Posted on by TracyC

A Native American Feast

A Native American Feast by Lucille Recht Penner, 1994.

This nonfiction children’s book explains the traditional foods of different Native American tribes and how they were prepared. (Throughout the book, they are referred to both as “Native Americans” and “Indians”, but mostly, the book uses the term “Native Americans.” The focus is on Native American tribes in the area that is now the United States, but the book includes information about various tribes across the United States.)

It starts with an Introduction that explains how European settlers came to North America and how the first settlers almost starved to death because they weren’t prepared for the conditions they found and didn’t understand the plants and foods of the Americas. In those early years of the colonies, the colonists relied heavily on help from nearby Native American tribes in learning techniques for hunting and growing food in North America. These colonists had to adopt some of the Native American foods and techniques of getting food in order to survive. Not only did European colonists adopt some foods used by Native Americans, but Native Americans also adopted foods that were introduced to them from Europeans, including some plants and grains, like apples and wheat, and some domesticated animals, like sheep. The focus of this book is on Native Americans and their cooking and eating habits, both pre-colonization and post-colonization. For more information about what the colonists were cooking and eating, see The Colonial Cookbook.

The book explains how we know what we know about Native American foods and cooking. Some information was recorded by early European colonists in America and European scientists who were interested in plants of the Americas, and archaeology provides information in the form of animal bones, clamshells, and pollen from plants that Native Americans cultivated, going back hundreds and even thousands of years. Native American eating habits shifted throughout their history, although they shifted very abruptly with the European colonization of North America.

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

Contents

Every chapter, including the Introduction, contains recipes that readers can make at home. Some of them are easier than others. Some recipes include pieces of Native American folklore about them or the foods in the recipes. Many of the illustrations are 19th century drawings.

Rather than organizing the book based on tribe or geographic region, the chapters of the book are based around particular types of food or cooking and eating concepts:

Introduction

This section introduces how historians know about the history of food among Native American tribes and how their diets changed after the arrival of Europeans.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Hickory Nut Soup
  • Green Succotash
  • Pueblo Peach Crisp

Discovering America

This section includes information about the earliest known hunting and cooking habits of Native Americans. It includes a description of the “land bridge” theory of how the ancestors of Native Americans arrived in the Americas from Asia. As of the early 21st century, we still don’t have a definitive answer for precisely how ancient people first arrived in the Americas, more recent theories include the possibility of these ancient people being seafaring rather than finding a land crossing, although the land crossing theory is also still possible.

Then, it explains about the arrival of the European colonists. It doesn’t sugar coat that the arrival of the colonists and their westward expansion led to the extinction and endangerment of native animal species because these newcomers hunted them without restraint. The introduction of unfamiliar diseases, like measles and smallpox, to the Native Americans took many lives, sometimes even killing whole tribes. These drastic changes greatly impacted the lives and lifestyles of Native Americans, although some traditional habits survived, including the preparation of traditional types of foods.

There are no recipes in this chapter.

A Great Mystery

This chapter explains about hunting and gathering and the development of agriculture among ancient Native American tribes. The “mystery” is about the development of corn as we know it. It was never really a wild plant. The evidence suggests that ancient Native Americans deliberately created it by cross-pollinating different wild grass plants, but it isn’t really known which ones. Most of this chapter explains how widespread corn was as a food and the uses and folklore that different tribes had for it.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Roasted Corn on the Cob
  • Blue Pinole – a blue cornmeal-based drink with sugar and cinnamon, from the Southwest
  • Thumbprint Bread (Kolatquvil)
  • Hopi Blue Marbles – boiled balls of blue cornmeal dough, a traditional breakfast food
  • Wagmiza Wasna – a mixture of cornmeal and dried berries

Treasure

This section is about foods that Native Americans introduced to the rest of the world, like pumpkins, peanuts, chili peppers, sunflower seeds, maple sugar, and different varieties of beans, including kidney beans and lima beans.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Cherokee Bean Balls
  • Apache Pumpkin with Sunflower Seeds
  • Popped Wild Rice
  • Zuni Green Chili Stew

The Hunt

This chapter is about Native American hunting techniques and the animals they hunted.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Broiled Buffalo Steaks
  • Venison and Hominy Stew

Feast and Famine

This chapter is about Native Americans who lived in areas where food was scarce and ways of foraging for food during times of famine. It also explains special feast days.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Mouse Cache Soup – made with beef broth and seeds: sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, buckwheat groats, and millet
  • Iroquois Strawberry Drink
  • Mushrooms Cooked in Oil

Berries, Flowers, and Bear Fat

This chapter explains the seasonings that Native Americans added to food and cooking techniques that added nutrients.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Fried Squash Blossoms
  • Pemmican Cakes – the origins of beef jerky
  • Maple Sugar Drink
  • Wild Grape Dumplings
  • Inuit Ice Cream – a berry dessert originally made with seal oil but made with egg whites here
  • Wojapi – a Sioux fruit pudding

Lighting the Fire

This chapter is about how plants and animals were processed to make them ready for cooking, such as how corn and acorns were ground into flour and how animals were butchered. When they had to boil water, they often used vessels that would have been damaged if they were put directly over fire, so they would heat stones and put them into the water instead.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Broiled Salmon Steaks with Juniper Berries
  • Broiled Rabbit with Corn Dumplings
  • Baked Beans with Maple Sugar

A Basketful of Water

Native Americans didn’t have cooking pots and pans made out of metal or glass until after the European colonists arrived. Before that, their cooking vessels were made of wood, stone, pottery, or tightly-woven baskets. This chapter explains the different types of cooking vessels they had, including the shells of pumpkins and gourds.

Recipes in this section are:

  • Pumpkin Shell Soup

Good Manners

This short chapter is about eating manners, superstitions, and taboos among different tribes. There are no recipes.

Thanksgiving

This section explains how Native Americans would give thanks to their Creator or Great Spirit or Nature or to animals and plants themselves for the foods that helped keep them alive. There are no recipes in this chapter.

Posted on by TracyC

The Little House Cookbook

The Little House Cookbook by Barbara M. Walker, illustrated by Garth Williams, 1979.

This children’s cookbook is based on the foods eaten in the Little House on the Prairie series. The series follows a farm family, and food is very important in the stories. I like the book because it provides historical explanations about the types foods that frontier families would eat. The illustrations in the books come from the original books.

The chapters in the book are:

Food in the Little Houses

The first chapter of the book explains about the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family and how much of their time on the frontier was occupied with finding and producing food. The foods that they ate were ones they grew and hunted themselves. They had to prepare everything from scratch, and even the children in the family helped. When they had difficult times, there was often little to eat.

The chapter also discusses the nutrition of a pioneer diet. They didn’t understand much about the science behind vitamins and nutrition, but because their lives were based around hard physical labor, they were able to tolerate diets that were heavier in starches and sweets than most modern people would have.

It also describes how celebrations and social occasions centered around food.

The Cook’s Domain

This chapter discusses what pioneer and farming families had in their kitchens and how they would cook and store food.

Staples from the Country Store

Although pioneers tried to be as self-sufficient as they could, nobody could ever make absolutely everything they needed. Country stores supplied a variety of good, especially the things that farmers couldn’t make by themselves, like farm tools, cooking pots, sewing supplies, guns, and some food staples that wouldn’t be produced by farms in the area or that required processing, like molasses and cornmeal. Country stores also allowed farmers to buy on credit or trade produce and other goods they had for ones they needed because they didn’t always have cash on hand.

The first two chapters were just informational, but this is the chapter where recipes start appear. Each of the recipes is accompanied by a quote from one of the Little House books where the dish is mentioned and some historical information. The recipes in this chapter are:

  • Fried salt pork with gravy
  • Hasty pudding
  • Fried cornmeal mush (a dish my grandmother said she ate growing up on a farm in Indiana in the 1920s and 1930s)
  • Johnny-cake
  • Corn dodgers
  • Cornbread
  • Crackling cornbread
  • Baked beans
  • Bean soup
  • Bean porridge
  • Oyster soup
  • Codfish balls

Foods from the Woods, Wilds, and Water

Pioneer families relied heavily on animals they could hunt and plants they could forage for food, like berries. This chapter discusses how they would process and prepare animals they hunted and what they could make with foods found in the wild. Personally, I have no interest in hunting, but the historical information is interesting. The recipes in this chapter are:

  • Stewed jack rabbit and dumplings
  • Spit-roasted wild duck
  • Blackbird pie
  • Fried fish
  • Roasted wild turkey with cornbread stuffing
  • Cranberry jelly
  • Blueberry pudding with a sauce
  • Huckleberry pie
  • Sun-dried wild fruit
  • Stewed dried fruit
  • Crab-apple jelly
  • Plum preserves
  • Husk-tomato preserves
  • Strawberry jam

Foods from Tilled Fields

This chapter discusses the crops farms produced, particularly wheat. There are recipes for different types of bread, biscuits, dumplings, crackers, doughnuts, and pancakes. There’s also a recipe for hardtack, which was a staple food for people going on long journeys because is wasn’t as perishable as other foods.

Foods from Gardens and Orchards

This chapter is about the types of fruits and vegetables that a family like the Ingalls would grow. It explains that these vegetables have changed over time because farmers developed new varieties of familiar foods, like potatoes. The flavors of these newer varieties aren’t quite the same as the old ones, but the newer varieties produce more food and are more resistant to disease.

The recipes included in this chapter are:

  • Mashed potatoes
  • Potato cakes
  • Fried potatoes
  • Hashed brown potatoes
  • Creamed carrots
  • Dried corn and creamed corn
  • Fried parsnips
  • Succotash – a dish of mixed vegetables with lima beans and corn
  • Lettuce leaves with vinegar and sugar
  • Ripe tomatoes with sugar and cream
  • Baked Hubbard squash
  • Raw turnip snacks
  • Mashed turnips
  • Stewed pumpkin
  • Pumpkin pie
  • Green pumpkin pie – It uses an unripened pumpkin, and it tastes a lot like an apple pie.
  • Apple turnovers
  • Apple pie
  • Birds’ Nest pudding – an apple dessert
  • Fried apples ‘n’ onions
  • Dried apples
  • Dried apple and raisin pie
  • Apple-core vinegar
  • Tomato preserves
  • Beet pickles
  • Green cucumber pickles
  • Green tomato pickles

Foods from the Barnyard

This chapter is about the types of animals kept on a farm as sources of meat, dairy, eggs, and fat.

The recipes included in this chapter are:

  • Lard and cracklings
  • Baked spareribs
  • Homemade sausage
  • Roasted pig
  • Mincemeat
  • Poached fresh eggs
  • Fried chicken
  • Chicken pie
  • Stuffed roasted hen
  • Roasted stuffed goose
  • Butter
  • Cottage cheese balls
  • Hard cheese
  • Pot roast of ox with browned flour gravy

Thirst Quenchers and Treats

This chapter covers special treats that farming families would have made or been able to buy at the general store. It explains the history and evolution of penny candies and other store-bought treats.

The recipes included in the chapter are:

  • Eggnog
  • Ginger water
  • Cambric tea
  • Lemonade
  • Pulled candy
  • Molasses-on-Snow candy
  • Vinegar pie
  • Custard pie
  • Heart-shaped cakes
  • Vanity cakes
  • Pound cake
  • Laura’s wedding cake
  • Sugar frosting
  • Ice cream
  • Parched corn
  • Popcorn
  • Popcorn balls
  • Popcorn and milk

There is a glossary in the back and a table of conversions.

One more thing I want to note is that the book refers to Native Americans as “Indians”, which is common in older books. There isn’t much information about Native Americans in the book because the focus is on pioneer farming families, but they are mentioned occasionally when there’s historical information about the origin and evolution of certain types of foods.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Homespun Sarah

Homespun Sarah by Verla Kay, illustrated by Ted Rand, 2003.

This picture book tells a story in rhyme about a girl living in 18th century Pennsylvania and what she and her family do to make her a new dress when she begins outgrowing her old one.

As Sarah gets dressed one morning, her old dress is noticeably tight, and it’s beginning to get too short for her. Because her family lives on a farm, they must produce most of what they need themselves, and that includes clothing. For Sarah to have a new dress, they must make one themselves entirely from scratch, which is what “homespun” means – they make the dress from homemade cloth from yarn that they have spun themselves.

Various family members carry out different household chores, and as the story continues, readers see how everything they do is not only a part of the family’s daily life but also contributes to the creation of the new dress. The family raises sheep, so they must start by sheering the sheep to get the wool for the dress.

In between doing routine chores, like doing the laundry and making new candles, they card and comb the wool and spin it into yarn with their spinning wheel. The family also owns a large loom, which is how they weave the wool yarn and flax into cloth called linsey-woolsey. The cloth they make is blue and red, dyed using plants that they have produced and gathered.

Once they’ve made the homespun cloth, Sarah’s mother measures her to plan the size of the dress and sews the dress. Sarah gets a new red dress, while her younger sister gets a blue one. Sarah is excited about her new dress, which fits her much better than the old one, and spins around to show it off!

The author’s note at the beginning of the book says that the story is set in Pennsylvania during the 1700s, and she wanted to show how people lived during that time, having to produce everything or almost everything they used by themselves. It also shows various aspects of family life, from where and how they slept to what they ate. The characters in the book, even the children, are shown drinking beer, but the author explains that is because water wasn’t considered entirely safe to drink. The beer they drank back then was very weak and “barely alcoholic”, which was why the children could have it. (We have water treatment facilities and devices available in the United States in modern times to ensure the quality of the water, so this isn’t something that we typically do now, especially with children, and I have more to say about this in my reaction.)

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

My Reaction

When I was a kid, I often skipped over prefaces and author’s notes because I just wanted to get to the story, but the author’s note really adds some historical depth and helps to clarify some aspects of the story that children might misunderstand. For example, I thought that the clarification about the mention of the characters drinking beer was important. Alcohol, chemically speaking, is actually a mild poison. It’s mild enough that humans can have it in small amounts without dying or even becoming ill (although we can get sick or die from large amounts, and some people have a greater or weaker natural tolerance to it, compared to each other), but even weak alcohol might kill germs in water and make it safer for humans to drink. This is the way it’s being used in this book. Because this book is for children, it’s helpful to explain this so that child readers understand that what the characters have isn’t quite the same as modern beer and that it’s not okay for children to drink modern beer in the same way. I think this is good book for parents or other adults to read with kids, so the adults can point this out to kids and help them to understand other historical elements of the story that they might miss or misunderstand.

The author’s note also explains that, because people during the time the story is set, had to make their own clothes by hand, and making was a very time-consuming, labor-intensive process, people had far fewer clothes back then than they do now. It was common for someone to have only one set of clothes that they wore every day until they were no long usable. Getting a new set of clothes was an exciting occasion, and that’s what the story in the book tries to capture. When readers see what this family goes through to create just one new dress for a girl who is outgrowing her last one, they can understand how much that dress means to the girl who receives it.

I love books that show how things are made, so I appreciated this book for the process it shows. However, because the story is told in short, simple rhymes and focuses on the how the process would look to a casual observer without getting too detailed, I felt like there were many parts of the process that were implied rather than stated. For example, they don’t explicitly mention that the red and blue dyes for the cloth came from the red berries the girls gathered or the blue flowers of the flax plant, but it’s implied by the earlier mentions of these plants and the way the book showed the characters gathering them. That could be enough for a casual reader, but I’m the kind of person who likes hearing the details of the process, so I would have liked more detailed explanations.

I did appreciate the way the book showed aspects of daily life in the 18th century. Some of them are explained in the author’s note, but there are also other parts of daily life to notice in the pictures. One of my favorite ones was the way that the youngest child in the family is tied to her mother or older sister’s apron strings to keep her from wandering away and getting into trouble while they’re doing their chores.

Posted on by TracyC

Yetsa’s Sweater

Yetsa’s Sweater by Sylvia Olsen, illustrated by Joan Larson, 2006.

Yetsa and her mother go to her grandmother’s house to help her prepare wool for making a sweater. Yetsa is getting too big for the sweater she’s wearing, but she still loves it because her grandmother knitted designs in it that have personal significance to her and her family.

Yetsa’s grandmother builds a fire and brings a large pot for the wool. They have to sort through the fleeces they received from Farmer McNutt and remove any little twigs or hay or anything that doesn’t belong. Yetsa yells when she finds some sheep poop stuck in the fleece. After they’ve removed the debris as best they can, they wash the fleece in hot water over the fire. Then, they rinse it in cool water and wring it out.

While the wool dries on the clothesline, they take a break and have some bread and blackberry jam.

The following week, they begin pulling apart the fibers of the wool, making it fluffier, a process called “teasing.” Then, Yetsa’s grandmother runs the wool through a carding machine, and they begin spinning it into yarn with a spinning machine.

When the spinning is finished, Yetsa’s grandmother has enough wool to make many sweaters.

In the back of the book, the author explains that Yetsa is her own granddaughter and that knitting is a traditional skill for Coast Salish women. They learned knitting from Scottish settlers who came to British Columbia, and the sweaters they made came to be called Cowichan sweaters, after the largest tribe in the region. Children like Yetsa begin learning how to prepare wool and knit at a fairly young age.

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

My Reaction

I love books that show people making traditional crafts, and I enjoying following this one from beginning to end! Readers get to see each step in the process of making the sweater, starting with the wool and ending with the finished sweater. I’ve been knitting from a young age, but I’ve never tried spinning my own wool, and I liked seeing the intricate patterns of the sweater.

When I was a kid, I often ignored authors’ explanations because my focus was on the story, but as an adult, I like the added details of author’s explanations. This is a family story because Yetsa in the story is based on the author’s own granddaughter.

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The Mystery of the Runaway Scarecrow

Three Cousins Detective Club

#26 The Mystery of the Runaway Scarecrow by Elspeth Campbell Murphy, 1999.

Sarah-Jane astonishes her cousins when she tells them that Buster, the scarecrow her mother made, which has been sitting outside of a local restaurant, has gone “on vacation. Scarecrows don’t just get up and go on vacation, and when they say that, Sarah-Jane says that Buster left a note saying that he had gone on vacation. The boys don’t believe scarecrows can write notes any more than they can go on vacation. Sarah-Jane admits that scarecrows don’t write notes, but someone else wrote a note on Buster’s behalf and left it behind when Buster disappeared. The note says that Buster is going on vacation and will be back when someone figures out where he’s gone. That’s weird enough, but Sarah-Jane says that Mr. Wesley, who owns the restaurant where Buster was, has been receiving pictures of Buster on his trip in the mail since he disappeared.

It seems like someone is playing a bizarre prank or maybe setting up some kind of treasure hunt involving the scarecrow. The town mayor says that Buster’s “vacation” has created more publicity for the town’s upcoming Fall Festival, so it could even be a publicity stunt. However, it’s been a few days since the last pictures of Buster arrived, and Mr. Wesley is inviting Sarah-Jane and her cousins to investigate Buster’s disappearance and find him because he knows that they like to solve mysteries.

The kids study the pictures for clues to Buster’s whereabouts, but the pictures are pretty generic. They show him outside a motel, at a gift shop, and at a gas station, but the locations aren’t very distinctive and could be found in any number of cities. The postmarks on the envelopes that pictures came in are all still in the area, so it seems like Buster didn’t go very far. They need to hurry if they’re going to find Buster in time for the town’s parade because the parade is tomorrow!

Then, Sarah-Jane reveals that something else mysterious has happened in the area recently. Someone stole a rare coin from Mr. Clark. This is also an intriguing mystery, but they don’t have many clues to start. Mr. Clark isn’t exactly sure when the coin disappeared because he doesn’t get out his coin collection very often.

For some strange reason, an older boy in Sarah-Jane’s neighborhood, Billy, seems very concerned about whether Sarah-Jane and her cousins have made any progress in finding Buster. Could Buster’s disappearance also have something to do with the missing coin?

Theme of the Story:

“The land has produced its harvest; God, our God, has blessed us.”

Psalm 67:6

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

I liked the way the person who took the scarecrow used the pictures to provide clues to their treasure hunt. Readers won’t be able to figure it out right away without explanation from the characters because the book doesn’t show all the pictures, but I liked the concept for how the culprit worked a series of clues into the pictures. There’s also a fun backstory behind the scheme. The prankster doesn’t have a sinister motive. The scarecrow caper is meant as a kind of prank/game/harmless publicity stunt.

I guessed pretty quickly who had taken the scarecrow, based on motive, but I liked the addition of Billy and the coin because it complicated the story and provided a second mystery on top of the first. There is a genuine crime in the story, but it’s not the one that the kids start out investigating.

The story takes place during October, but it’s not on Halloween. The town’s Fall Festival just seems to kick off the fall season in general.

Posted on by TracyC

Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed

Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed by Virginia Hamilton, 1983.

It’s Halloween 1938, and Willie Bea’s relatives have gathered at the old family farm, near where she lives. Money is tight because of the Great Depression, but one of her aunts lives and works in the city, making more money than the others, and is willing to help fund family dinners and provide a little extra for her nieces and nephews when they need something, like new clothes. The aunt is a little scandalous in their family for her multiple marriages, but the others appreciate her generosity, and the nieces and nephews like getting some extra attention and a few treats from her.

The family gathering is a bit chaotic with children running around and getting into trouble. One of Willie Bea’s cousins gets into particular trouble with her mother for using his bow and arrow set to shoot a pumpkin off of Willie Bea’s younger brother’s head. Their mother panics when she catches them doing it because he could have missed and killed the little boy, but Willie Bea tries to calm her mother. Willie Bea was less worried because she knows her cousin’s archery skill and that he wasn’t going to miss, but she understands that adults think of the risks and aren’t fully aware of what the kids are capable of doing. (I’m siding with the mother on this one. Even people who are very good at something can miss now and then, and it’s a big risk to take with someone’s life.) Willie Bea also realizes that the decision to use her little brother for the William Tell act actually came from another cousin because the cousin doing the archery wouldn’t have thought of it himself, and it’s not fair that her mother doesn’t know to blame this other cousin.

Willie Bea talks to her father about the incident, hoping that he’ll understand how unfair it is. However, her father tells her that what her cousin did was dangerous, no matter why he did it. Even though he has a reputation for being good with archery, even people who are good can still miss, and accidents can happen. (See?) Her father lets Willie Bea know that he’s aware that she and her cousins do risky things sometimes when they’re playing with each other, but as an adult, he and the other adults have a responsibility to tell them when something they’re doing is too risky and to put a stop to it. No matter how many times they’ve done some of these things without having an accident, some things are just accidents waiting to happen. They should never assume that an arrow can’t go wrong just because it hasn’t yet or that they can’t fall from a high place just because they haven’t fallen yet.

Willie Bea is a little embarrassed by the talk and feels like her father still doesn’t understand. However, Willie Bea herself has been starting to understand a few things about her relatives this Halloween, things that she either hasn’t noticed before or only half noticed. She can see that one of her cousins is too manipulative, noting the little tricks she uses to get her way and the things she says and does when she wants to be spiteful. She can see that her other cousin has trouble asking up for himself and is particularly vulnerable to manipulation.

Willie Bea also begins to notice things about the adults in the family and their relationships with each other. Aunt Leah, the aunt who has more money than the others and has been married multiple times seems glamorous and fascinating to Willie Bea. Aunt Leah is into horoscopes and fortune telling, and when she reads Willie Bea’s palm, she predicts something special for her. Although Willie Bea loves her own mother, she is intrigued by the family gossip that her father was seeing Aunt Leah before falling in love with her mother, and Willie Bea fantasizes about what it would be like to live with Aunt Leah in the city. She imagines that it would be exciting, and she asks her father why he chose her mother instead of Aunt Leah. Her father knows that Willie Bea doesn’t entirely understand what it’s like to make that kind of choice and what living with a woman like Aunt Leah would really mean. (It occurred to me that the multiple divorces Leah has had might be a clue.) He just explains to Willie Bea that his choice became clear after he got to know her mother as well as her sister, Leah. He knew her mother was the right choice because she was the kind of steady woman who would always be there for him.

That evening, while Willie Bea is putting together her hobo costume and the ghost costumes for her younger siblings and her parents are listening to the radio, Aunt Leah suddenly bursts in and starts having hysterics about it being the end of the world! It takes Willie Bea’s parents a while to get a clear answer from Aunt Leah about why she’s so upset. When she recovers enough to explain things, she says that she was listening to the radio, and she heard that Martians have invaded New Jersey! She describes the horrible, terrifying reports that the radio announcer made about the Martians destroying army troops with their deadly heat ray. Aunt Leah was so terrified by what she heard that she not only turned off the radio but unplugged it, and she says that she’ll never plug it in again, which might be a moot point, if aliens really are here to destroy the world. (If you know what was infamously broadcast on Halloween 1938, you know what Leah heard and that it’s not what she thinks it is.)

While Willie Bea’s parents are trying to decide what to make of Aunt Leah’s story, Willie Bea’s Uncle Jimmy arrives. He says that the rest of the family has also heard what Aunt Leah heard and that they’re all gathering at the old family farm. Rumor has it that people have seen the terrible invaders over at the Kelly farm. Willie Bea’s mother gathers the children and heads to the family farm that Willie Bea’s grandparents own to be with the rest of the family, while Willie Bea’s father tries to see if he can find the station that Leah was listening to and hear the reports for himself. It occurs to him that it might not be an invasion of the Martians but could actually be Germans and German war machines because they’ve all heard about the Nazi takeover of Germany, and he remembers the horrible Hindenburg disaster. If Germans could make a blimp that explodes into a fiery terror like that, then he thinks maybe they could make something that resembles an alien invasion.

At her grandparents’ farm, Willie Bea watches as various relatives panic, cluster around the radio, trade rumors, and try to figure what’s going on. Rumor has it that there are Martians on the Kelly farm, so Willie Bea convinces young Toughy Clay to go over there and try to see them for themselves. At Willie Bea’s insistence, they use the stilts that the children like to walk on to give themselves longer legs, so they can get there faster. Nothing is as it seems this Halloween, and Willie Bea’s expedition to see the Martians definitely doesn’t go as planned.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including a short picture book version).

My Reaction

Almost of the characters in this book are African American. I don’t think it’s ever stated directly because there’s no need in the story to describe them, compared to anyone else, but I think it’s subtly implied. There is only one point in the story where race is mentioned at all, and that’s when Willie Bea is hurt, and the doctor comes to see her. Willie Bea describes the doctor as an old man who delivered most of the babies in her family and knows everybody in the community, and she says that he visits everyone, black or white, rich or poor. Willie Bea’s family is at the poorer end of the community because the doctor knows that people like them don’t normally call the doctor unless it’s something that they really can’t handle by themselves.

I found the family relationships in the story confusing at first. The kids are all referred to by nicknames, and when they are first introduced, it’s difficult to keep it straight who is whose sibling and who is a cousin, and who is older and who is younger. At least, that’s how it seemed to me. Relationships are explained gradually as the story continues, along with characters’ real names as well as nicknames, but it takes some time to get to the explanations.

The story has a slow start, and the real adventure doesn’t begin until about halfway through the book. In some ways, it’s a coming of age story for Willie Bea because she finds herself seeing her family in ways that she never has before, becoming more aware of different sides of their personalities and gaining more insights into their relationships with each other. She also comes to see firsthand what her father means about the stunts that she and her cousins pull and how she should never assume that they can’t get hurt just because they haven’t before. Much of this book is what I would call “slice of life”, a sort of glimpse into Halloweens of the past in a rural community, especially one particular Halloween that would have been memorable for anyone who was alive at the time in the United States.

The radio broadcast that has Willie Bea’s family and others in the community panicking over an alien invasion is The War of the Worlds, a play based on the novel of the same name by H. G. Wells. This type of panic over this particular radio performance was a real, historical incident because the radio play was presented in the format of news broadcasts at the time, and some people who tuned into the program late misunderstood what they were hearing and thought that it was a real news broadcast about an actual emergency. It wasn’t a widespread panic because, first, people who started listening to the broadcast from its beginning knew what they were listening to, and second, not everyone was listening to the broadcast at all. Still, there was enough panic over the radio performance that it became newsworthy and has become a piece of American history and lore.

I enjoyed the historical details in the story, particularly all the radio play references throughout the story. Willie Bea’s family likes to listen to radio shows, and I’m familiar with some of them because I also enjoy old radio plays. Her family likes to listen to The Shadow and Little Orphan Annie. Willie Bea likes to amuse her siblings by imitating people from the radio, singing theme songs and reciting jokes from Jack Benny, like the famous “your money or your life” joke.

Posted on by TracyC

The UFO Mystery

The UFO Mystery by Mary Blount Christian, illustrated by Joe Boddy, 1989.

This book is part of the Sherlock Street Detectives series.

Halloween is approaching, and the Sherlock Street Detectives are talking about their costumes. David is going to be a bear, and he made his costume out of an old rug. Pedro is going to be a clown. Walter and Ann, who are twins, refuse to tell anyone what their costumes are because they want it to be a surprise.

Then, David says that he has to go home because it’s dinnertime, and after dinner, he’s going to look for a comet with his telescope. Pedro says that he’s never used a telescope before and asks if he can look, too. David says he can, and Pedro says that he will come back to his house when it’s dark.

When David and Pedro meet to use the telescope, David shows Pedro how to use a star map to find the constellations. While Pedro is looking through the telescope, he thinks that he sees a UFO! At first, David doesn’t believe him. It’s too early to see the comet, so he thinks maybe Pedro saw a meteor. Pedro insists that it was a UFO, and David points out that UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object. That means that anything that “unidentified” can be a UFO. Pedro can’t identify exactly what it was he saw, but that only means that he didn’t recognize the object. It doesn’t have to be an alien spacecraft, just some normal thing he didn’t recognize, like a meteor, a comet, or even just a firefly.

Since David’s dad works for NASA, Pedro says that they should ask him if it could have been a comet other than the one they were expecting to see. However, David’s dad confirms that there should only have been one comet that night and that the comet should have been in a different part of the sky. The boys talk about getting Walter and Ann to help them investigate, but then, they see some strange creatures in the bushes!

What did Pedro really see through the telescope, and could those weird creatures really be aliens?

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

My Reaction

This is fun mystery picture book! Figuring out what/who the aliens are is the easiest part of the mystery, since this is before Halloween and the twins were being mysterious about what their costumes are, although it might seem harder to young children. The answer to what Pedro thought he saw through the telescope is revealed first, although I wasn’t entirely sure what to think of it myself. At first, I thought that the “aliens” might have been throwing around some glowing toy or something, but they would have to have thrown it really high to get it in front of the telescope because the boys were using the telescope on the roof. There’s a perfectly logical explanation behind the phenomenon, and David figures it out by noting where the object was and it was moving. David’s father confirms David’s guess with a call to NASA.

One of the nice things about this simple mystery story is that it introduces some real concepts for stargazers and amateur astronomers. There is a vocabulary list and glossary in the back of the book.

This series also offers good representations for racial diversity. Racial issues don’t enter into the story. The kids are just a bunch of kids who happen to live in the same neighborhood and are friends and like to solve mysteries, but they are a mixed racial group, and that’s nice to see. David is black, Pedro is Hispanic, and the twins are white. The children’s races are not referred to in the text of the story, but they are shown in the pictures.

Posted on by TracyC

The Halloween Play

The Halloween Play by Felicia Bond, 1983.

Halloween is coming, and the students in Roger’s class at school are preparing for their Halloween play. The class rehearses their play every day, and they make invitations to the play to send out to people in town.

On the night of the play, the school’s auditorium is full of people waiting to watch the play, and Roger waits backstage for his turn to go on stage. He doesn’t have a big role in the play, but his role is important.

The other students in Roger’s class go on stage, dressed as witches, ghosts, and skeletons. They perform the songs and dances they’ve rehearsed. The audience laughs at the funny parts, and everyone is enjoying the play.

All the time, Roger is backstage, listening and preparing for his part. He counts down the lines until the moment comes when Roger steps on stage for the play’s finale!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

I remember reading this book when I was a little kid, and it was a Halloween favorite of mine! Felicia Bond is better known today as the illustrator (but not the author) of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, which was originally published two years after this particular picture book. The art style between the two books is noticeably similar, but the book about the Halloween play is different because this is about mice who live like people and do not interact with humans. I was also amused that one of the student mice in this book was dressed in an orange shirt with a black zig-zag and black shorts, like the cartoon character Charlie Brown, who wears a yellow shirt with a black zig-zag and black shorts. The tv special It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was known for popularizing the concept of Halloween tv specials, and Roger the mouse plays a large pumpkin in his class’s Halloween play, although Roger isn’t the mouse wearing the Charlie Brown style clothes. Roger is the one in the sweater with an R on the front. I was just amused by this little detail in the pictures of his class.

This picture book is a sweet little story about a mouse boy and the Halloween play given by his class. School plays on a wide variety of themes are a common experience for human children attending both public and private schools, and they are often memorable points in children’s school experiences. They can also be very emotional experiences. Students can be nervous about plays and being on stage in front of an audience, and sometimes, there are conflicts about which students get the best parts. This cute little picture book doesn’t have any drama in it and doesn’t talk about stage fright, although there are other children’s books that address these issues.

Instead, the story is more about a magical evening and the small but important role played by one particular student. Much of the story shows the build-up to the play, and when the play begins, Roger only appears on stage at the end of the play. The rest of the time, he’s listening to the other students from back stage, waiting for his cue to step into the spotlight. We don’t know exactly what the play is about, but it’s not that important. Those quiet moments of anticipation backstage are magical, and Roger will never forget how exciting this evening has been!

Posted on by TracyC

Everyone Goes as a Pumpkin

Everyone Goes as a Pumpkin by Judith Vigna, 1977.

Emily thinks that she has the best costume for the upcoming Halloween party! It’s a beautiful dress that makes her feel elegant and magical.

Emily takes the costume on the bus to show her grandmother, but somehow, the box with the costume in it disappears during the ride. Emily is upset at losing the costume and doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t want to go to the party as something ordinary, like a pumpkin.

Then, her grandmother suggests that she just go as herself. As herself, Emily is truly unique!

My Reaction

I liked the grandmother’s unorthodox solution to the problem of the missing costume. I can understand a kid loving a particular costume so much that it seems like nothing else will do, but showing Emily that she’s just fine going to the party as herself is a good way to show her that she is just fine as she is, just being herself. Emily would have liked going with the costume she loved, but she doesn’t need any costume in particular because she is good enough by herself.

Posted on by TracyC

Spooky Sleepover

Eagle-Eye Ernie

The Spooky Sleepover by Susan Pearson, 1991.

A couple of weeks before Halloween, Ernie decides to have a sleepover party for her friends. The kids enjoy scaring each other with ghost stories, and a thunderstorm adds to the spooky atmosphere.

Michael, in particular, keeps insisting that an old witch called Mrs. Maloney used to live in Ernie’s house with a bunch of cats. When spooky things happen during the course of the evening, Michael says that Mrs. Maloney and her cats have returned to haunt Ernie’s house. The kids try to stay up until midnight because ghosts are supposed to appear at midnight, but there’s no telling what they might actually see.

The kids fall asleep, but they wake up around midnight when they hear a crashing sound from the basement. Although they are afraid, they take their flashlights and go down to see what it is. Will they find a ghost?

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

My Reaction

This is one of those stories that has a pretty simple explanation, but the adventure seems bigger to the kids because their imaginations run away with them. I remember liking this series when I was a kid, and I think this is one of the books I read back then. I liked the creepy-cozy atmosphere of the story. Even though the kids have been scaring each other with ghost stories, they’re still just at a sleepover in an ordinary, safe house, and there’s nothing there that is harmful. It’s that kind of safe scariness that Halloween represents to young kids. They can enjoy the spookiness, knowing that there’s a logical explanation for everything. Adults and older kids will figure out pretty quickly what’s really going on.