Posted on by TracyC

Basil and the Pygmy Cats

BasilPygmyCatsBasil and the Pygmy Cats by Eve Titus, 1971.

Mouse detective Basil’s arch enemy, Professor Ratigan, has taken over the Asian country of Bengistan, near India.  Basil discovers that he is holding the real ruler of the country captive so that he and his gang can loot the country for everything they can get, keeping the populace in subjugation.  Basil is determined to go there and free the rightful ruler so they can vanquish Professor Ratigan!

When Dr. Edward Hagerup of the British Mousmopolitan Museum hears that Basil is heading to Asia, he asks him to investigate an historical mystery for him.  There have been tales of a race of pygmy cats, no bigger than mice, but new evidence has been found that suggests there is more truth behind the stories than anyone has realized.  Basil has an interest in archaeology and eagerly accepts this extra task as part of their mission.  Along the way, other mice who have heard of the expedition join up to help Basil.

At first, Basil’s original mission, stopping Ratigan, seems easy.  Basil and his friend Dawson allow themselves to be captured so that they can get into the palace and find the real Maharaja of Bengistan.  After solving a secret code in the dungeon, they find the Maharaja, who tells them that another acquaintance of theirs, the opera singer, Relda, is also a prisoner in the palace.  She was giving a performance there when Ratigan and his thugs took over, and Ratigan has forced her to stay, giving private performances for him.  During one of these performances, Basil and his friends manage to take Ratigan by surprise and capture him.

BasilPygmyCatsPic1Now, Basil thinks that he and his associates are free to continue their other mission, finding the lost civilization of pygmy cats.  However, that mission is fraught with danger and surprises, and they haven’t quite heard the last of Ratigan.

The story isn’t really much of a mystery.  It’s really more an adventure story.

Basil and his friends manage to locate the island of pygmy cats with the help of Jeannie (a sea serpent related to the Loch Ness Monster who lost her way back to Scotland after a family trip — I kid you not) and the Sacred Catfish (which they bribe with catnip — I also kid you not, and his nip trip is a little disturbing).

This is my least favorite of the Basil series, partly because of the lack of mystery and also because of “primitive” nature of the pygmy cats when they find them.  Basil makes it clear that the pygmy cats are inherently less intelligent than mice and that their greatest achievements were because of the influence of royal mice who washed up on the shores of their island years ago, only to be wiped out by a volcano.  (Really?  Really.  Basil, if these mice were so superior and the pygmy cats so inferior, why were the cats able to get away from the volcano when the mice didn’t, hmm?  Why didn’t the mice just go to the part of the island where the cats were until the volcano stopped erupting?  Just what kind of bill of goods are you trying to sell us, Basil?)  Basil comes off sounding like a 19th century imperialist, and the fawning adoration he gets for his discovery is really annoying.

In general, I don’t like the Basil stories that turn out to be more adventure than mystery, and Basil’s smug superiority at various points in the story are off-putting.  It’s true that that Sherlock Holmes (which this series parodies) had an ego as well, but these sort of imperialist attitudes in a children’s story are distasteful.  Although I like recommending nostalgic books for future generations, this is one that I really can’t recommend.  The brightest spot in this book was the secret code in the dungeon, which is more in keeping with the mystery theme.  If the book had made the plot to capture Ratigan and end his reign of terror in another country without all this stuff about an “inferior” species of small cats, it would have been a much better story.

Like other books in this series, this book contains a number of jokes on the original Sherlock Holmes stories.  Read a number of the names backwards, and you’ll see some familiar names from Sherlock Holmes as well as a reference to another series by Eve Titus.

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

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The Secret of the Strawbridge Place

SecretStrawbridgePlace

SecretStrawbridgePlacePic1The Secret of the Strawbridge Place by Helen Pierce Jacob, 1976.

This story takes place in Ashtabula, Ohio during the Great Depression. Kate is frightened of the hobos who pass through town looking for work, but at the beginning of summer, her brother Josh dares her to come with him to spy on the hobo camp. The two of them witness a fight between three hobos, and in their haste to get away, Kate falls and breaks her arm. At first, she is sure that her summer is ruined, but when she considers the place where she fell, she realizes that she has stumbled on an important clue to a secret surrounding the old house where they live.

Locals say that during the Civil War, the Strawbridge family, who lived in the house before Kate’s family, were part of the Underground Railroad, hiding runaway slaves. However, no one has ever been able to find the place where the slaves were hidden. When Kate fell, she discovered the opening to a cave near the river that she never knew was there before.

SecretStrawbridgePlacePic2Oscar, a boy visiting his grandfather nearby, becomes Kate’s friend. Since he was also injured in one of Josh’s escapades (having broken his leg when the kids were fooling around in the haymow), she invites him to join her in the search for the secret. They form a partnership called Cripples Incorporated and have fun inventing code words and writing secret messages about what they’ve discovered. Pursuing the secret comes with some risks, and before Kate can discover the whole truth about Strawbridge Place, she has a serious brush with danger.

It’s an interesting mystery that invites readers to try to figure out the clues along with Kate and Oscar as they ponder the sampler with the strange motto left behind by the Strawbridge twins. Oscar also introduces Kate to Sherlock Holmes stories, one of which provides her with the inspiration to solve the mystery. Kate also develops better feelings for the hobos, who, like the runaway slaves, turn out to be mostly ordinary people just looking for a better life.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.  There is also a prequel book that focuses on the original adventures of the Strawbridge family when the house was operating as a stop on the Underground Railroad called The Diary of the Strawbridge Place.

Posted on by TracyC · 4 Comments

Mystery of the Black-Magic Cave

MegMagicCave

Mystery of the Black-Magic Cave by Holly Beth Walker, 1971, 1978.

MegMagicCavePic1Meg’s Uncle Hal takes her and her best friend, Kerry, with him on vacation to Merrybones, Maine.  He has a cabin there, and it’s a good place to go fishing or exploring in the woods.  However, Uncle Hal isn’t just there to relax this time.  His friend, Emily Hawthorne, has asked for his help because she’s received some mysterious, disturbing messages.

Emily was born in Merrybones but moved away at a young age to live with an aunt on the west coast because she was orphaned after the death of her father.  Her father’s death was mysterious, and Emily has had the feeling that people haven’t told her the full truth of it.  It was known that he had a heart condition, and he was found dead in the woods one morning, apparently having died of a heart attack.  Emily herself was also found wandering in the woods alone, frightened and talking about a “dark monster”, but she was very young at the time and no longer remembers what happened or what she saw that night.

MegMagicCavePic2She has returned to Merrybones to teach in the local school, but people in this town look at her as an outsider because she has spent so many years away.  Now, she has received threatening messages written in rhyme and signed with a star with the number 13 inside.  Her pet black cat, Melissa, has also mysteriously disappeared, and Emily is worried about her.

Someone doesn’t want Emily to stay in Merrybones, possibly because they’re afraid of what she might remember about the past.  Meg and Kerry soon learn that there are strange legends and stories of witches connected with a cave in the woods.  They later discover that someone has been there recently, lighting candles and drawing pentacles like the ones on the threatening messages to Emily.  In fact, Mrs. Stoner, the woman who owns the bed-and-breakfast where Meg and Kerry are staying because Uncle Hal’s cabin only has one room, has what appears to be a witch’s spell book hidden in the storage room next to where the girls sleep.  To get the answers, Meg and her friends, including Mrs. Stoner’s own children, must summon the courage to go the cave once more and learn more about these mysterious “witches.”

The book is part of the Meg Duncan Mysteries.  It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

A creepy mystery like this was just the sort of thing I loved as a kid, but this story kind of bothered me, reading it again as an adult.  I had forgotten how it ended, but as I was reading about the secret society in the book and the clues that Meg and her friends uncovered about them, I found myself not just thinking that their spells and witch names were a little hokey for a secret society of adults (“Endorella” indeed!) but also getting angry at the juvenile way they behaved.  Part of me thought at first that it was because the witches’ scariness was toned down for the sake of juvenile readers, but more and more, I found myself thinking of them as adults who never really grew up, whose mean, cliquish ways were carried over into adulthood, long after they should have grown out of them.  There are adults in real life who are like that.  To my surprise, that sense wasn’t just because their little rituals were toned down for children but was actually a genuine clue to the identities and motives of the “witches” and the origins of their secret society.  Discovering that actually made me feel a little better.  I also think the author did a good job of explaining how a little harmless “fun” can get out of hand and showing the adults’ embarrassment at being caught in their “game.”  The secret society isn’t quite as mean or sinister as it first appears, which is also a relief.

There is an interesting twist to the story in who the real author of the threatening messages was.  I was pretty sure who the writer was, and I guessed right, but I had expected that this person would be a member of the secret society, which wasn’t true.  Also, the secret that the villain is trying to protect isn’t how the father died years ago, which turns out to be just because of his heart condition with no foul play, but the fact that someone stole the money that the father had in his possession at the time he died.  The story does end happily, though, including the thief repaying Emily (this person had actually been trying to work up to it for a long time) and Emily agreeing to spare the person’s reputation.  The kitty is okay at the end, too!

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The Westing Game

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, 1978.

It all starts when a mysterious person invites six sets of people to live in the new apartment building, Sunset Towers.  Sunset Towers is a luxury apartment building, but the rent for these individuals and families is surprisingly affordable.  That is because these people are special, and the owner of these apartments is preparing for a very special game.  Although there doesn’t seem to be anything to tie these people together at first, they do share a special connection that isn’t immediately obvious, a connection to the wealthy but mysterious Samuel Westing.

Among the new tenants of Sunset Towers is young Turtle Wexler.  Although she is often in the shadow of her overly-shy but pretty older sister, Angela, she has ambitions of her own in life.  While her mother dreams of making it in high society, Turtle (whose real name is also something of a mystery to the other tenants for most of the book) wants to become a successful businesswoman when she grows up, and one of the things she wants most is a subscription to the Wall Street Journal.  To raise the money she needs, Turtle accepts a bet to sneak into the supposedly empty Westing House on Halloween night, earning $2 for every minute she spends there.  There are stories that the place is haunted and that Mr. Westing’s body lies rotting on an oriental rug there, but Turtle doesn’t believe them.  As it turns out, she’s right.  Instead, she finds Mr. Westing dead in bed.

To everyone’s surprise, the tenants of Sunset Towers are all named in the will, but not in an ordinary way.  In order to determine who the final heir will be, they must all play The Westing Game.  The heirs are divided up into teams of two and given $10,000 and a set of clues.  They must use these to give an answer at the end.  But, what kind of an answer?  Mr. Westing’s will implies that he was murdered, but is that really true?  Could his murderer even be among the heirs/game players?

As the book continues, readers learn more about each of the contestants.  Each of them has their own personalities, ambitions, and problems.  For example, Angela Wexler is about to be married but seems less than enthusiastic about the wedding.  Cristos Theodorakis suffers from a strange malady that keeps him confined to a wheelchair.  Sydelle Pulaski was actually invited to join the tenants by mistake, but it might be the best mistake of her life.  Mr. Hoo is worried about his restaurant, and Madame Hoo dreams of returning to China.

The competition is fierce in the Westing Game.  Players are suspicious of other players cheating.  Things around the apartments start disappearing, and some mysterious person has even started planting explosives in unlikely places!  Whether the thefts and explosions have anything to do with the contest itself is for the reader to discover, but there is an answer to the Westing Game, and only one of the contestants will discover it.

The book is a Newbery Award winner.  There is a movie version of the book called Get a Clue! (1997), although it doesn’t follow the book completely.  There are multiple copies of the book currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

One of the great things about the Westing Game is how the seemingly mismatched pairs of contestants actually complement each other, giving people new perspectives on their lives and the answers to problems that some of them have been struggling with.   Lonely Flora Baumbach, grieving for her deceased daughter, is paired with young Turtle, who finds in her a more motherly person than her own mother, someone who values her for her intelligence and her unique skills in a way that no one else does.  Mrs. Baumbach enjoys having someone to care for again, and Turtle blossoms under her care and attention.  Mr. Hoo, meanwhile, finds some unexpected support for his business from Mrs. Wexler, who develops broader interests in life than her previous social ambitions and an unexpected flair for business and marketing.  Judge Ford, who was educated by Mr. Westing and always worried about how to repay the debt, finally finds a way to repay his kindness, a way that Mr. Westing would have approved.  Bertha Crow, an unhappy woman who turned to religion to atone for past sins, finds new happiness with someone who understands and accepts her past and is willing to help her continue her good works.  Even Angela, who seems to have everything a young girl would want (good looks and a kind fiance with a promising future in medicine), figures out what she really wants in life and finds the courage to stand up for it.

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Ginger’s Upstairs Pet

GingerUpstairsPet

Ginger’s Upstairs Pet by John Ryckman, 1971.

This is a cute picture book about a little girl named Ginger and the mysterious new “pet” she’s found.  At first, her mother doesn’t believe that Ginger has a pet, but Ginger keeps running downstairs from her room to ask for more food to feed her pet.  First, it’s cake.  Then, it’s apples.  Ginger keeps coming back down stairs with more requests for food.

GingerUpstairsPetPic1

Ginger’s mother thinks that Ginger is eating the food herself until Ginger comes downstairs with an especially strange request.  Then, her mother decides to see Ginger’s mysterious pet herself.

What kind of pet does Ginger have?  More importantly, how did she get it?

My Reaction and Spoilers

If you don’t want to know what pet Ginger has, don’t look at the pictures below!  I don’t mind giving spoilers, though, because this isn’t a very common book these days.  It isn’t on Internet Archive, although it’s possible to buy it on Amazon.  I won my copy in a drawing back when I was in first grade, and the school library was raffling off books they were getting rid of.

It’s a fun, light-hearted story about a strange day in the life of this family and the unusual “pet” that little Ginger temporarily acquires without even leaving her upstairs bedroom.  It’s a calm but humorous story that has enough reality to it to be believable.  Ginger’s pet and the way she found it are unusual enough that it would be unlikely that anything like this would happen to any real child, but not so far out and crazy to be completely unbelievable or too cartoony, and the situation is resolved realistically, after which Ginger and her mom have some cake themselves.  There’s nothing serious or tense about the story at all, so it would make good bedtime reading.  It’s one of the books that I think would be nice to see in print again.

The drawings are cute, and they’re interesting because they only use four colors: black, white, red, and green.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Mystery of the Roman Ransom

romanransomMystery of the Roman Ransom by Henry Winterfeld, 1971.

This is the sequel to Detectives in Togas, a mystery story about a group of boys in Ancient Rome.  Like the first book, it was originally written in German and translated into English.

On Xantippus’s birthday, his students decide that they want to give him a special present because they think he’s turning 50.  Actually, it turns out that they did their math wrong because Xantippus (whose real name is Xanthos and only known as Xantippus as a nickname among his students) was born in Athens, and the Greeks use a different dating system from the Romans.  His Roman students forgot even after he had explained that in their history lessons, which really annoys him.  He is also really annoyed that the special present they decided to give him was a slave of his very own so that he can concentrate on his studies while the slave does all of his chores.  Xantippus points out that, far from being a present, slaves are actually a burden because there are extra expenses for owning them and it would end up costing him more money than he could afford (much like the “free” cars that Oprah Winfrey gave to some of her audience members), and Xantippus wants no part of it.  He gives the boys the day off from lessons to reward them for being thoughtful (although, not quite thoughtful enough), and tells them to return the slave to the dealer who sold him and get their money back.  But, it turns out that this slave isn’t just any ordinary slave.

romanransompicWhen they return to the slave dealer’s home, he is gone, and the place is boarded up.  An elderly slave who was left behind said that all of the other slaves were sold, and then the dealer simply fled, abandoning him.  He also says that there was someone else who had come to see the dealer, demanding that he hand over the slave called Udo (the one that the boys had already bought).  This man was a former gladiator with only one eye, and he was very angry that Udo was gone.  He swore that he would he would get Udo one way or another, dead or alive.  He threatened the dealer, saying that he would return later and kill the dealer and all of his slaves if Udo was not among them then.  The slave dealer, not knowing the names of the boys who had bought Udo or where he could be found and therefore unable to get Udo back, fled in fear of the former gladiator’s threats.

During this time in Rome’s history, crime rates were high because gangs of ex-gladiators, runaway slaves, and criminals roamed the city, robbing and terrorizing the citizens.  The boys soon learn that the dealer’s fears were well-founded when the ex-gladiator finds them in the marketplace while they are trying to decide what to do with Udo.  He tries to take Udo from them by force, but they fight with him and manage to escape by dumping a pail of honey over his head.

Once the boys are safely away and in their secret hideout with Udo, he reveals his true story to them.  At first, they had believed that Udo was deaf and mute because he acted like he couldn’t speak, but he tells them that he was afraid to do so because he is a hunted man.  He was the slave of a powerful Roman army commander now stationed in Germania.  He was sent to Rome by his master in order to deliver an important letter, but upon learning that he would be killed after handing over this letter, he did not complete his mission.

The meeting was to take place in a cemetery at midnight, and when Udo arrived, he became frightened and hid.  Then, he overheard his contacts, two men who did not seem to even know each other, talking about how he would be eliminated after passing on his message.  Now, these men are looking for him for the message that he did not give to them, and Udo cannot go back to his master because his master would probably kill him for disobeying orders.

Udo discovered that the letter contained instructions for an assassin to murder an important Roman senator, and upon learning that, all of the boys are immediately worried because they are all the sons of senators.  They demand to know which senator will be murdered, but Udo cannot tell them because that information was in the letter, and he lost it after he fled from the cemetery.  He thinks that it’s in a cellar where he hid and spent the rest of the night before he was found by a group of gladiators who sold him as a slave the next day.  Now, he’s not quite sure where that cellar was.  Udo also says that his master will arrive in Rome himself in three days and will probably just pass on the name of the intended target to the assassins then when he learns that Udo didn’t.  With time running out and their fathers’ lives possibly on the line, the boys and Udo struggle to find the letter and stop the assassination plot before it’s too late!

In Ancient Rome, slaves were common among the wealthy, and owners had the power of life and death over them.  They could punish a slave severely for even a small mistake, abandon them if they were sick or elderly, and even sell them to the gladiatoral arenas, where they would have to fight for their lives or die as public entertainment.  To the boys in the story, such things are simply facts of life as they have always known it.  Rome in general was a violent place.

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

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Journey to America

journeytoamericaJourney to America by Sonia Levitin, 1970.

This is the first book in the Journey to America Saga.  Like her heroine, Lisa, Sonia Levitin also fled Germany with her family during World War II, and her stories are semi-autobiographical.

Twelve-year-old Lisa Platt lives with her family in Berlin in 1938.  But, with the rise of the Nazis, events have taken a frightening turn for Jewish families like theirs.  There has already been violence toward Jewish people, and travel is restricted.  Lisa’s father fears for their family, and their mother believes that war is about to break out.  Reluctantly, her parents have decided that the only thing to do is to leave Germany and try to start over somewhere else.

Because of the travel restrictions, Lisa’s father has to leave secretly, pretending that he is only going on vacation.  In reality, he and Lisa’s uncle will go to America and try to get established before sending for the rest of the family.  But, it isn’t safe for Lisa, her mother, and her two sisters to stay in Germany, waiting for word from them.  Instead, they pretend that they are joining Lisa’s father for a holiday in Switzerland.  They can only take a little luggage with them, as if they were really just going on vacation, and very little money.

journeytoamericapicBut, getting on the train out of Germany is only the first step of their long journey.  Lisa and her mother and sisters live as refugees in Switzerland, waiting for her father to help arrange for their passage to America.  Often, they have too little to eat because they don’t have much money.  There are some people who help them, and they make some new friends, but the long wait is difficult.  Meanwhile, they must face the frightening events taking shape around them, around the people they left behind, and their own uncertain future.

There is something in the stories that I’d like to describe a little more because I didn’t quite understand it when I first read this book as a kid, but I can explain it better now.  At one point in the story, Lisa’s grandmother suggests that her mother send the girls to England because other families are doing it and it would ensure that the children get safely out of the country.  Later, in Switzerland, Lisa gets a letter from her friend Rosemarie that says she and her sister are now in England without their parents because their father didn’t didn’t feel like he could leave Germany.  What they’re describing is the Kindertransport, a rescue effort started by Jewish, Quaker, and British government leaders to transport unaccompanied Jewish minors, from babies to age 17, from Germany and German-controlled countries to England for safety after the events of Kristallnacht made it clear that Jews were in serious danger in Germany.  When the children reached England, they were placed in foster homes, schools, and anywhere else willing to take them, similar to the way children evacuated from London to avoid the bombings later would be placed in foster homes or on farms.  Grandmother Platt points out that this could have been an option for her grandchildren when she discusses the possibilities with their mother, but since, neither the mother or father of the family wanted to stay in Germany, the family decided that they should all leave together.  The Kindertransport program ended when war actually broke out, but by then, about 10,000 children had been brought to England.  Although parents who sent their children to England on the Kindertransport hoped to reunite with them in England, most of the Kindertransport children who went to England never saw their parents again because their family members who stayed behind in Germany were killed in the Holocaust.  I had lessons about the Holocaust in school in Arizona, but they never mentioned the Kindertransport because it wasn’t something that really affected the area where we lived.  I did see a Holocaust survivor who came to speak at my high school in the early 2000s.  There were Holocaust survivors living in my area of Arizona then, and there still are as of this writing because I heard that they were among the first to be vaccinated during the coronavirus pandemic in early 2021.  This video from the BBC Newsnight and this video from the University and College Union explain more about it and have interviews with people who were brought to England on the Kindertransport as children.  Rosemarie and her sister would probably be very much like the people in those interviews years later.

Although there are sad parts of the book, there are lighter moments, too, and the characters are realistic and engaging.  There is only one illustration in my copy of the book, a drawing of Lisa and her sisters getting their pictures taken for their passports.  Other editions of the book have different illustrations.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, in different editions).

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Soup

soupSoup by Robert Newton Peck, 1974.

This is the first book in a series about the author’s childhood best friend.  His friend’s real name was Luther Wesley Vison, but he always hated that name.  Because Luther refused to come home whenever his mother called his name for dinner, his mother took to just yelling, “Soup’s on!” when she wanted him to come home to eat.  After that, everyone else just started calling him “Soup”, which he liked a lot better than “Luther.”

Together, Soup and Robert had a reputation for getting into scrapes in their small town in Vermont.  The book is a series of short stories about the funny things they did as kids, like how they got revenge on the school nurse for asking embarrassing questions, how Soup got punished for breaking a window other than the one he’d actually broken, how Soup talked Rob into rolling down a hill in a barrel, and how Robert’s aunt let him tie her to a tree right before a lightning storm.

souppicSome of the stories are laugh-out-loud funny, and some of them have kind of a moral lesson to them, like the time when Rob realized that he didn’t have the heart to lie to his mother even if it would allow him to escape punishment for talking back to the school nurse, the time when Soup and Rob tried to cheat Mr. Diskin out of some money so they would have enough to go to the movies but ended up feeling guilty, and how the boys made themselves sick by attempting to smoke cornsilk.  Others are just stories of childhood events and friendship, like the story of how Rob and Soup played football and how Soup loaned Rob his new shoes when his were ruined.  Even though Soup often got Rob into trouble, he really was a good friend and went out of his way to make Rob feel better when he needed it the most.

Although it is a short chapter book that is easy to read, a couple of the stories might require some further explanations for young children reading them, like the one where the boys smoke cornsilk using homemade pipes and the one where Soup says that someone told him it was all right to cheat Mr. Diskin because he’s a Jew (a belief that they come to rethink when they feel guilty for cheating someone who was always fair with them and was kind to them even when he discovered the deception).  They deal with older practices and prejudices and can be the start of discussions about the lessons people learn by making mistakes. Other than that, these stories present a fascinating look at what it was like to grow up in the country during the 1920s.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Pirate Island Adventure

pirateislandPirate Island Adventure by Peggy Parish, 1975.

The Roberts kids must solve another family treasure hunt! This time, they are staying with their grandparents at the family’s vacation home on Pirate Island. It has been many years since the family has been able to go there during the summer. For years, they rented the house out to a couple who lived there most of the time, and the grandparents could only go there when the couple left to visit relatives at Christmas. Now, the house is vacant again, and the grandparents have decided to take the Liza, Bill, and Jed there for the summer.

The last time that their grandfather spent the summer there as a child, his older brother decided to take something from every member of the family and make a treasure hunt just like the old family treasure hunt that the kids solved in Key to the Treasure. Just like that treasure hunt, other circumstances arose that kept the treasure hunt from being solved, so no one ever got back what grandfather’s brother hid. The only clue they have to the treasure now is a picture that grandfather’s brother drew. Since the children were able to solve the last treasure hunt, their grandfather is hopeful that they will be able to solve this one, too.

Unlike other treasure hunts that the Roberts kids solve, this treasure hunt does not involve codes and word games.  The clues are given in the form of drawings, most of which (unfortunately) are not shown to the readers.  The readers wouldn’t have a chance to solve the puzzles anyway because the objects in the drawings are things which the children’s grandfather has to recognize, places where he and his brother went as kids.  This book also introduces Hermit Dan, who appears in another book.

This book is part of the Liza, Bill, and Jed Mysteries series.

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The Haunted House

hauntedhouseThe Haunted House by Peggy Parish, 1971.

The Roberts family is moving to a different house across town because they want a bigger place to live. Liza, Bill, and Jed are not very happy about moving, at least at first, because they will be farther away from their friends, especially Jimmy and Mary, who have been their best friends and next door neighbors. Liza is also worried because the house they will be living in is the old Blake house, which is rumored to be haunted. A couple of past caretakers have left because they claimed to hear ghostly noises.  The boys tease her about it, and their father insists that there is no such thing as ghosts.

The house is definitely much bigger than their old one, and there is a barn, a garden, and a large wooded area on the property. When they actually move in, the kids become fascinated with the old things in the attic, which the children are allowed to go through.  The kids also plan to start building a tree house.  The boys become excited about the house, but Liza is still nervous about the ghost stories.

Then, strange notes and coded messages appear for the children, starting with a note taped to Liza’s window in the middle of the night. Little presents are left for them in a hollow tree with promises of bigger surprises later. Who is sending these messages? Could it be the ghost?

Like other books in this series, there are coded messages and word games that the readers can solve alongside the children.  Some of them are easily recognizable, like word scrambles and Pig Latin, and others are a little harder.  The kids walk readers through their solutions, but readers can attempt the puzzles on their own first.

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