Posted on by TracyC

Linda Craig and the Clue on the Desert Trail

Linda Craig

Linda Craig and the Clue on the Desert Trail by Ann Sheldon, 1962.

Linda and her friend, Kathy, are exploring Olvera Street in Los Angeles before a horse show when Kathy notices a strange man watching them.  While the girls were shopping, Linda bought a small horse statue that reminded her of her own horse.  As the girls finish lunch, Linda notices an odd symbol on the statue that looks like an arrowhead, but before she can study it more, the man grabs the horse and runs off.  Linda tries to chase him down to get the horse back, but the man drops it and breaks it.  Linda picks up the horse’s head and decides to go back to the shop where she bought it to see if she can get another one.

The shop doesn’t have another horse like the one Linda bought.  It was unglazed, and the others are glazed.  Disappointed, Linda goes on to the horse show, where she is taking part, along with her brother Bob and his friend Larry.  At the show, they see the mysterious man again, and he apparently steals the broken head of the horse statue that Linda had kept.  Bob thinks that maybe the man is some kind of smuggler and that there was something hidden in the head that Linda hadn’t noticed.

Linda goes back to the shop to talk to the owner again, and he tells her that the horse was a special order from Mexico for a man named Rico.  Rico said that he was a traveling salesman and that he would collect the horse at the shop, but when he didn’t turn up to get it, the shop owner decided to sell it. Linda asks the shop owner to send her another horse statue like the broken one if one comes into his shop and reports all of this information to the police.  Then, when she returns to the horse show, she finds a threatening message, warning her to “Beware. Stay away from C. Sello.”  The note is signed with the symbol of an arrowhead, similar to the one on the horse statue.  Linda also reports this note to the police, but she can’t resist trying to figure out who C. Sello is and how this person fits into the mystery of the possible smugglers.

Soon after, the shop owner calls Linda to say that another horse statue did come into the shop and that he has sent it to her but now someone has broken into his shop and smashed every horse statue he has. Realizing that what they wanted was not in the shop, the bad guys are soon on Linda’s trail, even kidnapping one of her friends by mistake, thinking that it’s her. They even try to poison Linda’s horse!

At the end of a desert trail, the Mojave Trail, there is a ghost town with sinister characters and old cliff dwellings with Native American petroglyphs that may hold part of the secret to the mystery.

The story contains some anecdotes about California history, which is interesting. I have to admit, though, that I thought that the warning note for Linda was pretty silly. C. Sello turns out to not be a person but a clue about what the smugglers are smuggling, and they didn’t have to tell Linda what it was because she hadn’t heard about it at that point and wouldn’t have any reason to know what they were talking about. If they really wanted to get her to leave them alone, they could have left a more vague warning that didn’t include any clues like “Go home!” or “Go away!”

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Crimson Ghost

The Mystery of the Crimson Ghost by Phyllis Whitney, 1969.

Janey Oakes loves horses and wishes that she had one of her own.  Her family lives on Staten Island in New York, so they don’t have room to keep a horse.  The only horses that she has ridden are rented ones.  However, her parents are now considering moving to the countryside in northern New Jersey, where Janey’s Aunt Viv lives.  If they do, there will be room for Janey to keep a horse, so she is hopeful.

Janey’s parents take her to visit Aunt Viv during the summer, while they decide if they want to move.  Along the way, they stop to ask directions at a half-ruined house.  The people there, Mrs. Burley and her grandson Roger, aren’t too friendly, and when Janey thinks that she hears a horse there, they seem oddly resentful and say that she should ask her aunt about it.

Aunt Viv seems oddly evasive on the subject of horses when Janey asks, saying that she doesn’t ride anymore.  She does tell Janey more about the strange, half-ruined house.  It was once a hotel for people who came to take the spring waters.  However, it eventually lost its popularity and was partly destroyed in a fire.  Mrs. Burley’s husband died in the fire, but she has remained living in the part of the house that is still standing, raising a couple of grandsons there after the death of her younger son.  Her older son is a doctor in New York City.  Aunt Viv says that she used to be friends with the younger of the two grandsons, Denis, but that ended when she did something wrong and something bad happened which she doesn’t want to talk about.

Aunt Viv introduces Janey to a girl who lives nearby named Coral, in the hopes that they will be friends.  Coral isn’t interested in horses, but when Janey questions her about the Burleys, she confirms that they do have a horse called the Star of Sussex.  She takes Janey up to the Burleys’ house again (partly in the hopes of seeing the older Burley boy, Roger, who she has a crush on).  There, Denis and Roger each explain to Janey that their grandmother had hoped to train Star as a racing horse.  Star is an excellent horse and had a lot of potential for racing, but Denis allowed Aunt Viv to ride her one day, and the horse stepped in a woodchuck hole and injured her leg.  The leg has healed, and the horse is able to gallop, but she still limps and can’t run at the same speeds she used to, ending Mrs. Burley’s racing hopes.  Since then, Mrs. Burley has been very bitter, especially toward Aunt Viv.  She behaves strangely, driving people away, and is also angry toward Denis for allowing Aunt Viv to ride the horse in the first place.  It was just an accident, but she blames them both.  Roger realistically thinks that they should sell Star for breeding because she has a good bloodline, and Denis’s real interest lies with airplanes, which fascinate him in the same way that horses fascinate Janey.  Their differing interests seem to support what Aunt Viv says about how the family should move and that the boys would probably have a better life away from the old, ruined hotel and Mrs. Burley’s obsession with the past.

Coral also tells Janey about a ghost dog that supposedly appears on nights when a strange red light appears on the Burleys’ property.  Later, Janey hears the howling at night. Aunt Viv doesn’t think it’s a ghost.  She says that people have tried to talk to Mrs. Burley about her dog, but she denies having one and gets really angry with people for accusing her of having one.  Yet, the howling does seem to come from the Burleys’ property, and Denis even says that he’s seen the ghost dog, that it seems to be covered in flames.  He claims that it’s the ghost of his grandfather’s dog, who died in the fire years ago.  Aunt Viv thinks that Denis is just saying that to try to protect his grandmother and because he can’t handle what other people have come to believe about her: that she’s losing her mind.  Mrs. Burley’s behavior is undeniably odd, and she’s prone to sudden mood swings.  People are worried that she’ll drive newcomers away from the area and drive down property values, and they think that she might need professional help.

Janey doesn’t think that Mrs. Burley’s mind is gone as much as people believe.  When she sneaks over one day to visit Star, Mrs. Burley is angry but notes that she has a good manner with horses.  To Janey’s surprise, Mrs. Burley agrees to let Janey ride Star.  Denis almost ruins things by making Janey believe that Mrs. Burley has changed her mind about the invitation and also by not telling his grandmother that Janey asked to meet at a later time.  Janey isn’t sure why Denis seems to have a grudge against her, although it might have to do with his own guilt for allowing the horse to be ridden and injured in the first place; his own grandmother still seems to have a grudge against him for that.  Neither one of them tells Janey that Star has a particular trick for throwing riders, even though she had specifically asked if there was anything that she should know about the horse or if it had any tricks.  After she’s thrown by the horse, however, Janey gets back on and proves to both the Burleys and to Star that she’s not intimidated and not going to fall for the trick again.  (The Burleys have deep, personal hurts, but I wouldn’t call them nice people.  There are people who would probably view this is a test of Janey’s skills and her ability to stick with a challenge, but I think that their lies and deliberate deception when Janey was asking the right questions show only their immaturity.  It may not bother some readers as much as it did me, but I have a very low threshold of patience for such things, and the characters lost a lot of my sympathy right there.)

Mrs. Burley warms up to Janey after that and confides in her some of the reasons why she has been so unfriendly, trying to drive people away, and why the horse meant so much to her.  Years ago, she and her husband made quite a lot of money, raising racing horses.  Star is from the same bloodline as their original horses.  Mr. Burley lost quite a lot of their money on various business ventures that didn’t work out, even before the hotel fire that killed him, but for a long time, Mrs. Burley was always able to keep one horse from that bloodline, hoping to get at least one last racing horse.  Star is an excellent horse who really would have made a good racing horse, but Mrs. Burley’s hopes were destroyed when Star was injured.  Mrs. Burley thinks that she’s too old now to raise another, that she wouldn’t live to see any of Star’s offspring become racers.  Janey still thinks that Star has the potential to be a racer, but Mrs. Burley says that the effects of her injury won’t let her get the speed she once had.  Mrs. Burley resents outsiders hanging around because she fears their “interference” in her life, and the injury of Star while Aunt Viv was riding her seems to prove that her fears are justified.

Janey tries to talk to Mrs. Burley about the ghost dog, but she gets angry with Janey for believing the things that people have been saying about her.  Worse still, Roger tells her that Mrs. Burley will probably sell Star soon.  She needs money badly and has been refusing to let anybody help her, even her son in New York.  Her pride at her independence may be her undoing.  Now that Janey has ridden Star successfully, she can’t bear the thought that the horse might be sold and sent away.  If only she could unravel the mysteries surrounding the Burley family, the strange red light, and the ghost dog!

My Reaction and Spoiler

Toward the end of the story, one of the characters talks to Janey about Mrs. Burley’s attitude, saying that “it’s important in life to have something to fight for.  Something we care about and want.  I don’t mean fight for with our fists, but something to try for, struggle for.  Something we can do that uses whatever we are to win the fight.”  He means that people need a purpose in life, something like a cause to believe in or a way of life to pursue that is suited to their talents. Janey says that she doesn’t like struggles, but the person points out to her that everything in life that you want involves a struggle, including the horses Janey loves. Janey has focused mostly on the struggle of getting her parents to agree to let her have a horse and Mrs. Burley to agree to let her ride Star, but even if she ended up owning a horse, including Star, there would still be the struggle of caring for the horse, devoting time to keeping the horse happy and healthy. Janey might enjoy that kind of struggle because it appeals to her talents and interests, but it would still require time and sacrifice on her part. Mrs. Burley loves horses as much as Janey does, and she loves the area where she lives to the point where she can’t image living anywhere else. All of her efforts focus on allowing her to continue living in the place she loves, although she feels like her horse dreams are lost.

Much of the emphasis of the book is placed on Mrs. Burley’s determination to maintain her independence as part of the lifestyle she loves, but I wish that there was a little more emphasis on the methods that people use to get what they want in life because that is central to the secret of the “ghost.”  That the “ghost” isn’t really a ghost isn’t too much of a spoiler, but while people in the area think that Mrs. Burley is faking the ghost because she’s mentally unbalanced, the real culprit is someone who wants Mrs. Burley to leave because there’s something that he wants very badly and doesn’t think that he’ll get it otherwise.  Once his scheme is exposed, the others make sure that he doesn’t get what he wants because, after what he has done, he doesn’t deserve a reward.  However, I wish that they had explained a little more plainly that there were other ways of getting what he wanted besides the scheme he planned.  The culprit thinks that no one was listening to him and what he wanted, but from my perspective, what he wanted was simply a matter of time, and he wasn’t willing to wait.  His scheme would have ended with Mrs. Burley being declared mentally incompetent and being put away in a home, which is a cruel thing to do to someone.  The other characters tell him that, but I wanted someone to explain to him that harming others for his own benefit would make him no better than someone who robs a bank because they want money.  That is, crime and fraud are still wrong even if they succeed because the ends don’t justify the means.  In some ways, I think that Mrs. Burley was selfish, but she still didn’t deserve to be labeled as crazy, and even if people weren’t listening to the culprit and taking him seriously as much as they should, the scheme still wasn’t his only option. 

To say more would be to tell you who the culprit is, and it’s not as obvious as it might seem. It was one of my favorite suspects, but I changed my mind a few times, going back and forth between suspects up until the end. In the end, Mrs. Burley is prepared to forgive the culprit and start over again, and there are hints that he may get what he wants in the future if he behaves better.  Personally, I think he probably would have gotten it eventually, anyway, so his situation is relatively unchanged, although he is now under pressure to prove his behavior to everyone. 

As for Star, she does become Janey’s horse as a gift from the one person who is in a position to give the horse to her while making sure that Mrs. Burley gets the money she needs.  Because of Janey’s help in revealing the culprit to Mrs. Burley and because of her devotion to the horse, Mrs. Burley is fine with the arrangement.

Posted on by TracyC

The Secret of Stonehouse

Stonehouse

The Secret of Stonehouse by Lynn Hall, 1968.

Heather has lived her entire life (as far as she can remember) in Scotland with her grandmother and her uncle, Donald.  Donald has raised her since she was small.  He’s been like a father to her, and she loves him like a daughter.  However, he recently decided to move the two of them to the United States, taking them to a small town in Wisconsin.  Heather can’t understand the reason for the move, and for the first time in her life, it seems like Donald is keeping secrets from her.

Donald seems oddly concerned that Heather shouldn’t tell people that she is adopted, something that he’s never seemed concerned about before.  Heather has asked him about her parents before, but all he can tell her is that his wayward brother Ewen brought her to the family farm in Scotland, saying that she was his daughter and that her mother was dead.  Ewen simply left her with Donald, never trying to see her or talk to her again and never sending her any money. Heather also knows that, although says that he’s going out to search for a new job, he’s been hanging out in other places, spending time with the mysterious Mr. Worley.

Heather makes friends with a boy named Gus who lives nearby.  Gus lets her ride one of the horses that his family owns, Cloud, and invites her to go riding with him sometimes and participate in local riding events called “shodeos.”  Heather loves horses and enjoys their rides together.

On one of these rides, the two of them go near a large, old, stone mansion that gives Heather a strange feeling.  Gus’s family tells her the tragic story of the family who used to live there, the Selkirks.  They were wealthy, but young John Selkirk was killed in an accident the day that his beautiful young wife, Molly, gave birth to their only child, a little girl named Hebron.  John’s parents never recovered from the loss of their son and passed away soon after, leaving just Molly and the baby.  However, when Hebron was only three years old, she was apparently abducted for ransom and later murdered, and her mother died soon after.  The story makes Heather uneasy, and the house gives her a strange feeling, like she’s drawn to it.

However, other sinister things start happening.  Someone in a car that looks disturbingly like Donald’s tries to run her and Cloud off a bridge.  When Donald spends the night away from home “on business”, someone sneaks into the house.  Heather begins to realize that someone is out to get her, some mysterious person means her harm.  Memories, dangerous ones, are beginning to surface in Heather’s mind, and someone is determined to try to keep her from remembering.

Part of the mystery is pretty obvious (at least, I thought it was, and you might guess it from my plot description), but the part that I didn’t guess was who was behind it all.

Posted on by TracyC

The Turret

The Turret by Margery Sharp, 1963.

Miss Bianca has decided to resign as Madame Chairwoman of the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society.  She has never felt particularly drawn to public life, really preferring her quiet life as a pet of an Ambassador’s son (whom she always calls “the Boy”), keeping him company during his lessons and writing poetry in her spare time.  During the times when she is away from the Boy, undertaking rescue missions for the society, she knows that the Boy pines for her and worries about where she is.  She has started to feel a little guilty that she might be neglecting her Boy.

Bernard, the Secretary of the society, actually feels a little relieved by her decision to resign.  While he thought that she made a great chairwoman, he has always worried about the dangerous nature of their missions, afraid that something might happen to Miss Bianca.  (Miss Bianca is a little annoyed that he seems so eager for her to resign, and his comment that “you’re too beautiful to be allowed into deadly peril” makes a weirdly chauvinistic compliment – like it would be okay for her to risk her neck if she were ugly because it would be less of a loss? – but Miss Bianca takes it in the spirit in which it seems to be offered.)  The two of them reminisce about some of their past missions.  Bernard thinks that the worst villain they’ve faced was the head jailer in the Black Castle (from the first book in the series), but Miss Bianca thinks that the worst was Mandrake (from the last book) because the target of his cruelty was a defenseless child.

The society plans to throw a special dinner for Miss Bianca, and Miss Bianca suggests that she would like a picnic by water.  The ideal place for it would be the moat around an old tower outside of the city.  Miss Bianca enjoys the picnic and is fascinated by the crumbling old turret.  Then, she notices something white in the window.  Thinking that it’s a piece of litter, one of the mouse boy scouts goes to retrieve it.  It turns out to be a small piece of linen, and after the boy scout takes it, it’s replaced by another.  Miss Bianca comes to the conclusion that there is someone in the turret and that the person could be a prisoner, signaling for help.  When she studies the scrap of linen more closely, she also realizes that she knows who the prisoner is because it has the name Mandrake on it!

After the events of the previous book, the evil Duchess had Mandrake locked in the turret.  To Bernard, it sounds like a just punishment for Mandrake, but Miss Bianca feels a responsibility to rescue him, in the hope that he might reform.  However, Bernard is skeptical about that possibility, thinking that they would just be letting a criminal lose if they tried to free Mandrake, and Miss Bianca is unable to persuade the other members of the society to undertake the mission.

However, Miss Bianca is unable to give up on Mandrake and goes to see him in his turret. Mandrake is a shadow of his former self.  She introduces herself to him as a member of the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society, and it turns out that he’s heard about it from friends of his who have been in jail (having had many disreputable associations over the years).  In order to test how likely Mandrake would be to reform, Miss Bianca asks him what he would do if he were freed from captivity, and he says that he’d like to be a gardener at an orphanage.  He feels badly about the child slaves he helped to abuse while serving the Duchess, and he’d like to see children happy, making their garden a beautiful place.  Miss Bianca is satisfied with this and sets about planning his escape. (She’s free to undertake this mission because her Boy is having his tonsils out and won’t miss her for awhile.)

At first, Mandrake doesn’t know how people even bring him food, since his room in the turret doesn’t seem to have a door and food just seems to arrive during the night.  Miss Bianca stays up at night to see what happens and learns that there is a hidden staircase in the turret that his jailers use.  Before Mandrake can escape, though, he needs to be stronger because he’s badly under-nourished.  Miss Bianca recruits the mouse boy scouts to bring him vitamins to help make him healthier and tries to figure out how the secret passage works and think of some way to create a distraction so that Mandrake can escape.

Shaun, the leader of the boy scouts, helps her to come up with a plan.  (The book says that Shaun is half-Irish and thinks of himself as being a “handsome boy-o.”  Stereotypical.)  Shaun has figured out that the jailers watching Mandrake are actually grooms by trade, and he knows of a race horse, Sir Hector, who could provide a good distraction for them.  Miss Bianca approves of the plan and persuades Sir Hector to help them.

Meanwhile, the members of the Prisoners’ Aid Society are getting fed up with their strict new chairwoman, who only seems interested in forcing them to participate in group exercises.  Members are starting to avoid going to meetings, and worse still, someone suggests to Bernard that the bossy chairwoman particularly likes calling committee meetings because she’s in love with him and wants the excuse to see him. The thought horrifies Bernard, but he’s afraid to say anything to Miss Bianca because he doesn’t want her to feel obligated to try to become the chairwoman again in order to solve the society’s problems (or his), not knowing what she’s actually been up to in her free time.

In the end, everything works out well.  When Mandrake is rescued, he actually does become the gardener for an orphanage.  The members of the society find out Miss Bianca’s daring mission, undertaken with just a handful of boy scouts, and feel badly that they didn’t take part.  They complain to the new chairwoman that she was just wasting their time with exercises instead of real missions, and she resigns, saving Bernard from her attentions.  Miss Bianca does not return to the society as its chairwoman, but the next chairwoman is more competent.

This is the third book in the Rescuers series, and it is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Miss Bianca

Miss Bianca by Margery Sharp, 1962.

Miss Bianca is still a hero to the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society after the rescue of the Norwegian poet in the last book.  Bernard is a lesser hero, even though he was part of the mission, but such is the lot the organization’s Secretary.  Since the success of the rescue mission, the society is keen to perform another rescue, a deviation from the society’s usual role of merely providing comfort to prisoners.  The rescue mission that they have in mind this time is that of a little girl.  (The first Disney The Rescuers movie also featured the rescue of a little girl, but the circumstances in the book are very different.)

Patience is an eight-year-old orphan who has been abducted and enslaved by the Grand Duchess and is being held in her Diamond Palace.  The Grand Duchess is cruel, and some people think that she’s a witch.  Miss Bianca appeals to the Ladies’ Guild of the society to help free Patience.  The Ladies’ Guild doesn’t usually take part in the more exciting missions of the society.  The mice are somewhat concerned about what they will do with the child once they have rescued her because other prisoners they’ve helped have had homes to return to, but Miss Bianca assures them that they have a home in mind for the girl, a farm family in Happy Valley who have lost a daughter and would be likely to take in another girl.  The Ladies’ Guild agrees to undertake the mission.  Bernard wanted to come, too, but Miss Bianca insisted that they didn’t need his help.

The Diamond Palace is a strange place, in many different ways.  People often come to see it because it looks like it’s made out of diamonds, although it’s actually rock crystal.  It’s cold all the time, but even weirder than that, there seem to be less servants in the Palace than Miss Bianca would expect, given that the Duchess is always surrounded by ladies-in-waiting, who would be expected to have maids of their own.  It turns out that the “ladies-in-waiting” aren’t real people – they’re clockwork automatons! 

Rather than being a witch, the Duchess is simply an odious person who has so much money that she can give full reign to a nasty personality without anyone stopping her.  She’s so nasty and spoiled and used to forcing people to do what she wants that all of her previous, human ladies-in-waiting found that they just couldn’t handle her increasingly unreasonable demands, like insisting that they all stand perfectly still all day long while she sits on her throne, not even the slightest movement allowed.  No human being could possibly manage that.  When the human ladies-in-waiting all fainted after trying to keep perfectly still for forty-eight hours straight, the Duchess screamed that they all must have done it on purpose and dismissed them, replacing them with automatons.  The mechanical people are almost perfect because they always stand perfectly still until they’re needed and never complain or have human needs, but the Duchess discovers that they’re not quite perfect because there are some chores that they can’t do and she also misses seeing people react fearfully or start crying when she bullies them.  Keeping Patience as her slave gives the Duchess someone to do those chores and also someone to abuse.  The Duchess has had other child slaves before, but the others have died from the abuse, ill-nourishment, and general bad treatment.  (This is a darker story in a lot of ways from the Disney one.)

When Miss Bianca and the other mice meet Patience, she is also under-nourished and desperately lonely.  Miss Bianca sends the others back to the society to report about the automatons and stays with Patience to keep her company, trying to decide how to deal with the strange, mechanical people.  Bernard worries anxiously about Miss Bianca when the others come back without her and decides to go after her.

The Duchess’s other human servant, Mandrake, her Major-domo, is also little more than a slave.  The Duchess has evidence of a crime that he once committed and uses it to keep his loyalty.  Usually, he’s the only one who gets to go out the back door because he doesn’t trust Patience to take out the garbage without running away.  However, Patience tells Miss Bianca that the clockmaker sometimes comes in that way when he comes to wind up the mechanical ladies-in-waiting.  Miss Bianca hatches a plan that involves making the ladies-in-waiting break down.

However, to Miss Bianca’s surprise, the Duchess commands Mandrake and Patience to come with her to her hunting lodge when the ladies-in-waiting break down.  There is no opportunity for escape.  However, it turns out that the hunting lodge is actually above Happy Valley, and Bernard knows where it is.

Of course, they do get Patience safely to her new foster family.  Miss Bianca actually talks to the girl’s foster mother and tells her that Patience will probably forget about her eventually, when she grows up, but the foster mother likes the lullaby that Miss Bianca sings for Patience and promises to keep it as a family tradition.

The darker aspects of the story really bothered me, and I have to admit that I didn’t like it as well as the Disney version.  Mandrake actually reappears in another book in the series.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The Goggles

Goggles

The Goggles by Ezra Jack Keats, 1969.

Peter and his best friend, Archie, live in a big city (probably New York City), and they often play in empty lots between the apartment buildings.  One day, Peter and Archie are playing in a lot filled with old, discarded junk, when Peter finds a special prize: a pair of motorcycle goggles!

GogglesFinding

The boys have fun playing with the goggles, but then they’re spotted by a gang of bigger boys.  The bigger boys try to make Peter give them the goggles, one of them even knocking him to the ground when he attempts to take them.

GogglesBullies

Peter’s dog, Willie, runs off with the goggles, and the boys split up to get away from the bullies, meeting back at their “hideout” in the vacant lot.

GogglesRunning

However, the big boys are still looking for Willie and the goggles.  What can Peter and Archie do to get rid of them?

GogglesTrick
Posted on by TracyC

Peter’s Chair

Peter’s Chair by Ezra Jack Keats, 1967.

There is a new baby in Peter’s family, his little sister, Susie, and things are changing for Peter.  He is no longer the baby of the family.  He must play quietly to avoid disturbing the baby, and his father is painting all of his old, blue baby furniture pink for little Susie.

Peter feels badly, seeing the baby getting all of his old things.  Spotting his old baby chair, which hasn’t been painted yet, Peter runs off with it, taking along some of his other old things.

However, what Peter eventually realizes is that he has grown too big to fit into his old chair.  Nobody stays a baby forever, and Peter’s old baby things are of no use to him anymore.

Seeing that he is out-growing these old baby things helps Peter to be willing to let go of them and help his father repaint them for his little sister.

This is a cute story about change and growing up and the worries that children sometimes have about their siblings taking their place in the family. The art style of the book is also interesting because it includes pieces of patterned or textured paper for things like wallpaper, people’s clothing, the newspapers under the furniture being painted, and the baby’s lacy blanket. Other books by the same author also use this technique, such as Jennie’s Hat.

Posted on by TracyC

The Snowy Day

SnowyDay

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, 1962.

This is a pleasant, slice-of-life story about the fun and wonder of a snowy day for young children.

A young boy named Peter wakes up on a winter morning to discover that it snowed during the night.

SnowyDayMorning

Peter hurries out into the snow, experiencing all of the fun it has to offer.  He studies the footprints that he makes in the snow and uses a stick to make marks in the snow and knock snow off of tree branches.  He’s still too little to join in the snowball fight that the big boys have, but he has fun making a snowman and snow angels.

SnowyDayAngels

The snow is so much fun that Peter makes a snowball amd put it in his pocket to save for later.  Of course, the snowball in his pocket doesn’t last, and he worries that the snow outside will disappear as well, but there is even more snow the next day.  He gets a friend of his to come outside and join him in the fun.

SnowyDaySnowball

It’s a simple, sweet story about one of the simple pleasures in life and one boy’s discovery of the wonders of snow. It would make a nice, calm bedtime story for young children.

SnowyDayFriend

This book is also a Caldecott award winner, and it is noted for being one of the first children’s books to feature a black main character.  Peter’s race is never mentioned in the text and is not directly a part of the story, but it is shown in the pictures.  Really, I think that’s part of what makes the book so great; although the book was considered ground-breaking for representing minorities, it does so in a way that’s completely relatable because his story could really happen to just about any child.

Posted on by TracyC

The Dancing Goat

The Dancing Goat by Bonnie Book, 1966.

Mimi is a good little goat who lives with a poor farmer and his wife.  They like her and take good care of her, and in return, she provides them with milk that they sell to help make their living.  However, things change for Mimi when she happens to see a circus parade with a dancing dog.  From that moment on, all Mimi wants to do is to dance!

It wouldn’t matter so much except that Mimi develops a bad habit of dancing when the farmer is trying to milk her, spilling the milk.  Eventually, the farmer concludes that he can no longer afford to keep Mimi, even though he and his wife don’t really want to part with her.  Mimi is upset at the thought of losing her home, and when the farmer takes her to the market to sell her, she starts to cry.

The people at the market don’t want to buy a crying goat and think that something is wrong with Mimi.  To cover up the noise of Mimi crying, the farmer starts to blow a tune on his comb.  Hearing the music, Mimi starts to dance again.

To the farmer’s surprise, everyone in the market loves Mimi the Dancing Goat, and they throw coins.  With the money that Mimi makes with her dancing, the farmer can now only afford to keep her but buy other livestock as well.  From then on, the farmer regularly takes Mimi to the market to show off her dancing and earn some extra money.  He plans to buy another goat to keep Mimi company, and he hopes that the new goat turns out to be a dancer, too!

I usually don’t like “animal almost loses their home” type stories because I always feel too sorry for the poor little animal, but the risk in this story is over pretty quickly, which helps. It also helped that the farmer and his wife genuinely liked Mimi and were only going to part with her reluctantly, so it wasn’t difficult for the farmer to change his mind as soon as Mimi showed that she could bring in money to help earn her keep.

Posted on by TracyC

The Cookie Tree

CookieTree

The Cookie Tree by Jay Williams, 1967.

Owlgate is a very orderly little village.  Everything has a purpose and a place, and nothing unexpected happens . . . until the day the cookie tree appears in the middle of town.  The tree is silver and gold and has chocolate cookies.

CookieTreeOwlgate

A girl named Meg notices it first, but her parents refuse to allow her to pick a cookie from the tree because they’re worried about where it came from. For all they know, the cookies could be poisonous!  Meg’s father gets the mayor to come look at the tree.

CookieTreeTownspeople

Eventually, everyone in town comes out to see the tree.  The miller thinks that the whole thing is probably a big joke, but most of the other adults are worried because it’s weird.  Some of them think maybe it’s some kind of bad omen.  Little Meg’s theory is that a magician sent it as a present for the village, just to give them cookies.  However, the adults reject that explanation, saying that it doesn’t make sense and they don’t any reason see why a magician would send them a cookie tree.

The mayor consults with the Village Councillors, but they don’t accomplish much other than to establish that there are indeed chocolate cookies growing on the tree when one of them samples a cookie.  The adults argue back and forth about what to do about the tree, but by the time they come up with a plan, the tree has vanished!

CookieTreeDebate

While the adults’ backs were turned, the children of the village ate all the cookies, and once the cookies were gone, the tree disappeared.  Apparently, Meg’s theory about the magician sending the tree just to give them cookies was correct.

One of the things that people sometimes praise children for doing is seeing things for what they are. Adults have a tendency to over-analyze things, looking for hidden meanings that may or may not exist. Sometimes, things really are just what they appear to be, and over-analyzing just confuses the issue. It can be like that with children’s books. Adults worry about every little thing in stories and possible messages being sent to children, but when people start over-analyzing stories, they can find themselves making up hidden messages and reading things into stories that aren’t really there.  Sometimes, stories and other things are just for fun, and you might as well simply enjoy them for what they are!

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.