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Mystery of the Angry Idol

Mystery of the Angry Idol by Phyllis A. Whitney, 1965.

Janice Pendleton is sad and nervous because the rest of her family will be moving overseas for at least a year, and she is staying in the United States to go to school. Her father is a consultant to the government, and his latest assignment is in Saigon in Vietnam. (This book is set contemporary to the time when it was written, in the 1960s. The Vietnam War lasted from 1955 to 1975, which is probably why Jan’s father is going there, although he is going as some kind of government consultant instead of an ordinary soldier. This book was written after the Bay of Pigs Invasion and President Johnson’s continuing escalation of the conflict in Vietnam.) However, things are dangerous in Saigon, so Jan’s mother and younger brothers, a pair of twins, will be living in Okinawa, Japan, so her father will able to visit them sometimes. (There’s a US Air Force base in Okinawa, Japan, and I know it existed and was in operation during the 1960s because, coincidentally, my older cousin was born there while my uncle was stationed in Japan in the 1960s. The book doesn’t mention this, but I thought I’d tell you that there’s an American presence there, including civilian relatives of military personnel, so Jan’s mother and brothers will likely be among other Americans during their stay there.) Twelve-year-old Jan could have gone to Japan with them, but she is much more advanced in school than her young brothers. They are so young than their education won’t be disrupted much by living in another country for a year or two, but Jan is older, and her family was worried about her losing her place in school.

Instead of going to Japan, Jan will be living with her grandmother and great-grandmother in Mystic, Connecticut and attending school there while her family is gone. It’s summer now, so until school starts, she will be spending her time adjusting to her new living situation and getting to know her relatives. Jan doesn’t know her grandmother very well, and she’s never even met her great-grandmother before. At least when she’s with them, she will be with family. However, her grandmother is a little worried about her great-grandmother’s health. Great-grandmother Althea doesn’t really leave her upstairs rooms anymore, and although she was much more lively and interested in people when she was younger, she doesn’t seem to have much stamina for meeting and talking to people these days. Jan is told that she will have to be careful and behave herself because, if she upsets her great-grandmother too much, she won’t be allowed to stay with them in Connecticut anymore. Instead, she would have to attend a boarding school in Boston. If she goes to Boston, she will be there alone, without any friends and family nearby, and she is nervous about that. She already knows that, by going to Connecticut, she will be removed from her parents and siblings and her friends in California, where she grew up.

To help her feel better, her father tells her more about her family’s history and great-grandmother Althea. When she was younger, Althea traveled through Asia because her father, Jan’s great-great-grandfather, was a merchant dealing in Asian art. (This is very similar to what the author’s father did for a living and why she spent most of her youth in Asia. More about that below.) Althea spent years living in China with her parents while her father bought and commissioned pieces of Chinese art and sculpture that he could sell and collect for himself. However, after her mother died, Althea was sent to a boarding school in Boston. Her father was later killed during the Boxer Rebellion. Althea was in China at the time when they realized that trouble was coming. She survived and escaped to the United States because her father sent her to stay with some friends of his. She took some of the smaller pieces from his collection with her.

Now, Great-grandmother Althea has an impressive collection of Asian art herself, including some of the pieces that she managed to smuggle out of China when she had to flee. There is one piece in her collection that seems particularly mysterious, an ugly statue in the style of a Chinese idol that she keeps turned to the wall. (The “idol” was never used as an object of worship, for those worried that Althea’s father may have looted a temple or appropriated a Chinese national treasure of some kind. Althea says that one of his artist friends made the statue specifically for him. It’s important to the story that it is in the style of an idol but that it is also genuinely ugly and of little intrinsic value.) Jan’s father implies that there is some kind of mystery surrounding that statue, but he doesn’t really explain what it is. Jan’s father worries a little about Althea because she always used to be such a lively woman, and he says that, in her old age, she has become a kind of hermit who has shut herself away from the world and lives like a “vegetable.” He hopes that Jan’s youthful presence in the house will help her become more interested in life again, although Jan doesn’t see how that can happen when she risks being sent away to boarding school if she “bothers” Althea too much.

When Jan arrives in Connecticut, everything is awkward because she doesn’t get her own room in the house. Instead, she has to sleep on a cot in the living room. Her great-grandmother doesn’t even want to see her right away. There is a storm that night, and Jan has trouble sleeping. The next day, she sees a neighbor boy outside and decides to try making friends with him because she really needs someone her own age to talk to. The boy, Neil, doesn’t seem entirely friendly, but he does talk to her down by the nearby boat dock. He tells her that, the night before, he noticed a strange, suspicious-looking man hanging around her family’s house, and he wonders if anything from the house was stolen. Jan says that she doesn’t think so and that she didn’t hear anyone come in, but because of the noise from the storm, it’s hard to say for sure if someone tried to get into the house. Neil points out that the mysterious stranger is still hanging around the house, and Jan sees a man with a beard hanging around nearby.

Their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of a boy in a boat. Neil and the boy in the boat don’t seem to like each other, and the boy in the boat seems to immediately resent Jan for talking to Neil. He tells her that she’d better not try to get into his boat because Neil tried to get in uninvited earlier. Jan is insulted by this rude boy and returns to her relatives’ house. There, she learns two surprising things. The first is that the boy with the boat, Patrick, is actually the son of Mrs. Marshall, the housekeeper, so they will be seeing a lot of each other. Jan’s grandmother had hoped that Jan and Patrick would be friends. (So far, they haven’t gotten off to a good start.) The second is that it looks like something may have been stolen from the house last night. The mysterious statue is missing. Jan tells her grandmother and Patrick about the strange man that she saw and what Neil said. Her grandmother has trouble believing that a theft really occurred. She thinks that great-grandmother Althea may have just moved the statue and forgotten, but Patrick is interested in the mysterious man.

When Jan goes upstairs to meet her great-grandmother for the first time, she discovers that Althea is not the “vegetable” that she’s been lead to expect. Althea is physically feeble and stays upstairs because her knees are bad and can’t handle stairs anymore. However, she is mentally sharp and highly observant. She talks to Jan about her family’s past and her own past. She understands that Jan didn’t really want to come to Mystic and be separated from her family, but her father wanted her to come and learn more about her family’s history. Althea explains that she spent a large part of her youth living in Shanghai until her mother’s death, when her father sent her to a school in Boston, and she really hated it. This is reassuring because Althea is less likely to send Jan away, remembering her own youth.

Althea also explains that she isn’t unhappy with her relatively isolated life in the upper rooms of the house, surrounded by the pieces of Asian art in her collection. She says that it’s just another phase of life. Life moves in phases, and a person knows when they’re ready for the next phase. When she was a little girl, she loved paper dolls and couldn’t imagine life without them, but as she got older, playing with paper dolls became dull, and she was ready for new activities. Similarly, when she was young and active, she couldn’t imagine a life without travel and meeting other people. Now that she can’t get around as well as she used to, she has entered a new phase of life where she enjoys quiet time alone and thinking and remembering. She is still somewhat in touch with the world because her rooms have a nice view of the Mystic Seaport, but she no longer has to deal with crowds and traffic and bothersome household chores and schedules. Jan is still young and active, so she has trouble fully understanding Althea’s isolated life of reflection, but Althea says that she will understand someday, when she’s ready for that phase herself.

Jan is interested in the objects in Althea’s collection, and Althea shows her some pieces and explains a little about their history. There are some pieces of scrimshaw that Jan’s great-grandfather carved himself, like a carving of a woman’s hand that Althea says was originally meant as a paperweight but which she had mounted on the head of one of her canes. Her other cane has a carved cat. Althea also owns a chess board with red and white pieces made of ivory and cinnabar, with the figures carved in an Asian style. Jan notices an empty shelf in the room and wonders if that’s where the missing statue is supposed to be.

While Jan and her grandmother are standing on an upper porch, looking at the view, they look down and see the mysterious man talking to Mrs. Marshall, who seems worried and upset. Mrs. Marshall and the man notice that they’re being watched, and the man waves to Althea and greets her. Even though the greeting is friendly, the man seems to upset Althea. When Jan asks about him and tells Althea what Neil said, Althea says that the man’s name is Eddie. She loved Eddie when he was a little boy, but she thinks he’s become a scoundrel. She says that Eddie came to see her the night before, but she didn’t want to see him and sent him away. Althea thinks he probably took the missing Chinese idol, but she also says that she always hated that statue. It had such a reproachful expression on its face that she turned it to the wall so she wouldn’t have to see it. Rather than dealing with Eddie or discussing the situation further, Althea says that she would rather just forget about it all.

Jan spends more time with Althea, until Althea gets tired. Althea shows Jan other pieces from her father’s collection of jade objects, explaining the different colors of jade and their relative values and the connections the pieces in the collection have to Chinese folklore and mythology. She says that her daughter-in-law, Jan’s grandmother, worries about robbers breaking into the house to steal these things, but Althea prefers to keep her collection close rather than locked away somewhere. The pieces in the collection bring back happy memories for her.

Jan’s grandmother owns a book store in a local historical district. When Jan goes to see the book store, her grandmother allows her to explore the area and tells her to be sure to visit Patrick’s grandfather at the rope walk (the place where they make rope). Jan goes there and encounters Eddie again. Eddie seems to want to speak to her, but Jan is afraid of him and avoids him. Grandfather Marshall had just been arguing with Eddie, and he’s in a bad mood when Jan darts inside. At first, he snaps at her when she rushes in. When Jan introduces herself and explains that she was startled by Eddie, Grandfather Marshall calms down and apologizes for snapping at her. Jan tries to ask him more about Eddie, but all he says is that he doesn’t want to talk to him, and he advises her to keep avoiding him. He shows her around the rope walk and explains to her how rope is made, and he also shows her a model ship he’s making for Althea that looks like the sailboat her husband used to own called the Happy Heart.

On her way back to her grandmother’s book store, Jan meets Eddie again. He explains to her that he’s actually Patrick’s older brother and the black sheep of their family. He also used to be friends with Jan’s father when they were both young, although Jan’s father was older than he was. Eddie badly wants to communicate with Patrick. He asks Jan if she’ll take a message to Patrick for him, and he hands her a note, leaving quickly before she can say anything. Jan shows the note to her grandmother and asks her what she should do about it. Without going into specifics, Jan’s grandmother says that Eddie was always a wild child, and years ago, he did something that was very scandalous, and he had to leave town. That’s why most people in town don’t want to see him or talk about him in public, although there’s been plenty of private gossip about what he did. The Marshalls have been friends with the Pendletons for years, and Jan’s grandmother thinks that it’s probably time to forgive and forget what Eddie did, which is why she doesn’t want to pass on gossip about him and make things harder for him and his family. She tells Jan that it’s fine to give Patrick the note from Eddie.

Jan’s delivery of the note thaws her relationship with Patrick a little, and he gives her a ride back across the river to her family’s home in his boat. There, Mrs. Marshall tells Jan that, because her meeting with her great-grandmother went well, Althea has decided that she can be trusted, so she will now have a room upstairs in the house. Jan just needs to be quiet whenever she’s upstairs because Althea likes to nap. Jan begins to feel a little more at home and less like an awkward visitor.

However, strange things are still happening in and around the house. Eddie is still lurking around, and nobody wants to tell Jan what he did to turn himself into such a black sheep. She overhears a late night conversation between Althea and Eddie where the two of them seem to be discussing secrets and playing cat and mouse with each other. Yet, Althea gives Eddie a job doing yard work and seems to be trying to help him redeem himself. He returns the statue that Althea never liked but seems to take other things. Althea tries to send him away when he causes problems, but he insists on hanging around and claims that he’s trying to help Althea. Like others, he believes that there is a secret behind the ugly statue that seems to make Althea nervous, although Althea doesn’t think that the statue contains any real mystery.

As Jan struggles to understand what’s happening around her, she risks getting on the bad side of the reclusive and temperamental Althea just as her great-grandmother seems like she’s becoming fond of her. The Pendleton house isn’t entirely a happy one, and the reasons why are buried in Althea’s past as well as Eddie’s. The clues have been right in front of Althea the entire time, but although Althea is intelligent and thinks she understands everything, there’s something critical that she’s overlooked all along, which changes everything.

My Reaction and Spoilers

Background of the Book

Many of the themes of Phyllis A. Whitney‘s juvenile mysteries come from her own life. When she was young, she lived with her family in Japan and other countries in Asia because her own father was working overseas. She was born in Japan, and her middle initial stands for Ayame (the Japanese form of the name Iris). Whitney’s parents were American, but she didn’t live in the United States until she was a teenager. Both of her parents died while she was a teenager, and she went to live with an aunt in Chicago, so she understood the feelings that kids could have, moving around, living in different countries, being separated from parents, and living with relatives. Because of her upbringing in Asia, many of her books, even those set in the United States, include some mention or aspects of Asian art or culture, especially Japan.

I think both Jan and Althea are reflections of the author and her life. They both share some aspects of their lives with the author, but Jan is probably more like the author in her youth, and Althea is the older version, looking back on her life and remembering what it was like to be young with the knowledge of what it’s like to be old.

The Atmosphere

I really liked the atmosphere of the story! It’s a lovely, old-fashioned house. Althea’s museum-like collection room is fascinating, and the room that she gives to Jan is cozy. Jan’s upstairs room has rosebud wallpaper and a four-poster bed and rocking chair. The room is a little worn and shabby, but Jan loves it. Her grandmother gives her milk and gingerbread on a china plate decorated with violets as a bedtime snack, and she reads old-fashioned children’s books, like A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Jan doesn’t usually read older children’s books, but there’s a collection of them in the house, left by the generations of children in her family who had grown up there.

Relationships

When Jan first meets Neil and Patrick, she realizes that neither of them is really the ideal friend for her. She continues to associate with them partly because she can’t help it. They’re both always around because Patrick’s mother is the housekeeper at Jan’s relatives’ house, and Neil’s family lives next door. Also, Jan doesn’t have anyone else her own age to talk to, although she is realistic and thinks that she should look for other friends in this town because both of the boys are difficult in different ways. Patrick is impulsive and temperamental (a bit like his grandfather the day Jan meets him – snapping at her just because he’s in a bad mood at someone else), and he has a chip on his shoulder because of his brother’s troubles.

However, Neil is even more temperamental. Jan quickly notices how Neil’s mood can abruptly shift from pleasant to irritable and how he doesn’t seem to have much compassion for other people. She later realizes that he’s most charming when he wants something from her or someone else. Neil’s ambition in life is to be a radio interviewer. His uncle is a radio announcer and has encouraged Neil’s ambition. Neil’s hobby is interviewing people and recording his interviews for practice. Some of his teachers have found his interviews fascinating and have played them in class because, while he has never interviewed anyone famous, Neil has interviewed people who have done some really interesting things, like the janitor who was once a prisoner of war during WWII. Neil’s also a little sensitive about his interviews because his father doesn’t think much about his ambitions and would rather that Neil go into his business when he grows up, and sometimes, other kids tease him. Part of the reason why Neil is interested in being friends with Jan is that he would love to interview her great-grandmother because she had a fascinating early life in China. He is also aware that there is some secret about the angry-looking idol in her collection, which she has always felt compelled to keep even though she doesn’t like it. Neil is obsessed with his life’s ambition and is willing to do just about anything to promote it. He also has a chip on his shoulder toward Patrick and Eddie and others who have made fun of what’s important to him and tried to discourage him from doing what he wants to do.

In the end, as Jan comes to know the two boys better and both confronts them over their behavior and helps them through the troubling situations they have, the relationships between the three of them improve. After everything that happens, they all come to realize that each of them has done something wrong or misjudged someone else. This doesn’t completely absolve any of them from things they’ve done because some of them could have had serious consequences for other people as well as themselves. There are things that each of them has to do to make things right, but because each of them has something they need to do to fix things, something to learn, or something they need to apologize for, they realize that they are willing to let each other make amends and to accept each other’s efforts to change. These feelings also extend to others in the story, especially Althea and Eddie. Everyone in the story has misjudged someone or the situation, and everyone has something they need to learn, understand, and change.

Happiness and Redemption

Themes about happiness and redemption run all the way through the story. Eddie’s part of the story focuses on redemption. Part of his troubles are of his own making, but Jan learns that he’s also been falsely accused and badly misjudged. Like others in his family, he has a quick temper and needs more impulse control, and he used to be pretty wild and hung out with a bad crowd. What others know about him and are initially reluctant to tell Jan is that Eddie went to prison for being involved in a robbery and is now out on parole. However, as both Patrick and Eddie explain, Eddie wasn’t actually involved in the robbery. Some of the friends he used to hang out with did it, and they implicated him out of spite when they got caught because he refused to go along with their plan. Althea believed him when he said he didn’t do the robbery and paid for his legal defense, but he was convicted anyway because of his history with the people who committed the crime and because witnesses misidentified him as one of the people who was there.

Althea still doesn’t really believe Eddie was involved in the robbery, but she does know that he causes trouble because he lacks self-control and has lingering resentment about the way people look at him because of the trouble he’s been in. Eddie later says that he’s unfriendly to other people because they’re not friendly with him, although I think it’s fair to point out that people believe badly of him because he’s lived the kind of life where everything he’s been accused of doing are completely credible. That means that, even before he was falsely accused of robbery, the way he lived and the way he treated other people made almost everyone he knows in his home town willing to believe that he was a criminal. There seem to have been significant lifestyle and behavioral choices on Eddie’s part that created his bad boy image and led up to this situation. He may not look at it this way, but he kind of set himself up almost as much as his supposed friends did because of the choices he made with his life, his choice of friends, and his neglect of people who once might have believed in him. Even his own parents believe the worst of him at the beginning of the story, and the way he’s been acting ever since he reappeared in Mystic supports the view that he’s still the kind of person he used to be and people think he is.

As my grandfather used to say, it’s easier to keep a good reputation than to redeem a bad one. It’s not impossible to redeem a bad reputation, but it takes both work and time, and Eddie doesn’t have much patience with the people whose patience he’s already exhausted. He’s only just reappeared in town, but he’s already angry that people are looking at him suspiciously for just showing up. He’s upset that other people aren’t giving him a chance or instant forgiveness and acceptance, but at the same time, he really isn’t giving them much of a chance to see that he’s changed or giving himself enough time to demonstrate that change. Fortunately, some people, like Jan’s grandmother, are willing to drop the matter and give Eddie the chance to prove that he’s changed, and Althea tries to help Eddie by giving him jobs and letting him stay with them in the house for a while.

For a while, Eddie tries to prove that he’s a hard worker and a steady person, but, when Eddie loses his temper with Neil for carelessly wrecking his yard work while trying to catch his runaway dog and turns the garden hose on Neil, Miss Althea starts to think that she’s made a mistake. She craves peace and solitude, and Eddie is one disaster and temper explosion after another. At one point, she tries to send him away, telling him that it would be easier for him to start over somewhere else, where people don’t know his history, and he can cultivate a completely new life and image. Eddie moves out of her house, but he refuses to leave town. He has another job now, thanks to Althea’s recommendation, and he refuses to leave town as if he’s in disgrace when he hasn’t done anything wrong. I didn’t really like Eddie, particularly in the beginning, because he doesn’t really see the way he has made his own reputation and provoked other people, but I think his redeeming characteristics are his determination and perseverance. His attempts to change his reputation are clumsy and impatient. I think he expects too much of other people too soon as he tries to rebuild his relationships with the people he’s offended and pushed away before, but I appreciate that he still cares enough to keep trying until he gets it right.

In facing up to the situation with Eddie and with Jan’s clumsy efforts to figure out what’s going on and make things right, Althea also comes to some realizations about herself and the way she’s been living. Enjoying some solitude and a slower pace of life is fine as a person gets older, but Althea comes to the realization that the way she’s been going about it has been selfish and has cut her off from the people around her. She is out of touch with the lives of people who were once close to her and has failed to understand them and appreciate what they’re going through because of her determination to avoid becoming involved with other people’s problems or deal with anything unpleasant.

The reason why she doesn’t like the ugly statue is because her father carved a message in the back of it, telling her to find a “happy heart.” The theme of happiness used to be one of her father’s favorite topics of discussion when he was alive, and he often lectured her on how to be happy. Althea never liked it when he would lecture that happiness is based on the way a person lives and the choices they make, pointing out times when her own choices or priorities were making her unhappy. She always thought that her father sent her that ugly statue with the “happy heart” message before his death because he wanted to tell her, yet again, to be happy, and she felt like the statue’s ugly snarl was like a rebuke every time she wasn’t happy or made bad decisions. Being lectured and rebuked doesn’t make a person feel good when they’re already feeling bad, as Eddie knows from his experiences. However, Jan and Althea both come to realize that Althea has misunderstood her father’s message and intentions on multiple levels for most of her life.

Althea gets extremely upset one day when Jan says that someone tried to steal one of her most precious jade statues. At first, Jan’s grandmother thinks that Jan’s imagination is running away with her and that her presence in the house is too disturbing for Althea to handle, talking again about sending Jan to boarding school, but Althea later explains that Jan isn’t the reason why she’s upset. She’s upset with herself. She realizes that Jan was wrong about the person taking the statue because she herself had given the statue to Eddie, telling him to sell it to get money to start over somewhere else. However, part of the reason Eddie wants to stay in town is to help Althea, to pay her back for paying his legal bills when he was in trouble. When she sees that either Eddie or Patrick returned the statue because Eddie cares more about struggling to restore his reputation and relationships than about money, she feels terrible that she tried to bribe Eddie to leave out of her own selfish desires.

Happiness and peace of mind can’t be bought, either with money or precious objects, and it doesn’t come from avoiding the parts of life that are unpleasant. Happiness comes from embracing life, all of it, even the parts that are hard, and from maintaining meaningful relationships with people you love, even through their struggles. You have to take the bad with the good to experience life fully. Once Althea comes to these revelations about the life that she’s been living and the life she really wants to live, she feels the peace of mind she’s been seeking and no longer fears the gaze of the statue or the rebukes that she thought that her father was giving her through the statue. Her life doesn’t have to be perfect, every choice she makes doesn’t have to be perfect, other people don’t have to be perfect, and her happiness doesn’t have to be perfect and constant for it to be real happiness. However, there are a couple of other mysteries surrounding the story that Jan manages to clear up, including the fact that Althea’s father had something else in mind with his last message. Althea was so sure she knew what her father was telling her that she didn’t look deeper, but Jan does and discovers the treasure that Althea has been ignoring the whole time.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Gulls

The Mystery of the Gulls by Phyllis Whitney, 1949.

Taffy Saunders and her mother are heading to Mackinac Island for the summer while Taffy’s father is in the hospital, recovering from a car accident. Taffy’s mother’s Aunt Martha has recently passed away, and she left the hotel she owned to Taffy’s mother. It’s a strange bequest because Aunt Martha hadn’t gotten along with her niece for years because she had disapproved of her marriage. There is also a condition on the inheritance. In order to retain ownership of the hotel, Taffy’s mother has to run it herself for a summer. Taffy thinks that it all sounds strange and mysterious, but her mother says that her aunt was an eccentric, and it was often difficult to understand why she did some of the things she did.

Taffy’s mother worries that something will go wrong over the summer that will prevent her from owning the hotel. It isn’t really that Taffy’s mother wants to be a hotel keeper, but since Taffy’s father’s accident, they’ve spent most of their money on medical bills. When he gets out of the hospital, he won’t be able to do his old job, which involved a lot of travel, so they’re going to have to settle down in a new city. Taffy is happy about living a more settled life than they used to live, but they’re going to need all the money they can get to buy a new home. Taffy’s mother is hoping to sell the hotel to pay their bills and buy a new home, but she can’t do that unless she can prove that she can manage the hotel first. Mrs. Saunders is hoping that her aunt’s long-time housekeeper, Mrs. Tuckerman, will help her make this summer a success, while Taffy is hoping that Mrs. Tuckerman’s daughter, Donna, will be a friend for her. Because their family has moved a lot, Taffy hasn’t had many opportunities to make and keep friends.

On the boat ride to Mackinac (which they point out is pronounced “Mackinaw” by locals), Taffy meets a boy about her age, David Marsh, who is going to Mackinac to visit his grandmother, and they talk about the sights to see on the island. There is an old fort on the island that is now a historic site for tourists, and David offers to show Taffy around. He tells her where his grandmother’s house is and says that she can come see him there, or he’ll come to the hotel, Sunset House, to see her.

When Taffy sees Sunset House, she thinks it’s charming. The hotel is a large, old house with turrets, cupolas, and a widow’s walk. Mackinac Island in general seems charming. Cars are not allowed on the island, so people get around with horses, carriages, and bicycles. Taffy’s mother talks about wanting to “wake this place up”, but Taffy thinks that the calm, sleepy atmosphere is right for the house and doesn’t want to disturb it. Since Taffy has moved a great deal with her parents because of her dad’s job, she has lived in many hotels and apartments, and she finds the old-fashioned and comfortable furniture at Sunset House to be homey. Taffy thinks that the home-like atmosphere of Sunset House is a nice change and that she will like it there. The room she shares with her mother is beautiful, also filled with old-fashioned furniture and a charming alcove with a lovely view.

It seems like Aunt Martha’s usual guests prefer the place quiet, too. The first guests that they meet are the Twig sisters, a pair of elderly ladies who are at first concerned about a new child in the house. Until Taffy arrived, the only child at Sunset House was Donna, who is described as a quiet child. Aunt Martha only rented rooms to adults with no children. Taffy learns that Donna, who is about her age, is usually never even allowed to bring other children to visit her. Taffy feels sorry for Donna and hopes that she will want to be friends as much as she does.

Besides Mrs. Tuckerman, the housekeeper, there is also a cook named Celeste. When Taffy and her mother first arrive, they are told that Celeste hasn’t prepared lunch because she’s been seeing “omens.” Apparently, this is something that she does periodically, and Mrs. Tuckerman thinks that, this time, it’s just because she’s upset about Mrs. Saunders arriving. There are three other people who also work in the kitchen, but they all seem pretty useless without Celeste’s direction. Fortunately, Mrs. Saunders is a woman of action, so she immediately takes charge of making sandwiches for lunch. To speed things up, she even offers to let guests come to the kitchen to make their own sandwiches, any kind they want, if they wish to. Although Mrs. Tuckerman isn’t sure that will work, lunch turns out fine. However, Taffy has a strange encounter with Celeste in the garden.

In the garden, Celeste asks Taffy what word the gulls are saying. Taffy did have the feeling before that the gulls are saying a word, and it sounds like the word “help” to her. Celeste says that’s what she thought, and she says that’s a sign that a storm is coming. Her fear of the bad storm coming is why she feels like she can’t cook, and it bothers her that nobody else seems to understand, implying that there is impending doom. Taffy shows Celeste a map that David drew to his grandmother’s house, which she is having trouble understanding. Celeste explains to her how to get to the house, and she also mentions a shortcut, but she warns Taffy not to take the shortcut after dark because it goes through a “goblin wood.”

Taffy meets Donna for the first time at lunch. Donna is a shy girl, but she is glad that Taffy is there because she has spent much of her time alone since children are not usually allowed at Sunset House. Taffy asks Donna about Celeste and what she means about the “goblin wood.” Donna explains that Celeste and her family have lived on Mackinac for a long time because they are descended from fur traders (this is why Celeste has a French name, although the book doesn’t mention it directly) and Native Americans (the book uses the word “Indians”). Because of this heritage, Celeste has a lot of superstitions about the island and the spirits that supposedly inhabit it. Taffy doesn’t believe in spirits, but she can’t resist taking the shortcut to David’s grandmother’s house, just to see what it’s like. She has an odd encounter in the woods with a Native American boy (called an “Indian”) wearing overalls, who refuses to speak to her and seems hostile toward her.

When Taffy sees David, she tells him everything about Celeste and her encounter in the “goblin wood.” David says that he’s taken the shortcut through the woods many times without a problem, and he never had any reason to think that it might be haunted. Taffy is a little insulted at his comment that maybe girls get scared easier than boys, and David explains that the boy might not have been as unfriendly as she thought because her imagination might just have been fueled by Celeste’s stories, so she was primed for something scary or sinister to happen. They reconsider that theory when the two of them walk back through the “goblin wood” and find a note left on a tree, telling her that she’s not wanted on the island and that her presence makes the “manito” angry. David says that the “manito” is one of the Native American gods or spirits who supposedly inhabit the island. (This is a real concept in Native American lore, but I’ve seen it spelled “manitou.”) Whoever wrote the note was trying to scare Taffy, but why?

David is intrigued by what Taffy has told him about Celeste and her “omens” and the “goblin wood”, the note left for Taffy, and the unfriendly boy in the overalls (who Taffy sees again, talking to Donna, when she and David try out his grandfather’s binoculars), and he says he is willing to help her investigate further. The two of them work out a code, where Taffy can hang things of different colors in the window of her bedroom to send him messages.

The mystery deepens when Taffy’s mother tells her that there are two vacancies in the hotel after Taffy heard Mrs. Tuckerman turn away a man who wanted a room. There is also a locked room off of Aunt Martha’s old office that Donna says no one is supposed to enter. She says that they can’t even find the key, that no one has seen it since Aunt Martha died. When Taffy talks to her mother, she says that the locked room is a library and that the boy in overalls she’s been seeing is named Henry and that he does odd jobs for the hotel. Taffy tells her mother that it seems like people don’t want them on the island, including Henry, Celeste, and Mrs. Tuckerman. Even Donna has been acting strangely. Even though she said that she was glad Taffy was there, she’s been strangely unfriendly, and she’s been telling her mother that Taffy is the unfriendly one! Taffy thinks that’s really unfair, but her mother thinks that it’s just because everyone is adjusting to the changes since Aunt Martha died. Donna isn’t used to being with other children, and Celeste and Mrs. Tuckerman may be worried about their jobs since the ownership of the hotel depends on how well Mrs. Saunders manages it this summer and what she plans to do with it when she takes full ownership. Taffy and her mother don’t even know what will happen to the hotel if Mrs. Saunders can’t prove that she can manage it well enough. Aunt Martha’s will deliberately keeps the alternate heir secret until the end of the summer.

This is only the beginning of the mysteries and puzzles. Taffy learns that the man Mrs. Tuckerman turned away from the hotel was actually an old friend of Aunt Martha who has worked in hotels in Asia and says he would like to own a hotel of his own. The storm that Celeste predicted comes, and a baby seagull crashes into the window of the Twigs’ room. Celeste thinks that’s another bad omen and that Taffy and her mother should leave. Then, someone leaves a bat skeleton in Miss Twig’s bed. Donna says that Aunt Martha used to collect things like that and that maybe her spirit put the skeleton in the bed because she’s not happy. Of course, Taffy doesn’t believe that. Too many living humans seem unhappy that she and her mother are there. Donna admits that Aunt Martha was originally going to leave the hotel to her mother before the two of them had a quarrel, and Aunt Martha changed her will. Whether Mrs. Tuckerman might still be the alternate heir to the hotel is still unknown. Donna thinks the alternate heir might be some bird society because Aunt Martha was an amateur naturalist with a fondness for birds. Could there be another heir who is hoping to drive Taffy and her mother away so they can have the hotel? Could Donna and her mother still be hoping that the hotel will come to them? Could Celeste or Henry be trying to drive them away for their own purposes?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. Like other Phyllis Whitney books, this book is something of a collector’s item now, and copies are not cheap through Amazon.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I’ve been to Mackinac Island before, when I was in my teens, and I didn’t know about the pronunciation until I read this book. I had even forgotten about the horses and carriages since I’ve been there (which might seem odd, but I only spent one day there and I was obsessed with the fudge), but Mackinac Island is still car-free today. Reading this book revived some old memories for me, and it makes me want to go back and spend more time there! I didn’t stay overnight while I was there last time, but there are plenty of hotels there, including ones that resemble the one in the story, with turrets, cupolas, and widow’s walks.

Culture and Folklore

The book mentions that there are many Native Americans living on Mackinac Island, but it doesn’t mention a specific tribe. Even though some of the spooky and ominous things that happen in the story appear to have their roots in Native American folklore and superstition, I’m not completely sure how accurate the descriptions of the folklore aspects are. From what I’ve read, it seems that manitous (or manitos) really are a part of Native American folklore in that region, but there are a couple of aspects of it in the story that I haven’t been able to verify. As a slight spoiler, we eventually learn that Aunt Martha used to collect not only animal skeletons but dead birds, which she would turn into taxidermy. Celeste didn’t think that this was fully respectful to the spirits of the creatures, although she did seem to think that Aunt Martha had some kind of special connection to the spirits of birds because she was so good with them, living, injured, or dead. Because the author, Phyllis A. Whitney spent her youth in Asia because of her father’s job, she also has a habit of introducing Asian elements to most of the books she wrote at some point. In this one, although the main focus is on aspects of Native American folklore, there is also an Asia folklore story about a Chinese gong in the hotel, which seems to have a connection to birds or winged creatures, and that complicates the situation. The effect is that Taffy sometimes feels like she is dealing with forces that she doesn’t understand, which adds some suspense, although she is also sure that there’s a person behind it all because she doesn’t really believe in all the folkloric superstitions and physical objects are being used for the strange things that are happening.

One thing that I like about Phyllis A. Whitney’s juvenile mysteries is that they do frequently include history and folklore of different places and people around the world, and they do seem generally well-researched and presented with empathy. This book and other she wrote were published in the middle of the 20th century, around the same time that other books I’ve read were also published. Some mid-20th century books for kids lean into racial or cultural stereotypes, but Whitney’s book often subvert that or show characters rethinking some of their preconceived notions. The book does use the word “Indian” instead of Native American, which isn’t preferred, but apart from that, Taffy’s attitudes and ability to look at things from someone else’s point of view are good. Taffy is characterized as a very imaginative girl, and one of the ways she uses her imagination is to picture what other people think or how they would feel about different things. At one point, David says that Celeste is crazy for all of her superstitious talk, but Taffy defends her, saying that she’s not crazy. Taffy doesn’t believe in Celeste’s superstitions, but she recognizes that Celeste believes and acts the way she does because she has spent her whole life being steeped in stories of the history of spirits. These stories don’t make sense to Taffy and David, but Taffy recognizes that they make sense to Celeste. Celeste is wrong about the spirits being responsible for everything weird that’s happening, but being wrong about something isn’t the same as being crazy.

Later in the story, the kids form a club for exploring the island and giving hotel guests tours of some of the scenic spots. Taffy, David, and Donna ask Henry to be their “Indian guide” for the tours, and Henry sarcastically asks if they’re expecting him to wear feathers. The others quickly reassure him that they’re not asking him to be the guide because they want him to put on a kitschy show for the tourists or anything embarrassing like that. They just think he would make the best guide because he knows the island better than the rest of them and all the history and stories of the island. They want to call him an “Indian guide” to emphasize his Native American heritage and provide a credential for his knowledge for the sake of the tourists, but they say they would still want him to be part of the tours even without that, just because they want to be friends and include him. This explanation satisfies Henry, and he joins their tour club. For those who would like to learn more about the history of real Native American life on Mackinac, I recommend the Biddle House Native American Museum.

Time Period and Atmosphere

This book is set contemporary to when it was written, the in late 1940s. Readers will notice that Taffy periodically mentions whether or not women are wearing slacks instead of skirts, and that’s because that was a modern fashion trend in her time. Taffy’s mother is very much a modern woman, and she wears slacks from the beginning. However, Taffy can see that many women who stay at Sunset House (although not all) are older and more old-fashioned women, who wear skirts, like the Twig sisters. At first Taffy worries about whether her mother is dressing appropriately for her new job, managing the hotel, but it works out fine.

Taffy and her mother have different views on the hotel from the beginning. Taffy thinks that the old-fashioned hotel is charming and that the quiet atmosphere really suits the place. However, Taffy’s mother thinks that the place seems depressing and wants to “wake it up” a little. Taffy worries that her mother’s attempts to “wake it up” might ruin the quietness and quaintness that appeals to their customers. This is one of the reasons why people who work at Sunset House are concerned about what Taffy’s mother plans to do with the hotel. On the one hand, they didn’t always like the way Aunt Martha did things, but Taffy’s mother is a newcomer, who might not understand which parts of the hotel’s atmosphere should be preserved.

It’s true that people often visit places like this hotel specifically for their atmosphere, and the kind of people who choose to stay at Sunset House are looking for exactly that quiet and quaint atmosphere. When she was alive, Aunt Martha cultivated that time of atmosphere and a client base who likes that. With Aunt Martha’s death, Sunset House is at a transition point, where the new ownership will set the tone for its future. I think Taffy is right that the old-fashioned charm of the house should remain because even modern people like to visit quaint and charming places that are very different from the places where they live the rest of the time, but at the time time, Aunt Martha’s ways were unnecessarily strict, and there is some room for relaxing the atmosphere without ruining the quaintness. Allowing families with children wouldn’t be bad, and when Taffy’s mother learns that Donna’s passion in life is dancing (something that Aunt Martha disapproved of), she arranges for Donna to do an evening show for the guests, which Donna and the guests love. A little live music and dancing is a way of adding some life to the old house without ruining the charm because Donna’s ballet and tap dance are also charming and tasteful.

For some context between Taffy’s mother and her Aunt Martha, I’d like to point out that, because this book takes place in the late 1940s, Taffy’s mother’s youthful visits to her aunt’s Mackinac Island hotel took place before her marriage, which was probably in the mid-1930s, given Taffy’s age. That means that she was there as a kid during the 1920s or early 1930s. Culturally, the 1920s and 1930s, post-WWI, was the beginning of the modern era, with flappers pushing the boundaries of women’s dress and behavior, and women needing to take on greater roles in working and supporting their families during the Great Depression and WWII. Taffy’s mother would have been growing up, coming of age, and marrying and having a child of her own during all of these changes, and I think this helps explain her practical, modern outlook on life and personal habits. (Remember, she wears slacks. Other women don’t, especially the older and more traditional ones.) As a member of the previous generation, Aunt Martha would have been a product of the late 19th century and early 20th century, which I think helps explain the Victorian/Edwardian style of her home and her apparent attitude that children should be seen and not heard, an attitude which seems to be shared by the Twig sisters. Not all Victorian era adults felt this way, and many parents genuinely loved and indulged their children whenever they could, but it seems like Aunt Martha clung to the strict aspects of Victorian upbringing. In fact, her resistance to listening to the needs of the young people is a central part of the mystery. In fact, it is the reason for the mystery, and we learn that Aunt Martha’s behavior wasn’t solely a matter of her upbringing but her own mercurial personality and moods.

Aunt Martha (Spoilers)

Understanding Aunt Martha is key to understanding the entire mystery because she is literally the one who set everything up. Although she is dead before the story begins, we actually do get more explanations of her thinking in her own words than almost anyone else, except for Celeste, because she left behind journals that explain everything. I got angry with Aunt Martha when I realized that her manipulation of everyone was deliberate and planned. Aunt Martha wasn’t just strict; she was controlling and vindictive. She expected everyone to consult her about everything going on in their lives and to do everything she said, just based on her say-so. Whenever anybody resisted that control because their lives were their business and not hers, she would get angry, and that’s when she would withdraw affection and support and renege on promises she had made, seeking to punish them for their resistance. As Taffy later observes, Aunt Martha was not a nice person, and in her journals, she even said that she distrusted people who were too nice and too liked by other people because she never was herself. Her hotel was charming, but she wasn’t.

The terms of Aunt Martha’s will were not so much designed to benefit someone as to punish them all. She didn’t leave the hotel to Mrs. Tuckerman, as she had originally planned, to punish her for not following her orders on how to raise Donna, even though Mrs. Tuckerman had previously let her control things for both her and Donna. Leaving the hotel to her niece wasn’t meant as a nice gesture, either. She thought her niece was an idiot whose decision to marry a man she didn’t approve of was a sign of ingratitude for all that she had done for her (whatever that was – apart from letting her visit during summer, we don’t know of anything else she did), so she expected that she would fail at managing the hotel and would be publicly embarrassed by the failure. Aunt Martha purposely set up a situation where some people would have to ensure that others would lose in order to “win” something because she liked the thought of them fighting among each other and having problems because of her.

While understanding other people’s thinking is important, I also think that it’s important to recognize that understanding does not equal approval. We can understand that Celeste’s superstitions make sense to her without believing that everything has a supernatural cause, and we can also understand why and how Aunt Martha decided to use her will to get back at everyone for defying her in some way while recognizing that everything she did was toxic and done out of malice. What eventually stops it all is the revelation of Aunt Martha’s thinking and the understanding of the motives of the people doing all the strange things at the hotel. Taffy and one other person realize that, in spite of Aunt Martha’s manipulation, there is still a way for everything to work out well for everyone, with no “losers” in the situation. Once they figure that out, they are able to explain things to the others and get them to cooperate.

There is a theme in the story about good people who do bad things, but that applies more to the people Aunt Martha manipulated than Aunt Martha herself. Aunt Martha was good to birds and helped them heal when they were injured, but she wasn’t so kind to her fellow human beings. Some of the characters in the story think that they have no choice but to do what they’re doing because of the way Aunt Martha set things up, and it’s very hurtful to Taffy because she thought they liked her and she liked them, yet they were plotting against her and her mother the whole time. Taffy’s mother says that they did like them and feel badly about what they did, that they just felt trapped. I was bothered by some of the characters talking about how likeable these characters were because I don’t like people letting others off the hook for doing harmful things just because they can be pleasant and charming sometimes. There are serious abusers who too frequently get off the hook for those reasons. Heck, people let Aunt Martha get away with many of the things she did because she was nice to birds and could be charming and helpful sometimes, but her journals explain detail how little she thought of other people and how she schemed to manipulate and control them. Her last act was to do something she knew would hurt and embarrass the people close to her and cause them problems with each other.

Fortunately, even though the offenders are otherwise nice and likable, the book doesn’t let them off the hook for their behavior. I was gratified that Taffy’s mother and other characters say that people need to take responsibility for their choices, even if they’re “all mixed up inside”, and that doing things that harm others can’t be excused. Even the miscreants just saying that they understand now that they were wrong about what they were thinking and doing doesn’t get them completely off the hook. Instead, the characters make the offenders each pick a way to punish themselves and make amends for the trouble they’ve caused, to show everyone that they’re genuinely sorry and really mean to make things right. I like it because, as Taffy points out, their behavior makes her wonder about their entire relationship. How much of their previous likeability was just an act while they were scheming against them behind their backs, and what is their relationship going to be now? Can they still be friends, or is that all over because they were plotting harm the entire time? The punishments they give themselves are a gesture to show that they really do regret what they did and that they are going to follow through on that regret and change for the better. Nobody gets away with causing problems just because they put on an outward show and come across as likeable. In the end, they’re not trying to insist on everyone letting them go because that’s what they want, and they’re not acting as though they’re entitled to anything or deserving of being treated as special exceptions. It’s just them, taking responsibility for themselves and owning their feelings and motivations, as Aunt Martha never fully did outside of her journals. As Mrs. Saunders says, “like anyone who does wrong, they’ll have to take their punishment.” Their willingness to do that and to admit that they were wrong and make amends is what paves the way to repairing their relationships with the others.

I was disappointed, though, that we don’t really get to see the miscreants explain themselves. The Taffy’s mother and others talk to them without Taffy being present, saying that they want to handle the matter privately, even though Taffy is the main character and the one who was investigating the mystery all along. It’s sort of weird that the main character was shut out of the final discussion. Because she’s not there, readers don’t get to “see” exactly what happened or hear the miscreants’ explanations in their own words. Taffy’s mother just tells her about it afterward, and that feels like a cheat. “Show” is generally better than “tell.”

A Touch of Cottagecore

I think this mystery story about a summer spent in an enchanting place, with an old-fashioned hotel and an island with horse-drawn carriages, might appeal to fans of the Cottagecore aesthetic. The kids in the story have some independence in where they go and what they do. Taffy is allowed to spend some time exploring the island with David, seeing the sights and enjoying the beauty of the island. The garden around the hotel has pretty flowers, and Taffy starts learning some of their names. She never had the opportunity before to learn much about flowers because she’s been living in hotels and apartments. She thinks that, when her family finally has their own house, she also wants her own garden with flowers.

Some characters in books make up their own special words which are only used in their story, and the word for this book is “exasper-maddening”, which Taffy and her father use to describe her mother’s behavior at times. The mother is a woman of action, which can be good when someone needs to take charge of the situation. However, she is also impulsive and stubborn, given to doing things as soon as she gets the notion to do them and sweeping everyone else along with her, and she also has a tendency to focus on whatever seizes her attention in the moment instead of what’s concerning someone else.

Posted on by TracyC

The Moon Jumpers

The Moon Jumpers by Janice May Udry, pictures by Maurice Sendak, 1959.

In this pleasant, relaxing children’s picture book, some children enjoy a beautiful summer evening! Some of the pictures are in black-and-white and some are in color, but the best pictures are the full-color, full-page illustrations. The illustrations are by Maurice Sendak, who wrote and illustrated Where the Wild Things Are. The story is told from the point-of-view of the children.

While their parents are in the house, the children go outside to enjoy the relative coolness of the evening. They run barefoot through the grass and play tag.

They climb a tree “just to be in a tree at night.” They set up their own camp, make up songs and poems, and tell each other ghost stories.

The moon is rising, and the children jump in the air, trying to touch it, although they know they can’t.

Eventually, their parents call them inside to go to bed. As the children go to bed, they say goodnight to the moon through their bedroom window.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It’s a Caldecott Honor Book!

My Reaction

This is a nice, calm book that would make a good bedtime story on a summer night! It reminds me a little of Goodnight Moon, Time of Wonder, and The White Marble, which are other calm bedtime stories. It isn’t told in rhyme like Goodnight Moon, but it does show the beauties of summer and evenings spent outside, like Time of Wonder and The White Marble.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Time of Wonder

Time of Wonder by Robert McCloskey, 1957, 1985.

This is a beautiful, very relaxing picture book about a family’s summer vacation on an island off the coast of Maine. Although you can see from the pictures that the main characters are a pair of sisters, the entire story is told in the second person, from the point of view of “you.” Readers are meant to feel like they’re part of this magical summer trip!

“You” feel like you’re spending the morning walking in the fog along the bay, enjoying the plants and birds in the forest nearby, and sailing in the bay with seals and leaping porpoises.

During the day, there are other children playing on the beach, diving from the rocks, and swimming. In the evening, “you” row a boat out into the quiet water and use a flashlight to look at the crabs.

When it rains, “you” feel it! Most of the time the weather is peaceful, but there is a storm approaching, and people know they have to get ready for it. When it comes, it brings a strong wind that blows through the house!

The family reads together and sings songs until the storm is over and it’s time to go to bed.

The next day, trees are uprooted, and “you” get to explore what’s beneath their roots.

When it’s time to go home because school will be starting again, you’re a little sad to leave this place, although you’re also glad to go home again.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It’s a Caldecott Medal winner!

My Reaction

This is a great book when you want something calm and relaxing or you feel like you need to take a mental vacation, whether you’re a kid or adult! Nothing stressful happens in the story. It’s just a lovely memory of a peaceful vacation. Even the storm that comes doesn’t do anything worse than blow things around the room and knock over some trees and plants. The girls in the story help clean up after the storm, find ancient seashells under the roots of a fallen tree, and are happy that the sunflowers are looking toward the sun again.

When the girls are looking at the shells under the fallen tree, they think about the Native Americans who lived in the area before white people came and before the tree grew there. They call them “Indians” instead of Native Americans, but that’s the only thing I can find to nitpick about the story.

I think this would make a great, calming bedtime story for kids, especially during the summer! It reminds me a little of the song Verdi Cries, about someone’s memories of a special vacation.

The setting for the story, on an island off the coast of Maine, is based on the author’s family’s summer home, and the two girls in the story are based on his own daughters. They are not named here because the story is about “you”, but the older girl is Sarah (called Sal) and the younger girl is Jane. They appear in and are named in Blueberries for Sal and One Morning in Maine, where they are much younger.

Posted on by TracyC

Hilda’s Restful Chair

Hilda’s Restful Chair by Iris Schweitzer, 1981.

One hot morning, Hilda finishes watering her garden and decides that she needs to rest for a while.

When Hilda needs to rest, she has a special place she likes to go – an old armchair that she keeps in a shed. She calls the chair her “restful chair.”

Hilda is joined in her restful chair by Osbert the wombat and Cadbury the cat. However, Osbert and Cadbury aren’t the only animals who enjoy the restful chair. Soon, a pair of rabbits ask to join the others in the chair.

As Hilda and her animal friends sit in the restful chair, other animals come to join them. As the chair becomes more loaded with animals, it starts to creak and groan.

Eventually, the chair just can’t take it anymore, and it falls over, dumping everyone onto the floor.

Still, all the animals decide that they had a good rest. As the animals leave, Hilda sets the chair up again, and she and her animal friends go inside to have some watermelon.

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

My Reaction

This is a cute, fun story about animals who enjoy a comfortable chair as much as a little girl. Kids like stories with repetition, and they would probably enjoy seeing the parade of animals who come to join Hilda in her chair. They would probably also see the ending coming, that the chair won’t be able to hold everyone. It’s just a question of which animal is going to be the last straw for the chair. Fortunately, no animals were harmed by this experience, and even the chair seems okay, even though it fell over.

Because there is a wombat in the story, I assumed that the story takes place in Australia. It probably does, but from the publication information, it looks like it was first printed in Great Britain. The author was originally from Israel, but she was living in London at the time the book was published.

Posted on by TracyC · 8 Comments

Clifford Takes a Trip

Clifford

Clifford Takes a Trip by Norman Bridwell, 1966.

Emily Elizabeth and her parents don’t usually take long trips during the summer because it’s too difficult to bring Clifford along. He’s just too big to go on trains or buses. One summer, Emily Elizabeth’s parents decide to go camping in the mountains. They can’t take Clifford, so they leave him behind with a neighbor.

However, Clifford misses Emily Elizabeth too much, so he decides to go find her! A gigantic red dog can create a lot of chaos on a cross-country trip.

Along the way, he does help a man with a broken-down grocery truck, and the man is grateful enough to feed him.

He also arrives at the family’s campsite just in time to save Emily Elizabeth after she thought it would be fun to play with some baby bears she found.

The family considers that next year, they may find a way to take Clifford with them somewhere else.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including one in Spanish).

My Reaction

Like all Clifford books, the humor is based around Clifford’s enormous size. Even though the family thought that it would be too far for Clifford to walk to come to the mountains with them, he tracks them down there anyway. Then, after he rejoins his family, he sleeps with Emily Elizabeth, his ear propped up to be her tent. The idea they’re considering next for transporting Clifford is a flat-bed truck. I could well imagine my own dog trying to track me down if I went on vacation without her, but fortunately, when your dog is about the same size as Toto in the Wizard of Oz, traveling with a dog isn’t as difficult.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

The Secret at Sleepaway Camp

The Bobbsey Twins

The Secret at Sleepaway Camp by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1990.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge Sean Hagins, for supplying me with photos of this book! Usually, I take pictures of books myself, but I just couldn’t find a physical copy of this one. Sean is a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, particularly the New Bobbsey Twins mysteries, and you can see some of his video reviews as well as videos about his photography work on his YouTube channel, SJHFoto. Thanks, Sean!

The Bobbsey Twins are headed to Camp Evergreen this summer! Before they leave for camp, their mother, who is a part-time reporter for the local newspaper tells them that she was just covering a story about a baby polar bear who disappeared from the local zoo. Flossie is upset about it because she’s fond of the polar bear, Snowflake, and likes to see her when she goes to the zoo. Nobody knows exactly how Snowflake got out of her enclosure. All they know is that the gate was found open, and Snowflake was gone. Mrs. Bobbsey recommends that the kids forget about it for now and concentrate on having fun at camp.

Nan and Bert are going to be counselors’ helpers at camp, and all the kids are looking forward to activities like swimming, horseback riding, and archery. The only downside is that Danny Rugg, local bully and troublemaker, will also be there as a counselors’ helper. (Danny is a long-standing nemesis in the Bobbsey Twins series, from the original incarnation of the series. See The Bobbsey Twins of Lakeport.)

Strange things start happening at camp right from the moment that the Bobbsey Twins arrive. Tanya, the head counselor, tells them that, for some reason, all of the camp’s rowboats are leaking. When the kids investigate, they discover that someone has deliberately drilled holes in all of the boats.

The first thought that the Bobbsey Twins have is that Danny is responsible because he has a history of playing mean pranks, although he denies it. Danny does say that he doesn’t see why everyone else at camp should have fun while he’s miserable. His job as a counselors’ helper is working in the kitchen, and he hates it because it’s hot in there, and he thinks the cook is weird.

When Freddie goes to unpack in his cabin, he meets another boy named Ian. Ian is from the city and has never been to the countryside before. He’s a little nervous and homesick, and he says that the camp’s cook has told him that the camp is haunted. Freddie says that he’s sure there’s nothing to worry about and that they’ll have fun at camp.

Arts and crafts goes fine, and the kids enjoy meeting the camp’s mascot, a tame raccoon named Bandit. Tanya explains that they found Bandit when he was just a baby and that the kids should never try to play with wild raccoons. However, when the kids arrive at the archery range, they discover that someone has snapped all the arrows in half! Because of the stories the camp cook has been telling everyone, some of the campers think that it’s the work of the camp’s ghost. The Bobbsey Twins still suspect Danny, and they offer their services to Tanya, to investigate and find out who’s really causing all the trouble at camp.

Danny isn’t the only suspect. Nan overhears the cook, Sal, telling the kids about a hungry, child-eating bear in the woods who is supposedly friends with the camp ghost. Does he just like scary stories, or does he have a special reason for wanting to frighten the kids at camp? Even Tanya seems to have something to hide, getting mysterious notes and meeting someone in secret.

Soon, other strange things happen at camp. Someone puts a snake in Freddie’s bed, and the kids see strange lights in the woods at night. Then, someone steals all the ponies out of the corral and smashes the kids’ clay art projects. Some of the kids think that it’s the work of the ghost Sal has been talking about, but the Bobbsey Twins are sure that someone only wants them to think that. What are all the pranks and sabotage really about?

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

My Reaction

I was pretty sure I knew right away who was behind the camp sabotage, but this is one of those stories where there’s more than one person doing things that are unrelated. Danny eventually admits to playing some of the pranks, like the snake in Freddie’s bed, but not all of them. I was also wrong about who the main villain was. The missing polar bear at the beginning does figure into the mystery of the things happening at camp. I figured it would be important, but I didn’t guess how and why.

One of the clues the kids find is a lucky rabbit’s foot keychain. The kids comment that those used to be popular good luck charms, but not many people have them anymore. I have to admit that I had a pink one when I was a kid that I got from a novelty shop. I don’t think I realized at first that it was a real rabbit’s foot. I think I assumed that it was fake because I bought it in a place that sold magic tricks and costume props, so I figured it was imitation, like everything else. I figured it out eventually, and then, I didn’t feel quite so lucky about it. I’m sure that those keychains fell out of popularity because other people felt the same way I did about them, and they were concerned about animal cruelty. I believe it’s still possible to buy real and faux rabbit’s foot keychains, but it’s been a long time since I last saw them displayed at a store, so I think the kids were probably right about them not being as popular as they once were.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Secret of the Sunken Treasure

The Bobbsey Twins

Bobbsey Twins The Secret of the Sunken Treasure cover

The Secret of the Sunken Treasure by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1989.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge Sean Hagins, for supplying me with photos of this book! Usually, I take pictures of books myself, but I just couldn’t find a physical copy of this one. Sean is a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, particularly the New Bobbsey Twins mysteries, and you can see some of his video reviews as well as videos about his photography work on his YouTube channel, SJHFoto. Thanks, Sean!

The two sets of Bobbsey Twins and their parents are on vacation in Florida for a week. It’s just a fun family vacation, although Mrs. Bobbsey is hoping to write an article about a sunken treasure ship called the Granada. The Bobbsey Twins are intrigued at the idea of searching for sunken treasure, although nobody has detected a sign of the treasure since the ship sank in 1801. Dan Chester, he brother of a family friend, lives in the town where the Bobbseys are staying along with his 15-year-old daughter, Meg. Dan and Meg are divers, and they have been searching for the wreckage of the Granada, and they think they have a lead. The Bobbsey Twins are excited to think that they might be able to participate in the search for the treasure or be there when the Chesters find it!

However, when Dan and Meg pick them up at the airport, they have bad news. Although they were able to locate the wreckage of the Granada, they were delayed reaching shore to claim their find because their boat propeller broke, and someone else claimed the Granada before they could. Joe Lenox, the man who claimed the wreckage, runs an underwater salvaging company, and he’s tough competition for the Chesters because he can afford all the latest sonar equipment. It’s a heavy blow to Dan and Meg, losing such an important find when they were so close to claiming it. The only consolation is that everyone will be able to watch the old safe from the wreckage being hauled to the surface. The safe is supposed to contain the treasure the ship was carrying.

When Joe Lenox learns that Mrs. Bobbsey is an out-of-town reporter, he invites the entire Bobbsey family to come with him on his boat to see the treasure being recovered. They accept the invitation, although the kids feel a little funny about it because Joe is Dan and Meg’s competitor.

On the boat, Joe shows the Bobbseys his equipment and explains how everything works. (I grew up in Arizona and have never been diving, so I have very little context for understanding diving equipment. This part looks informative, but since this book was published decades ago, there may have been some changes in equipment since then. I wouldn’t know.) Flossie is hoping that, when the treasure is brought up, she will get the chance to try on the famous tiara that is supposed to be in the safe. However, everyone is in for a shock. When the divers go to recover the safe, they discover that someone has already managed to open it and remove the strongbox containing the treasure!

Now, Joe feels cheated out of a treasure he thought he had safely claimed, and he wants to know who’s responsible. The logical suspects would be Dan and Meg, who felt cheated out of their opportunity to claim the treasure first and who have the diving skills needed to reach the safe. A charm belonging to Meg is found in the safe, making Joe and the police believe that the Chesters are guilty. Although, there are also the other members of Joe’s crew to consider. They were the only other people who knew where the wreck was. Could any of them gone out to raid the wreck before the official salvage operation? Can the Bobbsey Twins find the real thieves?

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

My Reaction

I had a couple of favorite suspects early on in the story. The book establishes that it would have taken at least two people to deal with the safe, so I was looking for a pair of people. I was only partly right, though, because there’s another suspect who isn’t introduced until later in the book. The first person I suspected is guilty, but there were more people involved than I thought.

The book explains a little about how a person can lay claim to a sunken ship. The characters say that they have to fill out paperwork at the courthouse. There are laws regarding claiming a sunken ship and official procedures to follow. It’s not as simple as finders keepers. It does matter who found it, where they found it, and who the ship belonged to originally. There were also some changes to the laws around the time this book was written and published with the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987. I’m not completely sure whether each Joe or Dan and Meg could have legally claimed the ship. It partly depends on whether or not it was within US territorial waters or outside the official three-mile limit, and it also depends on whether or not the ship was property of a foreign government which could lay claim to it. For the purposes of the story, we have to assume that Joe Lenox was able to successfully lay a claim to the ship and that Dan and Meg could have done so if they had reached the authorities first. What makes me doubt this is how it would have worked in real life is that the treasure on the ship belonged to a Spanish countess, which makes me think that it could be regarded as property of the Spanish government, but it would be difficult to determine that without additional information.

Posted on by TracyC · 12 Comments

The Secret in the Sand Castle

The Bobbsey Twins

#4 The Secret in the Sand Castle by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1988.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge Sean Hagins, for supplying me with photos of this book! Usually, I take pictures of books myself, but I just couldn’t find a physical copy of this one. Sean is a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, particularly the New Bobbsey Twins mysteries, and you can see some of his video reviews as well as videos about his photography work on his YouTube channel, SJHFoto. Thanks, Sean!

The two sets of Bobbsey Twins and their parents are spending a few weeks in an old house at Beachcliff Bay. It’s sort of a working vacation for their parents. Mr. Bobbsey owns a lumber yard, and he’s helping a local builder, Jim Reade, to either find some antique Victorian wooden gingerbread house trim or make new ones to match a home restoration project. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bobbsey is planning to write a travel article about the area for their local newspaper.

The house where the family will be staying is called the Wilson house, and it’s one of Mr Reade’s recent renovation projects. Flossie is the first in the family to go inside, and she is startled by what she thinks is a ghost. It turns out that it’s only the caretaker, Pete Smedley, taking the old dust sheets off the furniture. It’s not entirely reassuring because Pete says that there are stories about the old Wilson house being haunted by the ghosts of its former owners, who drowned in the nearby bay. He says that he knows when the ghosts have been there because they move things around and leave trails of water, seaweed, and seashells. Mr. Reade thinks that Pete’s stories are nonsense and that the strange things he’s observed are due to windows in the house being left open or something like that.

The inside of the Wilson house is as elaborate as the outside. The Bobbsey twins unpack their things and claim rooms for themselves upstairs. Flossie is quick to claim the biggest room with the best view for herself, and she asks Bert to help her move a mirror she likes into her room. They don’t have anything to hang the mirror, so they set it on Flossie’s bed. Strangely, they later find the mirror still on the bed but broken, and they don’t know how that happened.

Nan is curious about the Wilson family and the history of the house, so she and Freddie take a trip to the local library. There, Nan learns that the last two members of the Wilson family were a brother and sister, called Clay and Jennie. They were both artists, but they never made much money. Badly in need of money, they apparently robbed an armored car and stole gold bars. They tried to escape in a boat, but it was lost in a storm. The Wilsons apparently drowned, although their bodies were never found. The police thought they might have hidden the gold somewhere before getting on the boat, but nobody ever found the gold they stole.

Mr. Reade tells the children that his son, Jimmy, is entering a local sand castle contest, and the Bobbsey twins decide that they would like to enter the contest, too. Nan thinks they should try to build a replica of the Wilson house in sand. Unfortunately, Jimmy turns out to be a troublemaker, and it doesn’t look like he wants to be friends with the Bobbsey twins.

While the girls go to the store, Bert and Freddie decide to check out the old root cellar at the house, and someone traps them inside. The girls let them out when they get back. Then Flossie finds a secret passage and hidden stairs. Mr. Bobbsey says that it was once a servants’ entrance that had been sealed off. Later that night, a ghostly figure tries to enter Nan’s room! Could it have been Jimmy. playing a nasty prank, or is it someone looking for the lost gold? Could it even be a real ghost?

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

My Reaction

From the beginning of the book, I had a favorite suspect. However, this is one of those mysteries where there is more than one person involved, and they’re not working together. In the end, I was right about my main suspect, but having a second person doing suspicious things made the mystery more interesting. The title is a little misleading because the story is really about the search for the hidden gold from the robbery, not about the sand castle contest. The sand castle contest is more of a side issue, although studying the design of the house to build the sand castle version leads the kids to the solution of the mystery.

Because this book is from the late 1980s, there are things in the story that were more a part of my childhood than the lives of 21st century children, like renting videotapes. I was about the age of Freddie and Flossie when this book was first published, so it’s a bit of a fun nostalgia trip for me, both because I read books in this series when I was young and because some of the things the kids do in these stories are similar to things I did at their age.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

The Secret of Jungle Park

The Bobbsey Twins

#1 The Secret of Jungle Park by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1987.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge Sean Hagins, for supplying me with photos of this book! Usually, I take pictures of books myself, but I just couldn’t find a physical copy of this one. Sean is a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, particularly the New Bobbsey Twins mysteries, and you can see some of his video reviews as well as videos about his photography work on his YouTube channel, SJHFoto. Thanks, Sean!

Twelve-year-old twins Nan and Bert Bobbsey are part of a rock band with some of their friends. They call themselves The Aliens, and they’re participating in a Battle of the Bands at the amusement park Jungle Park. Nan plays the keyboard, Bert plays the drums, and their friends, Jimmy and Brian, play guitars. Flossie, their younger sister, wishes that she could join the band, too, but she’s still too young. Flossie and her twin brother, Freddie, are there to help their older siblings get ready and watch them perform. (And, the case of the boys, use some fake blood to play a trick on the girls.)

While they watch the first bands perform, they see some smoke. At first, they think that it’s just a stage effect, but it becomes thicker, and they realize that something is really wrong! Most of the audience flees, but Bert stays behind to save his band’s equipment. Nan tells him it was a dangerous thing to do, but Bert says that he doesn’t think it was a real fire. Fire fighters come, and so does their police officer friend, Lieutenant Pike. Lieutenant Pike also tells Bert that he took a foolish risk, but he agrees with Bert’s impression that the smoke was actually caused by a smoke bomb. Even though a smoke bomb isn’t real fire, setting one off in a crowded auditorium can still be very dangerous because someone could have been hurt in the panic when everybody rushed out.

Lieutenant Pike confides in the children that the police have been called to the park three other times recently for other apparent accidents and problems. He says that if things like this keep happening, they might have to shut down Jungle Park due to safety concerns. The four Bobbsey Twins don’t think that’s fair. They love Jungle Park, and they want to catch the person who set the smoke bomb!

Lieutenant Pike lets the kids look around after the police and fire fighters are finished with the auditorium. There are two clues that they find: a black eye patch and a swizzle stick. Bert doesn’t think that the swizzle stick is much of a clue, but Freddie thinks it might mean something. The eye patch points to two possible suspects that the kids know about: a member of a rival band in the contest and a man the girls saw who was lurking around the dressing room area. Bert thinks that the rival band was trying to disrupt the contest so they would win, but the others aren’t so sure. It turns out that the guy with the eyepatch was hired by one of the owners of the park to make some repairs, but could he have been hired to do more than that? Could one of the owners have a reason to make sure the park closes? What about the woman who takes care of the animals at the park? She doesn’t seem happy about the conditions they’re kept in.

As the kids investigate their suspects, they get chased by elephants, hunt for a suspect in a fun house, tackle someone in a gorilla suit, and win the band contest!

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

My Reaction

Like Sean, this particular Bobbsey Twins series was the one that I read as a kid. I didn’t even know the difference between the New Bobbsey Twins series and the earlier series until I was older. The Bobbsey Twins series, like other Stratemeyer Syndicate series, is typically set contemporary to when the stories were written, so the New Bobbsey Twins series is set in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when they were originally written and published.

That time period was when I was a kid myself, so things that the kids did in the New Bobbsey Twins series were very like things kids my age were doing when I was a kid. A lot of kids wished that they could be part of a band. At one point, Flossie talks about something she saw in a teen fashion magazine. Flossie isn’t a teenage herself, but as I recall, teen magazines were largely popular with pre-teens (or “tweens”), who wanted to look like teenagers. Later, she pretends to be collecting signatures for Save the Whales, which was a popular and well-known cause at that time.

The mystery in this book was pretty good. I was sure from the beginning that the kid from the rival rock band wasn’t the park saboteur, but I wasn’t completely sure which of the adults was responsible for much of the book.