The Case of the Counterfeit Coin by George Wyatt (Charles Spain Verral), 1960.
One Saturday, Jimmy Carson is going around, collecting fees from customers on his paper route, when he decides to stop for a soda. To his surprise, he discovers that one of the coins he has received from a customer turns out to be something very unusual. It appears to be from a foreign country, although Jimmy doesn’t recognize what country it’s from. When someone suggests that it could be a rare and valuable coin, Jimmy decides to call his friend and detective partner Brains Benton and ask him what he thinks about it. However, as Jimmy is talking to Brains at a public pay phone, someone tries to reach into the phone booth to grab the coin! Luckily, Jimmy notices in time and yells, and the person doesn’t succeed in getting the coin. Jimmy isn’t able to see the person’s face, but he gets a good look at their hand, the person’s hand has an odd, blackened thumbnail.
It seems that the coin has greater significance for someone than just an odd foreign coin that they accidentally spent instead of American money. When Brains looks at the coin, he identifies it as an ancient Athenian coin, but he also notices that someone has used modern implements on the coin and a varnish to make it look older than it really is. In other words, the coin might at first look like a collector’s coin, but it’s actually a fake. So, if the coin is fake, where did come from, and who wants it so badly?
The boys start going over Jimmy’s route to try to figure out where the coin came from and if any of Jimmy’s customers have a blackened thumbnail. It turns out that the coin came from Binky Barnes’s house. Binky is about their age, but the boys consider him to be a nuisance because he has a way of exaggerating things and is always telling tall tales. You can’t believe a lot of things that Binky says, but the coin apparently came from Binky’s coin collection. It was a new acquisition, and his mother was the one who accidentally gave it to Jimmy when paying him for their news delivery. That still doesn’t explain who was trying to steal it from Jimmy.
Binky is upset when the boys tell him that his coin is a fake, but they point out that he’s legally entitled to get his money back from the person who sold it to him. Binky says that he bought the coin at an old junk shop owned by a man named Silas Gorme. When the boys go to the shop with Binky, they discover that Silas Gorme is the man with the blackened thumbnail who tried to steal the coin from Jimmy!
Silas Gorme is quick to offer Binky a refund in exchange for getting the coin back, but Brains confronts him about how he tried to steal the coin from Jimmy earlier and demands to know where the coin came from. Gorme finally agrees to take the boys to the coin dealer he purchased the coin from, Jeremy Dexter. Gorme tells Dexter that he wants his money back because the coin is fake, but Dexter denies selling him a fake coin. When Dexter examines the coin, he confirms that it’s fake and that it looks like the coin he sold Gorme, but he insists that the coin he sold was authentic.
During the conversation with Dexter, it is revealed that Gorme sold the coin to Binky for less than he paid when it bought it from Dexter, which looks suspicious. Then, they find the tools used for creating the fake coin in Dexter’s shop, which also looks suspicious. Dexter denies that those tools belong to him, but the situation has now become a police matter. Brains is sure that Gorme planted the tools in Dexter’s shop to frame him, and Jimmy is concerned that Dexter is in trouble because of them. Can the boys figure out what Gorme’s game really is and prove it?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction and Spoilers
This story has the trope of a tomboy girl who is mistaken for a boy. Jeremy Dexter has a daughter called Terry. Terry is one of those neutral names that can be nicknames for other, longer names. In this case, Terry is short for Theresa. When the boys first meet her, she’s dressed in clothes that a boy might wear and a baseball cap, and when she gets mad at the boys for getting her father into trouble with the police, she tries to hit Brains and accidentally hits Jimmy. At first, Jimmy is ready to get into a fight with Terry, thinking that Terry is another boy, but Brains stops him and points out that Terry is actually a girl. Traditionally, it isn’t considered acceptable for a boy to hit or get into a fight with a girl, so Jimmy would look bad for hitting Terry back, even though she struck first. The whole situation is something of an old-fashioned trope that’s partly there to show how bright Brains is for noticing something that Jimmy didn’t.
Terry is also a Scrappy-Doo-like character, picking fights to prove she’s tough and charging in when she’s not supposed to, messing things up. Brains and Jimmy find her annoying because of that, and frankly, so did I. A tough and intelligent girl is good and could be a real help to the boys as well as being a client, but Terry’s a thoughtless, put-up-your-dukes kind of character and doesn’t really add anything to the plot besides comic relief. Really, it’s odd for her to be the kind of character who sees fist fighting as her first resort because her father is such a gentle, intellectual type. I just don’t see the point in it.
The mystery itself seems pretty obvious. Considering that only Dexter, the boys, and Gorme are present in Dexter shop when the counterfeiting tools are discovered, it seems pretty obvious who planted them. This is one of those books where there’s less emphasis on whodunit than how they’re going to prove it. I’m not that big on most howdunit style stories, but this one does have a bit of a twist because the boy discover that Gorme is really only the tip of the iceberg. He’s not just an unethical shopkeeper selling one duplicate coin so he can sell his antique coin and have it, too. I turns out that he’s just one member of a larger counterfeiting ring, and the others aren’t happy with him for drawing attention to their activities. Brains and Jimmy infiltrate the gang’s hideout to get the proof that they need to prove what’s really going on to the authorities.
When the story begins, in 1912, the four Linnet children are in a bad situation. With their father on his way to serve in the army in India with a stop in Egypt, they have been left behind to stay with their grandmother, who is not an indulgent, “grandmotherly” sort of grandmother. First, she’s planning to give away the children’s dog because she doesn’t like dogs. Then, she’s planning to send the two eldest children, Robert and Nan (short for Anna), to boarding school, while keeping the younger children, Betsy and Timothy, to be tutored at home. Worse, she locks the children up by themselves, sometimes in the dark, leaving them to scream.
Admittedly, the reason why they were locked up was because their grandmother had arranged a tea party to show them off to her friends, and the children, not liking parties, had barricaded themselves in a hen house, fighting off the gardener and their grandmother’s companion with rhubarb stalks until they were finally caught. They were locked away from the party guests until they were ready to apologize, which none of them want to do. (Bad strategy on the part of the adults. Some things are their own punishment. Rather than locking the children up, which is cruel, they should have let the children suffer the consequences of their own bad choice. Don’t get them out of the hen house; insist that they stay out there, not being allowed any of the goodies at the party or even being allowed back into the house until they first clean themselves up in the yard. The kids aren’t very good at planning, and I’m sure they don’t have food stores in the hen house. Everyone gets hungry eventually, and it should be clear to the children that it’s their personal choice how long they want to stay that way. But, the grandmother also shouldn’t give away the children’s dog without their consent, so it’s hard to feel too sympathetic here.) Realistically, it is acknowledged that their grandmother could be quite kind with children who were gentle, quiet, and well-behaved, but also realistically, this is not the case with her grandchildren. Frankly, the children are wild and have no inclination to compromise with their grandmother. With all of these things combined, it is clear that life with their grandmother is going to be impossible, and Robert decides that there’s only one thing to do: escape.
Robert manages to break out of the room where he’s been locked up, and he frees his siblings and their dog, Absolom. The four children set off with their dog, intending to walk to the mountains (just some mountains, somewhere to the west – nowhere specific and no real plan involved) and make their living there because Robert imagines that would be a good idea. As they pass an inn, they spot a pony and cart tied up outside, and they decide to appropriate them for some transportation. Besides, Robert has always wanted a pony. Nan is concerned that they’re stealing, but Robert says that they’re just “borrowing.”
The Linnet children have much more in common with their Uncle Ambrose than with their grandmother or other relatives. Uncle Ambrose is similarly unsociable and impatient. Uncle Ambrose was once a teacher, but now that he’s retired, he has no desire to spend time with children again. He also doesn’t like dogs. But, it turns out that the pony they “borrowed” belongs to him and takes them to his house. When Uncle Ambrose realizes who the children are, he takes them into his house and keeps them over night, although he doesn’t introduce himself to them immediately. The children feel much more at home with Uncle Ambrose, even when they don’t know who he is, because his house is a bit shabby and untidy, and he has a pet owl and a cat with kittens. Also, in spite of his gruff manner and assertion that he’s not happy about having children around, Nan has the sense that he actually likes them. The children decide that they’re going to try to behave themselves in this house because they like being there and want to stay.
In the morning, Uncle Ambrose goes to town to get the groceries that his peg-legged gardener, Ezra, neglected to get the other day when the children stole the pony and cart in town. When he returns, he also has the children’s luggage with him. Uncle Ambrose went to see his mother about the children, and when he suggested that he could keep them at his house, the children’s grandmother eagerly took him up on the offer. The children are all intensely relieved that they won’t be sent back to their strict grandmother and her overly-tidy house and can stay with their eccentric uncle, the peg-legged gardener who comes home singing in the middle of the night when he gets drunk, and the wonderfully untidy garden outside, where they can play.
Uncle Ambrose confesses to the children that he has actually missed his students since he retired from teaching. He isn’t particularly fond of children by themselves, but he is fond of teaching them. As a condition of the children staying with him, Uncle Ambrose insists that they allow him to educate them. The children agree to this because one of their reasons for running away was so they would not be split up when Robert and Nan were sent to boarding school. The children just want to stay together with their dog. Uncle Ambrose agrees to this, saying that he doesn’t approve of sending young girls to boarding school at all, although he insists that girls be properly educated as well as boys. He says that he wouldn’t even consider sending Robert to boarding school until he’s had a better grounding because he’s not satisfied with the reports he’s had of Robert’s academic abilities. The children aren’t thrilled at the idea of studying, but they agree to it because staying together and studying with Uncle Ambrose sounds better than being split up or the other alternative, being sent to stay with their Uncle Edgar in Birmingham. Also, Uncle Ambrose is willing to give the children some time each day to themselves, to play or do what they want. He won’t even insist that they show up for meals, but if they miss them, they’ll just have to go hungry. (See? I told you it was a better strategy than fighting to get them out of the hen house.) As much as the kids don’t like the idea of studying, they love the idea of having some freedom. Freedom means that adventures could happen.
Now, the story at this point could have been a complete story by itself – a group of wild, undisciplined kids are left with their strict grandmother, and after a battle of wills between the children and the grandmother and some overly-harsh punishment, the children run away, finding a gruff but kindly bachelor uncle who rediscovers the pleasure of having children around and also happens to have once been a teacher and can tutor the children while their father is away, managing to inspire the children to behave a little better and learn to make some better decisions by granting them a little freedom to make some of their own choices instead of being too controlling. That’s all very nice as a single story. However, in this case, all of that is just the background for the story to come. We’re still in just the first part of the book.
Segue to the Magic
After it’s settled that the children will stay with Uncle Ambrose, they decided to go into town for their first free excursion. They stop at the little store in town to buy some sweets and a picture postcard to send to their grandmother because Nan has been thinking over their time with her and has realized that they were badly behaved and feels guilty about it. The store is managed by Emma Cobley, an old woman in an old-fashioned dress and cap and a red shawl who owns a black cat named Frederick. Emma is a little creepy and she warns the children to stay away from Lion Tor because it’s a dangerous place. (A “tor” is “a high, craggy hill.”)
When the children return to the house, Ezra insists upon introducing them to the bees. The children think that this is a very odd thing to do, but Ezra says that it’s important, and he asks the bees to look after the children. Timothy asks if it’s possible for bees to look out for people, and Ezra says that they once saved his life when he fell into an old tin mine and showed the vicar (the children’s uncle, after he retired from teaching – they’re all living at the vicarage now) where to find him. When Ezra hears that they’ve been to Emma Cobley’s shop, he tells them not to go there anymore. The most Uncle Ambrose buys there is stamps, but neither of them ever buys anything else from her, and Ezra is reluctant to tell the children why. There is something a bit creepy about Emma and some suspicious things in her shop, like the overly-appealing candy and the one postcard that she refuses to allow the children to buy or even look at for long.
As the children start having lessons with Uncle Ambrose, Robert asks him if he will be giving them pocket money. Uncle Ambrose says that he doesn’t give pocket money, but there are opportunities for earning some. He gives them a list of chores that they can do and what he’s willing to pay for doing them. He also points out to Robert that, as the oldest boy, he can’t expect to wriggle out of the tougher chores or leave them to the girls, but if he’s willing to tackle the tougher chores, he will pay him well for it. Uncle Ambrose has somewhat chivalrous sensibilities about what girls can handle, and he also reminds the boys that there are consequences for misbehavior, lying, or stealing. He says that he would never use corporal punishment on a girl, but he has caned boys before and could do the same to his nephews if they give him reason. He tells the children that, from this point on, they cannot interrupt their lesson time with any subjects that aren’t related to the lesson. (He never does hit any of the children and does make reasonable exceptions to this rule later in the story.) It isn’t just the threat of punishment that keeps the children in line, though. It turns out that Uncle Ambrose is an excellent story-teller, and when he starts describing other countries or historical events, the children are captivated. In many ways, Uncle Ambrose makes learning fun because he really loves his subjects and knows how to share what’s fascinating about them with other people. There are parts of the learning that seem like drudgery, but they are balanced out by the parts that are truly fascinating.
The children also gradually begin learning more about the other people who live nearby. There is a black man (called a “Negro” in the story) called Moses Glory Glory Alleluja. (That’s apparently his real name in the story and not just a nickname, to which I say, “God help us all!”) When the children first see him, they’re startled and afraid of him because he’s carrying a curved knife and looks like “a coal-black giant.” They stop and stare at him because they’re afraid, and Ezra tells them not to hurt the poor man’s feelings because he’s a gentle man. As he gets closer to the children, they realize that he’s not as fearsome as they had first thought from a distance. He’s actually very pleasant, and the knife he’s carrying is just a scythe for clearing plants.
Moses works for Lady Alicia (a sort of man-of-all work – cook, gardener, butler, etc.), and Lady Alicia also has a monkey called Abednego. When the kids go with Ezra to pick up a couple of extra beds that Uncle Ambrose is borrowing from Lady Alicia for the children, Abednego takes Betsy’s doll, and she has to chase after him to get it back. In the process, Betsy meets Lady Alicia, an elderly lady in very worn fancy clothes and wearing jewelry. The two of them introduce themselves to each other and explain a little about who they are. Lady Alicia once lived there with her husband and son, but she says that her son, Francis, was “lost” years ago on Lion Tor at the age of eight. She doesn’t explain at this point how that happened or even if her son died or simply disappeared. Her husband also disappeared a few years later overseas because he was a traveler and explorer. She doesn’t seem to expect to see either of them again. This is really where the main plot of the book is introduced.
The Magic
So, now we know that there’s a creepy old lady who owns a shop that isn’t quite what it seems to be and a mysterious and sad old lady whose husband and son have disappeared, and it’s all connected to Lion Tor. The children’s first encounter with Lion Tor happens when Betsy’s siblings realize that she’s missing at Lady Alicia’s house. Not knowing that she’s with Lady Alicia, they assume that she’s wandered off into the woods to pick flowers and go searching for her. Nan finds her way to Lion Tor, where she discovers a cave that is filled with paintings. She knows they weren’t done by cave people ages ago because people in the drawings are wearing modern hats. The artist turns out to be a bearded man in ragged clothes who seems unable to speak.
Nan learns that this man is called Daft Davie, but Nan doesn’t think that’s fair because he seems intelligent and artistically talented, even though he isn’t able to speak. Ezra explains to her that Davie used to work for a blacksmith in another village nearby but some boys kept teasing him and tormenting him because he couldn’t speak, so he eventually went to live by himself at Lion Tor.
The boys eventually find Betsy with Lady Alicia. To their surprise, Lady Alicia seems to be enjoying Betsy’s company, even though she doesn’t normally like visitors. She invites the children to return again with Nan, making an odd comment about how the Linnet family seems “inevitable” but might do her some good.
Uncle Ambrose allows Nan to use the parlor of his house as her private room, where she can do her sewing and darning or just have time to herself. He says that he hasn’t done much with the parlor himself, other than putting furniture in it, because the parlor is usually for the lady of the house, and he’s unmarried. Now that Nan is there, she counts as the lady of the house as the oldest girl, and Uncle Ambrose can tell that she’s a reflective kind of person who can use some quiet time to herself, away from the other children. Nan is appreciative, and she’s also surprised when Uncle Ambrose tells her that the previous lady of the house was Lady Alicia. Before her marriage to the local lord, she was the daughter of the previous vicar, and he found some of her old books in a hidden cabinet in the room.
Uncle Ambrose removed the books from the hidden cabinet and put them on the bookshelf in the room, but out of curiosity, Nan investigates the hidden cabinet and finds that it still contains a notebook. However, the notebook belonged to a young Emma Cobley, not Lady Alicia. The notebook contains what looks like evil witchcraft spells. Nan is alarmed, although later, she’s confused because she sees Emma Cobley at church. She isn’t sure what to think because she can’t imagine that a real, evil witch would go to church. Nan considers that perhaps Emma used to practice witchcraft in her youth but repented later and changed her ways. However, if that’s true, why does Ezra disapprove of her, and how can they explain Emma’s creepy black cat? When Nan studies the spells in the book, seeing spells that can prevent a person from speaking, cause a person to lose his memory, and cause a person to forget affection for another, Emma’s true character and some of the mysterious events of the past begin coming a little more clear.
When Nan talks to Ezra later, he says that Emma Cobley’s father was a black-hearted warlock who taught her evil spells. Ezra says that his own mother practiced white magic and that his family is descended from ancient peoples who were called fairies or gods. Nan had thought that there was something gnome-like in his appearance and isn’t surprised that he’s a bit magical. Ezra further describes the day that Lady Alicia’s son disappeared at Lion Tor. They’d been on a picnic with the boy’s nurse, and the nurse and the boy had been playing hide-and-seek. A mist came up, and they were unable to find the boy. They feared that he might have drowned in the marsh because his cap was nearby, but they were never able to establish that. Some other people thought he might have been kidnapped by gypsies, but there was no evidence of that, either.
In the cemetery of the churchyard, there is a memorial to Lady Alicia’s husband, Hugo Francis Valerian, and his son who was named after him, but the husband’s death date is unknown. The children argue about what that really means. Robert says that the Valerians are dead, but they’re just not buried at the site of the memorial because they were lost and nobody knows exactly when they died and where the bodies are. However, Betsy has the feeling that they’re not dead, and Nan agrees that disappearing isn’t the same as dying. But, is that really true? Are the Valerians alive or dead, and if they are alive, where are they?
Pieces of the past continue falling into place. Betsy and Nan accidentally find old love letters that Emma Cobley wrote to the elder Hugo Valerian … love letters that also contain angry threats when the love wasn’t returned. Pictures that Davie painted on the walls of his cave resemble ones from Lady Alicia’s tapestry. Uncle Ambrose doesn’t believe in the power of witches and thinks that what Ezra has been saying about magic and spells is just superstition, but Ezra knows a few things that Uncle Ambrose doesn’t. He’s the one who knows how to undo Emma Cobley’s wicked spells.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. Sometimes, this book also appears under the title The Runaways.
My Reaction and Spoilers
A Few Concerns
I didn’t like the parts with the harsh punishments or threats of it for the children. Locking children up or caning them would be considered child abuse by modern standards, although my feelings about that are somewhat offset because they kids are pretty wild and the book makes it clear that they are badly behaved in the beginning and provoked the punishment they received. I’m willing to let it go partly because nobody actually gets caned and because of the fairy-tale atmosphere of the story. In fairy tales, there is often a cruel relative, and in this case, it’s more like an overly-provoked one at her wit’s end. In either case, the children’s situation with their grandmother in the beginning establishes the reason why they go to live with their eccentric uncle and have magical adventures.
Some people might not care for the different standards for boys and girls in the story. It’s old-fashioned, out of date even for the time when the book was first published, but the setting is also old-fashioned, so I think it’s meant to establish the time and place. It’s common in older children’s books and stories that imitate them for boys to be given more freedom than girls but also for boys to be subjected to harsher, more physical punishments when they get out of line. Uncle Ambrose seems to have similar feelings in that direction, although he does give the boys and girls the same lessons because he feels that girls’ minds also need to be educated, and he allows all of the children to have equal free time and ability to play and explore the area together.
As another reviewer of this book observed, it seems a little strange that the children would be so frightened of Moses when they first meet him because they used to live in India, and you would think that they would be accustomed to the idea that there are people of different races in the world. This can’t be the first time that they’ve seen people who look different, although I suppose they could be a little intimidated by him being especially tall and carrying a scythe. That might be something that would be a little startling to see very suddenly until you look again and realize it’s just a really tall guy with a farm implement because we’re living in the countryside now. I liked the warning from Ezra to the children to behave themselves and not hurt Moses’s feelings. I thought it was good to emphasize that other people’s feelings are important, and that comment helped to humanize Moses because, even if he looks a little strange or intimidating at first, he’s still a human being with feelings.
However, there is another part of the story not too long after that, when they’re looking for Betsy and Robert, who has a habit of play-acting, pretends like he’s a Roman emperor giving a command to a “coal-black Nubian standard-bearer”, saying, “Slave, lead on.” There seems to be some self-awareness in the story that this wasn’t a good thing for Robert to say to Moses (who is a servant, not a slave, although Ezra later says that there is a rumor that Lady Alicia’s husband may have bought him in a slave market overseas when he was young), and Timothy is concerned that Robert might have offended him. The story says that Moses isn’t the kind of person who takes offense or holds grudges, and he seems to understand that Robert is play-acting, but I felt like this somewhat undermined the message of considering other people’s feelings by suggesting that the best way to be is not to have any particular feelings to consider. That’s not something anybody can count on in real life or insist that others provide for them. Real human beings are not like stuffed teddy bears, who can take endless abuse or respond to any comment with a constant smile and still be lovable and want to snuggle afterward, like none of it matters. Real humans have both feelings and limits, and this is one instance where I felt like someone should have thrown a little cold water on Robert’s play-acting. The whole story has an air of unreality about it, which is part of the charm, but I think even fantasy stories should be real about human behavior.
The Fantasy
The fantasy in the story is really very light, compared to most fantasy books. Although it becomes well-established by the end of the book that Emma Cobley is definitely a witch who cast evil spells which caused Lady Alicia to lose both her son and her husband, the spells and their undoing were done in such a way that Uncle Ambrose never seems to realize that it was all magic. Basically, the children and Ezra find the little figures with pins in them that Emma made, and Ezra recites a magical rhyme that allows them to remove the pins, thus breaking the spells. Then, they burn the figures and Emma’s old spell book, destroying her magic forever. After that, Lady Alicia’s son and husband both come back, Emma actually becomes a much nicer person, and everybody lives happily ever after.
The pace of the story is fairly slow, which is actually part of its atmospheric charm. For a book dealing with an evil witch, black magic spells, and unhappy people, it’s really pretty relaxing. I think part of that effect is because of its gradual pace and also because there are never very serious consequences for anybody in the story. It’s sad that Lady Alicia, her husband, and her son were all parted from each other for a period of years, but when the spells are broken, they are pretty quickly very happy again. Emma Cobley does try to prevent the children from learning her secrets and breaking the spells, but really, nothing bad happens to the children at all. There is one semi-frightening part where the boys and their dog are up a tree with Emma and her friends below it, but then Uncle Ambrose comes and takes the children home, and everything is fine. Emma tries to cast spells on the children at once point, but the children don’t even notice until they find the figures of themselves later. Ezra tells them that the witch’s spells were ineffective against them because he made his own figures of the children first and put them in the church, so they are protected. Emma herself faces no consequences in the end, either. They don’t have to destroy the witch to destroy her magic, and once her magic is gone, she is so changed and everyone is so happy that there’s no retribution, only forgiveness.
On the one hand, the lack of consequences in the story for things the children do make the story feel like the stakes are low. There is a sense of sadness around characters in the story, but is no particular sense of urgency. They are not racing the clock to break the spells, and the villains are pretty ineffectual at putting up obstacles to their success. On the other hand, it seems like most of the story focuses on atmosphere over action. This little village is an enchanting place to be. It’s charming, and the lack of consequences for the children, whether it’s for being racially insensitive or facing down a witch or even just staying out late, make the story feel like a very safe kind of adventure. Uncle Ambrose, Ezra, and their bees won’t let anything serious befall the children, and the worst punishment they have for misbehavior is being sent to bed with gruel (a kind of thin porridge) instead of a proper supper. Uncle Ambrose told them that if they missed meals, it would be their fault, and they’d have to go without. However, he never lets children go to bed hungry, and he even allows them sugar on their gruel. Again, very low stakes, but charmingly so. This story is not stressful, which is good, but it’s not for people looking for excitement.
I was a little impatient with the children for not making the connection between the spells in the book and Daft Davie even after seeing the figurines, including the one with the pin in its tongue. This spell is supposed to prevent people from talking, and who else do they know who can’t talk? There aren’t that many people in the area, and there’s only one person in the story whose main characteristic is an inability to speak. Even as they’re breaking the spells, they don’t know who they’re breaking them for, like they can’t even guess, and Nan is surprised when Davie can suddenly talk afterward. I think this is one of those stories that wants to make readers feel clever for figuring it out before the characters, but that can also feel a little frustrating. If there’s one thing I would change about this story (other than the racial bits), I would want the children to realize the truth about the spells faster and break them more deliberately.
I don’t really mind that Uncle Ambrose never believes in the magic. The book leaves the situation a little open for the characters, and possibly even the readers, to believe that there are other explanations for what happens. Maybe “Davie” lost his memory and ability to speak through an illness. The children in the story know that’s not it, but it’s not important for anybody else to know. Although, perhaps Uncle Ambrose knows more about magic than he lets on because, for reasons that are never explained, his pony never grows old, and his pet owl seems immortal. But, maybe that’s for the readers to decide.
This book starts up after the events in the previous book in the series, Magic or Not?, but one of the interesting features of this book is that each of the characters takes a turn in telling the story from the first person. As with the previous story, it’s ambiguous about whether or not there’s any magic involved, although the story implies that there is. In the previous book, the characters came to believe that an old well on the Martins’ property was a magic wishing well, leading them and their friends on a series of adventures over the summer. At the end of the summer, they were still uncertain about whether the well was really magic or if their adventures were just coincidence and maybe some playacting on the part of the adults around them. In this book, they investigate the well more, starting the process of making wishes again, partly because they’re bored and need some excitement, but also to find out whether the well really is magical or not.
When I give my opinion of this story, I’m going to do much o it within the summary itself because there are things that I really need to address within each section of the story. In particular, there are some historical circumstances that I need to explain.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
The Story
James Martin begins the story in this book, starting by saying that he and his twin sister Laura normally can’t stand books told from the first person because they often contain characters lamenting “If only I had known …” or “If only I had” done this or that, and they think that the characters sound dumb for not thinking ahead more, realizing the significance of things happening when the reader can, and not taking appropriate actions like a real person would. However, they’ve decided that it’s okay to tell their story in the first person because they do realize the significance of things as they happened to them, and it’s Laura’s idea that each of their friends should tell their part of the story themselves because they all experienced what happened in a different way.
James Begins
James explains that he and his sister are in the same class at school, the one for more advanced students, along with their friends Kip and Lydia. Their other friend, Gordy, is in a different class at the same school because he’s a slower learner. It wasn’t easy for them to start being friends with Gordy in the previous book, but since then, they’ve tried to be especially nice to him … to varying degrees. (They don’t seem very nice to me.) Sometimes, they say that they still have to be firm with him on some things. In the previous book, he was a bit of a troublemaker because he is often thoughtless about his actions and has some rough tendencies. He comes from a wealthy family, and his mother is a fussy queen bee type, which has caused some awkwardness hanging out with him, which continues into this book.
In the previous book, James and Lydia moved to a smaller town from New York City, and they discovered that their new house has an old well on the property that the girl living nearby, Lydia, told them was a magic wishing well. James never believed that it was, but Laura did, and even James had to admit that the “wishing well” did give them and others things that they were wishing for. Or, at least, they got what they wanted in meaningful ways. It’s still questionable whether it was because of the well or not.
Since their previous adventures, the kids have settled back into ordinary life. They’re all getting used to their new school, and Kip and James try out for the football team. However, the kids soon start to feel that life is getting dull. The four main friends who are all in the same class start getting in the habit of leaving Gordy out of some of their activities, partly because he’s in a different class and partly because it gives them an element of secrecy that they feel like they’ve lacked since their previous adventures. They still do some things with Gordy and let him join them when he comes looking for him. Gordy isn’t the kind of guy to hold grudges, and that makes the others feel guilty about the times when they leave him out, which perversely makes them leave him out more because having him around reminds them that they feel guilty for excluding him earlier. James acknowledges that none of this is right or fair but says that it’s just a part of human nature and can’t be helped. He also says that they all genuinely like Gordy, but he often seems a bit childish, and there’s “something about him that makes people want to pick on him.”
(I genuinely hate people who have this attitude about taking advantage of others just because there’s “something” about them that just makes them want to, like it’s not self-entitled to feel and act that way. Besides, I know exactly what this “something” is, and that’s Gordy’s niceness. Other people might yell or complain at someone who’s being mean to them and tell them right to their face that they’re being a jerk, which can help put a quick end to their jerkiness or at least cause them to dump it on some other poor person instead. Unfortunately, the buck tends to stop with Gordy because he doesn’t lose his temper, doesn’t complain, and doesn’t tell others off when he should, and they’re the type who won’t change until someone does tell them off. They take advantage of Gordy’s niceness because he doesn’t stop them from taking advantage, and deep down, they know that’s what’s happening. That’s why they feel guilty, but not enough to stop what they’re doing. This really annoys me because it seems like they’re almost blaming Gordy for not stopping them from being mean to him, but yet, they totally know what they’re doing and could just stop it themselves. If you don’t like or respect what you’re doing, whose fault is that? You could just decide to do something different anytime you want. I found them annoying when they acted like this in the last book, and I thought that they’d learned something by the end of that story, but I guess not. It’s annoying when characters don’t seem to learn anything, especially when they’ve just been mocking characters in other books for being slow on the uptake. I also don’t like it when this type of character is one of the main characters in a story because, as readers, we’re expected to identify and sympathize with the main characters of a story, and in this case, I don’t want to do either. They’re just getting on my nerves at this point, and we’re not very far into the story. Fortunately, this does get better.)
One day, when the kids are sitting around on the porch of the cottage that they use as their clubhouse without Gordy, talking about how Halloween is coming but nothing feels exciting since their adventures with the wishing well, they start to consider wishing on the well again. They’ve thought of doing this before, but they hesitate to do it because they’re afraid of using up the “magic” (even though James claims he doesn’t really believe in it) or cause the well to become angry with them for making frivolous wishes. They decide to swear an oath to each other in blood not to wish on the well until the well gives them a sign that it’s time, although they don’t know what kind of sign they’re expecting. However, Gordy does not swear the oath because they left him out.
When Gordy comes along, he’s giving a piggyback ride to Deborah, James and Laura’s younger sister. Gordy is always nice to little Deborah and enjoys indulging her in small ways. Gordy’s niceness and the way Deborah gushes about it make the rest of them feel uncomfortable. (Enough to change your behavior and quit being such jerks about this? Hmm?) Then, Deborah happily tells the older kids that Gordy has “fixed the well” so it will give them “magic wishes all the time.” Laura, who is particularly protective of the well, demands to know how he “fixed” it, and Deborah says that he put a wish down the well, writing it down on her spelling paper, which had a gold star on it. When they ask Gordy what his wish said, he says that he wrote, “Get going, or else. This means you.” (That doesn’t sound like a “wish” so much as a threat. Admittedly, this heavy-handedness about Gordy is off-putting. I wouldn’t have blamed the others as much for avoiding him sometimes if that was their main motivation, but it’s not, so I still blame them.)
Laura is angry about that tasteless threat, feeling like it’s going to ruin everything. However, James reminds her that Gordy didn’t know about the oath that they’d just taken together and that he only did it to please Deborah. Besides, they’ve all also been more rude to the well in the past than Gordy was. However, Laura completely loses her temper, saying that the well and the magic belongs to them and not to Gordy. She tells him right to his face that he’s a pest, they never wanted him around, and he should just go home. James and Kip redeem themselves to me at this point by standing up for Gordy against Laura. The boys acknowledge that, although they’ve fought before, sometimes physically, Gordy isn’t a bad guy and doesn’t deserve this treatment. Gordy apologizes, saying he’s sorry if he’s caused trouble, but he felt like someone should do something, Deborah wanted him to, and nobody else seemed willing to do it.
(I liked the part where James says, “Stick and stones may break your bones, but names and plain truths and meanness can go much deeper and cut you to the quick.” I like that because I never approved of the usual saying that words can’t hurt you. Yes, they do. They’re often meant to. That’s the whole reason why people say mean things in the first place, to hurt or embarrass someone else in order to relieve their own feelings or settle a score which may or may not really exist outside of their own minds, and it’s just gaslighting to pretend otherwise. It’s just something that teachers and parents say when they want to ignore a situation instead of dealing with it or confronting someone else’s uncomfortable emotions directly.)
Laura goes into the clubhouse, upset, but Gordy and the others follow her inside. Gordy simply and directly tells her that he’s sorry, and if he did something wrong, it’s because he didn’t know better. James can tell that Laura really feels worse about her own behavior than about Gordy’s. She also apologizes, saying that the “magic” can’t be good if it makes her say mean things like that, and she doesn’t really mean what she said. (Nothing “made” you be mean but you, Laura. That’s just honest. It came from you, and that’s why you’re angry with yourself. Deep down, you know it. Now, learn to help it, so I can stop feeling like I need to explain it. Nobody can change your behavior but you. I do appreciate that the kids are now speaking more honestly and trying to work things out, though.)
James clarifies the situation for Gordy, who isn’t into reading fantasy stories like the other kids are. In fantasy stories, magic always operates by certain rules. If you break the rules, something bad might happen, and if it does, it would be his fault. To her credit, Laura says that if something bad does happen, they’ll all be in it together, but if the adventure goes well, Gordy should be the one in charge of it because he’s the one who started it. It pains Laura to admit that because the truth is that she had really wanted to be the one to make the wish herself, and that’s what’s really behind her temper tantrum. Gordy offers Laura the opportunity to be in charge, if she wants, but everyone agrees that it should be Gordy because it’s only right and in keeping with the “magic.” Gordy isn’t quite sure what being in charge means in this type of adventure, but the others say that they’ll be with him through the whole thing.
At that moment, somebody knocks on the door of their clubhouse, which never usually happens. The kids take that as a sign that the wishing well’s magic is starting, and they tell Gordy that he’d better answer the door as the leader of this adventure. The perspective of the story shifts to Gordy at this point.
Gordy’s Story
I actually enjoyed hearing Gordy’s perspective more than James’s. I hadn’t expected that at first because Gordy can be kind of rough and thoughtless, but he’s deeper than he lets on. Part of his difficulty is that he’s actually a very shy and nervous person, and that’s why he sometimes says dumb and awkward things; he just blurts things out from time to time because he’s nervous. Yeah, I’ve been there, too, kid. He’s worried about his friends seeing how scared he often is inside because he thinks that they won’t like him if they knew. His loud and rough manners are a cover for his shyness and nervousness. It pains him sometimes that he says or does things he shouldn’t, but he’s fully aware of what he’s doing and why. Like the others when they’re rude or mean to him, he can’t seem to stop himself. (There’s a lot of that going around.) He’s brighter than he pretends, and he knows that Laura lied to him earlier about having a dentist appointment so that the others could hang out without him. Even though he hasn’t confronted the others about that, he is hurt that they do these things and make him feel left out, and that’s part of what inspired him to make the wish on the wishing well. Even though they aren’t always as nice to him as they should be, he thinks they’re fun to be with, and he admires them for knowing what to do in different circumstances.
Gordy is nervous when he goes to answer the door of the clubhouse, not knowing who or what to expect. When Deborah sees who’s at the door, she screams, “Witches!” It’s a little old lady in a black cloak. She has gnarled hands and straggly white hair, and she does look kind of like a witch. For some reason, she’s also holding a bunch of branches and plant stalks. Gordy says the only thing he can think of, which is, “How do you do?”
It turns out that the old lady wants directions to Hopeful Hill. Gordy takes that as a bad sign because Hopeful Hill is a mental hospital. As Gordy describes it, it’s “a place where unhappy people come for the experts to make them hopeful again.” People from this mental hospital often walk up and down the road nearby for exercise, and mean kids from the area sometimes yell insults at them, calling them “loonies.” Gordy privately admits that he used to do that, too, when he was younger, but he’s ashamed of it now, and he hopes that his friends never find out about that, either.
Since Gordy knows that the wishing well magic is supposed to be based around doing good deeds, and he’s supposed to be the leader on this, he offers to show the little old lady the way to Hopeful Hill. As he walks with the lady, the others follow a little way behind them, which makes Gordy feel better. All the way, the woman creepily mumbles strange words to herself. Gordy isn’t sure whether she’s speaking in a different language that he doesn’t recognize, whether she’s a witch who’s casting spells, or whether she’s just a crazy person who’s mumbling gibberish. However, as he calms down a little, he starts to recognize what the woman is saying as the names of different plants. Relieved, Gordy starts talking to her about plants, and he starts liking her. Feeling a little bad that the lady would have mental problems, he politely asks her if she’d like to talk about her problems. However, the lady laughs and tells him that she’s not a patient. She’s one of psychologists. She’s also an amateur naturalist, and she likes to teach her patients about plants and birds. Gordy actually likes bird watching, but he doesn’t like to talk about it to other kids because he’s been teased about it before.
By the time they’ve arrived at Hopeful Hill, Gordy and the psychologist have become friends, bonding over their love of birds and nature. Before they part ways, the psychologist mentions that she has a patient named Sylvia who could use some help and maybe Gordy could be the person to help her. Sylvia is a little girl who recently lost both of her parents in an accident and has been having difficulty coping with the shock of it. Gordy understands, remembering how he felt when his father died. The psychologist thinks that maybe Sylvia needs other children to talk to, and she asks Gordy if he would be willing to talk to Sylvia. Gordy is often nervous talking to people, but he agrees to try.
There is an interlude in Gordy’s story where Laura explains how she and the others are still following behind Gordy and the old lady, still worrying about the old lady being a witch and what she’s going to do with Gordy. When he goes into the asylum with her, they’re still able to see them through a window, and they watch as the old lady introduces him to a pretty girl with blonde hair. Because they don’t know who Sylvia is and why Gordy is there, they think maybe the girl is under a spell.
Meanwhile, Gordy is surprised at what the asylum looks like on the inside. It sort of reminds him of a hotel. He meets Sylvia’s aunt, who is now her guardian and is an unsympathetic person. The psychologist, whose name is Doctor Emma Lovely, introduces Gordy to Sylvia. Sylvia is younger than Gordy (a sixth-grader) but older than Deborah (a first-grader). Gordy estimates that she would be in the third grade. At first, Gordy doesn’t know what to say to Sylvia, so he tells a dumb joke. He knows it’s a dumb joke, but it always makes him laugh, and it makes Sylvia laugh, too. The aunt is worried that Sylvia is becoming too excited, but Doctor Lovely says to let the children talk. Gordy later finds out that, up to this point, Sylvia had not spoken aloud for weeks, but she can’t resist asking him what “the third” at the end of his name means. Gordy explains that he was named after his father and grandfather, which is why he’s the third person to have that name. He tells her that his father is dead, too. He isn’t sure if he should say that, but he thinks it might be good for her to know that she’s not the only person who lose a parent. Then, he tells her a little more about his life, how he lives down the road, and what his friends are like. When it’s time for Gordy to go home, Sylvia doesn’t want him to leave, but Gordy says he has to go but maybe he can come back. Doctor Lovely says that she’d like him to come back.
It seems like their first good deed has gone well, and the kids go back to Gordy’s house for supper and to talk about what they should do next. However, while they’re talking, Sylvia suddenly shows up. She slipped away from the asylum and came to see Gordy because he mentioned to her where he lives. The kids invite her inside, although they’re concerned about what to do with her because she’s a runaway. Lydia’s impulse is to keep her, but James realizes that they’d have to make some special arrangements to do that. They consider keeping her at one of their houses, but they either don’t have the room or don’t think that their parents would let them. Gordy and his mother have the most money and space, and he’d like to have Sylvia stay there, but his mother is absorbed in all of her social activities and committees, and he doesn’t think that she’d have time or interest in Sylvia. (They also have a cottage that they use as a clubhouse, and I expected that they would consider keeping her there, but they don’t.) They end up calling Doctor Lovely and letting her take Sylvia back to Hopeful Hill, but Gordy doesn’t feel good about it because he doesn’t think Sylvia can really get better there.
The next day at school, Gordy is distracted, worrying about Sylvia, and does poorly in class. His teacher, Miss Wilson, keeps him after school to ask him why he’s been so distracted all day, so he explains the entire situation to her. Miss Wilson is moved by Sylvia’s story, so she gives Gordy a ride to Hopeful Hill, stopping by her house on the way to pick something up. When they get to the asylum, Miss Wilson gives Sylvia the box she got from her house, which contains a beautiful doll that Miss Wilson used to play with when she was young. Sylvia loves the present, and Miss Wilson invites her to come see her other dolls and dollhouses sometime.
While Sylvia plays with the doll, Gordy listens to Miss Wilson talking to Doctor Lovely, offering to take Sylvia. Miss Wilson has been teaching for many years and loves children. She’s wanted a child of her own, although she’s never had one, and she has the time to care for Sylvia because she works at a school, and her working hours would mean that she would only work when Sylvia herself is in class. Doctor Lovely says that could be arranged, if Sylvia is willing, and Sylvia agrees that she would like to stay with Miss Wilson for awhile and see if she likes it with her. (Sylvia’s aunt isn’t really discussed much, but since she doesn’t seem to want to be responsible for Sylvia, it seems that she’s willing to let someone else adopt her.)
Gordy is pleased because it seems like this little adventure is wrapping up nicely, and Miss Wilson even tells Gordy that she’s thinking of transferring him from her class to his friends’ class at school. His friends’ class is the more advanced one at school, and Gordy is a little more academically slow than they are, but Miss Wilson thinks that he can handle it and that being with his friends might motivate him to work a little harder and learn better. Gordy likes the idea, but he’s also starting to like Miss Wilson a little better now, so he says that he’d like to finish the semester with her before deciding. He hurries to meet his friends and tell them what happened with Sylvia, and Laura takes the story from there.
Laura’s Story
When Laura and the others hear Gordy’s story about Miss Wilson taking Sylvia, they’re a little disappointed because they had been planning to break her out of the asylum, and living with a teacher doesn’t seem like much fun, but Gordy says that Miss Wilson is really nice. Lydia is also dissatisfied because it seems like everyone was skipped over in this adventure but Gordy. Laura says that might be because she was so mean about it when they first found out about Gordy’s wish.
For a few days, things are pretty calm. They continue to visit Sylvia and are happy to see that she’s getting along well with Miss Wilson. Then, one day, James is reading a local paper, and he spots a letter to the editor that gets their attention. The letter wishes good luck to the new railroad station, and it’s signed “A Well-Wisher.” The kids are confused because they haven’t heard anything about a new railroad station in the area, and they wonder if it could be some kind of code. Then, they start thinking about the word “well-wisher.” It occurs to them that they are also well-wishers, both because they have a “magic” wishing well and because they wish everyone well.
The kids start wondering if anyone else in the area also has a magic wishing well, and if that’s what the “Well-Wisher” means. They start asking other people in the area who have wells if their wells are wishing wells, and they get a variety of responses, but nobody who sincerely says that their well is a wishing well. Since that doesn’t seem to lead anywhere, they decide to go down to the town’s railroad station and see what the letter means by “new railroad station.” They don’t learn anything there, either.
The kids stop to buy apples from a man selling them from a nearby orchard, and the man tells them that the orchard has been condemned, and this is his last crop. The town is forcing him to sell his property to the town so they can use the land for the new railroad station. The farmer is upset about having to move and seeing his beloved trees cut down.
At first, the kids think that their next wishing well mission is to prevent the new additions to the railroad station and save the orchard, but Kip points out that many commuters, like his father, rely on that railroad station, and the station has been getting more crowded and has insufficient parking. Just like the school the community decided to build in the last book, there is a community need for this expansion of the railroad station. Then, the kids wonder if there is a way to help the farmer keep his orchard even though he has to move it from its present site.
Fortunately, there is someone else who has an orchard and who could use an experienced farmer to help her manage it, and there might even be some romance in it!
Lydia’s Story
Dicky LeBaron has always been a rotten bully at school, particularly liking to pick on Gordy, although Lydia has had some bad experiences with him, too. The whole group has had a couple of run-ins with him just during the course of this book, and when it’s Lydia’s turn for a good deed, the first thing she thinks of is taking care of Dicky. Laura doesn’t think that the wishing well should be used for revenge, but Dicky keeps following them around, spying on them, and spreading mean rumors about what they do in their clubhouse. Lydia decides that she’s had enough of Dicky and is going to do something about him.
Lydia tells Dicky that what she and the others really do in the clubhouse is talk to ghosts, and she invites him to come see for himself. Dicky accepts the invitation, and Lydia feels a little guilty because she’s actually planning a trick on him. However, because Dicky has been so mean, she decides to go through with the trick anyway. There’s a hole in the floor of the clubhouse where an old furnace used to be. Normally, the kids keep the hole covered by an old chest so nobody falls into the basement, but Lydia moves the chest and covers it with a rug instead. Her idea is to trick Dicky into stepping on the rug and falling onto a pile of pillows in the basement. Then, while he’s trapped in the basement, she plans to scare him with spooky ghost noises, and then, when the rest of her friends come, they can all tell off Dicky for all the mean stuff he’s done to them and tell him that they won’t let him out of the haunted basement until he promises to behave better.
Of course, none of this goes according to plan. Instead, Lydia accidentally falls into her own trap, and when she falls into the basement, she hurts her ankle. When Dicky comes, she still puts on a ghost act, calling out from the basement in a ghostly voice and making a horrible face when Dicky looks down the hole. At first, Dicky really is scared, but then his older friends, who are even meaner, come along, realize that it’s a trick, and show him that it’s just Lydia in the basement. Dicky is mad at Lydia for tricking him, and he and the mean older boys talk about what they’re going to do to get even. However, when the older boys talk about doing something to little Deborah, Dicky draws the line because Deborah’s just a little kid. He and the other boys argue about it, and the older boys shove Dicky down the hole with Lydia.
Trapped in the basement together, Lydia and Dicky have a few honest words about what they’ve each done. Lydia apologizes for the trick, and Dicky reveals that he’s only been doing the stuff he’s been doing and sneaking around because he felt left out. Lydia asks him why he didn’t just ask to join in and be friends instead of acting like a creep, but Dicky cuts the discussion short while he figures out how to get out of the basement.
Dicky manages to climb out of the basement through a chimney, and when his “friends” try to stop him, they accidentally disturb a hornets’ nest, which drives them off. Dicky gets out and frees Lydia. Then, they go and rescue Gordy and Deborah from where the big boys had them tied up. Dicky gets a few hits from Gordy and from James and Kip when they come along because they all think he was one of the boys who attacked Deborah. Fortunately, they get the whole situation straightened out, and Deborah isn’t traumatized from the experience.
James admits that Dicky turned out better than he though under the circumstances, but he’s not sure he really wants him around because of the way he’s been acting toward them for a long time (a valid concern) and because he dresses like a juvenile delinquent (kind of shallow). Lydia tells James off for being a snob and not giving people a chance when they try to improve themselves (also a valid criticism). They all sit down with Dicky and explain to him what their group is really about, telling him about the wishing well and the good deeds and letting him decide for himself whether or not he’s interested in joining them. Even though Dicky is a bit superstitious, he thinks the wishing well sounds kind of childish and turns down the offer to join them. However, he thanks them for offering to let him join and seems to be fond of Deborah, and Laura thinks that he might help them out at some later point, if they need him.
Kip’s Story
Kip’s story in particular requires explanation because it’s topical for the time period when the book was written.
James and Laura’s family misses church next Sunday because they oversleep, but Kip is there, and he hears the minister giving the congregation a stern talk about a local issue. Apparently, there is a new family moving to the area, and some of the current residents disapprove and have been putting together a petition against the family. The minister tells the congregation that he disapproves of the petition and has written a letter of welcome to the new family, inviting members of the congregation to sign it as well.
The minister doesn’t say why people are against this new family, and this is the first that Kip has heard of it, but his parents are among those who sign the welcome letter. After church, Kip overhears some women talking about the minister, saying that he shouldn’t have brought up this issue in church and he “doesn’t know his place.” A couple of men are also talking, saying, “Once one gets in they’ll all come. We have to draw the line.” As far as lines go, I’m pretty good at reading between them, and I know that this book was published in 1960.
Even though nobody has openly said it, I knew at this point in the story that these people are talking about a black family moving to the area. The situation is like that of the Myers family in Levittown, Pennsylvania in 1957. I wouldn’t show the video I linked to kids because of some of the language involved, but the woman about 6 to 10:30 minutes into that video pretty much sums up her entire issue with having new neighbors who are black. She just “could never” accept them socially, like the snobbiest mean girl at the cool kids’ table in the middle school cafeteria, who thinks it’s weird and wrong that “uncool” kids want to be treated like human beings, too. She speaks like these people outside the church. I don’t know who the woman in the video is/was, but if she felt like she wasn’t being heard, I think that the way the characters talk in this book from 1960 show that people definitely heard her and others like her and noticed how they felt and what they said. Just because people don’t agree with you or even like you as a person doesn’t mean that they didn’t listen, hear, and understand. Understanding does not equal approval. It’s completely possible to understand someone else’s position yet not identify with it or approve of it, just like I felt irritated by the main characters in this story when they were being jerks to Gordy at the beginning, even though, as a reader, I was seeing the situation through their eyes. Seeing it through their eyes didn’t make me like it better. Sometimes, what you come to understand about a person is that they’re in the wrong or just being a jerk and you don’t want any part of their issues. That might sound harsh, but it’s true. It’s the risk we all take when expressing opinions, that when we get someone else’s attention, it won’t be the kind of attention we wanted but the kind that other people think we deserve.
In the story, Lydia’s grandmother calls the people against the new family “Philistines.” The kids don’t know exactly what that means although Kip vaguely remembers that the Philistines had “the jawbones of an ass”, which he thinks sounds like the situation here. (Actually, Samson killed Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, but I like Kip’s explanation because of the imagery.) Kip’s mother tells him that she doesn’t want to talk about the issue because it makes her “too angry”, so he talks it over with his friends instead. They still don’t openly say what the issue is with the new family because little Deborah is with them, and the older kids are careful about what they say around her, but Kip implies that he’s figured it out. They just refer to the disapproving townspeople as “snobbish”, which is true, although adults will recognize that it’s a particular kind of snobbishness.
I’d like to say here that I found it interesting that they never actually refer to the new family as black at any point in the story. I kept expecting that they would, but they never did. It’s all implied, and if you’re old enough to understand what’s going on, you get it. Deborah doesn’t get it at first, although she does when she actually sees the new family in person for the first time. They are never actually described, but the fact that their appearance makes Deborah immediately see the issue settles the matter.
The kids think that this issue with the new family in town might be their next mission and that Kip should be in charge of it, but Kip questions whether there’s anything for them to do because the minister has already been taking steps to deal with the situation. They consider signing the minister’s letter, if he’ll accept signatures from children, but they also wonder whether magic and their wishing well would go well with a church activity. They decide to go to the minster and ask him about it and if there’s anything they can do.
The minister is pleased that the children care and want to help, and he’s not overly concerned if they’re motivated by “wishing well” magic to do so. From the way he says it, it sounds like he regards the “wishing well” as a harmless children’s game or the product of overactive imaginations, which it might be, since the story never firmly settles it. The minister just appreciates that the children’s hearts are in the right place and uses the reference to fountains in Proverbs 5:16 as proof that a wishing well’s help is acceptable here. (Although, that verse is actually a metaphor for marriage and adultery, which completely goes over the heads of the children. He’s just humoring them here. Personally, I would have picked a reference to the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well because that has an actual well in it and “living water”, but it’s not a detail that’s really important to the story. The important point is the minister is happy to accept whatever help these imaginative children are willing to offer.) He says that, since the new family also includes children, it would be fitting if they could collect a page of children’s signatures to add to the letter. The kids are all happy to sign the children’s page and say that they can get some other signatures as well. They also get more signatures from other adults, not just children.
When the children go back to James and Laura’s house, Kip’s parents are talking to James and Laura’s parents. The adults are worried about the children hearing about the problem, although James’s father says that they might as well know that the world isn’t a perfect place and has its problems. The kids walk into the room and tell them that they know what’s happening already. James’s father says that he’s not really worried about whether can get enough people to sign the welcome letter. He’s pretty sure that the majority of the people in the community will be willing to accept the new family into the community. What worries him is that the people who are unhappy about the new family might escalate their behavior into some kind of demonstration if they don’t get their way. The kids say that they’ve wished on the wishing well, and they’re sure that will take care of it. Their parents know what the kids think about the wishing well, but they urge them to be careful here because this is a situation that makes people emotional, and it could get out of hand. Still, the kids have faith in the wishing well and in the friends they’ve made through their various adventures.
I found it interesting how the kids describe the way other children at school have heard about the issue from their parents. If their parents haven’t all talked to them directly about it, they’ve at least talked about it in front of them. The kids at school generally side with whatever their parents say about the issue, and the ones that are against the new family are described as being “stuffy, hopeless, purseproud ones” (“purse proud” people are people who are especially proud of their wealth because they have little else to be proud of, basing their self-esteem on monetary wealth) or “feckless goons who’ll do anything for a little excitement.” They also mention that there are “mindless ones who never have any opinion of their own and have to borrow other people’s,” and those people are up for grabs for either side, so they manage to sway a few of them. At one point, a bully tries to take their paper and tear it up, but Dicky stops him. Dicky orders the bully and some of the other kids to sign the paper, too, so he’s finally using his powers for good. Gordy’s mother is very influential in the community, and the “intolerant ones” (as the book describes them) try to recruit her to join their cause, but she turns them down. She doesn’t sign the welcome letter either, though, because she considers the entire situation tasteless and undignified and doesn’t want to get involved in any way.
It’s a little worrying when they hear that the “intolerant ones” are planning some kind of demonstration, but Kip comes up with a good idea for a demonstration of welcome: they recruit a bunch of friends to do a nice garden for the new family. People bring all kinds of plants for the garden, and many children help. The presence of the children gets the demonstrators to back out of their demonstration. The new family loves the new garden, and it turns into a big community celebration.
Before Kip’s story ends, he gets curious about who originally owned the new family’s house. After some research, he finds out that the original owner was an escaped slave who traveled through the Underground Railroad. Not only does it seem right that a black family should move to the property, but the original owner had a reputation for growing herbs in her garden that she used for magical cures, which seems to fit with the magic of the wishing well.
Deborah’s Story
I partly expected the story of the new family in town to be the climax of the book, but it’s not. They’ve safely moved in, but now, they’re going to have to live in the community, and there are still people who have bad feelings about that. This is where little Deborah gets a story in the book. The others hadn’t expected Deborah to get an adventure from the wishing well because she’s just a little sister of a couple of the main characters, but she’s in a unique position to do some good for the new family. Because Deborah is still only in the first grade, she dictates her story to another character, who doesn’t identify himself at first but who plays an important role in her adventure.
The three children in the new family are younger than most of the characters in the book so far, but the oldest, a boy named Hannibal, is six years old and in Deborah’s first grade class. Hannibal’s first day at school does not go well. He’s surly to his teacher and the other kids, making it clear that he doesn’t want to be there, and he doesn’t want to play with them. Hannibal’s behavior seems to confirm to the children whose parents didn’t want his family to move there in the first place that they were right not to want them, and some of the kids start teasing Hannibal on the playground at recess, making fun of his unusual name.
Dicky’s teacher has recently made him a playground monitor for the younger children in order to teach him some responsibility. Dicky (the other narrator who shares Deborah’s story and writes it down for her) knows that’s why he was given the job of playground monitor, but he finds that he actually doesn’t mind the job. When the other kids start teasing Hannibal and Deborah can see that he’s getting more upset, she runs to get Dicky. The mean kids are intimidated by Dicky and run away when he comes. At first, Dicky admits that he doesn’t quite understand the situation. Thinking that the other kids didn’t want to play with Hannibal, he calls one of his younger brothers over and tells him to play with Hannibal instead.
However, Hannibal says that he doesn’t want to play with anybody. He tells Dicky flat out that he doesn’t want to be there at this school and that the other kids don’t really want him. Dicky says that people do want him here, and that’s why they fixed up the garden and had that welcoming party. Hannibal is pretty sharp for his age, though, and he says that he knows that there are people here who didn’t want him or his family and the flowers in the garden aren’t going to fix that. He says he also knows that even people who do nice things often do them for their own sake, so they feel good, not because they really like or want to help someone else. Hannibal is also homesick for where they used to live in New York, and he wants to go back there.
Dicky can’t deny that a lot of what Hannibal said is true, but he also recognizes the emotional state that Hannibal is in. Dicky’s family has had a lot of problems, and even he realizes that’s why he’s often acted the way that he has. His family is poor, he has a lot of brothers, and social workers who have come to visit his family are often unhelpful because they don’t really understand the family or their situation. In the past, Dicky has often taken out his frustrations through vandalism and being mean to other kids, especially kids like Gordy, who have more than his family does. However, Dicky is now old enough to understand that breaking things and being mean don’t help anything and often make problems worse. He explains to Hannibal that making friends requires some effort from him as well as the other kids because they can’t be his friends if he won’t let them be, and even though he wishes he were back where he used to live, he lives here now, and he might as well make the most of it. Hannibal is too upset to listen, though, and when Dicky tells him to play with the other kids, he just starts shoving people around, pretending that he’s playing tag. Hannibal is so angry and surly all day that he really gets on everyone’s nerves, and when school’s out, he runs away from the other kids, some of whom are planning to get back at him for how he’s been treating them.
Deborah is worried about Hannibal, so she persuades Dicky to give her a ride on his bike while they go looking for him. Dicky is sympathetic and agrees. Deborah thinks that Hannibal is her mission from the wishing well, and even though Dicky doesn’t believe in it and thinks all the wishing well stuff is corny, he lets Deborah talk him into doing a ritual by the well where they wish that Hannibal would behave better and get along with others. Dicky does the ritual with Deborah to make her happy, although he worries that someone else might see them, and it will ruin his cool, tough guy reputation.
The person who sees them doing the ritual is Hannibal, who is hiding nearby. He is fascinated by the ritual that the others are doing and by Deborah’s “magic” wishing well. When Deborah tells him that they were wishing about him, Dicky expects that Hannibal will get mad again, but he doesn’t. Instead, Hannibal wants to make a wish of his own, wishing that he could be just like other kids.
Dicky tells Hannibal that he should learn to like himself and appreciate himself for being different because everyone is a unique person, and there will never be another person just like him again. Hannibal says that he likes himself just fine, but other people don’t, and that’s why it’s a problem. Dicky says that he can make the other kids behave themselves and play with him, but Deborah realizes that what Hannibal needs is someone to be nice to him for his own sake, because they want to, not because they have to.
Deborah invites Hannibal to come inside for some water, and when Hannibal notices that he’s ripped his clothes and worries about what his mother will say, Deborah suggests that her mother might be able to fix the rip. Seeing that someone is genuinely trying to be nice to him and that people will take care of him here softens Hannibal. The first grade teacher tells the other students to be nice to Hannibal on his second day because his first day was just really hard for him and that’s why he was behaving badly. The second day goes better, and Hannibal starts playing with the other kids and settling in.
The adventure does seem to do Dicky some good, too. He somewhat comes to believe in the magic of the wishing well, although he doesn’t like to admit it openly, and helping another troubled kid who reminds him a little of himself helps him to settle some of his own problems, teaching him the leadership and responsibility that his teacher hoped he would learn. He starts becoming more friendly with the other kids and hanging out with them more, although he also spends time with other friends or just by himself because he still likes being a kind of lone wolf. His personality grows and changes, but he also realizes that he can still be himself and his own man.
James’s Story
By this point, everyone has had an adventure of some kind except for James. Part of the reason why James is last is because he both believes in the magic of the wishing well and doesn’t. He likes fantasy stories and magic as much as Laura, but he also notices that everything that they’ve accomplished so far could also just be accomplished through kindness and thoughtfulness and that there doesn’t really need to be any magic. James likes facts and being sure of how things work, so for the last wish of the wishing well, he asks the well to give him some kind of evidence of whether or not there really is any magic.
One Saturday, the kids go on a long bike ride to just explore the area, finding a sign post that points to a place called Journey’s End Road. Curious about who would live on a road with such a strange name, they decide to check it out. At first, they’re expecting that they’ll find little cottages with elderly people in them, people who are at the end of life’s “journey”, so to speak. Instead, they find a mansion that looks like a castle.
While they’re admiring this castle-like mansion, a blonde girl in a blue dress steps out onto a balcony and calls to James for help, saying that she’s locked in and needs to get down. Laura thinks this is wonderfully romantic, rescuing a princess from a tower, and even James thinks that it seems pretty magical and romantic. Laura asks the girl if she’s being held prisoner by a wicked ogre, and she says yes. James doesn’t really believe that, but he’s more than willing to help. The girl tells him where to find a ladder, and he helps her to climb down from the balcony.
Once the girl is on the ground, she asks them to take her into town so she can get some important papers to the police and stop some international spies. James is still happy to help her, even though it’s weird that she’s now talking about spies. Gordy recognizes the girl as an older, teenage girl named Muriel who he’s seen at dance classes. Muriel tells them that her name is not her real name because she was stolen by the spies as a baby.
Her story gets weirder and more unbelievable, but James is enchanted by her because she’s pretty and gives her a ride on the handlebars of his bike, even leaving the others behind because she’s eager to get back to town quickly. She says that she needs to get to the town hall with the “papers”, but then, she says that they’re being followed, so they have to duck into a movie theater.
Of course, it turns out that she actually wants to meet another boy at the theater. She had a date with him to see the movie, but her father didn’t approve, and that’s why she was locked in her room. James is offended that she lied to him, let him pay for the tickets, and even referred to him as a “little boy.” Angry and humiliated, James hangs around in the theater’s lounge, afraid to face his friends and feeling let down by the “magic.” Then, he smells a gas leak in the lounge and warns the ticket seller. Seeing it as his opportunity to rescue Muriel from something that’s actually dangerous, James also goes back into the theater and makes Muriel leave with him.
Muriel is angry with James for interrupting her date, and then, he’s confronted by Muriel’s angry father, who mistakes him for Muriel’s date. Fortunately, James’s sister and friends come and explain all of Muriel’s lies to her father. Then, the movie theater is evacuated, and the ticket-seller and police praise James in front of Muriel’s father for saving everyone, pointing out that he personally saved Muriel and calling him a hero. Muriel’s father admits that he made a mistake thinking that James was the hoodlum that he didn’t want his daughter to date and says that they can see each other any time they want. James isn’t interested in seeing Muriel again, but he’s pleased at being a hero. He and his friends get their picture in the local paper.
James’s conclusion is that the wishing well proved that there is magic. His reasoning is that, if all he was supposed to do was to find the gas leak and be a hero, there were other ways he could have done it. He thinks that the wishing well directed him to Muriel so he could have the experience and excitement of rescuing a “princess” (or as close an approximation as they could get).
However, James does feel a little disillusioned, thinking about what “princess” Muriel is actually like, and he sees the need to grow up and see people and things for what they are. On the bright side, James has started to see the appeal of girls, and he’s learned to recognize that there are better girls than Muriel. He starts seeing a girl named Florence, and he sees his relationship with her as a kind of magic, so he’s satisfied, even though he now doesn’t have as much time for secret meetings with his friends and the “magic” wishing well.
The End
The book ends around Thanksgiving, with some final comments from everyone about how their adventures affected them and what they’re thankful for after their experiences.
When this story begins, Miss Bianca, who is Perpetual Madam President of the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society, is evaluating candidates for the Tybalt Stars award, which is given for mice who are brave in the face of cats. Bernard, the secretary of the society, is helping her. Each of the candidates is undeniably brave, but Miss Bianca notices that each of them also had a self-serving motive behind their bravery, which seems disappointing for a benevolent society. When they stop for lunch and Bernard goes to fetch some salt for them, he finds a note in the salt that says, “Someone please get me out of the salt mines.” The note is signed “Teddy (age 8).” Naturally, Miss Bianca is eager to help the poor boy! Bernard is a little more doubtful about the mission because the salt mines are about a thousand miles away, extremely dangerous, and extremely well guarded. Nevertheless, the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society cannot refuse to help a prisoner, and neither can its President.
Soon, Miss Bianca has members of the society trying to learn anything they can about a missing boy named Teddy, but apparently, no one has reported a boy by that name or age as missing. Bianca uses the lessons of the boy who owns her to learn more about the salt mines and how to get there. In order to get to the salt mines, they’d have to go by train, and it’s a very dangerous route. At the next meeting of the society, Miss Bianca asks for volunteers to go rescue Teddy, but everyone is reluctant to go, and many members of the society don’t like it that Miss Bianca doesn’t even seem to have any facts about Teddy or his situation that could help them. Miss Bianca says that, even though she can’t be more specific about Teddy’s background or how he came to be in the salt mines, the important fact is that he shouldn’t be there, and he needs help getting out. Since no one else wants to volunteer for the rescue mission, Miss Bianca says that she’ll go herself, and of course, Bernard insists on coming with her.
To Miss Bianca’s surprise, her biggest opponent, a curmudgeonly mouse called the Professor (his real name is George) who teaches mathematics, also volunteers to join the mission. Bernard and Miss Bianca are even more surprised when the Professor insists on bringing his friend Caerphilly along. Caerphilly is very elderly, but he’s also a professor of geology. Caerphilly has never actually been to the salt mines before, but he’s always wanted to see them and study them. Bernard and Miss Bianca aren’t sure that Caerphilly is up to handling the dangers that they’re likely to encounter on the mission. Miss Bianca reminds Caerphilly that this is supposed to be a rescue mission, not a scientific expedition. Caerphilly is unconcerned, saying that they can handle the rescue, and he’ll handle the science. Miss Bianca says that the Professor should warn his friend just what risks a rescue mission involves, but the Professor is also unconcerned, saying that the geology department at the university thinks too much of itself, and he wouldn’t mind seeing his friend chased by bloodhounds. (Some friend he is.) Miss Bianca is concerned both because of the danger and because their self-serving motives are just what she was concerned about before.
In spite of that, they decide to proceed with the mission, bringing the two professors. They take some time to make their preparations. Bernard and Bianca research the trains they’ll need to take. The Finance Committee allows them to take along the society’s Treasure – there’s only one, a single gold coin they found in a ruined building. Teddy might need this to pay for his train fare after they get him out of the mines. The Ladies’ Guild also knits mittens for the unfortunate boy because the salt mines are reportedly very cold. Miss Bianca tells the boy she lives with not to worry if he doesn’t see her for a week or so because she’s going to be writing an epic poem and needs privacy.
As they finally set out on their mission, the Professor is pessimistic, but the train journey is uneventful. When they arrive at the salt mines’ train station, it’s a very bare and gloomy building. Bernard finds a wooden door with some steps heading down.
At the bottom of the steps, they find themselves in an underground cavern filled with stalactites and stalagmites. There is also an underground lake surrounded by crusts of salt. The Professor realizes that they have entered the salt mines through a disused and forgotten entrance. In the distance, they hear the sounds of prisoners mining the salt.
It’s a long walk to the active part of the mine, but along the way, they make an important discovery – a mouse-sized city carved out of salt! Each of the buildings in the miniature town are unique and resemble famous buildings from around the world. Miss Bianca thinks that the buildings were probably carved by prisoners who made buildings to resemble the places where they used to live. It’s the perfect place for the mice to stay, though.
Bernard, inspired by this strange place, tries to write a poem for the first time in his life, which isn’t very good. Miss Bianca tries to be nice about it, but he can tell that she doesn’t like it. Bernard is upset enough to try to drown himself (that part of the story struck me as rather shocking, although it’s handled so matter-of-factly as just a product of the weird atmosphere of this place), but he can’t because he just floats in the salt water. It seems like most of the members of the expedition temporarily forget about Teddy. Only Miss Bianca isn’t affected by this strange little town because she lives in a porcelain pagoda at home that her boy gave to her, so these buildings are very much like what she already knows.
Fortunately, the expedition gets some help from some friendly bats who live in the mines. The younger bats in the group say that they’ve seen little Teddy serving the governor of the salt mines, who tends to stay apart from most of the prisoners because the prisoners have attacked him before. This is fortunate news because it means that Teddy is closer to the little salt town than they thought, and it won’t be as difficult to find him as they anticipated. He’s on an island in the middle of the lake of salt water, and that’s not too difficult to reach because Bernard has already proven that it’s easy to float in salt water.
Once they find Teddy, they also have to get him onto a train to get him away from the salt mines, which may not be as easy.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Spoilers
I generally prefer the plots of the Disney movies to the original books in this series, but this was still a fun story. I was a little disappointed that they never actually used the two professors’ specialties. I thought at first that they would use the geology professor to spout some interesting and useful facts about caves or mines, but they didn’t, and there was nothing in the story where a mathematics professor would be particularly useful. It just seems like a missed opportunity there.
There were some funny moments in the story. I liked the part where one of the bats, not really seeing Bianca clearly because bats are near-sighted, comments to another that, whatever it, if it moves, you should salute it, and if it doesn’t, you should paint it. Bianca takes that as a sign that this particular bat has completed his National Service, also noting that being near-sighted isn’t a barrier for bat National Service because, if it was, no bat would be able to participate.
In a twist at the end of the story, it turns out that Teddy used to live with his uncle and that Teddy’s uncle is the tutor for the boy that Miss Bianca lives with. Once Teddy is restored to his uncle, he comes to the house with his tutor and becomes friends with Miss Bianca’s boy.
Mystery of the Empty House by Dorothy Sterling, 1960.
Patricia Harrison’s family has recently moved from their apartment in New York to a house in Haven. Her father used to live in Haven when he was a boy. His mother still lives in town, and he still knows some of the other people who live there. Patricia, called Pat, is still unpacking her belongings when a boy from across the street, Jim Gray, calls to invite her to play ball with him and some of his friends in the field behind her house because his mother used to know his father when they were kids. Pat isn’t very used to playing with boys because she went to an all-girls school when she was in New York, but she agrees to go play ball with the boys.
When she goes to meet the boys, some of the other boys, the Paine brothers, don’t want her to play with them. When Jim said they were meeting “Pat”, they assumed that “Pat” was another boy. Jim says he doesn’t care if Pat is a girl or not because they could really use another player. Pat thinks they’re rude, and since they don’t seem to want her, she starts to leave, but Jim stops her and persuades her to stay. Even though Pat is usually good at baseball at school, she finds herself making clumsy mistakes when she plays with the boys, probably because she feels uncomfortable with them. Finally, she hits a home run, which is great, but there’s a problem. She accidentally hit the ball into the window of an old, abandoned house nearby that looks haunted.
The boys are mad because it’s the only baseball they have. Pat says they could just go get the ball, but the boys say they can’t. When she asks them if they’re scared, they say that’s not the problem; they’ve just promised that they won’t go near the old house. Pat says that, since she didn’t promise, she can just go get the ball, but Jim stops her from going into the house. He tells her that they can just buy a new ball. When Pat asks him why he doesn’t want her to go in, Jim says that it’s a secret having to do with the Paines. Pat says that she’s sick of the Paines and insists on going into the old house.
The old house is dark and spooky. When she climbs in through the window, Pat is startled when she runs into another person inside. At first, she can’t see the other person too clearly because it’s dark, but when she asks the girl who she is, the girl tells her that she’s Patricia Harrison. Pat is shocked and tells her that she can’t be Patricia Harrison because that’s her name. The girl finally laughs and admits that her real name is Barbara Thomas. Barbara lives next door to Pat’s grandmother and decided to stop by and meet her. When she saw Pat playing with the boys, she decided to go explore the old house instead.
Barbara is the one who explains the history of the house and the Paines’ attitude to Pat. The Paine family used to live in the old house. It’s the oldest house in town, dating back to the Colonial era. Nat Paine, the oldest of the Paine boys, was always proud of his family’s old home and used to brag about how George Washington and Lafayette visited the house during the Revolutionary War. It was even occupied by British soldiers at one time. Unfortunately, the father of the Paine boys was killed during the Korean War several years earlier (dating this story to the late 1950s or 1960, the year it was published). Since then, the family has fallen on hard times, and they’ve been unable to pay the taxes on the house. Now, because of the unpaid taxes, the town council is threatening to sell the old house to pay the unpaid taxes. The Paines have been forced to move out of the house and into a much smaller place, and Nat is very upset about it. Plus, he’s been going through this phase where he’s decided that he hates girls because he’s just getting into middle school, where all the boys either start developing crushes or decide that they hate girls. His younger brothers are being pests because they’re following his lead.
Barbara says that her father felt bad about what happened to the family and tried to convince other people in town to help the Paines pay the taxes on the old place. They could have helped, but they’ve made it plain that they just don’t want to. As Barbara’s father put it, “people in Haven are a bunch of rock-ribbed, rugged individualists who wouldn’t help their own grandmas.” (I have strong feelings about that, and I’ll explain them in the reaction section.) Barbara reveals right away that the secret Jim is keeping for the Paine brothers is that Nat made his brothers take a vow with him that they wouldn’t enter that house again “until it was rightfully theirs.” Barbara says that Nat’s sense of pride talking, and “You know how boys are.” She thinks Nat’s being overly dramatic, although she sympathizes with the family’s plight. When Pat suggests that maybe they shouldn’t be in the house, either, Barbara says that she comes there all the time to explore. Barbara thinks the old house is fascinating and that there might be a secret passage somewhere. She invites Pat to help her look for it sometime.
At dinner that night, Pat finds out that her parents already know about the death of the boys’ father and the trouble that the family is having over their old house. Pat’s mother says that the old house is a good example of the saltbox style of house that was popular in Colonial New England. (I remember my old high school history teacher explaining how the slope of the roof was meant to help snow slide off during the winter, but the uneven slope also allows more living space to be added onto an existing house.) However, Pat’s mother says that there probably aren’t any secret passages in the house because houses from that time were built pretty simply and didn’t even have closets or bathrooms. She doesn’t think that there’s any place in the old house to conceal a secret passage.
Now that Pat knows the issues with the Paine family, she begins to feel better about them, and they start being nicer to her. As Pat begins settling in, she becomes better friends with Barbara and is happy that she has another girl as a friend. They ride their bikes downtown together, and Barbara sleeps over at Pat’s house. As the girls are getting ready for bed, Pat looks out the window and sees a light in the old Paine house when no one is supposed to be there. Barbara says that whoever’s in the house is probably looking for the secret passage and the treasure. When Pat asks what she means by “treasure”, Barbara says that there’s a rumor that there’s treasure hidden in the house from Revolutionary times. The family used to be rich, but after the American Revolution, when the children of the family returned to the house after their parents were killed, the family fortune had vanished. People think that the ancestors of the Paines hid their fortune somewhere during the war and that it’s still waiting to be found. (I already had some misgivings about the people of Haven and their intentions in kicking the Paines out of their house, and now, suddenly, my suspicions are even worse.)
Barbara says that they can’t just let this mystery sneak steal what should rightfully belong to the Paines and ruin the only chance they have left of regaining their house. The girls sneak over to the house to spy on the intruder, and they end up frightening him away. The girls tell the boys about what they witnessed the next day, and they persuade the Paine brothers to come into the house with them in spite of their “vow” to look around and see what the intruder was searching for. As they inspect the kitchen fireplace, where the man was searching, and look at the flashlight he dropped, the man shows up again. It turns out that he’s a college student doing research on the Paine family.
Back in Revolutionary times, the family that lived in the house was the Woodruff family. (A Paine ancestor married into the Woodruff family, changing the family name, but the Woodruffs are also ancestors of the current Paines. It’s the same family.) The college student, Robert Popham, found some old papers that indicate that the head of the Woodruff family, the first Nathaniel Woodruff, was a Tory. Nat, who was named for this ancestor (full name Nathaniel Woodruff Paine IV), angrily denies it, saying that his family was known to associate with George Washington and Lafayette, hosting them at their house. Robert explains more about the papers he found, but he also says that the last letter Nathaniel Woodruff wrote to his wife before he was killed indicates that he feared for his life and left something hidden in an old post box to pass on to his young son. However, as Nat points out, the date on this final letter was shortly after Nathaniel Woodruff’s wife was murdered by unknown assailants. (She was found scalped, so people blamed her death on American Indians, but it’s also possible that she was killed by someone else who just wanted to make it look that way to cover up the real reason for her murder.) Nathaniel Woodruff didn’t know his wife was already dead, and since she never got the letter and he was also killed soon after, the box is probably still hidden somewhere. Robert thinks that what Nathaniel hid was proof that he was actually a spy for the Patriots and that he feared for his life because he suspected that the British knew he was a spy. He says that he wants to find this hidden box and the information it holds because it would make a fantastic historical research paper.
The kids are completely on board with the search for the hidden box, both because the Paines want to preserve the reputation of their ancestors and because there may be valuables hidden in the box that will help the Paines pay their taxes and keep their home. However, they only have until August 15, the date that the town council has set for selling the Paine house. They only have until the end of summer to figure it out!
To begin with, I didn’t like the people of Haven right from Barbara’s description of them as “rugged individuals who wouldn’t help their own grandmas.” It is pretty cold to turn out a war widow who is working as an underpaid nurse in the community and her children after their father was killed serving his country. I completely agreed with Barbara’s father’s assessment of the townspeople’s levels of generosity from the first. I suppose at least some of the townspeople of Haven probably thought they were actually being kind, giving Mrs. Paine several years after her husband’s death to come up with the mounting tax money, while doing nothing to help her and not actually paying her enough to manage and letting her family sink deeper into the hole until there was no way for them to escape, but in realistic terms, that’s not really kind at all.
We don’t actually hear the townspeople express their own feelings because the children don’t talk to the adults about their search and discoveries until they’re sure of what they found. When Barbara explained how her father felt about the townspeople’s unwillingness to help the Paines, I was also a little suspicious of their motives, and when Barbara mentioned that there’s been a popular rumor about hidden treasure in the Paine household for years and everyone has heard of it, I got really suspicious. Basically, I started looking for thieves among the townspeople. I immediately suspected that the “rugged individuals”, or at least some influential ones in the community, wanted to steal some historical treasure from a veteran’s widow and orphans because people who would would kick the widow and orphans out of their home might as well be out to steal their legacy, too.
If that was part of their plan, they weren’t very good at it, and they never even show up in the story. Perhaps I’m judging them a bit harshly, although in a way, I’m a little disappointed because that kind of Machiavellian plot would have made the story much more exciting. From the way the story goes, the townspeople might just not believe that there’s any treasure to be found because that rumor has been going around for so long and nothing has come of it. Still, I was suspicious of them for a good part of the book because it looked like the author was setting them up to be suspicious.
I was also annoyed by the townspeople because I found them ineffectual and uncreative in their approach to a community problem. They miss opportunities, and worse, they deny opportunities to others because they’re apparently stuck in their “rugged individual” mindset and won’t even entertain ideas that might help themselves as well as others when people like Barbara Thomas’s father suggest them. I often think that high-and-mighty rugged individualistic attitude cuts out so many genuinely fun, creative, and amazing possibilities that can make a community rich in character as well as money. It’s maddening to a person who thrives on creativity and likes to consider possibilities.
When I started getting really irritated at the townspeople, I guessed that, before the end of the story, they would do something to redeem themselves that would simultaneously leave me unsatisfied. I figured that the point where the townspeople finally come together would probably result in something that I thought they should have been working on from the beginning, and then, they’d act like it was such an amazing idea that they’d never thought of before and I’d be really irritated with them all over again because I thought of something like it very early in the story. Actually, that’s not how the story goes, and it’s still irritating to me.
So, what would I want them to do in this situation? Basically, the community wants its tax money, and the family wants to keep their house with a living wage that can support them. Fine. So, I asked myself, why not make this historic house, which is known to be the oldest house in town, into a community project which would actually contribute to the common good of the community (I don’t think “common good” is a dirty word, although I’m aware that some “rugged individualists” think so) and provide the Paine family with an additional source of income? If the town council invested in fixing up the house, which is also known to contain some very interesting Colonial antiques as well as fascinating architectural details and a unique history, the house could be turned into either a museum or a period bed-and-breakfast to encourage local tourism. (Sleep where George Washington and Lafayette slept!) Since it does have original furnishings and actual bedrooms, it probably wouldn’t take a lot to make the conversion for either of those projects.
The town and its business owners would benefit from the tourism, giving them an actual monetary return on their investment, and the Paine family could stay on with the house as its caretakers, receiving additional wages from visitors. People couldn’t say that the Paines simply received a handout because they would be doing valuable community work to support the town’s image and industry. It would satisfy Nat Paine’s family pride because he could talk to tour groups on the weekends and during the summer about his family’s great legacy to the history of his town. The whole community could even expand on the idea to further attract visitors, setting up a sort of local living history center, where people can learn Colonial crafts and recipes (something like what the Townsends demo on their YouTube channel), and schools from neighboring towns and cities could book field trips. Local business owners could support it with a themed restaurant and shops selling Colonial-era replicas and memorabilia and books about the time period. The town could hold special celebrations a few times a year to draw in more visitors, like a big Fourth of July parade or a Colonial Christmas celebration (although I known not all of the American colonies actually celebrated Christmas) or a re-creation of old harvest parties (more historically accurate) with plays by the local theater group (if they don’t have one, they could form one) or dramatic readings from Washington Irving at the local library or a themed fair with people selling local artisan crafts. They wouldn’t have to do all of this at once, but they could start with the matter of the house and build up from there. It’s an idea that has the potential for future expansion. This story is even set pre-Bicentenniel, so imagine what the town could do if they already had everything up and running by July 4th, 1776! Doesn’t anybody plan ahead? That’s creative use of resources. That’s community action. That’s job creation. Even if it’s not as big as Plimoth Plantation (now called Plimoth Patuxet to better incorporate the Native Americans) or Colonial Williamsburg (which both already existed by the time this story was written and could have provided inspiration), it’s still a money-making industry that is inherently built into the town’s very nature and won’t disappear tomorrow because some outside business decides to move or close a job-providing factory or something. Even if they didn’t get national or international attention, they would probably still be a destination for people from around their state and neighboring ones, and there’s potential for continued development. The project just need to be supported and promoted by the community.
Unfortunately, that’s not what they do. My griping aside, I guess if the solution was really that simple and the townspeople were more thoughtful and pro-active, we would lose the source of tension and the obstacle that our heroes have to overcome. The August 15th deadline is what pressures the kids to hurry up and find the treasure, so as irritating as it is to me, I have to put up with it.
The treasure hunt part is a lot of fun, and I liked the children’s logical, methodical approach to their search. When the children eventually find the hidden box, the story isn’t over. There are coded messages in the box that they have to decode to learn the full truth about Nathaniel Woodruff. Part of the story explains how they figure out how to decode the substitution code and the book code that compose parts of the message. The story they learn about Nathaniel Woodruff is better than anything the Paines had originally thought.
So, did they save the old house and do anything cool, like start a unique museum? Yes, and no. Although they don’t find any jewels, gold, or traditional sort of treasure, the letters that they find in the box are worth quite a bit. They sell them to a wealthy local business owner, and he donates them to a local university library. (So, you know, the wealthy business owner who never makes an actual appearance in this story and who wouldn’t have helped a war widow and her orphans for their sake can buy their family legacy and present it as his magnanimous gift to the university. I can’t say that he’s terrible for doing this because it does help, but I still think my idea was better.) The Paine family has enough money to keep their house and fix it up. It’s a pretty good ending, but I still prefer my vision. The story points out that it’s not a matter of everyone living happily ever after because they’re all their imperfect selves and still have some problems, but one lesson that they all learned from this experience is how to create their own book code to use for passing notes in class. It’s not profound, but codes are fun.
The First Book of Tales of Ancient Egypt by Charles Mozley, 1960.
The book begins with a section “About this book” that introduces the stories, but I felt like it could have said a little more. The introductory section points out how amazing it is that these folktales and myths from Ancient Egypt have survived thousands of years to reach us, but there’s a bit more to the story than that. For a long time, people were unable to read texts written in Ancient Egypt because knowledge of ancient writing was lost when Egyptian culture changed and developed new writing systems. Modern people eventually regained the lost knowledge of Ancient Egyptian writing when the Rosetta Stone was discovered because the Rosetta Stone contains the same message written in three different systems of writing – Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Ancient Egyptian demotic script. Because European scholars knew Ancient Greek at the time the Rosetta Stone was discovered, they were able to use the Ancient Greek portion of the stone to learn how to read the rest of it. It took years of study for them to fully understand not only the message on the stone in all three writing systems but to learn to apply the rules of Ancient Egyptian writing to other messages and carvings and decipher what each of them meant. Even in modern times, scholars are still working on translations of Ancient Egyptian writing and publishing new books of Ancient Egyptian stories that modern people have not read in English. It’s not just that these stories have survived for thousands of years to reach us; it’s also that people worked very hard to learn exactly what did survive for those thousands of years and make it possible for ordinary people to understand it. This book for children would not have been possible without many years of scholarly research.
The pictures in the book are sometimes monochromatic in different colors and sometimes full color.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
The stories in the book are:
The Magic Crocodile – When King Khu-fu is bored and nothing seems to please him, his sons tell him stories to amuse him.
In his first son’s story, in the distant past, during King Nebka’s reign, magic was commonplace, and King Nebka had a young magician named Uba-na-ner at his court. At first, the magician was very happy, but then, the woman he was going to marry ran off with another man. Angry, the young magician made a magical crocodile out of wax and sent it to attack his former fiance’s new husband. After the crocodile killed the new husband, the magician’s former fiance went to the kind and accused the magician of murder. Faced with the king’s questions, the magician confessed what he had done. The magician expressed remorse and turned over the box where he kept the wax crocodile. The king pardoned him because of his remorse but hid the box with the wax crocodile so it couldn’t be used again. That seems to be letting a magical murderer off lightly, and King Khu-fu doesn’t find the story very interesting.
In the second son’s story, there is a powerful wizard named Zaza-man-khu in the reign of King Sene-fe-ru. When Sene-fe-ru is feeling down, he asks Zaza-man-khu for something to cheer him up. Zaza-man-khu suggests a boating trip on the palace lake, rowed by singing maidens. At first, the trip is pleasant, but then, something happens that upsets all of the maidens, and they stop singing and start crying. Soon, everyone is crying so hard that it’s difficult for the king or his wizard to find out what’s wrong. It turns out that one of the maidens lost a precious jewel in the water, and it was some kind of lucky amulet. Now, she’s worried that something bad will happen to her, and all of the other girls are crying in sympathy with her. The king promises that he will give the maiden plenty new jewels if she stops crying, but she says that she needs that particular amulet, and none of the other maidens will start rowing the boat again until they figure out what to do. The king’s wizard is able to retrieve the lost jewel by parting the waters in the lake so he can walk out across the bottom of the lake and find it. King Khu-fu finds the story mildly interesting and says that it would be impressive if there was such a wizard in their time.
King Khu-fu’s eldest son says that he knows of such a wizard, a man named Didi, who is supposed to be 110 years old. Interested at last, King Khu-fu says that he wants to meet Didi. According to stories about Didi, he can restore life to a person or animal after it’s been beheaded, but how far will they make him go to prove it?
Isis and the Secret Name of Ra – This story explains the origins of the goddess Isis. In the beginning, Isis is not a goddess but a clever young woman. Although she is clever and has extensive magical knowledge, it isn’t enough for her. She wants to learn the secret name of the sun god Ra (Ra isn’t the secret name itself) to gain power over the whole world. People call Ra by many different names, but Isis is aware that he has one secret name that no one knows and from which he derives his power. Isis creates a magical snake that bites Ra, and Ra experiences pain for the first time. Isis offers to help heal him from the bite (that she caused), but she says that she needs to know Ra’s secret name. Ra says that if she knows the name, she will also become immortal, and Isis says that she’ll try to bear it (wink, wink). So, Isis becomes immortal and heals Ra from the poisonous snake wound.
After she becomes a goddess, Isis continues living as a mortal woman for awhile, but then she marries King Osiris. Osiris is a great king who teaches his people how to farm, and Isis teaches them healing arts. Their kingdom is great and peaceful, and Osiris and Isis have a son they name Horus. For a long time, no one, not even Osiris, knows that Isis is actually an immortal goddess. However, Isis’s powers allow her to sense evil and deception from Osiris’s jealous brother, Set. Osiris can’t believe that his brother is evil. Then, Set tricks Osiris into getting into a chest and throws him into the river and drowns him.
When Isis realizes what has happened, she realizes that she has the power to restore Osiris to life. At first, Isis is unsuccessful in her attempt to bring Osiris back to life because too much time has gone by since his death, but Thoth, the god of wisdom, has pity on her and Osiris and raises Osiris to serve as king of deserving spirits among the dead.
King Setnau and the Assyrians – King Setnau is a gentle and peaceful king, so even though Egypt has enemies, he does not try to improve Egypt’s army. Although most citizens love King Setnau, his generals don’t. When the King of Assyria decides to invade, seeing Egypt as easy prey, the angry Egyptian army refuses to obey the king and fight for Egypt. In despair, King Setnau prays at the temple and then tells his people about the army’s refusal to obey him. The ordinary citizens decide that they will be the king’s new army themselves. They are untrained and have mostly improvised weapons, and Egypt’s official army doesn’t take them seriously. However, King Setnau is appreciative of their loyalty and prays the he will be a suitable leader to them so they can save their kingdom. In the end, they are successful with a little help from the gods and a swarm of field mice.
The Wonder Child – King Usi-ma-res has a son who is a wise sage, Sat-ni. However, Sat-ni is unhappy because he and his wife have been unable to have a child, and they want one more than anything. Sat-ni’s wife prays for a child, and finally, she gives birth to a son, Se-Osiris. Se-Osiris turns out to be remarkably intelligent and learns very quickly. As he progresses in his studies, he begins learning magic, and by the age of twelve, he is already a master magician.
One day, a man from Ethiopia comes to the pharaoh’s court with a challenge: he has a sealed book and he wants to see Egyptian wizards attempt to read the book without breaking the seal. The pharaoh consults with all of his wizards and magicians about the book challenge, and Sat-ni says that he suspects that the book and its contents are protected by some kind of spell that will prevent the Egyptian wizards from reading it. However, Se-Osiris insists that he can read the book. To demonstrate, he proves to his father that he can read any book from his father’s library even though he has never seen it before while his father holds it sealed in another room. Pleased and amazed with his son’s skill, Sat-ni brings Se-Osiris to court to answer the challenge.
At first, the Ethiopian man sneers at the young boy who claims that he can answer his magical challenge, but the pharaoh says that it’s a sign of how great Egyptian magic is that even a twelve-year-old Egyptian can answer any challenge that Ethiopia could set. In front of everyone, Se-Osiris reads the book without even touching it, telling an ancient story about three Nubian magicians and their boasting of the ways that they would punish the King of Egypt for the amusement of their king and how the King of Egypt gets revenge.
However, the story doesn’t end there. The mysterious Ethiopian turns out to be the spirit of one of the magicians from the story in the book, who was disgraced through the magic of the Egyptian magicians and who has come back to settle the score. Se-Osiris must now face him in a magical duel.
The Thief and the King’s Treasure – King Rhamp-si-ni-tes loves gold and treasure more than anything. He loves it so much, he allows criminals and corrupt official to buy their way out of trouble. The king compromises law and justice in the land, thinking only of getting more gold and jewels. He neglects the state of his kingdom and even his own daughter. Soon, the king also becomes paranoid, constantly afraid that someone might take some of his beautiful treasures. Finally, the king hires an architect to design a safe place to keep his treasure, a vault no thief could enter.
However, the king is a terrible ruler and also a dishonest man. He pays the architect only a fraction of the money he promised him, so the architect clever engineers a secret entrance to the treasure vault so he and his sons can enter any time they want and help themselves to the money that the king owes them and all of his other subjects.
For awhile, it works, but then, the king notices that someone has been taking some of his treasures. He has some metal workers build a terrible mantrap that traps one of the architects sons. When it becomes clear that he is hopelessly trapped and their whole family may suffer the king’s wrath once he realizes who has been stealing from him and how it was done, the trapped son tells his brother there is only one, terrible solution – his brother must cut off his head. The trapped brother will die anyway because the king will have him killed, but if his brother removes his head, no one will be able to identify him, and the rest of their family will be safe. Reluctantly, his brother does as he asks.
However, the fact that the head was removed from the body tells the king that the dead thief must have had a confederate. He has his guards display the body of the thief publicly on a hill and watch for anyone who shows grief at seeing it. The dead man’s mother quietly grieves at the loss of her son, and when she says that she wants to see her son properly buried, his brother figures out a clever way to retrieve the body.
The king is enraged, but his neglected daughter decides that she also wants to find the thief, seeing it as her chance to secure her future in spite of her father’s neglect. She promises her father that she can find the thief but only if he promises her that she can have whatever she wants afterward. The king promises, not realizing that the one thing that the princess wants is to marry the thief.
The First Book of Tales of Ancient Araby by Charles Mozley, 1960.
I’ve had this book for years, and one of the questions that I’ve had about this book is why is it Ancient “Araby”? Why “Araby” instead of “Arabia”? According to Wikipedia, “Araby” is an archaic name for Arabia, which explains it, I guess. This book was published in 1960, and I don’t think people were using “Araby” back then, but the book is trying to sound ancient.
The stories in the book are based on those from the collection of folktales called One Thousand and One Nights, in which Scheherazade tells stories to the murderous king who is her husband, but they’re simplified for children. The introductory section to this book says that . The book doesn’t explain, but the original stories in the book were rather racy.
The book has pictures for each story, but some are in black-and-white, some are monochromatic with a color other than black, and some are in full color.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
The book contains the following stories:
Scheherazade – When the sultan’s wife betrays him, he not only has her executed but loses his mind with hatred for all women because he believes that they are all untrustworthy. He begins a murderous series of weddings, where he has his wives all executed the day after the wedding, so they can never betray him. (It’s dark stuff, but this story wasn’t originally intended for children). All of the unmarried women in the kingdom are terrified that they’ll be next, and the sultan’s vizier is beside himself because he doesn’t know how to stop the sultan and has an obligation to obey the sultan’s commands to bring him new brides. Then, his eldest daughter, Scheherazade, requests that her father send her to the sultan as his next wife. At first, the vizier doesn’t want to send her because it’s certain death to marry the sultan, but Scheherazade tells him that she has a plan to put an end to the weddings and executions. Every night, she starts to tell a story but leaves it unfinished, so the sultan keeps putting off her execution to hear the end of the story. This continues for 1,001 nights, until the sultan realizes that he’s actually happy with Scheherazade and no longer has any desire to execute her or any other woman. The rest of the stories in the book are among the ones that Scheherazade told the sultan. (The Scheherazade story is a frame story, a story that contains other, internal stories or creates the basis for the other stories.)
Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp – A poor boy and his widowed mother are approached one day by a man claiming to be the brother of the widow’s dead husband, the boy’s uncle. At first, he is very nice to them, bringing them to live with him and providing them with everything they need. However, one day, he stakes the boy, Aladdin, to retrieve a strange old lamp from a series of treasure caves, giving him a ring to protect himself. Before the boy returns to the man, he comes to the realization that the man isn’t really his uncle but an evil magician who is just using him to get the lamp. The boy and his mother discover that there is a genie living in the lamp who will do their bidding and provide them with all they need. They use the lamp not only to provide for themselves but to make it possible for Aladdin to marry a princess. The evil magician almost ruins everything when he tricks the princess into giving him the lamp, but Aladdin and the princess get it back through some trickery of their own.
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves – Ali Baba marries a kind but poor woman and makes his living as a woodcutter, while his brother, Kassim, marries a disagreeable woman from a wealthy family and becomes an wealthy merchant. One day, while cutting wood in the forest, Ali Baba sees a large group of horsemen. They are robbers, and they have a secret hideout nearby. Ali Baba hides and watches how they open the entrance to their secret cave with the magic words “Open, Sesame!” After the thieves stash their loot and leave, Ali Baba realizes that he can use their secret words to enter the cave himself and see what they left. He helps himself to some of the stolen loot. He and his wife decide to stash the second-hand loot and spend it a little at a time, ensuring their family’s security. However, Kassim’s wife finds out about their loot and tells Kassim, and Kassim damands that Ali Baba tell him where he acquired so much money. When Ali Baba explains about the thieves and the treasure cave, Kassim wants to go there and loot the place himself, but Ali Baba thinks it’s too dangerous to go back again because the thieves will be angry and will probably kill them if they get caught. When Kassim goes anyway and is caught and killed, Ali Baba must arrange a deception to prevent the thieves from learning who Kassim was and everyone else from learning how Kassim met his death so the thieves won’t take revenge on the rest of the family with the help of a clever slave girl, Morgiana.
The Fisherman and the Genie – A fisherman pulls a strange bottle from the sea that contains a genie, but to the fisherman’s shock, the genie threatens to kill him when he frees him from the bottle. The fisherman asks why he would do such a thing when the fisherman did him a favor, and the genie explains that he was imprisoned in the bottle by King Solomon for sins against Heaven. At first, the genie thought that he would reward whoever freed him, but as his imprisonment grew into hundred and hundreds of years with no rescue, he became increasingly enraged and decided to kill whoever released him. However, the genie decides to grant the fisherman one wish before death. The fisherman asks him to prove that he can actually fit into the bottle and imprisons the genie there again. He refuses to let him out again until the genie swears he won’t kill him. The genie promises the fisherman anything he wants, but the fisherman is a modest man and only asks that he always be successful as a fisherman. He gets his wish, and he uses the money he acquires from his success to build a better life for his family.
Sinbad the Sailor – When Sinbad’s father dies, he leaves Sinbad a considerable amount of money, but Sinbad quickly squanders most of his inheritance. When he realizes his foolishness, Sinbad uses what he has left to set himself up as a merchant sailor. However, this decision takes him on a series of wild adventures, from being nearly drowned to befriending a king to a hair-raising encounter with a roc (a giant bird that’s big enough to carry a grown man).
The Twice-blessed Arab – This is a legend about the origins of horses and camels.
The Story of Little Mukra – Little Mukra is a dwarf, and his father, fearing that the rest of the world will laugh at him and treat him cruelly for his size, hides him for his early life. When Little Mukra is sixteen years old, his father dies and the rest of his relatives declare that they don’t want him, so Little Mukra decides to go out and seek his fortune. One day, while Little Mukra is hungry, he hears an old woman calling for someone to come to eat. It turns out that she’s talking to her cats, but he persuades her to let him eat with the cats because he’s starving. The woman hires him as a servant to take care of her cats. It gives Little Mukra a place to live, but the problem is that the woman blames him for damage that the cats cause while the lady isn’t looking. The clever cats are always perfectly behaved when she’s watching but not when they’re alone with Little Mukra. Little Mukra escapes this situation with the help of the lady’s dogs, who are not so pampered as her cats and reveal to Little Mukra a paid of magical slippers that can make him run fast, securing him a position as the king’s special courier.
Sidney’s Ghost by Carol Iden, illustrated by Paul Galdone, 1969.
Nine-year-old Sidney Robinson’s best friend is a girl named Megan McKenna. The two of them have many interests in common, including fishing, cars, ghost stories, and horses. Megan’s father owns a stable, and Sidney envies Megan for having her own pony. Because Megan’s father sells horses to other people, the kids are used to seeing horses come and go. When Megan’s father can’t find a buyer for a horse, he’ll try to sell it at public auction. However, if he can’t sell a horse at auction at all, he sometimes sells it to the slaughterhouse, where they use the horse parts for glue and dog food. It’s sad, but the kids accept this as part of life until Megan’s father acquires a retired police horse whose former owner died, and Sidney realizes that he can’t let this beautiful black horse suffer this terrible fate.
The horse, officially named Sergeant O’Hara but called Uncle Charley by Megan’s family is a beautiful animal with a gentle temperament. Sidney wishes that he could persuade his parents to buy the horse for him. He is easy to ride and obeys commands, and he has an excellent history of his time as a police horse.
Megan’s father isn’t completely honest as a horse seller. The book goes into some detail about how he prepares horses for sale, painting on dapples and filing their teeth down to make them seem younger than they really are. Even Sergeant O’Hara gets this treatment, although Sidney worries that it hurts the horse. (I looked it up, and it turns out that it can be beneficial to file the sharp points off of a horse’s teeth, which is called teeth floating. However, this is something that should only be done by someone who has been trained to do it because it can hurt the horse to file the teeth down too much.)
Sidney and Megan love to watch the horse auctions and pretend they’re bidding on the horses, but Sergeant O’Hara is auctioned off as planned. Megan’s brother Michael let him loose in the paddock when he was supposed to be watching him, and he got all dirty, so he isn’t fit to be shown. Then, to Sidney’s shock, Megan tells him that her father is planning to just sell Sergeant O’Hara to the slaughterhouse instead of trying again at the next auction. If Sidney and Megan are going to save poor Sergeant O’Hara’s life, they’ve got to do something, fast!
Megan tells Sidney that she’s thought of a plan to save Sergeant O’Hara. The two kids sneak out and take the horse in the middle of the night and hide him in an old barn. As they go to hide the horse, they see a shadowy figure near the barn. Megan is afraid, and Sergeant O’Hara wants to chase the figure because of his police training, but Sidney stops him.
However, even with the horse safely in the barn where hardly anybody ever goes, there is the very real worry that they’ll be caught. The horse will need exercise, so Sidney will have to go ride him at night or when they’re sure nobody else will be around. Still, they feel like they need to come up with an additional plan in case the horse is spotted. Then, Sidney takes a hint from the way Mr. McKenna painted dapples on a horse earlier and suggests that they could paint Sergeant O’Hara a different color so he won’t be recognized. Megan thinks that’s a great idea, and they decide to paint him white, like the Lone Ranger’s horse, Silver.
They get the painting supplies from Sidney’s father’s hardware store, but Sidney grabs a can of paint labeled “Super Glo – White.” It turns out that it’s not just a really bright white; it’s a glow-in-the-dark white. The kids don’t figure it out until they’ve already painted half of the horse. When Sidney sneaks out to feed and exercise Sergeant O’Hara again, he’s frightened when this big, glowing thing comes out of the darkness at him. Somehow, the horse got out of the barn and scared him by running out in the dark, glowing. Sidney realizes after a moment of panic that’s what happened. Because they only painted half of the horse before they stopped, one side of Sergeant O’Hara is glowing white, and the other is pitch black. When the horse gallops back and forth, he looks like a glowing ghost that vanishes with each turn. It’s a neat effect, but having a ghost horse certainly isn’t inconspicuous.
One night, Sidney accidentally frightens his old teacher, Miss Winthrop, when she’s walking home from visiting a friend. Soon, she spreads the story of her ghost sighting all over town. Most people think that she’s getting a touch of senility in her old age, but Mr. McKenna thinks it over and notices Sidney’s comings and goings in the area. When he goes to the old barn to investigate what Sidney’s been doing. Seeing the horse and the glow-in-the-dark paint, he realizes what happened. He appreciates that Sidney and Megan wanted to save the horse and sees the humor in their unintentional ghost act.
Since the kids feel that strongly about wanting the horse and are taking good care of him, Mr. McKenna decides to let them continue to do so, but there’s still one thing that nobody has answered: Who was that mysterious figure they saw around the barn? The answer comes when this mysterious person sets fire to the McKenna’s stables and Sergeant O’Hara has the opportunity to show his skills as a police horse.
My Reaction
When I first read this book as a kid, I was expecting it to be a mystery. It kind of is, but the mystery isn’t about the horse or about any ghost. There are hints from the very beginning of the story that there is a thief in the area, but the story doesn’t really focus on that until near the end. Sidney and Megan hear people talking about a prowler, and they do see the mysterious prowler around the barn, but they’re too busy with their plans to save the horse to pay too much attention. Fortunately, their horse and his ghostly appearance help them to catch the the thief, and the reward money for catching him straightens out a lot of problems so Sidney can keep Sergeant O’Hara.
The gimmick of the “ghostly” painted horse has stayed in my mind for years since I first read this story, but it’s not the only memorable part of the book. One of the things that I remembered best about this book from when I read it as a kid was the difference in Sidney and Megan’s homes and families. The book puts some emphasis on the difference in their family lives, and it’s shown when each of the kids has dinner at each other’s home. Megan has several siblings, and their house is always noisy and boisterous. Sidney is Sidney is a fussy eater at home, but he just eats what’s put in front of him at the McKennas’, like the other kids do. Megan gets a rap on the knuckles from her father for starting to eat before Grace is said. One line from the book that stuck with me for years was when Megan’s brother, Frank, says Grace with this joking prayer: “We thank the Lord for the next meal – we’re sure of this one.” I still think of this whenever someone says Grace aloud.
By contrast, dinner at the Robinson house is much calmer, quieter, and more formal. Sidney is an only child, and his father owns a hardware store, so the Robinsons can afford nicer things. Megan is impressed at the nice tile in the bathroom, and the table is set with embroidered placemats and matching cloth napkins. Megan accidentally bites into one of the cloves in the ham, and when it burns her mouth, she spits the bite of food into her cloth napkin, feeling terribly guilty about it because the napkin really seems too nice for that sort of thing.
I could identify with the feelings the children have about being in houses where people have different habits. There were times when I was young when I felt a little out of place because they were either more formal than I was accustomed to being or more boisterous than I feel comfortable being. People always feel more comfortable with what they’re used to.
Famous French Painters by Roland J. McKinney, 1960.
This book is part of a series of Famous Biographies for Young People. Reading older non-fiction books can be problematic because non-fiction books are often updated with new information. In this particular book, there are people who are described as being still alive because they were at the time of the book’s publication, but they are not alive anymore. However, older non-fiction books sometimes interest me both because they are an indication of what people knew and studied at the time of publication and they sometimes cover odd topics that don’t commonly appear in new books. So far, this is the only book I own from this particular series, but the other biographies in the series
It begins with a section of black-and-white prints of famous French paintings and an introduction to the history of French painting in general. The introduction begins with a discussion of illuminated manuscripts in the 15th century and the artistic and architectural endeavors promoted by King Francis I in the 16th century. Francis I was particularly fascinated by Italian art, and he hired artists of the Italian Renaissance, including Leonardo da Vinci, to work at his court. Francis I helped to fuel an increasing interest in the arts in France called the French Renaissance. Although the French Renaissance was initially heavily influenced by the Italian Renaissance, French artists continued to develop their own styles. Popular subjects in French art were portraits, realistic landscapes, scenes from Classical mythology, and religious themes. The introduction ends with artists who painted during the late 18th century and early 19th century, explaining how their departure from neoclassical styles led to the development of new art styles.
After the introduction, there is a series of short biographies of famous French artists, beginning in the early 19th century and leading into the early 20th century. One of the first things that struck me about the list of artists included in the book is that, when their birth and death dates are included, none of the artists were born later than the 1880s, and the last two in the book have no death dates listed. Since the book was published in 1960, those last two artists were still alive at the time of publication, although they have died since then.
The artists included in the book are:
Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) – He was a leader in the Romantic style of painting and one of the first French artists to use watercolor paints, which the French learned from English artists.
J. B. (Jean Baptiste) Camille Corot (1796-1875) – Originally, he trained in business, but he didn’t think he was suited to business and decided that his future was in art. He was particularly known for his landscapes, which were his specialty. He was also known as a charitable benefactor.
Edouard Manet (1832-1883) – Manet’s parents originally wanted him to become a lawyer, but it soon became apparent that he did not have the interest or temperament for a law career. When he first began his art studies, he quarreled with his teacher over the teacher’s strict insistence on realism in art because Manet preferred a more creative form of expression. He eventually developed a more simplified realistic style that did not focus on small details, a style that contributed to the development of impressionism.
Edgar Hilaire Germain Degas (1834-1917) – His specialty was portraits, and following the lessons that his teacher impressed on him, he emphasizes the importance of lines and drawing in his work. Much of his work was in oil paint, but he switched to pastels because he found that it was easier to work with and less of a strain on his eyes. Some of his best known works were of ballet dancers.
Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) – He initially doubted his own artistic talents, but a fellow painter, Pissarro, advised him to stop trying to imitate others and put his focus on studying nature. Cezanne’s association with Pissarro helped him to develop his own style.
Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) – Early in his life, Renoir was known for his singing ability, but his parents insisted that he learn a trade. He started learning how to decorate china, but this was the era when factories began using machines to decorate china. For a time, Renoir decorated fans and window shades, but his focus on improving his drawing abilities led him to a career in art. He became a friend of Monet, and the two would discuss art techniques with each other, although they had different styles.
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) – He was originally from the Netherlands but lived in France. He was a contemporary of Gauguin, and the two were even friends. Unfortunately, van Gogh was plagued by mental illness, leading to the fit where he cut off part of his ear after an argument sparked by ridicule from Gauguin. Eventually, he committed suicide. He was not a famous artist during his lifetime, partly due to his mental illness and early death, but his work became famous after his death.
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) – Although he was originally from France, Gauguin is known for his travels to islands in the South Pacific, where he eventually died. Much of his work was inspired by his travels in the South Pacific.
Henri Matisse (1869-1954) – He was a leading figure in a group of artists known as the fauves, which mean “wild beasts.” They painted in an unorthodox way that included few details and ignored perspective.
Pablo Picasso (1881- ) – Picasso was originally from Spain, but he lived in France for most of his adult life. He began studying art at a young age and is known for his work in surrealism and cubism. He was alive at the time this book was written, but he died in 1973.
(Odd fact not included in the book – Picasso was actually born one day before the shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, AZ. It doesn’t mean anything and isn’t important, but I noticed the date and just thought I’d tell you.)
Georges Braque (1882- ) – Braque was a contemporary of Picasso, and the two artists were instrumental in the development of cubism, although they each did their own work. The collaboration between the two artists was interrupted by the outbreak of WWI. Braque was alive at the time this book was written, but he passed away in 1963. On the subject of limitations in art, he once said, “Progress in art does not lie in extending its limits, but in knowing them better.”
Something that struck me was how much artists who were contemporaries of each other worked together, met to discuss and analyze each other’s art, and were actual friends. I prefer collaboration to competition, and I like that many of these artists seemed to appreciate and learn from each other’s skills and techniques.
I was also surprised at the number of artists whose parents initially wanted them to become lawyers, like Manet, Degas, Cezanne, and Matisse.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
The First Book of Paintings by Lamont Moore, 1960.
This book is meant to be a beginner’s introduction to understanding and appreciating paintings. I thought it was interesting how, in the book’s introduction, it points out that the word “art” is based on the Latin word for “skill.” Art work is skilled work, and it explains how other types of skills are referred to as “arts.” Artists are people who are skilled at making things, but they also have an ability to see things more clearly than most people, form strong mental images, and convey those mental images and their feelings about them through their art.
The book is divided into sections that focus on different elements of paintings and artistic principles, explaining their role in art and providing examples of their use. The elements of paintings are line, shape, space, light, and color. The artistic principles covered in the book are pattern, balance, rhythm, contrast, and unity. Some of these sections also include suggested activities for readers to try that demonstrate these concepts.
Line – The lines of a painting define shapes in the painting. They also convey the idea of movement and direct the eyes of the viewer to important points of interest. This section shows a cave drawing a rhinoceros and suggests that readers trace it onto another piece of paper but change some of the lines to see the difference it makes.
Shape – Shapes are defined by lines. Shapes are flat, but their placement can create the illusion of depth and distance. The book suggests studying shape in drawing by drawing a friend’s silhouette.
Space – Shapes occupy and fill space. The placement of shapes within space create balance and suggest depth.
Light – Light is used to create the illusion of three-dimensional shapes because physical objects have sides that reflect light and cast shadow. It can also be used to give viewers a sense of substance because metal objects in paintings should look particularly reflective. Lighting can also convey mood in a painting. Part of this section explains how impressionists use light to give paintings more of an appearance of depth when viewed at a distance.
Color – The colors help to convey the mood of the painting. Certain colors also look better in combination with each other.
Pattern – Patterns are repeated features, like repeated shapes, lines, colors, and/or repeated light and dark spaces. Patterns can be used turn a few simple elements into part of a larger concept.
Balance – The concept of balance means that elements of a painting should balance each other, like placements of shapes and objects, points of interest, and areas of dark and light colors. If elements are out of balance, it can unsettle the viewers and give them the impression that something is wrong and needs to be fixed.
Rhythm – Rhythm in a painting suggests movement and energy, like the subjects of a painting are alive and moving.
Contrast – Contrast in a painting creates visual interest. If the elements of a painting are too much alike, they can look dull. The contrast could be in the placement and grouping of elements in the picture (such as some objects in the picture being grouped while others are isolated) or contrast between light and dark elements, making some of them stand out from others.
Unity – Unity refers to how well all of the elements of a painting combine to form a whole. All of the previously listed aspects of a painting need to work together effectively to convey the subject of the painting and the mood and message of the artist.
One of the things I like about this book is that is uses a wide selection of paintings from different countries and time periods as its examples, from cave paintings and paintings on Grecian pottery to Renaissance portraits and modern art.
At first, when I was reading the book, I was annoyed that almost all of the pictures of paintings in the book are black-and-white. Then, I discovered that the pictures in the chapter about the use of color in paintings are full color. That is the only place in the book (aside from the cover) where there are color images. I think the reason why they did that is to draw attention to the colors in that chapter while emphasizing other aspects of painting in the other chapters, but I think I would still prefer more color images throughout the book.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 