Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Witch of Blackbird Pond

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare, 1958.

This is a book that is often used in American schools or recommended to students, but because of the complexity of the story and dark subject matter, I wouldn’t recommend it to young children. It’s more appropriate for middle school level children and older.

The year is 1687, and a sixteen-year-old girl named Kit (short for Katherine) Tyler is traveling by ship from Barbados to the Connecticut Colony. Kit was born in Barbados, where her grandfather owned a plantation, which he received in a grant from the king. However, Kit was orphaned at a very young age, and now, her grandfather has died, so Kit is on her way to live with her Aunt Rachel, her mother’s sister, who is married to a Puritan and is living in Connecticut.

In Barbados, Kit was part of a prominent, slave-owning family, but in Connecticut, she’s just another girl. The people in Connecticut are Puritans, which puts Kit on the opposite site of a political conflict. Her father’s side of her family in Barbados was on the side of the Cavaliers, who supported the king against the Puritans, or “Roundheads” in the English Civil War (1642-1651). Because her Aunt Rachel has married a Puritan, Kit’s Connecticut relatives are on the side of the Roundheads. When Kit first sets off on her journey, she has very little idea of the difference between the two and what it’s going to mean for her future life.

People in Connecticut do things differently, and from the very beginning, Kit strikes them as strange and unpredictable. She is impulsive, and even her grandfather used to warn her about thinking before she acts. Kit is accustomed to living in luxury, giving orders to slaves, and generally being allowed to do as she pleases. It comes as a shock to her that not only can she no longer do these things, but others may heap harsh judgement on her for behaving oddly, even when she does it in the name of a good cause.

Kit gets her first impressions of what life in Connecticut will be like when she talks to the ship captain’s son, Nat Eaton, and an aspiring clergyman named John Holbrook. John Holbrook is the son of a tanner who has had to work by day and study by night since he was young, and he struggles to complete his education because his family doesn’t have enough money to send him to college. Because Kit’s grandfather was wealthy, Kit has never really had to think much about money before. She never had to work or even do chores when she was young, and when she tries to talk to John Holbrook about the books that she’s read, he disapproves of her choice of reading material because he thinks that reading should be reserved for the serious study of religion.

Kit’s naivety and views of slavery are challenged when Nat Eaton talks her about the horrible conditions slaves endure when they are transported from Africa to the Americas and how many of them don’t survive the experience. Kit is accustomed to owning slaves and having them work for her, but just as she has never had to think about the cost of the fancy clothes and other luxuries that her grandfather gave her, she realizes that she’s never given a thought to where slaves come from and how. Kit learns that, while there are people in the North American colonies who own slaves, there are others who vehemently disapprove of the practice, including Nat Eaton. He says that if his family had dealt in slaves, they could have a lot more money, but they’re doing fine carrying more humane cargo and passengers.

Note: Racial issues are more of a side issue than the main part of the story, and this is the part of the story that addresses the issue the most. I can’t say that Kit ever comes to reverse her early view of slaves completely, but this is the beginning of a revelation to her, one of the first indications to her that the life she previously lived is actually the exception instead of the norm, and not everyone looks favorably on people who live the way she used to live. None of the main characters in the story are black.

Kit is dismayed that there seem to be few topics from her old life (politics, money, slaves, the luxuries she owned, the relative freedom she had, not having to work, having plenty of time to read whatever books she liked whether they were useful or instructive or religious or not, etc.) that don’t cause some awkwardness, discomfort, or disapproval from the people who live in the community she is about to join and who will now be playing significant roles in her life. People don’t seem eager to be friends with her, and they look at her suspiciously as a stranger.

As her ship nears its destination, a little girl on board loses her doll overboard and Kit jumps into the water to get it back, alarming everyone. Most of the other women and girls don’t know how to swim, and they think it’s strange when Kit says that her grandfather taught her how to swim when she was little. The sea around Connecticut is too cold for swimming, so they’re not used to the idea of recreational swimming. (This time period was part of the Little Ice Age, so the area was even colder then than it is today.) Some people also consider that one of the tests for witchcraft involves seeing if a woman could float in water, and they begin whispering that Kit might be a witch.

When Kit finally arrives at the town where her Aunt Rachel and Uncle Matthew Woods live, Wethersfield, she is disappointed to see that it’s much more rural than the community where she used to live. The streets are not paved. Kit is dressed in an overly-elegant way for the community and even for her own family. When she finally meets her aunt, she thinks that she must be a servant at first because she is dressed so plainly. Aunt Rachel is happy to see her, and Kit meets her cousins, Judith and Mercy. Judith is very pretty, and Mercy walks with crutches. Kit is surprised at the very simple way they live, and they are taken aback at her fine clothes and all of the possessions she brought with her in her trunks from Barbados.

Her relatives are stunned when they find out that Kit plans to stay with them. They had not even expected her to come for a visit, and they had not heard about her grandfather’s death. Uncle Matthew asks why she didn’t write to tell them that she was coming, and Kit admits that she was afraid to write to them because she didn’t want them to tell her not to come and she didn’t have any other choice but to come to them. After her grandfather’s death, the overseer of the plantation sold off the entire crop and kept the money for himself, and all of the other plantation owners in the area presented Kit with debts her grandfather had with them that needed to be repaid, so she was forced to sell off the slaves and almost everything else to pay them. (From Kit’s description about the sudden influx of supposed debts after her grandfather’s death, I wondered whether at least some of these supposed debts were fraudulent and if Kit was simply too young and naive to challenge them, being accustomed to her grandfather handling all of the family’s money and business arrangements, but I can’t really be sure. She doesn’t go into detail about what proof the creditors offered of the debts or if she simply took them at their word, and its only real importance is in helping to provide her with a reason for going to live with her relatives.) Aunt Rachel says that Kit did the right thing by repaying the debts and coming to them, but Uncle Matthew seems less sure. He disapproves of Kit’s grandfather for being a royalist and seems reluctant to take on a now impoverished relative accustomed to a luxurious life.

Kit tries to share some of her fancy clothes with her cousins when they admire them, and Judith and Mercy love the new clothes, but Uncle Matthew puts a stop to it. He disapproves of Kit’s clothes because they are just too fancy and he thinks they encourage vanity. Uncle Matthew is very direct with Kit, explaining to her that people in this family and in this community live a very different life from the one she is used to, and she is going to have to adjust to their ways if she wants to live with them. Adjusting to this new life, which is so different from everything she knew before, is a major struggle for Kit throughout the story.

Privately, Kit confides in Mercy that she had another reason for wanting to leave Barbados. There was a man there who was a friend of her grandfather’s. Her grandfather also owed money to him, but he would have forgiven the debt and paid the other debts if Kit had agreed to marry him. Other people in Barbados said that it was a smart match and that she should marry him, but he was fifty years old, and Kit couldn’t bring herself to marry someone so much older than herself. That’s why she wanted to leave Barbados in such a hurry and didn’t want to wait even long enough to write to her relatives. (The issue of the girls’ marriage options and what they mean for their family and future lives is a major focus of the story. It is taken for granted throughout the story that all of the girls will get married at some point and that their primary future occupation will be being someone’s wife. However, what being a wife means for them depends on who they marry, what their husband’s occupation and position in society are, and the type of lifestyle they can support.) Mercy says that Kit did the right thing by leaving Barbados and that her Uncle Matthew will get used to her being there if she can demonstrate that she can be useful (an important factor in the occupation of being a wife or daughter of a Puritan family).

Being useful is a problem for Kit, who is unaccustomed to doing work of any kind. She doesn’t know how to do even basic chores. People need to explain to her how to do everything, and even then, Kit is extremely clumsy and lacks the patience to follow their instructions properly. Judith loses her patience trying to teach her and isn’t happy to learn that they’re now going to have to share a bed. Kit appreciates Mercy for her understanding and her quiet strength. Even though some people disregard Mercy because of her disability, Kit knows that Mercy has valuable skills and that she can work as hard as anyone. Life with the Woods family is a monotonous series of chores that previously Kit would have thought of only as labor for slaves that she would never have to do.

Then, there are religious differences between her and her relatives. When Kit lived with her grandfather, they never attended regular church services, but Uncle Matthew’s Puritan household is strictly religious, so Kit is expected to go to church with the family. At the church services, she sees that other people in the community are wearing clothes that are about as fashionable as her own, so not everyone in the community is as strict in their dress as the Woods family is. However, Kit is bored by the services (which last all day), the other parishioners don’t seem very friendly, and it seems like word has spread that Kit is a charity case that her aunt and uncle have taken in. However, she does attract the attention of a young man named William Ashby, and Judith meets John Holbrook for the first time.

As Kit spends more time with her relatives, she discovers that Uncle Matthew is a local selectman but that he has political disagreements with some of the other men in town, and some of them think that he is less loyal to the king than he should be. Kit also becomes involved in the romantic interests of her cousins and confronted with some choices she needs to make about her own future. William Ashby is from a wealthy and socially prominent family, but Uncle Matthew dislikes the Ashby family for being Royalists. Kit learns that Judith was interested in William Ashby before she came, and she worries that Judith will be angry with her for attracting his attention, but Judith tells her not to worry about it because she is now in love with John Holbrook. Kit still feels uncomfortable at William’s sudden interest in her because she has only just come to live in the area, she knows very little about William, and the two of them don’t seem to have much to talk about during his visits with her. However, Aunt Rachel and her cousins encourage her to pursue the relationship because William Ashby’s family is prosperous and he can provide a good living for her. Kit is flattered by William’s attention because he admires her whether she is “useful” or not. With his family’s money and position, William Ashby could give Kit a life similar to the one she had before with her grandfather with nice clothes and relative freedom from routine household chores.

However, Kit’s views and ambitions in life begin to change when she starts helping her cousin Mercy to teach young children in the community’s dame school. Basically, a dame school was when a woman of the community would teach children basic lessons, such as reading and writing, informally in her own home for a fee. (For more information, see Going to School in 1776.) Mercy explains that after children learn to read in the dame school, they can go on to the more advanced lessons in the community’s formal grammar school. Kit always enjoyed reading and discovers that she likes working with the children. As a dame school teacher, Kit earns fees from the students and performs a useful service that she enjoys much more than weeding gardens, scrubbing floors, and other household chores. Kit was not raised to have a profession, but there is more than one kind of work in the world and even in this small community, and this particular kind of work suits her. It pleases Kit that the students appreciate her and enjoy her lessons and stories.

The girls’ romantic dreams and life decisions as they come of age and begin making lives for themselves in the community could make for an interesting historical novel by themselves, but there is more to this story. This is a witch trial story. Kit has already had people making witch comments about her because of her odd behavior, but through her work at the dame school, she demonstrates other odd habits that cause her to get on the wrong side of community members. When she gets the idea of having students act out the story of the Good Samaritan instead of simply listening to it, the situation gets out of hand. She is criticized for using the Bible for play-acting, and the dame school is temporarily closed. Then, Kit befriends Hannah Tupper, a somewhat eccentric widow who lives in an undesirable area near Blackbird Pond that often floods. Nobody understands why she wants to live out there, all alone with her cats, and people in the area say that she’s probably a witch. The truth is that she is known to be a Quaker, and the Puritan community doesn’t like to associate with her because of her religion. Kit likes Hannah because she is kind and understanding to her and calms her when she is upset, but her family doesn’t like her to associate with Hannah, saying that evil can seem innocent at first. Kit also realizes that, while William Ashby admires her, he is also scandalized by her behavior. Hannah, on the other hand, is supportive of Kit and helps her continue to secretly teach a young girl whose mother doesn’t want her to have reading lessons.

Kit’s friendship with Hannah gets her into trouble with community and even puts her life in danger. People in Wethersfield start to die from a disease that has struck the community, and Hannah is blamed. Kit risks her life to save her from an angry mob. Although she successfully gets Hannah to safety, Kit is also accused of witchcraft and put on trial.

I often find stories of people falsely accused frustrating, but this one has a good ending. There is a note in the back of the book that explains the historical background behind the story. Kit Tyler is a fictional character, but there are some real historical characters in the book, and the political situation involving the colony’s charter is real.

The book is a Newbery Award Winner. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

The time period of the story is a time of witchcraft suspicions, like those that sparked the infamous Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts (1692-1693). Historically, suspicions of witchcraft and actual witch trials were more likely to occur in communities suffering from internal divisions and instability, especially when the community suffered some further calamity with no apparent explanation, such as a sudden epidemic of illness (possibly ergotism in Salem), heaping panic on top of existing community tension and anger. Then, the community would take out its feelings on someone who was generally disliked by a majority of community members, usually targeting someone who lacked resources to fight back against the allegations of witchcraft, like a poor woman or a widow. Basically, the community wanted someone who could serve as a convenient scapegoat (as described by the Salem Witch Museum) or whipping boy for the commu,nity’s roiling emotions and real problems that they either didn’t want to address or lacked the means to address. Even when it became obvious in hindsight that they had killed innocent people, most of those involved wouldn’t even suffer feeling guilty or bad about themselves for murder because there was always Satan and his trickery to blame for their own actions and decisions. No one could prove that they hadn’t been honestly deceived by the devil, so they would not be held responsible by their friends, who liked them personally and had been actively involved in the entire episode themselves. The community would already be accomplished at mental blame-shifting, so their minds would be relatively untroubled by personal responsibility. Knowing that they didn’t experience regret or remorse for their actions, that they felt right and good about their personal choices, doesn’t help the people they killed, the families of their victims, or people vicariously experiencing the injustice through history or historical novels. Miscarriages of justice are deeply frustrating, which is why I don’t normally like this type of story, although in the past, I’ve been fascinated by the historical background of this incidents, which is why I wrote a couple of papers on witchcraft trials, both American and European, in college, back when I majored in history. (Don’t make the mistake of saying anyone was burned at the stake for witchcraft in America. It’s not true, not even at Salem. The accused were hanged, and some were pressed to death with heavy rocks, but nobody was burned at the stake for witchcraft in the American colonies. That happened in Europe but not America, and it always annoys me when people get that wrong.)

In the book, the community in Wethersfield has all of the historical elements necessary for producing a witch hysteria. From the beginning, Kit notes the the political divisions in the community. Particularly, her uncle is at odds with other prominent community members about specific local issues and the amount of loyalty owed to the king, and there is also a conflict over the colony’s charter. Even though Kit would be the side of those favoring the king, more so than her uncle, the feelings that community members have about her uncle’s political position would give them a natural prejudice and suspicion toward what they would view as the strangest and most problematic member of her uncle’s family. Then, there is a sudden sickness that causes community members to die. The community also has an outcast who would make a convenient scapegoat, Hannah Tupper. When Kit first hears about her, her cousin Judith tells her that some people already think that she may be a witch. As both a widow and a Quaker outcast, she would have been unable to save herself from the townspeople without Kit’s help. When Kit provided that help, and the community lost their first choice of scapegoat, they picked Kit as their second choice, an acceptable substitute.

On the one hand, my own anger at the injustices of the past leads me to return the witch hunters’ judgement with some harsh judgement of my own. Some of the world’s most judgemental people are so unaware of any other emotions besides their own that they are shocked to discover that other people actually have minds and feelings and an equal ability to look back at them and assess what they see. I suppose that these people wouldn’t have guessed what future people would think when they looked back at them because their views of themselves wouldn’t match what independent observers, seeing their actions and the consequences across time, would see. Human beings often have internal fantasies about themselves where they are more brave, clever, attractive, and on the side of moral right than they actually are, and I think the witch hunters are a definite example of that. I don’t like people who wriggle out of personal responsibility, no matter why they do it, and if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, I only consider people as “good” as their own personal behavior and the way they affect other people around them. Nobody’s “good” simply because they say they are or like to think of themselves that way, especially if their real actions say otherwise. Actions speak louder than words. There are many things about the people in the community in this story (as well as in real historical communities) that don’t live up to my high personal standards. Offending me isn’t a criminal offense, and there aren’t many consequences for doing it, but it does provoke a lot of griping.

I think that there’s little point in having standards if you don’t actively live them, and although I think some of that sentiment would have been in the witch hunters’ thoughts, I further believe that everyone has an equal responsibility for both the standards they have and how they choose to demonstrate them. If people would give more thought to the “hows” of their actions and the consequences of what they do, I think there would be fewer problems in the world in general. I also think letting people get away with harmful behavior and not at least clearly criticizing it sets a terrible precedent that is likely to lead to further harm. In the book, once Kit’s name is cleared, she is inclined to forgive her accusers, although she is offered the opportunity to charge them with slander. I understand the reasons why Kit would decide not to pursue these charges, but at the same time, there is clearly one person in the story who was more responsible than the others for the charges brought against Kit and who has also been shown to be hostile toward her own innocent young daughter, and this person does not receive punishment for her actions in this story. I did feel better that the father of the child, realizing that his wife has been wrong about their daughter, falsely labeling her as a half-wit and keeping her from the education that she should have, stands up for the child and her continued education in the end, but I still kind of wanted to see the rest of the community give the mother more of a direct, official warning or censure to bring it home to her that there would be consequences for further misbehavior on her part because of the serious consequences, even possible death, that she almost imposed on others. Sometimes, I feel like this sort of conflict comes to an end too quickly and easily in stories with kind of an air of “We’re all good here now” without some of the underlying problems really being confronted or resolved. It happens sometimes like this in real life, but it’s not very satisfying, and just because some people say “We’re all good here now” doesn’t mean that everything is really fine and everybody involved is really fine. I’m never comfortable with pretending that things are okay that are clearly not. The mother of the child seems to have some mental issues of her own and some kind of emotional conflict over her own child that gives her a warped view of reality. That isn’t fully explained or resolved in the story, probably because the other characters don’t fully understand it, either.

Perceptions are important, but a person’s perceptions don’t stop reality from being, well, real. I know that, in real life, all or many of the supposed witch threats probably seemed real to the individual accusers in the middle of their personal panic, but the reality of the situation is that they did a great deal of harm to innocent people who were unable to stop them. In fact, they specifically targeted people they knew couldn’t stop them, which sounds pretty calculating. They did it because of their own personal problems and the demons that lived in their own minds, whether or not those mental demons had any supernatural help. It’s frustrating because you can’t communicate completely rationally with determinedly irrational people any more than you communicate can with dead people or fictional people and convince them to change their minds. There are times when there’s just nothing you can do when there is no way for the other person to receive new information or they’re just determined not to and no way to help someone who not only doesn’t want help but doesn’t think they need it and would be deeply offended and suspicious at the mere offer. On the other hand, the psychology of such incidents is kind of interesting.

Years ago, I attended a talk given by a team of professional ghost hunters where they said that people who call them to investigate hauntings in their homes tend to be people who are already troubled about something else in their life, such as money problems, marital problems, health problems (mental and/or physical), problems with their kids, or some combination of these. Then, when something happens that seems strange and inexplicable, they get startled by it because they’re already on edge. People who are more secure in their lives and are generally happy might brush off one or two odd things that happen as just rare oddities and forget about them, but people who are already upset about something else tend to seize on them. They become hyper-vigilant. They start noticing more and more odd things that they might otherwise have overlooked and draw connections between these things in their minds, actively looking for more. Soon, they have themselves convinced that they’ve got a full-blown haunting in their house, when at least some of what they’ve experienced is just the ghosts in their own minds. In one case, they said that a man was troubled by a mask he bought at a garage sale. He thought it was cursed because, soon after he got it, a bunch of bad things happened to him. (As I recall, his wife divorced him, he lost his job, and he had health problems.) The ghost hunters said, “To be fair, we don’t think that this mask was cursed when the man bought it. We think it became cursed because he bought it, and he continually blamed it for every bad thing that happened to him around that time, even though these things were probably going to happen anyway.” This is basically the same process that leads to witchcraft trials, except that in witchcraft trials, it happens on a larger scale. Witchcraft trials involve whole troubled communities instead of just a single troubled household.

This still happens in modern communities, but in places where people don’t believe in witches, it’s more likely to take the form of a kind of moral panic, where people get upset about a possible infiltration or excess of people seen as some kind of disruptive moral deviants, rather than a witch hysteria. In both cases, the community experiences extreme fear or paranoia about some perceived threat, but in moral panics, the perceived threat comes from some part of human society, like Communists during the Red Scare or some variety of criminal, not a supernatural force. Actually, I believe that we’ve been living in a state of moral panic in the US for at least the last few years, probably longer, on more than one front. I can’t help but notice that much of what’s been happening in modern times fits all the criteria and follows the typical stages of a moral panic, particularly the parts about the “hidden dangers of modern technology“, a belief in “a ‘hidden world’ of anonymous evil people“, and fear of an “evil stranger manipulating the innocent” (which, weirdly, is what I think is behind the willingness of some people to believe conspiracy theories in the first place as they accept stories that come from apparent “friends”, or at least people who look like people they might want to get a beer with or something – some people use them as their primary source of media, thus checking another box in the requirements for a moral panic and leading up to the final point). In my experience, the fear is particularly about evil people who want to “control” others and tell them what to do, the ultimate community boogeymen where I live. I’ve heard a lot about it for years from real people who habitually like to tell me what to do and how I should feel about things themselves.

This is kind of a digression from the story, but I put it here to illustrate that we might not have to question how people can get themselves into community hysteria over perceived threats, most of which prove to be not that threatening in the long term. Most people might not believe in witches anymore, but they’ve found plenty of creative substitutes for the same basic process over the years. A complete list would take too long to compile, but if you spend any amount of time on social media, you can come up with several “evil” or “deviant” groups or ideological concepts that people hate and fear in the space of a few minutes. Thanks to modern technology, you don’t have to wonder what’s going on in people’s heads. You can Google it. Many people will just tell you right up front what boogeymen are lurking in their minds, and they’ll gladly share that information with untold numbers of total strangers through Twitter, Facebook, and Quora, feeling validated and supported if faceless usernames agree and spread their stories, no matter why they do, and often raging against sinister forces trying to spy on them at the same time. It’s not rational, but it is recognizable. I put it to you that a few moments of honest self-reflection, considering not how you feel but what you’re actually going to do and what it’s going to mean in real terms, can be the stitch in time that saves nine. There are dangers to modern technology, but I don’t think they’re really that hidden. They’re the same dangers human society has caused itself in the past, just much faster, and they come mostly from the demons in the minds of the people involved. There is nothing online that wasn’t designed, written, promoted, spread around, and ultimately accepted by individual humans. It’s when people lose touch with the realities of the situation and the consequences that their actions have for real people around them in the real world that I really worry. It seems to me that blaming the Internet or the media for the things people have decided to do themselves has become the 21st century version of “The devil made me do it.”

Posted on by TracyC

The Most Wonderful Doll in the World

The Most Wonderful Doll in the World by Phyllis McGinley, 1950.

Dulcy is a little girl who is rarely satisfied by anything. She has a big imagination, and is always wishing for something better than what she has. Dulcy has an impressive collection of dolls, but even though she loves all of her dolls, she can’t help but think sometimes that some of them would look better with a different hair color or with different clothes or with some other small detail changed. No matter how good something is, it’s never completely perfect.

Then, one day, an elderly friend, Mrs. Primrose, gives Dulcy a doll named Angela. Dulcy likes Angela, although her immediate thought is that Angela would be even better if she had dark hair instead of blonde, finding a tiny fault as she always does. But, by accident, Dulcy loses Angela on the way home. She sets Angela’s box down when goes to help rake leaves into a bonfire, and when she goes to retrieve her, she can’t find her.

Once Angela is gone, Dulcy’s attitude changes. Dulcy is upset about the loss of Angela, realizing that Angela really was a precious and special doll. Her mother offers to get a replacement doll that looks like Angela, but Dulcy can’t imagine that any doll would be as special as Angela. As Dulcy describes the doll to her mother, she says that Angela was blonde with a blue dress and pinafore and eyes that could open and close. Those aren’t terribly unusual qualities for a doll, but Dulcy also adds that Angela had shoes with heels and could say “Mama” and “Papa” and sing Rockabye Baby. Those are more unusual, and Dulcy’s mother agrees that she probably won’t be able to find a doll that does all that.

However, readers soon begin to notice that Angela becomes increasingly wonderful each time that Dulcy describes her. When her father offers to buy her another doll, Dulcy adds that Angela could also walk and wave her hand. Dulcy tells her teacher about Angela’s little purse and gloves. She tells her friend Margery about Angela’s raincoat and umbrella.

The more Dulcy thinks about and talks about her wonderful doll, the less satisfied she is with her other dolls. None of them can compare to the amazing Angela! When her Aunt Tabitha gives her a skating doll, suddenly the missing Angela acquires the ability to skate as well. No doll that Dulcy has or ever could have could compare to the missing Angela!

Other children at school are fascinated by Dulcy’s descriptions of Angela and all of the marvelous things Angela had and Angela could do, which get more and more wonderful every time Dulcy tells the story. Then, people start getting tired of hearing about Angela. Dulcy’s friends don’t like hearing that their dolls aren’t as good as Angela, and people stop giving Dulcy dolls as presents because she always says that they’re not as good as Angela.

Then, one day, when Dulcy is playing with a new girl in the neighborhood, they find the box with the missing Angela. When Dulcy sees how the real Angela compares to the one that she dreamed about and imagined when she was lost, Dulcy comes to a greater understanding of the power of her imagination and the need to appreciate things being just the way they are.

Dulcy doesn’t completely give up imagining things and dreaming of perfection, but she does learn that part of growing up is remembering the difference between what she imagines and what is real. She realizes that when she was moping about the doll she didn’t have, she kept herself from having fun with the dolls she did have and discouraged people from giving her other nice dolls. Dulcy saves all the of the amazing qualities that she dreamed of for Angela and gives them to an imaginary doll called Veronica. Dulcy keeps Veronica as her perfect doll in her imagination, and she knows that Veronica is imaginary. As long as she can have her imaginary doll to be as amazing and perfect as she wants, she can be happy with her other dolls being just the way they are, and they make her happy, too.

The book is a Caldecott Medal winner. It is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Harold and the Purple Crayon

Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson, 1955.

Harold loves drawing things with his purple crayon. In fact, everything in the story is a creation of Harold’s, drawn with his purple crayon.

First, Harold decides that he wants to go for a walk in the moonlight. He draws a moon and a path that he can follow.

Along the way, he decides to draw a forest with an apple tree. However, he makes the mistake of drawing a dragon to guard the tree, and it frightens him.

Harold’s hand shakes, and he accidentally draws water and falls in. Fortunately, he also draws a boat and sails to a beach where he can have a picnic lunch.

After a series of adventures, Harold decides that he wants to go home, but he has trouble finding his home. He looks for his bedroom window, and then realizes that his window should look out on the moon, which is still in the sky.

After drawing his window and bed, Harold goes to sleep.

The story is rather surreal. We never see Harold’s real home or any other people who are not drawn by Harold. All we see in the story is Harold and the things he draws with his purple crayon. This is a story about the power of imagination, and at the end, we can only imagine Harold’s real life because we never see him return to it.

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

Posted on by TracyC

I Can Fly

I Can Fly by Ruth Krauss, 1950.

This is a cute Little Golden Book about a little girl playing.

As she plays, she compares herself to various animals. When she’s on her swing, she feels like she’s flying like a bird, and when she swims, she feels like a fish.

The story is told in rhyme, and in the back of the book, there is actually music so you can sing the rhyme as a song.

There are different printings of this book, some with different illustrations. The different versions also have different words, and it looks like the newer one includes both a boy and a girl and doesn’t have the music for the song. One of the newer versions is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Mystery in the Apple Orchard

Mystery in the Apple Orchard cover

Mystery in the Apple Orchard by Helen Fuller Orton, 1954.

Mystery in the Apple Orchard swing

Dee Waters (age nine), her brother Ronnie (age eleven), and the other neighborhood children enjoy playing in the nearby apple orchard. The orchard was planted by Dee and Ronnie’s grandfather, and the trees are all different types of apple. Sometimes, the children take a lunch with them and spend hours climbing trees and playing. They like to watch the animals there, like the squirrels and crows, running around and hiding things in the trees. There is also a swing hung in one of the trees.

The Waters’ housekeeper, Mrs. Brown, lives in the city and commutes to her job in the country. She also has a son, Timmy, and she’s been concerned about him. Timmy is recovering from a broken leg. The bullies in his neighborhood dared him to climb a tall pole, and he fell. Although Timmy’s been out of the hospital, he hasn’t been getting enough fresh air and time outdoors in the city because they don’t live near a park. Dee and Ronnie don’t know Timmy, but hearing that he’s been unwell, they suggest that Mrs. Brown bring him along the next time she comes so that they can show Timmy the apple orchard. The children’s mother thinks that’s a good idea and also urges Mrs. Brown to bring Timmy for a visit.

Timmy is a little younger than Dee and Ronnie, and he can’t play many games with the children yet because he still walks with a crutch and can’t run. Still, he is fascinated by the animals in the orchard and enjoys watching them. He doesn’t see many wild animals in the city.

Most of the other children in the area are nice to Timmy, but Gloria is a little bit of a snob. Ronnie finds Gloria annoying because she is so prissy and extra careful about her clothes, and on Timmy’s first day in the orchard, Gloria shows up with a ring that she says has a real diamond and a family. The other children don’t believe her at first because it would be silly to wear an old, valuable ring to an apple orchard, especially when it looks so loose on her finger. Ronnie warns her that it could get lost, but Gloria tells him to mind his own business. She also tries to cheat when they play hide-and-seek, asking Timmy to tell her where everyone is because he can’t play the game anyway. Timmy refuses to help her cheat, and Gloria leaves in a huff. Because this is a mystery story, you can see where this is probably leading.

Mystery in the Apple Orchard play ticket desk

When Timmy comes the next time, the children decide to pretend that they’re going on trips by airplanes, with the trees in the orchard representing the planes. Timmy is sad that he can’t climb with the others, so they make him the ticket agent in the airport. Gloria shows up again, still with her diamond ring, and the other children again warn her that she could lose it in the orchard. Gloria says that’s impossible because she tied it to her finger, and she shows the the string. (What was it they said about the Titanic being unsinkable?)

Naturally, the ring gets in the way while Gloria is playing with the others, catching on a twig in a tree. They have to untie the string to get her loose. The other children tell Gloria to put the ring somewhere safe while she plays, suggesting that Timmy the ticket agent could watch it. However, Gloria decides to put the ring on a stone near the old well that has been filled in. (Considering that there are small animals in the orchard that happen to like shiny things, this was not the best decision.)

Mystery in the Apple Orchard digging

Sure enough, by the time Gloria comes down from her tree and her imaginary flight to Paris, her ring is gone. Naturally, Gloria is upset and admits that she was wearing the ring without her mother’s permission. (Gloria likes to show off.) She accuses one of the other children of taking the ring. Timmy seems like the most logical suspect, since he was on the ground while the others were in the trees, but he denies it, saying that he closed his eyes so he could imagine a flight, like the others were doing. Dee suggests that an animal could have taken the ring. Earlier, a chipmunk carried off the piece of string. On the other hand, crows also like shiny things. Could the crow have swooped down and carried it away?

Gloria still insists that Timmy took the ring, and she threatens to tell her mother that he stole it. Can the others find the ring before Timmy is labeled as a thief?

It take awhile for the other children to find Gloria’s ring, and because they failed to find it with the animals right away, some readers might wonder whether a human was responsible for taking. However, the mystery itself is very simple and wouldn’t really surprise anyone but young children. In the end, though, the important point is that Timmy is so motivated to find the ring and clear his name that he finds the courage to climb a tree again. He has healed from his broken leg more than even he thought he had. Before coming to the country, the doctor had told him that he could stop using his crutch, but he hesitated to do that because he was so afraid of re-injuring himself. Once he gets the courage to try not using his crutch, he discovers that he can also do many other things, although he does freeze up when trying to come back down the tree and needs the help of a couple of telephone linesmen to get back down. The linesmen tell him that it’s okay and that God has smiled on him for helping him to improve and do what he needed to do. Timmy is reassured by the discovery that he can do more than he thought he could, and his mother and Mrs. Waters decide that the Browns should move to the country permanently so that Mrs. Brown won’t have to commute to work and Timmy can have more fresh air, playing with the other children in the apple orchard.

This book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Mystery in the Old Cave

Mystery in the Old Cave cover

Mystery in the Old Cave by Helen Fuller Orton, 1950.

Mystery in the Old Cave nut gathering

Andy and Joan Draper are excited about spending the fall and winter in the country. Usually, they live in an apartment in New York City and only go to their family’s vacation home in Vermont during the summer. However, this year, some friends of their father will be moving to New York, and they’ll need a place to stay because they are having trouble finding an apartment of their own. The children’s father has decided to rent their apartment to his friends while his family stays in Vermont. That means that the children will have to go to school in Vermont, but the children like the idea because they will be able to do things that they normally can’t do when the seasons change, like gathering nuts. When the first frosts come, the hickory nuts on the trees fall to the ground, making it easy to collect them.

After Andy and Joan collect nuts for the first time, they decide to store them in the old sugarhouse on the property. Normally, the family doesn’t use the sugarhouse for anything, but it used to be used during the times when their vacation house was a working farm and people tapped the maple trees for their sap to make maple syrup. They would process the sap in the sugarhouse. Sometimes, farm hands also used to sleep there during the harvest.

Soon, the children begin to suspect that there’s a stranger hanging around the property. Their dog, Ponto, barks at someone the children don’t see and comes running back to them, acting like someone kicked him. Later, a strange man approaches them and asks them if they know anything about a cave in the area. Andy and Joan don’t know anything about a cave. The man tells them that it’s supposed to be near the old sugarhouse, but if the children haven’t seen it, it might have caved in or something. He seems very secretive and doesn’t want the children to tell anyone that he’s been asking questions, and the children wonder if he could be the one who kicked their dog earlier. Later, someone (perhaps this strange man) steals many of the nuts that the children gathered and even some cookies. The children change their minds about storing things in the sugarhouse and decide to keep their gathered nuts in an unused room in the main house. The only clue to the identity of who’s been sneaking around is a red pencil that the person dropped.

Mystery in the Old Cave store

The children make friends with a boy named Phil who lives nearby. Phil is an orphan who lives with his Cousin John (who he sometimes calls Uncle John because he is so much older), a mean and stingy old man who doesn’t treat him very well and makes him work hard around the house instead of going to play after school with the other kids. He doesn’t even replace Phil’s clothes when they get old and torn. Phil gets a job at the local store to earn some money for a new sweater, but Cousin John even confiscates Phil’s earnings.

Mr. Lane, who owns the local store, is nice, and he tells Andy and Phil about how maple syrup and maple sugar are made, something that everyone in town used to participate in so that it was like a community party. The boys think it sounds like a lot of fun, and while they are talking about the old sugarhouse, Mr. Lane mentions that, once, some thieves joined in when they were making making syrup. Nobody knew they were thieves at first; they were just a couple of strangers who came along with everyone else and started helping out. Later, there were some robberies in the area, and the thieves were found hiding in a cave near the sugarhouse. Mr. Lane says that he and his friends used to play in that cave when they were young, and Andy and Phil decide that they want to find it.

Mystery in the Old Cave bones

The boys take some tools with them while they’re looking for the cave, in case the entrance has been covered over, which turns out to be the case. Once they dig through the entrance, the rest of the cave appears intact. They find some old bones inside that probably belonged to a bear. They can’t look around much more because the cave is too dark, so they decide that they’ll return later with some lanterns. Mr. Lane tells the boys that there still might be stolen loot around because they never did find everything that the thieves took, including a pearl necklace that belonged to Andy’s grandmother, who was living there back then. Could these things be what the mysterious stranger is looking for?

Mystery in the Old Cave stove in store

During the course of the book, Mr. Lane begins to notice that Phil’s cousin isn’t giving him enough food. Cousin John denies Phil food when he refuses to turn over the extra money that he’s been earning to him. Mr. Lane gives Phil food from the store to eat. While Phil is at the store, he overhears the stranger, who calls himself Joe Williams, talking to Mr. Lane. Joe Williams admits that he’s looking for treasure in the area. Mr. Lane says that he doesn’t have high hopes that Joe Williams will find anything around the cave because the whole area was searched thoroughly years ago.

Phil tells Mr. Lane that he can’t stand living with his cousin anymore and wants to run away. Mr. Lane tries to persuade him not to go, saying that he can deal with Phil’s cousin, but Phil has had enough and worries that his cousin will make life hard for anyone who tries to help him. When Phil hides out in the old sugarhouse, he meets up with Joe Williams, who explains to him more about how he knows about the treasure that may be hidden in or around the cave. He’s about ready to give up the search, but Phil finds something that everyone else has overlooked.

In the end, Andy and Joan’s parents decide to take Phil in. Phil’s cousin agrees to sign over custody to the Drapers, provided that he gets to keep the money from Phil’s job that he took and the money that Phil’s mother left for Phil’s upkeep. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal and that the courts and social workers would have something to say about that if this story happened in real life in the 21st century, but in the story, Mr. Draper accepts the deal and basically uses the money that was meant for Phil to pay off his cousin to surrender custody of the boy. The story ends at Thanksgiving, with Phil sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with his new family, who will really love him and treat him much better than his cousin did.

Mystery in the Old Cave hiding

This is one of those older mystery stories that’s really more adventure than mystery. There’s really only one suspect for the odd person sneaking around, and his reasons for sneaking around turn out to be exactly what he said they were. There is no other hidden purpose or secret past behind that man other than what he said, and in the end, he just kind of leaves the story. The kids don’t have many clues to the location of the stolen items, and in the end, Phil finds them more by accident than anything else.

Sometimes, when I’m unsatisfied by the ending of a story, I like to make up an alternate one of my own. If I were writing this, I’d have had Phil’s nasty cousin be involved in the robbery and the hunt for the hidden loot. For example, maybe he was actually one of the original thieves and had a falling out with his partners, and he’s secretly searching for the rest of the loot they hid for years. Maybe he’s had to redouble his efforts recently because they’re getting out of prison soon, and he wants to get to the hidden loot before they do. Cousin John is money-hungry enough that it could be plausible, and that would allow the story to end with him being sent to prison, which seems fitting.

This isn’t important to the story at all, but I just wanted to say that the copy I have of this book is damaged in a very odd way. On some of the beginning pages, someone has cut out a few of the words, ransom-note style. I don’t know why that happened. There aren’t enough missing for a real ransom note, and some of the cut-out words are still stuck in the pages, but since this is a mystery book, I kind of like the image of someone using it to write some kind of mysterious secret message.

I haven’t been able to find an online copy of this book yet, but Internet Archive has others by the same author.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Rasmus and the Vagabond

Rasmus and the Vagabond by Astrid Lindgren, 1956.

Disclosure: I am using the 2015 edition of the book, published by Plough Publishing House.  Plough sent a copy to me for review purposes, but the opinions in the review are my own.

The Swedish author Astrid Lindgren is best known for her Pippi Longstocking series, but she also wrote other excellent books for children. This particular book is about a nine-year-old orphan boy and his adventures with a traveling vagabond (tramp) after he runs away from an orphanage.  There is an element of mystery, which pleased me, as a life-long mystery fan.

The dullness and unfairness of life at the orphanage gets to nine-year-old Rasmus. While the other children in the village get to play and go swimming, he and the other orphans are expected to work, doing chores like digging up potatoes in the garden or pulling nettles.  Mrs. Hawk, who is in charge of the children, doesn’t like them goofing off when they could be doing chores.  The work is necessary because orphanage sells produce and eggs to help support the children, and the children know that when they’re thirteen years old, they will have to start taking regular jobs to support themselves.  Mrs. Hawk doesn’t see much benefit in letting the orphans play, like other children do.

One day, while Rasmus is pulling nettles by the chicken coop, he finds what, to him, amounts to wonderful treasures: a single five-cent coin and a seashell!  He has no idea how they got there, but he has never found anything so wonderful before.  He rushes to tell his friend, Gunnar, about them. Gunnar tells him that someone is going to visit the orphanage and pick out a child to adopt. All of the children hope to be the one chosen for adoption, and Rasmus wonders if his lucky finds might be an omen that he will be the one chosen.

Unfortunately, he isn’t the one chosen. As Gunnar predicted, the couple who visit the orphanage pick a girl with curly hair, Greta, and Rasmus embarrasses himself by accidentally breaking the lady’s parasol.  Rasmus thinks that he’ll never get adopted, and he suggests to Gunnar that maybe they should try to strike out on their own and find parents. His reasoning is that, if they didn’t have to compete against the other children at the orphanage (especially the cute, curly-haired girls), they might have better luck at finding families.  Gunnar thinks that Rasmus’s plan is crazy, but Rasmus also knows that he has punishments ahead for his earlier escapades, and he’s decided that tonight is the best time to get away.

That night, Rasmus sneaks out alone, taking his five-cent coin with him and leaving the seashell for Gunnar to remember him by.  At first, Rasmus is terrified on his own, and when he gets hungry, he actually starts to miss the orphanage.  Fortunately, he soon meets a tramp who goes by the name of Paradise Oscar.  Oscar actually turns out to be pretty nice, sharing his food with Rasmus.  Rasmus asks if he can be a tramp like Oscar, and Oscar says that boys should really be at home with their parents.  When he learns that Rasmus doesn’t have parents, he takes the boy under his wing.  Rasmus starts to like the free life of a tramp.  They work when they want to and don’t when they don’t.  Sometimes, they make money by singing in the street.  They can sleep anytime they want, and they spend Rasmus’s coin on butterscotch candies.

However, trouble looms when Oscar is taken in for questioning by the police about a robbery.  Two masked men robbed the Sandhoe factory before Rasmus ran away from the orphanage, and the police think that Oscar may have been one of them.  Rasmus believes in Oscar’s innocence.  The police aren’t so certain, but they release him for lack of evidence.

Shortly after that, Rasmus witnesses another robbery.  At first, they’re afraid to go to the police, but they leave an anonymous note so that the robbery victim gets help.  One of the miscreants involved actually accuses Oscar of being one of the robbers, but some of what Rasmus witnessed points to the real villains.

Rasmus and Oscar are colorful characters, and their journey through the Swedish countryside is full of adventure, with Oscar running from the law and Rasmus still searching for the home and family he desperately wants.  There are some moments of suspense in the story, but it all ends happily, and Rasmus does find a home that’s just right for him, although it’s not quite what he had originally pictured. Rasmus’s experiences on the road change him and his ideas of what he wants in life and a family. When he started his journey, he wanted to be chosen by someone else, but in the end, it’s the choice that he makes that determines his future.

One part of the story that particularly fascinated me was when Rasmus and Oscar hide in an abandoned village, and Oscar tells Rasmus that the reason that the village is abandoned is because, years before, the people in the village all decided to emigrate to America together, specifically Minnesota (a popular destination for Scandinavian immigrants).  I remember from my first degree in history that mass emigrations of that sort also took place in other countries.  The Library of Congress has more information about Swedish immigrants and the major periods of immigration.  I think that the event that Oscar referred to was during one of the periods of high population and famine in Swedish history. I love books with interesting historical details!

As a fun fact, this book is also one of those books that appears in Swedish on Ikea shelves, just to help demonstrate bookcases or dress up one of their mock rooms. I spotted it there once. If you look for the name “Rasmus,” you’ll recognize it. The next time you see it, you’ll know what it’s all about!

This book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive, but it’s also back in print and available for purchase through Plough. If you borrow the book and like it, consider buying a copy of your own. This one’s a keeper!

Posted on by TracyC

Sawdust in his Shoes

Sawdust in his Shoes by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, 1950, 1977.

Disclosure: I am using a newer edition of the book, published by Plough Publishing House.  Plough sent a copy to me for review purposes, but the opinions in the review are my own.

At fifteen years old, Joe Lang is a rising star in the circus, a trick rider. Circus life is the only life he’s ever known because his father is a lion tamer. Many of the children whose parents work for the circus also work for the circus, competing for the spotlight and top billing, and Joe loves that type of life, even though it means hard training, an element of risk, and constantly moving.

Unfortunately, things change for Joe when his father is killed during an accident in one of his performances. (Mercifully, the accident is not described in the book. Joe does not witness his father’s death. In the story, he hears screams from the circus patrons and is shortly informed that his father has been killed.) Because Joe is still only fifteen, his father’s death raises the question of who will have custody of Joe. Joe’s mother is dead, and his stepmother, who did not grow up with the circus herself, was never fond of circus life or of Joe. After the death of Joe’s father, his stepmother leaves to go live with her sister, and Joe never hears from her again. Mo Shapely, an older man who works for the circus as a clown, wants to assume responsibility for Joe, and Joe would be happy with that because Mo is an old family friend who helped raise and train him. However, the local authorities are not convinced that Mo is a suitable guardian for the boy because of his age, his unsettled lifestyle, and lack of savings.

Mo waits in town with Joe while the authorities make up their minds, but they soon run short of money, and Mo is forced to catch up with the circus and return to his job. Since Joe’s guardianship is still unsettled, the authorities send him to the County Industrial School for Boys, where he will stay until Judge Reynolds has completed his inquiries into Mo’s background. The boarding school offers vocational training, but Joe finds the place dull and bleak and the people unfriendly. When the other boys find out that he used to be with the circus, they are envious and tease him, and even the teacher mocks him. Only one boy tries to be friendly with him, and Joe asks him if any boys ever escape from the school. The boy tells him that some have tried, but no one has succeeded. However, Joe realizes that he just can’t stand life at the school, and all he wants to do is run away and try to rejoin the circus.

When Joe runs away from the school, he cuts across some farmland, loses his way, and ends up getting caught on some barbed wire, where he is found by the Dawson family. The Dawsons treat his wound, and Joe despairs, realizing that he has gone the wrong way and that he has no chance to catch up with the circus before they move on. The Dawsons ask Joe what his name is and offer to help him get home, but Joe is reluctant to tell them the full truth because he doesn’t want to be sent back to the horrible school. Instead, he tells them that he has no home or parents but that he’s worked before, since he was young, and that he hopes to find a job when he’s recovered from his wounds and exhaustion. The Dawsons are concerned about Joe and curious about his mysterious past and vague answers, but Mr. Dawson decides to offer Joe a position as farm hand. Joe is surprised at the offer and a little suspicious, and he asks Mr. Dawson why he’s so willing to take in a perfect stranger. Mr. Dawson answers him in an equally vague way, saying that if Joe really feels like he needs to steal their silver, he must need it more than they do, and he’s welcome to it. Joe decides to accept Mr. Dawson’s offer of employment.

Joe isn’t used to farm work, but he’s strong from his work with the circus (Mr. Dawson had noticed his athletic build), and he is good with horses and other animals. Although Mrs. Dawson is concerned that they know so little about Joe or his background, Mr. Dawson tells his family to allow Joe to have his privacy and not question him too much about his past. Still, Joe can’t resist showing off and trying one of his old tricks on horseback one day, accidentally making his injury worse because it isn’t healed yet. He begins to worry that the injury might be bad enough that he’ll never be able to be a trick rider again. By the time he has fully recovered, he is also long out of practice.

Eventually, Joe’s secrets are exposed, and he must make some choices about his future. Although Joe had lived many different places when he traveled with the circus, living on the Dawsons’ farm provides him with new experiences and broadens his horizons in unexpected ways. He had never had much respect for non-circus people before (partly because of his bad experiences with his non-circus stepmother). He still dislikes some of the Dawsons’ neighbors for their unfriendliness and suspicious toward him, but the Dawsons themselves are very different from most of the people Joe has met before. Joe comes to realize that he has not forgotten everything that he learned from his old life and that he can apply his old skills in new ways. He even starts to consider that there are more ways of living than he had previously thought, and he begins to see the appeal of non-circus life. Still, the circus is what he always loved first, and he feels torn between what he’s always wanted and the people who have loved and supported him when he needed it the most.

Children today probably don’t look at the circus in the same way as past generations. Some of the larger, mainstay circuses, like Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey, have closed. People make jokes about how scary clowns are, and animal acts aren’t considered humane to the animals. Circuses still exist in the early 21st century, but they’re not quite what they used to be, and they aren’t looked at in quite the same way. Even when I was a young child, in the 1980s and early 1990s, I wasn’t particularly wild about the circus. A large part of that is temperament. I’m not fond of loud noises or large crowds, and I tend to avoid places where there are both. I’m very different from my grandmother, who absolutely loved circuses and parades and excitement of all kinds, dragging her children with her, even when they didn’t always feel like going. In my grandmother’s youth (1910s and early 1920s), there were few things more exciting than a circus coming to town!

However, this story isn’t just about love of circuses or a look back on the forms of entertainment that people used to enjoy. There’s always some nostalgia of that type to vintage books, but this book is about more than that. This is about a person finding his way in life and facing an unpredictable future, who has to decide what’s really important to him. I’m sometimes fascinated by people who seem to know what they want to do in life from an early age. They are born to parents with a profession they want to follow or who have connections to a profession they want to follow, and they start training very early for something they truly love. At first, that seems to be Joe’s situation in life. He loves the circus, he was born into that kind of life, he gets that early training, and there’s nothing else he would rather do. Some people like that become early success stories, just being lucky enough to be born in the right place and with the right connections for the life they want to live, and it all looks like smooth sailing. Most people aren’t that lucky, though, and even for people who think they know what they want, life has a way of throwing a monkey-wrench into their plans. That is what this story is really about.

Joe’s life abruptly changes when his father dies and his guardianship remains in limbo. Things often happen in our lives that we can’t fully control, taking us down paths we never thought that we’d travel. There are times when many of us start to question what we really want out of life, whether our first choices were really the best ones, or if there’s something else that we really want. Sometimes, these unexpected detours make us feel like we’re headed for a dead end, like when Joe fears that he has lost his skill and he’ll never live the life he once dreamed he would. However, sometimes, these things are just a temporary bend in the road. In some ways, an adult who has been through this sort of process would understand it better, but even children know what it is to have a dream and not know whether or not it will become reality.

Children need time to discover and develop their talents, and, as they grow and step into the wider world, they routinely discover that they have to make other decisions that they knew nothing about before. Children also know what it’s like to be at the mercy of adults who can either help guide them on their way or who stand as an obstacle to their dreams and efforts, like the judge who takes so long to decide what he thinks is best for Joe that Joe feels he must take his fortune into his own hands. Right up until the very end, Joe’s ultimate choice remains uncertain as readers wonder what he’s really going to decide to do and what his destiny is going to be. At first, Joe seems like he’s in a bad situation, with limited options, but his experiences show him that his options in life are broader than he thinks. It seems like saying yes to one of the choices confronting him means saying no to something else he cares about, but even that isn’t as straight-forward as it seems. I think this is one of those timeless books that can appeal to all ages because what it’s really about is a person finding his way in life and discovering that a difficult, unpredictable path may be just the path he needs to take.

In the end, it’s not just about what Joe chooses or where he ends up; it’s about what he does along the way. When Joe runs away from the school, he is the one who is injured and in need of help, but he also has a positive impact on the people who were kind enough to help him when he needed it. In fact, there are some situations that would have turned out much worse for everyone if Joe hadn’t been there and been able to help. Joe’s unexpected detour in life changed everyone else’s lives as well, and it was well worth doing, in spite of the struggle.

This book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive, but it’s also back in print and available for purchase through Plough. If you borrow the book and like it, consider buying a copy of your own!

Posted on by TracyC

The Cabin Faced West

The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz, 1958.

Ten-year-old Ann Hamilton hasn’t been very happy since her family decided to move West.  Her family lives in 18th century Pennsylvania, and moving West means homesteading in an area where there are few other families, none of which have girls Ann’s age.  Her father and brothers love the adventure of starting over in a new place on the western frontier (what is considered the frontier for their era), but Ann is lonely, surrounded by boys, and missing their old home.  When her father built their cabin, he purposely placed it so that the door faces to the west because he says that’s where their future lies.  Ann’s brothers, Daniel and David, also make up a rule that no one can complain about the west (partly because Ann had already been doing a lot of complaining), saying that anyone who does so will get a bucket of water poured over their head, and they make a game out of trying to catch each other complaining about something.  So, there is nothing Ann can do but suffer in silence and write in her diary, a present from her cousin Margaret when the family left Gettysburg.

There’s a boy close to her age who lives nearby, Andy McPhale, but Ann doesn’t think much of him.  He makes jokes about her being “eddicated” because she can read and write.  Sometimes, he seems like he wants to play with her, but she’s a girl, and he doesn’t want to play girl games.

Andy McPhale also worries about his mother.  His father believes in hunting and trapping more than planting.  Rather than grow some of their food, Andy’s father goes off for days at a time on hunting expeditions, leaving his family with very little while he’s gone.  Ann’s family thinks that this is a sign of poor planning for the future and don’t think highly of Andy’s father for it.

Later, they meet a young man named Arthur Scott who has just arrived in the area and is looking for land to settle on.  When Mr. Scott first arrives, he meets Ann on the road.  Ann has allowed the hearth fire to go out, and she is on her way to her aunt and uncle’s house to borrow some from them because she doesn’t know how to start a fire by herself.  Understanding her problem, Mr. Scott gives Ann a ride home on his horse and helps her to restart the fire, promising not to tell her parents.  They invite him to stay for lunch, and he talks about his time at Valley Forge with Washington’s soldiers when he was only 13 years old.  He was too young to fight, but he volunteered to drive an ammunition wagon.  Ann thinks of George Washington as a hero, and she finds it thrilling that Mr. Scott served with him.

Arthur Scott becomes a friend of the Hamilton family, and Andy McPhale seems jealous of him and the attention that Ann pays to him.  Then, Andy tells her that his family has decided to go back to town for the winter.  In the spring, they will return to the area and try farming, persuaded by their experiences working with the Hamiltons.  To Ann’s surprise, Andy offers for Ann to come with them.  She could visit Gettysburg and stay with her cousin Margaret again.  Ann has been lonely, being the only girl in the area, and it’s a tempting offer.  However, Ann feels like she must stay for her family’s sake and so she won’t feel like a deserter.  When a storm destroys a good part of her family’s crop, she feels terrible and wonders if it’s all really worth it.

In the end, there is a great surprise coming for Ann: she gets to meet her hero, George Washington, when he comes to see some land that he has purchased nearby.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction and Addition Information

I first read this book when I was a kid in elementary school. As the cover of the book says, the author won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, which honors authors and illustrators for children who have made long-term contributions to children’s literature. Laura Ingalls Wilder was the author of the semi-autobiographical Little House on the Prairie books, but because those books contain uncomfortable racial language and situations, her name were removed from the award in 2018. The award still exists, but it’s now called the Children’s Literature Legacy Award, which is more descriptive of its purpose.

I liked this book as a kid, although I had forgotten many of the details before I reread it as an adult, and I’m not sure if I fully understood the history behind the story when I was a kid. I think stories actually become more interesting when you know the background, so I’d like to discuss the history a little.

The story is based on the real life of Ann Hamilton, the great-great-grandmother of the author of this book, who did get to meet George Washington in 1784. The author is essentially retelling an old family story. The real Ann Hamilton married Arthur Scott when she grew up.  The place where they lived, called Hamilton Hill in the story, is now called Ginger Hill. In fact, it seems that a member of the Hamilton family caused the name change, although that story isn’t really one for children.

One of the parts of the story that I always remembered from when I read it in school as a kid was the part where Ann talks about “mother’s fried wonders”, basically describing a fried donut. People in the 18th century did make various types of fried pastries, varying in style and name depending on where they lived. For an example of early American donuts, see this video by Townsends about 18th century doughnuts, where they make doughnuts and talk about the history and evolution of American “dough nuts” (they talk about the name and how it seems to come from the original shape – nut-shaped pieces of dough).

Posted on by TracyC

The Yellow House Mystery

The Yellow House Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1953, 1981.

This story in the Boxcar Children series picks up the following spring after the previous book.  The children’s cousin, Joe, is arranging for the excavation of the cave where the children found their Native American artifacts.  They’ve decided to use dynamite to blast open the roof of the cave to make excavation easier (I’m not sure if this is really the best way to get at artifacts that were sheltered safely for years in their cacve and were easily being dug up by children in their current situation, but okay), and although he had told the children that they couldn’t be there for the blasting, he’s changed his mind.  He’s even going to let seven-year-old Benny be the one to push down the handle that will set off the blast.  (Because this is one of the early books in the series, the children are aging from the first book in the series – Henry is sixteen years old, Jessie is now fourteen, and Violet is twelve.)

One of the people who will be working on the excavation is Alice, an old school friend of Joe’s.  Everyone can tell that Joe is in love with her, and soon, he proposes to her.  They get married and decide to spend their honeymoon camping out in the barn on the island, just like the children did the previous summer.

However, the children have started to wonder what the story is about the old yellow house on the island.  For some reason, it makes their grandfather sad, and he doesn’t like to talk about it.  Eventually, their grandfather tells them that their housekeeper, Mrs. McGregor, used to live in that house with her husband, Bill.  Bill used to take care of Mr. Alden’s father’s race horses.  He was a nice man, but weak-willed.  His brother, Sam, and his brother’s disreputable friends were often able to persuade Bill to do things that would get him into trouble, and Bill was never able to stand up to them.  One day, he vanished mysteriously from that house, and neither his wife nor the Aldens have any idea what happened to him.  There are only two clues about the reason for Bill’s disappearance.  One is money that Bill was supposed to give to Mr. Alden’s father for the sale of two horses that he managed on his behalf.  Mr. Alden assumes that Bill’s brother did something with the money and that Bill probably left because he was afraid to face Mr. Alden without the it.  Sam died soon after Bill disappeared, so they were unable to ask him about what he knew.  The other odd thing that happened before Bill disappeared was that Mrs. McGregor heard strange sounds in the night.  When she went to investigate, her husband was apparently just reading a newspaper, and he claimed that the noise was nothing unusual.  But, what was Bill really doing?

The kids want to investigate Bill McGregor’s mysterious disappearance, and their grandfather and Joe and Alice enter the house with them to have a look for more clues.  In a hiding place behind one of the fireplace bricks, they find a letter from Sam to Bill about the money from the horse sale.  Sam promised Bill that he would be able to pay him back more than the money he owed and tells Bill to meet him at a house in Maine near Bear Trail.  The kids persuade their grandfather to let them to go Maine with Joe and Alice over the summer to try to find the house on Bear Trail so they can find out what happened to Bill.  The trip will involve camping, hiking, and canoeing, but they’re up to the challenge!

Joe is familiar with Bear Trail because he used to work as a trail guide when he was in his teens.  They are also joined by another trail guide, Mr. Hill, and have adventures that include a storm and a real bear.  However, the real answers to the mystery lie at the Old Village at the end of the trail.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. There are multiple copies of the book. In order to check out a book through Internet Archive, you need to sign up for an account. The account is free, and you read the books in your browser.

My Reaction

In a number of ways, this book is more adventure than mystery.  It doesn’t take long for the kids to realize discover Bill McGregor’s new identity.  However, what happened to the money is more of a puzzle.  Even Bill has been unable to find where his brother hid it years ago.  Benny discovers it by accident while watching a toad. 

One thing that had made me uncomfortable was how long Bill had stayed away from his wife.  When the kids confront him about his real identity, it turns out that Sam’s disreputable friends had lied to him, telling him that his wife had died shortly after he disappeared.  He is overjoyed to discover that she is still alive, and she is glad to see him when he finally returns home.