Posted on by TracyC

The Sherwood Ring

The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope, 1958.

When Peggy Grahame’s father dies, she goes to live with her Uncle Enos in upstate New York, at their ancestral home, which goes by the whimsical name Rest-and-Be-Thankful. The family has lived there since the family arrived in America, fleeing their old home in Scotland after their support for Bonnie Prince Charlie failed. Uncle Enos loves history and tends to live in the past of their old home. Peggy’s father has sarcastically
said that Uncle Enos keeps “a pack of ghosts” at the old home and dedicates his life to making them feel comfortable by never changing anything there. Although, before he dies, he admits that the place is actually haunted, after a fashion, although neither he nor Enos has ever seen the ghosts themselves. Knowing that he is about to die, he sends word to Enos that Peggy is coming, and he says that Peggy will understand what
he means about the ghosts when she gets there. He also says that Peggy will largely be looking after herself at the house because Enos is too preoccupied with studying history to take much notice of her.

After the reaches New York, Peggy has to ask for additional directions to her uncle’s house. She meets a young man from England, Pat Thorne, who’s in the United States on a scholarship, doing some historical research. Strangely, when he came in pursuit of the papers he had hoped to find, his cousin Mildred denies their existence, although he’s sure that they actually do exist. He suspects that Mildred is covering it up for some reason because a picture that he remembers his cousin had is mysteriously missing. He has now come to the region where Uncle Enos lives in search of additional historical material, and he is hoping to see Uncle Enos himself because he’s the local authority on the region’s history. He has heard that Uncle Enos welcomes young scholars, but he’s been having trouble getting in touch with him. He gives Peggy a ride to Rest-and-Be-
Thankful, although they have car trouble on the way.

However, when they arrive at Rest-and-Be-Thankful, Uncle Enos is strangely angry that Pat Thorne is there. He says that he has nothing to say to Pat and that he doesn’t want Peggy associating with him. Both Peggy and Pat insist that Uncle Enos explain why he’s so angry, but he refuses to explain anything. He only wants Pat to leave the house. Pat replies to Uncle Enos that he will leave but that he will also be seeing Peggy again,
no matter what Enos says. Peggy can tell that Enos is distressed at the idea of Pat hanging around, but there’s a second shock for Peggy as she begins settling into the house. She sees a picture of one of her ancestors, a girl called Barbara, and she realizes that this girl looks exactly like a girl on a horse who she met before she met Pat and who directed her to talk to him. Peggy wonders if she’s seen her first ghost.

It’s some time before Peggy hears from Pat again, and she meets her second ghost one day when she’s fuming about Pat not coming to speak to her or get in touch with her and saying that she’ll “show him.” A young man in a continental army uniform is suddenly sitting in an armchair near her, and Peggy recognizes him from his portrait as Richard, the brother of Barbara. Richard tells Peggy about his life during the American Revolution and how personal pride got him into an embarrassing and dangerous situation.

He had been given a special mission by George Washington to apprehend a man called Peaceable Sherwood, who was leading a gang of people who were sabotaging the Revolutionaries’ war efforts. To his surprise, Richard received a letter from Peaceable Sherwood himself while he was staying with some neighbors. The letter was sealed with a seal from Sherwood’s signet ring, and it told Richard that he was aware that Richard was looking for him, promising that Sherwood and his men would make things interesting for him. Sherwood proved an elusive person to find. Eventually, Richard discovered evidence that pointed to a place where Sherwood would be waiting to meet some of his gang. He admits that he should have gone for reinforcements, but he was so eager to prove himself by capturing Sherwood as quickly as possible, so he confronted Sherwood alone. There was a fight in which he was almost killed, and he had to admit his humiliating mistake to the young woman he loved.

Ghostly Richard says that he’s telling this story to Peggy as a warning to her about hot-headed pride. He doesn’t know the young man Peggy was talking about, but he says that hot-headed pride also kept him and the girl he loved, Eleanor Shipley, from admitting their real feelings for each other for some time, until his humiliation at the hands of Sherwood caused them both to drop their pride. Peggy is touched by the story,
and she asks Richard what eventually happened with Sherwood, if he ever caught him. Richard refuses to answer and disappears. Later, when Peggy begins delving more into her family’s past and her uncle’s collection of heirlooms, Eleanor Shipley appears to her and continues the story of Richard and
Sherwood.

As Peggy tries to settle in to life at Rest-and-Be-Thankful with Uncle Enos and to learn what it is he has against Pat Thorne, ghosts of the past continue to appear to her, all connected to the events of the American Revolution. Eleanor explains her budding relationship with Richard, and Barbara appears again to tell her how she and Richard were both captured by Sherwood and his men at Rest-and-Be-Thankful but managed to escape and Sherwood. Sherwood was going to be executed, but while Peggy is given the dull task of serving punch at her uncle’s Fourth of July ball, the ghost of Peaceable Sherwood himself shows up to tell the story of his escape and how he decided that the only woman he could marry was Barbara. Even though they were on opposite sides of the war, he’d never known a girl as clever and resourceful as she was. Even though Barbara initially says that she has no intention of marrying Sherwood, she also appreciates his cleverness, and she had tried to intervene to prevent him from being executed when he was in prison and can’t bring herself to turn him in when he escapes. Sherwood tells Barbara that the men in his family are known for their stubbornness and that it’s actually the motto on their family crest that they always get what they want, so he’s already making plans for their future wedding.

Not long after the Fourth of July ball, Uncle Enos falls seriously ill. The doctor says that it’s a virus, but he can tell that there’s something wrong with him because the treatments he’s giving Uncle Enos aren’t working as well as they should. Uncle Enos has made himself ill before by bottling up his emotions, and everyone who knows him can tell that there’s something on his mind that’s seriously troubling him, something he doesn’t want to say. However, Uncle Enos cannot get better until he finally admits what’s troubling him and deals with it. It’s his stubborn personal pride that’s getting in the way. Peggy is sure that the problem is about the conflict between him and Pat Thorne. It also possibly has to do with the story of Sherwood and the events that took place at Rest-and-Be-Thankful during the Revolutionary War.

When Barbara appears to Peggy one more time to finish the story of Sherwood and Peggy calls Pat to come to Rest-and-Be-Thankful, many things are cleared up. Sometimes, ghosts call on the living to right the wrongs of the past, but sometimes, ghosts of the past are concerned about loved ones who are still alive and help them to right the wrongs of the present.

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

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

I was curious about this book for some time because it has ghosts and visions of the past. It has similar themes to other books I’ve read, and I enjoyed The Perilous Gard, which is by the same author.

Partway through, I was a little hesitant to finish the book because I liked the characters of the past, and I didn’t want to see anything horrible happen to them. Because they are all dead and because of Uncle Enos’s animosity over something that happened in the past, I was bracing myself for something tragic to happen to one or more of the characters in the story. I thought, at first, that maybe Sherwood actually killed Richard at some point, maybe before he could marry Eleanor. Then, I thought maybe Barbara and Sherwood turned into a kind of Romeo and Juliet romantic tragedy because they’re on opposite sides. Fortunately, none of that happened in the story.

The best part of this, for me, is that the people from past (spoilers) all survived the Revolutionary War, and they apparently lived normal lives after that. Richard and Eleanor are married during the course of the story of past events, and Barbara tells Peggy that she did marry Sherwood after the war, when there was no more conflict of interest between them. Unlike many other ghost stories, the ghosts of the past in this story aren’t there to ask their living relatives to make things right for them. They don’t have any unresolved problems themselves; they are there to provide comfort and support to Peggy. They know that Peggy hasn’t had much attention or affection from her relatives. Her father didn’t pay much attention to her, and her uncle is too wrapped up in his historical research to pay much attention to her. Peggy needs some attention and information from her family to figure out what’s going on with Uncle Enos and how to help him as well as herself. The ghosts say that they cannot give her all the answers, but what the ghosts tell her gives her the clues she needs to work out the rest herself. Peggy also comes to see that some of her ancestors can relate to things that have happened to her, from the deaths of parents to dealing with disagreeable relatives to falling for someone that her family might not approve of. It helps her to see that she’s not alone, and her experiences help her to understand some of theirs.

I didn’t expect to hear any part of the Revolutionary War story from Peaceable Sherwood’s perspective, but when he showed up as a ghost to tell his part of the story, it helped me see that the story might have a happy ending after all, with no tragedies left for the historical characters. Although Sherwood is an antagonist to the other characters for much of the story, he reveals that what he’s doing isn’t entirely of his will. In some ways, he is a “poor little rich boy” – someone who comes from wealth but hasn’t had much affection or close relationships in his life and is stuck in some unfortunate circumstances. He comes from a wealthy family in England, but he was orphaned at a young age and put under the guardianship of an uncle who didn’t like him. It was his uncle who got him a commission in the army, and he did that mainly to get rid of him rather than for Sherwood’s personal advancement in life. Sherwood’s been doing the best he can with the position he’s given, and he and Richard both understand and accept that their respective roles put themselves at opposition to each other. They have to alternately fight each other and defend themselves from each other, but they also respect each other because they are somewhat similar to each other and pretty equal in their skills and intelligence. There are times when either of them could have killed the other, but they don’t because they are gentlemen and behave honorably, and they also have some fondness for each other. When Barbara starts to get to know Sherwood and his history more, she also begins to feel some fondness for Sherwood and finds him charming. Personally, I would have been put off by a grown man saying that he always gets what he wants because that sounds so bratty, but Barbara later explains that Sherwood usually gets what he wants because of his cleverness and determination in pursuing what means the most to him, not just pure entitlement.

When I first started reading the book, I had some suspicions about how Pat Thorne is connected to the Grahames and to Peaceable Sherwood, but the answer and type of problem that he represents to Uncle Enos were a little unexpected. The connection was somewhat what I expected, but it goes deeper than that, and the problem between them is very much a modern one, made by the living members of the family, not one left over from a past tragedy. It’s not an insurmountable problem, either. It’s not a family feud but a kind of misunderstanding that got out of hand, leaving Enos torn about how to handle it. He did something he probably shouldn’t have because someone else did something that she really shouldn’t have. Enos apparently was acting in good faith, but admitting the facts of the matter would mean giving up something that has meaning for him and historical significance. Now, he’s torn between wanting to deny what he did and what he’s got and wanting to make things right. Once Peggy and Pat compare notes, the matter becomes clear. Things work out very well between Pat and Peggy at the end, and they seem to understand each other very well, partly because of Peggy’s knowledge of the past and partly because Pat himself is very perceptive about what Peggy’s life has been like. He knows that things have been hard for Peggy because of how her father and uncle have been. She hasn’t had much attention or affection, but he’s determined to provide that for her. Pat completes the story of Peaceable Sherwood and brings it full circle. Pat doesn’t hold back about his own circumstances and the kind of life he expects to live with his future wife, but both he and Peggy are sure thinks will work out for them. Even though his family doesn’t have the money they once did, they still have a tendency to get what they set their hearts on.

Posted on by TracyC · 5 Comments

Lucy Beware!

Lucy Beware! by Pamela Sykes, 1983.

This book is the sequel to Come Back, Lucy (Mirror of Danger). Come Back, Lucy was the original title of the first book, when it was published in Britain, and Mirror of Danger is the US title. Because copies of Lucy Beware are very difficult to find these days, I’ve made this review especially detailed and included detailed spoilers at the end for the sake of people who want to know how this story goes and what happens to the characters but just can’t find a copy to read.

The story is set two years after the events of the first book. Orphaned Lucy has settled in nicely with her cousins since that first frightening Christmas when she lost her elderly Aunt Olive, who raised her, and she connected with Alice, the malevolent girl ghost who haunts the old Victorian house where Lucy and her cousins now live. In the previous book, Alice used Lucy’s feelings of sadness and loneliness after Aunt Olive’s death and the difficulties she had fitting in with her cousins to try to trap her in the past with her. Lucy was finally able to free herself from Alice by passing the 100th anniversary of the end of Alice’s time in the house and by finally telling her relatives the truth about Alice and how Alice manipulated her.

Since that time, Lucy hasn’t seen Alice, but the family has been secretly uneasy about her. When Aunt Gwen, her cousins’ mother and Lucy’s new mother figure, falls ill, Lucy becomes distressed. It brings back her memories and feelings from losing Aunt Olive and makes her worry about the future again. Although people keep assuring her that Aunt Gwen will be fine and that she just needs to go to the hospital for some tests, Lucy secretly worries about what will happen if Aunt Gwen also dies. Her cousins can see that she’s uneasy, and they wonder if they should talk to her about it.

Rachel reminds her brothers that leaving Lucy too much alone with her own feelings was what allowed Alice to get hold of her last time, but her older brother, Patrick, says that’s all nonsense. He still believes that Alice was a figment of Lucy’s troubled imagination because she was dealing with her grief and all of the sudden changes in her life. Bill, the youngest, saw Alice himself, and it was a disturbing experience, although he now expresses doubt about what he actually saw. Deep down, he knows that he saw a ghost, but he tries to convince himself and others that maybe he was wrong because he’s afraid to admit the truth, even to himself.

The time when Aunt Gwen has to stay in the hospital for some tests coincidentally happens at the same time as parent/teacher conferences at the children’s school. Since Gwen is ill, Uncle Pete goes to the meetings himself, and when he comes home, he has bad reports to deliver to each of the children. Patrick has failed his exams, Rachel is struggling in math, and Bill’s teachers say that he’s not even really trying because all he cares about is football.

When it’s Lucy’s turn to receive her report, Uncle Pete says that her teachers say that she’s putting in effort, but she’s still behind in some subjects because, until she came to live with her cousins, Aunt Olive didn’t send her to school but tutored her at home according to her own standards rather than the curriculum used in modern schools. Lucy has been trying to catch up in her studies over the last couple of years, but one of her teachers is unhappy because Lucy hasn’t been working on an important report about home life in the late Victorian era. Lucy still has a love of Victorian homes, partly because, in her early life, Aunt Olive brought her up in an old Victorian era house as if she were a Victorian girl herself and partly because the house where she now lives with her cousins is from that period. When Uncle Peter speaks to her about her report, Lucy finds her mind traveling back to her previous connections with the Victorian era, what she loves about it, … and what now makes her uneasy about it. Then, she hears a familiar voice from the back of her mind. Alice is trying to connect with her again! Lucy finds Alice putting words into her mouth again, asking for Uncle Peter’s help with her report because he’s an architect who understands old houses, but Lucy can now distinguish between her own voice and Alice’s.

When Lucy is alone in her room, she sees Alice again, but although the connection between them hasn’t been severed as much as she thought, she also realizes that she has come to a deeper understanding of it, of Alice, and of herself since their last encounter. Lucy can see, just from looking at Alice, that Alice has been crying. Both of them are in a similar emotional state in their lives right now, which they each acknowledge has called each to the other’s mind again and reactivated their connection. The reason why they were each able to connect with each other before was because they were both extremely lonely, and now, they’re also each troubled about something in their lives and education. However, Lucy reminds Alice that she now understands what kind of a friendship they had before. Alice tries to brush her concerns and the real seriousness of the previous situation aside, but Lucy reminds her, without Alice actually allowing her to use the words “kill” and “death” out loud, that she knows that Alice tried to kill her, more than once, so she would be trapped in the past with her as a ghost.

Alice is still sly and manipulative, and Lucy knows how to read her, letting her know that she’s on to her tricks. Alice tries to forcibly pull Lucy into the past once again, but Lucy not only resists but demonstrates that she can now forcibly pull Alice into the present! Lucy makes it clear that Alice won’t be dictating terms this time because they are more equals now than they used to be. In fact, in some ways, Lucy has matured much more in the last two years than spoiled Alice. Lucy knows that she could walk away from Alice now, if she really wanted to … yet, she does feel a kind of bond with Alice. Alice is correct that both of them are trouble, and Lucy also realizes that Alice is in a unique position to help her with her report on Victorian home life, since she is actually living it herself. Lucy finds herself wondering if she could be able to get Alice’s help without getting too badly used by Alice or endangered in return.

Lucy tells Alice that she’s willing to hear her out about her troubles, and Alice says that she’s worried about her future. Alice is aware enough of Lucy’s time to realize that women have more options in their lives than they did during the Victorian era, and she tells Lucy that she’s been inspired by Florence Nightingale to become a famous nurse. Lucy is surprised by that ambition because she knows that being a nurse requires someone to be caring and willing to work hard and under conditions that can be rather rough. Nothing about that sounds like anything that would appeal to Alice.

Lucy knows that Alice is selfish, shallow, and spoiled. She is not accustomed to working particularly hard at anything, and her chief interests in life seem to be parties and clothes. Lucy says that she thought Alice would be more likely to want to marry a handsome man than work at building a career. Alice says that’s just what she wants to do, but she says that she doesn’t want to marry just anyone. She has her eye on marrying royalty and becoming a princess! Her interest in Florence Nightingale and nursing comes from the fact that the queen is interested in Florence Nightingale, so Alice thinks that becoming a famous nurse could be a path to getting the attention of the right people. Lucy thinks this is a hopeless plan because most nurses don’t get that kind of fame, and she also doubts whether Alice has it in her to become any kind of nurse, let alone a famous one. Alice says maybe she could if Lucy could give her some advanced knowledge from her time, things that other young women of the Victorian era wouldn’t know, so Alice will stand a chance of outshining others with her advanced knowledge. Basically, Alice is only interested in chasing fame rather than knowledge and achievement, and she has realized that Lucy is in a position to help her cheat on the knowledge part to get ahead of other people in the field.

Lucy makes it clear to Alice that she thinks her plan is ridiculous. She doesn’t think Alice has what it takes to be a nurse. Even if she manages to get into the field, it’s unlikely that she would become famous in it, at least not famous enough to get the attention of royalty. However, she is willing to help Alice find out more about nursing in exchange for Alice helping her with her school project on the Victorian era. Alice isn’t thrilled at the idea of helping Lucy with anything, but Lucy makes it clear that they’re going to deal on equal terms in this situation or not at all, so Alice reluctantly agrees. Alice admits that the Victorian home life project was actually her idea, and that she had subtly suggested it to Lucy because she wanted to reestablish her connection with her. She can only do that when Lucy thinks about her, so she needed something to remind Lucy about her. Alice has a way of getting into people’s minds and giving them suggestions.

Lucy is uneasy about the deal she’s made with Alice. She reminds herself that Alice is a ghost and a dangerous one at that. It’s only because she is so worried about her school project and because she feels like nobody else can help her that she is willing to try working with Alice. Everyone else in their family seems caught up in their own problems with school and with Aunt Gwen’s health. With the risks in mind, Lucy takes some steps to protect herself from Alice, if necessary, like always carrying a small pocket mirror with her, knowing that reflective objects are key to traveling through time and meeting Alice. Last time, Alice tried to trap her in the past by removing mirrors from around the house, so it’s important for Lucy to have something small and reflective with her all the time.

Something that makes this time with Alice different is that Alice no longer seems interested in trapping Lucy in the past. In fact, it’s only with great reluctance that she agrees to meeting Lucy in her own time at all. Part of what makes the difference is that there’s a young man named Eric Summers who is romantically interested in Alice. They’ve known each other for a long time because their mothers are friends. Lucy asks why Alice doesn’t just marry Eric if she likes him so much and forget all this nonsense about nursing, but Alice is ambitious and still has a dream of marrying royalty. Eric is fond of her, but he doesn’t have a title of any kind.

To fulfill her part of the bargain with Alice and to help finish her own report for school, Lucy borrows some old books about nursing in the Victorian era from their family doctor. Doctor Brown was an important character in the first book, and he has always been aware of Lucy’s troubles fitting in with her relatives after Aunt Olive’s death and the fact that she’s behind in her schooling, so he’s happy to help her. However, although Lucy gives Alice information from those books and is willing to let her look at them when she comes to Lucy’s time, Alice steals the books and takes them to the past with her! It’s a real problem because Lucy knows that the books are old, collector’s items, not easily replaceable, and Doctor Brown says that he will need them back for some lectures he’s planning.

To retrieve the books (and to get some final, first-hand information for her school project), Lucy makes a daring trip back into the past to confront Alice one last time.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I was thrilled to get hold of a copy of this book through an interlibrary loan! It’s very difficult to find these days, much more difficult than Come Back, Lucy (Mirror of Danger). In fact, I’ve repeatedly checked all the major book-selling sites, and I have yet to see even one copy for sale, and some appear to having waiting lists for people looking for a copy. According to other reviews, Lucy Beware isn’t as popular as the first book in this two-part series. Other people who have read the book have said that they really like the first book better.

The end of the first book did seem like it pretty well settled the issue of Alice. At the end of the first book, Lucy survives past the 100th anniversary of Alice’s last day in the house before leaving to go to a house in the country with her parents and with Lucy establishing a new bond with her relatives. When Lucy bonds with her relatives, she no longer feels the need for Alice as a toxic friend or to connect with the past because she can now look to the future without being afraid. With things being pretty settled at the end of the first book, a sequel might not be necessary, although there were a few unanswered questions from the first book that was I wondering if the sequel might answer. For example, we never learn in the first book how Alice died or what made her into the lonely ghost that she became in the house. What was it that made her cling to the house and try to trap Lucy there with her?

Personally, I was surprised in this book that, not only does Alice make a reappearance, but that she isn’t dead yet. Originally, I had expected that Alice became a ghost because she had died on her way to the new house in the country that her parents bought, which was why she left the house where Lucy now lives with her relatives. My original theory about why she was so lonely and haunting the house where she used to live was that she died before she could get to her new home and rejoin her parents. However, this book reveals that not only didn’t that happen but that she is anticipating a longer future to plan for. I was disappointed that this book doesn’t explain the circumstances of Alice’s death or a offer an explanation of her apparently ghostly powers.

I was also a little disappointed that this book changes the dates of Alice’s life and Lucy’s previous experiences with her to accommodate Alice’s interest in Florence Nightingale. Originally, in the first book, the date when Alice moved from her old house to the house in the country was given as 1873. In this book, which is supposed to take place after both Lucy and Alice have aged a couple of years, it’s the mid-1860s because Florence Nightingale gained her reputation for nursing during the Crimean War in the 1850s, and when Lucy makes a reference to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was published in 1865, Alice calls it a “new” book in her time. Changing the dates feels like cheating, although I suppose a lot of readers who didn’t know the when Florence Nightingale was famous or when Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published might overlook that. However, for me, it makes this sequel feel more artificial than a naturally-following progression of the story from the first book.

Alice’s character as a lying, manipulative, dangerous girl hasn’t altered, but although Lucy still thinks of Alice as a ghost, the story is presented more as a time traveling story rather than a haunting. The first book also involved time travel, but it was much more definitely a haunting. Alice’s ability to travel through time or to pull Lucy back into the past in the first book were pretty obviously based around her being a ghost. When she appeared in house in the present time, she was either invisible to people other than Lucy (because Gwen saw doors open and close by themselves when Alice was searching for Lucy) or gave the person who saw her an eerie feeling (like she did when Bill saw her).

There is also one thing that Alice can do that Lucy can’t, which might be due to her status as a ghost – she has a way of putting ideas into other people’s heads without them being aware that she’s doing it, almost a form of possession. In this story, she admits that the reason why Lucy chose home life in the Victorian era as the subject of her school project was that she suggested the idea to her to make Lucy start thinking about her again so she could reestablish her connection with Lucy. That kind of supernatural ability or possession only really makes sense if she’s a ghost instead of just a time traveler. We are never given any other explanation for it.

While Alice still has the ability to manipulate Lucy’s mind and put thoughts into her head or words into her mouth in this story, the supernatural aspects of the time travel seem to be altered or suspended in this book because Lucy has figured out how to use her mental state and connection to Alice to do her own time traveling or summoning Alice. Also, Alice apparently didn’t die in the year she left her old home or soon after that, so the original issue of why she was haunting her old house at that particular time is unresolved. In the original story, she said that she’d been waiting a long time for someone to come and play with her, indicating that she hadn’t been anywhere but her own house since her death and hadn’t moved on from being a lonely child in the years since her death, but this story contradicts that idea, showing Alice moving forward both in age and emotionally. In spite of that, Lucy still thinks of Alice as being a ghost in her time, and she considers that it would make her a kind of ghost from the future when she’s in Alice’s time.

Because this book is extremely difficult to find outside of a library these days, I’m going to offer some detailed spoilers for it for the benefit of people who can’t find a copy.

Spoilers!

Far from Alice dying at any point in the story or revealing her eventual cause of death, Alice seems headed for marriage at the end of the story! Lucy witnesses Eric speaking to Alice, and it seems like he’s about to propose to her! I felt a little sorry for Eric at this point because, although he’s apparently known Alice for years, he may not be fully aware that she’s a narcissistic, manipulative liar who has traveled through time as a ghost and tried to kill another child while she was still a child herself. However, Eric seems like a bit of a snob, so they might be more alike than I’m giving him credit for.

When Lucy confronts Alice about the books and demands them back, Alice seems a little conflicted about returning them. Alice has soured on the idea of nursing after seeing some of the things that nurses have to do in those books. She’s definitely more the dressing up and giving dinner parties socialite type. Besides, she can tell that she has a definite prospect for marriage with Eric, and he’s promised to keep her in the lifestyle that she’s accustomed to. Even if she never gets a title, she can still live like a spoiled princess, and that might be good enough for her. Still, Alice has trouble giving up anything she’s set her mind and hands on, and she has admitted to Lucy that she plans to get her governess, Mademoiselle, fired by framing her for theft!

To get one last revenge on Lucy and to keep her from foiling that rotten plan against Mademoiselle, Alice tricks Lucy into hiding in a shed on their property (they call it an “outhouse”, but it’s really more of a gardening shed or outbuilding than a privy) and locking her in, telling her parents, who have just returned home, that she has trapped a burglar. Because Lucy can travel through time and space by looking at her reflection, she manages to make her escape before the police can apprehend her, and she gets away with Doctor Brown’s books and a few useful but inconsequential items from the past that she can use for her project. Before making her final escape back to her own time, Lucy hears some conversations between Alice and her parents that clear up a few lose ends.

Mademoiselle does get fired, but it’s for something she actually did herself – she shirked her duties to watch Alice while her parents were away so she could spend time with her secret boyfriend. (That’s something she did in the first book, too.) However, that’s fine, as far as Mademoiselle is concerned, because she and her boyfriend are going to get married and move to France. Before she leaves, she tells Alice’s parents exactly what she thinks of them for never spending time with their daughter and never knowing what she’s up to. Alice’s mother is offended at the impertinence, and she tells Alice that she’s decided that Alice is too old for another governess. Instead, they are going to arrange for her to have a Coming Out party and for her to be Presented at court, which meant for a wealthy girl of her time, that she was being acknowledged as being of marriageable age, so she would be able to accept Eric’s proposal. Basically, she’s becoming a debutante.

Alice is excited by the glamor of that, and she completely gives up the idea of being a nurse because all she ever wanted that for was a way to impress someone important so she could make a good marriage. Now that she has her love interest and will soon be the belle of the ball, she doesn’t have any use for that plan anymore. Surprisingly, though, Lucy herself realizes that she finds the idea of nursing appealing, and for the first time, Lucy finds a life ambition of her own. Part of her worry about the future in the previous book was that people expected her to think of the future and have life ambitions, but Aunt Olive had never raised her to think that way or have any ideas about a career. Now, she has a goal for her future that appeals to her and gives her a focus for her studies. She confides her interest in Doctor Brown, her family’s physician, and he promises to help her and lend her more books.

At the end of the story, Lucy confides everything about her latest adventures with Alice to her family and Doctor Brown, and they all believe her. It’s kind of hard for them not to because, when she returns to the present from her latest journey into the past, she is disheveled and dirty from her experiences. They’re all worried about her, but Lucy sees this as a maturing experience. Alice might be headed for marriage, but Lucy realizes that, inside, Alice is still the same immature, self-serving brat she always was. Lucy acknowledges that she isn’t entirely grown up herself, but she is getting there, and she’s much further along than she was before. She realizes that she and Alice are now headed in very different directions with their lives. The story leaves it open for another possible interaction between Lucy and Alice again, but if they ever do meet again, it will probably be for the last time. Lucy is far more confident in herself and the direction she’s chosen for her life, and she sees the beginning of divides in their lives and attitudes that will further separate her from Alice in the future.

Oddly, Rachel realizes toward the end of the book that Patrick has become particularly attached to Lucy, like he might have a crush on her. That might sound weird because they’re cousins, but as I recall from the first book, the relationship is actually a little more distant than that. When the cousins are first introduced, they are referred to as “distant” cousins. (The original description was, “Distant ones, but definitely related.”) Lucy calls Pete and Gwen her aunt and uncle, and other people call them Lucy’s aunt and uncle as well, but the relationship might not be literally that one of them was a sibling of one of Lucy’s parents.

My impression from the first book was that either Pete or Gwen is a distant cousin to Lucy, but because they are old enough to be her parents, people just call them her aunt and uncle. We were told in the first book that they were unaware of Lucy’s existence before Aunt Olive’s death, which I don’t think would have been the case if either was a direct sibling to one of her parents. Neither of the books ever clarifies exactly how distant they are as cousins, and in fact, I don’t think they even explain which of the two of them is actually related to Lucy by blood and which by marriage. (I think, because Gwen and Lucy are more attached to each other and Gwen was the first family member to contact Lucy through a letter after Aunt Olive died, it’s implied that Gwen is her blood relation, and her children are related to Lucy through her, but that’s never clarified.) Somehow, one or the other of them was related to Lucy through some connection to Aunt Olive, who I think was actually a great-aunt to Lucy, given her age, old enough to be her grandmother. However, if it helps, it means that Lucy and Patrick are likely not first cousins. They’re probably more like nth cousins once or more removed from each other in the family tree. It could be third cousins or fourth cousins or third or fourth cousins once or twice removed. I don’t know exactly because the books are vague about that.

It’s still a little odd for Patrick to get a crush on Lucy since they’re living together as cousins now. What Rachel notices is that Patrick has become increasingly protective of Lucy. Now that he and other family members fully believe in Alice and the threat she poses to Lucy, Patrick has expressed a desire to get his hands on her and make her pay for what she’s done or almost done to Lucy. Lucy confidently says that he won’t have that opportunity, but Patrick seems a little grimmer about it. Rachel notices that Lucy doesn’t seem fully aware of the depth of Patrick’s feelings or what that might imply. Lucy is light-hearted at the end of the story, confident that she and Alice are growing out of each other because their lives are diverging and neither one is really interested in seeing the other again. However, the book’s ending leaves the possibility open for one more encounter because Alice’s ultimate fate isn’t settled. Alice is apparently still considered a “ghost”, but she’s oddly not dead yet in her time and is showing every sign of being able to grow up and get married.

One of the other reviewers on Goodreads said that she could imagine what might happen if there was a third book in the series, but there isn’t one. It’s possible that the author left that possibility open on purpose, but this is only a two-book series. I could see that there’s room left for one more chapter in the story, a truly final encounter between Alice and Lucy. If that happened, I would expect that the story would have to end with something that would make it truly impossible for Alice to come back, which for me, would mean that we would have to finally have an answer to why there seems to be this bond between Lucy and Alice, and we would have to know when and how Alice eventually died.

For me, the first book was stronger because it seemed to imply that Alice died young and that she knew that she would never rejoin her family at their new home or have the opportunity to have a friendship or attachment outside of the memories of her lonely life in the past. In the first book, she seemed to need Lucy to die in order to join her in her past or at least the memories of her past, making them both ghosts with each other for company. (I did wonder whether Lucy actually went to the real past in the first book or just Alice’s memories of it.) When Lucy survived Alice’s final attempt on her life and passed the 100th anniversary of Alice leaving her house, I thought it was implied that Alice died on her way to her new home in the country, severing her link with her old house and, by extension, her last hold on Lucy. However, this second book, which shows Alice living past that point in her own time, treats the connection between Lucy and Alice more as a sympathy of feeling, similar to the connection between the girls who switched time periods in Charlotte Sometimes. Lucy thinks that the time traveling is over because both of them have experienced changes of feeling and are headed in different directions in their lives, so that might truly be the end of their story, although part of me thinks, as others do, that there’s room for one more story. Since there are no more books, any continuation would only be in the reader’s imagination!

My Own Fanfiction Rewrite

Since I was disappointed that this story was more time travel than haunting and that Alice isn’t being treated as the ghost she was in the original story, I started writing my fanfiction version of this book in my head. I really wanted the story to be more of a ghost story rather than just time travel and to explain more about Alice’s background and why she’s a ghost. If you’re not interested in my imagined version, you can skip this because it’s pretty long.

In my imagined version of the story, I’d keep the parts about Lucy and her cousins struggling in school and Aunt Gwen getting sick because those are important sources of Lucy’s inner turmoil. However, I decided to add an extra character, another distant cousin who has been living in the United States and has only recently returned to England. This new character, who I’m calling Margaret, is now a middle-aged woman, but (because these stories are set in the 1970s), was sent away from England as a child evacuee during WWII. I thought of her as a character because she’s someone who can reveal some hidden parts of Lucy’s family’s past, including some things she’s rediscovering herself upon her return to England. There were many children sent from England to the US by ship in the summer of 1940, although that stopped in September of that year when a ship carrying child evacuees sank. Many of the children from that torpedoed ship were killed although some were rescued, an incident of real-life children never arriving at their destination that could help foreshadow Alice’s demise on her way to her “new life in the country” as she called it in the first book.

The way I see it, Margaret has decided to move back to England, partly out of a restlessness she was already feeling about her life in the United States and partly because, since Aunt Olive’s death, she realizes that she is losing her last connections with her own past and the few remaining members of her biological family. She explains that the reason why there are so few members of their family left (aside from Aunt Olive, it is established in the books that Lucy has no other biological relatives other that the cousins she’s living with now) is that many of them were killed during WWII, including Margaret’s parents. Her parents died during the bombing of London known as the Blitz, and the house where she once lived was completely destroyed. If Aunt Olive hadn’t persuaded Margaret’s parents to send her to the US as a very small child because she had a friend who was helping to organize the evacuation effort and arranged for Margaret to be fostered by an old school friend of hers who was married and living in the United States, Margaret would also have been killed. Because she was living in the US with a foster family when her parents died and had no way of returning to England due to the war, her American foster family adopted and raised her. She probably would have forgotten all about her English relations except that Aunt Olive stayed in touch with the school friend who adopted Margaret and wrote to Margaret and explained everything to her years later.

When Aunt Olive died, Margaret didn’t hear about it right away because Aunt Gwen and Aunt Olive’s friends didn’t know much about Margaret, but after not hearing from her for some time, Margaret started making inquiries and reconnected with Aunt Gwen. She wrote to Aunt Gwen and talked with Uncle Peter about how she was considering returning to England, and when Aunt Gwen gets sick, she comes for a visit, staying with the family and helping with the house and the children while further considering whether or not she wants to move back permanently.

In some ways, Margaret’s presence can be helpful for Lucy because both of them have the experience of being orphaned and having to move forward in their lives in a new home with a foster family and a somewhat tenuous connection to their own pasts. In other ways, Margaret could unintentionally reawaken Lucy’s interest in the past and her uneasiness, reminding her strongly of Aunt Olive. Margaret has been Americanized and is much more modern than Aunt Olive was, but she could still resemble a younger version of Aunt Olive (about 30 or 40 years younger than Aunt Olive was) and have some household skills that are similar to Aunt Olive’s, like her cooking. Margaret might take over most of the household cooking in an effort to help the children focus on their studies, which might also unintentionally remove a source of relaxation for Lucy, who likes cooking, forcing her to focus more on things she doesn’t really want to think about.

I see Margaret as having worked as a librarian in both school and public libraries, which would also make her similar to Aunt Olive, who used to be a teacher at a private school for girls. Because she is an academic person, she helps to tutor Lucy and her cousins through the problems they’ve been having with school, something else that reminds Lucy of Aunt Olive, who used to tutor her at home. Margaret approves of Lucy’s proposed project about Victorian homes, saying it’s perfect because she has many of the resources that she’ll need already, living in a renovated Victorian home and with Uncle Peter’s books on architecture and interior decorating. She takes the children on trips to their local library and helps them find further resources for their various projects, but I’m adding another twist to the story here with a special project for Patrick.

Let’s say that Patrick also has to do a project for history, and Margaret asks if he’d also like to do one about the Victorian era because he and Lucy could share resources and work together. However, Patrick, who is a Young Socialist and deep into the idea of Socialism (as established in the first book of the series) had actually wanted to do a report about that instead. He’s upset because his teacher won’t allow him to do the report that he wanted to do originally, and he thinks it’s discrimination because his teacher doesn’t approve of Socialism. Actually, it’s because Socialism is all Patrick ever talks about. It is what he’s most motivated to learn about, but his teacher wants him to learn about and talk about something else for a change. Because of that, his teacher assigned him the topic of WWII, and Patrick hates the idea of doing a report about war. Margaret asks him what about WWII, specifically, he’s required to talk about, and Patrick shrugs and just says the teacher didn’t say, only that the project needs to be about WWII.

Margaret points out that WWII was a world-wide war that took place in many different countries and also involved the Home Front, civilian volunteers who helped the war effort and government-run programs that helped to protect and feed civilians during the war. Those programs, including the child evacuation programs that saved the lives of children like Margaret were social programs, so doing a report about the Home Front of WWII and child evacuees would fulfill the teacher’s requirements and also be an example of successful social programs, which would please Patrick. Since Margaret herself was an evacuee, he could interview her for the project, and she would even be willing to come speak to the class about her experiences when Patrick has to do his presentation to the class. She was very young when she was evacuated, but there are some things that she still remembers sharply about the experience and others that she’s come to appreciate more in the years since. Patrick is interested, and even Rachel, Bill, and Lucy get pulled into the topic when Margaret starts telling stories about it because it has a connection to their own family.

During moments of worry and melancholy about Aunt Gwen’s illness and when Lucy has to work on her own Victorian project alone rather than share in Patrick’s one about WWII evacuees, Lucy starts to feel the tug of Alice’s time again. She finds Alice’s old scrapbook again, the one where she said that she was leaving to start a new life in the country, hidden among Uncle Peter’s architecture books, and after reading in a book about Victorian Christmas celebrations (something she witnessed in Alice’s time), she looks up and into her bedroom mirror, finding herself in Alice’s time again! Lucy’s bedroom was once the old school room of Alice’s house, and Lucy finds herself face-to-face with ghostly Alice. But, to her surprise … Alice hasn’t changed in the two years since Lucy last saw her. Alice hasn’t aged at all. Also, it’s Christmas again!

It didn’t seem as weird to Lucy the last time she experienced Alice’s Christmas because it was also Christmas for Lucy in her cousins’ household. It’s extra weird now, though, because it’s October in Lucy’s own time. In fact, as Lucy looks around and hears Mademoiselle talking about Alice’s upcoming birthday, she discovers that it’s the exact same Christmas that she experienced before in Alice’s house, the last one she experienced there before her family decided to move to the country. Alice remembers Lucy from before and dodges Lucy’s questions about why it’s the same Christmas. Lucy wonders if she might accidentally run into her past self in this house, since she’s been to this exact place and time before, but Alice makes a cryptic comment about nobody else having done so the other times. Lucy tries to ask what she means about other people and “other times”, but Alice tries again to persuade Lucy to stay with her because she must have returned for a reason. Lucy escapes from Alice using a mirror, because she now knows how to do that, but she’s troubled and confused.

At the end of the first book in the series, Lucy had planned to do some research about Alice to find out about her as a person so she wouldn’t have to be so scared, thinking of her as a ghost, but she put it off. Now that she’s doing this report about the Victorian era, she realizes that she has the perfect excuse to learn more about what happened to Alice and how she became a ghost, stuck in one particular Christmas. Because Margaret knows about records and research from her career as a librarian, Lucy shows her Alice’s old scrapbook and asks her if she can help her find out more about who Alice Becket was and what happened to her. Margaret finds the idea intriguing and helps Lucy track down Alice’s records. They learn that Alice died in an accident on the same day she left the house to travel and meet her parents in the country and is currently buried in a churchyard not far from the house. Margaret even takes Lucy to see the grave and is surprised at how affected Lucy is at Alice’s grave and the idea of Alice’s death.

This leads to a heart-to-heart talk between Lucy and Margaret on the subject of loss. Lucy confides her worries about losing Aunt Gwen, like she lost Aunt Olive. Margaret reassures Lucy that she knows a little more about Aunt Gwen’s condition than Lucy does, and without going into specifics (because, from something Aunt Gwen said in this story, I think she’s having some women’s troubles), she says that Aunt Gwen is going to need some treatment but that she’s going to be all right. They talk a little more about Aunt Olive, revealing a little more of Aunt Olive’s backstory as a professional teacher who never married because the young man she loved died in WWI, something Lucy never knew before because Aunt Olive never talked about it with her. (I invented this part. It’s not something addressed in the author’s original stories.) Margaret says that, perhaps, Aunt Olive thought Lucy was too young to understand how she felt before she died, but also, it was probably something very painful for her talk about. Margaret herself heard the story from Aunt Olive’s old friend, who adopted her, rather than from Aunt Olive herself.

Lucy and Margaret talk about how difficult it can be to talk about emotionally painful things, something Margaret understands from her own past and something that Lucy experienced in the first book. Lucy asks Margaret if her discussions with Patrick about her past as an orphaned evacuee are painful to her, and if it will be difficult for her to talk to Patrick’s class about her past. Margaret says it’s not as painful to her now as it once was because so many years have passed since the war and her parents’ deaths. Since then, she’s come to terms with what happened and has built a new life and identity for herself. She has realized that life also comes in phases and is full of changes. She senses that her life is changing once again, and she’s feeling something pulling at her to return to England and her relatives there again because she feels like the time is right somehow. The idea of returning to London would have once frightened her because the London she remembered as a young child was a sad and scary place, but it has done her good to visit with her young cousins and see that London is now a happy, busy, living place filled with young people and is very different from what she remembers. Revisiting her past has helped her to make peace with it, even more so than she had before.

However, Lucy realizes that visiting Alice’s grave hasn’t brought her the peace that she had hoped for because there’s something very wrong with Alice’s death and the way she keeps returning as a ghost. Lucy no longer looks at Alice as being a “friend” as she did when they first met. Alice is spoiled, selfish, and dangerous, and Lucy knows she can’t trust her. Yet, she also finds Alice a tragic figure, and she doesn’t know what to do about it. That night, she reflects on everything that everything Margaret said and accidentally looks at herself in the mirror. Suddenly, she finds herself in the old schoolroom again, and she thinks that she’s returned to Alice’s time, but to her surprise, the room is different from both the way it looks as her modern bedroom or Alice’s Victorian schoolroom. It’s something in between. It has the old Victorian wallpaper, a little worn and shabbier than it was in Alice’s time, but there are now two small beds in the room because it’s being used as a bedroom. Lucy turns around and is shocked to see two girls with red hair and freckles staring at her, also in shock.

After that first shocked moment, the girls introduce themselves to each other. The two girls are a pair of sisters: Janet and Alice Becket. Lucy is surprised that there’s a second Alice Becket, and Janet explains that it’s a family name. Every generation of their family has an Alice, ever since the first Alice Becket died tragically young. Lucy explains to them about meeting Alice, and the girls are eager to hear what she has to say. They’ve met Alice, too, since they arrived at this house. Janet and Alice the younger don’t normally live here. It’s the summer of 1940, and their lives have changed since the war started. Their father is away, in the army, and their mother is involved in war work. The girls are staying with their aunt and uncle in this old house, preparing to leave soon on a ship that will take them to stay with other relatives in the United States. Right now, they feel neglected and abandoned by their parents and fearful about the journey ahead of them. Young Alice is frightened that they might not make it to the US because their boat might sink. Janet is less afraid of sinking than she is that they might not be able to come back to England again or that their parents might not want them back. Victorian Alice has gotten hold of these younger relatives of hers, pulling them back into the charming Victorian Christmas, where everything is peaceful, no war, and Alice is surrounded by luxury, servants, and pretty dresses.

Seeing these other girls falling into Alice’s trap, with Alice trying to persuade both of them to join her forever in the past, Lucy warns them about what Alice is really like and that Alice herself seems to be a prisoner of her own past. She reminds them of Alice’s tragic fate and that, if they join her, they will have to share that fate, too. That reminder that Alice died young helps to ground Janet and Young Alice in their own time and reality, giving them something to use to fight against Alice. At the same time, though, the girls admit that all three of them feel an attachment to Alice and that they want to do something to help her. Young Alice, fearing that maybe she and her sister will die at sea anyway, on their journey, still finds herself tempted to share in Alice’s past. If she has to die young and be a ghost, she thinks she’d rather haunt a familiar house and live in a charming Victorian Christmas forever.

I have in mind that there would be a series of time jumps where Janet and Lucy have to follow Young Alice into Victorian Alice’s past, seeing again Victorian Alice singing Christmas carols and having her birthday party, just as Lucy did before, only with Young Alice in the place Lucy previous occupied. Alice lies to people, as she always does, and she calls Young Alice “Abigail” because she can’t explain to others why there are two Alice Beckets. (This is also a callback to the first book, where Alice lies about Lucy’s name, for no apparent reason other than Alice is a pathological liar.) Young Alice confides to Janet and Lucy again about her fears of dying at sea and admits that she’s long had a fear of dying young because she was named after Alice, who died young. Janet admits that there was another Alice in the family before her who also died young, and there is some speculation about whether Victorian Alice may have had a hand in that, in another of her failed attempts to trap a companion in the past with her, or if that was just a coincidence.

It occurs to Lucy that, if the three of them can somehow save Victorian Alice’s life, they can stop this time loop from occurring. Alice would no longer be a ghost because she could finally go forward into the new life she always wanted, and other generations of children in the family and others who occupy this house will be safe from her. However, there are complications. First, they have to learn exactly how Alice died and figure out what, if anything, they can do to prevent it. Second, Lucy’s cousin Margaret, without knowing about the hauntings yet, raises the question of how tampering with the past can change the present.

While they’re considering whether and how they can save Alice, Lucy considers whether or not she can use her presence in 1940 or get Janet and Young Alice to do something to save Margaret’s parents from being killed. She asks Margaret for a few more details about her parents and what their address was. Margaret says that she no longer remembers the address of her old home, and then, she tells Lucy that it was a very unhappy place for her. Even if it still existed, she wouldn’t want to visit again. Lucy is surprised and asks her why. Margaret says that, when she said that London was a sad and scary place for her, she wasn’t talking about the bombings, which hadn’t started before she left. The bombing of London started in September 1940, and she left for the US that summer.

The period from the official entry of Britain into WWII in September 1939 to May 1940, when Germany invaded France was called “The Phoney War” because the general public didn’t feel the effects of the war too much and wasn’t taking it seriously, feeling like it was basically a non-event. Some people in London who had sent their children away as evacuees before London was actually bombed in September 1940 had brought them back home again, thinking that the whole thing was a false alarm, and Margaret explains, sadly, some of those children were injured or killed because they came home too early. This brings up the topic of how people, even when they’re trying to be safe, don’t have a complete guarantee of safety. If Margaret had left England later, on the boat that was carrying child evacuees that sank, she could have been killed anyway, like many of them were. Those children were trying to leave one dangerous situation only to be killed by another. Lucy finds that idea terrifying, understanding why Janet and, especially Young Alice, are afraid. Margaret gently tells her that life can be frightening and unpredictable. We all do the best we can and make the best decisions we know how to make, but unfortunate things can happen to anyone. There is no complete cure for that but to continue to do the best you can and to love and appreciate the people and place where you are while you’re there and while you’re with them.

The full truth about Margaret is that Aunt Olive arranging for her to be evacuated was to save Margaret from her own parents as much as to save her from the war. Margaret’s parents’ marriage wasn’t a happy one. According to both her adoptive mother and Aunt Olive, her parents were very immature people who probably got married too young. They liked to party when they were young, and the idea of marriage sounded romantic to them, but the truth was that neither of them understood the realities of maintaining a mature relationship, running a household, or raising a child. There was a nanny called Sally who was the only person who really took care of little Margaret. Her mother was a vain woman who still wanted to go out dancing and to parties all the time, and her father was a man of violent temper who drank too much and would hit or slap his wife or young daughter when he was angry. Margaret’s few memories of her parents include her father screaming at her and slapping her and her mother brushing her hair and ignoring her while she was crying. Other times, she remembers hiding from her parents or hearing them fighting with each other in the middle of the night. If Margaret had been old enough, Aunt Olive would have arranged for her to attend the boarding school where she was teaching, but Margaret was still too young to be admitted. The evacuation effort gave Aunt Olive another way to rescue Margaret. Sending Margaret away saved her life twice, first from her parents’ bad treatment and then from sharing her parents’ sad fate.

Lucy is shocked at this story of Margaret’s original, unhappy home life, and Margaret reassures her that her adoptive family was much happier. They were kinder, more patient people, and her older, adoptive siblings sometimes spoiled her. Even the journey by ship to the US, while frightening at first, was a delight. In fact, Margaret describes how she made friends with a couple of girls on the ship who were older than she was and how they looked after her and reassured her during the voyage. She had forgotten their last name, but she now realizes why Alice Becket’s name seemed so familiar to her while they were researching her. The other girls were Janet and Alice Becket. Margaret starts to ponder whether or not there’s a connection there, but before she can continue the thought, Lucy asks her what happened to Janet and Alice. Margaret says that they went to live with some relatives near the place where she lived in the US, and she would continue to see them sometimes while they lived there. She lost touch with them after the war, when they returned to England to rejoin their parents. This news cheers Lucy, who realizes that she can now tell Janet and Young Alice, with confidence, that they will be fine during their voyage to the US and they will return to see their parents again. She leaves Margaret musing about her old friends and wondering if she can trace them and see how they are now.

Janet and Young Alice are reassured by what Lucy tells them about their future. Janet promises to keep an eye out for little Margaret when they board the ship and that they’ll be her friends, and Young Alice is relieved by their promises that the journey will be safe for her, too. Lucy decides there’s no point in attempting to warn Margaret’s parents about what’s coming. The bombings haven’t started happening yet, and if any of them tried to tell them that they’re going to be killed by something that hasn’t started happening yet, they would think their warnings were “phoney.” As with others, they will have to be left to make the best decisions they know how to make to protect themselves, which Lucy uncomfortably knows will ultimately fail.

Although it’s sad to think about it, Lucy realizes that their loss was best for Margaret in the long term, and she also has to face another uncomfortable thought that she’s been trying to ignore: Aunt Olive’s loss, occurring when it did, was also best for Lucy. Lucy still misses Aunt Olive because Aunt Olive was kind and truly loved her, but Lucy has come to realize that Aunt Olive wasn’t teaching her everything she really needed to know to succeed in school and life. Her vision of life has expanded since she came to live with her cousins, and although school is sometimes a struggle, it’s ultimately the best thing to prepare her for her future. Aunt Olive lived a full life, and it was her time to go. Even though Lucy couldn’t see it at the time, it was also time for her to move on from her old, sheltered life. This realization allows Lucy to let go some of lingering sense of loss for Aunt Olive, although she knows she will always love her, and of her desire to return to that part of her life. She begins to understand what Margaret was talking about, how life moves in phases and there are times when you’re ready to move on to the next.

This brings the children back to Victorian Alice, who wasn’t ready to leave her life just as she was promised a new life in the country and who hasn’t been able to move on ever since. Maybe not all tragedies are unforeseen and unpreventable, and sometimes, someone has to intervene before someone can move on. I decided that, since Alice and her governess left the house to journey to the countryside on December 21, the shortest day of the year, Alice’s death was caused by a carriage accident because they left too late and tried to travel further in the dark, partly at Alice’s impatient insistence and partly because the governess feared Alice’s parents’ reaction if they didn’t arrive on the promised day. I envision that Lucy recruits her cousins, who have noticed that things are starting to happen with her and Victorian Alice again, and her new friends from 1940 to help her intervene to save Alice’s life. Lucy is worried about what else they might change by doing so, but Alice is clearly a suffering child who is terrorizing other generations, and it must be stopped. I decided that they find the location where they accident occurred and find a way to stop the carriage together and convince the governess and their driver to break the journey and rent a room at a nearby inn for the night. Alice, recognizing them and realizing that they’re there to help, persuades the governess that she also doesn’t want to continue the journey until morning.

When the children all return to their own times, they’re not immediately certain that the cycle has been broken, but they know that Alice at least survived December 21. When Lucy gives her presentation to her class about the Victorian era and describes the scene at a Victorian Christmas, just like the caroling and party she experienced with Alice, she worries at first that she’s going to suddenly find herself transported there again and shuts her eyes while she describes the scene so she won’t accidentally see anything reflective. When she opens her eyes, she’s still in her classroom, and her classmates applaud her presentation. Her teacher praises her detailed descriptions, which make them all feel almost as if they were there themselves.

Lucy thanks her and modestly says that her distant cousin, Margaret Emerson, helped her with the research for her presentation so people won’t get too suspicious about how she knows so much about this topic. Suddenly, Lucy’s teacher, Mrs. Morrison, looks at her intensely and asks her the name again. Lucy repeats Margaret’s name and explains how Margaret has come to stay with them and right now, she’s in Patrick’s class, helping with his presentation about WWII evacuees because she was an evacuee herself. To everyone’s surprise, Mrs. Morrison rushes out of the room and runs down the hall. Some of the students look out into the hallway to see what’s going on, and they see Mrs. Morrison hugging Margaret in the hallway and crying. After a few words, the teacher returns to her room with Margaret, wiping her eyes, and explaining that she and Margaret are old friends. They were child evacuees together, and they haven’t seen each other for years. Mrs. Morrison was Janet Becket, who is now grown up and married. After Mrs. Morrison introduces Margaret to the class, they promise to get together for lunch on Saturday to catch up, and Margaret says that she would be happy to join her in talking to her class in the spring, when they cover WWII.

When Mrs. Morrison comes to visit Margaret at the cousins’ house after Aunt Gwen recovers and returns home from the hospital, she is surprised (or claims she is) that their house is the same one that used to belong to her uncle years ago. It was in their family for generations, and some cousins of hers lived in it after her aunt and uncle died, but her relatives have all moved on to other places, while is why the house was eventually sold. She recounts the story of how she and her sister, Susan, stayed there for awhile before being evacuated to the US. She emphasizes the name Susan while looking at both Lucy and Margaret. Margaret is a little confused at the name, like she still remembers the sister being “Alice”, and Janet quickly explains that there used to be a tradition in their family of naming girls after other relatives but her parents changed that. Her mother originally wanted to name her sister “Alice” after an earlier relative, but her father was against it because that earlier Alice was such a scandalous person, so he insisted on giving Susan a completely different name. Janet also emphasizes that having an original name probably helped Susan to become more confident in life, indicating that it changed her fears of dying young, like the first Alice. Lucy looks around and realizes that her cousins, who met both Alices in the past when they helped to save the first Alice’s life, have also noticed the name change and recognized its significance. Janet’s comments about the “scandalous” (rather than “tragic”) first Alice have proved that their efforts to save her were successful.

Yet, Lucy wonders why it is that she and other people can still remember the old past, with the ghostly Alice and the other Alice’s original name if they successfully changed everything. Later, Margaret has a private talk with Lucy, where she says that Janet has told her everything about the ghost and what they did to save her. Margaret praises her for her compassion and bravery, although she says she wishes that Lucy had told her about it all before. Lucy says that she didn’t know how to explain and still doesn’t know whether or not saving Alice was the right thing to do. In some ways, she feels like Alice the child no longer haunts her, but she’s not so sure whether Alice lived to be an adult or what she did as an adult, since Janet calls her “scandalous.” She also says she doesn’t understand why they can all remember the past that existed when Alice died or her haunting if they really saved her life. Margaret says that, even when the past is the past, pieces of it last and can come back to haunt you. Alice, both living and dead, had an effect on other people’s lives, and when you affect other people that profoundly, the effects will last, even after the other person or the situation has changed in some way. When they think about it, if Alice hadn’t been a ghost and a particularly insistent and malevolent one, none of them would have known about her death or been moved to save her life, so her “ghost” phase was oddly necessary and is what enabled her to finally move on in the way she wanted.

Margaret and Janet have visited the churchyard together and confirmed that Alice isn’t buried there, as she was before. Janet says that the family story is that Alice, being Alice, grew up vain and selfish. She remained a liar and schemer throughout her life, and it became more obvious as she grew up. I envision that she married for money, multiple times, and was a thrill-seeker, losing large amounts of money gambling on horses and at card games and having a string of scandalous relationships and a few possible crimes to her name.

Since Alice’s childhood was the 1870s and into the 1880s, she was an adult during the 1890s, known as the “Gay ’90s” (“gay” as in “happy”, not homosexual) in the US or the “Naughty Nineties” in the UK. It was a period when society was becoming a bit more liberal, and some members of high society were particularly decadent in their lifestyles and behavior. I could see Alice being one of the scandalous set of that period, keeping company with a few big-name theatrical types like Oscar Wilde while it was fashionable to do so or even the young Edward VII (who was known as Albert or Bertie before becoming king in 1901, after his mother, Queen Victoria’s death). Edward VII was a scandalous figure himself, in his youth, known for gambling and keeping mistresses. I could see social-climbing and excitement-chasing Alice meeting him at a horse race and becoming one of his lesser-known lady friends and perhaps receiving a few gifts of jewelry from him (I wouldn’t go into too much detail on that for a kids’ book). At some point, Alice may have even stolen some money or jewelry that she claimed was a “gift”, and her family had to help her settle the matters as quietly as they could so Alice wouldn’t be turned into a spectacle in court. She may have also blackmailed some of her other scandalous friends for money. Because Alice was a manipulative and terrifying ghost child without empathy for others, I picture that she would probably be just as manipulative and almost as terrifying as an adult.

I haven’t fully decided how Alice eventually died because she couldn’t possibly be alive in Lucy’s time, but I imagine something colorful, dramatic, and suitably scandalous. Maybe she sank on the Titanic in 1912, when she would be in her early 50s. At least, she was believed to have been killed in the sinking. She might not have actually died then but allowed people to think that she died so she could escape from her scandalous life along with some ill-gotten gains because her schemes had been exposed, her latest wealthy husband left her, and her family had grown tired of bailing her out of her escapades. That would leave Alice’s final fate a bit of a mystery, which seems fitting. It sounds dark, but Alice herself has always had a dark personality.

That Alice, as an adult, left a trail of scandal, chaos, and maybe a crime or two in her wake as she made her way through life, could leave the option open for her to reappear again as a different type of ghost or for some more time travel so the kids can unravel another problem or two caused by Alice’s survival because they feel responsible for saving her life and unleashing her on the world. Then again, as Margaret pointed out, you can’t know everything that might occur in life, and sometimes, you have to let people try to sort themselves out as best they can, dealing with problems as they arise. Alice isn’t accustomed to accepting responsibility and consequences for her actions, but there may come a time when she’ll have to in order to survive.

Epilogue: Mrs. Janet Morrison tells Margaret that the librarian at the kids’ school will be retiring at the end of this school year, so Margaret applies for the job and gets it, having impressed the school’s headmaster with her help on the students’ historical projects and her talks about her life and experiences as a child evacuee. Margaret returns to the US for a while to quit her old job and prepare for the move back to England. Lucy asks her about her adoptive American family and if she’ll miss them when she moves. Margaret says she plans to return sometimes to visit them, and they’ll keep in touch. Right now, her adoptive siblings and nieces and nephews are busy with their own lives, and so is Margaret. They’ll all get together again when the time is right for them to do so. Until then, she’s satisfied that returning to England and spending time with her relatives there is the right thing to do. There are also hints that a relationship might be developing between her and Patrick’s history teacher. The kids are surprised because both of them are older than they would think for romance, but then again, Lucy has come to see that some things happen when it’s the right time for them to happen. Although the past has left its mark on all of them, they’re all now moving forward, even Alice (in her unique and frightening way).

Anyway, that’s my really long and detailed summary of the type of sequel I envisioned but which doesn’t actually exist outside of my imagination and this summary I wrote. Bringing in the new, previously-unknown relative from the US with her WWII info might seem like a departure from the Victorian vs. modern thing, but I thought that the addition of a third time period might allow the characters to view the situation from another perspective that’s somewhat in between the other two. The addition of the other relative, Margaret, is also an opportunity to show someone who was orphaned at a young age and raised by an adoptive family and now has an adult perspective on the situation. She can also help explain aspects of the family’s past, including some of the sad and difficult parts. Above all, I think it’s important to preserve Alice as the little horror we all know, love, and dread.

Imaginary Third Book

I don’t have an entire plot worked out for a third book, if there was one, but I was intrigued about what the other reviewer said about imagining how a third book would go, if there was one. In my imagination, the third book would deal with the fallout of saving Alice’s life and might take Lucy (and possibly her cousins) to another time period in the past, where they have to intervene to save someone else from an adult, living Alice because Alice is no longer a child ghost. This third book might deal with the possible/impending death of another child in Alice’s family who was named after Alice.

Alice is still immature, selfish, and dangerous, and before the book is over, the characters would discover how and when adult Alice died, to put an end to her entirely. To make sure that Alice cannot come back to haunt anyone else as a ghost, they decide that, because she was always an immature spirit, she needs a companion spirit to act as kind of an eternal governess. Lucy wonders what happened to Alice’s Mademoiselle, but Margaret (to work in the character I added for my imaginary second book) suggests Aunt Olive instead. Mademoiselle wasn’t really the best governess for neglected young Alice, often sneaking off to see boyfriends, even in the first book, when Alice needed someone more loving and attentive. Aunt Olive spent years as a teacher at a girls’ boarding school and would know how to handle wayward girls.

Lucy has never tried to travel to the past to see Aunt Olive as a ghost, even though she spent the first book half living in memories of her past, but at Margaret’s insistence, she summons up Aunt Olive by revisiting her strongest memories of her. For the first time, Lucy’s cousins get to meet Aunt Olive, who they’ve heard stories about, and this is the first time that any of them have seen an adult ghost. Aunt Olive greets Margaret and Lucy and lets them know that she is aware that she is a ghost and that their lives are continuing. To give Lucy some final closure about Aunt Olive’s death, Aunt Olive lets her know that she is glad that she is living with relatives who love her and care for her. Aunt Olive herself is at peace, not a restless ghost, because she lived a full life and has reunited with the man she once loved and all of the relatives she has lost over the years, including Lucy’s parents. Lucy has been curious about them during the course of this story, and with some help from Margaret and Aunt Gwen, has learned more about who they were and what happened to them because she was too young when they died to have memories of them herself. Aunt Olive tells Lucy not to dwell on them or grieve for them because they are also at peace. They are happy and proud that Lucy is living her life and becoming her own person. Lucy doesn’t need to worry about them or following in their footsteps because they are proud of her and love her, no matter what she decides to do with her life. (This theme might play into some of the characters they meet during their trip back into the past, but I haven’t sorted out how yet.)

Margaret explains to Aunt Olive about Alice, although she says that, if Aunt Olive is at peace now, perhaps they shouldn’t have disturbed her to deal with Alice. Aunt Olive says that’s nonsense. Time means nothing to her now, she always loves and cares about Lucy and wants to help her when she needs it, and this Alice herself also needs help. Aunt Olive knows exactly how to deal with her. There would be a final confrontation scene between Aunt Olive and Alice’s adult ghost form. Alice has seen glimpses of Aunt Olive before, through Lucy’s memories, and she demands to know what Aunt Olive is doing here. As the two of them argue, Lucy and her cousins see their spirits change form. Elderly Aunt Olive’s spirit becomes younger, taking more of the form of the age she was when she used to be a teacher, and immature adult Alice begins turning back to the child she was when Lucy first met her, because that’s who she really has been all along, on the inside. When Alice fully shows herself as the spoiled, immature child she’s always been, Aunt Olive the teacher gently but firmly takes her in hand and marches her through a wall mirror, where they vanish. After that, none of the cousins sees either of them again. Presumably, Alice will now be supervised by Aunt Olive and other relatives (Lucy’s and her own) and given the loving discipline she never had when she was alive. She won’t be lonely anymore, and she definitely won’t be left to her own devices.

The wrap-up for the story would be that Lucy is done with ghosts. She never saw her parents’ spirits because she has no memories of them that she can use to summon them, and what Aunt Olive’s spirit said about them has convinced her that she doesn’t need to see them. She now knows who they were and that they’ve always loved her, and she is free to live the rest of her life, knowing that the people she’s loved and who love her are always with her and proud of her, no matter what she does.

This final book would be where Lucy settles on her first career ambition, possibly deciding to become a nurse, like she did in the real second book. I think the subplot for the story could be that Lucy is now her in early teens, and with her older cousin, Patrick, approaching graduation and considering what he’s going to do for college and career, Lucy begins to worry that she has no plans and ambitions. It’s already established that Aunt Olive didn’t raise her to have any, bringing her up in the old-fashioned style with the idea that she would probably marry eventually and run a household. It seems to Lucy like everyone else knows what they want out of life, but she doesn’t. Throughout the book, Lucy considers different ideas and asks Uncle Pete, Aunt Gwen, and Margaret about their careers. None of them really excite her, so she asks them if they know what her parents did. This gets her delving into who her parents were and what they were like. However, in this case, revisiting the past helps Lucy move forward in her future. She finds out that her mother was a nurse, something she hadn’t known before, and she becomes interested in that as a career. She knows that she doesn’t have to do that as a job to follow in her mother’s footsteps, and she has the freedom to change her mind if she wants, but there are things about nursing that actually interest her, and it gives her a direction for her life.

Posted on by TracyC

A Stitch in Time

A Stitch in Time by Penelope Lively, 1976.

It’s summer, and 11-year-old Maria Foster’s parents have rented a house near the sea for their summer holidays. Maria is an only child, quiet and given to daydreaming. Maria is shy and socially-awkward and her parents are often preoccupied with their business and thoughts. It often seems like their parents are socially-awkward and don’t know quite what to do or say to Maria as a child, which is why she doesn’t always know what to say to other people. Because she frequently doesn’t have anyone else to talk to and doesn’t always know what to say to other people, Maria often finds herself having imaginary conversations with objects or animals.

The seaside house where the Fosters are staying is an old one, built about 1820. It’s lovely and has a beautiful view. The interior has brown wall paneling. The furniture is old-fashioned, Victorian, and rather grand. When Maria chooses a bedroom for herself, she finds a collection of labeled fossils in a small chest of drawers, which she finds fascinating. The only modern touches are just a few bits and pieces left behind by the family that had rented the house before them and left the week before, like some half-eaten boxes of cereal. There’s also a tabby cat who appears to come with the house, and Maria begins to imagine conversations with it.

When they first arrive, Maria is sure that she hears the creaking of a swing and a dog barking, but when she goes looking for them, she can’t find them. When she begins exploring outside, she finds some small fossils in the rock, and her mother says that they’re ammonites and that the area is famous for them. She accidentally breaks one while trying to get it out, and she decides that it’s better to leave the others where they are. Exploring further, she finds some loose fossils and fossil fragments that she can collect more casually without hurting them. She begins making her own fossil collection, and she uses the old fossil collection and some books she finds in the house to begin labeling her own specimens. She begins to think that the fossil notes and sketches she finds were written by a girl around her age, and she tries to imagine what she was like.

When they meet the landlady who rented the house to them, Mrs. Shand, she says that she grew up in the house herself with several brothers and sisters. She says that the room that Maria chose for herself was once the old nursery. Mrs. Shand now lives in a small flat in the old guesthouse nearby, and she invites them to call on her if they have any questions about the house.

Maria observes a family with several children at a nearby hotel, and she even briefly speaks to a boy her age, but she doesn’t know how to ask them if she can play with them. Later, she and the boy, Martin, meet again and realize that they have a mutual interest in the natural world. Martin tells her the names of some plants and birds, and Maria impresses him with the name of a fossil she’s learned. Martin warns her about the cliffs nearby, which have a tendency to crumble after rain.

Mrs. Shand invites Maria to her house to get a book that she would like to loan her. Maria doesn’t really know what to say to Mrs. Shand, but Mrs. Shand tells her about the collection of stopped clocks she has. She says that they belonged to her grandfather, who was a scientist, and that they have been stopped as a gesture of respect to her grandfather since his death. Maria notices a stitched Victorian sampler on the wall, and Mrs. Shand says that she can look at it because the girl who made it was about her age. It has a the typical alphabet and an embroidered quotation about death, but it also has the image of a house with a tree and a swing, a little black dog, and some fossils. Maria realizes that it’s the house that she is now staying in and that it confirms that there was once a dog and a swing there, like she keeps hearing! An inscription says that the sampler was started by a ten-year-old girl named Harriet in 1865 and completed by her sister, Susan.

Maria begins to think about time and how the lives of people who had once lived in the house where her family is staying, like Harriet, have left traces behind, not unlike the fossils in the cliffs or Mrs. Shand’s stopped clocks, full of past times. Maria begins to wonder about Harriet and what happened to her. She lived over 100 years ago, so she would be dead by Maria’s time (the 1970s, contemporary to the writing), and Martin says that Harriet probably grew up, got married, and had children, like most girls. Yet, Maria finds herself thinking that maybe Harriet didn’t grow up and get married. When Mrs. Shand lets her and Martin look at her old photo albums, Maria notices that, after a certain age, Maria doesn’t seem to appear in family photographs. Mrs. Shand says that her own mother was Susan. The lack of Harriet in the photographs and the fact that Susan finished the sampler leads Maria to conclude that something tragic happened to Harriet.

Then, one day, Maria thinks she hears the dog again, barking frantically with the sounds of a landslide and shouting children. Nobody else can hear it, but Maria is sure that she’s hearing an echo of a past tragedy, and she becomes convinced that Harriet was killed in that past landslide. The existence of the metal swing that once hung in the tree is confirmed when she and Martin find it and restore it. When Maria swings on it, she feels like she’s gone back in time, almost like she was Harriet with her dog and sister Susan nearby.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

I enjoyed the themes of time and what people leave behind. There are comparisons all through the story between clocks, fossils, and echoes of the past, and it all relates to the passage of time. More specifically, Maria starts seeing changes in herself, emotionally and mentally, as she matures.

Some of this story obviously takes place in Maria’s imagination. As a shy, socially-awkward introvert with parents who are also introverted, Maria tends to live in her own head much of the time. She often has imaginary conversations with objects and animals, and many of these are reflections of Maria’s concerns at the time. Through much of the story, Maria isn’t happy with herself as she is, realizing that she is socially-awkward and doesn’t know how to approach people and connect with them. When Maria imagines conversations with the tabby cat at the house, the cat tends to be critical of her. It’s a reflection of Maria’s own insecurity and self-criticism.

Maria’s parents love her, but they interact with her in a kind of off-handed way, which feeds her insecurity and social awkwardness. Maria knows that her parents love her, but she can tell that they don’t always know what to say to her or do with her, which makes it harder for Maria to learn how to interact with other people. Maria’s parents are both very introverted and try to avoid social occasions, if they can. However, Maria has realized that she needs to connect with other people and make friends. Through her experiences with Martin and his siblings, Maria becomes more outgoing and confident, and she finds it easier to interact with other people.

In some ways, Maria doesn’t entirely fit in with her parents because she’d like to be a little more outgoing than they are. Similarly, Martin sometimes doesn’t fit in with his family, either. Martin’s family is boisterous, and he is something of an intellectual. There are times when he likes doing quieter activities with Maria, talking about plants and fossils.

When Maria visits a local museum with Martin, and they look at the fossil exhibit, they talk about evolution vs. creationism. Maria decides that she doesn’t believe in the Noah’s Ark story about animals in the Bible, but at the same time, she thinks that studying animals through time makes it look like someone was experimenting with different designs of creatures and improving them with each generation. Martin says that’s nonsense and that it’s just evolution. Maria and Martin both seem to believe in evolution, but the difference between them is that Maria thinks that it seems like there’s a hand guiding it, and Martin credits just natural, scientific forces. In some ways, Maria and Martin are kindred spirits in their thinking, but Maria leaves a little more room in her personal understanding for feelings and the supernatural. Maria seems to be the only person in the story who is sensitive to the sounds and echoes of Harriet’s past.

At the end of the story, Maria decides that she’s going to give up imagining the conversations with the cat because she’s feeling a little more confident in herself through her friendship with Martin, her new understanding of the echoes of the past, and her realization that she herself is moving forward into her own future. She has a sense that she is leaving her past self behind, much like Harriet did. A part of Maria may always be young in this particular summer, but like Harriet, Maria herself is moving on.

What Really Happened to Harriet? (Spoilers)

As Martin guessed, Harriet did grow up and get married. She didn’t die young as Maria thought, based on the echoes of the past she’s been hearing, although she is correct that there was a landslide by the beach and that a tragedy occurred there. Before Maria’s family leaves at the end of the summer, Maria finally asks Mrs. Shand about Harriet and the landslide. Mrs. Shand explains that Harriet and her sister managed to escape the landslide, but their dog was killed. They were very upset about it and buried the dog near the old house. When Maria visits the grave, she discovers that this is the anniversary of the dog’s death.

Because I love dogs, I was still upset about the dog’s death, but Maria is at least reassured that Harriet herself survived. She asks Mrs. Shand why there aren’t any pictures of Harriet with the family after that summer, and she says that there are pictures of Harriet grown up, just not many because she wasn’t living at home anymore. The fall after her dog died, Harriet went away to boarding school. Her sister finished her sampler, both because Harriet was leaving for school and because Harriet never liked sewing. After Harriet graduated from her school, she got married and moved away. She did visit with her family after that, but because she was living somewhere else, she just wasn’t present for all the occasions when her family had their photographs taken.

So, because Maria guessed wrong about Harriet’s fate, readers might wonder if she just imagined everything she experienced related to Harriet’s memories and the landslide. However, the book indicates that Maria didn’t imagine it all. She drew the wrong conclusions about what was sensing, but she did sense things that she would have had no reason to know about, hearing the dog’s bark and the sounds of the swing before she had reason to know that either of them were ever there. When she’s on the swing and feels like she’s becoming Harriet in the past, she also manages to come up with the dog’s name before anybody tells her what it is. Because Maria is an introvert who often interacts with things in her environment more than she interacts with living people, it seems that she has a kind of sensitivity to her environment. At the end of the summer, though, when she senses that she’s changing as a person, she considers that, even if she were to return to this place again, she probably wouldn’t experience it in the same way. She’s moving on, mentally and emotionally, and that changes her perceptions of things.

Posted on by TracyC

When Marnie Was There

When Marnie Was There by Joan G. Robinson, 1967.

Anna is traveling alone by train to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Pegg for the summer. Anna lives with Mrs. Preston, who she calls her auntie, but the truth is that Anna is a foster child. She knows that her mother and grandmother are dead. Anna feels different from other children and has trouble relating to them. Anna often feels like an outsider around other people. She also suffers from asthma, which gets worse when she is stressed, and it’s been interfering with her going to school. Her vacation in the countryside with the Peggs is meant to help improve her health, but her health problems are partly based on her inner turmoil, which accompanies her to the countryside.

The Peggs are nice. Mrs. Pegg tries to get Anna to be friendly with a local girl, Sandra, but it doesn’t go well. Anna takes offense that Sandra cheats at cards, and she calls Sandra a pig. Sandra insults Anna by saying that she looks like “what she is.” Although the vague insult is probably because Sandra couldn’t think of anything better at the time, it stings because Anna really doesn’t think much of herself, and she constantly worries that it shows on the outside.

Anna is happiest when she’s left to wander and explore by herself and try not to think about all the things that bother her. As Anna explores the area alone, she finds a large, old house that intrigues her. She has the odd feeling like the house has been waiting for her and an odd sense of familiarity with it. Mr. and Mrs. Pegg say that’s the old Marsh house and that nobody lives there now, although they’ve heard that someone has bought it. Anna likes to imagine that the house belongs to her and that the family that will move into it belong to her, too. She thinks she sees a blonde girl in one of the windows, getting her hair brushed.

Then, one evening, she meets a pretty blonde girl with a little boat. The two of them hide and listen to the girl’s parents talk, and they begin to develop a kind of odd friendship. The two girls continue to meet in the evenings in the blonde girl’s boat. The blonde girl, who calls herself Marnie, says that she wants to keep their friendship a secret, and she would rather that they get to know each other slowly, only asking one question about each other in turn. For some odd reason, though, when Anna is with Marnie, she has trouble recalling details of her present life, and anytime she stops to focus on the present, Marnie suddenly disappears, although Marnie claims that Anna is the one who suddenly disappears.

Marnie and Anna explore the countryside together, gathering mushrooms, and talking a little to each other about their lives. Anna admits to Marnie what she can’t bring herself to tell anyone else, the reasons why she’s been so upset. She fears that her foster family doesn’t really love her. She thinks they kind of do, but she has recently learned that they’ve been receiving payments from the local council for her support. Since she found out about the money they’re receiving for her, she’s felt a sense of betrayal and abandonment. She used to think they felt like she was their own child, but now, she thinks that they’re mostly just being paid to care for her.

It seems like, all her life, Anna has been abandoned by the people who were supposed to live her the most. She doesn’t really remember her parents at all. She knows that her father abandoned her and her mother when she was small and that her mother remarried but died shortly after that. Anna’s mother had left her with her grandmother while she went away on her honeymoon, but then, she and her new husband were both killed in a car crash, so they never returned for her. Anna remembers a little about her grandmother, who took care of her after her mother died, but then, her grandmother also got sick and died. Anna tells Marnie that she hates them all for going away and leaving her. Marnie points out that dying wasn’t their fault, but Anna says that, before her grandmother went to the hospital, she promised to return soon. She broke her promise by dying. Ever since, Anna has had the feeling that she can’t trust anybody because people leave and break promises. Her feelings of not being able to trust people are at the root of her difficulties in forming friendships and confiding her true feelings to her foster family. Marnie hugs Anna and tells her that she really loves her and that they’ll be friends forever, and for the first time in a long time, Anna feels happy and feels like she can believe Marnie.

At first, Anna envies Marnie’s privileged life in the big house. Marnie’s father is wealthy, and her mother is beautiful, and it seems like Marnie has everything she could want. Anna even gets to attend one of the parties Marnie’s parents hold at the house when Marnie convinces them to let her in as a little beggar gypsy girl (the book’s description) selling sea lavender for luck. (There is minor alcohol use at this point because the people at the party give Anna a little glass of wine. People are also smoking at the party.) However, when Marnie explains a little more about what her parents are like and what really happens in her house, Anna comes to see that Marnie isn’t fortunate at all. Her parents are rarely home because her father is often away, in the navy, and her mother likes to spend most of her time in London. Marnie doesn’t exactly say what her mother does in London, but the implication seems to be that she spends a lot of time partying and hob-nobbing with high society. While they’re away, Marnie is looked after by her nurse, who can be abusive when she’s angry with Marnie, and sometimes she and the maids threaten to lock Marnie in the old windmill nearby, knowing that she’s afraid of the place. Anna thinks that’s horribly cruel, and she says that no adult in her life has ever hurt her or tried to frighten her on purpose. Marnie doesn’t think of herself as being so unfortunate because this is the only life she’s ever known, but Anna knows that not everybody treats children like that. Her heart goes out to Marnie, and she declares that she loves Marnie, too.

Anna’s relationship with Marnie teaches her how to open up to other people and trust them, but that trust is shaken after a frightening experience at the old windmill. Marnie’s distant cousin Edward, who seems to be the only person in her life who truly looks out for her, is also a bit strict and teasing with her when it comes to the things that she’s afraid of. He thinks that fears should be confronted, so he convinces her that she should be brave and get over her fear of the windmill. In an effort to face her fears, Marnie tries to go inside the windmill alone and climb up the ladder to the loft. However, once she’s up there, she becomes too afraid of the ladder to climb down again. Anna also climbs up and tries to comfort Marnie, but no matter what she says, Marnie is too scared to climb back down. The girls fall asleep in the windmill, and when Anna wakes up, Marnie is suddenly gone. Anna is angry at Marnie for leaving without telling her when both of them had been frightened. Once again, she feels betrayed and abandoned by someone she thought she could trust.

Then, during a storm, Anna sees Marnie gesturing to her from a window of the Marsh house. Marnie calls out to her that she’s sorry about leaving her and that she can’t come out because she’s locked in and is being sent away the next day. She just wants Anna to know that she loves her. Anna, seeing that Marnie didn’t mean to hurt her, forgives her and says she still loves her, too. To Anna’s shock, though, when she tries to look inside the windows of the Marsh house, the place looks empty and abandoned. Confused and upset, Anna stumbles and falls into the water nearby, nearly drowning, but she is rescued by a local man.

After that experience, Anna is ill and sad because she realizes that Marnie is gone from her life. When she recovers, though, she goes to look at the Marsh house again and encounters the children of the new owners, the Lindseys. Anna feels a surprising sense of connection to them, and they to her. As they get to know each other and become friends, one of the Lindsey children, Scilla, reveals that she’s found a diary in the house that tells her about Marnie’s life. At first, she thought Anna was Marnie when they met. Anna is shocked because she’s been starting to think that Marnie was only an imaginary friend of hers. When Anna and Priscilla read the diary, they learn more about the history of the Marsh house and Marnie. The diary is old and refers to the First World War as an event that is currently happening, bringing into question who and what Marnie really was when Anna was becoming her friend. Mrs. Lindsey says that they can ask their family friend, the elderly Gillie about Marnie. Learning about Marnie’s past awakens some of Anna’s memories and reveals some things about Anna’s own past. Understanding who and what Marnie was helps Anna to understand that her birth family, who seemed to have abandoned her, actually loved her. Accepting Marnie’s love helps Anna to understand and accept the love of her foster parents and new friends.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. This book has also been made into a Studio Ghibli movie of the same name, although they changed the location of the story from England to Japan. Changing the location of the story changes some of the historical details, but the essential parts of the story are the same as well as the lessons Anna learns from her experiences.

My Reaction and Spoilers

Probably, most people today are familiar with this story because of the Studio Ghibli movie. The movie is pretty faithful to the original book, although changing the setting from England to Japan changes some of the details. It kept the general sense of Anna’s family’s history, her personal connection with Marnie, and the lessons that Anna learns about love, trust, forgiveness, and connecting with other people. In both the book and the movie, Anna comes to realize that the feeling of being “outside” or “inside” relationships with other people is largely a reflection of how the person feels inside themselves. Anna is troubled because she has long-term trauma and inner turmoil that needs to be resolved. Finding out the truth about Marnie and her own past, especially now that she’s old enough to understand the situation, helps to resolve Anna’s feelings.

This is one of those stories where it’s difficult to talk about the book in detail without spoilers, so from this point on there are going to be some major spoilers.

Who is Marnie Really?

Readers will probably get the sense that there’s something odd about Marnie pretty quickly. There are a few odd time discrepancies when Anna’s with Marnie. Marnie vanishes at odd moments, especially when Anna tries to remember details of her present life in Marnie’s presence. For some reason, it takes a lot of effort for Anna to remember her present life when she’s with Marnie, and when she tries to focus on the present day, Marnie disappears.

Why do I keep talking about the “present”? Because this is a time slip story. It’s not immediately obvious to Anna that, when she’s with Marnie, she’s in a different time period because they’re spending time in the countryside with no signs of modern technology or the absence of modern technology, like television or radio, to give away the time periods. Marnie never goes into the Peggs’ household, and the only time Anna goes into the Marsh house with Marnie is during a party, where everyone is dressed up. There are a couple of minor clues, like Marnie referring to what Anna’s wearing as boys’ clothes because she’s wearing pants instead of a dress or skirt, but other than that, there are few references that would clarify the time period for Anna. Anna’s difficulty of thinking of or being in two different time periods at once also keeps her from making the connection.

After Marnie leaves and Anna knows that she is gone, Anna partly concludes that she was only an imaginary friend of hers, but the diary makes it clear that Marnie was a real person. It also adds some details that confirm Anna’s experiences with her and add some extra information that Marnie didn’t discuss with Anna that clarifies when she really lived in the Marsh house.

The truth is that Marnie was Anna’s grandmother, who is now deceased. The Marsh house was familiar to Anna because it was her home with Marnie during her earliest years. The things that Gillie has to say about Marnie help to fill in the blanks and connect Marnie’s story to Anna’s.

As a child herself, Marnie really was the poor little rich girl whose wealthy parents neglected her and frequently left her alone with an abusive nurse. Marnie was somewhat isolated as a child and, like Anna, was frequently happiest exploring the countryside or going out alone in her boat. The only person she felt that she could confide in was her distant cousin, Edward, who was older and tried to look after her, although he was also stern and not as emotionally understanding as he probably should have been. The summer that Anna experiences with Marnie was the summer when Marnie’s life changed forever, partly because of the windmill incident.

Marnie really did go into the windmill by herself in an effort to conquer her fear, and she did get trapped there because she was afraid to come down. Her nurse and the maids, unable to find her and not knowing where she went, finally called for a search party for the missing girl, but it was Edward who figured out where she was. He found her in the mill, unconscious, either passed out from fright or having fallen asleep from exhaustion, and carried her down the ladder himself, which is why Marnie was gone when Anna woke up. Edward didn’t see Anna there, probably because she had either shifted back to her own time while the girls were asleep or because not everybody is able to see Anna when she’s caught between times. The fact that the nurse had no idea where Marnie was exposes her neglect of Marnie, and when Marnie tells Edward about how the nurse and maids made her afraid of the windmill by threatening to lock her in there and how her nurse has given her abusive punishments, he makes sure that the nurse is fired. The reason why Marnie called out to Anna that she was being sent away was that, when the nurse was discharged, her family decided that it would be best for her to go to boarding school instead. Marnie’s father, who was in the navy during WWI/The Great War, was killed during the war, not very long after that party that Anna attended as the little beggar girl, and after boarding school, Marnie married Edward. They moved somewhere else, and they had a daughter of her own.

Unfortunately, Marnie’s life and family were plagued with problems, some of their own making and some beyond their control. When Anna and her new friends, the Lindsey children, try to ask Gilly who was responsible for how things turned out for Marnie, she says that the answer is complicated. The older a person gets, the more they realize that there are many factors involved in how a person’s life turns out, and it’s difficult to point to any one thing as a cause.

Marnie’s parents obviously neglected her, and although Edward really did love her, he wasn’t very understanding about emotional needs. Marnie herself, although she wanted to be a better parent to her daughter than her parents had been to her, didn’t really know how because she didn’t have good parental role models to follow and hadn’t been brought up to understand her own emotional needs, let alone how to care for the emotional needs of a child. She hadn’t fully matured emotionally by the time she became a mother, and outside events complicated her relationship with her daughter, Esme. Esme was young during WWII, and she was sent away to the United States as a child evacuee to escape the threat of bombing. Although Marnie sent Esme away for safety, they were separated for a period of years when Esme was very young. When Esme came back, she didn’t feel much connection to Marnie. She felt abandoned for being sent away from her mother and accused Marnie of never really acting like her mother because she wasn’t there for her, physically or emotionally. Marnie tried to repair her relationship with Esme, but as soon as Esme was out of school, she ran away and got married to Anna’s father.

We never learn who Anna’s father was. He is probably still alive somewhere, but Gillie describes him as having been too young and immature for the role of a husband and father. It wasn’t long before he and Esme divorced, and he was out of Anna’s life forever. The story seems to imply that he might have been from Spain because he has a darker complexion than Marnie or Esme and because he liked the Spanish sound of the name Marianna, the name that Esme originally gave to Anna as a baby and which came from Marnie’s mother. (We are told that Anna was unaware that her legal name is still Marianna and that Anna is a nickname that her foster family gave her.) Because her marriage failed when Anna was only a baby, Esme turned Anna over to Marnie almost immediately, so Marnie really was the one who was raising Anna the entire time. Esme tried to get her life straightened out, and the man she married next seems to have been a nice person. The family might have managed to get themselves back together as a family after that, but Esme and her new husband tragically died in a car accident on their honeymoon. Marnie genuinely loved Anna and tried to continue caring for her, but her own health was failing, and the shock of Esme’s sudden death made it worse. Marnie desperately wanted to recover and return to Anna at the Marsh house, but she really couldn’t help dying. When Anna fully comes to understand all of this, she manages to forgive her mother and grandmother for leaving her, knowing that they loved her and that leaving her the way they did wasn’t what they wanted.

Anna’s new sense of inner peace and acceptance of her family’s love for her, flawed as they all were, helps Anna understand and accept her foster family’s love. She and her foster mother also have a heart-to-heart talk about the payments they’ve been receiving to help support Anna. Mrs. Preston says that she hadn’t wanted to talk to Anna about the payments because she hadn’t wanted Anna to feel self-conscious about them or to think that the Prestons didn’t want to support her themselves, although the money has helped with Anna’s expenses. Mrs. Preston admits that she’s tried to avoid mentioning things that would make Anna seem more separate from the Preston family or less than fully hers, and she had noticed that Anna was uncomfortable when she was younger and Mrs. Preston tried to tell her what she knew about her mother and grandmother. Anna had been uncomfortable hearing about them because she was angry with them for their seeming abandonment of her, but Mrs. Preston hadn’t understood and was too uncomfortable herself to probe Anna’s feelings deeper, although she now sees that it’s better to be open about things, even when they’re uncomfortable. Anna’s relationship with her “auntie” improves because of their new understanding of each other, their feelings, and Anna’s past. I think Anna also sees that Mrs. Preston has treated her much better than Marnie’s own parents ever treated her, which shows that being blood relations isn’t always a guarantee of a close and loving relationship or the best treatment. Although, realizing that she originally did come from a family who loved her as best they could and that her grandmother really was her first real friend helps give Anna the basis she needs to establish loving relationships with other people.

What is Marnie Really?

As I said, this is a time slip story. Anna apparently really does go back in time, speak to Marnie as a living person in her time, and interact with other people at the party when Marnie pretends that she’s a little gypsy beggar girl (the book’s description) selling sea lavender. The beggar girl incident also appears in Marnie’s diary. Marnie doesn’t refer to Anna by name, but it seems to indicate that Marnie actually experienced the incident with Anna and that it wasn’t just a dream.

Although, I have seen other reviewers suggest that Anna could have been dreaming or imagining some of these things as the presence of the house awakens Anna’s memories of living there with Marnie and stories that Marnie might have told her about her childhood. Yet, the fact that Scilla saw Anna once looking up at the house and seeing Marnie in the window while none of her siblings could see Anna at that time suggests that something supernatural was happening and that only certain people can see Anna when she’s caught between time periods.

So, does that mean that Marnie was a ghost or that Anna was a type of ghost when she was slipping between time periods? It’s a possible explanation, and I think one of the characters makes that comparison. We don’t have an exact explanation for how the time slips happen except that Marnie and Anna have a strong emotional connection to each other and to the Marsh house. Marnie’s death and Anna’s unresolved feelings create a need for the two of them to meet again, almost for the first time, and come to understand each other.

I think the movie version somewhat implies Marnie deliberately reaching out across time to reconnect with her granddaughter and assure her of her love, but in the book, it seems as though Marnie is unaware that they are actually family. Marnie just loves Anna as Anna, not trying to justify their family’s circumstances but just being herself as she was when she was young and letting Anna see the person she really was. Just as Anna couldn’t climb down the ladder for Marnie, only trying to help her do it herself, Marnie can’t do all the emotional understanding for Anna. Her presence just helps Anna to come to a new understanding of her and their shared past.

In beginning, Anna was angry that her teachers accused her of “not even trying” at school or at getting along with others, but the truth is that she was missing some important pieces of information and understanding to make the efforts she needs to make. Marnie’s life turned out the way it did partly because she was also missing some understanding about emotions, relationships, and what it takes to be a good parent. We don’t know why Marnie’s mother was the way she was. Perhaps she was similarly raised by neglectful parents and distracting herself from her own past traumas in those constant parties she gives and attends. As Gillie says, it’s hard to know exactly where these things start when you begin to look at the bigger picture. However, Anna’s new understanding indicates that her life is likely to turn out better than the previous generations of her family. In an odd way, it seems she both needed both her connection to them and a kind of separation from them to get there and break their cycle.

Posted on by TracyC

Imagine a Day

Imagine a Day by Sarah L. Thomson, paintings by Rob Gonsalves, 2005.

This book celebrates the power of imagination and invites readers to use their imaginations, envisioning things that are impossible but amazing!

There isn’t exactly a story to the book. Each page poses something for readers to imagine with an accompanying picture where the shifts from the real world to the imaginary or impossible one are shown.

Each of the illustrations is surreal, with perspective changes from the real to the unreal.

The book invites readers to imagine powerful and amazing things, like “when grace and daring are all we need to build a bridge”, “when you forget how to fall”, “when we build a moat not to keep strangers out, but to welcome them in”, “when everything you build touches the sky”, “when you build the world around you piece by piece”, or “when the edge of the map is only the beginning of what we can explore.” All of this amazing things are things that could happen on a wonderful day! Just imagine a day like that!

The best part of the book is the end when we “Imagine a day … when a book swings open on silent hinges, and a play you’ve never seen before welcomes you home. Imagine … today.” Books are a key that unlocks a person’s imagination!

My Reaction

The pictures are amazing, and they really make the book! The pictures use perspective to shift the characters and their actions from the ordinary world to the extraordinary! Fence posts or toy blocks gradually morph into buildings. Streets become rivers, and rivers become trees. People on swings or bikes start off on the ground and end up above the trees! I’ve shown a number of pictures from this book to show you what they’re like, but there are many more to enjoy!

The pictures are fascinating to look at, and each of them seems like it could represent the beginning of a story. In that way, the book reminds me a little of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. The things the book invites readers to imagine are positive, inspiring, and uplifting, and I think this book would be good to use for a story-writing prompts. Even adults can find this enchanting book inspirational for their creative powers!

Posted on by TracyC

Matilda

Matilda by Roald Dahl, 1988.

Matilda is an exceptional child, a young genius with amazing talents, but her parents are dull and self-centered, and they never notice. They can’t understand why she wants books when everybody else just watches television, her father prefers her brother Michael to her, and she is often neglected by her mother, who just wants to go out and play bingo. At a young age, she takes herself to the library to get her own books. She reads her way through all the children’s books in the library at age four, and she starts reading adult classics.

Her father hates it that Matilda likes books so much because he’s never been able to like or understand them. He prides himself on being clever, but he only uses his brain to come up with new ways to cheat the customers at his used car lot. Matilda maintains her sanity in this awful family by outsmarting them and playing pranks on them whenever they’ve been particularly nasty. Once, she uses superglue to stick her father’s hat to his head, and another time, she manages to convince her family that their house is haunted.

When Matilda is old enough to begin school, her teacher is the kind Miss Honey. Miss Honey’s is greatly impressed by Matilda’s abilities, realizing immediately that she is more advanced than other students her age. She is even more impressed when Matilda explains that she taught herself. The school’s headmistress is the mean and formidable Miss Trunchbull. Miss Trunchbull intimidates everyone, from the students to the teachers. When Miss Honey tries to tell Miss Trunchbull about Matilda’s unique abilities, Miss Trunchbull doesn’t want to hear about it. She knows Matilda’s father, and he’s always talking badly about Matilda, so Miss Trunchbull is prepared to believe the worst about her. She refuses to believe anything positive about her. Miss Honey thinks that Matilda should be put in a higher grade at school because she needs something mentally challenging, but Miss Trunchbull refuses to consider it.

Since Miss Honey can’t move Matilda up to a higher grade, she gives her higher level textbooks to study in class. She tries to talk to Matilda’s parents about her abilities, but they don’t want to heard about it, either. Matilda’s father only values skills that immediately produce money, and he doesn’t think Matilda’s abilities are likely to do that. Matilda’s mother thinks that the only thing that’s important for girls to do is look pretty so they can get good husbands who will provide them with money. Neither of Matilda’s parents think that a college education is important, and her father says that people learn bad habits at universities. Miss Honey points out that, if they were really in trouble, like if they were sick or needed legal help, they would turn to people with university educations, but it does no good. Miss Honey finds Matilda’s parents offensive and realizes that they are never going to do anything to help Matilda and that they don’t care about her future.

Meanwhile, Matilda and her new friend, Lavender, have discovered just how mean Miss Trunchbull is. She locks up misbehaving students and makes girls with pigtails cut their pigtails off for no other reason than she just hates pigtails. When Lavender plays a trick on Miss Trunchbull by putting a newt in her water, Miss Trunchbull, already expecting trouble from Matilda, decides that Matilda was the culprit. Matilda angrily protests that she didn’t do it, and suddenly, she makes Miss Trunchbull spill water on herself just by thinking about it and looking at her glass. Miss Trunchbull angrily accuses Matilda of having done that, too, but nobody can see how she could have when she was nowhere near Miss Trunchbull when that happened.

Later, Matilda confides in Miss Honey that she made it happen. Matilda’s intelligence has gotten beyond her, and she is starting to develop powers of telekinesis. She also realizes that it gets easier for her to use these abilities with practice. Miss Honey invites Matilda to the little cottage where she lives so they can talk more about it. They discuss trying some tests of Matilda’s abilities, but while they’re at the cottage, Matilda realizes that Miss Honey is actually very poor. Miss Honey reveals that Miss Trunchbull is actually her aunt, and not only has she been withholding her wages but she’s defrauded her of her inheritance. Matilda hatches a plan to use her powers to get justice for Miss Honey.

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

My Reaction

I saw the movie version of Matilda before I read the book, and I think the book is definitely better! It’s a favorite of many fans of cottagecore and light academia because it has elements of both. Matilda is a highly intelligent little girl whose incredible brain and love of books change her life forever. She loves to read books while drinking hot chocolate, and her Miss Honey, lives in a charming little cottage that reminds Matilda of fairy tales.

I love books that mention other books, and Matilda likes to talk about the books she likes. Her favorite children’s book is The Secret Garden, and she also likes adult classics, like books by Charles Dickens. She says that she’s also read books by C. S. Lewis and Tolkien, but she doesn’t like them as well as some others because they don’t have much humor in them. Matilda thinks it’s important that books for children have humor in them.

Humor is what makes Matilda such a fun book to read! Matilda is badly neglected by her parents, and Miss Trunchbull does some horrible things to the children at her school. In a story with a more serious tone, these things could be truly tragic or make readers angry at the injustice, but the horrible people in this story are played for humor. Their misdeeds are portrayed with whimsy. Matilda doesn’t waste time crying and only rarely gets angry, instead using her powerful mind to devise amusing punishments for the perpetrator and to change things for the better. Readers can relax and enjoy Matilda’s adventures, confident that, no matter what the antagonists dish out, she will always get the upper hand in the end.

In some ways, Matilda reminds me of an earlier children’s book called The Girl with the Silver Eyes because both books involve misunderstood girls with unusual abilities. However, they are not the same story. Matilda is more whimsical fantasy, and The Girl with the Silver Eyes is science fiction. Matilda’s unusual mental abilities come from her need to be intellectually challenged, while Katie, the girl in The Girl with the Silver Eyes, gets her abilities as a side effect of a medicine that her mother took while she was pregnant with her. Both girls frighten and intimidate people and sometimes use their abilities to get back at people who are mean to them, but in different ways. Both of them also begin to thrive when they find people who understand them, especially teachers who help them cultivate their abilities. In The Girl with the Silver Eyes, Katie also learns that there are other children like herself, but Matilda remains unique in her story.

Roald Dahl was opposed to any of his books being altered in any way, but in 2023, the publishers had some of the language in this book changed, particularly words related to appearance, such as skin color or people being fat. It was a controversial decision because of the author’s specific wishes against having his work changed, but the publishers insisted that it was necessary to “ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today.” I can understand the purpose of some of the changes, although I don’t see why some others were changed. For people who want to compare the two versions, there are still plenty of copies of the original version available today. Check the printing date of the copy of your book to see which version it is. Updated books will be printed 2023 or later. The changes were also not implemented in all countries where this book was published. As of 2026, the United States, France, and the Netherlands have not implemented the changes.

Posted on by TracyC

The Silver Crown

The Silver Crown by Robert C. O’Brien, 1968.

Ellen Carroll has always known, deep down, that she was a queen. Of course, everybody else sees this as a game of pretend, and it kind of is, but on her 10th birthday, her life changes forever, and there may be more behind Ellen’s feeling of being a queen than even she knows.

When Ellen wakes up on her 10th birthday, she finds a letter from her Aunt Sarah and a beautiful silver crown next to her on her pillow. Ellen loves the crown because Aunt Sarah is the only adult who seems to really believe Ellen when she says she’s a queen. Ellen takes the crown and goes for an early walk in the park, daydreaming about being a queen. When Ellen gets back to her house, she gets a real shock. In the brief period that she was gone, the house has completely burned down, and apparently no one else in her family survived!

Ellen, in shock, tries to talk to the firefighters and police about the fire and what happened to her family. She discovers that the fire was surprisingly sudden and fierce, there’s no indication that anyone survived, and they might only find bones when they finish their investigation. Ellen explains that this was her family’s house, but since her family hasn’t lived there very long. Nobody really knew her family, and nobody really knows her, and even the police seem to doubt her identity. However, a policeman says that he will take her to the station.

On the way to the police station, something else shocking happens. Ellen and the police officer witness a murder! A robber shoots a store manager, and when the policeman chases the robber, he is also shot. Alone and forgotten, Ellen watches more police come and investigate the situation, trying to figure out what to do. Ellen realizes that, with her family gone, what she really needs is a guardian or a next of kin. That would be Aunt Sarah. However, Aunt Sarah lives in Kentucky, and that’s hundreds of miles away. Ellen could write to Aunt Sarah, but it would take days for her to get the letter, and in the meantime, Ellen has nowhere else to stay. Then, Ellen decides that the thing to do is to go to Kentucky herself. She writes a letter to her aunt to tell her that she’s coming, and sets out to find a ride.

She accepts a ride from a nice man called Mr. Gates who says he’s a teacher and that he’s going to Kentucky, too. She considers it good luck until, during the ride, she begins to notice that there’s something weird about this man. He seems weirdly happy, all the time, and he sometimes repeats certain stock phrases at inappropriate moments. When Ellen gets a look inside in the glove compartment and sees something disturbing – a gun! Suddenly, something clicks in her mind, and she realizes that Mr. Gates was the man in the green hood who shot the store manager and the policeman! She escapes from Mr. Gates and runs into the woods.

While she hides from him in the dark woods, she hears Mr. Gates searching and calling for her. As she listens to him, he grows more disturbed and more disturbing. First, he tries to tell her that he’s going to take her straight to her Aunt Sarah, and Ellen realizes that she never told him her aunt’s name. Then, he begins raving, trying to command her to come out because “the king” has demanded that he bring her to him, and he will punish them if they don’t come. Ellen doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but in the woods that night, she has a strange vision where a man wearing a black crown that looks like hers seems to be commanding other people.

The next day, Ellen befriends a boy named Otto. Otto lives with his elderly mother in the woods, and they survive partly on things they salvage after trucks wreck on a dangerous section of road nearby. Otto and his mother invite Ellen to stay with them a little while to eat and get some sleep.

Ellen explains everything that’s happened to her to Otto’s mother, Mrs. Fitzpatrick. Mrs. Fitzpatrick is a wise woman, and she and Otto both sense that there’s something odd about Ellen’s crown. They sense that it has a power of some kind, but it’s the kind of power that only particular people can use. Whatever the crown does, Mrs. Fitzpatrick is sure that it will only work for Ellen. She questions Ellen about who gave her the crown, but she admits that she doesn’t really know. All she knows is that it was there when she woke up. Since it was her birthday, she just assumed that it was a birthday present. She talks her Mrs. Fitzpatrick about having this sense that she’s a queen and that her Aunt Sarah thinks so, too. Mrs. Fitzpatrick agrees, but she says the question, is what or where is Ellen the queen of? Ellen will need to figure that out before she can understand what the silver crown really is and what it does.

During the night, Mrs. Fitzpatrick shoots at someone who’s lurking outside their cabin, and they realize that someone is still hunting for Ellen. Ellen can’t stay there, and Mrs. Fitzpatrick points out a road that Ellen can take, and she insists that Otto go with her because he knows how to manage in the woods and can help Ellen. Mrs. Fitzpatrick admits that it’s also best for Otto to leave the area because he’s also in trouble.

At first, she’s vague about what trouble Otto is in, but gradually, Mrs. Fitzpatrick explains that Otto and his past aren’t what he believes or has chosen to believe. Mrs. Fitzpatrick found him as a very small child, abandoned on the nearby highway, and she has no idea who his birth parents are or what happened to them. Mrs. Fitzpatrick says she doesn’t really need the things that Otto has salvaged from the wrecked trucks, but for some reason, Otto believes that she does, so he’s been causing these accidents by using branches to hide the sign warning people of the dangerous curve ahead. It doesn’t seem to affect smaller cars, but bigger trucks can’t make it without warning. Ellen is horrified, but Mrs. Fitzpatrick says that she thinks that Otto needs to leave this place and the dangerous fantasies about himself and his life that he’s build, living alone in the woods.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick lets the children go with a warning to Ellen to keep the crown hidden and not to tell anybody about it. She also warns her to beware of any people or group who use the name Hieronymus. The first Hieronymus was a saint, but others have appropriated the name to study the occult and esoteric knowledge, and not for any holy purpose. Mrs. Fitzpatrick says that she has read about a crown like Ellen’s which is associated with these people, and she thinks this secret society is after Ellen now.

Ellen and Otto set out on a cross-country journey to reach Ellen’s Aunt Sarah, but they eventually find themselves trapped in a disturbing boarding school, run by the secret society they are trying to escape. The students in this school are controlled by the mysterious Hieronymus Machine, and they are being trained as soldiers in the service of “the king” to sow chaos in society. Ellen is close to learning the purpose of her crown, but she and Otto will need their wits to escape and put an end to this secret society’s evil plans!

Robert C. O’Brien is known for Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, but The Silver Crown was his first book.

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

I was intrigued by this story from the very beginning. Strange things start happening very quickly – the appearance of the silver crown on Ellen’s birthday, the destruction of her house, the murder she witnesses, Ellen setting out on her journey to her aunt, and the strange and disturbing Mr. Gates attempting to kidnap her – all of these events, while confusing for Ellen, are related and part of a much larger story.

The parts of the book where Ellen and Otto are traveling cross-country, meeting people who help them escape from the people chasing them and continue their journey, seem almost like part of a fantasy book or fairy tale. This story is both fantasy and science fiction. (Spoiler) The Hieronymus Machine is an invention more than a thousand years old that controls minds by broadcasting feelings like radio waves. The school run by the society uses the Hieronymus Machine to control the minds of the “students”, and the students are all part of a larger experiment to test the powers of the machine and the ability of the black crown to control it. There is a pseudo-scientific explanation of how the machine works, which is the science fiction element, but the black and silver crowns that control the machine and the roles of “king” and “queen” associated with the crowns add the fantasy element. When Ellen meets the king, he explains to her how he discovered the machine and that the people who built it, although they called themselves monks, were actually sorcerers. I enjoy stories that are cross-genre, and I thought that this combination of fantasy and science fiction worked well.

Actually, I was surprised when Ellen and Otto ended up at the boarding school and started learning what the Hieronymus Machine is and what it does because it struck me as very similar to the plot of The Mysterious Benedict Society. This book is 40 years older than The Mysterious Benedict Society, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it inspired that later series. Both of them are based around the concept of mind control machines that work like radio waves and strange boarding schools that are used both for mind control experiments and for training/brain-washing people to serve a dark purpose. Both stories feature children who are orphans and/or separated from their parents and people whose identities are uncertain and whose memories are corrupted by the machine. (Spoiler) It turns out that Ellen’s family is still alive but being held captive by the secret society, but we never learn who Otto’s parents were or if they had any connection to the secret society themselves.

There are some differences between The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Silver Crown. Ellen discovers that the king, although seeming to be in control of everything initially, is also controlled by the machine. The machine controls everyone around it, to some extent. The king somewhat controls the machine through the black crown, but at the same time, he’s also carrying out the goals of the machine. Although he seems in command, he’s really just a tool of the machine itself and needs to be freed from it as badly as everyone else. This is a somewhat different scenario from The Mysterious Benedict Society, where there is one person who is definitely in control. Some people, like Ellen, have a natural resistance to the mind control effects because their minds work differently from other people’s, and that’s how Ellen is able to resist the mind control and use the silver crown. The silver crown is the one that actually controls the machine while the black crown allows the machine to control the wearer while giving him the illusion of control, which is why the king wants to control the silver crown and Ellen. On some level, the machine realizes that it needs Ellen and the silver crown to function. Ellen needs to learn how to use the crown and the knowledge it gives her about what to do to establish control over the machine and ensure that it can’t control anyone else again.

There are actually two different endings to this book, depending on whether you read the British version or the American version, and if you listen to Kent Kently’s reading on Youtube, he reads both of them at the end of the book. In the original British version, Ellen’s Aunt Sarah says that she sent Ellen the crown after finding it in a curio shop in Spain, where the shop owner seemed to think it was an old theatrical prop. This ending isn’t very detailed and leaves some things to the imagination. The American version has far more detail, and in that version, they conclude that the secret society had someone break into Ellen’s house and leave the crown for her because they were actively searching for someone who could use it. If you read other reviews of this story, some of them will differ from each other, depending on which version the reviewer read. Personally, I like the American version with its more detailed explanations better, but Kent Kently prefers the shorter, original version.

Posted on by TracyC

The Moorchild

The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw, 1996.

When Saaski was only a few months old, her grandmother, Old Bess, started to notice that she didn’t look right, compared to the rest of the family or even compared to the way she looked when she was a newer baby. The grandmother tried to brush those thoughts aside, thinking that children change as they grow, and people of the village think that she’s odd herself as a widow who lives alone and knows about herbs. All the same, Saaski seems unusually fussy and throws tantrums, becoming a child who’s difficult to control. It could just be colic, or it could be something stranger.

Old Bess begins to put the pieces together about Saaski’s strange behavior. Saaski seems to hate or fear her own father, and Old Bess realizes that it’s because he is a blacksmith and wears an iron buckle on his belt. Saaski has an aversion to iron. She also has an aversion to salt, and only honey seems to soothe her. Saaski’s eyes change color from time to time, and Old Bess realizes that Saaski not only isn’t her grandchild but that she isn’t even human. Saaski is a changeling, a fairy child switched out for the human child before her christening.

When Old Bess tries to tell her daughter and her husband that Saaski is a changeling, her daughter refuses to believe her. Her husband seems to consider that Old Bess might be right, but he absolutely refuses to do the cruel things to the child that Old Bess tries to tell them will cause the fairy folk to take the changeling back and bring them their real daughter. Old Bess says that Saaski must either be made to tell her true age, which she cannot do because she cannot talk yet, or the parents must do cruel things to her, like beat her, burn her, or throw her down a well. The parents say that they cannot do such things to a baby, no matter what kind of baby it is, and they no longer want to discuss the matter, forbidding Old Bess to tell anyone else of her suspicions.

However, in this case, Old Bess is correct. The child known as Saaski is a changeling, and she knows it herself. Although she is in the form of a human baby, she knows that she is not really a baby. Her fairy name was Moql. She doesn’t know her true age, but she knows that she is a fairy youngling and that she used to live among the other fairies in the fairy mound. She doesn’t like being part of this human family, and she wishes that the fairies would take her back, but she knows that, whatever happens, they never will reclaim her. Even if this family treats her cruelly and the fairies decide to remove her from their house, she knows that they will just place her with a different human family.

The problem is that, unlike other fairies, Moql has no ability to hide from humans. Other fairies can change their shape or color, fade, or just wink out of human vision entirely, but Moql can’t. The fairies discovered it one day when Moql was unable to hide from a human shepherd. She is able to escape from the shepherd, but her blunder isn’t forgiven by the other fairies. Moql’s inability to hide from humans was considered a danger to whole band of fairies. She was taken before the prince of the fairies. When he sees that Moql cannot hide from humans, he remembers that a human man entered the fairy mound some time ago and stayed awhile with a fairy woman. Moql’s mother was a fairy, but her father was that human. As a half-human, Moql will never have the abilities that the other fairy younglings have.

When Moql is considered a danger to the other fairies, they feel little attachment to her or desire to keep her. They don’t consider a half-human likely to work out among the fairies, so they decide to swap her for a human child who might make a good servant to the fairies. They’ve done this before with other younglings like Moql. Moql is frightened because she doesn’t know how to be human. Life in the fairy mound is all that she knows. She is only half human, and if she’s not working out as a half fairy, how can she possibly work out as a human? What if she can’t work out as a human? Will she belong anywhere? What if she belongs nowhere?

The fairies tell her that she will start life all over again as a human baby and that she will forget all about the mound and her past life. The other fairies think nothing of casting her out. None of them really care about her. The fairies don’t feel emotions like humans do, and they don’t feel very much about anybody. Moql’s birth mother doesn’t feel anything for her but a mild curiosity and no concern for her future. Fairy mothers don’t really develop an attachment to their children, who are raised communally in the fairy nursery and school. Most fairies don’t even know who their parents are, and they don’t really develop feelings for their parents any more than parents feel attached to their children. Even fairy couples don’t stay together very long, forgetting about each other when they become bored with the relationship and moving on to others. Fairies don’t really care that much about relationships, like brother and sister, and fairies don’t even have a sense of what being a “friend” means. So far, even Moql hasn’t felt that much for anybody, either. Moql’s first human feelings come with her despair about being torn away from everything and everyone she’s ever known, made worse from realizing that nobody else feels anything for her. In their position, she might not feel anything for the loss of one of them because that’s the fairy way, but the human part of Moql longs for belonging and fears what will happen to her if she can’t find a place or people to belong to.

When Moql wakes the next day, she finds herself as the baby Saaski, but in spite of what the fairies said, she still retains her memories of her fairy life. Everything in this human household is strange. She fears the people who are supposed to be her parents, and most of the things that they offer her to soothe her aren’t soothing to a fairy or half-fairy, which is why she screams and throws tantrums. When she hears Old Bess describe her as a changeling and tries to urge her parents to do things to get rid of her, Moql realizes that she is stuck as a human, no matter what happens. Her only hope is to make herself forget or at least pretend that she doesn’t remember being a fairy and to try her best to be the human baby Saaski. It means pretending that she doesn’t have the ability to do things that a human baby shouldn’t be able to do and that she doesn’t know things that she actually does know. It’s not easy, but Saaski’s memories do fade a bit with time. She has vague memories of her past life, but the longer she lives as a human, the less she remembers of her past.

Time passes, and Saaski grows into a child, but the humans around her have an odd feeling about her. They whisper about her behind her parents’ backs. She doesn’t look like other human children, and odd things seem to happen around her. Saaski doesn’t trust Old Bess because she knows that Old Bess has always suspected she was a changeling. Other children in the village have heard their parents whispering about Saaski, and they start asking her if she really is a changeling. By that point, Saaski isn’t sure anymore what that means.

Old Bess does look for an opportunity at first to get the fairies to take back the changeling, considering shoving her into a pond at one point. However, when she realizes that Saaski has real feelings, she cannot bring herself to do it. She realizes that Saaski is also a victim of the switch when she was exchanged for the real Saaski. She doesn’t really belong among them, Saaski knows it, and Old Bess can tell that it hurts that she’s different and that others don’t accept her. Old Bess isn’t sure how much she understands about herself, her past, or her situation, but it’s been as unfair to her as it has been to the real Saaski and her family. The sense of belonging Saaski craves eludes her.

The only place Saaski really feels at home is out on the moor by herself, although she doesn’t really remember why anymore. That is where she first meets the orphan boy, Tam, who travels with the tinker. Tam knows what other people say about Saaski, but he isn’t afraid of her and likes her anyway. He is the first person who really seems to accept Saaski. For a time, her father forbids her to go on the moor again after she has a distressing encounter with a shepherd, who seems to recognize her as being a fairy.

Surprisingly, Old Bess turns out to be an ally of Saaski’s, urging her parents to let her go to the moor again. She knows how restless Saaski has been, confined to their home. The only thing that has soothed her is the old bagpipes that once belonged to her father’s father. She seems to know how to play them without anyone ever teaching her. Eventually, her parents allow her to return to the moor, partly so she won’t keep playing the bagpipes at home. When she’s able to see Tam again, he is happy to see her, and she shows him how she can play the bagpipes.

There are other things that Saaski seems to know without knowing how she knows. She sometimes sees strange symbols that no one else seems able to see. When Old Bess realizes that she can see these symbols, called runes, the two of them discuss it. Old Bess can’t see them herself, but she knows about them. She learned a lot about such things from an old monk she once cared for and from the books he left behind, which is also where she gained her knowledge of herbs.

Old Bess admits to Saaski that, like her, she is considered strange and that she doesn’t quite belong to the village where they live. She was brought to the village as an infant after she was found abandoned in a basket at a crossroads. They left her at the miller’s house, and she was raised by the miller and her wife. She doesn’t know who her birth parents were, where they came from, or why she was abandoned as an infant, and she was told that the gypsies who found her almost drowned her as a changeling before deciding to leave her in the village.

Saaski also knows that she doesn’t belong in the village, although she can’t think where she does belong. She can’t explain how she is able to see and understand fairy runes or do the other things that she seems able to do, apparently without anyone teaching her. Over time, she gradually discovers or rediscovers the things she could do and knew as a fairy. She discovers that she can see fairies when she spots one stealing Tam’s lunch. Later, a group of fairies try to steal her bagpipes. To Saaski’s surprise, she is able to understand their language, and they seem to recognize her.

Then, after the children in the village bully Saaski again, an illness comes to the village, afflicting all of the children but Saaski. Old Bess says it’s a normal childhood illness she’s seen before, and the children probably got it from the gypsy band who recently passed through town. However, the villagers, who have always been suspicious of Saaski whisper that Saaski is responsible, that she has cursed the other children. Saaski denies is, but the villagers are becoming increasingly hostile. They want her out of the villager, but if Saaski can’t stay there, where can she go?

When Saaski tries to bargain with a fairy for some help to hide from the villagers, the fairy reminds her that she was a fairy herself and that she was never able to disappear. Saaski is stunned at this confirmation of the villager’s suspicions about her being a changeling. When she tells Old Bess about it and about the memories that are now returning to her, Saaski realizes that she really doesn’t belong in this human village, at least not fully. Yet, she remembers that she doesn’t fully belong among the fairies, either. Once again, it leaves her the question of where she does belong. Saaski is going to have to take her fate into her own hands, but before she does, she wants to do something for the family that raised her and has loved her, in spite of everything: find the original Saaski in the fairy mound and return her to her parents.

The book is a Newbery Honor Book.

My Reaction

I enjoyed the story because it is a unique portrayal of the folkloric idea of changelings. Another book I read on the same topic, The Half Child, is told from a real world, historical point of view, without fantasy. In that book, changelings are disabled children or children who aren’t “normal” in some way who are labeled as being something other than human or “real” children because people of the past couldn’t understand why they were different or what was wrong with them.

The Moorchild, however, is fantasy and builds on the folklore concept. In other books with changelings, we see the changelings from the point of view of other people, who wonder about their true nature, but this book includes multiple viewpoints, including that of the changeling herself. In folklore, it isn’t entirely clear why the fairies would want to change their children with human children, leaving them to be raised by other people and possibly never seeing them again. This book builds on that concept, portraying the changeling children as being half human and/or flawed in some way, compared to the other fairies. They do use the human children they gain in the swap as servants, which is a folkloric concept, but this story explains why the fairy child left in exchange for the abducted human child is an acceptable loss to the other fairies.

Fairies in this story don’t have the same types of feelings as humans. In fact, they don’t seem to feel much at all, making most of their lives literally care-free because they just don’t care that much about others or the consequences of their actions. However, they don’t feel much emotional attachment to each other, either. Saaski/Moql’s birth mother doesn’t feel much of anything for her daughter or for the man whose life she changed and worsened through her seduction and rejection. She is completely unconcerned about what has happened to them or what will happen to them because of her. Later, Saaski realizes that the fairies are aware that Saaski is blamed for pranks they played, but they don’t mean it spitefully. They genuinely don’t care whether Saaski or someone else is blamed for things they do as long as they never get caught themselves. When Saaski realizes that the other fairies genuinely don’t care about her or what happens to her, she knows that they will never take her back and that she will never rejoin them.

Saaski feels more emotion than full fairies feel, but she doesn’t always respond in acceptable or predictable ways to the humans she lives with because she doesn’t share all of the emotions they feel. She craves a sense of belonging, but she doesn’t really know how to get it or create it. At times, she feels love and gratitude without being entirely sure what she’s feeling or how to express it. Strangely, she also doesn’t experience hate and resentment in the same way humans do. Tam tries to explain it to her, and Saaski recognizes that the children in the village who bully her feel hatred and resentment to her, but she doesn’t feel those emotions herself. She doesn’t like it when they bully her, and she feels hurt by them, but the emotion of hating and wanting to hurt them back isn’t there. I thought that was an interesting concept, exploring someone with non-conforming emotional reactions. Saaski’s emotions in the story are explained by her fairy heritage, but what made it interesting to me is that neurodivergent humans also have different ways of experiencing and showing emotions that can change the way they are accepted by or interact with other people, which brings the idea of changelings full circle, back to the concept of children who aren’t like other children from birth or a young age.

I thought it was fascinating that we get to see things both from Saaski’s point of view and from the point of view of other people, particularly Old Bess. Old Bess is the first to realize that Saaski is a changeling and not her “real” granddaughter. She understandably wants her real granddaughter back, and she knows the folklore that fairy folk will take back a changeling who has been abused. However, Saaski’s parents, even knowing or suspecting that Saaski might be a changeling, cannot bring themselves to do anything cruel to her, and Old Bess comes around to that point of view herself. By observing Saaski, she sees that Saaski is a child, if not an entirely human child, and an innocent victim of the switch herself, with feelings and a difficult life ahead of her because she doesn’t fit in with this community.

Old Bess also recalls and admits to Saaski that her own past isn’t quite normal and that she also doesn’t quite fit in. I wondered if we would ever get the full story of Old Bess’s past, but unfortunately, we don’t. We know that she was abandoned as an infant, apparently rejected by her birth family or guardian, but we never learn why. I had wondered at first if Old Bess would turn out to be a grown-up changeling. It seems that people once suspected that about her, but apparently, she isn’t because she can’t see the fairies or fairy writing in the way Saaski does. It seems that Old Bess is fully human and not half fairy. In the end, the important point is that, when Old Bess is honest with herself and Saaski about her past, her story has some elements in common with Saaski’s situation. They have both known rejection and abandonment, the difficulties of trying to fit in when they don’t entirely fit in, and the love of people who accepted them and cared for them in spite of it all.

I appreciated that Saaski’s parents do their best to love and care for Saaski even when they know she’s strange and may not be their daughter. They stand up to the people who bully their daughter and pressure them to get rid of her. In fact, in the end, even after Saaski and Tam set out into the world together and they have their birth daughter back, they still think of Saaski and miss her sometimes. Saaski was no replacement for the daughter they lost when they were switched, but at the same time, they realize that their birth daughter doesn’t entirely replace Saaski in their lives and affections. In the end, it’s like they’ve had two daughters, both of them “real”, although one didn’t fit in and eventually left to start a new life elsewhere.

Posted on by TracyC

The Diamond Princess and the Magic Ball

The Jewel Kingdom

#8 The Diamond Princess and the Magic Ball by Jahnna N. Malcolm, 1998.

Demetra is the Diamond Princess, and she lives in the White Winterland. She and each of her sisters has a different castle and region to rule over in their parents’ kingdom, but they still spend time together. After a visit with her parents, Queen Jemma and King Regal, at the Jewel Palace, Demetra finds herself worrying about how she measures up to her sisters. It seems like each of them has done something special for the people in their region, but Demetra can’t think of anything special she’s done. She talks about it with her friend, Finley the fox, but she can’t think of anything really special to do.

On the way home, they see a wagon with performers giving a show. Princess Demetra wants to stop and watch the show, but Finley warns her that it could be dangerous because they’re near the Mysterious Forest, which is a dangerous region. Demetra insists on stopping anyway, and she meets a fortune teller called Madame Zara. Madame Zara says that she can see that Demetra is a princess, and a boy from the audience says that’s not much for a fortune teller to see because Demetra is obviously wearing her crown.

Madame Zara says that she knows who the boy is, too. His name is Wink, and Madame Zara says that he’s a failed student wizard, rejected by the Wizard Gallivant. Demetra also knows Gallivant because he appointed her as the Diamond Princess. Madame Zara could have figured out Wink’s identity because his wizard robe is peeking out from his pack and has his name on it, but the part that’s harder to figure out is how she knew that the frog hidden in Wink’s shirt is actually his dog. Wink accidentally turned his dog into a frog.

Demetra decides that’s good enough proof that Madame Zara knows things other people don’t, so she asks her to tell her fortune. Madame Zara shows her a beautiful snow globe that looks like it has a scene of the White Winterland inside. Demetra can even hear the voices of people she knows inside it. Madame Zara says that the magic ball tells the future and asks Demetra if she would like to have it. Demetra says she would, although Wink tries to warn her not to trust Madame Zara. However, Demetra lets Madame Zara take a lock of her hair in trade for the magic ball.

As Demetra continues on her way home, she begins to see that the snow that always covers the White Winterland is melting! Something is terribly wrong, and it may have something to do with the magic ball!

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

My Reaction

I never actually read any of the Jewel Kingdom books when I was young, but I remember them being sold in stores along with little jeweled charms. It doesn’t take too long to get into the lore and backstory of the series, even though I’ve read the few books I’ve read out of order.

There are recurring villains in this series, especially Lord Bleak and his minions, called Darklings. When the Darklings appears in this story, the book explains who they are and about Lord Bleak’s backstory. Lord Bleak was an evil tyrant who used to rule the Jewel Kingdom, until he was vanquished by Queen Jemma and King Regal. Since then, he’s been trying a series of evil schemes to regain control. The Darklings used to be beautiful, but they were corrupted by evil, and now they’re hideous creatures in dark robes.

Because this story is meant for young children, Demetra makes the mistake of entering into a suspicious trade with a shady character, apparently not having had the “stranger danger” warnings and not heeding her friends’ concerns. Of course, it turns out that the lock of hair she traded for the magic ball was important because it gives the person who holds it power over her and her kingdom. To save her kingdom, she has to get her lock of hair back.

I enjoyed the story, though. It has a colorful setting, and I liked their trip to the Bizarre Bazaar.

Posted on by TracyC

Princess Megan

The Magic Attic Club

Princess Megan by Trisha Magaw, 1995.

Meg and her friends are planning to perform a short play of Peter Pan at a local nursing home. Her friends chose her to be their director, and Megan is really looking forward to it. Then, her mother does something that threatens to derail the project.

Megan’s mother is a lawyer, and she frequently has to work late. The problem is that, this time, she’s going to have to work on Saturday, interviewing witnesses for a trial. However, that Saturday, Megan’s mother was supposed to be at the high school, receiving donations for a food drive. She asks Megan to take care of the food donations, but the problem is that the play Megan and her friends are supposed to perform is also on Saturday. Helping with the food drive would make it difficult for Megan to get to the play on time. Megan’s mother is tired and in no mood to listen to Megan’s objections that it wouldn’t be fair to derail her project with her friends. Her mother just wants Megan to take care of her obligations for her.

While Megan is fuming about the unfairness of the situation and worrying about what to do, she decides to visit their neighbor, Ellie Goodwin. Megan and her friends have a standing invitation to visit and explore her attic, which has the ability to send them to other places and times when they put on different costumes and look at themselves in the mirror.

This time, Megan tries on a purple princess dress, and she finds herself in a Medieval village in France, near a castle. She meets a peasant girl named Michelle. Michelle tells her that there’s been trouble over the matter of the unicorn and the feast.

When Megan asks what she means, Michelle explains that Lord Claude and Lady Helene are hosting a feast and joust at their castle and that the king (who is supposedly Megan’s father in this world) has been invited as an important guest. At the end of the feast, they want to give the king a unicorn’s horn as a gift, but the problem with that is that they have to kill the unicorn to do that. Alternatively, it is possible to befriend a unicorn and get filings from its horn that also have magical powers, but Lord Claude and Lady Helene want to give the king the whole horn. Michelle confesses to Megan that her mother, who works in the castle’s kitchen secretly released the unicorn that they’d captured for the purpose. If they knew she was the one who did it, she would be in serious trouble.

Megan wants to help Michelle and her mother, and as someone who supposedly has the rank of princess, she should have some authority. However, she’s not entirely sure what kind of influence she can have because she knows that she’s not a “real” princess. Everyone thinks that she’s the king’s daughter, but Megan knows that she’s not. Can Megan find another way to save the unicorn’s life and Jacqueline from punishment, without revealing herself as an imposter princess?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

Some children’s books that involve time travel have real, historical information for educational value, but this one, and others in the series, are pure fantasy. Megan doesn’t visit real Medieval France. This is a fairy tale version of the Middle Ages with a unicorn and an invisibility cloak. There are a few accurate details for the Middle Ages, like the practice of using straw or other plants on the floors and the fact that intricate tapestries took years of work to complete. However, the focus is definitely on fantasy.

The invisibility cloak is critical to Megan’s plan to save the unicorn and make the king realize the value and beauty of the unicorn before someone can kill it on his behalf. When the king sees the unicorn for himself and reads the note that Megan wrote for him, he accepts the living unicorn and its presence as his gift instead of the horn. The problem with the unicorn is resolved pretty quickly, and so is Megan’s situation with her mother.

At first, I was expecting that the situation that Megan encountered in the fantasy world would have more of a direct parallel to Megan’s situation in her regular life, but it doesn’t really. It mostly serves as its own adventure, although it does highlight that Megan is creative when it comes to problem-solving and can be relied on in difficult circumstances. What Megan really needs to do is to explain to her mother why it would be difficult for her to take over her mother’s project without compromising her own. When Megan finally explains, it turns out that her mother didn’t know about her project with her friends. Handling both of their projects requires some careful scheduling and a little help from a friend, but they manage to work it out.

I really like the pictures in the Magic Attic Club books because they remind me of the ones in the American Girls books. They have a similar quality.