Posted on by TracyC

The Shadow Guests

The Shadow Guests by Joan Aiken, 1980.

When Cosmo’s mother and brother mysteriously disappear, Cosmo’s father sends him to live with eccentric cousin Eunice in England, who is a mathematician educated at Cambridge and who now lives in Oxford. Cosmo’s father plans he will join Cosmo in England later, after he’s finished wrapping up the family’s business in Australia.

After Eunice picks up Cosmo at the airport, she tells him that she’s arranged for him to attend a small boarding school. Cosmo has never been to any kind of school before because his family lived too far outside of town. He and his brother always had their lessons together at home. Cosmo isn’t sure he’s going to like living with all these strangers at school, but Eunice says that she arranged for him to be a boarder rather than a day pupil so he would make friends faster. Eunice lives at the old Curtoys mill house, and Cosmo joins her there on weekends.

However, most of the other students at school don’t seem particularly friendly, and one of the teachers seems oddly confrontational about Cosmo’s father. He knows that Cosmo’s father, Richard Curtoys, was once a well-known cancer researcher in London, and he doesn’t know why he gave it all up and moved his family to the middle of nowhere in the Australian Bush. Cosmo doesn’t know what to say because he was very young when his family moved to Australia, and he doesn’t really know why they moved.

On his next weekend with Cousin Eunice, he asks her about it and whether or not the family’s sudden move to England had anything to do with what happened to his mother and brother. Eunice admits that it did. Cosmo’s father hadn’t wanted to explain and had left it up to Eunice to decide how much to tell Cosmo, but Eunice believes that it’s better for people to know everything than not know anything. Eunice reveals to Cosmo that their family has been under a curse for generations.

The Curse

The curse apparently started with the Roman invasion of Britain. Their family seems to have Roman roots, and one of their ancestors was apparently a Roman soldier. When the Romans took over Britain, they wanted to convert the inhabitants to the Roman religion, which was still pagan at that time. According to the legend passed down in their family, their ancestor was one of a group of soldiers who were ordered to destroy a pagan British temple. The son of one of the priestesses at the temple tried to resist them, and Cosmo’s ancestor killed him. The boy’s mother then killed herself out of grief. The boy’s grandmother, who was also a priestess, placed a curse on Cosmo’s family: in every generation, the eldest son of the family would die in battle, and his mother would die of grief.

Since then, Eunice says, the curse seems to have come true. She can list generations of their family where the eldest son has died in battle, including Cosmo’s father’s generation. Cosmo’s father was the youngest son of his family, and his elder brother, Frank, died young in battle. After Frank’s death, when Richard was only 10 years old, his mother died of grief, just like in the curse. Richard claimed that the curse was all nonsense when he was an adult, and he refused to tell his wife about it when they got married. However, Eunice had been friends with his wife before she met Richard, and she didn’t think it was fair to keep the secret from her, now that they had two sons of their own. Eunice admits that she told Cosmo’s mother everything, and that the story seriously upset her. It was Cosmo’s mother who insisted on moving to Australia, hoping to get as far away from the curse and any potential war as possible.

When Eunice explains this, some of the things about Cosmo’s family begin to make sense to him. Eunice admits that it seems like the elder brothers of the family resent the younger ones, who are safe from the curse, and Cosmo realizes that he sensed that his brother seemed to be hard on him or resent him, indicating that he probably had some sense that he had an ordeal or possible early death to face that Cosmo would be spared. Yet, younger brothers in the family are not entirely spared from the curse. It’s true that they live to carry on the family line, but each of them is also destined to lose their first son, and shortly afterward, to lose their wife to grief at their son’s death. Cosmo considers that maybe, when he’s grown up, he’ll just adopt a child to get around the problem.

He somewhat compares the family curse to a form of cancer. Some families are more genetically prone to particular types of cancers than others, and the way that members of those families survive is if, somehow, a genetic mutation is introduced to the family line, something that makes those individuals different from the ones before. It’s an indication that, maybe, this curse might not afflict their family forever. If someone, like Cosmo, can figure out how to be different from earlier generations of his family, and not pass on the cursed element to the next generation, there might be an end to the curse. Figuring out how to do that is going to be difficult, though.

Eunice says that his mother tried to evade the curse by running away, but apparently, it didn’t work. Nobody knows exactly what happened to Cosmo’s mother and brother, only that their car was found abandoned, and that they appeared to go off into the Australian desert on foot. Searchers have found no sign of them since, and because it’s such a harsh environment, people don’t think it’s likely that they’re still alive. Nobody knows why they went off into the desert, except maybe either the curse drew them there or they were trying to escape from it. Eunice’s housekeeper, who also knows about the curse, talks about it with Cosmo, and Cosmo asks her whether she thinks it’s possible to break the curse. Like Cosmo, she thinks it might be a case of gradual changes, members of the family doing things differently from earlier generations. Unlike Eunice, she thinks that maybe what Cosmo’s mother and brother did was one such change, and it’s difficult to tell what effect it has had yet.

Cosmo remembers a strange old man who visited them once in Australia. He thinks the man was probably a sorcerer or something because he told them things about their futures. He’s not sure what the man said to his mother, except that it seemed to upset her, and she was never the same afterward. Eunice suspects that the man may have told her that it’s impossible to run away from heredity and destiny. The man told his brother something about there being many different types of battles, which might indicate that staying away from wars would not be sufficient to save him from his destiny. The old man didn’t clarify that statement, but it’s true that people also fight internal and emotional battles every day, no matter where they are. Was this the battle Cosmo’s brother lost or could lose, and has it actually claimed his life already?

Cosmo had always thought his brother and mother were braver than he was, but now, he comes to question that. They had tried to run from their apparent destinies, and maybe the running caused them to go missing, and maybe even to die. When Cosmo’s father writes to him about the family curse, he explains that he has come to believe that the curse is a self-fulling prophecy, that it only comes true because people expect it to. Perhaps Cosmo’s mother and brother would have been fine if they hadn’t tried so hard to outrun their curse, putting themselves into a dangerous situation.

Of course, Cosmo realizes that it’s easier for Cosmo and his father to put aside their fear than it was for Cosmo’s mother and brother. Being the direct subject of an existential curse is certainly much more terrifying than just being part of a family that has a curse that may kill people around you. These thoughts cause Cosmo to consider the nature of fear and how people can be afraid of many different things and how the nature of a person’s fears make a difference in how they are affected by them. What one person can face with courage may be the undoing of another.

The Ghosts

Meanwhile, the other kids at school have become deliberately hostile to Cosmo. They accuse him of being stuck up and lying to them about Australia, and they start saying that Cosmo has probably never even been to Australia. Cosmo knows that all of the things that they say about him are untrue and unfair, but there isn’t much he can say to refute it. It seems to be a form of hazing at the school. He thinks about how petty and childish the other kids are and how they have no concept about the serious issues that are hanging over Cosmo. In a way, though, Cosmo discovers that he’s actually more comfortable brooding over the curse than he is thinking about the obnoxious kids at school. There is a kind of comfort in knowing your life fits a pattern, even if it’s a disturbing and unpleasant one. He also thinks about what the old man told him, that one day, he would have three friends. Because of the way kids at school act, Cosmo can’t image having any friends there at all, but that prediction comes true as well.

Cosmo gradually discovers that the mill house where his aunt lives is haunted. Eunice tells him about a phantom coach and horses that are supposed to appear at night, and Cosmo begins seeing a boy who calls himself Con. Con first appears to him as a little boy, about 4 years old, but each time Cosmo sees him, he gets a little older. He also eats Cosmo’s candy bars from his room. Eventually, Con speaks to Cosmo as a young man. He admits that he took the candy because eating someone else’s food forms a relationship between the two of them. Con explains to Cosmo that his father was a free Roman soldier, but his mother is a slave woman, so Con himself is a slave. The only way he can win his freedom is to play in the gladiatorial games, and he needs Cosmo’s help to practice. At night, Cosmo practices Roman style fighting with Con, but it is gradually revealed that Con does not expect to survive his upcoming fight. When Con speaks to Cosmo more about his family, it is revealed that Con is a member of Cosmo’s family from the distant past. He is the eldest son in his generation, and he knows about the family curse. Because of the curse, he expects to die fighting. Cosmo tries to explain to Con that he doesn’t need to believe in the curse.

Whether that helps Con or not isn’t apparent because Cosmo has to spend the next weekend at school and doesn’t see Con again. The next ghost he sees is a boy called Sim. Sim has been living at a monastery in the Middle Ages, getting an education, but his father has pledged him to his uncle to go fight in the Crusades. Sim is worried because he doesn’t know anything about fighting and thinks that he’ll be killed. He asks Cosmo if he can help him learn to fight. Again, Cosmo doesn’t know much about fighting, but he tries his best to help Sim. He doesn’t really see why Sim has to be obligated to go to war if he’s no good at it and doesn’t want to go, but he does notice that Sim’s eyesight is poor, and what he really needs are glasses.

Then, some of the hauntings at the mill house turn frightening. Cosmo is almost killed in multiple, inexplicable accidents. It seems like a poltergeist is out to get him. One of the boys who’s been giving Cosmo a hard time at school is also visiting the mill house and witnesses some of these accidents one weekend because his father works with Eunice. Not only do the boys learn to get along better after getting to know each other, but Cosmo starts realizes that the boy, Moley, actually has some problems of his own. He has an unhappy home life because of his stepmother. Moley also has a weak heart that keeps him from participating in certain school activities. Knowing this makes Cosmo feel more sympathetic toward him. Moley also comes to realize that something mysterious and threatening is happening to Cosmo, and he witnesses a ghost that Cosmo doesn’t see: a stern old woman in black. Moley has the sense that this old woman is responsible for the accidents happening to Cosmo, although he doesn’t seem to recognize that she is a ghost at first. It seems like Cosmo has now become the target of his family’s curse, which shouldn’t happen because he isn’t the eldest son. Has Cosmo become the target of the curse or some other supernatural force that now sees him as a threat?

My Reaction and Spoilers

I enjoyed the story, although I feel a little conflicted about the ending. The story is somewhat open-ended. We know that Cosmo survives his ordeals. Part of me wonders if the curse may have actually saved his life, after a fashion. If his bother was fated to die and Cosmo was fated to survive, then the forces trying to kill Cosmo were destined to fail. But, that’s just conjecture. These questions are never really answered. In the end, Cosmo doesn’t know if anything he’s done has changed the nature of the curse or if it actually can be changed. He still doesn’t know what might be in store for his future wife and children or if he will actually have a future wife and children. The only way to know is to live his life as best he can and deal with whatever comes along the way.

There are two things that I can see that he gains from his ordeals: closure about his mother and brother and a glimpse at what various other relatives have done in the past to change their fate (or if they did anything). I think there are some indications, based on Cosmo’s encounters with family ghosts, that what his father believes about the curse is probably true, but the story leaves that up to the imaginations of the readers. If you like speculative books, you might enjoy this one.

Metaphysics

Although Eunice is a mathematician, she’s also interested in metaphysics. She and Cosmo have discussions about the nature of time and reality and the possibility of other dimensions or other realities, which have a bearing on whether or not we interpret the ghosts that Cosmo sees as ghosts or not. In some ways they seem like ghosts, but in others, they might be people who have not yet died but who have crossed over in time.

This isn’t confirmed, though, and during Cosmo’s ghost experiences, someone from the past is attempting to kill him. (Spoilers) At first, I thought that the old woman attempting to kill Cosmo was the old priestess who originally put the curse on his family and who was trying to stop Cosmo from helping the ghosts who came to him to survive and thwart the curse. That isn’t the case, though. What Cosmo discovers is that various ancestors have tried different ways of thwarting the curse themselves. So far, none of them have been successful (and I’ll have more to say about that), but Cosmo discovers that one ancestress and her son actually became evil sorcerers themselves. The old lady is a sorceress, and she believes a prophecy that her son will die in a fight with Cosmo, so both she and her son are traveling through time and actively trying to kill Cosmo to save the son from the family curse.

During his struggles with this unholy duo, Cosmo is very close to being killed, and he has a near-death experience. He sees a beautiful, peaceful place, with Con and Sim and his mother and brother. He wants to join them all there, but they tell him that it’s not his time, and they will wait for him there until it is. This seems to represent a vision of Heaven and to confirm the supernatural nature of the story and that Cosmo’s mother and brother are also both dead.

Destiny and Curses (Lots of Spoilers)

I already said that, in the end, we don’t know if anything that Cosmo has seen, done, or experienced has broken the curse or changed his future or his family’s future. What we do see through Cosmo’s experiences are two things: that different generations of the family have tried to thwart the curse in different ways and that (although the story doesn’t explicitly spell this out) there may have been reasons other than the curse itself for what happened to the sons who died, including what Cosmo’s father said about belief in the curse itself causing it to come true.

Con tried to practice his fighting skills in an effort to win his battle, but unlike Cosmo, he never seemed to seriously consider that maybe he didn’t need to fight that battle at all. We’re not sure exactly how many generations removed he was from the original curse (maybe one or two, possibly more?), but it seems that enough time has gone by to convince him that the curse is real and that he should believe in it. Did his belief that he was going to his destiny and going to die in the upcoming fight cause him to actually seek out that fight and also to lose it?

When Sim comes to Cosmo, Cosmo tries to talk to him about just choosing not to fight, but Sim explains that isn’t an option for him. His father arranged it with his uncle, and Sim has no power to refuse to go. The choice not to fight isn’t open to Sim, but Cosmo also realizes that, beyond simply not being a skilled fighter, Sim is also at a disadvantage because he has bad eyesight. So, was Sim’s death almost arranged by his family because they had already concluded that it was his fate to die in battle, never teaching him to actually fight and overlooking his eyesight? If they had left Sim in the monastery, where he was studying, maybe nothing bad would have happened to him.

After Cosmo recovers from his near death at the hands of the sorceress and her son, who was an 18th century member of the Hellfire Club, he learns their fate from Eunice. Both the evil mother and her son died at the same time in the river where they nearly drowned Cosmo, indicating that they accidentally got themselves killed in their attempt to kill him. The prophecy that said the son would die while fighting Cosmo was actually a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they simply hadn’t believed it and had ignored Cosmo, he would have never met them at all, living in a completely different time and having no way to magically travel through time on his own. It’s only because they sought him out and actually started the fight that both of them died, which lends credence to what Cosmo’s father says about believing in the curse causes it to happen.

Before the end of the story, Cosmo’s father tells him that searchers have finally found his mother’s and brother’s bodies in the desert, confirming his vision of them in Heaven. We still don’t know exactly why they went off into the desert to die. Were they trying to flee the curse in a panic, so they weren’t thinking about how this decision could lead to their deaths? If they had simply chosen not to believe in the curse and had continued living in London instead of trying to wildly flee, losing the battle with their own emotions, perhaps they would have both lived normal lives and not died early … maybe.

There’s no real way to prove exactly what happened to Cosmo’s mother and brother. We never hear what happened to them from their point of view, and what decisions they made because of it. Both Cosmo’s father and Eunice says that they shouldn’t blame them for how they attempted to deal with something beyond themselves because they did the best they knew how at the time, even if no one else understands. This leads me to consider that maybe the real curse of the family is: bad decisions. Whenever the curse seems to arise again, each generation has to decide how they will handle it: run or fight, believe or not believe, etc. Each time, they’ve made the wrong choice for their circumstances.

In a way, Eunice bears some responsibility for what happened to Cosmo’s mother and brother, although no one blames her for her role in the situation. Cosmo’s father, having concluded that belief in the curse causes it to come true, had decided not to tell his wife or kids about the curse, so they would never have to grapple with whether they believed it or not. But, apparently, he never explained that logic to Eunice because she spoiled it by telling Cosmo’s mother and shocking her into taking a course of action that led to her and her elder son dying. Would the situation have been different if she had said nothing or if she had said something but said it at a different time from the one she actually chose? Eunice says that she thought Cosmo’s father should have explained the situation before he got married. Maybe that would have changed things or maybe it wouldn’t, but if she felt that strongly that this was the right thing to do, she could have brought up the subject earlier. Maybe she should have talked to both of Cosmo’s parents before their marriage to either get everything out in the open or at least understand why she should keep the secret. Either Eunice didn’t do that or she weakened in her resolve to keep the secret, and she inadvertently set the curse cycle in motion again.

The supernatural nature of this story and its ghosts suggests that the curse is probably real on some level and not just a series of bad luck incidents and unfortunate mistakes that the family makes. The hopeful outlook, the one that Eunice’s housekeeper believes, is that, little by little, with each passing generation, the family changes. Each generation is a little different from the last. Cosmo’s brother was apparently the first not to die in a conventional battle or a physical fight. He died trying to avoid fighting. With him, it seems to have been some kind of internal battle. This may be true of later generations, or maybe this is the first step in shattering the pattern of the curse. Possibly, all that Cosmo has seen will grant him the ability to make better choices, teach this children how to break old patterns, or do something drastically different that nobody else has done before. It’s hard to say, but realizing that it’s hard to say what might happen or what could have happened is a major part of the story.

Thinking about the curse and all of the ways the family could break it and all of the ways they’ve failed to break it so far shows the unpredictable nature of the choices people make in life. Each generation apparently did something they thought was for the best, whether they were embracing fate, fighting fate, or running from fate. The story leaves open the possibility that fate (or the curse) will always find them in some form, no matter what they do. If they don’t actively go to war, they may face their battles in another way, like internal or emotional battles. Who’s to say whether a different sort of internal battle might have taken Cosmo’s brother in London, even if the family said nothing about the curse to him or his mother? As a teenager, he might have had a battle with drugs or depression and lost. He might have gotten a disease and lost that battle. Life has a lot of maybes, and none of us can foresee every possible struggle or disaster.

Another maybe is that maybe the important point isn’t whether or not the curse exists or whether or not they can save all the potential victims but what each of them chooses to do with the life they have while they have it. Cosmo and his father will keep on living. His father will return to his important cancer research, and Cosmo will have decisions to make about his own life. He may or may not decide to have kids, he may or may not tell his future wife or fiance about the curse, and he may or may not try to adopt a child rather than have a biological one. In fact, unless the curse guarantees that sons will be born in the family, we don’t know for sure whether Cosmo might have all daughters. Really, anything is possible. What his future children’s struggles might be or what the real risks to them could be are a distant unknown right now in Cosmo’s life. In the end, he will have to trust them to a certain extent to make the right choices or at least the best choices that they know how when their battles come to them, in whatever form they take. We all have battles of our own to face and risks we take, no matter who we are, and nothing in life is guaranteed for any of us.

There is one last thing that did surprise me. In all of the ways it seems people in Cosmo’s family tried to end or thwart the curse, did nobody think of maybe some form of apology or atonement? The curse stems from an ancient offense someone in their family committed. Perhaps, if they found a way to say they were sorry, it would do something to end the vengeance against them, but it seems like nobody even suggests it. Heck, the evil sorceress lady and her son acquired the ability to use magic and travel through time, but because they were evil and stupid, they went after Cosmo, who was probably their greatest ally, instead of looking further back in time for the real source of their problems. Couldn’t they have gone and faced the priestess lady and either stopped her from creating her curse or stopped their ancestor from killing her grandson? There are a lot of maybes to this whole situation, but I’m honestly surprised that they didn’t think of that one.

School Troubles

Some of the school experiences in the story may have been based on the author’s own education. Joan Aiken was home schooled until she was 12 years old, and then, she was sent to the Wychwood School in Oxford, a boarding and day school. It’s possible that she also encountered difficulties adjusting to being at school with other children and the hazing and bullying that can occur in that type of environment. In the story, Eunice sees value in learning how to get along with other people, although Cosmo questions the value of learning to get along with people as awful as the kids at his school.

He gradually begins to learn more about the relationships of kids at school by observing them as an outsider. Some of the awful ways of treating him are considered some kind of hazing or initiation, and he’s expected to undergo it with some degree of grace before they will grant him acceptance. It’s all pretty idiotic and immature. Cosmo realizes it, although he knows he can’t show much reaction, or it will make things much worse. It’s the sort of thing I hated when I was a student myself. I admit that I was shy and socially awkward, and I didn’t get along well with many other kids because I just couldn’t stand this sort of thing.

Over 30 years later, I haven’t really changed my mind about that. I get that being around other people can open your eyes to human nature and how to deal with your fellow flawed human beings, but I see the same problem in this story as I do in real life: allowing this system of hazing encourages the personal entitlement of particular students, and it also is detrimental to the mental health of people who struggle to deal with them. I think schools do better at this now than they did when I was a kid, when it seemed like almost 100% of the personal development, learning, and personal responsibility was put on the shoulders of everyone else who has to deal with this type of person. I think I have much, much less patience for this kind of thing now than I used to due to overexposure early in life, which does call into question whether what I learned from that experience was really beneficial or not. On the whole, I actually do think that I benefited from exposure to other people, in spite of all the stresses and mental health issues along the way. Part of the issue is, when you’re part of a group of people, you have to put up with the worst parts of that group to spend time with the better parts of the group. If you avoid society too much, you don’t meet the better parts. Learning social skills and human understanding also requires time and practice, which is what Cosmo learns in the story.

People who bully and cause problems can be considered in the learning phase of developing social skills themselves. It’s just that there do have to be rules about how much of their bad behavior can be allowed while they learn. They can’t be allowed to sabotage other people’s social development for the sake of their own because that only leads to their personal entitlement at someone else’s expense. If they are spared consequences for their actions, they never learn anything, either, never improving or showing signs of development, just putting more needless stress on other people and never seeming to understand or care why. I’ve seen far too many examples of this in real life.

I actually enjoyed the way the school in the book handled some of these conflicts. The headmaster is a psychologist, and although some of the things he does seem a little unfair, he actually discusses his reasons for doing this with Cosmo. He understands how his students think and feel, and he knows how to give consequences for actions that not only enforce the school’s rules and better treatment for bullied children but also which affect their relationships with each other more positively.

At first, Cosmo is angry when he’s punished along with some of the other kids who have been bullying him for a prank he tried to discourage them from committing. However, the headmaster apologizes to him for that, saying that he knows those other kids have been giving him a hard time, treating him like he thinks he’s better than they are. One of the other teachers says that Cosmo has been targeted because he’s one of the bright students, and some of the members of his family have a more prestigious reputation than Cosmo realizes. By giving Cosmo the same punishment as the other boys, while the other boys are made to acknowledge that it’s unjust and that Cosmo doesn’t deserve it as much as they do, the headmaster is showing the other boys that they don’t have reason to think that Cosmo is being treated better than they are, ending some of their resentment against him. He also knows that the boys can now accept Cosmo as being one of them, united in resentment against the headmaster for being harsh and unfair. The headmaster is willing to take their resentment against him because, as an adult faculty member, he doesn’t need to be one of “them”, as in one of the students or their “friend” or “pal.” He’s apart from them anyway in terms of age and status, and part of his role is guiding their actions and relationships with each other. In a way, Cosmo admires the logic and the tactic, even though it means enduring the punishment, and it does improve the way the the other boys treat him.

Posted on by TracyC

Moonflute

Moonflute by Audrey Wood, illustrated by Don Wood, 1980, 1986.

One night, a little girl named Firen can’t sleep. It’s a hot summer night, the moon is full, and Firen feels like the moon has taken away her sleep, so she must go out into the night and look for it.

Outside, Firen raises up her hands to the moon and asks for her sleep back. The magical moon sends her a moonbeam, and when Firen touches it, she realizes that it’s solid. It’s actually a flute. When Firen plays the flute, it makes magical music that doesn’t sound like any normal flute, and it brings all sorts of wonderful smells of things that Firen loves. As she continues to play, she feels light and tingly, and she realizes that she is rising into the air!

Firen flies over the countryside, looking for her sleep. As she journeys through the night, she sees various animals and wonders if they have her sleep. She sees cats in a patch of catnip, whales playing in the ocean, and bats and monkeys in a jungle.

When Firen sees a couple of monkeys soothing a baby monkey to sleep, she thinks about her own parents and uses the flute to return home. Is the moonflute helping her find her sleep at home with her parents, or has she actually been asleep all the time?

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

My Reaction

This book follows the “It was all a dream” theme, where the main character experiences something fantastic, but they were dreaming all the time. While Firen was wondering where her sleep was, she apparently fell asleep. It isn’t definite that’s what happened, but it’s implied when her parents go to her room, and she’s in bed, without the flute. If readers would like to think of it differently, that Firen really did have her flying adventures, it’s possible to read it that way, too.

The pictures really make this book! The illustrations are oil paintings, and they are beautiful and ethereal. Firen witnesses some stunning scenes, like whales leaping in the ocean, with everything bathed in glowing moonlight.

I was intrigued by the name “Firen” because I don’t think I’ve heard it before, and I like unusual names. I couldn’t find much information about the name online, so it seems like it isn’t very common. I thought at first that it might be a modern, invented name, although one name site says that it has Arabic origins.

Posted on by TracyC

The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum

The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum by Kate Bernheimer, pictures by Nicoletta Ceccoli, 2008.

In this story, there is a little girl who lives in a castle in a museum, inside a big, glass globe.

Children love to come to the museum and look at her in her castle. The girl also likes it when the children come to see her.

Although the girl in the castle has other creatures to play with and things she likes to do, like making music, she sometimes gets lonely when the museum closes, and all the children go home.

When the girl in the castle dreams, she dreams of the children who come to visit her at the museum, imagining their journeys to come see her.

When the children are visiting or when she’s dreaming about them, the girl isn’t lonely, but when she wakes up from a dream and there aren’t any children, she gets lonely again.

However, the girl gets an idea. If you, the reader, want to be her friend, you can give her your picture. When she looks at your picture, she won’t be lonely anymore!

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

My Reaction

I love the surreal, fantasy pictures in this book! We don’t know exactly what the girl is or why this tiny girl lives in a miniature castle in a museum. The book says that people claim “she’s lived there forever.” She is alive and has feelings, but she seems to be surrounded by fantasy creatures as companions in her castle rather than other people. She doesn’t seem to have parents or family. My theory is that she is a magical, living toy because the museum seems to be filled with other toys, the fantasy creatures in her castle seem to be toys with little wind-up keys in their backs, and the castle itself incorporates little toys and odd-and-ends, like buttons and marbles. However, the girl’s backstory is left up to the imagination of the readers.

This book breaks the fourth wall of the book, with the girl inviting readers to put their own pictures into the book and saying that the girl can see them through the book when they read it. Readers looking at the book keep the tiny girl company when she doesn’t have visitors to her museum. It’s not the first book that I’ve seen that uses the concept of readers keeping a book character company through their books. There is a book from the 1930s called The Tale of Corally Crothers, where a lonely girl with no brothers and sisters goes in search of a friend and finds you, the reader. (I haven’t found a copy of it myself, but you can see some pictures of this book on this site.) Books that involve the reader and invite the reader into their world are charming, and I found the fantasy elements of this particular book delightful!

Posted on by TracyC

Princess Hyacinth

Princess Hyacinth by Florence Parry Heide, illustrated by Lane Smith, 2009.

For reasons nobody understands, Princess Hyacinth is not affected by gravity, and she floats upward anytime she is not restrained or weighted down.

It’s a real problem because, while it’s difficult enough when she floats up to the ceiling of the palace, if she were allowed out of the palace without something weighing her down, she would simply float away.

Princess Hyacinth’s parents go to great lengths to make sure that she is always secured to something or weighed down with special weighted clothes and a very heavy crown.

Of course, being weighted down all of the time makes life difficult for Princess Hyacinth, too. She wishes that she could go outside and play and swim with the other children, but she can’t because she can’t be outside without the weights. There is one boy in particular who comes by her window with a kite with a crown on it and says hello to her, but it would be difficult for her to go out and play with him.

Then, one day, when Princess Hyacinth is particularly bored and tired of being weighted down, she persuades a balloon man to tie a string to her and let her float among his balloons. At first, it’s fun, floating along as the balloon man walks through the park, but then, the balloon man is startled by a dog and accidentally lets go of her!

As Princess Hyacinth floats upward into the sky, she is thrilled because she has never felt so free in her life, but where will it end? How high can she go, and is there any way for her to get back? Fortunately, there is a way for her to get home, with the help of a friend!

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

My Reaction

This story reminded me of a much-older story from the 19th century, The Light Princess, but this picture book is much, much less serious than that book. In The Light Princess, the princess is cursed, and the story is about breaking this curse that has afflicted her all of life. In this book, there is never any explanation about why Princess Hyacinth isn’t affected by gravity, and she is never cured. Instead, she makes a friend who helps her find a way to live with her condition and enjoy it.

I liked the art style in this book. I found it amusing that the king, queen, and palace guards are drawn in the style of the face cards in a deck of playing cards. Princess Hyacinth is a cute little girl, and when she’s wearing her heavy princess gear, you can almost feel the weight of it on her. In the end, there are still times when she has to be tied down, but she seems more normal, less weighted down, because she has found someone to help her deal with her condition.

Posted on by TracyC

The Shoemaker’s Boy

The Shoemaker’s Boy by Joan Aiken, illustrated by Victor G. Ambrus, 1991, 1994.

Jem’s father is a shoemaker, and Jem is learning his trade. However, things take a bad turn when his mother suddenly becomes ill. It’s a strange kind of illness. She sleeps all the time, can’t eat, and is hardly breathing. The doctors can’t seem to help her, so Jem’s father decides to go on a pilgrimmage to St. James in Spain and pray for his wife to get better.

While he’s gone, Jem has to mind the family business and look after his mother. Jem’s father has a reputation as a incredible shoemaker, with people coming to see him even from other kingdoms, and Jem is worried that he won’t be able to maintain the business on his own because he’s still learning the trade. However, since nothing else seems to help his mother, it seems like his father’s holy pilgrimage is their last hope.

While his father is away, Jem tries his best, but he finds it difficult to keep up with the orders that come in for shoes. He falls behind on his work, and money is running short. Then, one day, he has a strange encounter with three little men, who are only the size of young children. They are all dressed in green, and they ask Jem for the three silver keys. Jem doesn’t know what they’re talking about, but the men say that they were sent to ask him for them because someone was supposed to leave the keys with him. Jem says that nobody has left any keys with him, and suddenly, the little men vanish! At first, Jem thinks that maybe he imagined the whole thing, but this is just the beginning of a series of strange happenings.

Late that night, there is a knock on the door, and when Jem answers it, he is confronted by a knight wearing black. The knight says that he wants Jem to make him a pair of boots because he’s heard that the boots from this shop are the best. Jem doesn’t want the knight to be disappointed, so he explains to him about his father being away and that he is not as good as his father at making boots. The knight appreciates his honesty and says that he will try Jem’s work anyway. He promises Jem an excellent fee for his services if the boots are ready by morning, and to Jem’s surprise, he also asks Jem if someone has left three silver keys for him. Jem tells him that nobody has left any keys with him, and the knight says that someone may leave them by the time the boots are ready, and he asks Jem to take good care of them.

Jem works on the boots through the night, and he’s making good progress when, in the middle of the night, a second knight arrives. The second knight is dressed in white. This knight doesn’t want any boots or shoes. Instead, he asks Jem to take care of a little packet for him while he runs an errand. He says that he has heard that Jem is very trustworthy, and he says that if he doesn’t return by morning, Jem can keep the packet. Jem agrees that he will take care of the packet and make sure no one else touches it.

The rest of the night is very strange. While Jem works hard on finishing the last boot, he hears strange sounds outside, and he thinks that he can hear the little men and the black knight calling out for the mysterious keys. What does it all mean? Are the keys in the packet left by the white knight, and if so, what are they for?

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

My Reaction

This is a short, easy beginning chapter book, and it’s a nice story with a Medieval setting, written in the style of an old fairy tale. The story leaves a few questions unanswered at the end. We never really find out who the two knights are or who the little men are, although there are implications that they are supernatural. I think that they also have religious significance, tying them to Jem’s father’s pilgrimage. The contents of the white knight’s packet are not obvious, but it is the solution to Jem’s main problem. When Jem’s father returns home, he also has some information about Jem’s mysterious visitors, although he doesn’t have all the answers, either. Readers know enough at the end to appreciate that Jem made the right decision when he handled the packet and that his experiences were partly a test of his character.

The book mentions Jem’s father putting a scallop shell on his cap when he’s about to begin his pilgrimage. The scallop shell is a symbol of St. James, one of the original Twelve Apostles. The place where Jem’s father was going on his pilgrimage, the shrine of St. James at Santiago de Compostela in Spain is a real place that has been a popular site of religious pilgrimages for centuries. After Jesus was crucified, His disciples traveled to other places to spread the word about Jesus and gain new converts to the new religion of Christianity. St. James went to what is now Spain, and after teaching there, he eventually returned to Jerusalem. It isn’t entirely clear what happened to his body after he died, but one of the stories is that his followers brought his body back to Spain and buried it at the site now known as Santiago de Compostela. St. James is now the patron saint of Spain, and pilgrims who visit Santiago de Compostela often collect a scallop shell as a souvenir of their journey. Actually, that is the one complaint that I have about this book. In the story, Jem’s father puts on a scallop shell as he begins his journey, but in real life, Medieval pilgrims usually used the shell as a sign of completion of their journey.

Posted on by TracyC

The Reluctant Dragon

The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame, illustrated by Michael Hague, 1983.

This picture book, with its illustrations, is from the 1980s, but the story by Kenneth Grahame is much older, from 1898. It was always a short story, originally published in a collection called Dream Days. In the original version, there’s an opening part that isn’t included in this picture book, where a girl name Charlotte finds large footprints from a reptile, and a man tells her the story of the dragon.

There is a shepherd whose son loves to read, borrowing books from a friendly member of the gentry who lives nearby. Not all parents from their class value book learning, but the boy’s parents appreciate it and support their son for spending time reading. One day, the shepherd comes home and tells his wife and son that he’s had a terrifying experience. While he was out with his flock, he heard a strange snoring nose, and when he went to investigate, he found a frightening-looking creature with scales, with its head sticking out from the cave.

The shepherd’s son isn’t as alarmed as the shepherd. He merely identifies the creature his father saw as a dragon. He knows about dragons because he’s read about them, and he’s thought for some time that the cave was probably a dragon’s cave. Rather than being surprised or alarmed about the dragon, his father’s discovery merely confirms what the boy already suspected, that a dragon might have lived in the cave once and that it would be a suitable dragon’s home. Furthermore, the boy says that dragons are quite sensitive creatures, so he might look in on this one at some point.

When the boy goes to visit the dragon, the dragon tells him he won’t put up with any rough stuff, like hitting or throwing stones. The boy says he wasn’t going to do any of that, and the two of them start to talk. The dragon hasn’t been staying in the cave for very long, and he’s not sure if he’s going to stay or not. It’s a nice place, but he’s not sure if he’s ready to settle down or not. He admits that he’s lazy, compared to other dragons. Other dragons do things like rampaging, chasing knights, and eating damsels, but this dragon would just prefer a quiet life with regular meals and time to snooze and make up poetry. The boy and the dragon talk about poetry and how it seems like nobody else around them appreciates it the way they do or understands why they like it.

However, the boy can see that there would be problems with the dragon settling in this area. Dragons and humans just don’t mix, even though this dragon isn’t interested in rampaging or doing the other things that would be likely to make enemies of the local population. Once word has gotten around that there’s dragon here, there are bound to be people who will try to hunt it with spears and swords because they’ll only see the dragon as a monster. The dragon has trouble grasping the idea that he could even potentially pose a risk to the human population or that anybody might see him as a danger.

Eventually, word does get around that there’s a dragon living in the cave. The people in the village are both thrilled at this exciting thing happening to their village and plotting to rid their land from this supposed scourge, although the dragon has spent the entire time with his poetry and hasn’t been scourging anything. The village attracts the attention of St. George, the famous dragon slayer, and he comes to deal with the apparent problem.

The boy goes to the dragon and warns him that St. George is in town and that he’s got to prepare to face him and fight. Everyone in town is expecting him to, and they’re all excited about it because it’s the most exciting thing that’s ever happened there. However, the dragon says that he doesn’t like violence, and he doesn’t want anything to do with St. George. The boy worries that, if the dragon won’t take the threat seriously and fight, St. George will simply kill him, but he can’t seem to impress on the dragon just how much danger he’s in.

The boy tries to go to St. George and explain the truth about the dragon, but St. George doesn’t take him seriously at first. Everyone else in the village has been telling him tales of horror about the terrible things the dragon has been supposedly doing. The boy explains that the people in the village aren’t telling the truth because the truth is that they only want a fight. This is a quiet, boring little village, the villagers want excitement, and fights are a primary source of excitement for them. They don’t care at all that the dragon doesn’t like fighting and doesn’t want to be involved; they just want to stir things up with their stories and give St. George a reason to go over the dragon so they can watch the entertainment. When the boy explains that, right now, the villagers are taking bets on the upcoming fight, and so far, they’re favoring the dragon to win, St. George begins to think that maybe he’s been too quick to believe the villagers. He agrees to go with the boy to meet the dragon and talk things over.

Both St. George and the boy think the best thing might be to have a fight and get it over with because that’s how things typically go with dragons, and it’s what everyone is expecting. St. George even says that he wouldn’t have to hurt the dragon much in the course of the fight, as long as it looks good to the spectators. The dragon isn’t thrilled with the plan because he still doesn’t like violence, and he doesn’t want to be hurt or even kind of hurt. The boy realizes that the dragon won’t be getting out of the experience, either. St. George would get the glory for the fight, but what’s in it for dragon? Fortunately, the dragon knows what he wants – to be the guest of honor at the victory banquet!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. The original story of The Reluctant Dragon was made into a cartoon film (with some slight changes to the story) by Walt Disney in 1941, and it was used as a vehicle for a film tour of the new Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California.

My Reaction and Spoilers

This story is fun because it’s sort of a parody on folktales, especially St. George and the Dragon, subverting everyone’s expectations. The dragon in this story isn’t particularly fearsome and just likes poetry and a peaceful life, and the villagers, who are supposedly being terrorized, are actually the bloodthirsty ones. St. George is rather disappointed when he realizes that the villagers have been duping him with their stories, but he also realizes that they have to find a way to give the people what they want while sparing the dragon and making it so the dragon won’t be victimized later. Although the boy feels like they have to have a fight of some kind to appease the villagers, he also doesn’t want his dragon friend hurt, and he realizes that they have to consider what the dragon really wants.

The three of them work out a way to give the villagers a good show during their “fight” without the dragon getting really hurt. Then, St. George declares that the dragon has been defeated, and there is no need to cut off his head as the villagers have asked because the dragon has seen the error of its ways and repented, so there is no further need for vengeance. St. George’s victory speech also makes it clear to the villagers that he won’t put up with any more stories about the dragon’s terror because he knows that they can’t be true, that they should drop their prejudices because it’s pretty clear that they don’t know everything even if they act like they do, and that it’s wrong to make up stories about things that haven’t actually happened just for the excitement of doing so. I particularly like that last part of his speech/lecture: “And he warned them against the sin of romancing [in the sense of dramatizing and romanticizing things], and making up stories and fancying other people would believe them just because they were plausible and highly coloured.”

I feel like this is a lesson that more people could stand to remember this modern era of conspiracy theories, social media, and Internet rumors. Yeah, I’m particularly thinking of the stories about immigrants eating animals in Ohio. I’m never going to let that one go because everyone who fell for that and helped spread it was acting like the villagers in this story. They were irresponsible and attention-seeking, causing trouble and danger for people who did nothing to deserve it just for their own excitement and hysteria. It doesn’t help if people based some of their belief on old stories about other groups of immigrants eating pets. That actually makes it much worse because I know those stories were debunked decades ago, so they have even less of an excuse to fall for that now.

If you’re thinking at this point that the matter of rumors of pet-eating immigrants is unrelated to the story, I would argue that it fits in very well because, in both the story and in the real-life rumors, social acceptance is a major issue. The dragon wants to be socially accepted so he and stay in the cave that he now considers his home. He wants to be left in peace to compose his poetry but at the same time have the ability to have company and join in local festivities so he won’t feel too lonely. The problem is that the village people have their own expectations and plans to use the dragon as their personal source of excitement, uncaring about whether that costs the dragon his life or if it costs the knight his life while attempting to kill the dragon. They honestly don’t care who gets hurt or even killed as long as they get to see it, knowing that the stories they invent to tell St. George are necessary to make it all happen. Immigrants also want social acceptance and to be allowed to live their lives peacefully and go about their business in their new homes. People sometimes tell wild stories about them, things they made up themselves, knowing that they’re untrue and uncaring about the consequences for other people, for their own purposes.

The very first time I heard of the Springfield pet-eating hoax, I immediately thought of Janie’s Private Eyes, which I reviewed here years ago and contained references to similar accusations about immigrants. I read Janie’s Private Eyes when I was a kid, and since it dealt with the dangers of rumors and prejudice, specifically rumors about immigrants eating pets, I grew up figuring that these were things that adults should just understand and that only had to be explained to kids, who hadn’t heard about them yet. I don’t suppose everyone has read Janie’s Private Eyes, but I always thought, surely, by adulthood, they would have read something or had somebody clue them in at some point.

There was just no chance of me ever being impressed about humors of Haitian immigrants supposedly eating pets as an adult after hearing about long-debunked rumors about Chinese immigrants supposedly eating pets and Vietnamese immigrants supposedly eating pets and Mexican immigrants supposedly eating pets (I live in a border state, so other parts of the US may or may not have gotten around to that one). After all, how many sets of immigrants can you hear this about before it just becomes eye-rolling routine, like those dumb chain emails that used to be popular in the early 2000s or those supposedly shocking but highly improbable kidnapping stories you’re supposed to warn every young woman in your life about but which are almost direct rip-offs of badly-misspelled fan fiction from Wattpad that was written by teens around that same time period? In all those cases, they’re the some wild stories, just retold with a few minor details and the names of the characters changed.

Stories do matter. The ones we hear when we’re young live in our heads and influence the way we look at things when we’re older and how we respond to some of the questionable things that other people are bound to tell us later in life. In a way, I think it really helps to hear some of this bunk when you’re young, under circumstances where you can tell it’s bunk or with someone cluing you in, so you can get some of these ideas out of your head earlier in life and be better able to tell what’s old-fashioned, sensationalist bunk from someone playing up for attention when you’re an adult. I think that The Reluctant Dragon, although it can be taken in a lighter fashion as parody or satire by people who know the type of stories that are being parodied, also offers the opportunity to talk about the power of stories, how they change people’s views and motivate people to action, and the serious consequences of rumors.

Maybe some of the people spreading the Internet rumors really were ignorant and gullible, easily alarmed and manipulated by a wild story, and maybe some of them just wanted in on the excitement to get attention for themselves and never cared whether it was true or not as long as they could latch on to the attention the story was getting and make themselves part of it. I’m pretty sure that the people starting them and passed them on wanted excitement and attention. There is a certain thrill to passing on rumors, feeling special because you “know” something other people don’t know yet and maybe even wanting praise as well as attention for passing the story along. Maybe some of those people also wanted to get some kind of petty revenge on the immigrant population by saying something bad about them, they expected that people would believe them if they made the stories seem dramatic and plausible (like St. George said in the story), and like the villagers in the story, they did not think or care about what would happen to the people who were the subjects of their libel.

It’s the same sort of thing with most social media rumors, which often contain little truth and can do a lot of harm by people believing them and continuing to spread them, which is why I’m against them all in principle. I urge everybody, when you hear any sensational story through Facebook or any form of social media, to pause and do a little fact-checking before you send that story to anyone else. If you can’t verify it or if you find evidence against it, make no other comment on it other than a link to the evidence against the story (if possible) and a message saying that you don’t want to see any more rumors or conspiracy theories. (At least, I sincerely hope you don’t. I’m telling you, they’re only trouble, and real people get hurt because of fake news.)

In real life, I doubt most people, being told off, even in a nice way, for making up stories and getting caught in lies, would behave with as much grace as the villagers in the story. In real life, people get defensive when they know they’ve been caught and “fight back”, but the villagers just accept it as part of the excitement they wanted and focus on getting to the party they know they’re going to have. During his speech, along with his other admonishments, St. George lets the villagers know, subtly, that he’s discovered that they’ve also been staging animal fights and that this practice is going to have to end, and the villagers all know that he’ll personally be checking on that. At the end of St. George’s speech, there is “much repentant cheering”, and they all go to enjoy the banquet. If people are feeling a little awkward about their behavior or the situation, they’re still determined to enjoy themselves and this remarkable event as much as possible. Everyone relaxes at the banquet because the major event is over, everybody has had a taste of excitement and the spectacle they were craving, and St. George’s speech is over, so there’s nothing left for anybody to plan or worry about. Everybody has a good time at the party, and the dragon is pleased that he’s been accepted into society, so he will be allowed to stay in this peaceful place and even have some company, which was what he really wanted.

Posted on by TracyC · 4 Comments

The Diamond in the Window

The Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton, 1962.

Eleanor and Edward Hall are orphans who live with their Aunt Lily and Uncle Frederick in their family’s big but somewhat shabby old house in Concord, Massachusetts. The family has lived there for generations, and they are intellectuals with a particular interest in the literary history of Concord. Uncle Freddy is obsessed with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau, although he doesn’t share Eleanor’s love of Louisa May Alcott. When a couple of the town leaders threaten to take the family’s house because of unpaid back taxes and to destroy it because they think it’s an eyesore, the children come to learn that their house holds more secrets and history than anyone knows.

As Eleanor and Edward look at the house from the outside, they suddenly realize that there’s an window at the top of the house that’s shaped like a key and made of colored glass. They’ve never seen that window from the inside of the house, so there must be a secret room! The children search the attic and find a trap door that they never realized was there before. When they look into the hidden room, they find a pair of children’s beds and toys.

The children ask Aunt Lily about the room, and she sadly admits that she hadn’t wanted to tell them about it. Then, she begins to explain more about the family’s history and the aunt and uncle the children never knew. Aunt Lily is their father’s sister, and Uncle Freddy is their brother, but there were once two more children in the family, called Ned and Nora. Eleanor and Edward were named after them, but Ned and Nora mysteriously disappeared years ago. Aunt Lily still believes and hopes that, somehow, they will return someday, so she has always kept their room ready for them.

When she shows the children pictures of Ned and Nora in the family’s album, they also see a picture of a young man in a turban and ask about him. Aunt Lily says that the man is Prince Krishna, son of the Maharajah of Mandracore. Their Uncle Freddy has written books about Emerson and Thoreau and was once considered an expert on the Transcendentalists. People who were interested in Transcendentalism, like Prince Krishna, used to come and study with him. Aunt Lily wasn’t really interested in Transcendentalism, but she explains, “I think he said that the Transcendentalists believed that men’s minds were very wonderful, and that they could know all kinds of important things without being taught about them through their eyes and ears –because they were part of something called an Over-Soul.” Eddy approves of this concept because it sounds like it’s about learning without school, and he approves of anything that involves no school.

Everyone was fond of Prince Krishna while he lived and studied with the family, and Aunt Lily said that he used to make up fun games for Ned and Nora, like treasure hunts with real jewels as prizes because the prince was very rich. The children get the sense that Aunt Lily was in love with Prince Krishna, but he also vanished shortly after Ned and Nora did. When they discovered that Ned and Nora were missing from their beds one morning, Prince Krishna dashed around, looking for them, but suddenly, he was also gone, and no one knew where or how.

Eleanor and Eddy return to Ned and Nora’s room upstairs to have another look at it, and they find a mysterious poem called “Transcendentalist Treasure.” From the handwriting, which matches a note that Prince Krishna wrote to Ned and Nora with a present he gave them, Eleanor and Eddy realize that Prince Krishna also wrote the poem. Since the poem seems to be some kind of treasure hunt, the children think that it was probably part of the treasure hunts that Prince Krishna used to make for Ned and Nora. They try to figure out what the clues in the poem mean and what it might lead to, hoping that it might be the jewels that Aunt Lily told them about and which haven’t been seen in the house since Ned, Nora, and Prince Krishna vanished. If they could find those jewels, they could pay the back taxes and save their house!

However, they don’t really begin to grasp the full importance of the poem until they ask Aunt Lily if they can spend the night in Ned and Nora’s room. During the night, they have a bizarre dream, in which they’re climbing an elm tree with Ned and Nora and find a harp, which is something that was mentioned in the poem. A dangerous wind blows them out of the tree, and they wake up. They could have believed that it was only a dream except that they realize that they both dreamed the same thing, Eleanor has bruises and a scratch on her leg that she got from falling out of the dream tree, and Eddy has located the harp in Ned and Nora’s bedroom.

They show the harp to Aunt Lily, and she says that Prince Krishna had given it to Ned and Nora years ago, hanging it in a tree so that they would hear the wind blowing across it. The poem and the dreams that Eleanor and Eddy have seem to be hinting at the treasure hunts that Prince Krishna had with Ned and Nora. Eleanor and Eddy begin to think that solving the riddles in the poem may not only lead them to the jewels but to the truth about what happened to Ned, Nora, and Prince Krishna.

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

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

The book introduces the concept of Transcendentalism. I remember my English and history teachers discussing the Transcendentalists when I was in high school, but for some reason, they didn’t appeal to me back then, even though I went through a kind of phase where I was interested in metaphysical topics. I think my teachers put a lot of emphasize on their interest in nature, and I wasn’t an outdoorsy person. The background information in this story revived old memories of my high school classes and actually clarified a couple of points for me. The kids visit real places in Concord, Massachusetts, including the house where Louisa May Alcott once lived, and the book is full of discussions of literary figures and their lives and quotations from their works.

The children’s surrealist dreams connect to real objects in their lives and in the history of the family and their house. The dreams follow the poem that Prince Krishna left behind, and in each of their dreams, they see Ned and Nora up ahead of them, so the Eleanor and Edward realize that they’re following their path. The poem and the dream reference pieces of Transcendental literature and thought, and the children’s uncle explains the references throughout the story.

Many of the dreams also show the children’s personal and mental growth. In one dream, the children examine different images of their future selves, seeing how different choices they make can lead their lives in different directions, and they make up their minds which version of themselves they want to aim to be. In another dream, the children are trapped in a nautilus shell, and they discover that they have to think their way out of it. The thoughts they have help them work their way through each chamber of the nautilus, but they have to use thoughts with increasing depth and complexity to make progress. At first, remembering nursery rhymes is enough to help them move forward, but as they go further, they have to concentrate on more complex poems and higher-level moral and philosophical thoughts.

Although the dreams the children have are very surreal, and readers have no idea where they might be leading, the children do find Prince Krishna and their missing aunt and uncle. When the three of them return, Prince Krishna does explain where they were the entire time they were missing. He doesn’t offer a detailed explanation because they were trapped in a sort of magical/metaphysical prison, but he does explain who trapped them and why. There is a villain in the story, but it takes a while to grasp who and what the villain is because readers don’t really see it/him in his true form and don’t understand who he is and what his motives are until Prince Krishna explains. Eleanor and Eddy end up understanding more than Aunt Lily and Uncle Freddy do in the end, but finding Ned and Nora, Prince Krishna, and Prince Krishna’s treasure changes everyone’s lives for the better. Throughout the book, Uncle Freddy is mentally unbalanced, eccentric at the best of times and outright crazy at others. Local people want to see him committed to an asylum, but his mind was unbalanced by Ned and Nora’s disappearance. Once they’re back, he regains his senses.

The author wanted to write realistic children as her protagonists to appeal to real children. Eleanor and Eddy have their own insecurities and dreams which play into their characters all through the book and appear in the visions of the futures and choices they have to make in their dreams.

Posted on by TracyC

Emma in Winter

Emma in Winter by Penelope Farmer, 1966.

This is the second book in the Aviary Hall Trilogy. Each of the books in the series could be read independently of each other, but this book in particular makes more sense if you have read both the first book, which is The Summer Birds, and the third book, Charlotte Sometimes before reading this one. People in this book directly reference events in The Summer Birds, something with Charlotte Sometimes does not. Although Charlotte Sometimes was written and published after this book, it actually takes place during the autumn before this story and it does inadvertently contain a spoiler for Charlotte Sometimes because Charlotte appears at the beginning of the book. It’s just my own preference that it’s better to read this book after Charlotte Sometimes because it makes Charlotte Sometimes more suspenseful. Like Charlotte Sometimes, this book also involves time travel, and the characters do some research on the subject of time and how it works.

At the beginning of the story, Emma Makepeace is upset because her older sister, Charlotte, will be leaving early for the new term at her boarding school after Christmas. At this point, Charlotte has already had her first term at boarding school (which is where and when Charlotte Sometimes takes place, although there are no references to the events of that story here), and she has been invited to visit one of her new friends from boarding school before they return to the school together. All through Charlotte’s first term at boarding school, Emma has been lonely without her and has been finding life at their home, Aviary Hall, increasingly difficult. 

The girls are orphans (although the books never explain what happened to their parents) who live with their grandfather and his housekeeper. Between the two of them, Charlotte is the more serious and responsible and Emma is the more mischievous and thoughtless. Up to this point in their lives, Charlotte has acted the part of the caring older sister, trying to teach Emma to behave herself and covering for her when she doesn’t. Charlotte has realized that their grandfather has little patience for misbehaving children and that Emma pushes the limits, so she has frequently intervened and smoothed things over when Emma tries his patience. 

Emma has often thought of Charlotte as a kind of spoilsport for trying to act grown-up and mature, but during Charlotte’s absence at boarding school during the previous term, Emma has suddenly come to see how much Charlotte has been helping her and saving her from the consequences of her own actions and the realities of their home life. Without Charlotte there to be the motherly big sister, providing some warmth and affection and acting as a buffer between Emma and the adults, the grandfather has become more impatient with Emma’s immaturity. Both he and the housekeeper have been more direct with Emma about her behavior and bad habits, and there’s no one there to shield Emma from it. Emma is lonely for Charlotte’s company and feels picked on by the adults, so when Charlotte cuts her time with Emma short after her first visit home to go visit one of her school friends, Emma is angry and resentful. Charlotte is tempted to back out of her friend’s invitation for Emma’s sake, but she feels like she can’t, and their grandfather tells her that she must go ahead with the visit.

Emma is in a state of emotional turmoil through most of the story, adjusting to Charlotte’s absence, the new expectations of the adults in her life for her to mature and improve her behavior, and her own resentment about these things. While all this is happening, something else strange happens. Emma begins having strange dreams about flying. They remind her of the children’s flying adventures from two years previously, as described in The Summer Birds. It has been so long since she last flew that she struggles to remember how in her dreams, and when she wakes up, her muscles feel sore from the effort. However, at first, she can’t remember what happened in her dreams.

At school, when the new term begins, Emma is made head girl because she is the eldest girl in the class. A boy called Bobby Fumpkins is made head boy because he is the eldest boy. Emma is embarrassed and uncomfortable about being the head of the class in partnership with Bobby. She hates Bobby because he is fat, awkward, and spoiled. Before his mother gave birth to Bobby’s younger sister, who is still a baby, she babied Bobby more than she really should have at this age. Their family also has their own tv set, something most of the other children’s families don’t have at this time, and which Bobby bragged about when they got it. For these reasons, most of the other children in the class don’t like Bobby, either, and they’ve teased him mercilessly for years. They think he’s a sissy and a baby because of his mother’s attention and because he’s milder-mannered than they are and never stands up to them. Because of his awkwardness, they like to call him Jemima Puddle-Duck after a character from a children’s book by Beatrix Potter. Bobby tells himself that his classmates mean all this teasing good-naturedly, but they don’t really. Emma is particularly adamant within herself that she genuinely hates Bobby.

However, like it or not, Emma’s life has become intertwined with Bobby’s. Their teacher expects the two of them to work together at school during the day, and at night, she gradually begins to realize that he is sharing in her same dream of flying. Other children at school tease Emma about being friends with Bobby, particularly one girl who really wants to cause trouble for Emma because, as the next eldest, she would be next in line for the head girl position herself. Emma denies being Bobby’s friend, partly because he still gets on her nerves and partly because she’s still lonely without Charlotte and is worried by being shunned by the other children at school. However, she gradually begins to feel guilty about the way she and others have been treating Bobby, and she begins to feel the impulse to try to be nicer to him. 

As her relationship with Bobby improves, Emma begins remembering more of their shared dream, and the two of them talk about the dream together. Bobby was one of the children at school who shared in their flying adventures two years before, and the two of them discuss their past adventures with each other and how they compare to the dream they’re now having. There are a few things that they begin to notice that are different from their past flying adventures. One is that they both have the feeling that someone is watching them. It seems to be a stern or hostile presence, a pair of eyes that belong to some unknown person, but they don’t know who it is. They also begin to notice that it looks like plants are growing backward as they fly over the countryside. That is, grown plants seem to be returning to small plants and seeds. They gradually notice that the land seems to be going back in time. Eventually, they start seeing dinosaurs in their dreams, and it looks like they might be going back to the beginning of the world. What will happen to Emma and Bobby in their dream when they eventually reach the beginning of everything?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

I’ve already explained my reasoning about the reading order of the books. The Summer Birds is the first book in the trilogy, and you really have to read it before you read this book because the characters directly reference events from that story. Actually, I thought that was a really interesting choice, to have Emma and Bobby talking openly with each other about the summer when they learned to fly. They just accept that event as a common event in their lives that they shared and that everyone who shared it with them openly acknowledges. Sometimes, in children’s fantasy stories, the characters later downplay magical events, feeling like they were dreams they had or games of pretend they played because they seem too strange to have really happened, but no, in this book, the characters all know what happened to them and just accept it as a part of their lives. I thought it was interesting that this book acts as a bridge between the theme of flying and the themed of time travel in Charlotte Sometimes, although I still think that Charlotte Sometimes keeps more of its suspense if you don’t know that Charlotte safely returns to her own time before you read it. 

I still think that Charlotte Sometimes is the best book in the trilogy. It is the best known, and unlike this book, it can be read independently of the others in the trilogy. It doesn’t reference either of the other two books at all. There are no references to Charlotte having participated in any previous magical adventures in that story. That may be partly because she is among strangers at her new boarding school who wouldn’t know anything about her flying adventures, but even her private thoughts don’t give any hint to that. What I think that The Summer Birds and Emma in Winter add to Charlotte Sometimes are some further insights into Charlotte and Emma’s personalities and the relationship between them. I still think that Charlotte Sometimes is the best book in the trilogy. It is the best known, and unlike this book, it can be read independently of the others in the trilogy. It doesn’t reference either of the other two books at all. There are no references to Charlotte having participated in any previous magical adventures in that story. That may be partly because she is among strangers at her new boarding school who wouldn’t know anything about her flying adventures, but even her private thoughts don’t give any hint to that earlier adventure. What I think that The Summer Birds and Emma in Winter add to Charlotte Sometimes are some further insights into Charlotte and Emma’s personalities and the relationship between them. Emma in Winter also adds some thoughts about the nature of time and time travel, which add some further insights into Charlotte’s time travel experiences.

Emma and Bobby do some research about time in her grandfather’s study, a room where Emma is usually forbidden to go. One of the theories they find is that time moves in a coiled pattern, like a spring, and that the coils of the spring can be pushed together so different points on the coils can touch each other. This theory really relates better to Charlotte Sometimes than to Emma in Winter, but what is more relevant to this story is the idea that human thought can be the force that pushes the coils together and makes them touch. This is also a part of Charlotte Sometimes, and I explain in my review of that story about how Charlotte and Clare having many similarities and being in a similar state of mind as well as sharing the same physical space at different times allowed them to switch places with each other. However, the emphasis in Emma in Winter is Emma and Bobby realizing that their own thoughts and feelings influence their dreams and, therefore, their time travel.

This story is rather metaphysical and a little difficult to follow during the dream phases. I noticed that some other reviewers seemed confused about the point of the time traveling. I found it a little confusing, too, but it seems like this is a coming-of-age story, like the other books in the trilogy. The Summer Birds focused on Charlotte and how her more mature outlook helped the other children make an important decision that would alter their lives forever. Charlotte Sometimes raises the question about what defines a person’s identity and how a person’s identity can be tied to someone else’s even when they’re separate people. Emma in Winter focuses on emotional understanding.

Both Emma and Bobby are going through major changes in their lives, particularly ones that require them to become more mature than they once were. Bobby has been somewhat spoiled and coddled by his mother, but he’s no longer the center of attention at home, now that he has a little sister. At first, Bobby finds it hard to cope with his mother no longer giving him the attention she used to give him, but it does give him the opportunity to become more independent and mature. Emma despises Bobby for being babyish because he was spoiled and overprotected by his mother when he was younger, but the truth is that Emma is also babyish. She’s not accustomed to being accountable for her own behavior and bad habits because Charlotte usually takes responsibility for her and shields her from some of the reactions of the adults and other people. 

When Charlotte goes away to boarding school, Emma is left on her own for the first time to deal with the consequences of her actions and other people’s reactions to them. It’s a bit of a shock for her at first, and she realizes that she hasn’t fully appreciated what Charlotte was doing for her for the whole time. She also comes to the disquieting realization that, even thought she feels like the adults are picking on her over her behavior, she doesn’t like the way she behaves, either. She comes to feel guilty about the way she treats Bobby, and when she draws some nasty pictures of her teacher, she is startled to realize how much she has hurt her teacher’s feelings and how badly she feels about doing that. For the first time in her life, Emma has to face her own behavior and see how her behavior truly affects other people. She is shocked and troubled when she realizes that she doesn’t like what she sees and it’s her own fault. Only Emma can decide how nice or how mean she is and who she really wants to be.

The children’s time traveling adventures that they have while dreaming lead them to explore their relationship with each other. Emma realizes that she has to be nice to Bobby and learn to get along with him for them to be able to function with each other in the dream. Their final dream together is confusing and rather surreal, but it also involves the two of them confronting aspects of themselves, their lives with other people, and their own behavior. 

When they move all the way back in time as far as they can go, they’re confronted by a vision of their teacher, not as she actually is, but as Emma drew her in a mean drawing. Emma has to remind herself and tell the figure that it’s only a drawing she made; it’s not reality. They also see visions of other people in their lives and even of themselves at their worst and most frightening, but they have to hold on to the reality of themselves, as they are now, the people they’re becoming, not who they used to be or how other people see them. I took it to mean that neither of them can go backward in their lives anymore, to their old habits and who they were or how they were as younger children, but they have to accept the changes taking place in their lives and in themselves to return to the real world, their own time, and the lives they have ahead of them. They discover that the key to traveling through time is thinking, so they have to think themselves out of their time travel dreams, focusing on their real selves and the real lives, accepting and even loving themselves as they are. Change has been coming for both of them, but they have to make the decision to face it and embrace it and to let go of their past selves to move on in time and in their lives.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Stonestruck

Stonestruck by Helen Cresswell, 1995.

It’s WWII and Jessica knows that she will be evacuated from London soon, along with other children from her school. She doesn’t want to leave London and her mother, even though the bombings have gotten increasingly worse and frightening. Her father has already gone away to the front, and she has no idea if he will ever return. Then, one night, the unthinkable happens: their house is destroyed in a bombing. Jessica and her mother survive the bombing by sheltering in their basement, but Jessica’s pet cat is nowhere to be found. She doesn’t know if he survived the bombing and ran away somewhere or if he is buried somewhere in the rubble of their house. Jessica is traumatized, but with their home gone, her mother makes the decision to send Jessica away from London early. Jessica’s mother has decided that she will volunteer for service as an ambulance driver.

Jessica is terribly upset and worried about what will happen to her when her mother sends her away to Wales alone, but her mother assures her that she will be fine and that she will soon be joined by the other children from her school. They are being sent to a Welsh castle, where they will have classes together. Jessica’s mother tries to tell her that it will be fun and exciting, going to school in an old castle, but Jessica is too frightened and traumatized to think that this will be a fun adventure.

When Jessica’s train arrives at the station in Wales, she is met by Mr. and Mrs. Lockett, the gardener and housekeeper at the castle. They are friendly and welcoming to her, but on their arrival at the castle, Jessica hears a frightening scream. The Locketts don’t explain to her what the sound is and act like they haven’t heard a thing. When Jessica wakes up early the next day, she is relieved to see a peacock on the castle grounds, who gives the same strange cry that she heard the night before.

She is satisfied that the weird scream she heard has a logical explanation, but then, something else frightening happens. Although the morning is clear, there is one, strange, dense patch of mist on the castle grounds. Jessica thinks that it’s strange to see such a dense patch of mist in only one spot when there’s no mist anywhere else. Then, she hears a voice calling her name from the mist and the sound of children’s laughter. Jessica is confused because she’s only just arrived and hasn’t met anyone else there except the Locketts, and the rest of her classmates from her school in London aren’t there yet. It gives her an uneasy feeling, and when she sees a hand reach out of the mist and beckon to her, she becomes terrified and runs away.

At breakfast, Mrs. Lockett is cheerful and behaves in a perfectly ordinary manner. She expresses sympathy to Jessica over her ordeals during the bombings in London and the loss of her house and asks her what she plans to do before the other children arrive. She confides that she and her husband are not accustomed to children because they have none of their own, confirming that Jessica should be the only child in the castle right now. Jessica assures her that she can entertain herself. She asks Mrs. Lockett about the peacock that made the screaming sound, but Mrs. Lockett says that there are no peacocks on the ground and that she didn’t hear any scream. Mrs. Lockett is very disturbed by Jessica’s mention of a peacock. She says that the family that owns the castle won’t have peacocks on the grounds because they’re bad luck, and she sternly tells Jessica not to imagine things. Then, Mrs. Lockett gets a call that a train with 30 evacuees will be arriving, and she needs to help arrange accommodations for them. She leaves Jessica to entertain herself, but she warns her to stay out trouble and to stay away from the pond.

Jessica explores the grounds of the castle and meets Mr. Lockett again. Mr. Lockett, who prefers to be simply called Lockett, is kind to her, and she asks him about the peacock. Lockett seems to believe Jessica that she saw a peacock and finds it worrying. He says the same thing that Mrs. Lockett said, that peacocks are bad luck. He says that, for most people, a peacock’s cry means coming rain but that it means tears at the castle. He says that he knows that Jessica is sad right now, but he says that she should remember that she won’t always be sad. Some day, she will be happy again. He also cautions her to be careful what she wishes for.

When Mrs. Lockett returns, she says that she’s made arrangements for the evacuated children who are coming. She is sympathetic to the evacuees. Arranging housing for them is a hassle, although she says it’s for their own good to be evacuated. Lockett says that it’s good up to a point. He doesn’t speak much, but he observes that, while it’s necessary for the children to be sent away from the bombings, it isn’t so good that they’re being separated from their parents. He says that he’s sure that Jessica would rather be with her mother. Jessica is surprised that he understands how she feels. She says that, while the castle is nice and definitely safer than London right now, she really misses her her mother. Mrs. Lockett doesn’t want to dwell on that. Instead, she encourages Jessica to come with her to meet the evacuees’ train. She says that these new children from London will be friends and company for her. Jessica isn’t so sure because these children are strangers to her, not friends from her school, but she does go to meet the train with Mrs. Lockett.

People from the village have gathered to meet the other evacuated children. Some of the women have prepared food for children’s arrival, and some are talking about how many children they’ve been told to accept into their homes and their fears that some of them will have lice. When the children get off the train, Jessica can see that they are all hesitant and scared. Among the crowd, Jessica sees a boy she recognizes from the night of the bombing, standing outside of a burning house. She doesn’t know his name, but she feels a kinship with him because he also lost his home. Unlike the other children, he has no bags with him. Then, suddenly, the boy vanishes in the steam from the train. No one else seems to notice that he was there or that he’s now missing. Jessica wonders if she just imagined him.

The children’s teacher is checking the children’s names off a list as they are assigned homes, but Mrs. Lockett stops her, saying that she’ll see to it herself. However, Jessica notices that Mrs. Lockett puts it off. Jessica asks Mrs. Lockett how many evacuees there are, and she vaguely says about 20 or so, when she had said 30 before. When Jessica asks her again exactly how many there are, Mrs. Lockett says that it’s an old superstition in their town, that no one should ever count children twice. Jessica asks her why that is, but she brushes off the question. Later, Jessica sees Mrs. Lockett burning the list of evacuees. With the list gone, no one will be able to count how many evacuees there are.

After her mother calls the castle to check on her and tries to pretend that things are fine when Jessica knows they’re not, Jessica feels the need to go for a walk by herself. Mrs. Lockett lets her go, warning her to be back before dark. As Jessica explores the castle grounds, she experiences more strange phenomena. She sees the peacock and the mist again and hears a voice calling her name. She sees a boy on a horse vanish into the mist. Then, a troop of phantom children charge past her, laughing and calling her name, and Jessica is shocked to see that one of them looks like her!

Jessica knows that she’s not just imagining the things that she’s been seeing, and she struggles to understand what’s happening and what it means. She realizes that, every time something strange happens, she either sees the peacock or hears its cry. She also remembers that, the first time she heard its cry, she had the strange feeling that, while she went into the castle, a part of herself stayed outside. Is that other part of her the phantom girl that she saw, being chased by the other phantom children? It looked like her, but it also felt alien, like it isn’t really her.

Jessica discovers that the boy who vanished at the train station ran away and has been hiding out on the castle grounds. He was afraid to let himself be sent to a strange home with the other evacuees because he’s heard that evacuees are treated horribly. Jessica tells him that she’s been treated kindly at the castle. Before she can learn the boy’s name, he runs away again, frightened by a strange old woman.

The old woman is frightening and seems to know who Jessica is. She says that she’s going about her rounds, leaving food out for the children. She knows about the phantom children, who run around in the mist with their hands linked. She refuses to tell Jessica her real name, just telling her to call her Priscilla, and she warns Jessica to keep repeating to herself that things aren’t always what they seem.

Jessica asks Mrs. Lockett if she ever played chain tag, the type of tag game where children join hands whenever they’re caught and then continue chasing other children. Mrs. Lockett says that the children around here call that game Fishes in a Net. When there are four or more children in a chain, they surround other children to trap them. She says that she played it in another place as a child, but not here because their mothers would never allow them to. Jessica asks why, and Mrs. Lockett hesitates to answer, but she makes a reference to a boy she knew when she was young, who apparently played the game too many times and disappeared. Before he disappeared, he talked about the peacocks, which was why they decided to get rid of the peacocks on the grounds. Mrs. Lockett says that the Green Lady wanted him for her own. When Jessica asks her about the Green Lady, Mrs. Lockett suddenly brushes it off as an old legend that doesn’t mean anything. Lockett the gardener says that some stories build power with the telling, and that’s why people don’t want to tell them.

However, Jessica realizes that there is truth to the legend that Mrs. Lockett doesn’t want to explain. Mrs. Lockett knows that there’s enough truth to it to destroy the list of evacuated children so it will be harder to keep track of who’s there and who isn’t. The people of this town don’t count children twice because something that lurks in the mist vanishes children away, and no one wants to notice it or admit it’s happening, that it’s been happening for generations. As long as they don’t count children twice, they can tell themselves that no one is missing and nothing is wrong, even when it is. Jessica begins writing about all of her strange experiences in the journal that her mother gave her, trying to solve the mysteries of the castle and the mist. Something in the mist is after her, beckoning her to come to it, and like the others before her, if she goes to it, she will never come back.

At Jessica’s urging, Lockett tells Jessica what he knows about the story of the Green Lady. The Green Lady isn’t human. She’s a shapeshifter with a heart of stone. Years ago, she kidnapped the young lord of the castle, Harry, because he was a beautiful boy, and she wanted him for her own son. However, Harry was desperately lonely, living only with someone who had a heart of stone. He refused to speak aloud again until he had a human playmate. So, the Green Lady began stealing playmates for him, but it was never enough. There is one playmate in particular that Harry is waiting for, the one whose name he calls in the mist. That’s Jessica. Because only Jessica, frightened and lonely in a strange land, has the ability to break the spell.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers:

Some reviewers on Goodreads have pointed out that this book is very similar in plot to an earlier book by the same author, Moondial. In Moondial, as in this book, there is a young girl who is sent away from home and encounters mysterious phenomena that involves children in past times who are suffering and need her help to free them. However, the two stories are not identical, and I like the way this particular book is framed around WWII child evacuees from London.

It is important to the plot that the child evacuees from London are scared because of the war and have been wishing that they can go home, but that they haven’t been raised in the atmosphere of fear and superstition that the children in Wales have been. They have worries, but they’re not the same worries as the Welsh people have. Jessica learns from Lockett that it is the wishing themselves away that splits the children’s spirits and leaves them vulnerable to being captured by the trapped spirit children. Lockett understands what is happening better than anyone and how the unhappy children from London feel because he was also once an unhappy child. He was abused at home when he was young, and he also wanted to get away. However, when confronted by the spectral children whose hearts have also turned to stone, he changed his mind and escaped their clutches. He explains to Jessica what she has to do to reclaim that part of her that split off from her when she wished that she could go home, and from there, Jessica realizes what she needs to do to end this ghostly game of tag and free the other trapped children. The first step is reconciling herself to her situation as it exists and no longer wishing herself away. In doing so, she is doing what all of the adults around her have been failing to do, both about the supernatural phenomena and about the current war – facing up to the situation and not trying to pretend like it is less serious than it really while no longer wishing it away. Then, she realizes that the only way to end the spectral children’s game is to beat them at it, and for that, she needs help from other children.

When one of the other child evacuees from London has been captured and spirited away, Jessica and the boy who has been hiding out convince the other child evacuees to help them get him back and free the other children who have been taken across the generations. They have some work convincing the other evacuees of what is happening, but when they do, they form their own team for chain tag or Fishes in a Net and face off against the team of spectral children. It has to be the evacuee children who end this curse because the Welsh children are too afraid to do it, and the Welsh children’s parents would never risk them in the attempt. The Welsh people aren’t as careful about the evacuee children, and some of them have been bullying and abusing some of the evacuees. There is some concern when they realize what the evacuee children are going to do, but no one stops them.

It isn’t entirely clear what happens when the evacuee children free children who were taken from previous generations because these older children simply vanish. Even Jessica isn’t entirely sure whether the children returned to their own times or if they’ve simply passed on. However, the people of the Welsh town realize that the children have finally been freed and that the spell is broken, and they are grateful.

Parts of the story were stressful to read. First, I found the loss of Jessica’s cat upsetting. They never learn exactly what happened to the cat during the story. Then, Jessica finds out that the other boy who lost his home also lost his mother and siblings in the bombing, showing her that her own losses, while serious, aren’t the worst ones. There are also instances where the local children bully the London children, and the Welsh parents blame the London children for it. Some of the Welsh people are kind to the evacuees, but some also bully and abuse them, seeing them as only rough, poor children who are troublemakers and an inconvenience to them.

Even Mrs. Lockett says that she feels lucky that she got Jessica as an evacuee because she is gentle and well-behaved, not like the other London children. Jessica realizes that this is an unfair prejudice. Although she does not consider herself a brave person, she finds her courage when she begins to confront some of the adults around her about the way they look at the London children and how they treat them. She asks the adults directly if they realize that the London children also don’t want to be there and that no one asked them if they wanted to be sent away from their parents. The adults, confronted with the reality of the the children’s feelings and the reasons for their being there, entrusted to their care, are embarrassed. They don’t have real reasons for their prejudices against the evacuees, only their unfair feelings and bad behavior, and they realize that when they are confronted directly with the realities of the situation and their own behavior. Really, I think that facing up to realities, even ones that are strange and scary, is one of the major themes of the book. It is Jessica’s realization that she can do that, when even the adults around her can’t or won’t, that gives her the courage to do what she needs to do to end the spell and save herself and other children.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Moondial

Moondial by Helen Cresswell, 1987.

Araminta Kane, called Minty, has always had the ability to sense things that others can’t. For as long as she can remember, she has had the ability to sense and even see spirits. She doesn’t talk about it much because this happens to her routinely. When she does mention it, her mother assumes that it’s imagination or a trick of the light. Minty becomes more aware of her ability after her father dies, and she is still able to hear his voice from time to time.

She has been learning to cope with her father’s death and the changes to her life since it happened. She and her mother have been getting along pretty well, but her mother has to work long hours. It’s bad enough that Minty has to be alone so much on weekends, but her mother wonders what she will do during her school holidays. Minty’s mother decides to send Minty to stay with her godmother, Mrs. Bowyer, in the village of Belton, for the summer. Mrs. Bowyer is an elderly lady who lives in an old, stone cottage, which is near the old manor known as Belton House. Belton House once belonged to Lord Brownlow, but it is now owned by the National Trust (UK organization that focuses on preservation and protection of historic sites) and operates as a tourist attraction, open to the public. Mrs. Bowyer used to work for the Brownlow family as a domestic servant, and now, she sometimes helps out in the gift shop at Belton House.

Minty is happy about spending the summer with Mrs. Bowyer, who they call Aunt Mary, because she has heard about Belton House, and she would like to see it. She knows that there is a hidden tunnel on the property, and the idea of exploring it sounds intriguing. However, she wonders if that will be enough to keep her occupied all summer, and she does worry about whether her mother will be all right without her. She knows that her mother is still mourning her father and that she sometimes cries at night. Minty’s mother reassures her that she will be fine and that they’ll be too busy working to be sad and lonely. She also reassures Minty that she won’t be bored while she’s in Belton. When she stayed with Aunt Mary as a child, she always had the feeling that Belton was unusual somehow, that unseen things were happening beneath the surface. Minty asks her if she means ghosts, that the village is haunted. Her mother isn’t quite sure because she never actually saw any ghosts or anything of the kind.

Aunt Mary is happy to have Minty stay with her, and she says that Minty can help her in the shop at Belton House. She says that things at Belton House aren’t like they were in the old days, when the Brownlows lived there, and she remarks that they would turn over in their graves if they saw all the tourists and school groups tramping through their house and grounds. Before her mother leaves Belton, they explore the nearby churchyard together. Even though it’s July, Minty feels a strange gust of cold air. She senses that there is something strange about it, she plans to return later and examine the area more closely.

Minty has a strange sense that time doesn’t work in quite the same way in Aunt Mary’s village that it does elsewhere. She thinks it makes sense that time would stand still in the old graveyard because everyone there is dead, but Aunt Mary herself seems to move as if she’s in a different time as well. Aunt Mary is puzzled even about basic pieces of modern technology, not understanding even what Minty’s headphones are for.

While Minty is with Aunt Mary, she gets word that her mother has been in a car accident and is in the hospital. Minty is terrified of losing her mother as well as her father. A nice man named John Benson from her mother’s office is helping to arrange things, and Aunt Mary urges Minty to try not to think about it or worry too much, but Minty can’t help it. When Minty feels like she needs to get out of the house and go for a walk, Aunt Mary suggests that she go explore Belton House and meet Mr. World, the groundskeeper, who likes children.

When Minty meets World, he asks her if she’s there to meet the children. At first, Minty doesn’t know who he’s talking about, since she just saw a tour group of other children leaving the grounds. She asks if there are any children currently living in the old house, but World isn’t talking about living children. World tells her that there are children who haunt the place. He says that they’re trapped and need someone to free them, and he thinks that Minty will be “the one to turn the key” and set them free. This isn’t exactly reassuring talk for Minty’s current situation, but she has the feeling that what World says is true and that she’s just been given a kind of invitation that she can’t refuse.

In the gardens of the manor, Minty finds a mysterious sundial that has the power to take her back in time. The very first time she encounters it, it gives her a strange feeling, and for some reason, she keeps thinking of it as a “moondial” instead of sundial. Suddenly, Minty finds herself back in the Victorian era with a boy named Tom. Tom is an orphan from London who works at the manor house, and the adults there abuse him. Minty tries to intervene, but none of the adults can see or hear her, and she suddenly finds herself back in her own time, uncertain of what made her travel through time and what brought her back to the present.

Later, when Minty visits the old house again, she has another encounter with the sundial/moondial and finds herself visiting the grounds of the manor at night. This time, she meets a girl from the past called Sarah. Sarah sings little rhymes (old, traditional ones – Poor Mary (sometimes called Poor Jenny or Poor Sally, and sometimes she’s weeping for a lost sweetheart and sometimes for a playmate) and Girls and Boys Come Out to Play (listen on YouTube). Minty watches as a frightening adult dressed in black hurries her back into the house, calling her a “little devil.”

When Minty visits Tom’s time again, she learns that Tom has also seen Sarah. He seems to also have the ability to travel through time, and when he sees Sarah, it’s also at night. Tom still thinks that both Minty and Sarah are ghosts. Minty doesn’t know why this is happening, but she senses that she needs to help Tom and Sarah.

When Minty visits the hospital, she isn’t sure what to say to her mother, who is still in a coma, so she decides that she will make recorded tapes about her time-traveling adventures that she can play for her mother, along with some music. The doctor approves of Minty make tapes for her mother to listen to, but Minty tells him that what she has to say is private, and she makes him promise that he and the nurses won’t listen to them while they’re playing. The doctor promises that there won’t be anyone in the room, and they won’t listen to the tapes themselves.

Then, Aunt Mary has a visit from a strange woman called Miss Raven, who says that she’s an author investigating the ghosts at the manor house. Aunt Mary even accepts Miss Raven as a lodger at her house. However, Minty has a strange feeling that Miss Raven is not to be trusted. Miss Raven tries to get Minty to admit that she has seen ghosts. She watches Minty closely and tries to get Aunt Mary to limit Minty’s freedom to go places by herself. World also shares Minty’s suspicions of Miss Raven. He tells her that Miss Raven is probably after the children, and it’s up to Minty to save them. She doesn’t know how to do that, but she’s determined to try.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. There is also a BBC miniseries based on the book. It’s available on DVD through Amazon, and you can sometimes see it or clips of it on YouTube. There is also a similar (although not identical) story by the same author called Stonestruck, which involves child evacuees from London during WWII.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I read Stonestruck first, and I read Moondial specifically because another reviewer mentioned the similarities between the two stories. It seems like the author wanted to revisit the themes of Moondial in a somewhat different setting and with some twists when she wrote Stonestruck. The two stories aren’t identical, but there are similar themes of captive children or children’s spirits trapped across time. The time travel in this book centers around the mysterious sundial/moondial, while Stonestruck has ghostly children playing a game, and capturing other children.

There are features of both books that I like, so it’s difficult to choose a favorite between the two of them. I like the features of the child evacuee and the ghostly game from Stonestruck. This one has a truly haunting ending with a frightening scene on a Halloween night in the past. The ending of Stonestruck is a little more open-ended than the ending of Moondial. You can read my review of Stonestruck for more about how that ends, but it’s less definite what happens to the captive children or captive children’s spirits in that book. In this one, we do find out what happens to them. There are hints of Tom’s fate all the way through the story, but Minty doesn’t recognize it immediately, partly because “Tom” is actually a nickname rather than his real name. He later explains to her that kitchen boys are always called “Tom” no matter what their real names are.

Time is important to the story, and Minty realizes that the key to the time travel is that the supposed “sundial” is actually a “moondial.” Sarah refers to it as a “moondial” when they see her because Sarah typically only comes out at night because her face is disfigured by a birthmark and people think it’s a sign of the devil. Since Sarah almost never sees the sundial when the sun is out, it’s a “moondial” to her. The superstition about birthmarks is historical. However, I though that what the characters say about measuring time was interesting.

At one point, World gives Minty a book about sundials to study, and he explains that “clock time is mean time. Sundial time is what they call apparent time …” and the only exact time is star time. Minty takes that to mean that the moondial measures true time. You can measure time by the stars, using Polaris and the Big Dipper, and measuring time that way is based on a 24-hour clock rather than standard 12-hour clocks. Measuring time based on the Earth’s rotation, relative to fixed stars, is called sidereal time. What World says about clocks being based on “mean time”, meaning the “the sun’s average (mean) rate for the year” is true. Sundials measure “how the sun travels across the sky“, but the movement isn’t completely regular, which is why our clocks use the average movement rate. Because of the variations in the sun’s movement from the average or mean calculations, you can’t accurately set a clock or watch by a sundial, unless you know how to calculate for the variations. That’s what World means about sundials showing apparent time. Measuring time by the positions of the stars in the sky creates a “day” that is just slightly shorter than the standard 24-hour day that we measure on clocks. However, star time isn’t the only true way of measuring time. Stars appear to move with the rotation of the Earth, which is pretty accurate, but we now also have the concept of atomic clocks. Even those aren’t 100% accurate, though. There doesn’t seem to be a 100% infallible accurate way of measuring time, but atomic clocks are only off by about 1 second every 100 million years. They’re about as close to full accuracy as we are able to get. The book doesn’t go into all of the scientific details of measuring time because it’s a fantasy story, but I thought that working some real concepts of measuring time into the story was fascinating.

The book also works in the concept of the mottos that are traditionally carved on sundials, like the ones that say they only count the sunny hours. However, some sundials have deeper inscriptions, and the concept of inscriptions on sundials explaining time travel appears in some other fantasy books, like The Time Garden. In this book, Minty considers inscriptions like, “For the Night Cometh – cutting off all Power of Passing of Time” and “Light and Shadow by turns, but always Love.” Both of these inscriptions give her clues to how the moondial works and what she needs to do to help the distressed spirits of the past children, who are trapped in time. Tom and Sarah are both lonely and unloved children where and when they are. When Minty reunites them with the spirit of Tom’s sister, Dorrie, who he is separated from in life, the three spirits are able to be the love and company they each need. There are two carved figures on the sundial, Chronos and Eros – Chronos representing time and Eros representing love. Love transcends time.

Miss Raven is the villain of the story, even though we don’t really meet her until later in the book. Miss Raven may possibly be a witch, and she uses cats to spy on Minty. The details about how and why Miss Raven became a witch are never clarified. She also seems to have originated from Sarah’s time and was once her governess, although that isn’t really clarified, either. Did she turn evil because of her resentment of Sarah, or was she always like that? We also don’t really know why she’s after the children or the children’s souls. At the end, she seems to have vanished, perhaps banished by something Minty did on a fateful Halloween of the past in her final travel through time, although Aunt Mary thinks that she has departed in a normal way. There are things that aren’t fully explained by the end of the story, although we do learn what happened to Tom, and Minty knows that Tom’s spirit is now free and happy with the spirit of his sister and another lonely girl who badly needed friends.

The Halloween scene in the final time travel is really chilling, and it’s especially spooky in the miniseries version of the book.