Posted on by TracyC

Felicity’s Craft Book

American Girls

Felicity’s Craft Book by Rebecca Sample Bernstein and Jodi Evert, 1994.

This is a companion book to the Felicity, An American Girl series.  It explains about the types of crafts that people would do in Colonial America and gives instructions for projects that readers can make at home.

In the beginning of the book, there is a brief history of crafting in America.  It explains that, in the earliest days of the American colonies, people had to get most of their goods from Europe because they had to spend their time and energy on building homes and establishing farms in order to survive.  However, as the colonies became more established, people were more able to make goods for themselves, both in their own homes and as professional craftspeople.  By the time that Felicity lived, during the late 1700s, there were many skilled craftspeople, and those craftspeople also trained new people in their professions in apprenticeships.

Before presenting craft projects that readers can make, the book also offers a few tips for safety and neatness while making things. The crafts are also divided into sections relating to topics like writing, sewing, games and toys, and scented objects that you can make with plants.

The projects explained in this book include:

A quill pen and two types of ink – The book gives instructions for making ink from different types of berries (such as raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries, which make red or purple ink) and walnut shells (which makes a brown ink).

A wax seal – To be used with sealing wax or wax from a candle. These were used to seal letters before the invention of envelopes with glue. (I know that there are people and companies that still make these because I have one myself and the sealing wax to use with it.)

Game of Graces – A hoop with a pair of sticks that were used for a tossing game.

Cup and Ball Game – A common toy in which a cup is attached to the end of a short stick and a ball is tied to it.  Players have to move the toy around and make the ball swing into the cup.

Kites – Made with lightweight paper.

Folding Fan – Made with poster board and ribbon.

Fancy Straw Hat – Explains how to decorate a hat with flowers and ribbon.

Fruit Pyramid – Used as a table centerpiece.

Cross-Stitch Sampler – A basic sampler using only the cross-stitch. (Colonial girls would create more elaborate samplers to show off the range of stitches they could make.)

Sachet – A small bag of potpourri (sweet-smelling dried plants).  Colonists would put sachets into trunks and wardrobes where they were storing their clothes to make them smell nice.  (Some people still do this in modern times.)  In a later part of the book, they also give instructions for making potpourri with herbs and flower petals.

Friendship Pincushion – An embroidered pincushion.

Tussie-Mussie – A small bouquet, like the kind that bridesmaids and flower girls might carry.  (The book says that people in Colonial times might carry one or maybe a pomander ball if they went to visit a sick person because they had an idea that breathing bad air would spread sickness and they were trying to freshen the air with fresh scents.  That’s not quite how sickness is spread, but they were partly correct about sicknesses being airborn.)

Pomander Ball – An orange scented and decorated with spices and cloves.  Besides freshening the air, they can also make nice decorations.

In the sections about different types of projects, there is additional historical information about life and crafts in Colonial America. Because, in the books, Felicity’s grandfather owns a plantation and one of the books takes place there, the craft book also has a section about plantations that includes a brief description of plantation life and slavery, noting that the lifestyle and pastimes that plantation owners enjoyed would not have been possible without their slaves to take care of the plantation chores for them.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Molly’s Cook Book

American Girls

Molly’s Cook Book by Polly Athan, Rebecca Sample Bernstein, Terri Braun, Jodi Evert, and Jeanne Thieme, 1994.

This is a companion book to the Molly, An American Girl series.  It has recipes from the 1940s that people would have made during World War II.  A section at the beginning of the book explains how shortages and rationing during the war changed the way that people shopped for food and cooked.  For example, people on the homefront didn’t have many canned foods because many canned foods were shipped overseas to soldiers and much of the metal that would have been used to make more cans for food was being used to make other war supplies.  Because certain types of food were in short supply, individuals and families would receive ration books, which contained stamps that represented which types of foods they would be able to buy and how much.  Cookbooks printed during the war focused on creating meals that used little or no rationed products.  People also planted Victory gardens and grew their own vegetables to fill out their meals.

The cookbook is divided into sections for different meals:

Breakfast – Fried Potatoes, Toad-in-a-Hole (not the British dish – this is eggs cooked in a frame of bread, what I first learned to make as Eggs-in-a-Frame), Fried Bacon, Quick Coffee Cake, and Frozen Fruit Cups.

Dinner – Vitamin A Salad (made with carrots and lemon gelatin), Deviled Eggs, Carrot Curls and Celery Fans, Vitality Meat Loaf, Parsley Biscuits, Volcano Potatoes, and Applesauce Cupcakes.

Favorite Foods – French toast, Waldorf salad, PBJ Roll-ups, Jelly Flags, Victory Garden Soup, Nut-and-Raisin Bread, and Fruit Bars.

In each section of recipes, there is more historical information about food in World War II.  There is also a section in the back with party ideas from the 1940s.

For more World War II recipes, I recommend The 1940’s Experiment, which is a blog with recipes from World War II and an explanation of how they can be used to both save money and lose weight because they were intentionally designed to make maximum use of limited resources, both economically and nutritionally. In Molly’s Cook Book, there is a chart that government experts during World War II used to give people guidance on how to budget their food money among seven food groups. The diet that they recommended, both nutritionally and to limit certain rationed foods, was heavy on vegetables and fruits and lighter on meats, grains, and dairy products. This type of diet is basically in keeping with modern nutritional advice, which also emphasizes the importance of vegetables and fruit.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Do-It-Yourself Magic

Do-It-Yourself Magic by Ruth Chew, 1987.

Rachel and her younger brother, Scott, stop by the discount store on the way home to admire the model kits.  Most of the model kits are too expensive for them to buy, but one kit has been put on discount, The Build-Anything Kit.  The kids think it’s a good deal because they can use it to build more than one kind of model. 

When they get it home and begin to play with it, they are confused at first.  Scott tries to build a model stock car racer, but all the wheels and other pieces are all different sizes.  Then, Rachel finds a double-headed hammer labeled, “sizer.”  The kids discover that when they hit the model pieces with the hammer, they can make them bigger or smaller.  Besides working on pieces, the sizer can also make people bigger or smaller.  Rachel makes Scott smaller so that he can drive his stock car model around the room.  Then, when he drives outside, she makes both him and the car bigger, so the car is the size of a normal car.  A neighbor spots them in this strange car and calls the police, so the children are forced to shrink the car again quickly. 

When they get home, they discover that they left the door open and that a man is trying to steal their tv set.  Without thinking, Rachel hits him with the sizer and shrinks him.  Now, they have to decide what to do with him before the situation gets worse!

At first, the kids keep the thief in a glass, but then they let him out and allow him to drive around in the stock car model.  While they are trying to decide what to do with him, they take a look in the model box again and notice some pieces that weren’t there before.  They look and feel like stone blocks, so they begin building a castle with them.  To their surprise, the man they shrunk runs into the castle.  They are worried about him, so they hit the castle with the sizer to make it bigger.  Suddenly, the castle is as large as life, and they go inside to discover that they are back in medieval times. What will happen to the thief in the past, and will the kids get back home?

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The Ravenmaster’s Secret

The Ravenmaster’s Secret by Elvira Woodruff, 2003.

Forrest Harper is the son of the Ravenmaster of the Tower of London in 1735.  The story begins by explaining the tradition of keeping ravens at the Tower of London because of the superstition that the Tower would be conquered by its enemies if the ravens ever abandoned it.  This superstition led to the creation of the job of Ravenmaster, who looks after a flock of ravens that live at the Tower with wings clipped so that they can’t fly away.

Forrest Harper lives at the Tower with his parents and sisters, training to become a Ravenmaster, like his father.  He likes the ravens, and they like him.  He is pretty good at caring for ravens, but there is something that bothers him: he thinks that he isn’t brave enough and that others think that he is a coward, too.  He is smaller than the other boys and is often teased.  He has trouble cutting up the squirrels that the rat catcher’s boy (his only real friend, although his mother doesn’t approve of him) brings to him to feed to the ravens.  Even though it’s necessary, Forrest doesn’t like the sight of blood and feels kind of sorry for the squirrels.  Worse still, when Forrest’s family attends the public hangings (which were treated as a kind of festival day with music and entertainment in Forrest’s time), Forrest is unable to look at the criminals who are being hanged.  The one time he does try it, he throws up, and again, the other boys tease him mercilessly for it.  Forrest’s problem, as readers will see, isn’t so much that he’s a coward as he has more empathy than the other boys, both for animals and people, and that isn’t really as much of a problem as he believes.  His father tells him to ignore the bullies because they are foolish, and their foolishness will show in time.

Forrest sometimes dreams of going out into the wider world, beyond the Tower, where he could do something brave that would impress everyone.  The rat catcher’s boy, whose real name is Ned although most people just call him Rat, also dreams of running away because he is an orphan, treated harshly by his master and always in danger of being turned over to the chimney sweep to be used as a climbing boy.  He doesn’t think that Forrest has a real problem because his life at the Tower is pretty good, living comfortably at the Tower with his parents, whatever the local bullies say.  Still, the two boys often imagine what it would be like to go to sea together and have adventures.  When there is an announcement that a new prisoner will be arriving at the Tower, a Scottish Jacobite rebel, Forrest thinks that helping to guard a dangerous rebel will make the Tower bullies respect him.

To Forrest’s surprise and embarrassment, this rebel actually turns out to be a girl.  She is the daughter of the rebel Owen Stewart, who is being held in a different tower at the Tower of London (the Tower of London is actually a fortress with multiple towers – she is imprisoned in Bloody Tower and her father is in Bell Tower).  She has been charged with treason, along with her father and uncle.  Forrest isn’t happy about being given the task of taking food to a girl prisoner. 

However, Madeline McKay Stewart, the girl prisoner, is pretty tough in her own right.  Although Maddy’s been separated from her father and uncle and all three of them are likely to be executed, she is being pretty brave about it.  She talks to Rat and Forrest.  She is interested in Forrest’s pet raven, Tuck, and tells him about how she used to feed baby owls back home.  She talks about her life and family in Scotland, and Forrest realizes that he’s starting to think of her as a friend instead of an enemy to be guarded.

While Forrest is used to hearing English people criticize the Scots for being “savage,” he is astonished and a bit offended when Maddy talks about English people being “evil.”  For the first time, it makes him think of the situation from the other side.  He knows that not all English people are evil and realizes, having seen that Maddy actually has refined manners, that Scottish people aren’t “savage.”  One day, at Maddy’s request, he takes a message to her father in exchange for her ring, which he plans to sell in order to buy Ned back from the chimney sweep after the rat catcher loses his term of indenture to the chimney sweep in a game of cards, sparing him from the horrible life and health problems that the young climbing boys suffer.  Then, Owen Stewart gives Forrest a message to take back to Maddy.  Without really meaning to, Forrest realizes that he has suddenly become a go-between for the rebels and could be considered a conspirator under English law.

As Forrest considers the fate that lies ahead for Maddy and the nature of war between England and the Scottish rebels, it occurs to him that the adults in his life have often done the opposite of the things that they have always taught him were important.  His father always emphasized fairness, yet the war and Maddy’s possible execution are unfair.  Maddy shares Forrest’s feeling that the world might be a better place if people didn’t become adults and abandon their values.

Then, Maddy’s father and uncle are shot while attempting to escape, and Maddy is left completely alone.  Forrest feels badly for Maddy.  Soon after, he is unexpectedly approached by a carpenter who seems to know that he has become friends with Maddy.  The carpenter, who is a stranger to Forrest, tells him that Maddy will soon be executed by beheading but that he has a way to save her life.  Forrest has to decide if he is willing to trust the stranger and save Maddy, knowing that doing so would make him a traitor himself.

One of the parts of this story that interested me was how Forrest noted the hypocrisy in the adults around him as he was trying to decide what he should do.  Qualities that adults often praise and try to instill in their children are often ignored in the way that the adults live and even in how they treat other children, like Ned and Maddy.  Abandoning values, even the ones that they really want their children to have, isn’t something that adults have to do as they grow older, but it is something that some adults do if they think they must in order to live as they want to live or accomplish something that they want to accomplish.  The adults who think that Maddy should be beheaded would probably say that they were doing it for the greater good in promoting their cause against the rebels.  However, treating Ned as a piece of disposable property is something that they mostly do because they can and because they know that there is nothing that Ned can do to stop them.  Ned actually tries to repay his indenture legally with money that Forrest gives him, but although the sweep accepts the money, he refuses to let him go, saying that no one will take Ned’s word over his and that he could always use the money to make sure that Ned is hung as a thief if he tries to make trouble.  It is this type of attitude and situation that make the children realize that they are on their own to solve their problems and that working within the law is not going to be an option for them because the law is not just and it is not on their side.  It’s a frustrating situation, and I often feel frustrated when I encounter this type of thing in books, but fortunately, things do turn out well in the end.

This is one of those coming-of-age stories where a boy must decide what he stands for and where he really belongs.  Through Maddy and the inscription on her ring, which means “Face Your Destiny,” Forrest comes to understand the destiny that is right for him as he helps both Maddy and Ned escape to a better life elsewhere. 

The book also includes some interesting historical information. There’s a map of the Tower of London in the front of the book, and in the back, a short history of the Tower with information about famous prisoners and escapes. There is also a glossary of English and Scottish words that modern children (especially American children) might not know, such as breeches, wench, loch, and tattie-bogle (scarecrow).


The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.  (To borrow a book through Internet Archive, you have to sign up for an account, but it’s free, and then you read the book in your browser window.)

Spoiler: In the last chapter of the book, it explains what happened to the characters after the story ends.  Forrest does become the Ravenmaster after his father, realizing that it is the right kind of life for him and that he no longer desires to have adventures outside the Tower.  He has a wife and daughter, and years later, he receives a message from Ned, who says that he has become a captain in the Royal Navy and that Maddy has gone to live in the colonies with other Stewarts (something that my own Jacobite ancestors did, which is how I got to where I am now).

Posted on by TracyC

The Puppeteer’s Apprentice

The Puppeteer’s Apprentice by D. Anne Love, 2003.

Poor Mouse works as a scullery maid in a castle in Medieval England.  She has lived there all her life, since someone abandoned her at the castle as a baby.  She has no idea who her parents are, when her real birthday is, or exactly how old she is (the cook once said she was about eleven, but he wasn’t sure).  She doesn’t even have a real name; Mouse was simply the name given to her by the cook, who makes her work hard and beats her if she makes a mistake.  Mouse’s life is hard, but then one day, she makes a big mistake, and the cook gets in a rage and attacks her with a meat hook.  Mouse escapes from him and flees the castle.  She knows that she cannot go back, but she doesn’t know where to go. 

For the first time in her life, Mouse’s fate is in her own inexperienced hands.  For a time, she joins up with a group of travelers, who take her to the city of York.  However, none of them can adopt Mouse, and she must struggle to make a life for herself.  In York, Mouse sees a puppeteer performing, and she is inspired to learn to be a puppeteer herself.  Through a mixture of trickery and pleading, Mouse convinces the puppeteer to take her on as an apprentice. 

Although Mouse makes many mistakes at first, and the puppeteer gets angry and threatens to leave her behind, the two eventually learn to get along with each other.  Mouse gains skill at making and manipulating the puppets, and her confidence grows.  However, danger still lurks in the future, for the puppeteer also has a dark past and dark secrets which pursue the two of them in their travels.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

Stories with abused and neglected children are always sad. Mouse is failed by various adults who are mainly focused on their own lives and securing their own positions in life before she finally becomes independent. We don’t know why Mouse was abandoned as a baby, although it was probably because her parents were poor and maybe unmarried, which would have been a stigma at the time. We can be pretty sure that, whatever happened, Mouse’s parents’ position in life was too precarious to take care of her themselves. The castle cook she lives with is mainly worried about his own job and is more of an unwilling employer to Mouse than a parent. In fact, employment is more of a theme in Mouse’s precarious life than family. Even the puppeteer is more of an employer to Mouse than a parent. Mouse learns from the puppeteer, but it’s as an employee, and Mouse is well aware that she can be abandoned at any time if she fails to please her employer. In the end, Mouse gains an independence that pleases her, but I still found it a little sad because it seems like the one and only person who can’t abandon Mouse is Mouse herself and that there is little or no security in trusting or relying on others. The eventual goal turns out to be employing herself so she doesn’t haven’t to rely on someone who can dump her. I suppose that can be true in real life, too, but it’s one of hard, dark sides of life.

Although, the adult characters’ focus on securing their own lives and positions first is also a testament to the nature of the time when the story is set. Opportunities are limited by social level, and there are few sources of support for those who suffer unfortunate circumstances. Although it seems like the adults in the story are cruel and neglectful, there’s also a desperation to their own situations. The one person in the story who is willing and able to offer more generosity to Mouse than other characters is able to do so because of his privileged position in life. Even the puppeteer, while seeming more free than other characters, is living under danger and threat, and there is genuine risk to sharing in her life that Mouse doesn’t come to understand until later.

The puppeteer always dresses in loose-fitting clothes to cover up the fact that she is a woman.  Although there is no reason why women cannot be puppeteers, she finds it necessary to disguise herself because she is pursued by an enemy from years ago.  Once, her father, who was a master puppeteer, saved the life of a young Duke who was attacked by a man named Ordin.  Ordin was trying to steal some of the duke’s lands.  The old puppeteer and his daughter stood witness against him, and he was thrown into prison.  Later, when he got out of prison, he attacked the party on the road, killing the old puppeteer and his companions.  Only the daughter escaped alive, and she became a puppeteer to support herself.  Ordin escaped, and she was forced to disguise herself to protect herself.  She even refuses to tell Mouse or anyone else what her real name is through most of the book. 

However, Ordin recognizes her one day while she and Mouse are giving a performance.  He and another highwayman follow them on the road and attack them.  The puppeteer kills the other highwayman but is gravely wounded herself.  Mouse fights back against Ordin, knocking him into the fire, and he burns to death.  They are not far from the duke’s castle, so the puppeteer sends Mouse there to get help.  Mouse tells the duke what happened to the puppeteer, and he has her brought to his castle.  The puppeteer, realizing that she will not recover from her wounds, finally tells Mouse her story and offers her name if Mouse wants it for herself.  The duke offers to let Mouse stay at his castle.  Mouse stays the winter, but in the spring, she decides to leave.  She has come to love life on the road, and she promised the puppeteer that she would take care of the puppets.  Mouse decides to take the puppeteer’s name, Sabine, as her own and sets off on a journey to find a place to perform her new puppet play, one telling the puppeteer’s story.

Posted on by TracyC

The Time of the Forest

The Time of the Forest by Tom McGowen, 1988.

The story takes place in the prehistory of Denmark, among its earliest inhabitants.  It shows the conflict between the hunter-gatherers, who are native to the forests of that land, and the farmers, who have traveled to the area to build a new home on the edge of the forests.

When the two groups learn of each other’s existence, they become frightened of each other. The hunters are afraid that the new people will take over their hunting grounds, and they are offended that the newcomers cut down the trees to build their homes and clear land for farming. The farmers are afraid of the forest, the wild animals inside it, and the hunters, who they fear might start hunting them.

A young hunter, Wolf, watches the farmers to learn more about them, and he is fascinated by what he sees. In some ways, the two groups are alike, and Wolf finds himself wanting to know more about the ways of the farmers and maybe even make friends with the pretty girl, Bright Dawn, who he sees tending the farmers’ goats.

However, the son of Wolf’s chief has decided that the newcomers must be destroyed. When Wolf saves Bright Dawn from the chief’s son, the two of them must learn to work together and combine the skills of their different peoples in order to survive.

In the end, after a bloody clash between their respective peoples, both Wolf and Bright Dawn are each exiled from their tribes.  However, their exile actually gives them the freedom to start their own tribe that combines aspects of both of their societies.

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

My Reaction

This story was somewhat speculative about the early days of Europe, when societies were starting to shift from hunter/gatherer groups to more settled agricultural groups.  The author says that he was theorizing about the cultural clashes that may have taken place during this time.

Something I noticed about the story is that the groups, particularly the hunter/gatherer group, somewhat resembled some Native American groups around the time that they first encountered European settlers.  The author didn’t say anything about using their lifestyles as inspiration or drawing any parallels between them and early Europeans, but it did make me think about the similarities between groups that are living similar lifestyles but in different places.  In other words, it does seem reasonable that hunter/gatherers living in Europe would be living in circumstances that would be very similar to hunter/gatherer groups in the Americas.

Posted on by TracyC

River Quest

Dinotopia

#2 River Quest by John Vornholt, 1995.

Thirteen-year-old Magnolia and Paddlefoot, a Lambeosaurus, are apprenticed to the Habit Partners of Freshwater. Habitat Partners keep an eye on different aspects of the environment on Dinotopia and make sure that the environment is maintained and cared for. The Habitat Partners of Freshwater are specifically concerned with the bodies and sources of freshwater all over Dinotopia.

When Magnolia’s master, Edwick, is injured badly during the eruption of a geyser, he and his partner, a Saltasaurus named Calico, retire and leave the post to Magnolia and Paddlefoot. Magnolia thinks that she is still too young for the position, and she and Paddlefoot worry about whether they are ready to handle the job. However, they have no choice because a crisis has arisen, and Edwick is in no shape to handle it.

The Polongo River, which supplies the water for the waterfalls that power virtually everything in Waterfall City, is drying up. Magnolia and Paddlefoot must journey up the river to find out what is happening and restore the river to its proper course.  Along the way, they find friends who can help them, but completing their mission means coming perilously close to the Rainy Basin where the meat-eating dinosaurs live.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Windchaser

Dinotopia

#1 Windchaser by Scott Cienein,1995 .

Raymond Wilks is the son of a ship’s doctor. They are sailing on a ship taking convicts to the British colonies in Australia when the prisoners revolt and take over the ship during the middle of a terrible storm. Raymond’s father is killed, and the ship is wrecked, but Raymond escapes with a young thief named Hugh O’Donovan. The two of them are taken to shore by friendly dolphins, and they meet up with some of the inhabitants of Dinotopia.

At first, they are frightened of the dinosaurs, but everyone is kind to them. They are taken to Waterfall City, one of the most beautiful places in Dinotopia, and they begin learning about the history and ways of the land. People in Dinotopia don’t use money, and everyone shares with each other, trading goods and services for everything they need. There is no crime in Dinotopia because everyone has all that they need and everyone looks after each other.

Raymond, although still mourning his father’s death, thinks that Dinotopia is a wonderful place, and he admires the attitude of the people there. Hugh, who was orphaned at a young age and forced to steal to survive, has difficulty believing that the people are all as nice as they seem or the society as perfect as they say. His harsh childhood has taught him not to trust others too much. Little by little, the people of Dinotopia win Hugh over, and he desperately wants to become worthy of the kindness that people show him, although he doubts whether he ever can.

As Hugh and Raymond struggle to come to terms with their new life in Dinotopia, they encounter a flying dinosaur called a Skybax who is suffering from an old injury. The Skybax, called Windchaser, shows up from time to time and causes trouble. He is the only unhappy creature they have seen since arriving in Dinotopia, and Raymond develops a strong desire to learn what is wrong with him and help him. Raymond’s struggles to help the unhappy dinosaur lead him into danger, and Hugh fears that he may lose the best friend he’s ever had.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Pirates

Magic Tree House Research Guide

Pirates by Will Osborne and Mary Pope Osborne, 2001.

This book is the nonfiction companion book to Pirates Past Noon, part of the Magic Tree House Series. While the Magic Tree House Series is a fantasy series that involves time travel, there are companion books to some of the novels with nonfiction information related to the stories. The fantasy series is meant to introduce children to different historical periods and encourage an interest in reading, but the companion research guides take children further into certain subjects.

This book focuses on pirates throughout history, explaining how pirates functioned from the time of Ancient Greece and Rome, into the Middle Ages with Vikings, and beyond. It explains that, while legends and adventure stories make the lives of pirates seem fun and exciting, the realities of their lives were more harsh. Throughout the book, Jack and Annie, the characters from the main series, appear in illustrations and side notes to define certain terms or tell the readers fun trivia.

There is a chapter about New World pirates that explains the buccaneers and privateers that preyed on Spanish treasure ships in the Caribbean. The Golden Age of Piracy was in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. It was a period of intense pirating activity as governments recruited privateers to attack the ships of enemy nations. Pirates also attacked ships that traded with American colonies as they increased in size and number. The Golden Age of Piracy ended in the 1720s, when governments began instituting harsher punishments for pirates and sending more warships to confront the pirates. The book includes a Gallery of Pirates where it gives brief biographies of famous pirates, like Henry Morgan, Sir Francis Drake, Blackbeard, and “Calico Jack” Rackham with Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

There are chapters that describe the lives that pirates lived on their ships. One chapter talks about the types of ships that pirates used, how to distinguish between different types, and the trade-offs between size and speed. For example, sloops could move faster, but schooners were larger and could carry more. Although pirates operated outside of the law, they had rules for themselves to establish order and resolve conflicts on their ships, and there were punishments for people who broke the rules. People also had different jobs on pirate ships.

Part of the book also talks about legends of buried treasure and sunken ships. There is some truth to the legends, although mostly, pirates tended to spend their loot shortly after getting it instead of hiding it for later.

At the end of the book, there is a guide for doing further research which suggests research tips, other books to read and documentaries to see, and websites to visit. Of the websites listed in the book, only one still exists as of this writing: Maritime Pirate History. Another one, Treasure Island, pops up thanks to the Wayback Machine. It might be possible to find the others through the Wayback Machine by actually searching the Wayback Machine for them, but with so many other new sites and books that are probably equally as good, it might not be worth the time.


Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Pirates Past Noon

Magic Tree House

#4 Pirates Past Noon by Mary Pope Osborne, 1994.

One rainy afternoon, Annie urges Jack to go to the tree house with her because she has a feeling that they will soon meet its mysterious owner.  When they arrive, no one is there, so the kids start looking at the books.  The day is cold and wet, and Annie shows Jack a picture of a sunny beach, saying that she wishes they were there.  Soon, they find themselves on the beach. 

They have fun at first, but then some pirates come to the beach, looking for a treasure buried by Captain Kidd.  The evil pirate, Cap’n Bones, makes the kids prisoners aboard his ship until they figure out where the treasure is hidden from the clue written on the captain’s map.

The clue says that the treasure is hidden underneath the whale’s eye, and from the ship, Jack and Annie realize that the island is shaped like a whale with a big boulder for its eye.  The kids make the pirate captain take them back to the island in exchange for telling him where the treasure is.  While the pirates are digging for the treasure, a parrot flies over, saying, “Go back!”  The pirates take that as a sign of an approaching storm and flee, leaving the kids behind. 

A storm does come, but Jack still has difficultly tearing himself away from the treasure that they’ve uncovered.  Finally, the parrot convinces him to leave, and he and Annie use the tree house to go home again. 

Once they’re back in Pennsylvania, the parrot appears and turns into a woman and says that she’s Morgan le Fay.  She is the owner of the tree house and the amulet.  Besides being King Arthur’s sister and an enchantress, she is also the librarian of Camelot.  She has been using the tree house to travel to other times to collect books that the scribes in Camelot can copy for their library.  She put the spell on the tree house so that she can travel to some of the places in the books herself.  The kids can use the spell only because Annie truly believes in magic and Jack really loves books.  She and the tree house disappear as the kids head home, but Jack discovers that she left her amulet with him as a sign that she will come back.

I was surprised that the owner of the tree house turned out to be Morgan le Fay, both because an Arthurian character didn’t seem to quite fit with a magical children’s tree house and because Morgan le Fay wasn’t one of the good characters in the Arthurian legends. The exact nature of the character of Morgan le Fay changed through different retellings of the Arthurian legends, and she wasn’t always an adversary or villain, but she does do things in some of the stories that wouldn’t make her a good heroine for children’s literature. However, none of that matters in this series because, here, she’s just an enchantress from Camelot who is interested in books.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.