Aliens for Lunch by Stephanie Spinner and Jonathan Etra, 1988.
This book is part of the Aliens for Breakfast Trilogy, a short, easy chapter book series for elementary school children.
It’s spring break, and Richard and his friend Henry are bored. It seems like all of their friends have all gone somewhere for vacation, but they’re stuck at home. Richard’s mother leaves the boys home alone, telling them that there’s food for lunch in the refrigerator and a new sample of popcorn that arrived in the mail. The last time that a sample of a new kind of food arrived in the mail, Richard’s alien friend, Aric was hiding inside, and the same is true this time, too! Aric is back, and he needs Richard’s help!
Aric tells Richard and Henry that a valuable shipment of XTC-1000 was hijacked by aliens called the Graxians. XTC-1000 is the secret substance that makes all desserts taste wonderful. (I always thought that was sugar, but okay.) Aric’s planet ships XTC-1000 to other planets, and each shipment is supposed to last for thousands of years, but the Graxians are greedy, and they used up their supply too quickly, which is why they hijacked a shipment bound for another planet. It’s a real problem because, if that other planet’s desserts suddenly turn bland because they’ve run out of XTC-1000, they’re bound to start raiding desserts from other planets, like Earth.
Aric’s Interspace Brigade was supposed to send weapons to help Aric and Richard face off against the Graxians, but as always, they’re on a strict budget, and the weapons they sent somehow failed to arrive. Richard and Henry do the best they can to improvise weapons with things they find in Richard’s kitchen, but they’re not very terrifying. The Graxians take Aric, Richard, and Henry prisoner after they board the ship. Can the boys manage to free Aric and discover what they need to subdue the Graxians?
My Reaction
I don’t think I read this book as a kid, although I remember reading the first book in the series. The Aliens for Breakfast Trilogy is a short series of funny science fiction stories as Richard and his alien friend do battle against the villains of the galaxy with food! I like the fact that even the aliens they fight find their efforts laughable when they try to use things that just don’t make sense, like when they try to use the kitchen gadgets as weapons. I also enjoyed the pun that the secret substance that makes desserts good is “XTC”-1000. (No, I don’t think they mean the illegal drug.) There is also a running gag that Aric’s space organization is always operating on a shoestring budget, which is why they often have to improvise weapons and modes of travel. The stakes are high but laughable at the time time, and somehow, they always manage to save the day! There is an extra joke at the end of this book where Aric gives both of the boys jackets from his space organization, telling them that girls find them irresistible. When the boys try wearing them for the first time, they come to the conclusion that neither one of them is ready to be irresistible.
Aliens for Breakfast by Stephanie Spinner and Jonathan Etra, 1988.
This is the first book in the Aliens for Breakfast Trilogy, a short, easy chapter book series for elementary school children.
There’s a new student in Richard Bickerstaff’s class at school called Dorf. In spite of his strange name, Dorf is a good-looking blond boy with an irresistible smile. Everyone in class admires him and imitates him. Even Richard finds himself admiring Dorf’s clothes and wishing that he could wear the same thing, even his stupid bowling shirt. Then, when Richard sits down to breakfast one morning before school, he learns something startling about Dorf that changes everything.
Richard’s mother gives him a sample of Alien Crisp that came in the mail. She thinks that Richard will love it because of his love of science fiction, but right away, he can tell that this is no ordinary cereal. When he pours milk on the cereal, it comes to life! Actually, he has revived a small alien called Aric, who was sent to Earth from another planet in freeze-dried form in the cereal. Aric is a Commander of the Interspace Brigade, and he’s here to stop an alien invasion on Earth. His target is Dorf.
Dorf is no ordinary boy. He’s an alien in disguise and a dangerous one. His type of alien multiplies, and if that happens, Earth is doomed! There’s only one thing that can stop Dorf … and Aric has forgotten what it is. Being freeze-dried for the trip to Earth has scrambled his memory, but he knows that the weapon they need is an ordinary type of food from Earth.
While Aric struggles to remember what that secret weapon is, Dorf’s hold over Richard’s friends and teachers becomes stronger. Everyone is charmed by Dorft, and everyone wants to do whatever Dorf does. Only Richard resists, and that identifies him to Dorf as an enemy.
Dorf uses his powers to make Richard start dissolving. If Aric doesn’t remember that secret weapon soon, both Richard and Earth are history!
My Reaction
I remember reading this when I was in elementary school, although I forgot most of the story. I remembered the alien arriving in the cereal box, like those little toys we used to get in cereal as kids. I also remembered that he was under threat somehow and that Aric told him that he hoped he didn’t have big plans for the weekend, with the implication that, if they don’t do something, he won’t make it to the weekend.
There’s a lot of humor in the story. I was alarmed at how Richard’s fingertips start bleeding when the dissolving begins. That part sounds a little scary. He bleeds rather than starting to fade out, and I had forgotten about that part in the story. However, there is humor in the story that helps to soften it, and the solution is a simple one that works right away.
The story has some references to real life science fiction, like Yoda from Star Wars and the starship Enterprise from Star Trek.
This is the second book in the Bruno and Boots series (also called the MacDonald Hall series), which is about a pair of boys at a Canadian boarding school for boys and their humorous adventures and pranks.
Once again, Bruno and Boots are faced with a problem when Boots’s parents consider sending him to a different school. MacDonald Hall, unlike its athletic rival York Academy, doesn’t have its own swimming pool. MacDonald Hall is superior to York Academy in academics, but they often lose to them at swim meets because the MacDonald Hall team can only train at the local YMCA once week. Boots’s father is an athlete who once competed in the Olympics, and athletics are very important to him. Because of York’s superior athletic facilities, he’s considering sending Boots there instead. Bruno and Boots ask their headmaster why the school doesn’t have a pool, and he says that they want to build one but haven’t been able to raise the necessary money. Of course, Bruno, the idea man, immediately starts getting ideas.
Boots loves MacDonald Hall and doesn’t want to leave his friends, especially his best friend and roommate, Bruno. Although Bruno’s schemes often cause chaos, they do produce results in the end, so he is able to convince his friends to go along with them. While Boots writes letters home, talking about how great MacDonald Hall is and how much he loves it there, hoping to sway his parents’ minds, Bruno begins scheming for a way to raise the money so that MacDonald Hall can build a new pool.
First, Bruno gets the other students at the school to hold a rummage sale, selling things of their own and even some furnishings from their dorm rooms. The girls from Miss Scrimmage’s school across the road also join in their efforts, including donating some items that they liberated from their headmistress’s rooms. Mr. Sturgeon, the headmaster of MacDonald Hall is upset when he finds that the boys are holding a large public sale without his permission, and there are some complications because of the items that the girls stole from Miss Scrimmage, including the shotgun that she keeps for protection. While almost everyone would be relieved by someone else buying that gun and removing it from Miss Scrimmage’s dangerous hands, the purchaser turns out to be a robber, who uses the gun in a holdup. Chaos ensues when the police come to arrest Miss Scrimmage because the gun had her name and address engraved on it. However, Mr. Sturgeon manages to get the situation under control by explaining about the sale and giving Miss Scrimmage an alibi for the crime, and he is persuaded not to punish the boys by his wife, who is sympathetic to the boys, and a member of the school’s board of directors, who is impressed by the boys’ initiative and school spirit. However, Mr. Sturgeon tells the boys not to hold any more sales and that he needs to know about any future fundraising efforts.
Their next fundraising project is a talent show with students from both MacDonald Hall and Miss Scrimmage’s. It doesn’t go too badly, although there are complications. Mrs. Sturgeon’s attempts to take pictures of the performers startle the performers with bright flashes that cause a few accidents. Elmer’s bird calls accidentally attract an owl that flies away with Miss Scrimmage’s hat. Then, several of Miss Scrimmage’s girls modify their dancing costumes to make them skimpier, scandalizing Miss Scrimmage. In spite of the incidents of minor chaos, Mr. Sturgeon appreciates that the boys have managed to raise more money, and they’ve also managed to get some of the more shy students, including Elmer, to participate in school activities.
Mr. Sturgeon does put a stop to some of Bruno’s more inappropriate ideas. He refuses to let them hold a casino-themed fundraising event or bet on a race horse because he can’t condone gambling, and he won’t let them enter a fellow student in an eating contest out of concern for the student’s health. However, Bruno convinces his fellow students to enter any contest they can find with a cash prize. Unfortunately, some of the contests also have non-cash prizes, which is how they end up with a massive amount of jelly beans and a refrigerator. When Bruno asks Mr. Sturgeon for permission for them to hold a funny photo contest at the school, he agrees on the condition that the photos be tasteful enough for a school environment. Of course, the students’ attempts to deliberately produce humorous pictures also lead to some antics and bizarre pranks.
After that, the boys hold a kind of carnival that they call “Individual Effort Day” because each student gets to do their own kind of fundraising effort, making and selling things or producing some form of entertainment. While everyone, including the girls at Miss Scrimmage’s school, who are also participating, tries to come up with an original idea, some of the students try spying on each other and stealing ideas. Mr. Sturgeon particularly enjoys the game that Bruno and Boots are holding, where people pay to throw wet sponges at them. He accurately hits both of them and also hits Miss Scrimmage when she passes by. Cathy and Diane’s haunted house scares Miss Scrimmage, and Mr. Sturgeon gets hooked on an elaborate pinball game built by Elmer.
When Mr. Sturgeon points out that the boys have mostly been getting money from the students and parents of MacDonald Hall and Miss Scrimmage’s, Bruno takes his attempts to get money from the public too far by setting up a toll stop on the road that runs by the school. It’s illegal to get money under false pretenses, so Mr. Sturgeon calls a halt to all the fundraising efforts. However, he changes his mind when he finds out that some of the boys’ parents, including Boots’s parents, have been considering sending their boys to York Academy because of the pool issue. Realizing that the boys have been trying to save the school and continue going to school with their friends, Mr. Sturgeon lifts their punishment, although he still gives them a warning that if they do anything illegal again, it will jeopardize the rest of their lives.
The boys still have the problem that they are thousands of dollars short of their goal, even after Cathy wins a large cash prize in a recipe contest. There is still one student at the school who hasn’t contributed to all the fundraising efforts, though: Boots’s old roommate from the previous book in the series, the wealthy but stuffy and fussy hypochondriac, George. George has resisted getting involved in all the weird activities happening on campus because he considers them all “vulgar”, but when they finally explain to him that the point of it all is to raise funds for the school, he approves. If there’s one thing George knows how to do well, it’s manage money. George convinces them that they don’t need to raise more money from other people if they know how to put their money to work for them in the stock market. The other boys are a bit dubious about letting George invest their money, but George knows what he’s doing. Meanwhile, Boots’s parents have been taking all the letters he’s been writing them about how great MacDonald Hall is and how happy he is there to heart. In the end, they just want their son to be happy.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It’s also one of the MacDonald Hall books that was made into a movie. You can sometimes see the trailer for the movie or clips of it on YouTube.
My Reaction
I always liked the Bruno and Boots series when I was a kid. The pranks aren’t quite as funny to me as when I was a kid, but I like it that the boys’ antics always have a purpose. I don’t like stories where people play pranks just to be mean, but the boys’ escapades in this series are always in support of their school and their friends.
There are also aren’t really any villains in the series, and there are no villainous characters in the story. Even when people are in opposition to the boys, they aren’t really evil. There is the rival school, which is snobby and rude to the boys, but other than giving the boys a motive for fundraising for the pool project, they don’t play much of a role in the story. The headmaster of MacDonald Hall is a good man who really cares for the boys, and even when he punishes them, he has their welfare at heart. The boys, especially Bruno, have a tendency to go too far with their schemes, and they do need someone to restrain them at times. George wasn’t a very likeable character in the previous the book, and even here, he’s kind of fussy and not too fond of Bruno and Boots. However, he also cares about the school, and this time, he has just the talents that they need. The other boys at the school also appreciate what George does for them, and they hail him as a hero.
I also appreciated that, in the end, Boots’s parents acknowledge that it’s more important for him to be happy with his school and his friends than for him to seriously train for the Olympics. Boots’s letters are overly enthusiastic about the things he’s been learning in class, and I’m sure his parents know that he’s not really that excited about his math lessons, but they can read between the lines and realize that the purpose of his letters is to indirectly ask them not to make him switch schools. Even if MacDonald Hall wasn’t able to get a swimming pool of their own, I think his parents would have agreed to let him stay there if he insisted that he just wouldn’t be happy anywhere else.
Henry Green absolutely loves chocolate, and he eats it all the time, at every meal! Although this doesn’t sound healthy, Henry’s parents let him eat as much chocolate as he wants because it never seems to affect his health. Henry doesn’t gain weight, have stomach aches, get cavities in his teeth, or suffer skin problems from eating all that chocolate, so his parents assume that it must be okay and let him eat whatever he wants. However, Henry is about to suffer some consequences from his chocolate obsession.
One morning, Henry starts feeling a little funny, and then, he notices that he’s breaking out in brown spots. His teacher takes him to the school nurse, and they notice that Henry’s rash smells oddly like chocolate. More little brown spots start popping out as they look at Henry.
They take Henry to the hospital, where the doctor who sees him is mystified. He says it’s like Henry is turning into a candy bar, and he starts talking about making medical history. In a panic, Henry runs away from the hospital. However, he ends up lost, and everywhere he goes, people notice his spots and the smell of chocolate.
Henry is afraid that he’s going to spend the rest of his life as some kind of chocolate freak, but a kind truck driver helps him and a candy shop owner who’s experienced this problem before provides a solution to his Chocolate Fever.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Spoilers
I remember hearing about this book when I was a kid, but I didn’t read it until I was an adult. I liked it, and I enjoyed the character of Mac, the truck driver who helps Henry. At first, Henry is reluctant to explain his situation to Mac, but Mac can clearly see (and smell) Henry’s condition, and he just waits for Henry to explain himself without pressing him for answers. When Henry explains that he’s afraid of being a freak for the rest of his life, Mac tells him that he’s “unique” and “sort of special”, not really a “freak.” Henry is afraid of everyone staring at him at all the time, but Mac says that he’s already had experience with that. Mac is a black man in a mostly white society, and he says that being different from other people is bound to attract some attention, but he’s proud of what makes him different because “black is beautiful.” Henry says that’s not the same as his situation because being covered with spots is ugly. It’s true that people with different colors of skin look the way they do because it’s natural for them to look that way, like people with different hair colors and eye colors. That’s not quite the same as someone suddenly breaking out in a weird rash.
Henry just wants to run away from him problems, but Mac convinces him that he has to deal with the situation instead of just running away. He has parents who care about him, and he at least needs to let them know where he is and what’s happening, and they can work out another way to deal with the problem that doesn’t involve returning to the hospital with the doctor he doesn’t like. Mac points out that it’s also possible that this problem of his is a temporary one that will clear up on its own.
Mac’s plan to call Henry’s parents is interrupted by a couple of robbers who hijack the truck, but when Mac finally delivers the cargo he’s carrying – a shipment of chocolate bars – to a local candy shop, the owner of the candy shop provides the solution that Henry’s been looking for. The candy shop owner once had a problem like Henry’s, and he teaches him that it’s possible to have too much of a good thing and that he needs to learn moderation. Cutting back on chocolate also means that Henry gets to experience and appreciate other flavors that he’s been ignoring. The story ends with the potential for Henry to get hooked on some of these flavors as well, and we’re left with the question of whether or not Henry has completely learned his lesson yet.
It’s a fun story about learning not to overdo things. One thing that surprised me was that Mac smoked a cigar because children’s books cut back on portrayals of smoking during the late 20th century to discourage children from taking up the habit. There were still some books that had people smoking, but it just struck me as interesting in this particular story because the story is about out-of-control habits.
“We are the Wouldbegoods Society, We are not good yet, but we mean to try, And if we try, and if we don’t succeed, It must mean we are very bad indeed.”
By Noel Bastable
The previous book in the Bastable Children series, The Story of the Treasure Seekers, ended with the children and their father going to live with their “Indian uncle.” The uncle isn’t identified by name, but he is apparently their real uncle, and he had only recently returned from living in India in the previous book, when he invited the Bastables to come live with him at Christmas. Since then, he has been helping the children’s father with his business, and the children are once again going to school, but not boarding school because their father doesn’t believe in boarding schools. However, the six Bastable children are still motherless and not accustomed to being supervised much in their free time.
During the spring, the children of one of their father’s friends come to stay for a visit. The Bastable children don’t like the other children much at first because they seem too timid and too well-behaved. The imaginative Bastable children decide that what these other kids need is a good game of pretend to get them out of their shells. One of the Bastables’ favorite books is The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling, so they decide to make their own jungle and act out scenes from the book. They give their guests the book to read, pointing out parts that they want to act out, while they go set up the jungle. They use the garden hose to create a waterfall, and they haul a bunch of their uncle’s taxidermy animals out of the house to set the jungle scene. They also set loose some guinea pigs and a pet tortoise and cover their dog in coal dust so he can be a wolf. Their father’s friend’s son, Dennis (called Denny), starts really getting into the game, but his sister, Daisy, prefers just to read the book. Matters come to a head when the boys frighten Daisy too much with their tiger costumes, and she faints. It is at that moment that their father and uncle arrive with some friends, seeing the children all gathered around Daisy, whom they first fear has died of fright. Some of the boys are nearly naked, their skin covered in brown dye so they’ll look like Mowgli from the book (no modern children should dye their skin for a costume like that, and that should be something adults explain to them, if they read this book), the taxidermy animals are all wet from the hose, the coal-covered dog is on the sofa inside, and the tortoise and one of the guinea pigs are never seen again.
Naturally, the adults are angry at the situation, and the children admit that their game went too far. The uncle swats the boys with his cane (not the girls because it would be ungentlemanly to hit a girl), and all of the children are sent to their rooms and put on a temporary diet of bread and water as punishment. Their father briefly talks of the possibility of boarding school, which shocks the children because they know how he feels about it. What the adults decide to do instead is to send the children to the country for the summer. Their friend from the previous book, Albert’s uncle, is an author, and he has rented a house in the country, where he will be writing. He always appreciates the children’s imagination and playacting, and he agrees to take all eight children, both the six Bastables and Denny and Daisy. (Albert isn’t there, so he’s probably somewhere with his mother.) Of course, since Albert’s uncle (who is never identified by any other name) will be writing much of the time, readers can guess that the children will have little supervision in the country.
The old manor house that Albert’s uncle has rented is a fascinating place. It has a moat around it, and a secret staircase, although it’s not really secret anymore because people already know about it. The eight children immediately begin doing things wrong in the country because they don’t know what they’re supposed to do and what they aren’t supposed to do, and adults usually only tell them what they’re not supposed to do after they’ve already done it. They ring a bell that is only supposed to be rung in emergencies, and they play in some hay that the horses are supposed to eat. Then, the girls in the group bring up an idea they’ve had.
The girls are still feeling guilty over the earlier bad behavior that got them sent to the country in the first place, so they’ve decided that it’s time for them all to reform their characters. Daisy in particular suggests that they form a society to do it because she knows that when people are serious about undertaking a good cause, they form a society for it. The boys aren’t as enthusiastic about the idea of forming a society around just being good, which doesn’t sound very fun or interesting, but the girls talk them into it. Oswald wants to know how it will be organized and who will be in charge, so they begin setting out some rules. Basically, all of the children are in the society, and nobody is allowed to leave it without telling the others. As long as they are in the society, they must always try their best to be good, and every day, they must try to do some good deed, which they will record in special book. After a debate about the name of their society, they decide to call it the Society of the Wouldbegoods. They also decide that this society must be kept secret from the adults, which is a major reason why their efforts turn out the way they do.
The first evening after they form the society, the children are unusually well-behaved but glum because they’re working so hard to be good. Albert’s uncle notices their odd mood, but they can’t explain to him why they feel this way, and he doesn’t press them. They also quickly have trouble finding good deeds to do, especially ones that are fun or interesting.
Dicky’s first good deed effort is to try to fix a window that seems broken to him, but it turns out that he doesn’t understand the reason why the window is the way it is. Because he changes it, a milk pan accidentally falls out the window into the moat. Oswald decides that the only good deed they can do is to retrieve the milk pan and fix Dicky’s mistake. They immediately recruit the other children to help them drag the moat, but none of them really knows how to do that, and by the terms of the society, they can’t ask the adults or tell them what they’re trying to do. The only thing they can find to use for dragging the moat is a bed sheet, which they ruin by getting it dirty and tearing it, and it still doesn’t help them retrieve the milk pan. Failing that, they decide to make a raft and use it to reach the pan. This works better, but when they reach for the pan, the raft overturns and dumps everyone in the water, and Dora hurts her foot badly on an old tin in the water. Fortunately, the cook sees them fall in the moat, and she hurries to get Albert’s uncle, who gets the boat from the boathouse and rows out to rescue the children. (Apparently, the kids didn’t know there was a boat before they built the raft.)
Their next good deed goes better, although they don’t entirely think of it as a good deed. The children become fascinated with some soldiers who are training nearby. They like to watch the soldiers as they ride by and have their drills and exercises. When they wave to the soldiers, the soldiers blow kisses to the girls, which gives them a thrill. The kids dress up as soldiers and ask Albert’s uncle if they can borrow the old armaments that are decorating the walls of the old manor house as their weapons, and he says yes. (Oh, Good Lord, why? Nothing bad happens to the kids because of those old weapons, and they apparently don’t damage any of the antiques, but given their track record, this was taking a real risk.) The soldiers are amused by the children, and the next time they pass by, they stop and take a rest with the children. The captain of the soldiers takes some time to explain the soldier’s weapons to the children and tells them that they will soon be sent to the front overseas. (This is way too early to be World War I, and they refer to the Southern Hemisphere, so I think they’re talking about the Second Boer War, which was happening while this book was being written and published.) Before the soldiers leave, the children decide that they want to give them a parting gift, so they get some money from their father and give each of the soldiers a pipe and some tobacco, because the soldiers were all smoking during their rest break. Modern children’s books wouldn’t have the kids encouraging their smoking habit, but in this turn-of-the-century book, the gift goes over well. Sadly, the children never see any of the soldiers again after they leave for the front and don’t know what happened to them. Still, they did something nice for the soldiers.
The children’s experiences with the soldiers sets up their next attempt at a good deed, with mixed results. Part of it gets very uncomfortable, but it has a happy ending. The children notice an older woman who also watches the soldiers and seems to get very emotional when she sees them. They find out that her son is also a soldier who is already at the front, and she is very worried about him. The children decide that they should do something nice for her, so they try to weed her garden without permission. The problem is that the children don’t know how to tell the difference between vegetables and weeds, so they also pull up her turnips and cabbages. The woman is angry with them, but they apologize and say that they’ll talk to their father about making things right with her.
Then, the children have to bring her a postcard addressed to her that was accidentally delivered to them with the mail for the manor house. They don’t even read it ahead of time although they could because they don’t want to do anything else wrong. This is a rare serious moment in this series because the postcard is from the army, and it says that the woman’s son is dead. The woman is very upset, and the children sympathize with her.
Then, the children decide that they can do something else nice for the woman by making a tombstone for her son. They know that he must have been buried at the place where he was killed on the battlefield, so he won’t have a normal tombstone in England, and they think it would be nice to make a memorial for him. The concept of making a memorial for someone who is buried elsewhere is actually a real thing. It’s called a cenotaph (although I don’t think these children know that word because they keep calling it a “tombstone”), and they are commonly done for soldiers who are killed overseas and buried there or whose bodies can’t be retrieved. (The musician Glenn Miller has one because his plane went down in the English Channel during WWII, and his body was never recovered.) Making a memorial of this type for the grieving family of a soldier would be a nice gesture, if it was done well and with the input of the soldier’s family. The kids do the best they can, carving a wooden tombstone and inscribing a beautiful message on it, but they don’t tell the soldier’s mother about it until after they’re finished. At first, the older woman thinks that they’re making fun of her grief, but Alice persuades her that’s not the case and convinces her to take a look. They decorate the tombstone with flowers and offer a lovely message about the soldier’s service to his country. The soldier’s mother is touched, and she appreciates the sentiment, although she has the children move the memorial to a more private spot. She likes it that the children continue to put flowers on the memorial, and she becomes friendly with them.
This episode also has a happy ending because it turns out that the reports of the soldier’s death were wrong. He was actually missing and injured, not killed. His mother and the children learn the truth when he comes home and sees the children decorating his “tombstone.” Fortunately, he is amused by the memorial and the touching sentiment expressed by the children, and his mother is overjoyed at his return. The children celebrate by chopping up the tombstone and using it for a bonfire.
Around this time, the children realize that they don’t have very many good deeds to record in their book, so they decide that they can make notes about any good thing that they notice someone else doing. Nobody is allowed to write about themselves or to persuade someone else to write something about them because bragging about their own good deeds wouldn’t be good or noble. It’s a fortunate decision because many of the children’s other adventures in the country aren’t directly related to the Society of the Wouldbegoods or their good deed efforts, but they count some of the things that certain children do during their adventures as good deeds (and Oswald gripes about things he did which he thought should have been counted but weren’t).
One day, the children are sent out on a long walk because Albert’s uncle has a headache and the children are making too much noise in the house. They decide to check out a tower that has some spooky local legends about it because it contains a tomb about halfway up the tower. The others credit Denny for a good deed because he offers to go first into the spooky tower. (This tower is somewhat based on a real landmark, but the author took some creative liberties with it. The man who is supposedly entombed there, Richard Ravenal, isn’t a real person. He was created for this book, but he gets a mention in the lore of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.) The children have a frightening encounter there with a beggar. They give him a coin as a good deed, but he sees that the children have more money with them, so he locks them in the tower from the outside, telling them that he won’t let them out until they give him the rest. Oswald notices that there are bolts on the inside of the tower door as well as the outside, so he quickly locks them to make sure that the beggar can’t get inside. This turns out to be a good decision because, when the children toss the rest of their money to him, it isn’t as much as he thought they had, and he pounds angrily on the tower door. (Oswald thought that the others should have counted his locking the door as a good deed because it saved them, but they decide not to because it was really more “clever” than “good.” Oswald thinks that’s an unfair technicality.) The children are safe inside the spooky old tower until the beggar leaves, and they are able to signal to someone else to unlock the door from the outside. This incident wasn’t the children’s fault (for a change), but the adults insist that, from this point on, they take the dogs with them when they go very far from the house.
The children make some other attempts at doing good deeds on purpose, but again, they go horribly awry because the children don’t know what they’re doing, and they don’t talk to anybody else about their ideas before they do them. After they cause a disaster that ruins a fishing contest and wrecks a barge full of coal, which costs their father a lot of money to fix, Albert’s uncle explains to them the full consequences of what they did and how much trouble they caused for a lot of people. The children feel terrible about it, and Alice starts to cry. She doesn’t fully reveal the existence of their society to Albert’s uncle, but she does say that they’ve been working so hard at being good and doing good things, but nothing they do works out. She says that they must be the worst children in the world and dramatically says that she wishes they were all dead. Everyone is shocked by this, and Albert’s uncle calmly tells her that they’re not the worst children in the world. He says that he knows they’re all feeling bad about what they’ve done, and he does want them to feel badly because they have seriously caused some real problems, and he doesn’t want them to do these things again. However, he says that he doesn’t want them to give up on the idea of being good because that’s something that they will learn better how to do over time. Also, he notes that, in all the time he’s known then, none of them have ever done anything intentionally mean or wicked, they’ve never lied about what they’ve done, and they’ve always been sorry when things have gone wrong. Being truthful and genuinely regretful for causing harm are worthy qualities.
Oswald feels bad abut that part because he has realized that there’s one thing he’s done that caused a disaster, and he hasn’t admitted it to the others yet. What he did was unintentional, and he didn’t know the incident was his fault at first, but he’s been trying to work up the courage to confess since he realized what he did. Albert’s uncle’s kind words make Oswald confess right away, and Albert’s uncle is appreciative of his honesty for that, too. The others call credit Oswald’s confession as a good deed. He doesn’t think it is, but they say it counts because it was a difficult thing for him to do, and technically, he didn’t have to do it. At that point, nobody had guessed that he was responsible for one of the problems, and if he had kept quiet, it wasn’t likely that anybody would have found out. He had been honest because he simply wanted to be honest and do the right thing, even knowing that people might get mad at him or punish him for what he did.
Albert’s uncle forgives the children, although he still expects them to learn from their misadventures. At this point, the children also begin to consider just how far the Society of the Wouldbegoods will go. So far, it hasn’t been a great success, but they do appreciate what Albert’s uncle says about not giving up on the idea of trying to be good. Still, the children (especially Oswald), decide that it’s time to set an ending point for the society. They decide that each of them will try to do one more good deed of some kind, and when each of them has one more deed to their name to put in their book, they’ll dissolve the society. From that point on, if any of them want to be good, they’ll do it on their own, when and how they choose do it. (The boys in the group are particularly relieved at this idea, although they’ve all been feeling some strain from the society.)
The children’s escapades still continue, some related to good deed efforts and some just part of summer activities that they do for fun. They try to hold a circus with some farm animals, which get loose. There’s a bonfire that gets out of control and burns a farmer’s bridge (although the children put it out themselves before it gets worse). Dora finds a baby who’s been left alone in his carriage and kidnaps/cares for it. At first, she thinks that maybe he’s the long-lost heir of a noble house who was kidnapped by gypsies, like in books, and has been abandoned, so she must adopt him and care for him until he can be reunited with his family. Like many of the children’s good deeds, it has mixed results, but this one ends up being more on the side of good. She shouldn’t have just taken the baby from its carriage, and he technically wasn’t kidnapped until she took him. However, it turns out that his nanny was neglecting him, leaving him all alone while she flirted with her boyfriend. When the adults discover that the children have the baby and why they have him, the nanny’s neglect is exposed, and she gets fired.
A couple of the boys later buy a pistol, which they make all the children promise not to tell the adults about. (I thought at first that it was a toy pistol, but it apparently fires real bullets. God only knows why anybody thought it would be a good idea to sell these boys a real gun.) The boys were thinking at first that it would be handy to have if there was a burglar, but one of the boys accidentally shoots a fox with it and kills it. The other children, although they were pretending to be fox hunters, are upset at finding a real dead fox and bury it with a proper funeral before they know that it was one of the other boys who killed it. They get into some trouble over it from the master of fox hounds. The boy who shot the fox explains that, at the time he shot it, it was caught in a metal trap, and it bit him when he tried to let it loose, which is when he accidentally shot it. Albert’s uncle confiscates the pistol because none of this would have happened if the boys hadn’t been playing with a gun, and Oswald thinks that it would serve him right if they really did get a burglar in the house and were unable to fight him off. (I’m pretty sure that they’d be more likely to accidentally shoot one another or one of their own dogs before they shot anybody else.)
Toward the end of the summer, Albert’s uncle agrees to be a host for an antiquities society that wants to see the old manor house and investigate a nearby site for possible Roman ruins. Albert’s uncle is beside himself when he discovers that, rather than being host to a small club, more than 100 people show up to accept his invitation to have tea before touring the grounds. The children, inspired by a book called The Daisy Chain, decide that it would be amusing to bury some pottery that they made themselves, just so the antiquarians will definitely have something to find. That part turns out fine because the antiquarians can easily tell the pottery made by the children from actual antiquities, and they are amused by the children’s “relics.” The problem is that the children also decide to bury some pottery they found in the library along with their own pottery, and those were real relics. The antiquarians get excited when they find those, but Albert’s uncle realizes that those pieces of pottery belonged to the real owner of the rented manor house. The children have to go to the head of the antiquarian society to admit what they’ve done to get the antique pottery back.
From there, the children are inspired by something a tramp says to them to open up a stand offering free drinks (lemonade and tea), but it goes wrong when some people take advantage of their kindness. They also take part in some war games without realizing that it’s all a game or training exercise. Then, while acting out the pilgrimage from The Canterbury Tales, they meet a kind lady, who turns out to have a romantic past with Albert’s uncle! They’re not sure that they like the idea of Albert’s uncle getting married, but they’re willing to try to help him reconnect with his lost love if it will make him happy and for goodness’s sake!
THE EPITAPH
‘The Wouldbegoods are dead and gone But not the golden deeds they have done These will remain upon Glory’s page To be an example to every age, And by this we have got to know How to be good upon our ow—N.’
This book reminds me of a couple of more modern books, The Adventures of the Red Tape Gang by Joan Lowery Nixon from the 1970s and Why Did the Underwear Cross the Road? by Gordon Korman from the 1990s, which are both books about kids trying to do good deeds with unintentional and hilarious results.
Just as in the first book in the Bastable Children series, much of what the children do in this story is due to the children’s naivety and imagination and a lack of adult supervision. Oswald makes it a point to say that they were not entirely neglected by the adults while they were in the country. Although Albert’s uncle frequently had to spend time writing, he did spend plenty of time with the children, and their father and Denny’s father came to see them regularly, along with some other adults. The children enjoyed spending time with the adults and doing things with them, but Oswald doesn’t describe much of what they did with the adults because the things they did on their own were the most interesting. (In the sense of dangerous and disastrous, but also exciting.) At various times in the story, they meet up with adults who are happy to talk to the children and explain things about their business or how things work, but the children also like acting on their own initiative, without asking adults for advice or opinion or taking time to really prepare for things they want to do, like when Oswald didn’t want to take the time to actually train an animal to do something when the children decided that they wanted to have a circus with animals. The children’s innocence and ignorance are played for comedy, but child readers would probably appreciate the children’s sense of independence. Few modern children would be given even half of the opportunities the Bastables have to do things on their own and cause as much trouble as the Bastables do.
Racial Issues
In the first book of the series, I talked about some racial issues in the story, and there are also issues with racial language and attitudes in this book. I don’t know whether or not this book has been reprinted with altered language, like the first one. Some of the incidents in this book might take more editing than the first one, like where the kids darken their skin for acting out scenes from The Jungle Books or giving pipes and tobacco to the soldiers.
There is an instance of the use of the n-word in this book, and this time, it’s something Oswald says rather than something the adults say. Basically, he was talking about hard the children were working, and he was trying to imply that they were working like slaves, but instead of saying the word “slaves”, he says the n-word. Children’s word choice is influenced by the books they read reads and the things adults say around them, and we’ve already established that adults around them use the n-word in a casual way.
Again, this brings up the question of whether or not the author herself this that using the n-word is acceptable or if she’s just trying to portray the way some people around her talked. In a way, I think she does address this topic indirectly, although that might be unintentional. There is a point in the story when the children talk about unpleasant things found in poetry, like death and the devil, and they note that a person doesn’t always have to like the things they read or write about. It struck me that, perhaps, the author was trying to explain that she doesn’t always like, advocate, or believe in things that occur in her stories. This conversation isn’t directly related to the use of the n-word, so I’m not sure whether that would be one of the things that the author didn’t really like or not. It might have been a more general notion, like when authors write about sad things that happen or the things the children do that they really shouldn’t. It is a reminder, though, that characters are not exactly the same as their characters, and they may differ in important ways. The nature of the characters suits the story, but may not be a reflection of the author’s life and attitudes.
There is also one instance of an anti-Catholic attitude, but it’s played for humor. The kids are on a tour of Canterbury Cathedral, and their tour guide says, “This is the Dean’s Chapel; it was the Lady Chapel in the wicked days when people used to worship the Virgin Mary.”
(I’ve heard this accusation about Catholics worshiping the Virgin Mary before, all too many times, mostly from my Protestant grandmother. I belong to a family of mixed religions, and I had experiences like this from a very young age. Catholics don’t worship Mary. Catholics honor Mary, which is different. We also have a sense that those who were bound together by faith never lose that spiritual connection to the living members of the church when they die, so living Catholics can still communicate with the departed spiritually through prayer, which is what the whole thing about praying to saints is about. It’s about communication and spiritual support rather than worship. Catholics don’t have to do this if they don’t want to, but it’s always an option, if they feel the need of spiritual support from another soul who might understand their situation, because there is a sense that the spiritual connection is always there. Mary and the other saints are not substitutes for God or Jesus but rather part of an extended spiritual family that supports its other, younger, and more vulnerable living members in a spiritual way as they all, living and dead, serve and worship the same God. I suppose a simpler way of putting it is the concept that those who love us never leave us, or as C. S. Lewis put it in the The Chronicles of Narnia, once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia. Some bonds are unbroken by death. The punchline to the tour guide’s comment is in H. O.’s response.)
When the children think about the connotations of changing the name of the chapel from Lady Chapel to Dean’s Chapel because of changing worship styles, H. O. speculates, “I suppose they worship the Dean now?” You can imagine how well that question is received. Yeah, do they worship the Dean, or is the Dean just someone they’ve honored by naming something after him? You tell me if there’s a difference.
War and Soldiers
The scenes with the soldiers and war games remind me of something that the author couldn’t have known when she wrote the book. In the following decade, Britain would be involved with World War I (called the Great War before WWII), and many boys, like the kids in this story, would end up going to war. Oswald thinks that it would be exciting to be a soldier, but real war isn’t a game, and he might have many of his illusions shattered. Knowing what I know about this generation’s future, I have some real concern for the children in this story. There’s a very real risk that they could be killed in battle, just as the young soldier in this book that they built that tombstone for in this story could have died in the war that was being fought during his time. This story doesn’t go that dark because the Bastable Children series is a humor series, but there are moments of real sentimentality in the stories. E. Nesbit couldn’t have known about the war that was coming, but she did know about wars that existed during her lifetime. Introducing the children to the soldiers in this story introduces some serious concepts to the children, who are largely naive about many aspects of life, still thinking of many dangerous things as sources of excitement and adventure. We don’t know what happened to any of the soldiers the children befriended, but the knowledge that the old woman’s son almost died brings it to the children’s awareness that death is a very real possibility in that type of “adventure.” It’s a lesson that will accompany them into their future.
The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit, 1899.
This story (the first in a series) is told by one of the six Bastable children: Dora, Oswald (who won the Latin prize at his school), Dicky, the twins Alice and Noel, and Horace Octavius (called H.O. for short). The narrator initially refuses to identify which of the Bastable children he is, saying that he might admit it at the end, but his constant self-praise (which begins immediately) and the way he refers to his siblings kind of gives it away. At various points in the story, he forgets that he’s trying to be mysterious about his identity and just refers to himself in the first person, although he goes back to the third person when he remembers. The children live with their father, but their mother is dead. The narrator says, “and if you think we don’t care because I don’t tell you much about her you only show that you do not understand people at all.” The story isn’t about missing their mother, but about their search for treasure. (“It was Oswald who first thought of looking for treasure. Oswald often thinks of very interesting things.”)
The Bastables are in need of money. After their mother died, their father was ill for a time. Then, his business partner went to Spain, and his business hasn’t been very good since. The children can tell that their father is economizing on household goods. He’s sold some things from the house, there doesn’t seem to be money to have broken things fixed or replaced, and he’s let the gardener and other servants go. He’s not even sending the children to school right now because he can’t afford the school fees, and people have been coming to the house about unpaid bills. Oswald thinks that the best thing to do is to look for treasure to restore their family’s fortunes.
The children all think of ways that they can look for treasure. Oswald wants to become a highwayman and hold people up, but Dora, as the eldest, rejects that idea as wrong. His next suggestion is that they rescue a rich old gentleman and get a reward, but that’s a long shot. Alice thinks they should try using a divining rod. H.O. is in favor of the idea of being bandits. Noel likes books, and he wants to either write poetry and publish it or possibly marry a princess. Dicky is more practical with things like math and money, and he tells the others about an advertisement in the newspaper about a way to earn money in your spare time. Since the children aren’t going to school and have plenty of time, he thinks they should try it. He also has another idea, but he refuses to explain to the others exactly what the scheme is. Dora, as the eldest, decides that they should just try digging for treasure, not even bothering with a divining rod, because it seems like people always find treasure by digging. Since that’s the most straight-forward method any of them have thought of yet, they decide to go with that.
They recruit Albert, the boy from next door, to help with the digging. They don’t always get along with Albert because Albert doesn’t like reading and isn’t good at games of pretend. (The children seem to know that this treasure hunt is a game, although they’re still half-way hopeful that they’ll actually find something.) Still, they manage to persuade Albert, and the children begin digging a tunnel. It’s Albert’s turn to dig when the tunnel collapses, half-burying the unlucky Albert, who screams and keeps on screaming while Dicky runs to get Albert’s uncle. Albert’s father is dead, so he lives with his mother and his uncle, who used to be a sailor and now writes books. The children all like Albert’s uncle because they like his books, and he seems to know a lot. Albert’s uncle matter-of-factly digs Albert out of the hole and asks the children how he came to be buried. The Bastable children explain about their search for treasure. Albert’s uncle says that he doubts they’ll find any treasure in the area, but as he unearths Albert, he seems to find a couple of coins, which he gives to the children to divide among themselves and Albert. (It’s hinted that Albert’s uncle is just giving the children pocket money that he pretends to find.) It’s an uneven amount, so they agree that Albert can have the larger share because he got buried.
The Bastable children could have used their new pocket money as stake money for the venture Dicky saw in the newspaper, but there are some other things they want to buy, so they spend it all and have to try something else. One of the children (they disagree later about who it was) brings up the subject of detectives, like Sherlock Holmes. They think that detectives must earn a lot of money, so some of them think they ought to try being detectives. Alice says that she doesn’t want anything to do with murders because that would be dangerous, and even if they did kill someone, she would feel bad if she had to be the one to get them hanged for it. After all, surely nobody would want to kill someone more than once anyway, so there’s probably little risk that they’d do it again. (Oh, boy. Alice has apparently never heard of serial killers. Jack the Ripper had already committed his murders by the time this book was written and published.) The others tell her that detectives probably don’t get to choose which crimes they investigate. They just have to look into any mysterious situations they encounter and see what they turn out to be. That reminds Alice that she did see something mysterious herself. She got up during the night because she suddenly remembered that she’d forgotten to feed her pet rabbits, and she saw a light in a nearby house, where the entire family is supposedly away at the seaside. The children think that some criminals may be hiding in the empty house and decide to investigate. It turns out that there is an innocent explanation. Oswald accidentally falls and gets knocked unconscious during the investigation, so Albert’s uncle is again recruited to carry him home, and the uncle lectures them about spying on people.
Since another money-making scheme has failed, they decide to move on to the next idea, publishing Noel’s poetry. He doesn’t have enough poems for a book, but they remember that they’ve seen poetry published in a newspaper, so they decide to talk to the newspaper editor. Oswald and Noel go to see the editor together. Along the way, they meet a woman who also writes poetry. She reads Noel’s poems and says that she likes them, giving the boys a little stake money to get Noel’s literary career started. At first, Oswald refuses the money because he remembers that he’s not supposed to accept gifts from strangers, but the woman insists that the gift is that from a fellow writer, not a stranger, and she gives them her card. The children’s father later says that she’s famous for her poetry, although the boys had never heard of her before.
When they see the newspaper editor, he seems amused by Noel’s poetry (which includes an elegy to a dead beetle) and very interested in how and why he came to write poetry. He invites the boys to join him for tea, and they explain about how they’re trying to restore their family’s fortunes. The editor says that he’s willing to buy Noel’s poems and publish them, and he asks what Noel thinks would be a fair price. Noel isn’t sure because he originally just wrote the poems because he likes poetry, not to sell. The editor offers him a guinea, which is more money than they’ve ever had before, and the boys are impressed and accept it. The editor says that his paper doesn’t normally publish poetry, but he can arrange for it to be published in a different paper. They later see a story in a magazine about them, written by the editor, with all of Noel’s poems with it. Oswald isn’t happy at how the story describes them, but Noel is pleased that he’s been published.
The book continues from the summer through the fall, and the children continue trying various money-making schemes, with varying degrees of disaster and success. Noel finds a princess to marry, but they only get a few chocolates out of that adventure. While Dora is away, visiting her godmother, the other children turn bandits on Guy Fawkes Day. The only person they can find to kidnap and ransom as bandits is Albert, who doesn’t like this game at all. (The children again seem to realize that this is only a game, but at the same time, they hope for a little money out of it.) They write the ransom note for Albert using H.O.’s blood because this adventure was his idea (although they also have to use red ink to finish it because they don’t get enough blood from H.O.’s finger). Albert’s uncle, who enjoys a good game of pretend, comes to ransom Albert, although he can’t pay the enormous sum mentioned in the ransom note. He tells the children that he knows it’s all a game, and he thinks a little more pretend play would do Albert good (Albert doesn’t have much imagination), and the rough play is also punishment for Albert sneaking out of the house while he should have been inside, nursing his cold. However, the uncle says they should have realized how scary that ransom note could have been for Albert’s mother if he hadn’t seen Albert with the children and knew where he was and what was really happening. The children apologize and admit that they don’t think much about people’s mothers since they lost their own. (Although the book is mostly funny, there are sentimental bits, too.)
Albert’s uncle suggests a more harmless money-making scheme to the children – starting a newspaper, and they let Albert join them. Their newspaper contains a couple of serial stories (that don’t entirely make sense, and some of the children can’t think what to contribute to them), some poetry by Noel, some “Curious Facts” (that aren’t entirely factual but are very curious), and an editorial piece on the subject of education by Alice, who says that if she had a school, nobody would learn anything they didn’t want to learn, but there would be cats, and the students would sometimes dress up like cats and practice purring. The newspaper turns out to be not very lucrative, and the children run out of things to write about, so they give that up and return to more hair-brained schemes.
Oswald tries to rescue an elderly gentleman so that the wealthy old gentleman will richly reward him, just like in books, but not finding any danger to save him from, he sets their dog on him, so he can easily save him. The gentleman, a local lord and politician, figures out pretty quickly that this was a scheme and that the dog belongs to the children, and he demands an explanation. The children explain to him about trying to restore their family’s fortunes by doing the things that seem to work for people in books, only nothing they’ve tried works like it does it books. The old gentlemen gives the a lecture about honesty and honor and consideration for other people, and the children make their apologies to him.
From there, they try the part-time job advertised in the newspaper, which turns out to be getting people to place orders for wine by giving them free samples. The children try a little of the wine themselves, but they don’t like it, so they add a bunch of sugar to try to improve the taste. You can imagine how well a group of children trying to give various strangers free wine goes. Eventually, someone confiscates the bottle and tells their father what they’ve been up to.
Although they promise their father that they won’t attempt to go into business again without talking to him about it, they start thinking that they could make a lot of money if they invented a wonderful medicine that would cure something. After arguing about what they’re going to cure, they decide they’re going to cure the common cold. The only way they can think of inventing the medicine is for one of them to get a cold and then for all the others to try various things to cure it. Noel is the one who catches cold, and the others try to cure him. When they can’t cure Noel’s cold, they worry that he’s going to die from it, but fortunately, he does recover.
However, there are times when the children do things that are helpful, typically by accident. The best thing they do is to be extra friendly to a man who comes to see their father. The children come to the conclusion that he’s a poor man and that their father is being kind to him, but they’re not satisfied with the level of hospitality that their father offers. The children decide to invite him to their kind of dinner, and the fun they have together encourages him to give their father the help he needs. The children come to the conclusion that, sometimes, life can be like books.
The book is now public domain, so it is available to read online through Project Gutenberg (also in audio format) and Internet Archive (multiple copies, including audiobooks). There is also a LibriVox Audiobook on YouTube. It’s the first in a series of books about the same children. The story has also been made into movies multiple times. The original book contains some inappropriate racial stereotypes and language, which I discuss below. However, recent reprintings of the book have changed some of the inappropriate language, so the book would probably be okay for modern children, if you pick a book with a recent printing date.
My Reaction
I really enjoyed this story, even though there are some problematic racial issues, which I’m also going to describe and discuss. The descriptions of the children’s schemes and escapades are very funny, and I laughed out loud at some parts. The story reminds me of some of the MacDonald Hall books where the boys do some bizarre fund-raising efforts or try to get publicity for their school. The children’s efforts to find or earn money in this book are based on books that were popular with children in the late Victorian era and money-making schemes that existed at that time. Not all of them would be as familiar to modern children as they would have been to children of the late Victorian era, but I think modern children could understand most of them, with the possible exception of the man who I think was supposed to be a money lender.
If this book was set in modern times, in the early 21st century, I think that their bizarre money-making schemes would be a little more like those in the MacDonald Hall books, although I can think of a few more. Alice’s description of the ideal school, with cats who teach students how to purr, makes me think that, if she were a modern girl, she would want to start a cat cafe out of their house using a bunch of stray cats (or maybe some borrowed from neighbors without permission), which would also be hilarious. I would like to see a book with someone doing something like that because the opportunities for things to go wrong would be both boundless and guaranteed to happen. (Corralling the cats, possibly abducting cats from neighbors, messing up the tea and food, health violations, lack of business license, cats biting and clawing people and messing up the house and trying desperately to escape, etc.)
One thing that I like about the Bastable Children series in general is that there are many references to books that children from the late Victorian era would have known and enjoyed. This book references things that I think came from the Arabian Nights, and the children refer directly to Sherlock Holmes, The Jungle Books, and The Children of the New Forest, which was a 19th century historical novel.
Reality vs Pretend
Much of the book is about the difference between reality and pretend, and the Bastable children often end up about halfway between the two with most of their schemes. They draw much of their inspiration from books they’ve read, and they seem to be aware that much of what they do is a game of pretend, although they also seem to halfway hope that their schemes will work out for them the way they would if they were children from the books they’ve read.
The children’s innocence and naivete about the way the world works is a major reason why they don’t understand how things work differently between the real world and the world in stories. It’s also the reason why they only seem to halfway grasp their father’s money troubles and the reasons for them. Adults often find the innocence of children to be charming, and the adults in the story are often charmed by the children for that reason. It works in their favor in the end because they receive kindness from adults for being charming, innocent children, who know how to have fun. However, the adults in the story also understand the children’s family situation, seemingly even better than they do, and they frequently humor them and help them out of pity. It’s both funny and also a little sad and touching at times for adults reading this book. It’s funny because you can see what the children are really doing and follow their logic as they map out their plans, while at the same time spotting how it’s all going to go wrong before the children see it themselves. It’s also a little sad and worrying because you can also see how little the children are being supervised and how much they turn to the kindly uncle who lives next door for help when they’re in real trouble because their mother is dead and their father is wrapped up in his own troubles.
The subject of the children’s deceased mother comes up periodically throughout the book, as the children think about how things have changed for the family since she died. Dora admits to Oswald that, before their mother died, she asked Dora to look after the younger children. That’s why Dora has been trying to be responsible and to stop the other children from doing things she knows are wrong (like turning into bandits to rob people for money). The other children often get irritated with her for stopping them from doing things they want to do, and they frequently do the wrong thing anyway, even if they have to go behind her back to do it. Oswald develops some sympathy for Dora when he realizes that she’s been trying to do a difficult job that she doesn’t really know how to do, and he talks to some of the other children about going easy on her.
Racial Issues and Gender Stereotypes
This book has been reprinted many times since its original publication, and modern editions have been edited to remove inappropriate racial language. The original book has multiple places where there are racial issues and gender stereotypes, although they mostly come from two very specific sources. The gender stereotypes, which are found in other books in this series as well, come from our narrator, Oswald. Oswald has noticed that his sisters and other girls have different standards from him and his brothers, and it sometimes irritates him. Like other boys in vintage children’s books, he also has a tendency to try to show that boys are better than girls, sometimes saying things like, “Girls think too much of themselves if you let them do everything the same as men.” I partly think that the author, who was a woman, put things like that in her stories to show how boys of her time behaved, but maybe also to poke fun at men who felt threatened by women doing things that were considered for men only, like they’re little boys, feeling threatened by sisters who can do what they do.
Much of the racial issues in the story come from the children’s playacting, which is again based on the books they’ve read. They frequently refer to “Red Indians”, by which they mean Native Americans. Based on what they’ve read from books, American Indians are fascinating and exciting but also savage, and they love all of that. Actually, now that I think of it, that stereotype isn’t a bad description of the Bastable children themselves. They are somewhat savage or semi-feral in their behavior at times, although they would probably hate being called that. They’re certainly not tame children. I don’t entirely blame the children in the story for having misconceptions about other people because children can get misconceptions from things they read, see, or are told by adults. I don’t entirely blame the author for depicting the kind of misconceptions children have, either, especially because the Bastable children’s misconceptions make up a large part of the story and its humor. What is more concerning to me is the original sources of these misconceptions, the things that children get from people who should know better, who might even actually know better but who spread misconceptions anyway for their own purposes.
Whether the author of this book could be considered a source of misconceptions, or at least for perpetuating them, is a matter for debate. The references to other pieces of real literature and how the children use them for inspiration for what they do point to earlier books that sparked these misconceptions and racial stereotypes. I’ve always thought that the things children read early in life set them up for many of their attitudes as adults, and that’s why I think it’s unfair to expose children to literature that creates these misconceptions without an accompanying explanation about why certain attitudes are wrong or harmful and how spreading them causes problems. As adults, we often forgive children for things they do and think because we know they’re young and still learning, but children don’t stay little forever, and they need to know what is expected of them as they grow older. When they’re no longer little kids, people expect them to have a certain level of understanding about the world, the people in it, and how to treat others and speak respectfully about them. If they don’t demonstrate that kind of understanding by a certain age, many people will not take it that they’re still in the learning phase but will think that they’re being deliberately insulting or trying to provoke others when they speak inappropriately. In many cases, those people will be correct because there are people of all ages who like to push other people’s buttons to get a reaction, but I think it’s doing a great disservice to set children up for that type of conflict by trying to keep them “innocent” for too long. I’ve seen that even kids who know that there are certain words they shouldn’t use don’t always seem to understand why they’re not supposed to use them, and that half knowledge is part of the reason why they sometimes throw around nasty terms like they don’t know what they mean. The truth is, some of them really don’t. Kids like that don’t sound charmingly innocent in the 21st century. They sound dumb and clueless because they are these things. The things they don’t know are painfully obvious, and people, even possibly other kids their own age, will definitely notice and openly comment on it. The reason why they’re so clueless is that the adults in their lives who knew enough to tell them, at some point, that these were bad or shocking words to use around other people apparently didn’t explain to them why or make it clear what the social consequences for using these words would be. What I’m trying to say is not that reading this book or others of this vintage is bad, but if you’re going to share books like this with kids, with the original wording, you can’t do it properly without talking to the kids and being very direct about certain subjects. If you’re not, it could lead to problems, and it will be no favor to the child to set them up for that. The things people don’t know will almost certainly hurt them eventually and probably damage their relationships with others along the way.
The Bastable children don’t end up with damaged relationships or social consequences for the things they do because they are still young enough to be considered charmingly innocent and naive in their antics, although at least some of them would be considered old enough to know better about some things by their age. The children don’t even seem to understand the difference between Native American Indians and Indians from India until it is explained to them toward the book, when their “Indian uncle” comes to see them. The Indian uncle is the source of another racial issue in the language he uses. He’s one of the adults who says things he shouldn’t, and I need to talk about what he says and why he says it.
Readers should be aware that the original printing of this book contains the n-word. There is one use of the n-word by an adult character, toward the end of the book. It happens just once in the story, although it threw me when I reached that point because there wasn’t really anything leading up to it, so its use seemed rather sudden. It’s a shame because, up to that point, I was prepared to make some allowances for what the children say about “Red Indians” as part of their innocent ignorance, but as I said, we make allowances for the things children do that we don’t for people who are old enough to know better. The “Indian uncle” just throws out the n-word in a casual expression he uses, like “If Oswald isn’t a man, then I’m a monkey’s uncle,” except he uses the n-word instead of “monkey’s uncle.” A more recent edition of the book I’ve seen replaces the n-word with the word “fool.” I could forgive the children some of the racial stereotypes they use in some of their games because the entire premise of the story is that the Bastable children are naive and somewhat clueless, getting most of their sense of how the world works from storybooks instead of guiding adults, but things that adults say and do are different. To say that this was simply part of the way people talked during this period of history would be taking the easy way out and providing an apparent excuse for the behavior. Everyone has reasons for the things we say and do, and I’m not letting either the author or this “Indian uncle” off the hook that easily without prodding deeper into both of their motives.
The n-word isn’t something that appears in many of the children’s books I’ve read, even the vintage and antique books, because it’s a crude term. Technically, the n-word isn’t even really a word by itself but a slang corruption of a word, and it’s been considered a crudity and an insult since much earlier in the 19th century. By the early 20th century, its use was associated primarily with uneducated and unrefined “poor white trash” in the United States, and whatever their personal racial attitudes, people who wanted to be seen as educated would avoid its use. Those who did use it tended to use it in a derogatory and hostile way. Even in children’s books as old as this one, the use of crude racial terms (when they appear) are often used to establish the personality and background of the character who uses them. They appear as hints of crudeness, lack of good upbringing and moral character, and even violence and criminal tendencies (see books in the Rover Boys series for examples). Even when other characters use racial stereotypes in these stories, the use of the n-word in particular tends to signal something crude and nasty in the user’s character, something that goes beyond the other characters’ level of acceptability, especially when it comes from a character who is portrayed as being old enough and educated enough to know better. A contrast would be the Little House on the Prairie series, where characters sometimes use crude racial terms without being the villains of the story. However, the characters in the Little House on the Prairie books can still fall under the description of uneducated and unrefined. They are a poor farming family who lives much of their lives in the backwoods and on relatively isolated farms. When they associate with other people, it is most often people who are very similar to themselves, so they’re rarely in a position to get feedback from a wider society. The while the Ingalls family does try to better themselves and seek out educational opportunities later in the series, characters in those books could be considered “innocent” about certain things in much the same sense as the Bastable children are. That is, none of them know any better. The term “innocent” implies a lack of knowledge and experience as well as a lack of guilt. The Bastable children are, once again, proof that what you don’t know is obvious to others who do know, and it can hurt your image.
With that in mind, when I have seen the n-word or similar words in print, my main approach is to use it as a clue about the personality of the character who says it or about the author who wrote the dialog or both. One of the difficulties that I encountered with this particular book, compared to others, is that the author sets up the “Indian uncle” who uses the n-word to be one of the “good” characters, a rich and kindly relative who saves them all from poverty. He would seem to be in the position of someone who should know better than to use the n-word, but he does so anyway, in a casual and thoughtless way. That makes this book different from other books, where the n-word is used by characters who are definitely villains and whose use of crude language is portrayed as part of their rough and ill-mannered character. The uncle’s age and position in society wouldn’t seem to put him in the position of an ignorant innocent, and yet, he’s not portrayed as a rough villain. However, there is something else at play in this situation that I think explains who this “Indian uncle” really is and what his deal is, and that’s Victorian British colonialism.
In this series of books, adults are not always referred to by name but by their relationship to the children or the role they play in the children’s lives. In this case, the “Indian uncle” (who is never called anything else by the children, not even by his personal name) is not an “Indian” of any kind. This is just another of the children’s misconceptions because of what their father told them about him. He is apparently really an uncle of the children, and he has recently returned to England from India, but he is white and British, like the rest of their family. This is revealed in hints that go over the children’s heads at first, but which are explained more toward the end of the book.
First, the children listen in on some of the things their father and uncle say to each other when they’re having dinner, and they hear them talking about “native races” and “imperial something-or-other.” The children don’t understand what they’re talking about. Because of the books that they’ve been reading, they’re still under the impression that “Indian” means that this uncle of theirs is a Native American, but adults will put together the bits and pieces and realize that, since this story is late Victorian, the uncle has just come from India, which is under British imperial rule, and like an imperialist, he’s probably not saying many complimentary things about the “native races” there. 19th century British racial concepts were shaped by their colonization and quest for empire and were frequently expressed in a pseudo-scientific form of social Darwinism, that some races of people on Earth had evolved to be more successful than others, with the British at the top of the heap because they had successfully conquered other people and took over their land for their own use. (By this definition, I note that highwaymen and robbers should also be considered vastly superior to the people they rob because they successfully took something away from someone else. I’m sure that the Victorians would be insulted by that comparison, but I think it accurately shows the problems with this type of thinking.)
Second, when the uncle’s house is described, it’s full of taxidermy animals, most of which he killed himself (this is discussed further in the second book in the series) during his travels. That’s when it is revealed that the uncle has actually come from India and is not Native American at all, as the children had supposed. He is a wealthy man who has traveled as an adventurer, which is exciting for the children to hear about, but this is also another clue to the uncle’s personality. I noticed that the author made it a point to say that the uncle’s study was very different from the children’s father’s study because it didn’t have books in it but had those taxidermy animals. I took this as an indication that the uncle is not as much of a man of learning or business as the children’s father. He doesn’t use his study for reading and studying anything. He has money, but I’m guessing that he didn’t get it from having a profession. The children mention that their father went to Balliol College, and they meet a friend of his from his student days. Their father spends most of his time working, even though his business is suffering, and his old friend is also a family man with job (he is described as a sub-editor in the next book in the series). However, the “Indian uncle” is not described as having any profession. We don’t know if he ever attended college, but if he did, it probably wasn’t to be educated for a career. He is a man of leisure or relative leisure, who has apparently spent a good part of his life traveling around the world, shooting things and having them stuffed, and has little interest in books and studying. He’s had the money to live this kind of life, so he does it, fully confident in his superiority and ability to go where he wants and do what he likes. What I’m thinking is that this man is probably their father’s elder brother, who probably inherited money and indulged himself, while his brother studied and worked. Travel can broaden a person’s perspective, but the uncle seems to have traveled for self-indulgent adventure and excitement rather than learning about the world and the people in it. He’s got enough money that he probably doesn’t have to learn anything he doesn’t want to, and as the man who pays the bills and hires people to do things for him, he’s probably not held accountable for much. He can say and do what he likes, so he does that, without giving it a second thought, and maybe not even a first one. This isn’t explained in the course of the book, and I can’t point to much more than I already have to support it, but I think this man is meant to represent a type of wealthy British imperial adventurer.
Ultimately, what I’m saying is that the children think their uncle is a great man because he brings the family to live with him in his big house and helps their father with his business (probably by providing financial backing), so the family’s circumstances improve. He can invest money in their father’s business (the nature of which isn’t specified), and he showers the children with presents, which they love. However, as an adult, I’m noting his apparent relative lack of interest in books, intellectualism, and refinement of manners. I’m sure that the children will find him exciting to be around, but he doesn’t strike me as a learned man, a well-read one, or even a very well-behaved one. He has a lot of money, which can be used to fund the children’s education, but I don’t really trust his guidance or ability to be a role model. I also wonder if the children, who are being given an education and were definitely raised to love books, will continue to see their uncle in a romanticized way as they grow older. Few people can spend their lives traveling around, shooting things, and hiring “native races” to carry their baggage along the way. If that’s most of the uncle’s experience of life, it’s not really going to prepare the children for the future. At the time E. Nesbit wrote this book, she couldn’t have known that, about 15 year later, Europe would erupt into World War I, and boys who were children around this time, like Oswald, Dicky, Noel, and H.O., may very well have ended up being soldiers and had many of their illusions about life shattered. (I have more to say about that when I cover the next book, The Wouldbegoods.) People talk about past people being a product of their times, and in this case, the uncle and his racial attitudes are both a product of this time of imperial Britain and his own wealth, and nobody outside that bubble would see either the way he does.
That brings up the question of what the author, E. Nesbit, really thinks about these things. Does she also share the uncle’s view’s of British imperialism and other races, or is she just portraying the uncle as a type of person she observed around her in society? It’s not entirely clear because everything in the story is presented from young Oswald’s point-of-view, and he is uncritical of these things and seems to have little idea of the larger picture of things. But, there are things in The Wouldbegoods that I think help clarify some aspects of that, some possibly intentionally and others possibly not.
That was a long rant/explanation, but I thought it was important to delve into the issues a little deeper. The tl;dr of it is that, while people were the products of their times, they were also the ones who made their times what they were for their own purposes, even if they didn’t think as deeply about it at the time as we do today, and what we observe about them and their behavior are clues to their personality, life circumstances, and motivations. Overall, I found the racial issues with this story to be aggravating distractions from what is otherwise a fun and funny story, and their removal from modern printings actually improves the story by removing these distractions from the plot. The modern printings are fine for kids to read.
The Movie Version
I watched the 1996 version of the movie, which emphasized the more serious portions of the book and included the character of a female doctor, who helped the family in place of the uncle from India. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as funny as the original book. I’m not sure about other movie versions.
This fun picture book is written in comic book form. Almost all of the text is in speech bubbles in the pictures.
One morning, Leo finds an unexpected prize in his cereal box: an invitation to dinner at a fancy restaurant! He and his parents decide to accept the invitation, getting dressed up for the occasion.
The food is great, and Leo notices that there is a band playing. He asks his mother if she’s going to dance, and on a whim, she decides to dance with the waiter with the dessert cart.
From there, the evening goes from good to great for everyone! The restaurant turns into a party with everyone dancing, Leo’s mother swinging from the chandelier, and the musicians having the time of their lives!
Then, a lady who is a dancing with Leo loses one of her diamond earrings. Leo volunteers to find it for her, and it turns up in an unexpected place.
The evening is such a success that the owner of the restaurant invites them to dinner the next night, too!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. It was first published in Great Britain.
My Reaction
In real life, fancy adult restaurants tend to serve foods that kids don’t like and require a level of etiquette that kids often find stifling, but in this fun, comic book style story, Leo and his parents have the time of their lives on this fun evening out! All of the adults in the story are open to some zany fun, and even the owner of the restaurant enjoys himself so much that he’d love to have them back the next day.
Like all picture books, it’s the details in the pictures that really make the story. The story doesn’t tell you that the reason why the cereal box prize was an invitation to this restaurant is that the restaurant owner also owns that brand of cereal, but it’s shown in the pictures, with his name on the box. When Leo and his parents arrive at the restaurant, the owner meets them and compliments them on their taste in cereal. Later, he’s shown eating a bowl of his cereal himself. I also loved the picture that includes Leo’s mother letting loose and swinging on the chandelier. The other people in the restaurant are also eccentrics. One of the dancing women is wearing a dress with a banana print and a matching hat with a banana on it, and while Leo is searching for the lost earring, he finds a lady in an elephant print dress and fuzzy slippers. There’s nothing dull about this elegant dinner or the people enjoying it!
When the character of Maniac Magee is introduced, he is described as a legend or a tall tale. Even though he is a young boy, his origins are unusual, and people have built up stories around him. The story even admits that his personal story is part fact and part legend.
The truth is that “Maniac” is an orphan. His real name is Jeffrey Lionel Magee, and he was born a normal boy with normal parents, but his parents were killed in a trolley accident when he was only three years old. After that, he went to live with his aunt and uncle in Pennsylvania. However, his aunt and uncle had an extremely dysfunctional marriage. They didn’t believe in divorce, so they stayed married, but they lived a strange, separated life in their house. They divided their home in half so they could effectively live apart, avoiding each other most of the time. They shared Jeffrey by taking turns eating meals with him, but they never ate together as a whole family. Eventually, Jeffrey couldn’t take this weird life anymore, where his aunt and uncle never talked to each other. One day, he blew up at them at a program at his school, and he ran away.
For the next year, Jeffrey seems to have wandered around by himself. Nobody is sure exactly where he was during that year, but he eventually turned up in another town about 200 miles from where he started. He wore ragged clothes and worn-out shoes, but he greeted people with a cheery, “Hi.” One of the first people he meets is a black girl named Amanda with a suitcase, and he asks her if she’s running away. Amanda tells him that she’s not running away, just going to school. Her suitcase is full of books. Jeffrey is fascinated by the books, and he offers to carry her suitcase. Amanda thinks it’s strange that a white boy like him is in an area of town that is almost entirely black, and she asks him who he is and where he lives. Jeffrey doesn’t quite know how to answer her at first because he doesn’t really live anywhere.
He asks her why she carries so many books to school, and she explains that she has younger siblings who color all over everything and a dog who chews everything, so she feels like she has to carry her whole personal library around with her to protect it. Jeffrey begs Amanda to loan him a book. At first, she refuses because she doesn’t know if he’ll give it back, but he swears he will. After they argue about it, Amanda tosses him a book because she has to hurry off to school and can’t take time to argue anymore.
Jeffrey continues to wander around the town for several days. People begin to notice him, how he runs everywhere goes, how he’s always carrying a book, and how he shows off his sports prowess by bunting a frog during a baseball game he joins. He lives in the deer shed at the zoo and eats some of the food for the animals, although he also joins a large family at dinner one night because they’re always taking in people or inviting people to dinner, so one extra person doesn’t attract too much attention. Nobody knows what to call him, so they start thinking of him as that “maniac” and start calling him Maniac.
The bully who threw the frog at him in the baseball game gets angry because Maniac’s bunt ruined his perfect record of strikeouts, so he decides to beat up Maniac in revenge. When he and his friends chase after Maniac, Maniac runs in the direction of the invisible line that divides the town in half, into the white portion and black portion of town. Maniac doesn’t understand the division between the parts of the town, but the other kids do, and they won’t follow him across the line between their part of town and the other part of town. Maniac’s disregard of the racial separations in this town is one of the things that sets him apart from other people and accentuates his oddness. He’s not afraid to share food with a black kid, even eating over the same place where the other kid bit.
When one of the black kids fights with Maniac, trying to get the book away from him, a page is torn. Fortunately, Amanda knows immediately which of them ripped the book. Jeffrey/Maniac reassures her that they can fix the torn page, so Amanda invites Jeffrey home with her. He spends the rest of the day with Amanda and her family. In the evening, Amanda’s father offers to take him home, but Jeffrey doesn’t know how to explain that he lives the deer shed at the zoo. In the car with Amanda’s father, Jeffrey tries to pretend that he lives in a house a few blocks down the street, but Amanda’s father knows immediately that it can’t be true. Jeffrey still doesn’t understand the division in the neighborhoods in town, and the house he picked for his pretend house is in the black area of town. When Amanda’s father presses Jeffrey for an explanation, Jeffrey admits that he doesn’t have a home and explains about his past. Amanda’s father immediately takes Jeffrey back to his family’s house, and Amanda’s mother insists that Jeffrey stay with them.
For the first time in about a year, Jeffrey has a home! Jeffrey gets along well with the family and is good with Amanda’s little brother and sister. He likes reading Lyle, Lyle Crocodile to them. He doesn’t even mind taking baths with the little kids or untying their knotted shoelaces.
Maniac starts feeling at home in the black neighborhood, although he’s still regarded as an oddity. His new family calls him Jeffrey, but everyone else calls him Maniac. He is a strange kid, who turns out to be allergic to pizza and breaks out in a pepperoni-shaped rash when he eats it. He’s a very fast runner and good at sports, and he seems to have a special talent for untying knots. Because of his time spent living in a dysfunctional house where people didn’t talk to each other and his time living alone on the streets, there are many things that Jeffrey doesn’t understand about other people. He doesn’t understand social dynamics and racial issues, and it takes him some time to understand how other people look at him as well as at each other.
One day, when he’s playing with the other kids in the street, an older black man calls him “whitey” and tells him to go home, back to his “own kind.” He doesn’t believe that Maniac lives in the neighborhood. His new siblings tell the old man to go away, and the old man keeps ranting about people belonging with their “own kind” until a woman leads him away. The incident disturbs Maniac. Amanda says that the old man is a “nutty old coot” and that Jeffrey should ignore him, but the incident makes Jeffrey realize that there are some people in the neighborhood who don’t want him there. Jeffrey wants to stay with his new family, and they want him to stay, but Maniac worries that his presence is creating a problem for them. Can he find a way to truly become part of this new family he so desperately needs?
This book is a Newbery Medal winner. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies), and there is also a Literature Circle Guide for book groups and classrooms.
My Reaction and Spoilers
I remember reading this book in class when I was in elementary school. The story is interesting because it’s framed as a tall tale but about a contemporary boy. “Maniac” Magee is described as being a legendary child because of his unusual ability for untying knots and his strange allergy to pizza. No real human being can actually be allergic to pizza because pizza isn’t a single food. There are many different ways of making pizza using various combinations of common ingredients. People can be allergic to some of the ingredients in a pizza, but if they were, that wouldn’t be an allergy to pizza itself, and those people would also be allergic to other types of food containing those same ingredients. That’s not Maniac’s problem, though. He seems to be particularly allergic to just pizza by itself. Maniac does things that are impossible and inherently beyond the normal child in everything he is, even in his defects, a classic tall tale character. One of his famous feats, untying an infamous knot in the neighborhood, is like the legendary Gordian Knot. The story is dressed with humor and tall tale elements, but it has themes that are very serious and even heart-rending.
Tall tale elements aside, this is a story about racial issues and a lonely, neglected child who desperately needs a family and a place to belong. Because the story focuses on Maniac as a tall tale character, the racial issues in the story aren’t immediately obvious, although they begin entering the story as soon as Maniac finds his way to his new town and encounters the girl who will be his new sister. The one thing that Maniac really needs is a stable and loving home. He is an orphan, and he ran away from his aunt and uncle’s home because they were too dysfunctional. As a runaway, he wanders for a time, looking for a better home and people who really care about him. He eventually finds that loving home with a family of a different race. Some people might find it strange that he feels a sense of belonging with people who, on the surface, seem quite different from him, but a sense of family goes much deeper than surface appearances. Maniac himself, on the surface, is a very unusual boy compared to most boys in the world, but deep down, he’s still a kid who needs love, attention, a family, and a place to call home. His new family offers him all these things, regardless of how unusual he is, and what they look like doesn’t matter.
The opposition of some parts of the community messes up this loving home for Maniac partway through the story, and he runs away and spends time on his own again. For a time, he lives in the locker room of a baseball stadium, looked after by a groundskeeper who is an elderly, washed-up baseball player. The groundskeeper, Grayson, passes away during the course of the story, but their friendship helps Maniac to understand some things about people. Grayson was also a neglected child. His parents were drunks, and unlike Maniac, he never learned to read because his teachers never tried to teach him. He was placed in a class with kids who were considered unable to learn because they were troubled or had learned problems. Because his teachers never had any faith in his ability to learn, he never really tried. Maniac is like a grandson to him and opens his eyes to many things before his death.
After Grayson dies, Maniac returns to wandering again, believing that he is jinxed to lose any home he has and anybody he cares about. However, Maniac still cares about other people, and he discovers that other people also care about him. When he tries to introduce a tough black boy to some white boys he’s staying with, hoping to make a connection, it goes wrong, and Maniac starts to think it’s all hopeless. However, when Maniac is unable to help one of the white boys when he’s in trouble and the black boy saves him, the white boys come to see the black boy in a different light, grateful to him for saving one of them and taking care of them. The black boy also comes to look at Maniac differently. When he confronts Maniac about why he couldn’t rescue the boy, Maniac admits for the first time that he’s still haunted by the memory of how his parents died, and the situation reminded him too much of it, so he was unable to handle it. The black boy softens at seeing this human side to Maniac and the other white boys. He’s the one who brings Amanda to Maniac, and Amanda insists that he come home with her. Maniac hesitates at first because he thinks he’s jinxed, but Amanda won’t put up with any nonsense from him, and Maniac comes to realize that they really are a family and that he is really going home.
As a side note, I also remember my elementary school librarian reading Lyle, Lyle Crocodile to my class when I was in first grade. In fact, she said it was one of her favorite books, and she also read others in the series to us. I had forgotten that the book was mentioned in this story, which was published the year after I first heard Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, but it did bring back some nostalgia for me. When Maniac teaches Grayson to read because Grayson never learned when he was a kid, they find well-known picture books on the sale rack at the library, including The Story of Babar, Mike Mulligan’s Steam Shovel, and The Little Engine That Could.
Nick is a creative boy in elementary school who is known for pulling elaborate stunts, like turning his classroom into a tropical paradise with fake trees and real sand. When he gets to fifth grade, he has Mrs. Granger as his language arts teacher. Mrs. Granger has a sense of humor about some things, but she also has some strict rules and is all business when it comes to her specialist subject. Her vocabulary lists for her students are extensive, and her favorite thing is the unabridged dictionary. Nick likes words and enjoys reading, but he finds the dictionary to be boring. When he sees a word he doesn’t know, he would rather ask someone else what it means than look it up in the dictionary.
In most classes, Nick is good at asking teachers questions to sidetrack them from assigning homework. The other kids know he does this, so they aren’t surprised when he asks Mrs. Granger about her big unabridged dictionary and where all the words in it come from. Unfortunately, for Nick, Mrs. Granger is also onto his trick, and rather than answering the question herself, she assigns Nick to look up the answer and tell the rest of the class what he’s learned the next day in addition to his usual homework assignment. Nick is upset because he usually doesn’t have much homework at all, and now, he has to do more.
When Nick gets home, he reads about dictionaries in his encyclopedia, but he’s not sure that he understand everything he’s read, and it all sounds terribly dull. Then, Nick gets one of his creative ideas that he thinks will make this boring assignment more fun. When it’s time for Nick to give his report, even he is surprised at how much he has to say about the dictionary. Mrs. Granger loves his report, although even she tries to cut Nick short when he goes on for too long. Although the other kids were initially bored, they begin to enjoy Nick’s report when they realize that he is actually using it to waste an entire class period. Eventually, Mrs. Granger tells Nick that he’s at a good stopping place in his report, and she praises him for all of his work. Nick, annoyed that she’s making him look like a teacher’s pet, decides to ask one more question. He says that he still doesn’t understands who decides what the meanings of words are, like who decided that the word “dog” refers to a dog. Mrs. Granger tells him that everyone who speaks English does. Words mean whatever the people who use them agree that they mean. People who speak other languages use different words to refer to the same animal, but those words are valid to them because they all agree on the meaning of the words.
Then, Mrs. Granger says something that really starts Nick thinking. She says that if everyone in their classroom decided that they wanted to call a dog by some other word, and they got other English-speaking people to agree on it, that word would come to mean “dog.” If enough people agreed to use their new word and agreed on its definition, the new word would be put into the dictionary. To answer Nick’s original question, people who speak a language determine the words of that language and whether they are included in the dictionary. Mrs. Granger adds that the dictionary is the work of many experts over many years, and there are good reasons why each of the words included in the dictionary are there. The dictionary contains the laws of the English language, and while those laws can change, it takes time.
Later, when Nick is walking home with his friend Janet, Janet finds a fancy pen. Nick thinks about what Mrs. Granger said about how people like him, who use a language everyday, decide what words mean. It reminds him how, when he was little, he used to use a baby word that his family understood meant “music.” He had to give up using that word when he went to preschool because nobody outside of his family understood that word, but Nick understands how the word had meaning in his family because they all understood what Nick meant when he used it. While he’s thinking about it, he bumps into Janet, who drops the pen. On impulse, when Nick gives the pen back to her, he decides to give the pen a new name. He calls it a “frindle.”
At first, Janet is confused about what Nick means by “frindle.” It’s the beginning of a new experiment for Nick. Out of curiosity, Nick tries to see if he can teach a saleslady at a local store that the word “frindle” means “pen.” He goes to the store and asks for a frindle, pointing to the pens. Then, he gets some of his friends to do the same thing. After several kids all ask the same lady for a “frindle”, she begins to respond to it by automatically reaching for a pen. Nick is excited because he has just created a new word. “Frindle” now means pen because he decided that it did, and he got other people to agree on the meaning. Nick is making language history!
To make sure his word becomes part of language, Nick gets his friends to use the word “frindle” instead of “pen” at school … in Mrs. Granger’s class. Mrs. Granger isn’t amused by the class’s excessive use of the word “frindle” for pen because she knows that this is another of Nick’s stunts, and it’s a distraction from school lessons. She tries to discourage Nick from promoting it at school, and Nick points out that he’s only doing what she said about how words are made. Mrs. Granger explains how words in language evolved from other words that also have meaning, but “frindle” doesn’t have that kind of evolution because Nick just made it up, based on nothing. Nick insists that “frindle” means something to him and his friends, and they’ve already sworn an oath to each other to keep using it.
To Nick’s surprise, Mrs. Granger responds by showing him a sealed envelope. She tells him that it’s a letter for him, but she doesn’t want him to read it now. The letter is for him after the question of “frindle” is resolved. For now, she just wants Nick to sign the envelope and date it so that he’ll know what she hasn’t switched envelopes or tampered with the letter in any way. Nick is confused, but he does sign the envelope, and Mrs. Granger mysteriously says, “And may the best word win.” It seems like Mrs. Granger is declaring a war of words, pen vs frindle, but are Nick and Mrs. Granger really on opposite sides?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Spoilers
This is a fun and humorous story that does a great job of showing how languages evolve and the purpose and meaning of language. Nick and his friends unwittingly give themselves an education during the course of their stunt. The reason why Nick had to sign and date the envelope is that Mrs. Granger is also enjoying their experiment, and she has made a prediction about how it will all turn out. Anyone who has ever had to deal with a small child who has learned a bad word can guess what Mrs. Granger has realized and how her own actions are calculated to make sure she gets the result she really wants.
Something that not even Nick fully reckons with until his experiment is well underway is that, now that all of the kids at school know about “frindle”, he can’t stop them all from using the word, even if he wants to. Although Nick originally created the word, words in a language belong to everyone who uses them. This is both a thought-provoking book about the nature of words and language and a good story for stopping periodically and having kids make their own predictions about what will happen next.
Even kids have power because they are also language-users, and they have the ability to influence the language and understanding of everyone around them by the words they choose! Nick is very much an idea person, but after “frindle” starts getting so much national media attention, he starts to get intimidated by the level of power he has. He has become more conscious of the consequences of his ideas and how they can affect large numbers of people. For a time, he becomes more shy because of that realization, but Mrs. Granger gives him some encouragement. She tells him that he has many good ideas and that she’s sure he will go on to do great things with them. Nick regains his confidence and realizes that he can use his powers for good, supporting good causes.
The Mad Scientists Club by Bertrand R. Brinley, 1965, 2001.
TheMad Scientists Club series is about a group of boys who like science and make things in their clubhouse laboratory. Their inventions are often part of pranks that they play on their town, Mammoth Falls, but the boys also use their inventions and skills to help people. People in town are aware that the boys pull pranks and stunts, but they are often unable to prove the boys’ involvement in particular pranks, and the boys typically keep the methods they use secret.
Henry is the idea man of the group, and the club’s rival is a former member named Harmon. Harmon’s cousin is still a member of the Mad Scientists Club, and Harmon likes to spy on them and pump his cousin for information so he can mess up their plans out of spite.
Each chapter in the book is its own short story about the club’s antics. Some of the stories originally appeared in Boys’ Life magazine in the 1960s. The stories are a good fit for Boys’ Life because some of the skills the boys use are skills that are taught in Boy Scouts, like what to do when someone is injured and how to tie different types of knots.
The stories reference scientific and mathematical principles, and the boys are methodical in their approaches to the problems in each story. The technology is old by modern 21st century standards (and so are some cultural references, like McGee’s closet), but the principles are sound. There are no projects for readers to do themselves in the book, but it does occur to me that these types of stories could work well with some included activities or nonfiction accompaniment.
The first story in the book was made into a live action tv movie by Disney, The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove (1971), but the movie has different characters from the ones in the book. The Disney movie uses the same set of characters they used for their movie version of Secrets of the Pirates’ Inn (based on The Secrets of the Pirate Inn). The plot of The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove is also very different from the original story because, in the Disney movie, the kids don’t know what the “monster” is at first and need to investigate it, whereas the boys in the Mad Scientist Club know exactly what the monster is in their story because they built it themselves. You can watch the movie online through Internet Archive, but unfortunately, I couldn’t find an online copy of the book.
Stories in the Book:
The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake
Dinky accidentally starts a town-wide rumor about a sea monster in the lake when he makes up a story about seeing a strange creature in the lake when he needs an excuse for arriving home late. His friends know it’s just a story, but they decide to play along and build a monster of their own out of canvas and chicken wire and scare people as a prank. Even though people in town are scared of the monster, the attention the town receives is so good for local businesses, the boys can’t bring themselves to stop their prank. Instead, they decide to make their monster more elaborate, and things start to get out of hand. How can they end the hoax while saving the town’s image and avoiding punishment?
Night Rescue
An Air Force plane explodes near the town of Mammoth Falls. The pilot escaped from the plane, but he’s now lost in the woods. The local authorities are searching for him, and the boys in the club want to help. The mayor doesn’t want the kids involved, knowing their usual pranks and stunts, but the Air Force colonel is willing to let them help, if they think they can, because he just wants his pilot rescued. The boys use a flare to determine which way the parachuting pilot would have drifted, and then, they calculate about how far he would have drifted to find him.
The Unidentified Flying Man of Mammoth Falls
The boys find an old department store manikin and keep it in their clubhouse until Henry gets the idea for how they can use it in an elaborate prank on the town’s Founder’s Day. They’re going to make the manikin fly!
The Secret of the Old Cannon
The town’s old cannon from the Civil War is a local landmark now. (We don’t know what state Mammoth falls is in, but there are statues of Confederate soldiers next to the cannon.) Years ago, the town filled the barrel with cement, so it can never fire again. Around the time that the cannon was filled in, there was a bank robbery in town, and some of the boys in the Mad Scientists Club think that the money might have been hidden in the cannon before it was filled with cement. The boys try to figure out how they can prove whether or not the money’s in there without removing all of the cement. Someone else also wants to know the answer to that, and the answer may be important to the upcoming race for mayor.
The Great Gas Bag Race
Henry has an idea for a new kind of balloon that he thinks will help the Mad Scientists Club win the balloon race, but the club’s rival, Harmon, is also entering the race.
The Big Egg
The boys are digging for fossils in the local quarry when they find a dinosaur egg! At first, they’re not quite sure what to do with it. They consider selling admission for people to come see it or maybe turning it over to a museum, but Henry announces that he has another idea. Henry wants to bury the egg in the ground and see if it hatches. It seems unlikely, but the other boys agree to try it. Then, when a couple of the boys go to check on the egg, they discover that it’s missing! They bring their friends back to look at it, and suddenly, the egg is there again! What’s going on? Did someone take the egg and then return it? Is this another one of Harmon’s tricks?
The Voice in the Chimney
One day, some of the boys in the club see Harmon throwing stones at an old, abandoned house in town while some girls watch him. Wondering what he’s doing, they get closer and hear him challenging the ghost that supposedly haunts the old house, trying to impress the girls with his bravery. The boys are disgusted because they know Harmon isn’t really that brave, and they hate seeing him show off for the girls. When they hear Harmon brag that he’s going to come back to the house at night, they tell the rest of their club, and the boys decide to put on a haunted house act of their own to scare Harmon. In the process, they also end up scaring the mayor and the chief of police!
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 