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Mystery of the Angry Idol

Mystery of the Angry Idol by Phyllis A. Whitney, 1965.

Janice Pendleton is sad and nervous because the rest of her family will be moving overseas for at least a year, and she is staying in the United States to go to school. Her father is a consultant to the government, and his latest assignment is in Saigon in Vietnam. (This book is set contemporary to the time when it was written, in the 1960s. The Vietnam War lasted from 1955 to 1975, which is probably why Jan’s father is going there, although he is going as some kind of government consultant instead of an ordinary soldier. This book was written after the Bay of Pigs Invasion and President Johnson’s continuing escalation of the conflict in Vietnam.) However, things are dangerous in Saigon, so Jan’s mother and younger brothers, a pair of twins, will be living in Okinawa, Japan, so her father will able to visit them sometimes. (There’s a US Air Force base in Okinawa, Japan, and I know it existed and was in operation during the 1960s because, coincidentally, my older cousin was born there while my uncle was stationed in Japan in the 1960s. The book doesn’t mention this, but I thought I’d tell you that there’s an American presence there, including civilian relatives of military personnel, so Jan’s mother and brothers will likely be among other Americans during their stay there.) Twelve-year-old Jan could have gone to Japan with them, but she is much more advanced in school than her young brothers. They are so young than their education won’t be disrupted much by living in another country for a year or two, but Jan is older, and her family was worried about her losing her place in school.

Instead of going to Japan, Jan will be living with her grandmother and great-grandmother in Mystic, Connecticut and attending school there while her family is gone. It’s summer now, so until school starts, she will be spending her time adjusting to her new living situation and getting to know her relatives. Jan doesn’t know her grandmother very well, and she’s never even met her great-grandmother before. At least when she’s with them, she will be with family. However, her grandmother is a little worried about her great-grandmother’s health. Great-grandmother Althea doesn’t really leave her upstairs rooms anymore, and although she was much more lively and interested in people when she was younger, she doesn’t seem to have much stamina for meeting and talking to people these days. Jan is told that she will have to be careful and behave herself because, if she upsets her great-grandmother too much, she won’t be allowed to stay with them in Connecticut anymore. Instead, she would have to attend a boarding school in Boston. If she goes to Boston, she will be there alone, without any friends and family nearby, and she is nervous about that. She already knows that, by going to Connecticut, she will be removed from her parents and siblings and her friends in California, where she grew up.

To help her feel better, her father tells her more about her family’s history and great-grandmother Althea. When she was younger, Althea traveled through Asia because her father, Jan’s great-great-grandfather, was a merchant dealing in Asian art. (This is very similar to what the author’s father did for a living and why she spent most of her youth in Asia. More about that below.) Althea spent years living in China with her parents while her father bought and commissioned pieces of Chinese art and sculpture that he could sell and collect for himself. However, after her mother died, Althea was sent to a boarding school in Boston. Her father was later killed during the Boxer Rebellion. Althea was in China at the time when they realized that trouble was coming. She survived and escaped to the United States because her father sent her to stay with some friends of his. She took some of the smaller pieces from his collection with her.

Now, Great-grandmother Althea has an impressive collection of Asian art herself, including some of the pieces that she managed to smuggle out of China when she had to flee. There is one piece in her collection that seems particularly mysterious, an ugly statue in the style of a Chinese idol that she keeps turned to the wall. (The “idol” was never used as an object of worship, for those worried that Althea’s father may have looted a temple or appropriated a Chinese national treasure of some kind. Althea says that one of his artist friends made the statue specifically for him. It’s important to the story that it is in the style of an idol but that it is also genuinely ugly and of little intrinsic value.) Jan’s father implies that there is some kind of mystery surrounding that statue, but he doesn’t really explain what it is. Jan’s father worries a little about Althea because she always used to be such a lively woman, and he says that, in her old age, she has become a kind of hermit who has shut herself away from the world and lives like a “vegetable.” He hopes that Jan’s youthful presence in the house will help her become more interested in life again, although Jan doesn’t see how that can happen when she risks being sent away to boarding school if she “bothers” Althea too much.

When Jan arrives in Connecticut, everything is awkward because she doesn’t get her own room in the house. Instead, she has to sleep on a cot in the living room. Her great-grandmother doesn’t even want to see her right away. There is a storm that night, and Jan has trouble sleeping. The next day, she sees a neighbor boy outside and decides to try making friends with him because she really needs someone her own age to talk to. The boy, Neil, doesn’t seem entirely friendly, but he does talk to her down by the nearby boat dock. He tells her that, the night before, he noticed a strange, suspicious-looking man hanging around her family’s house, and he wonders if anything from the house was stolen. Jan says that she doesn’t think so and that she didn’t hear anyone come in, but because of the noise from the storm, it’s hard to say for sure if someone tried to get into the house. Neil points out that the mysterious stranger is still hanging around the house, and Jan sees a man with a beard hanging around nearby.

Their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of a boy in a boat. Neil and the boy in the boat don’t seem to like each other, and the boy in the boat seems to immediately resent Jan for talking to Neil. He tells her that she’d better not try to get into his boat because Neil tried to get in uninvited earlier. Jan is insulted by this rude boy and returns to her relatives’ house. There, she learns two surprising things. The first is that the boy with the boat, Patrick, is actually the son of Mrs. Marshall, the housekeeper, so they will be seeing a lot of each other. Jan’s grandmother had hoped that Jan and Patrick would be friends. (So far, they haven’t gotten off to a good start.) The second is that it looks like something may have been stolen from the house last night. The mysterious statue is missing. Jan tells her grandmother and Patrick about the strange man that she saw and what Neil said. Her grandmother has trouble believing that a theft really occurred. She thinks that great-grandmother Althea may have just moved the statue and forgotten, but Patrick is interested in the mysterious man.

When Jan goes upstairs to meet her great-grandmother for the first time, she discovers that Althea is not the “vegetable” that she’s been lead to expect. Althea is physically feeble and stays upstairs because her knees are bad and can’t handle stairs anymore. However, she is mentally sharp and highly observant. She talks to Jan about her family’s past and her own past. She understands that Jan didn’t really want to come to Mystic and be separated from her family, but her father wanted her to come and learn more about her family’s history. Althea explains that she spent a large part of her youth living in Shanghai until her mother’s death, when her father sent her to a school in Boston, and she really hated it. This is reassuring because Althea is less likely to send Jan away, remembering her own youth.

Althea also explains that she isn’t unhappy with her relatively isolated life in the upper rooms of the house, surrounded by the pieces of Asian art in her collection. She says that it’s just another phase of life. Life moves in phases, and a person knows when they’re ready for the next phase. When she was a little girl, she loved paper dolls and couldn’t imagine life without them, but as she got older, playing with paper dolls became dull, and she was ready for new activities. Similarly, when she was young and active, she couldn’t imagine a life without travel and meeting other people. Now that she can’t get around as well as she used to, she has entered a new phase of life where she enjoys quiet time alone and thinking and remembering. She is still somewhat in touch with the world because her rooms have a nice view of the Mystic Seaport, but she no longer has to deal with crowds and traffic and bothersome household chores and schedules. Jan is still young and active, so she has trouble fully understanding Althea’s isolated life of reflection, but Althea says that she will understand someday, when she’s ready for that phase herself.

Jan is interested in the objects in Althea’s collection, and Althea shows her some pieces and explains a little about their history. There are some pieces of scrimshaw that Jan’s great-grandfather carved himself, like a carving of a woman’s hand that Althea says was originally meant as a paperweight but which she had mounted on the head of one of her canes. Her other cane has a carved cat. Althea also owns a chess board with red and white pieces made of ivory and cinnabar, with the figures carved in an Asian style. Jan notices an empty shelf in the room and wonders if that’s where the missing statue is supposed to be.

While Jan and her grandmother are standing on an upper porch, looking at the view, they look down and see the mysterious man talking to Mrs. Marshall, who seems worried and upset. Mrs. Marshall and the man notice that they’re being watched, and the man waves to Althea and greets her. Even though the greeting is friendly, the man seems to upset Althea. When Jan asks about him and tells Althea what Neil said, Althea says that the man’s name is Eddie. She loved Eddie when he was a little boy, but she thinks he’s become a scoundrel. She says that Eddie came to see her the night before, but she didn’t want to see him and sent him away. Althea thinks he probably took the missing Chinese idol, but she also says that she always hated that statue. It had such a reproachful expression on its face that she turned it to the wall so she wouldn’t have to see it. Rather than dealing with Eddie or discussing the situation further, Althea says that she would rather just forget about it all.

Jan spends more time with Althea, until Althea gets tired. Althea shows Jan other pieces from her father’s collection of jade objects, explaining the different colors of jade and their relative values and the connections the pieces in the collection have to Chinese folklore and mythology. She says that her daughter-in-law, Jan’s grandmother, worries about robbers breaking into the house to steal these things, but Althea prefers to keep her collection close rather than locked away somewhere. The pieces in the collection bring back happy memories for her.

Jan’s grandmother owns a book store in a local historical district. When Jan goes to see the book store, her grandmother allows her to explore the area and tells her to be sure to visit Patrick’s grandfather at the rope walk (the place where they make rope). Jan goes there and encounters Eddie again. Eddie seems to want to speak to her, but Jan is afraid of him and avoids him. Grandfather Marshall had just been arguing with Eddie, and he’s in a bad mood when Jan darts inside. At first, he snaps at her when she rushes in. When Jan introduces herself and explains that she was startled by Eddie, Grandfather Marshall calms down and apologizes for snapping at her. Jan tries to ask him more about Eddie, but all he says is that he doesn’t want to talk to him, and he advises her to keep avoiding him. He shows her around the rope walk and explains to her how rope is made, and he also shows her a model ship he’s making for Althea that looks like the sailboat her husband used to own called the Happy Heart.

On her way back to her grandmother’s book store, Jan meets Eddie again. He explains to her that he’s actually Patrick’s older brother and the black sheep of their family. He also used to be friends with Jan’s father when they were both young, although Jan’s father was older than he was. Eddie badly wants to communicate with Patrick. He asks Jan if she’ll take a message to Patrick for him, and he hands her a note, leaving quickly before she can say anything. Jan shows the note to her grandmother and asks her what she should do about it. Without going into specifics, Jan’s grandmother says that Eddie was always a wild child, and years ago, he did something that was very scandalous, and he had to leave town. That’s why most people in town don’t want to see him or talk about him in public, although there’s been plenty of private gossip about what he did. The Marshalls have been friends with the Pendletons for years, and Jan’s grandmother thinks that it’s probably time to forgive and forget what Eddie did, which is why she doesn’t want to pass on gossip about him and make things harder for him and his family. She tells Jan that it’s fine to give Patrick the note from Eddie.

Jan’s delivery of the note thaws her relationship with Patrick a little, and he gives her a ride back across the river to her family’s home in his boat. There, Mrs. Marshall tells Jan that, because her meeting with her great-grandmother went well, Althea has decided that she can be trusted, so she will now have a room upstairs in the house. Jan just needs to be quiet whenever she’s upstairs because Althea likes to nap. Jan begins to feel a little more at home and less like an awkward visitor.

However, strange things are still happening in and around the house. Eddie is still lurking around, and nobody wants to tell Jan what he did to turn himself into such a black sheep. She overhears a late night conversation between Althea and Eddie where the two of them seem to be discussing secrets and playing cat and mouse with each other. Yet, Althea gives Eddie a job doing yard work and seems to be trying to help him redeem himself. He returns the statue that Althea never liked but seems to take other things. Althea tries to send him away when he causes problems, but he insists on hanging around and claims that he’s trying to help Althea. Like others, he believes that there is a secret behind the ugly statue that seems to make Althea nervous, although Althea doesn’t think that the statue contains any real mystery.

As Jan struggles to understand what’s happening around her, she risks getting on the bad side of the reclusive and temperamental Althea just as her great-grandmother seems like she’s becoming fond of her. The Pendleton house isn’t entirely a happy one, and the reasons why are buried in Althea’s past as well as Eddie’s. The clues have been right in front of Althea the entire time, but although Althea is intelligent and thinks she understands everything, there’s something critical that she’s overlooked all along, which changes everything.

My Reaction and Spoilers

Background of the Book

Many of the themes of Phyllis A. Whitney‘s juvenile mysteries come from her own life. When she was young, she lived with her family in Japan and other countries in Asia because her own father was working overseas. She was born in Japan, and her middle initial stands for Ayame (the Japanese form of the name Iris). Whitney’s parents were American, but she didn’t live in the United States until she was a teenager. Both of her parents died while she was a teenager, and she went to live with an aunt in Chicago, so she understood the feelings that kids could have, moving around, living in different countries, being separated from parents, and living with relatives. Because of her upbringing in Asia, many of her books, even those set in the United States, include some mention or aspects of Asian art or culture, especially Japan.

I think both Jan and Althea are reflections of the author and her life. They both share some aspects of their lives with the author, but Jan is probably more like the author in her youth, and Althea is the older version, looking back on her life and remembering what it was like to be young with the knowledge of what it’s like to be old.

The Atmosphere

I really liked the atmosphere of the story! It’s a lovely, old-fashioned house. Althea’s museum-like collection room is fascinating, and the room that she gives to Jan is cozy. Jan’s upstairs room has rosebud wallpaper and a four-poster bed and rocking chair. The room is a little worn and shabby, but Jan loves it. Her grandmother gives her milk and gingerbread on a china plate decorated with violets as a bedtime snack, and she reads old-fashioned children’s books, like A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Jan doesn’t usually read older children’s books, but there’s a collection of them in the house, left by the generations of children in her family who had grown up there.

Relationships

When Jan first meets Neil and Patrick, she realizes that neither of them is really the ideal friend for her. She continues to associate with them partly because she can’t help it. They’re both always around because Patrick’s mother is the housekeeper at Jan’s relatives’ house, and Neil’s family lives next door. Also, Jan doesn’t have anyone else her own age to talk to, although she is realistic and thinks that she should look for other friends in this town because both of the boys are difficult in different ways. Patrick is impulsive and temperamental (a bit like his grandfather the day Jan meets him – snapping at her just because he’s in a bad mood at someone else), and he has a chip on his shoulder because of his brother’s troubles.

However, Neil is even more temperamental. Jan quickly notices how Neil’s mood can abruptly shift from pleasant to irritable and how he doesn’t seem to have much compassion for other people. She later realizes that he’s most charming when he wants something from her or someone else. Neil’s ambition in life is to be a radio interviewer. His uncle is a radio announcer and has encouraged Neil’s ambition. Neil’s hobby is interviewing people and recording his interviews for practice. Some of his teachers have found his interviews fascinating and have played them in class because, while he has never interviewed anyone famous, Neil has interviewed people who have done some really interesting things, like the janitor who was once a prisoner of war during WWII. Neil’s also a little sensitive about his interviews because his father doesn’t think much about his ambitions and would rather that Neil go into his business when he grows up, and sometimes, other kids tease him. Part of the reason why Neil is interested in being friends with Jan is that he would love to interview her great-grandmother because she had a fascinating early life in China. He is also aware that there is some secret about the angry-looking idol in her collection, which she has always felt compelled to keep even though she doesn’t like it. Neil is obsessed with his life’s ambition and is willing to do just about anything to promote it. He also has a chip on his shoulder toward Patrick and Eddie and others who have made fun of what’s important to him and tried to discourage him from doing what he wants to do.

In the end, as Jan comes to know the two boys better and both confronts them over their behavior and helps them through the troubling situations they have, the relationships between the three of them improve. After everything that happens, they all come to realize that each of them has done something wrong or misjudged someone else. This doesn’t completely absolve any of them from things they’ve done because some of them could have had serious consequences for other people as well as themselves. There are things that each of them has to do to make things right, but because each of them has something they need to do to fix things, something to learn, or something they need to apologize for, they realize that they are willing to let each other make amends and to accept each other’s efforts to change. These feelings also extend to others in the story, especially Althea and Eddie. Everyone in the story has misjudged someone or the situation, and everyone has something they need to learn, understand, and change.

Happiness and Redemption

Themes about happiness and redemption run all the way through the story. Eddie’s part of the story focuses on redemption. Part of his troubles are of his own making, but Jan learns that he’s also been falsely accused and badly misjudged. Like others in his family, he has a quick temper and needs more impulse control, and he used to be pretty wild and hung out with a bad crowd. What others know about him and are initially reluctant to tell Jan is that Eddie went to prison for being involved in a robbery and is now out on parole. However, as both Patrick and Eddie explain, Eddie wasn’t actually involved in the robbery. Some of the friends he used to hang out with did it, and they implicated him out of spite when they got caught because he refused to go along with their plan. Althea believed him when he said he didn’t do the robbery and paid for his legal defense, but he was convicted anyway because of his history with the people who committed the crime and because witnesses misidentified him as one of the people who was there.

Althea still doesn’t really believe Eddie was involved in the robbery, but she does know that he causes trouble because he lacks self-control and has lingering resentment about the way people look at him because of the trouble he’s been in. Eddie later says that he’s unfriendly to other people because they’re not friendly with him, although I think it’s fair to point out that people believe badly of him because he’s lived the kind of life where everything he’s been accused of doing are completely credible. That means that, even before he was falsely accused of robbery, the way he lived and the way he treated other people made almost everyone he knows in his home town willing to believe that he was a criminal. There seem to have been significant lifestyle and behavioral choices on Eddie’s part that created his bad boy image and led up to this situation. He may not look at it this way, but he kind of set himself up almost as much as his supposed friends did because of the choices he made with his life, his choice of friends, and his neglect of people who once might have believed in him. Even his own parents believe the worst of him at the beginning of the story, and the way he’s been acting ever since he reappeared in Mystic supports the view that he’s still the kind of person he used to be and people think he is.

As my grandfather used to say, it’s easier to keep a good reputation than to redeem a bad one. It’s not impossible to redeem a bad reputation, but it takes both work and time, and Eddie doesn’t have much patience with the people whose patience he’s already exhausted. He’s only just reappeared in town, but he’s already angry that people are looking at him suspiciously for just showing up. He’s upset that other people aren’t giving him a chance or instant forgiveness and acceptance, but at the same time, he really isn’t giving them much of a chance to see that he’s changed or giving himself enough time to demonstrate that change. Fortunately, some people, like Jan’s grandmother, are willing to drop the matter and give Eddie the chance to prove that he’s changed, and Althea tries to help Eddie by giving him jobs and letting him stay with them in the house for a while.

For a while, Eddie tries to prove that he’s a hard worker and a steady person, but, when Eddie loses his temper with Neil for carelessly wrecking his yard work while trying to catch his runaway dog and turns the garden hose on Neil, Miss Althea starts to think that she’s made a mistake. She craves peace and solitude, and Eddie is one disaster and temper explosion after another. At one point, she tries to send him away, telling him that it would be easier for him to start over somewhere else, where people don’t know his history, and he can cultivate a completely new life and image. Eddie moves out of her house, but he refuses to leave town. He has another job now, thanks to Althea’s recommendation, and he refuses to leave town as if he’s in disgrace when he hasn’t done anything wrong. I didn’t really like Eddie, particularly in the beginning, because he doesn’t really see the way he has made his own reputation and provoked other people, but I think his redeeming characteristics are his determination and perseverance. His attempts to change his reputation are clumsy and impatient. I think he expects too much of other people too soon as he tries to rebuild his relationships with the people he’s offended and pushed away before, but I appreciate that he still cares enough to keep trying until he gets it right.

In facing up to the situation with Eddie and with Jan’s clumsy efforts to figure out what’s going on and make things right, Althea also comes to some realizations about herself and the way she’s been living. Enjoying some solitude and a slower pace of life is fine as a person gets older, but Althea comes to the realization that the way she’s been going about it has been selfish and has cut her off from the people around her. She is out of touch with the lives of people who were once close to her and has failed to understand them and appreciate what they’re going through because of her determination to avoid becoming involved with other people’s problems or deal with anything unpleasant.

The reason why she doesn’t like the ugly statue is because her father carved a message in the back of it, telling her to find a “happy heart.” The theme of happiness used to be one of her father’s favorite topics of discussion when he was alive, and he often lectured her on how to be happy. Althea never liked it when he would lecture that happiness is based on the way a person lives and the choices they make, pointing out times when her own choices or priorities were making her unhappy. She always thought that her father sent her that ugly statue with the “happy heart” message before his death because he wanted to tell her, yet again, to be happy, and she felt like the statue’s ugly snarl was like a rebuke every time she wasn’t happy or made bad decisions. Being lectured and rebuked doesn’t make a person feel good when they’re already feeling bad, as Eddie knows from his experiences. However, Jan and Althea both come to realize that Althea has misunderstood her father’s message and intentions on multiple levels for most of her life.

Althea gets extremely upset one day when Jan says that someone tried to steal one of her most precious jade statues. At first, Jan’s grandmother thinks that Jan’s imagination is running away with her and that her presence in the house is too disturbing for Althea to handle, talking again about sending Jan to boarding school, but Althea later explains that Jan isn’t the reason why she’s upset. She’s upset with herself. She realizes that Jan was wrong about the person taking the statue because she herself had given the statue to Eddie, telling him to sell it to get money to start over somewhere else. However, part of the reason Eddie wants to stay in town is to help Althea, to pay her back for paying his legal bills when he was in trouble. When she sees that either Eddie or Patrick returned the statue because Eddie cares more about struggling to restore his reputation and relationships than about money, she feels terrible that she tried to bribe Eddie to leave out of her own selfish desires.

Happiness and peace of mind can’t be bought, either with money or precious objects, and it doesn’t come from avoiding the parts of life that are unpleasant. Happiness comes from embracing life, all of it, even the parts that are hard, and from maintaining meaningful relationships with people you love, even through their struggles. You have to take the bad with the good to experience life fully. Once Althea comes to these revelations about the life that she’s been living and the life she really wants to live, she feels the peace of mind she’s been seeking and no longer fears the gaze of the statue or the rebukes that she thought that her father was giving her through the statue. Her life doesn’t have to be perfect, every choice she makes doesn’t have to be perfect, other people don’t have to be perfect, and her happiness doesn’t have to be perfect and constant for it to be real happiness. However, there are a couple of other mysteries surrounding the story that Jan manages to clear up, including the fact that Althea’s father had something else in mind with his last message. Althea was so sure she knew what her father was telling her that she didn’t look deeper, but Jan does and discovers the treasure that Althea has been ignoring the whole time.

Posted on by TracyC · 8 Comments

Clifford Takes a Trip

Clifford

Clifford Takes a Trip by Norman Bridwell, 1966.

Emily Elizabeth and her parents don’t usually take long trips during the summer because it’s too difficult to bring Clifford along. He’s just too big to go on trains or buses. One summer, Emily Elizabeth’s parents decide to go camping in the mountains. They can’t take Clifford, so they leave him behind with a neighbor.

However, Clifford misses Emily Elizabeth too much, so he decides to go find her! A gigantic red dog can create a lot of chaos on a cross-country trip.

Along the way, he does help a man with a broken-down grocery truck, and the man is grateful enough to feed him.

He also arrives at the family’s campsite just in time to save Emily Elizabeth after she thought it would be fun to play with some baby bears she found.

The family considers that next year, they may find a way to take Clifford with them somewhere else.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including one in Spanish).

My Reaction

Like all Clifford books, the humor is based around Clifford’s enormous size. Even though the family thought that it would be too far for Clifford to walk to come to the mountains with them, he tracks them down there anyway. Then, after he rejoins his family, he sleeps with Emily Elizabeth, his ear propped up to be her tent. The idea they’re considering next for transporting Clifford is a flat-bed truck. I could well imagine my own dog trying to track me down if I went on vacation without her, but fortunately, when your dog is about the same size as Toto in the Wizard of Oz, traveling with a dog isn’t as difficult.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

The Bobbsey Twins’ Adventure in the Country

Bobbsey Twins

The Bobbsey Twins’ Adventure in the Country by Laura Lee Hope,1907, 1961.

Before I explain the plot of this story, I have to explain that this is one of the early Bobbsey Twins books, originally published in the early 20th century, and like other Stratemeyer Syndicate books that were still in print during the mid-20th century, it was revised from its original form to update the language, culture, and technology in the story and, especially, to remove questionable racial terms and caricatures. The physical copy of the book I read as a kid was the revised version, and I didn’t know about the revisions until I was an adult. When I describe the plot at first, I’m talking about the revised version, but I’m also going to explain some of the differences between the original version and the revised version, so you can see what changed.

The two sets of Bobbsey Twins (Nan and Bert are the elder set of twins and Freddie and Flossie are the younger set) are enjoying their summer vacation at home when their mother receives an invitation for the family to visit the children’s aunt and uncle on their farm and to attend an auction that will be held somewhere nearby. The aunt says that there is something that will be sold at the auction that she thinks will interest the family, but the adults are keeping it as a surprise. The children are excited because they like visiting the farm, and they’ve never been to an auction before.

Mr. Bobbsey has to work at his lumber yard, so the children and their mother take the train to the farm ahead of him, accompanied by their cook/housekeeper, Dinah. (Dinah is black and is a recurring character in the series. The book refers to her as “colored.”) The train trip is a bit chaotic because they nearly forgot to bring their packed lunch, and then, Fred’s cat escapes from its carrier and is nearly left behind when they reach their destination. However, they do get there safely.

At the farm, the children enjoy seeing their cousin, Harry, and visiting all the animals. Freddie loses one of the calves when he tries to take it for a walk, like it’s a dog, and at first, the children fear that it fell in the river and drowned. Fortunately, someone from a nearby farm finds the calf and brings it home. These unrelated misadventures are just the beginning of the children’s summer because there is a mystery that seems to be unfolding at the farm.

On their first night at the farm, Flossie wakes up in the middle of the night because she hears someone playing the piano. She wakes Nan, and the two of them go downstairs, but by the time they get there, whoever was playing the piano is gone. At first, the children’s uncle thinks that it was just a dream, but Nan knows that it wasn’t because a piece of sheet music was knocked off the piano. Later, when they hear the piano at night again, there are smudges on the keys.

The auction is fun. The children each have a little money to buy something small for themselves, just for the experience of bidding on something at an auction. They all find something to buy, and some of the things they find are funny and eclectic. The mystery object that their mother is there to buy is a pony and cart. A neighbor of the aunt and uncle had a pony and cart that his grandchildren used, but they’ve moved away, and the Bobbseys have decided to buy it for their children. The twins’ aunt and uncle are willing to keep them at their farm because they can’t have a pony in the city, and their cousin can use them when the twins aren’t there. The children love the pony, and they have fun with him and the cart with some other kids. However, when they return to the farm after they auction, they discover that the family’s prize bull has been stolen!

The story is somewhat episodic, but there is a thread of mystery that runs through the whole book as the children try to find the missing bull. There’s a boy from New York City who was lost from a group heading to a nearby Fresh Air Camp (part of a charity that has existed since the 19th century to provide poor city children with enriching summer experiences in the countryside – I referred to it before in another vintage children’s book, Ruth Fielding at Sunrise Farm) who witnessed the theft but didn’t realize that the men he saw didn’t own the bull. There’s a Fourth of July celebration and a picnic with other kids, including a local bully. There is some real danger, where Flossie falls over the edge of a cliff and has to be rescued, and the family has to evacuate the farm temporarily when they fear that a nearby dam might break after a fierce storm. Along the way, the Bobbsey twins gather pieces of information that help them find the missing bull.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). The original edition of the book is public domain and available online through Project Gutenberg.

My Reaction

The Mystery

The mysteries in the story are pretty simple. The story is pretty episodic, and the nighttime piano-playing is unrelated to the theft of the bull. The reasons for that are partly related to the way the book was written in the original version. Originally, the book was more of a general collection of stories about how the Bobbsey Twins spend their summer on their aunt and uncle’s farm and have little adventures there, and it wasn’t really a mystery story. One of the features of Stratemeyer Syndicate books is that chapters are always supposed to end on cliffhangers to keep the stories exciting and encourage children to keep reading. That format lends itself well to the mystery genre, which is why some Stratemeyer series that originally started as more general fiction or adventure gradually evolved into mysteries, but some of the early books, like this one, kind of end up being somewhere between mystery and general fiction and read almost like collections of shorter, interrelated stories.

The theft of the bull didn’t occur at all in the original story, but there was a thread through the book about the piano playing at night. In both the new and the old versions, they eventually find out why, but there are different explanations between the versions. In both versions, the nighttime piano player is an animal, not a human.

Original Version vs. Revised

Like other Stratemeyer Syndicate books that were in print in the mid-20th century, the early Bobbsey Twins books were revised and reprinted around the time of the Civil Rights Movement, both to update the technology and slang in the stories and to remove inappropriate racial language. The 1960s edition of the book uses the word “colored” to refer to the housekeeper/cook who works for the Bobbsey family and her husband, which was an acceptable term in the early and mid-20th century (as in The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP), but the word “black” became the common accepted informal, generic term and “African American” became the accepted formal, specific term post-Civil Rights Movement because people were trying to distance themselves from racial words that, while they were not meant to be derogatory, had some emotional baggage attached to them. In the case of this particular book, the changes from the original version to the version I have include making Dinah more intelligent and eliminating the use of stereotypical black people speech. In the original book, even though she’s an adult, Dinah seems childlike in her reactions to things and seems to need the children to explain things to her, like the scale they see at the train station. When she speaks, her speech is spelled out with a strong accent (ex. “dat chile” instead of “that child”), and she throws out phrases like, “Lan’ o’ massy!” In the revised version, she acts and speaks more like the other adults.

Something else that changed from the original version is how much emphasis there was on poor people vs. upper middle class people, like the Bobbseys. The older version of the story emphasizes more how poor the kid from the Fresh Air Camp is and how charitable the Bobbseys are toward him. There are also other instances of charity toward the poor, like when Nan lends another girl a dress because they need to wear white dresses for the Fourth of July celebration, and the other girl doesn’t have a white dress. The book is careful to mention that nobody else knows that the other girl was borrowing a dress from Nan, with the implication that it would have been embarrassing or a mark of shame for people to know that it was a borrowed dress instead of one of her own. Things like this appear in many vintage children’s books from the 19th century and early 20th century, but it’s not something you find much in modern modern books, at least not described like that. Even when I was a middle-class kid in the late 20th century, it wouldn’t be assumed that a kid would necessarily have certain types of clothes for a special occasion or that their family would be able to just quickly buy something new for one-time use. It was also normal for people to borrow things from friends, even just on whims, so borrowing a dress for one-time use for a special occasion wouldn’t have been regarded as either an act of charity or anything to cause embarrassment, if other people just happened to know about it.

Even though there are things in the stories that were changed to make the stories contemporary with the time of the revisions, the 1960s, there are still aspects of the stories that would be out-of-date culturally by 21st century standards. One of those issues relates to how the adults in the story handle the children. One of the adults in the story tries to resolve the bully situation by letting Bert physically fight the boy who was picking on him, telling both the boys to wrestle with each other to settle their differences and get it all out of their systems. This is not advice that most modern adults would give to kids, and one good reason for not giving that advice is that it doesn’t work, not even in this book. First of all, the kid being bullied might not be the winner of the wrestling match in real life, and no kid should be forced to fight physically just because some bully wants to beat them up. In the book, Bert wins the wrestling match because he’s had wrestling classes before, but as the case would probably be in real life as well, it resolves nothing. The bully is resentful about losing the fight and continues to bully him and play mean tricks on the other kids. The bully episodes are basically there just to add conflict and excitement to the story, and they don’t do much more than that.

I was a little surprised that they left in the part from the original story where the kids put on their own circus, and they have an act they call the “Sacred Calf of India.” In the revised version, Nan wears an improvised sari for this act, and they teach the calf to do a trick. Animals doing cute little tricks are just fine, but adding in the exoticism seems in poor taste. I suppose that they left this part in the revised version because it’s not trying to be insulting to people from India, more that the kids are trying to play on the concept of circus acts and snake charmers, but it is another example of something that you find sometimes in vintage books but wouldn’t be likely to find in modern ones.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Bobbsey Twins of Lakeport

Bobbsey Twins

The Bobbsey Twins of Lakeport by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1904, 1961.

Before I begin discussing the story, I need to explain that this story, I need to explain that, in the 1950s and 1960s, children’s series books from the Stratemeyer Syndicate that were still in print were rewritten and reprinted to update slang and cultural references and, importantly, to remove inappropriate racial language and stereotypes. This was the time of the Civil Rights Movement, and people were becoming more self-conscious about the language they were using and what they were teaching to children. The Bobbsey Twins was one of the series that was rewritten, and I was surprised by some of the things that appeared in the original printings of the first Bobbsey Twins series. As a kid, I was more familiar with The New Bobbsey Twins series, which was written in the 1980s and 1990s. The Bobbsey Twins was one of those series that has multiple sub-series, sort of like the various incarnations of Scooby-Doo cartoons, each one updated to fit the decades when they were written. The original Bobbsey Twins series was first written in the early 1900s, and the way it originally portrayed the black couple who work for the Bobbsey family was very problematic. I was really surprised. The edition that I’m describing below is the revised 1960s edition, with the problematic elements changed or removed.

The story begins with both sets of Bobbsey Twins – the older set, Nan and Bert, and the younger set, Freddie and Flossie – disassembling their old tree house because they’re planning to build a new one. Six-year-old Flossie mentions that a spooky old house near their school is also going to be torn down, and Freddie says that another kid at school claims that house is haunted. The children’s father says that they must be talking about the old Marden house. It used to a farmhouse, but the town has grown around it. Mr. Marden was a wealthy man who had once been ambassador to Great Britain, and he build the large house when he retired. Since then, the place has become disused and badly run-down, which is why the kids think it’s spooky and why it’s going to be torn down.

The children’s mother explains that she knows Mrs. Marden, who is the widow of the original Mr. Marden’s grandson. Mrs. Marden is now elderly, and she sold the old Marden house to the school when she went to live in a nursing home. Mrs. Bobbsey says that she hasn’t been to visit Mrs. Marden lately, she decides to pay her a visit that afternoon. The kids are still curious about whether the house could be haunted, and they ask their mother to ask Mrs. Marden about it. It doesn’t seem likely that the house is really haunted, even though it is old and spooky-looking. Danny, the kid at school who claims that he’s seen ghosts around the place, is known for playing mean tricks, so he’s not a reliable witness.

Bert suggests to the others that they could go take a look at the house themselves. When they get there, they see men surveying the property. The men say that, after the house is torn down, it will be replaced by an addition to the school. The kids ask the men if they’re worried about the house being haunted. One of the men says that he heard some strange sounds, but he thinks it was just a couple of local boys playing a prank. The men don’t think that there’s a real haunting there. The Bobbsey Twins want to see the inside of the house, but the surveyors tell them that they can’t go inside because the house is locked up to discourage vandals. The kids spend a little more time with the surveyors, helping to hold their equipment and seeing how it works. However, the children are still curious about the house and wish they could investigate it more.

Then, when their mother comes home from visiting Mrs. Marden, she tells them that there really is a mystery about that house. Mrs. Marden’s memory is failing her, but she knows that some valuable souvenirs from old Mr. Marden’s time as an ambassador are missing. One of them is a cameo surrounded by diamonds (the book defines what a cameo is for the benefit of kids who don’t know) and a collection of obsidional coins. (The book also explains what these coins are. The characters had to consult a book because even Mrs. Bobbsey doesn’t know. I hadn’t heard of them before, either, because I don’t know much about coin collecting. They’re basically improvised coins made during times of siege to pay off soldiers. They’re made from whatever materials the makers had at hand and are often irregular in shape. I love stories that explain interesting and unusual historical details!) Mrs. Marden knows that she hid these things somewhere in the old Marden house, but she just can’t remember where. Since the house is going to be torn down, there isn’t much time left to find them!

Mrs. Bobbsey gives the children permission to investigate and tells them that the principal at their school has the keys to the house. She thinks that the principal might let the kids into the house if they explain that they want to retrieve something for Mrs. Marden. The school principal is surprisingly agreeable to the idea of the children poking around the old house and gives them the key, but Danny overhears their conversation and tries to convince them again that the house is haunted.

When the twins and a couple of their friends go inside the house, there isn’t much there. All the furniture has already been cleared out of the house, and it doesn’t seem to leave many possible hiding places to search. The only thing Mrs. Marden seems able to remember about the hiding place is that it has something to do with a hearth, but there are many fireplaces in the old house.

It turns out that the old house is hiding many secrets! There are secret passages and hidden trap doors. The kids also discover that someone is sneaking around the old house, someone who seems to know its secrets. Could it be Danny, playing ghost to scare them, or could it be someone who’s after the same treasure the children are trying to find?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

New vs. Old Editions

I have trouble talking about the original edition of this book because I haven’t been able to find it. I’m not sure if that’s because the racial language was just too objectionable for anyone to want to put a copy online, even though it should be public domain now. Although, it could be that it is online but I just don’t recognize it because it’s called something different. Some of the revised Stratemeyer Syndicate books are so different from their originals that they’re barely recognizable as being the same story. Some original stories were considered so outdated that they were completely rewritten. I know something about the level of racial language and stereotypes in the Bobbsey Twins because I did find an older edition of the next book in the series, and I’ve read articles about some of the other books I haven’t read yet.

Even though this printing doesn’t contain the problematic racial language and stereotypes of the original, there were things some of the characters said that I still didn’t like. Mr. Bobbsey calls Flossie “my little fat fairy” as a term of endearment, but it sounds a little rude to me to call attention to her being “fat.” Flossie doesn’t seem to mind, probably partly because she’s only 6 years old and not at the stage where girls really start worrying about their appearance, but some girls can really be affected by being called “fat”, especially if there’s a lot of teasing at school aimed at “fat” people. The father similarly calls Freddie his “little fat fireman” because Freddie wants to be a fireman. Freddie doesn’t seem to mind it, either, but I still feel like the “fat” part is just unnecessary. If he’s going to give nicknames, why not just say “my fairy princess” or “little fireman”, sticking to words with positive connotations, without adding an extra, unnecessary word that can easily turn negative? I’m not fond of teasing, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to teach kids to tease or set them up for teasing later.

The Mystery

One thing that makes this story a little different from other books in the Stratemeyer Syndicate series is that the children get some adult help with the mystery. Usually, the children in Stratemeyer Syndicate series try to do everything themselves, but when the kids realize that there is a strange adult sneaking around the house and trying to scare them away, they tell their school principal, and he comes to investigate with them. However, even when the adults realize that there’s some strange adult lurking around and trying to scare the kids, nobody stops the kids from continuing to investigate the house.

There are various other little adventures that happen throughout the book, like Freddie getting lost in a department store and adopting a cat he names Snoop and the boys camping out with a friend but ending the trip when it starts to rain too hard. However, these incidents also help the kids to gather some additional clues to the main mystery.

The identity of the adult sneaking around the house would be impossible for readers to guess because we don’t really get to meet him until later. The kids are the ones who find the treasure, although it happens by accident. I would have liked it better if they had reasoned it out, but it’s still a pretty good kids’ mystery story.

Posted on by TracyC

The Richleighs of Tantamount

The Richleighs of Tantamount by Barbara Willard, illustrated by C. Walter Hodges, 1966.

The Richleighs are a wealthy Victorian family in England, their enormous wealth the product of generations of marriages between wealthy families. There are four children in the family (from oldest to youngest): Edwin, Angeline, Sebastian, and Maud. The four Richleigh children are accustomed to their family’s wealthy and luxurious lifestyle, brought up by their fond parents and the governesses and tutors they hire to oversee the children’s education. Overall, the children are happy and appreciate their privileged lifestyle, but there is one thing that bothers all of them. It has bothered them for a long time. They don’t understand why their parents won’t take them to see their family’s ancestral home, Tantamount.

The wealthy Richleigh family owns several grand houses (including one in Scotland and one in Italy), but Tantamount is a mystery to the children. They know it exists because their family has a painting of it, and their grandfather talked about it once. A distant ancestor built this castle-like mansion in Cornwall, on a cliff overlooking the ocean and in a mixture of styles from around the world, and it’s supposed to contain some amazing things. Yet, the children’s father says he has never been there himself. The children’s parents don’t even like to talk about the place, and they’ve never taken the children there. The children know that something mysterious must have happened there at some point, but they have no idea what it is. They just know that they would love to see the place and find out what all the mystery is about! They often speculate about what the place is like, what once happened there, and why they’ve never been allowed to see it.

One day, Sebastian, who is the one who usually asks the most questions, decides to press their mother for answers about Tantamount. She tells him that his great-great-great grandfather, who built the place, was an eccentric and that the mansion is just too big, too inconvenient, and too remote to be of any comfort or use. This inconvenience is one of the reasons why most of the Richleigh family just cannot be bothered to go there. Also, his mother admits that the Richleighs are actually a little ashamed of the house because it is so hideously, overly elaborate and vulgar, even by the luxurious standards of the Richleighs. Sebastian says that he would still like to go there for an adventure, but his mother sees no point to it. She tells him that he can’t always have everything he wants, that he’s already a very indulged boy, and that he should just be happy with what he has. However, the children’s burning desire to see Tantamount and experience what they imagine as its mysteries isn’t really about the physical ownership of the house or the fantastic things that are supposedly kept there but about the spirit of mystery and adventure. As wonderful as everything the Richleigh family has, the children are chasing something else: excitement!

The children’s parents are actually the ones who don’t seem to understand the emotional attachment that people can have to physical belongings. Twice a year, they have their children donated old toys of theirs to the poor, which is a good thing, but poor Maud is traumatized when her parents tell her that she must give up her old rocking horse, Peggy, and that they will replace it with a brand new one. It’s not because Maud has outgrown rocking horses, but Peggy is looking a little shabby from use, and they want the children’s toys to all be in the best condition. They don’t consider the emotional attachment that Maud has to Peggy from her hours of playing with her or that Peggy’s shabbiness is a sign of Maud’s love for her. When they tell Maud that old toys are dangerous for children to play with, Maud asks why they aren’t dangerous for poor children to play with, her mother just tells her not to answer back. (Meaning that she doesn’t have a good answer, and she knows it.) Sebastian says maybe it would be better to just buy the poor children a new rocking horse instead of sending them Peggy, but his father tells him not to be impertinent, showing that this ritual about giving toys to the poor isn’t really about doing something nice for the poor so much as updating the children’s toys for the newest and “best” when that isn’t really what the children themselves want.

Soon after the children’s father gives away Peggy, he falls seriously ill, apparently from something he caught from the family he gave Peggy to. The children worry about what his illness will mean for their family, especially if he dies. Their first thoughts seem fairly petty. They first think that maybe this wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t decided to give away Peggy. Then, they realize that, with their father ill, they won’t be able to travel to Italy this summer, as the family planned. Then, they think that, if their father dies, they will all have to wear gloomy black, and either Edwin will become head of the family at age 16 or that their uncle will look after the family. Their uncle is a more dour man than their father, so that’s also a gloomy prospect.

Fortunately, the children’s father recovers, and the children are relieved. His doctors advise him to take a sea voyage to recover. The parents will be traveling without the children, and they won’t be going to Italy, but the children say that they understand that this is important to their father’s health. However, this does leave the question of what the children will do while their parents are traveling. The parents ask the children for their opinions about what they would like to do this summer because they want the children to have a pleasant time together while they are gone. There is only one thing that all of the children want, and this time, the children’s parents agree: the children will spend the summer at Tantamount.

The parents make arrangements with Mr. Devine, the agent who manages the property on behalf of the family, for the children to go there for the summer. The children will be chaperoned by their governess, Miss Venus, and Edwin’s tutor, Mr. Gaunt. Before they leave, the children’s father tells Edwin that, since he is 16, he’s no longer just a child, and if any situation should arise which requires him to take charge, he should, as the heir to Tantamount. If anything serious happens, and they need help, they can also send word to Mr. Devine. The children’s mother tells them that there will also be a housekeeper at Tantamount who has a daughter of her own, who will also be helping out.

From the moment their parents leave for their voyage and the children make their final preparations to leave on their trip, they feel like everything is changing. Although they were always aware that they were privileged, they never really noticed much about the details of their lives or home or thought very much about the people who served them. Alone for the first time with Miss Venus and Mr. Gaunt, Angeline is struck with the thought that she never really noticed much about Miss Venus as a person, even what she truly looked like. Before, she was always just the governess, just another part of the steady routine of the children’s lives, but now, dressed for travel and just as excited as the children, she really seems to be a real person. Even Mr. Gaunt is excited and not so much his usual somber self. The children quickly realize that, without their parents there to insist on proper behavior, stiff manners, and a certain appearance, the governess and tutor are relaxing and become more themselves. Mr. Gaunt tells the children stories about his past travels across Europe, and they’re much more fun to hear about than his usual dull lessons. As they step outside of their usual rigid routine, it seems like everything has magically come to life for the children.

When they first arrive at Tantamount, it’s dark, and the place seems sinister. However, they receive an enthusiastic welcome from the housekeeper, Mrs. Pengelly. In the morning, the children see how grand the place truly is. The rooms are big and elaborately decorated, and there are amazing views of the sea.

Even more exciting than that, the children also quickly realize that life at Tantamount offers them the opportunity for more freedom than they’ve ever had in their lives. Without their usual nurses to pick up after them or fuss over what they’re wearing, they are free to make these simple choices for themselves. The idea of looking after themselves for a change and doing things as they want to do them is exciting by itself. Some parts of looking after themselves seem a little daunting at first, but Angeline realizes that it’s also good for them. Young Maud worries about what “they” will say about things the children are doing, but the older children point out that there is no “they” to worry about. Their parents and nurses aren’t there, and everyone who is there technically works for them.

Eagerly, the children begin to explore Tantamount. It is filled with strange and wonderful things, but most of it is in shabby and neglected condition. There are magnificent statues that are crumbling and a beautiful chandelier lies smashed where it fell on the floor of the ballroom. Angeline first thinks that their father will blame Mr. Devine and Mrs. Pengelly for the condition of the house, but Edwin points out that the house has been neglected for generations by the Richleighs themselves. Who knows how many years ago the chandelier fell when nobody in their family even cared whether it was still hanging or not? Edwin himself says that if their ancestral home was neglected to the point where it started falling apart, their own family was to blame. The children discuss which is more of a “folly”, as Mr. Gaunt put it, to build such a grand place in such a remote location or to forget forget about it and let it fall apart. The word “folly” can refer to an unnecessary building like this, and Edwin says that Tantamount is a “folly” in the sense that the family has done well enough without it for years. Edwin says that their ancestor probably had fun building it and that men like that build grand things for travelers to marvel at, but apart from that, they have little use. Since then, most family members have barely even thought about Tantamount. The children begin to feel sorry for the mansion, almost like it’s a neglected animal with a personality of its own. The place starts to feel sad to them.

Edwin also points out that Tantamount is actually dangerous in its crumbling condition. He even saves Maud from stepping onto a section of floor that would have crumbled underneath her. The children realize that they will have to be very careful of everything they do in Tantamount.

Tantamount is a sad and scary place, but still exciting because the children’s adventure is only just beginning. When Miss Venus and Mr. Gaunt see the condition of Tantamount, they decide that they and the children cannot possibly stay there for the summer. However, the children have only just had their first look at the place and have only just begun to delve into its secrets and consider what might be done with the crumbling old mansion. Even more importantly, they have had their first real taste of the freedom and responsibility that Tantamount has offered them, and they won’t give it up so soon. Edwin asserts himself as the de facto head of the Richleigh family and tells the governess and tutor that they may leave if they find it too uncomfortable, but he and his siblings will be staying because they are family and this is their home.

At first, the children are nervous at sending the adults away, but Edwin has thought it out. He has noticed that Miss Venus and Mr. Gaunt are fond of each other, and he suspects that they might take this opportunity to run away and get married. The other children wonder if they will tell their parents that they are at Tantamount alone, but Edwin doubts it. It would take awhile for any message to reach their parents, and the tutor and governess also wouldn’t be too quick to admit that they had abandoned the children, even if the children did request it themselves. The children have also begun to suspect that Tantamount might not be all that it seems. Although their family neglected the place badly themselves, what exactly has Mr. Devine been doing as the steward?

The Richleigh children befriend Nancy and Dick, two sailor’s children who live by themselves nearby. Nancy and Dick are a little afraid of the Richleigh children at first, partly because Edwin attacks them when they first meet, thinking that they’re trespassers, and partly because they know more about the dark history of the Richleighs and Tantamount than the Richleigh children do. However, the children all become friends, and Nancy and Dick teach the Richleighs many things that they need to know to survive on their own at Tantamount. The Richleigh children are happy to get help from Nancy and Dick, and they’re especially happy that, for one in their lives, they’ve made friends on their own instead of just associating with the people their parents have picked out for them to meet. Nancy and Dick are far less fortunate than the Richleighs, and they open the children’s eyes to what poverty really means. Nancy and Dick are also on their own because their mother is dead and their father hasn’t yet returned from the sea.

The Richleighs are impressed with the things that Nancy and Dick know and can teach them, and they also enjoy the carefree summer that they spend with Nancy and Dick. While they’re happy to accept help from them, the last thing the Richleighs want is any adult finding out that they’re living alone at Tantamount. There are still mysteries there for the children to solve, and the last thing they want is to give up the first real freedom that they’ve ever experienced!

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

The Richleighs are practically the personification of a privileged Victorian family. Readers are told that the Richleigh children are accustomed to luxury, although the book is also quick to say that they aren’t spoiled because readers might find them insufferable if they were. However, in the first few chapters, readers might also realize that the Richleigh children are living a rather repressed and highly controlled life. They have all kinds of toys to play with but no control over whether or not they get to keep their favorite old toys. Their parents get rid of anything that they personally think is getting too shabby without regard for sentimentality. Peggy wasn’t just a toy to Maud; she was like an old friend, and she and her siblings are sure that her new owner won’t appreciate her as much or might do something horrible, like sell her for drinking money or turn her into firewood. The parents are unconcerned about Maud’s feelings. They and the children’s nurses are always telling children not only what they should do but how they should feel. When Angeline expresses an opinion, her nurses tell her that “Ladies don’t have opinions – they’re nasty things to have.” When Sebastian tries to make his mother understand how much it would mean to him and his siblings to see Tantamount, he talks about “adventure”, but the book hints that he may have also been thinking of “escape” – escape from the luxurious monotony of their lives, from the constant supervision and control of the adults, and from constantly being told who they are, what they should do, and how they should think and feel. The two oldest children, Edwin and Angeline, realize that their parents are prepared to give them anything they want, but only provided that the children want the things their parents think they should want, like the new rocking horse.

When the children are left to the own devices at Tantamount, they have to take responsibility for themselves and manage everything by themselves for the very first time in their lives. Rather than finding it frightening, however, the Richleigh children find it exciting. Young Maud is the one who’s the most worried because there has never been a time in their lives when the children haven’t had someone taking care of them and telling them what to do. Angeline thinks that learning to do things for themselves will be good for them, and she delights in making simple choices, even deciding what to wear without someone to tell them. However, Maud doesn’t even know how to dress herself without help, and she worries about what “they” would say. Sebastian points out that there is no “they” to say anything. The children themselves are in charge, and Sebastian is looking forward to them doing what they want to do. Maud doesn’t know how they’ll even begin to know what to do without someone telling them, but Edwin reassures her that they’ll figure it out.

Since Edwin is the oldest boy and he already has their father’s permission to act as the heir to Tantamount, the children immediately decide that he’s in charge. It fits the general pattern of Victorian society that they’re all accustomed to, and it makes Maud feel a little better that someone’s in charge. However, because Edwin now gets to run things the way he wants, he doesn’t just want to give his siblings orders. He establishes the group as a family council so they can discuss things and make decisions together. Although he maintains his position as the head of the family council, he cares about how the others feel, and over the course of the summer, he particularly comes to value the thoughts and advice of Angeline, who proves herself to be a sensible and practical young lady.

It isn’t long before the children discover the dark secret of Tantamount that they always suspected was there: it is being used as a hideout for smugglers and has been for some time. The reason why Mr. Devine hasn’t tried to maintain the house or a staff there is that he doesn’t want anybody snooping around and learning the truth about what he’s been doing there. When the children figure it out, they also realize that no one else is aware of their discovery yet. The locals might have their suspicions, but so far, nobody knows that the Richleigh children have made this discovery and that the children are staying at Tantamount all by themselves. However, this situation can’t last. Eventually, the smugglers will come back or Mr. Devine is bound to check on them, and the children will have to decide what they will do when that happens.

The children also must confront the knowledge that their own ancestors must have been the ones who started the smuggling and wrecking business and were responsible for the deaths of many sailors. There was a hint to the dark history of Tantamount in the painting the children have admired for years, but the children just didn’t understand the meaning of it before. The children’s parents don’t seem to be aware of any of this, or they would never have allowed the children to go to Tantamount at all. The children realize that the reason why Tantamount was abandoned by the family was that, at some point, some of the Richleighs decided that they didn’t want any part of this nefarious business anymore, so they got as far away from Tantamount as they could, created new lives and homes for themselves, and tried to prevent the younger generations of the family from finding out what happened there. This is the dark side of privileged families. Although much of the Richleighs’ wealth has come from wealthy marriages, not all of it has, and some has come from some dark sources.

The children still love Tantamount, even for its darkness, and they wish they could do something to cleanse it of all the bad things that happened there. Tantamount has changed them and allowed them their first tastes of freedom, independence, and self-discovery. The oldest children realize that their time there can’t last because their parents will come for them at the end of the summer, and there is still the matter of the smugglers. They try to think of a way to preserve some of the feelings of this transformative summer even when it’s time for them to go home.

In the end, the real villain eventually brings about his own end while trying to destroy Tantamount and hide its secrets forever, and the children pledge to themselves that they will rebuild it someday, but in their own way and for much better purposes. This is a secret that they keep from their own parents, just between the four of them, because this is something that they want and will pursue independently at some point in the future.

There are sad parts to the story as the children reflect on the abandoned and neglected nature of Tantamount and the evil that has happened there. However, there is also adventure and mystery and the kind of magic that comes from a carefree summer spent in a fantastic place!

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Big Book of Real Trains

The Big Book of Real Trains by Elizabeth Cameron, illustrated by George J. Zaffo, 1949, 1953, 1963.

This is a vintage children’s nonfiction book that’s all about trains! It was reprinted and had its copyright renewed many times, which is why I give multiple dates for the book. My edition was the 1973 printing. The pictures are detailed, and they alternate between color and black-and-white.

I thought it was interesting that the first half of the book devotes a page to explaining each specific type of train car and its purpose, so kids can learn to recognize them on sight. If you look at the bottom of each of those pages, you’ll see how they’re slowly building a complete train, from locomotive to caboose, with each new car.

There is a special page that shows the inside of a locomotive to explain each of its parts and how it functions, and there is another picture that shows the parts of a streamlined locomotive.

After the book explains each of the basic train cars, it explains the classification yard, where freight cars are assembled into trains.

I particularly liked the sections of the book that explain the signals railway personal use and all of the types of personnel who work on trains. The signals are old-fashioned manual signals, but it’s still interesting, especially if someone might be writing a story that takes place in the past on a train. Some of the jobs might also be different on modern trains, but I liked how they pointed out just how many types of people who might be working on a train. The book refers to these workers as “men”, which sounds a little old-fashioned, but I noticed that the tiny figures representing different jobs had different skin colors, even for higher-ranking jobs on the train, which is very good for a vintage book. The illustrator made an effort to show diversity! Overall, I thought their explanations were pretty good.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive, although the copy is listed under an alternate title, The Book of Classic Trains.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy

The Three Investigators

The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy by Robert Arthur, 1965.

In the original editions of The Three Investigators, their cases were introduced by Alfred Hitchcock. Later editions of the books in the 1990s were rewritten to remove Alfred Hitchcock, but I’m using the version of this book that includes Alfred Hitchcock’s introduction for my review.

This story begins with two letters address to The Three Investigators. One of them is from an elderly woman in a wealthy area of town, who has heard about how The Three Investigators helped a friend of hers find her lost parrot in the previous book in the series. This lady would like their help to find her missing cat. Bob and Pete thinks that sounds like a simple enough case, but their other letter is from Alfred Hitchcock, so they decide to read that before committing themselves.

Alfred Hitchcock’s letter is incredible! He tells The Three Investigators about an old house that has been turned into a private museum by an archaeology professor. His museum has relics from his archaeological digs in Egypt. Recently, a mummy has arrived at his museum from a museum in Egypt. Professor Yarbrough was the one who originally discovered that particular mummy, but since it arrived at his museum, he has noticed a bizarre phenomenon. The mummy seems to whisper! Professor Yarbrough can’t figure out how the mummy can whisper, but it seems like the mummy is trying to tell him something important. Professor Yarbrough has consulted with a friend, Professor Freeman, who is a language expert, but the mummy only seems to talk when Professor Yarbrough is alone. Knowing how crazy this predicament sounds and what his other colleagues would say if he told them, Professor Yarbrough decides to tell his friend Alfred Hitchcock instead. That is why Alfred Hitchcock decides to tell The Three Investigators and see what they make of it.

Bob and Pete think that the mummy mystery sounds exciting but creepy. Since Jupiter is away on an errand, they decide that they would rather try to find the missing cat first. However, when Jupiter returns, he already knows about their prospective cases, and as predicted, he can’t wait to investigate the mummy. At first, Professor Yarbrough doesn’t have much confidence in the boys because they’re younger than he expected, but Jupiter persuades him to let them try. The professor’s butler, Wilkins, is very nervous and tells the boys that there is a curse on the mummy. Strange things are happening that make Wilkins think that the professor is in danger from the curse. The boys are there when a large statue in the professor’s museum suddenly falls over, almost striking the professor. Wilkins would rather send the mummy back to Egypt, but the professor doesn’t believe in curses. In spite of the talking mummy, the professor is sure that there must be a logical, scientific explanation for everything.

Jupiter also believes in scientific solutions, and his first theory about the whispering is that it’s being transmitted electronically, but they can’t find any electronics on or around the mummy. His next idea is to capture some of the mummy’s speech on a recording, which is successful. Professor Freeman says that the mummy seems to be speaking a form of ancient Arabic.

Then, Wilkins sees someone walking around in a jackal costume. Someone steals the mummy, and strangely, comes back a second time to steal the mummy case. Even the missing cat puts in an appearance.

Who wants the professor to think that the mummy is whispering and believe that it’s cursed? Who wants the mummy case, and why is that case even more important to the thief than the mummy itself?

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

My Reaction

From the beginning of the book, I had a couple of theories about who could be responsible for the mummy’s whispering and “curse”, but I was only partially correct. There are different people involved, doing different things and for different reasons. The main villain is one of the people I suspected, but I didn’t know this person’s motive until it became clear that the mummy case is what they really want. The missing cat is part of the mystery, but don’t worry, the cat is fine and being cared for!

Posted on by TracyC

Blackbeard’s Ghost

Blackbeard’s Ghost by Ben Stahl, 1965, 1976.

This is the novel that the live action Disney film Blackbeard’s Ghost from 1968 was based on. My copy is a later edition designed as a tie-in with the Disney movie, based on the cover, but it contains the text of the original story.

The story begins with a prologue that explains how Blackbeard the pirate evaded execution for piracy by offering to collect tolls from ships on behalf of the colonial governor, Governor Eden, in the town of Godolphin. However, instead of collecting tolls from the ships, he decided to use his position for his own benefit. Knowing that he would eventually need a source of stability on land instead of spending the rest of his life at sea, he looted wood from various ships and used it to build a tavern for himself called the Boar’s Head. He hired a woman rumored to be a witch, Aldetha, to tend the tavern for him. In the end, though, Blackbeard was killed by someone who wanted to collect the bounty on him for piracy. After his death, the poor woman who tended his tavern was burned at the stake for witchcraft.

(Note: The witch burning is historical inaccuracy because no witchcraft executions in North America involved burning, at least not in English-controlled parts of the American colonies. Accused witches in North America were typically hanged. None of this story is meant to be historically accurate, but I always feel compelled to point that out in stories that make that mistake. The town of Godolphin and the Boar’s Head Tavern are fictional. In real life, Blackbeard did receive a pardon from the real Governor Eden in Bath, North Carolina, and he was eventually killed in 1718 in a battle with Lieutenant Robert Maynard and his crew, as he did in this story. However, in the book, the tavern is now owned by a descendant of Maynard’s, and in real life, Maynard didn’t have any children.)

Most of the story takes place in the 20th century, when two 14-year-old boys, J.D. and Hank, talk about how the old Boar’s Head Tavern is about to be torn down because the former owner sold it, and there’s going to be a gas station built on the land instead. They think it’s a shame because they’ve heard ghost stories about the place and think the old tavern is fascinating. The boys go to watch the workmen tearing down the old tavern, but the workmen haven’t made any progress so far. Although they’d love to loot some of the expensive woods from the old tavern, they just can’t seem to dismantle the building. They’ve been able to dismantle some of the newer additions to the building, but somehow, they can’t seem to touch the original structure. The site has been plagued with mysterious accidents. Their equipment fails, heads fall off the ends of their hammers, and workmen keep getting injured in small accidents, not enough to seriously hurt anyone but enough to keep them away from their work for days at a time.

When J.D. and Hank see the workmen leaving the building in frustration soon after arriving, they decide to go inside and look around to satisfy their curiosity and see if there’s anything of value that they can salvage before the tavern is demolished. They don’t find much of value, but they do find their way into Blackbeard’s secret dungeon under the tavern. There, they find a piece of old parchment with a satanic curse written by Aldetha. (So, apparently, people were actually right about her being a witch. Plot twist!) Inspired by this creepy message from the past, the boys realize that they can make money from other kids by capitalizing on the ghost stories about the old tavern and holding seances to contact the spirits. They don’t really believe that seances are real, but they figure that, if they can get enough ghost-story fans to come to their seances, they can make a profit from this enterprise.

Of course, the boys’ seance awakens the ghost of Blackbeard. Blackbeard is invisible to everyone except for the boys, but he’s a solid ghost, who can manipulate physical objects. The boys quickly realize that Blackbeard can be a dangerous ghost, and he’s not at all happy when he finds out that a descendant of the man who killed him wants to have his tavern torn down.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. The Disney movie is available to buy or rent through YouTube or Amazon Prime. There is also a sequel to this book called The Secret of Red Skull, which involves spies and is also available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

There is some humor in this book because only the boys are able to see and hear Blackbeard, but by the end of the story, adults become aware of Blackbeard’s ghost, too. The boys’ history teacher is helpful in finding a way to appease the ghost by helping him to negotiate to buy back his tavern using his hidden treasure. When it becomes obvious both to Maynard and the company he tried to sell the tavern to that it’s haunted, they’re willing to accept pirate gold in exchange. The company also sees that it can use the building for public relations purposes by sponsoring a pirate museum in the old tavern. It’s good news for the teacher, too, because he gets to be the director of the museum. There, he can show off his collection of pirate memorabilia and indulge his love of pirate history. The tavern continues to be haunted by the ghosts of Blackbeard and his witch friend, leaving the story open for the sequel.

As expected of Disney films, the Disney movie version of the story is quite different from the book. In the movie, the person who can see the ghost is a college track coach who is staying in the old inn, which is still being operated by elderly descendants of Blackbeard’s old crew. There is a track meet in the movie that never appeared in the book, and at the end of the movie, Blackbeard disappears, having been freed from his haunting by performing a good deed.

I prefer the concept of the boys being the ones who accidentally summoned Blackbeard’s ghost, but the boys got on my nerves at first. In the early part of the book, they bickered a lot and didn’t seem to like each other enough to be best friends, although they seemed to be friendlier with each other later, when they were both trying to figure out what to do about Blackbeard. I think the teacher character was my favorite. He takes the matter of the ghost in stride, coming up with a practical solution that helps everyone.

Posted on by TracyC

Mystery of the Haunted Pool

Mystery of the Haunted Pool by Phyllis A. Whitney, 1960.

At the beginning of the story, Susan Price is traveling alone to visit her Aunt Edith. Her father is in the hospital, and her mother and brothers are tending to things at home. Her family wants her to make a good impression on Captain Daniel Teague, who lives in Aunt Edith’s town. Her father’s doctor has advised him to move to the country, where there is less air pollution, and the family would like to move to the small town along the Hudson River where Aunt Edith owns an antique store. However, the only available house that would be big enough for the family would be the Teague house, and Captain Dan hasn’t decided whether to rent or sell his house to them or not. Before Susan arrives, she isn’t sure what’s going on with Captain Dan and the arrangements regarding his house, but it turns out to be a complicated situation involving her aunt’s antique business, the Teague family history, and Captain Dan’s grandson, Gene.

When Susan’s bus reaches the bus stop, Aunt Edith isn’t there to meet her, so she walks to her aunt’s store. Aunt Edith apologizes for not meeting her. The reason why she didn’t is that a woman named Altoona was hanging around her shop, and she didn’t want to leave Altoona there alone. Lately, Altoona has been acting suspiciously, snooping around the shop as though she’s looking for something but doesn’t want anyone to know. Aunt Edith doesn’t know what Altoona is looking for, but it’s making her nervous. In particular, Altoona seems interested in a barrel of old books that Aunt Edith is selling on commission for Captain Dan, but Aunt Edith doesn’t want her looking through them until she’s had a chance to examine them herself.

Aunt Edith says that she’s known Altoona since they were children. Altoona was raised by her father and an older sister, both of whom were strict and unloving. Altoona led a very restricted life until her father and sister both drowned in a boating accident. Since then, Altoona has been indulging herself by spending her inheritance on antiques. However, rather than being a good customer of Aunt Edith’s, Altoona has turned into competition. She seems to delight in trying to beat Aunt Edith to some fascinating antique. Altoona seems to be on the trail of some new discovery, but Aunt Edith doesn’t want to give her the chance to poach something that might be right under her nose in her own shop.

Since Aunt Edith’s husband died years before, she’s been living in a back room of her shop. With her brother and his family wanting to move to the country, she’s planning on helping them get a house and living there with them. Aunt Edith has her eye on a particular house owned by Captain Daniel Teague, but he’s been reluctant to sell, which is why it would help if Susan made a good impression on him. Captain Dan has been living in a big old house with his grandson, Gene, but it’s an expensive house to maintain for just the two of them. He’s been considering renting it to Susan’s family with an option for them to purchase it later. However, he’s been dragging his feet on making a final decision because he wants to make sure that he approves of the Price family and that Aunt Edith won’t sell any of the antique furnishings from the house in her shop without permission. Also, Gene is upset at the idea of moving, and Captain Dan is concerned about Gene.

Aunt Edith explains that Gene is just a little older than Susan and that he was injured in an accident a couple of years before. He was hit by a car, and he’s been in and out of the hospital for treatment. Even now, his leg is stiff, and he has to wear a brace. Susan witnesses his frustration when she watches him trying to play basketball alone the first time she meets him. She can tell that he’s been trying really hard to overcome his disability, but things are still very hard for him. Susan is touched by Gene’s struggles and his stubborn efforts to succeed. She also discovers that he has strength and coordination in his arms, even though his left leg is very weak. When she asks Gene to teach her how to shoot baskets so she can impress one of her older brothers, she begins to realize that sometimes Gene tries too hard, and it makes his situation harder on him. When he gets tense, he has more trouble than when he’s relaxed.

Gene confesses to Susan that he feels guilty about being hit by the car, not only because he got hurt but because of what it’s done to his family. He admits that it was his fault for not looking more carefully before crossing a nearby highway. He feels terrible because his grandfather has spent most of his savings to pay for the hospital and doctors’ bills, and his mother had to get a job in New York City to pay the rest. Gene’s reluctance to move out of the family’s old home is that he knows how much his grandfather loves it, and he would feel even more terrible if his family lost the house because of his careless accident. The two of them seem to be getting along until Susan tries to climb a nearby rock, and Gene angrily tells her not to.

Captain Dan turns out to be a nice man. He’s called Captain because he used to be a river boat captain. He comes from a long line of sailors. When Susan tells him about meeting Gene and how Gene got angry at her for trying to climb a rock, Captain Dan tells her not to try too hard to accommodate Gene and his moods. He says that Gene’s biggest improvements have only come recently, when he started pushing Gene to work harder to improve. He thinks that Gene was a bit coddled up to that point and that he was too discouraged by the doctors’ predictions about what he wouldn’t be able to do anymore without really trying to test his limits and see what he could do for himself. In a way, Captain Dan is actually in favor of the Prices moving into their big family home because he knows that Susan has brothers. He thinks that having other boys around will be good for Gene, getting him to participate in more activities and push himself a little more.

One thing that’s making Captain Dan hesitate is the idea of having Aunt Edith in his house. He admits that he finds it difficult to say no to her when she wants something, and she’s been urging him to let her sell some of his old things in her shop. He’s concerned about what she might talk him into parting with next if she were living in his house. When Gene finds out that Aunt Edith talked his grandfather into parting with that barrel of old books, he gets angry again and talks back to his grandfather.

Susan is surprised at Gene’s rudeness and disrespect, but his grandfather says that part of that comes from Gene not liking himself much right now. Because Gene is unhappy with and disparaging of himself, he’s unhappy and disparaging with everyone. That’s part of why Captain Dan has been pushing Gene to improve himself, to give him more confidence and self-respect because he will see that he still has the ability to improve. Captain Dan also realizes that Gene has an intense attachment to their family home and family heirlooms because he takes more pride in their family’s history than in himself, thinking that he’ll never be able to be proud of himself now. Aunt Edith says that Gene’s father, a pilot who died in a crash, was also a decorated pilot during WWII. When Gene was younger, before he was injured, he was a much more active boy, and his father was proud of him for it. Aunt Edith thinks that Gene worries that his father would be ashamed if he saw his current condition.

Susan likes Captain Dan for his kindness and understanding of Gene. She’s not sure how much help her brothers would be with Gene, though. Her brother Adam, the closest in age to Gene, probably wouldn’t have much patience with a boy like him. That’s probably why Susan’s family decided that Susan would be the best person to break the ice with Captain Dan and Gene.

Susan tells Captain Dan that she saw Altoona watching the house when she came up to see him, and he says that he knows about Altoona’s obsession with antiques. He’s not sure what Altoona is looking for, but he thinks it must be some kind of antique. Mrs. Bancroft, Captain Dan’s housekeeper, says that the family has a secret. Aunt Edith says that rumor has been around their small town for years, but she doesn’t know what sort of secret it’s supposed to be, and with a town full of people who all know each other and each other’s family history, she can’t imagine what could still be secret about the Teague family.

Then, Susan finds an old ship’s log book in the bottom of the barrel of books that Aunt Edith got from Captain Dan. It’s the log book for the Flying Sarah, the ship that one of the Teague ancestors sailed. Aunt Edith returns the log book to Gene because she knows it must be a family heirloom, more valuable to the Teague family than anyone else. However, Gene is still sore about Aunt Edith having the barrel of books, and Susan catches him sneaking into the shop one night while Aunt Edith is out. He says that he wants one of the books, but he refuses to say which one he wants or why. Susan thinks that Gene knows more about his family’s secret than he’s telling and that his concern about the books has something to do with it. It seems like Gene may be on the trail of the same thing Altoona is searching for, but what is it? Captain Dan also seems to know, but he tells Gene in Susan’s presence that it doesn’t matter.

Susan gets a hint from Altoona when Altoona tells her that the old Teague house is haunted by the ghost of Sarah Teague, the wife of the captain who sailed the Flying Sarah, which was named for her. Altoona says that Sarah’s husband was murdered on the Flying Sarah and that Sarah took over the family’s shipping business after his death. Then, Sarah drowned in the little pool in the woods near their house. Altoona says that Sarah promised to come back and haunt the house if things didn’t go her way, but what does that mean?

Susan does some research in an old book about ships and discovers that the captain of the Flying Sarah had been carrying a valuable shipment of jewels for a friend when the ship was attacked by pirates. He died from the wounds he received from the pirates, and the pirates apparently took the jewels along with other valuable objects from the ship. After her husband’s death, Sarah Teague insisted on taking responsibility for the lost jewels and repaying the owner for their loss, which was financially crippling for the family. The book also repeats the story about Sarah Teague haunting the old family home. Soon after Susan and Aunt Edith move into the Teague house, someone break in during the night, apparently looking for something. Susan goes to look at the pool where Sarah drowned and thinks that she sees a strange face looking back at her from the water. What message from the past does Sarah Teague have for them, and what secret has the Teague family been hiding for generations?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

For much of the book, the exact nature of the Teague family secret is a mystery to Susan, although readers can probably make a pretty good guess at what Susan eventually finds. Part of the difficulty is that the Teagues themselves don’t seem to quite understand what they really have. They know part of the secret, but only part of it. When Susan discovers the rest, it changes things for Captain Dan and Gene. Susan’s brother, Adam, helps Susan with the mystery for part of the book, but Susan is the one who makes the final discovery.

Altoona is kind of a rival/antagonist for solving the mystery, but not an evil one. She appears to be going through a kind of finding herself phase since the deaths of her father and sister. Her family was repressive, so for the first time in her life, she is taking advantage of opportunities to get involved with community activities and indulge her own whims. She dresses in strange ways because she’s trying out all of the things her father and sister would have never allowed her to wear when she was younger. She volunteers at the local library, but she has trouble deciding which books to recommend to the children who visit the library because she’s never read many of them herself. When Susan suggests to her that she should read some of the children’s books herself so she’ll know what they’re like and what they’re about, Altoona balks at the idea of an adult reading children’s books at first. However, she decides that maybe Susan is right, and when she tries some of the children’s books that Susan recommends, she says that she likes them.

Altoona’s pursuit of the Teague family secrets isn’t malicious. It seems to come from her newfound sense of independence and adventure. Figuring out the old mysteries of the Teague family is a sort of personal challenge for her and something that has fascinated her for her entire life, a fascination that she is now free to indulge. She almost messes things up by taking something that doesn’t belong to her, but it turns out to be an innocent mistake because of something Gene did, and she makes things right in the end. Altoona also comes up with a solution to the Price family’s housing problem. She says that she’s always wanted to travel, and at Adam’s encouragement, she’s decided to take an extended international trip for a year or so. While she’s away, she rents her house to the Price family so the Teague family can have their house to themselves again.

The book mainly focuses on self-discovery for Gene as a side plot to the story. At the end of the book, Gene’s problems aren’t completely solved, but he has become more reconciled to his condition and has a better understanding of things he can and can’t do because of the children’s adventures. By learning to get along with Susan and Adam, Gene becomes more ready to face other people and their reactions to his disability. When things improve for him and his family, he also seems less inclined to keep beating himself up over his accident. Things aren’t perfect for him at the end, and he’s probably never going to have completely normal use of his bad leg again. Still, there are signs that he’s mending, both physically and emotionally, and that things will get easier for him.

I like books that mention other books. In this book, the barrel of books that Aunt Edith gets from Captain Dan includes classics, like Little Women and Treasure Island. There are also books by Washington Irving, Gene Stratton Porter (known for A Girl of the Limberlost), and Harold Bell Wright and some “novels about an imaginary kingdom called Graustark.” These are all real authors and books. Aunt Edith says that some of them aren’t old enough to be considered real antiques, but this book was written more than 60 years, so modern standards would be different. Part of the story also includes books that have hidden pictures drawn on the fore-edges of the pages, which can only be seen when the pages are held at an angle. This type of fore-edge drawing or painting is something that can be found in real antique books.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mad Scientists Club

The Mad Scientists Club Series

The Mad Scientists Club by Bertrand R. Brinley, 1965, 2001.

The Mad Scientists Club series is about a group of boys who like science and make things in their clubhouse laboratory. Their inventions are often part of pranks that they play on their town, Mammoth Falls, but the boys also use their inventions and skills to help people. People in town are aware that the boys pull pranks and stunts, but they are often unable to prove the boys’ involvement in particular pranks, and the boys typically keep the methods they use secret.

Henry is the idea man of the group, and the club’s rival is a former member named Harmon. Harmon’s cousin is still a member of the Mad Scientists Club, and Harmon likes to spy on them and pump his cousin for information so he can mess up their plans out of spite.

Each chapter in the book is its own short story about the club’s antics. Some of the stories originally appeared in Boys’ Life magazine in the 1960s. The stories are a good fit for Boys’ Life because some of the skills the boys use are skills that are taught in Boy Scouts, like what to do when someone is injured and how to tie different types of knots.

The stories reference scientific and mathematical principles, and the boys are methodical in their approaches to the problems in each story. The technology is old by modern 21st century standards (and so are some cultural references, like McGee’s closet), but the principles are sound. There are no projects for readers to do themselves in the book, but it does occur to me that these types of stories could work well with some included activities or nonfiction accompaniment.

The first story in the book was made into a live action tv movie by Disney, The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove (1971), but the movie has different characters from the ones in the book. The Disney movie uses the same set of characters they used for their movie version of Secrets of the Pirates’ Inn (based on The Secrets of the Pirate Inn). The plot of The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove is also very different from the original story because, in the Disney movie, the kids don’t know what the “monster” is at first and need to investigate it, whereas the boys in the Mad Scientist Club know exactly what the monster is in their story because they built it themselves. You can watch the movie online through Internet Archive, but unfortunately, I couldn’t find an online copy of the book.

Stories in the Book:

The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake

Dinky accidentally starts a town-wide rumor about a sea monster in the lake when he makes up a story about seeing a strange creature in the lake when he needs an excuse for arriving home late. His friends know it’s just a story, but they decide to play along and build a monster of their own out of canvas and chicken wire and scare people as a prank. Even though people in town are scared of the monster, the attention the town receives is so good for local businesses, the boys can’t bring themselves to stop their prank. Instead, they decide to make their monster more elaborate, and things start to get out of hand. How can they end the hoax while saving the town’s image and avoiding punishment?

Night Rescue

An Air Force plane explodes near the town of Mammoth Falls. The pilot escaped from the plane, but he’s now lost in the woods. The local authorities are searching for him, and the boys in the club want to help. The mayor doesn’t want the kids involved, knowing their usual pranks and stunts, but the Air Force colonel is willing to let them help, if they think they can, because he just wants his pilot rescued. The boys use a flare to determine which way the parachuting pilot would have drifted, and then, they calculate about how far he would have drifted to find him.

The Unidentified Flying Man of Mammoth Falls

The boys find an old department store manikin and keep it in their clubhouse until Henry gets the idea for how they can use it in an elaborate prank on the town’s Founder’s Day. They’re going to make the manikin fly!

The Secret of the Old Cannon

The town’s old cannon from the Civil War is a local landmark now. (We don’t know what state Mammoth falls is in, but there are statues of Confederate soldiers next to the cannon.) Years ago, the town filled the barrel with cement, so it can never fire again. Around the time that the cannon was filled in, there was a bank robbery in town, and some of the boys in the Mad Scientists Club think that the money might have been hidden in the cannon before it was filled with cement. The boys try to figure out how they can prove whether or not the money’s in there without removing all of the cement. Someone else also wants to know the answer to that, and the answer may be important to the upcoming race for mayor.

The Great Gas Bag Race

Henry has an idea for a new kind of balloon that he thinks will help the Mad Scientists Club win the balloon race, but the club’s rival, Harmon, is also entering the race.

The Big Egg

The boys are digging for fossils in the local quarry when they find a dinosaur egg! At first, they’re not quite sure what to do with it. They consider selling admission for people to come see it or maybe turning it over to a museum, but Henry announces that he has another idea. Henry wants to bury the egg in the ground and see if it hatches. It seems unlikely, but the other boys agree to try it. Then, when a couple of the boys go to check on the egg, they discover that it’s missing! They bring their friends back to look at it, and suddenly, the egg is there again! What’s going on? Did someone take the egg and then return it? Is this another one of Harmon’s tricks?

The Voice in the Chimney

One day, some of the boys in the club see Harmon throwing stones at an old, abandoned house in town while some girls watch him. Wondering what he’s doing, they get closer and hear him challenging the ghost that supposedly haunts the old house, trying to impress the girls with his bravery. The boys are disgusted because they know Harmon isn’t really that brave, and they hate seeing him show off for the girls. When they hear Harmon brag that he’s going to come back to the house at night, they tell the rest of their club, and the boys decide to put on a haunted house act of their own to scare Harmon. In the process, they also end up scaring the mayor and the chief of police!