, April Snow, takes a dislike to Mandie, which is difficult because they have been assigned to the same room.

Things change when Celia Hamilton comes to the school. She and Mandie become best friends, and Mandie is allowed to share a room with her. Then, strange things start happening. Mandie and Celia keep hearing strange noises during the night from the attic floor above them, and some of Mandie’s clothes disappear. At first, they suspect that April Snow may be playing a mean trick on them, but it turns out that she is not actually at fault. There is someone at the school who doesn’t belong, but finding this person may get Mandie and Celia into trouble.

This adventure requires Mandie to meet with her grandmother again.  Mandie is nervous about seeing her grandmother because her grandmother helped break up her parents’ marriage and sent her away with her father when she was a baby. Surprisingly, Mandie’s grandmother seems to like her and her friend Celia. She admires their spirit and even says that Mandie reminds her a little of herself when she was young.  This meeting helps the granddaughter and grandmother to make peace with each other and the past.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Mandie and the Ghost Bandits

MandieGhostBandits#3 Mandie and the Ghost Bandits by Lois Gladys Leppard, 1984.

Mandie and her family are going to proceed with the plan to create a hospital for the Cherokees with the gold that they found in the cave. To do that, they need to take the gold to a bank in Asheville.  They decide to take the gold secretly on a train. Uncle Ned stays in the baggage car to watch the gold as they set out on their journey.

When the kids decide to leave their car to go visit him, strange things begin to happen. They see riders dressed as ghosts out the window. Then, the car with Uncle Ned and the gold inside is disconnected from the rest of the train, crashing into a ravine. The train comes to a stop, and the kids jump off to see if they can help Uncle Ned.

Before they can find him, the train starts up again, leaving them behind, and they are taken prisoner by the mysterious ghost bandits. They are after the gold in the baggage car, but how did they know it was there when Mandie’s family tried so hard to keep it a secret? Mandie and her friends must escape and find the others before it is too late!

In some respects, I would call this more of an adventure story than a mystery, although there is still the question of how the bandits knew where the gold was in order to steal it.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Mandie and the Cherokee Legend

MandieCherokeeLegend#2 Mandie and the Cherokee Legend by Lois Gladys Leppard, 1983.

Mandie is going to visit her Cherokee relatives with her mother and Uncle John. Mandie is eager to meet her relatives, and she hopes that they all like her. The Cherokees all knew her father well, and most of them are eager to meet her. All except for her cousin, Tsa’ni, that is.

Tsa’ni knows the stories of how white men have oppressed the Cherokees and forced them to move off of their land years ago, and he resents all white people because of it. The others tell him that he is wrong to hate all white people because of what some of them did in the past and that Mandie and her Uncle John are good people. However, Tsa’ni doesn’t listen to them, and he plays a mean trick on Mandie, Joe, and Uncle Ned’s granddaughter, Sallie. He offers to show them a cave, but then he abandons them inside.

The three kids have to find their own way out, but they discover a fortune in gold nuggets in the process. First, the children have to make it back to Uncle Ned’s house after a frightening night in the woods. Mandie, Joe, and Sallie accidentally stumble onto a still (machinery for making alcohol) that belongs to a white couple while they are wandering around in the woods after leaving the cave. The couple are worried that they will tell people about their illegal still, so they hold the kids prisoner.

Although the kids manage to escape, they must return to the cave to find the treasure again (while dodging Tsa’ni’s tricks to foil their efforts) and keep it safe (from the still operators and anyone else who might want to steal it) until they can decide what to do with it. As far as Uncle Ned and the other Cherokees are concerned, gold is bad luck because it was the discovery of gold which forced the Cherokees out of their old homeland. However, the origin of this gold may help to change their minds.

This book is one of the Mandie Books.  It is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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Mandie and the Secret Tunnel

MandieSecretTunnelMandie and the Secret Tunnel by Lois Gladys Leppard, 1983.

Young Amanda Shaw is almost twelve when her father dies, leaving her with a bully of a sister and a mother who doesn’t really love her. Her only friends are Joe, who is the son of the local doctor, and Uncle Ned, a Cherokee Indian. Amanda and her father are part Cherokee, and Uncle Ned helps to look after her now that her father is gone. Then, Amanda’s mother remarries and sends her to live with another family who want someone to help them look after their young son. However, the family is rather mean to Mandie, exploiting her for cheap labor, and Uncle Ned offers to take Mandie to live with her uncle in the town of Franklin.

Mandie never knew that her father had a brother (Uncle Ned is Mandie’s “uncle” by affection, not blood), but she readily agrees to go to him. Uncle Ned and some other Cherokees help Mandie to sneak away in the middle of the night and make the journey to Franklin. When she arrives at her uncle’s house, she is taken in by the servants, but she is told that her uncle is away in Europe.  Mandie’s uncle turns out to be rich, and Mandie is very happy in his house. She gets new dresses for the first time in her life and makes friends with Polly, the girl next door.

Then, word comes that her uncle has died in Europe. Her uncle’s will is missing, and no one knows exactly what will happen to her uncle’s property or to Mandie until it is found. Strangers come to the house, saying that they are also relatives of Mandie’s uncle, but Mandie wonders if they really are who they claim to be. With the help of Polly and Joe, who comes to visit her, Mandie searches for her uncle’s missing will and accidentally finds a secret tunnel leading out of her uncle’s house.

As Mandie and her friends investigate this mysterious situation, where things and people aren’t what they claim to be, Mandie learns that her own past isn’t what she believed it was.  Her family has kept many secrets from her, and learning these secrets leads her to a better future than she’d ever imagined.

This book is one of the Mandie Books.  It is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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The Mystery Off Glen Road

Trixie Belden

tbglenroad#5 The Mystery Off Glen Road by Julie Campbell, 1956.

When their clubhouse is damaged by a storm shortly before Thanksgiving, the Bob-Whites realize that they will have get some money to fix it soon before the really bad winter weather comes. The Wheelers’ gamekeeper has recently quit, so they offer to patrol Mr. Wheeler’s game preserve for awhile to earn some extra money.

While Trixie and Honey are patrolling, they find a dead deer. They don’t tell anyone about it right away because their dogs, Patch and Reddy, were with the carcass when they found it. If the dogs killed the deer, they might be killed because people would be afraid that the dogs would go wild and start killing more animals. However, Trixie later finds signs that a human butchered and hauled away the carcass. There seems to be a poacher in the wood, and the dogs are innocent of the deer’s death, but how can Trixie and Honey tell the others about it when they tried to cover up the crime in the first place?

To make the situation more complicated, Trixie’s brother, Brian, wants to buy a used car from Mr. Lytell but doesn’t feel that he can spare the money until the clubhouse is fixed. To keep Mr. Lytell from selling the car, Trixie gives him an expensive ring that Jim gave her as security for the car. Since Trixie normally isn’t interested in jewelry at all, she pretends that she wants to wear it to impress Honey’s cousin, Ben, who is visiting for Thanksgiving. Trixie doesn’t actually like Ben at all, but it was the only excuse she could think of for getting her parents to take the ring out of her safe deposit box in the first place. Trixie’s reluctant efforts to fake a crush on Ben and act more girly add humor to the story.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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The Mysterious Visitor

Trixie Belden

tbvisitor#4 The Mysterious Visitor by Julie Campbell, 1954.

Now that school has started again, Trixie and Honey see more of the other kids who live in Sleepyside, including a girl named Diana Lynch. Trixie has known Diana for a long time, but ever since her father made a lot of money, Diana has been distant.

Di is deeply unhappy because her parents, particularly her mother, have been trying to live up to their new status by having the household run by fussy servants who don’t care much for children. Diana always has to wear formal clothes, she doesn’t get to play with her younger siblings as much, and she finds it increasingly hard to just relax and have fun with friends.

When Honey and Trixie invite Diana to become a member of the Bob-Whites, she tells them about her long-lost uncle who has recently come to visit her family. Her mother is happy about finally meeting the brother she has not seen since she was a baby, but Uncle Monty has been making Di’s life miserable. Whenever she makes plans to have a Halloween party or do things with friends, he tries his best to interfere and ruin everything. Uncle Monty is rude and offends people. Trixie is convinced that Di’s Uncle Monty is not what he seems to be, but she’s not sure how to prove it.

I love the description of the Halloween party that the kids have at Diana’s house!

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The Gatehouse Mystery

Trixie Belden

TBGatehouseMystery#3 The Gatehouse Mystery by Julie Campbell, 1951.

One day, Honey and Trixie decide to explore the old gatehouse on the property of Honey’s mansion. It hasn’t been used for years, and it is overgrown with vines. However, it looks as though someone has been there recently, and the girls find a diamond on the floor inside. There are signs of a scuffle, and the diamond looks like it was accidentally wedged into the floor. Have thieves been hiding out in that old cottage?

Honey thinks that they should turn the diamond over to the police, but Trixie wants a chance to investigate the crime first, just the two of them, and to prove to Jim and her brothers that she and Honey can be detectives as good as any man could. However, the boys become involved when someone attempts to enter Honey’s room at night to reclaim the diamond.

With their suspicions divided between the new gardener and the new chauffeur, the kids form a club they call the Bob-Whites of the Glen to investigate the matter and to trap the thieves.  This club continues for the rest of the series.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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Posted on by TracyC

Cadet Kirk

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

STACadetKirk

#3 Cadet Kirk by Diane Carey, 1996.

McCoy and Spock meet again when they are both on their way to the Starfleet Academy Science Conference at Colony Cambria. However, the small ship that is supposed to take them there is piloted by Cadet Kirk, who is disappointed because he was originally supposed to be the pilot for Dr. Richard Daytrom, a famous scientist who will be speaking at the conference. McCoy isn’t happy about the situation either, remembering that Kirk got him in trouble the last time they met and caused him to miss his holiday.

Kirk seems entirely too self-assured and constantly quotes rules and regulations. As they pass the Atlantis Outpost, an automated research station, the ship is caught by a tractor beam and forced to the ground. A group of mercenaries hired by Klingons believed that Dr. Daystrom was on board the ship, and they want to kidnap him. Kirk does his best to follow regulations, but it only results in getting them all captured. Kirk is discouraged and worried about what will happen when Daystrom’s ship finally arrives.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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