Posted on by TracyC

Bicycle Mystery

The Boxcar Children

Boxcar Children Bicycle Mystery cover

Bicycle Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1970.

Boxcar Children Bicycle Mystery fixing a bike

Grandfather Alden tells the Boxcar Children that their Aunt Jane has invited them to visit her on her farm. To make the trip more interesting for the adventurous kids, he suggests that they make the journey to Aunt Jane into a cross-country bicycle trip. There are motels along the route where they can stay, or they can came out. They won’t be able to take Watch the dog with them this time because he’s getting too old to follow their bikes that long distance, but the kids like the idea of the cross-country bike trip.

The cross-country trip gives the Alden children the chance to meet new people and have adventures. Along the way, they stop to help Mrs. Randall, a woman who is worried about having to fix dinner suddenly for her husband’s boss while her house is a mess. The Aldens see how upset she is while they’re shopping for food themselves, so they volunteer to help her. The boss’s visit turns out to be a success, and rather than coming to discuss a problem at work, he’s there to tell the Randalls that he’s considering Mr. Randall for a promotion. However, the Alden children have the feeling that there’s something else worrying Mrs. Randall that has to do with her son, Carl, who isn’t there. Every time Carl is mentioned, Mrs. Randall seems worried.

Boxcar Children Bicycle Mystery dog in the window

As the children continue on their way, they get caught in a rain storm and take shelter in an abandoned house. There, they find a little gray dog, who seems friendly and well-behaved. The dog is very hungry, and they share their food with him. The dog seems eager to follow them when they leave. They try to tell the dog to go home, thinking that he probably lives somewhere nearby, but he insists on going with them. Benny starts calling the dog Shadow for following them. The Aldens don’t think they can keep Shadow because they don’t think Watch would like them getting another dog, and they’re a little worried that letting him follow them might be taking him further away from wherever he lives, but they don’t know what to do but take care of him until they can figure out where he belongs.

Boxcar Children Bicycle Mystery injured boy

Later, they meet a boy who is minding a roadside vegetable stand who has a broken leg. The boy says that he feels badly because his father can use some help picking vegetables, too, but he can’t do much since he broke his leg. The Boxcar children offer to help, and the boy and his father are surprised that they’re willing to work for free. The kids say that they’re just out for adventure right now, and they don’t mind helping. The father, Mr. Smith, notices the way that Shadow whines constantly, even though he doesn’t seem hurt. They talk about the dog and wonder who the owner is. Mr. Smith thinks that, if someone didn’t want the dog, they probably could have sold him instead of abandoning him. His son, Roy, noticed something odd while he was minding the vegetable stand. A pair of girls commented that it was the same dog that they had seen in a parking lot earlier. Mr. Smith suggests that the kids ask Miss Lucy at the post office if anyone in the area has lost a dog because she knows everyone and everything that’s going on. When they ask Miss Lucy, she says that nobody in the area has lost a dog, and Shadow isn’t at all familiar to her. Shadow seems to be an unusual breed, and Miss Lucy thinks that he looks funny.

As the children travel further, they spot a sign for a dog show. They decide that they should go to the dog show and see if they can meet people who are interested in dogs and might know what kind of dog Shadow is. They meet a man who tells them that the dog is a young show dog, and he offers to buy the dog. When the kids say that they can’t sell Shadow because he doesn’t belong to them, the man and his wife seem suspicious, and the woman takes a picture of them and the dog.

When the kids finally reach Aunt Jane’s farm, Uncle Andy recognizes the dog as a Skye terrier. The kids finally manage to locate the dog’s owner, and it turns out to be a surprise.

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

My Reaction

This is one of the early Boxcar Children books, written by the original author. Because of the cross-country trip format, the book is somewhat episodic, with incidents taking place at different places where the children stop on their trip. The story has more elements of adventure than mystery, but the mystery element is there, too.

The Boxcar Children frequently have more independence from adult supervision than most kids have today, which is part of the appeal that the series has for kids. I think that most people who rent motel rooms would be concerned about renting rooms to children by themselves, but it’s important to point out that the word “kids” is relative. In the later books in the series, the kids’ ages are frozen, so the eldest, Henry, never ages past 14 years old. However, in the earlier books, like this one, the kids did age. In this book, Henry is college-aged, so he’s not exactly a kid anymore. The book doesn’t provide an exact age for him, but he’s probably 18 years old or older.

Posted on by TracyC

The Rescue

The Rescue by Mary Cunningham, 1978.

Bob and Becca are going to stay at their aunt’s cabin in the mountains in California with their mother. Becca has been upset since she found out that her best friend, Elaine, will be moving to another state with her family. This trip is partly to get Becca’s mind off of losing her best friend, but Becca keeps thinking about how much she would have liked having her friend along on the trip. The only bright spot for Becca is that she might be able to write to Elaine about how nice the cabin, called Lantern Lodge, is or about the interesting things they might find to do. It’s not as good as having Elaine there to share the experience, but it’s better than nothing.

Lantern Lodge was originally built to be a guest cabin for friends of the movie star who once owned the mansion at the top of the hill. Now, the mansion is owned by an old man whose grandson is staying there with him. Bob wonders what the grandson is like and if he might want to go fishing sometime. There used to be a staircase leading up the hillside from the cabin, but it’s overgrown with brambles now.

Becca finds her way up the hillside by following a friendly Siamese cat, who shows her how she can use a cherry tree to reach the portion of the old stairs that is still climable. When she gets to the top of the hill, she admires the greenhouse where the old man grows orchids. She also discovers that Bob got to the top of the hill before her and has already met the old man’s grandson, Dan. Without revealing herself to the boys, she listens to what they’re saying. Dan explains that he’s taking care of his grandfather’s house and plants while his grandfather is in the hospital with pneumonia.

There’s a weather report on the radio that there’s a storm coming and that people in vacation cabins should watch for flash floods. Bob asks if that means his family should leave Lantern Lodge, but Dan says that there shouldn’t be a problem because the lodge is well-constructed. However, Dan says that Bob should wait until after the storm to go fishing. Bob agrees and heads back to the cabin. Becca, who still hasn’t shown herself to the boys, decides to stay longer because she’s curious about the old mansion and wants to look around more.

Becca heads back to the cabin when it starts to rain, although it’s difficult to get down from the stairs and tree when they’re wet and slippery. Becca manages to do it unharmed, but her mother slips and hurts her arm when she comes outside to look for her. When her mother’s arm swells up, Becca goes to look at the plants where she fell and realizes that there’s poison oak or poison ivy there. The rain has gotten worse, and the road has flooded, so they can’t leave the cabin, even if their mother was able to drive with her injured arm.

Fortunately, the phone at the cabin still works, and Dan calls them to see how they’re doing. They explain about their mother’s injured arm, and Dan gives them the name and number of a doctor to call. He also gives them other advice for dealing with the situation, recommending that they cook as much food as they can and bring it upstairs in case the lower floor of the cabin floods. They should also fill everything they can with clean water for drinking and prepare candles in case they lose electricity. They follow Dan’s instructions and call the doctor’s office. The nurse on duty gives them some instructions for caring for their mother’s arm and says that they’ll try to send a messenger with some medicine.

Dan calls again later to tell them that cabins in the area are being evacuated, and he thinks they should leave their cabin, too. Bob tries to explain that they can’t leave because the road is flooded and help hasn’t come for them, but the phone line goes dead. He doesn’t know how much Dan understood. They know that there is an emergency crew helping with the evacuations, but without a phone, they can’t call for help. There’s only one way left to communicate with the outside world, and that’s the old flagpole that’s been there since before the telephone was installed. A white flag run up the pole is supposed to signal distress, but the rope is rotten, and they can’t raise the flag. Their mother is now feverish and not very aware of what’s going on. What are Bob and Becca going to do?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

I’ve never been a fan of disaster movies or survival stories, but I did enjoy this one. At one point, Bob says that he used to like seeing disasters movies, but it’s very different from experiencing one in real life. The children are scared, but they try to stay practical and do everything they can to deal with the situation and keep themselves and their mother safe.

It’s not a very long book, but it has some useful information about dealing with disasters. After the phone line goes dead, the kids find a book in the cabin about dealing with disasters. Most of the information in the book doesn’t apply to them, but they make use of the parts they can.

Dan eventually reaches them, but the tree he tied his boat to falls over, trapping him in the house with the kids and their mother. The situation is still dangerous at that point, but the kids realize that there is now one more person to help them. Although Dan was sure that the cabin would be solid, they soon realize that it’s starting to break up, and they have to get out fast. Because he has assisted with other rescues, Dan has the experience they need to help the kids get themselves and their mother to safety. Also, don’t worry about Becca’s pet mouse. I was afraid at first that the mouse wouldn’t make it, but the mouse is okay in the end!

Having survived a real disaster puts the more minor disaster of Elaine moving away into perspective for Becca. It’s sad when a friend moves away, but there are far worse things, and she and her family have come through them together.

Posted on by TracyC

The Witch’s Spoon

The Witch’s Spoon by Mary Cunningham, illustrated by Marilyn Miller, 1975.

Tom and Lauren are spending a week with their grandmother at her beach cottage during the summer. They have visited the cottage many times before, and they love revisiting all their favorite places, the bunk beds on the cottage’s sleeping porch, like the tree where they always see baby owls (which they call the owl tree), and the place where they once found some lost coins (which they call the money spot). They know the cottage well, inside and out. This summer, though, there are a few things that are different.

The first thing that the kids notice that is different is that their Grandma has added a new item to her curio cabinet: a big silver spoon with a long handle. They ask their grandmother about the spoon, and she explains that it’s a witch’s spoon. She recently inherited it from the children’s Great-Aunt Hannah (that would be their grandmother’s sister), who used to live in Massachusetts. The spoon is a family heirloom from the time of the witchcraft trials in Salem (“when witches were thought to be as much of a problem to people as air pollution is now” – this is from the mid-1970s). Their grandmother says that there are good witches and bad witches, and good witches would use spoons like this one to stir love potions. Tom doesn’t believe in witches, but Lauren is fascinated by the spoon and the idea of love potions. She is sure that she senses magic from the spoon.

The next thing that will make the children’s visit here different from previous years is that their grandmother has decided that they’re old enough to have a June Day. June Days are a family tradition, and it’s not just because it’s June. During a June Day, the usual household rules are suspended for one day, and the children are allowed to go wherever they want and do anything they want, all on their own. Grandma says that she will prepare meals at the usual times, but for that day, it’s up to the children whether or not they show up for them, so they don’t need to interrupt their adventures. If the children aren’t there to eat their meals, Grandma will share the food with their nextdoor neighbor, Mr. Bunby. There are only a few safety rules that the children have to follow: they are expected to by careful when attempting any activity that might have an element of danger, and they have to leave their grandmother a note about the general area where they are going, like the beach or the nearby woods, so if they’re not back by dark, she’ll know where to look for them. The June Day ends when it gets dark, and the children must be home by then.

The grandmother understands that there is a certain element of risk in letting the children go off by themselves, and she reminds them that “every box has its pill.” That means that, while their children can choose what they’re going to do, they have to face the consequences of their choices, no matter what they might be, good or bad. “If you open the box and find a bitter pill, you have to swallow it.” Getting to make their own rules and decisions for a day doesn’t get them out of taking the consequences of whatever they do. If they get hurt or get into serious trouble, not only will they suffer the hurt or trouble they cause, but their parents may not let them come back next summer, so they need to keep that in mind when making their choices. Freedom still comes with responsibility, and that’s what the children need to be old enough to understand before they can have a June Day. Tom says that they understand, and that they won’t do anything too wild. Their grandmother tells them that they can have their June Day in two days, so they will have time to look forward to the treat and plan for it.

Tom and Lauren have different interests, so each of them decides to make up their own plans for a private adventure. Tom already knows what he wants to do for his June Day. There is a cave near the beach where the children usually aren’t allowed to go, but there are rumors that there is a giant cavern inside where pirates have hidden their treasure. Getting inside the cave will be difficult and involves an element of risk, but he is determined to spend his June Day hunting for pirate treasure. He doesn’t want to persuade Lauren to join him because he thinks she’ll be too scared to do it.

Meanwhile, Lauren thinks how she’s always wanted to hold a baby owl in her hands. She loves animals, and she decides that she’ll try to hold a baby owl on her June Day. She decides she won’t tell Tom about it, because he would probably think that was a silly thing to do. Lauren thinks that she even might try to make a baby owl a pet, just for the rest of the week.

There is one other thing that is different about this year, though. Their grandmother informs them that their cousin, Elizabeth, will be joining them at the cottage this year. Elizabeth’s father is the brother of Tom and Lauren’s father. Years ago, he moved to Italy and married a woman there, and they had only one daughter, Elizabeth. Unfortunately, Elizabeth’s parents died in a car accident, and Elizabeth has been living with her three aunts in Rome. She has never been the United States before and has never met either her grandmother or cousins, so the children’s grandmother has decided to invite her to visit this year.

Tom and Lauren aren’t thrilled at the idea of meeting their Italian cousin. It’s partly jealousy at sharing their grandmother with a girl they don’t really know. Elizabeth was named after their grandmother, and Lauren worries that Grandma will like her better because of that. Tom complains that she’ll probably be fat and smell like garlic because people in Italy eat a lot of spaghetti. It’s a mean thing to say, and even Lauren thinks it sounds ridiculous, but the children’s negative attitudes are also because they realize that Elizabeth’s presence will complicate their secret plans for their June Day. In order to have their secret adventures by themselves, they will also have to avoid their cousin trying to tag along.

In spite of their negativity and thoughts about playing pranks on Elizabeth so she won’t want to stay, Lauren realizes that she is also curious about this cousin and seeing what she’s like. When Elizabeth arrives the next day, she is a slim girl with dark hair, who doesn’t smell like garlic at all. Elizabeth speaks fluent English as well as Italian because she goes to an international school in Rome, so the children are able to talk to each other easily. Lauren feels jealous about the attention that their grandmother showers on Elizabeth, but Elizabeth is nice to Lauren. Elizabeth likes to knit, and she says that she would like to make a sweater for Lauren. Lauren asks her if she’ll have enough time because she’s only visiting for a week, and Elizabeth says that if it’s not finished by the time she has to leave, she will mail it to her. Lauren begins to feel a little sorry that she thought bad things about Elizabeth, but she also still feels jealous because of all the things Elizabeth knows how to do. Elizabeth can play the flute and wears pretty clothes as well as knitting and speaking multiple languages. Then, their grandmother announces that Elizabeth will be allowed to choose one item from her curio cabinet to take back to Italy with her. Tom and Lauren aren’t even allowed to open the curio cabinet without permission!

Their grandmother tells Tom and Lauren that they will each have a chance to choose something from the cabinet when they’re older. The only reason why Elizabeth is choosing now is that she lives far away and can’t come very often. Tom and Lauren each have favorite items in it that they tell Elizabeth to definitely not take before they get a chance to choose, and Lauren suggests that Elizabeth take the witch’s spoon. The witch’s spoon hasn’t been in the cabinet long enough for Tom or Lauren to have developed an attachment to it. Elizabeth is intrigued by the story that witches used it for making love potions, and their grandmother says that, in times of trouble, you can look into the bowl of the spoon and see answers. Elizabeth says that it’s an Italian tradition that a good witch gives children presents on January 6th (see The Legend of Old Benfana). She tries to see her deceased father in the spoon and is disappointed when she can’t. Their grandmother says that it might not be magical anymore or maybe people only saw in the spoon what they wanted to see.

Tom and Lauren continue making their secret plans for their June Day, each kind of wondering what the other is planning to do. When the day arrives, they each get up early and put their plans into action before anybody can ask them what they’re going to do. Of course, their plans don’t turn out the way they thought. Lauren’s attempt to hold a baby owl and maybe make one a pet don’t take into account how the mother owl would feel about that. In the cave, Tom accidentally falls and drops his flashlight, so he’s trapped and unable to find his way out. Neither one of them was specific enough in their notes for anybody to find them quickly when they get into trouble. Fortunately, Elizabeth turns out to be not only a tag-along but a helpful partner in their adventures. Through their various adventures and disasters on this special June Day, the three children come to feel like they really are cousins. At the end of the story, the grandmother makes a special tea blend, and Elizabeth stirs it with the witch’s spoon, turning it into a love potion, but for family love.

I bought my copy of this book through Amazon. I haven’t found a way to read it online.

My Reaction and Spoilers

The book doesn’t say exactly where the story takes place, but I think it’s supposed to be the California coast because that’s where the author lived. The descriptions of the pine forest near the cottage and beach fit the California coast, and the same author wrote another book called The Rescue that takes place at a cabin in California.

The story has some nice cottagecore vibes, with the children having fun and adventures in nature. There are times that they reminisce about past summers at the cottage as well as enjoying the current summer. They once kept a lost, wild baby ferret as a pet temporarily one summer before releasing it back into the woods, and they always have to look for baby owls in the owl tree when they arrive at the cottage. They spend time at the beach, swimming, wading, sunning themselves, and looking for seashells. Lauren has a favorite type of seashell, called angel’s toenails. When Tom explores the cave, he likes seeing the stalactites, and he sees bats and a type of blind fish in the stream of the cave.

Few children these days have the same level of freedom that these children have at their grandmother’s seaside cottage, although for somewhat obvious reasons. Their grandmother speaks to them honestly and sincerely about the nature of risk-taking and accepting the consequences of their actions, but adults will realize that there are obvious problems with each of their plans for June Day. Even as a kid, I would not have tried to pick up a baby owl or keep one as a pet. Wild animals do not want to be made into pets, and they don’t want their babies to be picked up and held by humans. Owls are cute, but they are also birds prey with sharp beaks and talons and will fight back if they feel like someone is intruding on their personal space. Even my child self would have thought of that long before Lauren tries her June Day experiment. Of course, that’s mostly because my elders impressed on me that nobody should mess with wild animals. The reason why we know that certain things are bad ideas is that people actually tried them and found out from personal experience. Maybe some people have to try things themselves before they understand or believe why they’re bad ideas. I have to admit that I once tried to pick up a dead cactus pad when I was about four years old because I had the idea that dead things couldn’t hurt me, so I figured out that it wouldn’t hurt to touch dead cactus. That’s the Arizona version of this type of experimenting with interacting with the natural world, and I was very, very wrong. One benefit of this kind of hands-on experimenting is that the lessons you learn stay with you forever, but as the grandmother of this story says, you have to accept the results of your experiments, whether it’s a clawed head or a handful of cactus spines.

Tom is the one who takes the greatest risk in this story. When he first considers using the June Day to explore the cave, he knows that they’re not usually allowed to go there. The question that immediately came to my mind was why, and the obvious answer is that the adults know that the cave is too dangerous. Tom considers the difficulties of getting into the cave but not the dangers he can encounter inside. Just because the rules have been suspended for the day doesn’t mean that the dangers have also been suspended for the day, which was what their grandmother was trying to get the children to understand. It’s not unlike learning that cactus spines are just as sharp when the cactus is dead as when it was alive. Fortunately, Lauren and Elizabeth manage to rescue Tom without anyone getting hurt.

The adventures that Tom and Lauren end up sharing with Elizabeth help them bond as cousins. They also learn that, while Lauren has some unique skills and lives a very different kind of life in Rome that is exciting in its own way, she isn’t perfect and neither is her life. Elizabeth is an orphan who still misses her parents. The skills that she has are ones that she’s learned from her aunts, who each have their own standards for what Elizabeth should learn and do. Elizabeth’s aunts love her and care for her, but she isn’t always allowed to do what she wants. This summer represents an unusual amount of freedom for her, too.

I think Tom and Lauren might have taken Elizabeth’s sudden arrival better if their grandmother had prepared them for it instead of springing it on them without warning or discussion of how it would affect their summer plans. The grandmother might have also prevented some hard feelings by talking to all of the children about the gift for Elizabeth from the curio cabinet. I understand why Tom and Lauren wanted to prevent Elizabeth from suddenly taking things that they were attached to. If she had, it would have caused some hard feelings among the cousin. If I were the grandmother in this situation, I think I would have sat all three children down and told them that I wanted to give each of them a special gift from the cabinet. Tom and Lauren would have to leave their gifts in the cabinet for the present, partly because the heirloom Tom values most is a pearl-handled gun, and I think he’s too young to have that unsupervised. However, it would be understood that each of the children would own a special heirloom, and they could discuss their choices among themselves so there wouldn’t be hard feelings or the impression that one child was given more choice than the others.

There aren’t really occult themes in the story. The witch’s spoon only does one thing that appears like magic at one point, and there is a logical explanation for that. The love potion tea really just caps off the children’s day of adventure, when they bond over helping each other. The children know that the spoon probably really isn’t magic. The real magic in their imaginations and the time they spend together as family.

Posted on by TracyC

Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now!

Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now! by Dr. Seuss, 1972.

It’s time for Marvin K. Mooney to go, but he absolutely refuses. Where is going? We don’t know because the book doesn’t say. I imagine that he’s supposed to go to bed because it’s bedtime. He looks like he’s wearing footie pajamas, and the large hand that points for him to go looks like it might be a parent’s hand, but that’s just a guess. This book is just a nonsense rhyme.

The owner of the hand repeatedly tells Marvin to go, telling him that he can go in any way he chooses, as long as he goes.

In the tradition of Dr. Seuss books, all the suggested methods of going are nonsensical, and there are a few made-up nonsense words and devices thrown in.

Eventually, when the owner of the large hand insists, Marvin decides that it really is time for him to go.

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

My Reaction

I’m not a big fan of Dr. Seuss. I wasn’t even as a kid, mainly because my early introduction to Dr. Seuss was The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, two of the major ones people think of when they think of Dr. Seuss. I thought that the Cat in the Hat was way too pushy, and I was very concerned about the welfare of the pet fish in the story. When my teachers made the requisite eggs and ham and dyed them with green food coloring, I absolutely refused to eat them. I didn’t mind it when they turned milk bright green with food coloring for our earlier green-themed day because milk turned the color of mint ice cream looked good, but nothing that turns the shade of green of those green eggs and ham looks appetizing. Knowing that it was just food coloring didn’t help. Speaking of becoming more accepting of new experiences, Sam I Am really needs to learn how to take “no” for an answer.

Anyway, my early Dr. Seuss experiences didn’t appeal to me much, so I didn’t seek out Dr. Seuss books as a kid. I never encountered this particular Dr. Seuss book until I was an adult, and the one thing about Dr. Seuss that really appeals to me now is the knowledge that The Cat in the Hat was specifically meant to be a more interesting alternative for beginning reader than the Dick and Jane readers that were popular in the mid-20th century century. All Dr. Seuss books contain a limited range of simple vocabulary with a few made-up words thrown in to make it interesting, and they’re all meant to be funny and somewhat bizarre to keep young readers interested.

As I said, I don’t know for sure who is telling Marvin to go in this story or where he’s supposed to go. I think it’s probably bedtime, and he’s supposed to go to bed. It would be just like a parent to use a child’s full name to tell them that they’re supposed to do something when they’re not listening. But, it doesn’t really matter. There are some Dr. Seuss books that have a moral to them, but this isn’t one of them. It’s just supposed to be a simple story that’s fun for young children to read. You can imagine where Marvin goes yourself!

Posted on by TracyC

Clocks and More Clocks

Clocks and More Clocks by Pat Hutchins, 1970.

One day, Mr. Higgins finds an old grandfather clock in his attic. He likes the grandfather clock, but he wonders if it really keeps accurate time.

To figure out how accurate the grandfather clock is, he decides to buy another clock. He puts the second clock in his bedroom.

The problem is that when Mr. Higgins goes from his bedroom up to the attic, the clock in the attic reads one minute later than the one in the bedroom. Mr. Higgins isn’t sure which one is right.

Confused, Mr. Higgins decides to buy a third clock to compare to the other two. He puts this one in his kitchen. However, the same thing happens! Each time Mr. Higgins leaves one clock and walks to the next, they’re always a little different!

After purchasing a fourth clock gives him the same results, Mr. Higgins asks the Clockmaker what the problem is and he should do. The Clockmaker comes to Mr. Higgins’s house to take a look at his clocks.

When the Clockmaker compares the time on his watch to the time on each of the clocks, each of the clocks is correct. All of Mr. Higgins’s clocks are working just fine. Suddenly, Mr. Higgins knows what he must do!

Mr. Higgins goes out and buys a watch like the one the Clockmaker owns. Since he bought his watch, all of his clocks have been reading correctly, and Mr. Higgins is happy.

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

My Reaction

This is a fun picture book, partly because even kids will begin to figure out what’s going on with Mr. Higgins’s clocks before he does. He never figures out that it takes him one minute to get from one floor of his house to the next. It doesn’t occur to him that the clocks he left behind in each room have been advancing since he walked to the next one. Even at the end, he still doesn’t seem to fully understand it. He just knows than, when he compares any of his clocks to his new watch, they’re always right! The reason why this happens is never explicitly explained. It’s just left for readers to notice and chuckle at.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Big Book of Real Trains

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on by TracyC

Ben’s Trumpet

Ben’s Trumpet by Rachel Isadora, 1979.

A boy named Ben likes to listen to the music coming from the nearby jazz club at night.

During the day, Ben stops by the club on his way home from school so he can watch the musicians practice.

Ben’s favorite instrument is the trumpet. Ben doesn’t have a trumpet himself, but he imagines that he does and that he can play for his family or play along with the musicians from the club.

Some of the other kids in the neighborhood laugh at Ben for playing an imaginary trumpet, but the trumpeter from the club doesn’t laugh. When he sees Ben playing his imaginary horn, he compliments him.

Later, when he sees Ben watching the club, the trumpeter invites Ben inside and lets him try his trumpet for real.

This book is a Caldecott Honor Book. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

I thought this was a nice story about an adult who understands a boy’s dream and is willing to take him under his wing. Both Ben and the trumpeter understand the love of music, and the trumpeter sees how badly Ben wants to be a real musician. We don’t know whether Ben eventually becomes a professional musician or not because the story ends with him trying a real trumpet for the first time, but the story implies that the trumpeter may become a mentor to Ben and that this might be the beginning of Ben realizing his dream.

The book doesn’t give a specific date for the story, but the illustrations and use of terms like “the cat’s meow” indicate that it takes place in the 1920s. The illustrations not only give the story its 1920s vibe, but the abstract lines included in the pictures help to convey the sounds of the music and echo the art deco style popular during the 1920s.

There are a couple of things in the pictures that adults should be aware of. There is one picture where Ben’s baby brother is completely naked, for some reason, and there are adults with cigarettes. Other than that, I can’t think of anything else about the book that would be a cause for concern. There is no specific location given for the story, but it takes place in a city, and all of the characters are African American.

Posted on by TracyC

Sing Down the Moon

Sing Down the Moon cover

Sing Down the Moon by Scott O’Dell, 1970.

The story begins with a young Navajo girl, Bright Morning, admiring the beginning of spring, but she is caught in a storm and hurries home without the sheep she was supposed to be tending. When the girl’s mother realizes that she abandoned the sheep, she takes the girl back to the sheep, and they watch them all night. The sheep are very important to the family, and the girl’s mother refuses to allow her to take the sheep out by herself again for the rest of that spring.

When Bright Morning finally proves that she can be responsible and not leave the sheep to tend themselves, she is allowed to take them out again. Bright Morning likes to talk to the other girls, Running Bird and White Deer, as they watch all of their sheep together. The girls like to talk about their futures, who they will marry and what kind of children they have. They like to tease each other. Bright Morning’s friends know that she is likely to marry a young man called Tall Boy. The rumor is that Tall Boy’s parents want him to marry her because her mother owns so many fine sheep. Bright Morning knows that her friends tease because they are curious about Tall Boy and want her to talk about him, but she refuses. The girls know that he is supposed to be riding out with the warriors soon, and they tease that maybe he will bring back some other girl from the Ute tribe, but Bright Morning ignores them.

After the warriors have left for their raid on the Utes, the girls see some white men on horses approaching the village. The girls recognize them as oldiers and are worried that their village could be vulnerable to attack without the warriors. Later, the girls encounter more white men, but these men are not dressed as soldiers. They stop to talk to Bright Morning and Running Bird, asking them for directions, but the girls realize that they are slavers. They kidnap both girls and ride away with them!

They take the girls to a town of Spanish people and separate them from each other. They sell Bright Morning to a woman who uses her as a servant. The woman has other Native American girls as slaves, including a younger girl called Rosita. Rosita doesn’t mind her captivity or her life as a servant much. She came from a tribe that was very poor, and since she was brought to this woman’s household to work for her, she has had better food and clothing than she did at home. Rosita tells Bright Morning that the family they work for isn’t bad, and Bright Morning is allowed to keep her dog, who followed her when she was abducted. However, Bright Morning can’t stand her captivity. The woman who owns the house gives her new clothes, but Bright Morning doesn’t care. All she wants to do is find a way to go home.

Bright Morning is reunited with Running Bird when another captive girl comes up with a plan for the three of them to escape. They manage to steal horses and ride away from the town. Along the way, they meet up with Tall Boy and one of his friends, and the boys help fight off the Spaniards who are pursuing the girls. Unfortunately, Tall Boy is badly injured in the fight. He loses the use of one of his arms, and the other Navajos know that he can no longer be a warrior. Bright Morning still cares about Tall Boy, but her mother and sister tell her that she should no longer consider marrying him.

However, the Navajos’ troubles are just beginning. They haven’t heard the last of the soldiers. The American soldiers return and drive the Navajos off their land. They destroy all of their homes and eventually round them up and start them on a long march with little food, where many of them die. The Navajos fear that all of them will die. How will Bright Morning and her family survive, and will they ever see their homeland again?

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

My Reaction

I remember reading this book when I was about 13 years old, in middle school! It takes place in my home state, the northern part, where the Navajo reservation is now, in the Four Corners region. I’ve been to Canyon de Chelly (“Chelly” is pronounced like “shay”, like in French) before, although I hadn’t been there at the time when I first read this book. Since I read this book as a kid, I’ve been to places and seen things that helped me understand the setting of the story better. As an adult, I appreciate the historical aspects of the story even more because I know more about the background. The book doesn’t give a date for the story until the postscript at the very end of the book, but the death march described in the story is Long Walk of 1863 to 1865.

The second half of the book is very depressing because there are horrible conditions and many deaths, including the deaths of children. I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to revisit this book at first because I remembered that it was depressing, but the book is well-written. The narrator describes events in an exciting, compelling way.

I had forgotten many details of the story, but there were some things that jumped out at me as an adult that I hadn’t noticed the first time. The postscript at the end of the story explains how life and Navajo culture changed after this traumatic event. If you see photographs of Navajo in “traditional” costumes now, they often include velveteen clothing, but that’s actually a relatively new tradition. The velveteen was adopted from white people during their captivity because they didn’t have access to wool to make their older style of traditional clothing. When Bright Morning was held captive in the Spanish town, she was given velveteen clothing there.

Another odd topic that is touched on only very briefly but that I know more about from other sources concerns the subject of flour. The book mentions that the Navajo were unused to eating wheat flour until it was their only form of rations during the Long Walk. Until then, their staple grain was corn, and when they started eating wheat flour, it made them feel sick. Their bodies just weren’t used to it. The book doesn’t explicitly explain this, but I know from other sources that the Long Walk and those flour rations were the origins of Navajo fry bread. Fry bread was not part of Navajo diet until that point. I grew up eating it on special occasions as a treat because it is greasy but good with powdered sugar, and it’s often served at carnivals and fairs here. However, as an adult, I came to realize that its origins as a food come from a very dark source. It was starvation food. It can keep you alive if there’s nothing else, but it’s not going to keep you healthy if you eat nothing else. It’s greasy and fatty, and it has little nutritional quality. Even now, I don’t have as much tolerance for it as I did when I was a kid. I can’t stomach it well these days if it’s too greasy or I eat too much.

That’s actually not a bad metaphor for the events described in this book. They’re heavy, and the more of it you understand and absorb, the sicker you feel. I absorb much more now than when I was a kid and only half understood the full significance of the events, and it makes me feel much worse than I did the first time.

So, do I recommend this book for kids? Actually, yes. I’m not a fan of depressing books with a lot of death, and I struggled through some depressing books when I was in school. If you had asked my 13-year-old self whether books with this much death and suffering were worth it, she might have had trouble answering that question, but time and further understanding have changed the way my adult self feels. There are some depressing topics that are worth the struggle to absorb them, but if I were the one teaching the lessons, I think I would do it a little differently than my teachers did for me back then.

I think this book is still a good introduction to topics that can be difficult to discuss. It’s worth reading once to understand the historical background of these events and what they really meant to the people who experienced them directly. It’s painful to read the bad parts, but it’s the kind of pain that leads to something better: real understanding. I recommend the book for kids in their early teens because I think that’s the best level for understanding it and accepting the bad parts. I think it should also be accompanied by nonfiction history lessons about the time period and events and discussion about their feelings about the story and historical events. I remember being told some of the history the first time I read this book, but I think that maybe there should have been more discussion about feelings.

I think it’s important to discuss feelings because they’re the hardest part of this book and they’re also the reason why it’s difficult to study some of the darker parts of history. I had a hard time with this when I was younger, and I still do in some respects, but I think understanding what causes those feelings is key to handling them. Reading books like this while discussing tools to handle difficult feelings could help students to better handle their emotions in other areas of life as well.

One of the first points that I think is important to understand and which my teachers didn’t really explain to me is that it’s natural to feel bad when you hear about bad things happening to other people, even when the bad things happened generations before you were born or even when those individual characters are fictional. (Bright Morning and her friends and family are fictional characters even though the events around them are historical. Real Navajos did experience what they experienced.) Empathy is a natural human emotion, and it’s an important tool for living with other people. Humans are social creatures. We live as part of larger groups, and we need at least some empathy to understand other people’s emotions and circumstances, how our actions affect them, and how to treat other people as we ourselves would truly like to be treated. The ability to experience empathy is a sign that you are mentally and emotionally healthy. It’s really only worrying when someone can’t feel it.

One of the most disturbing feelings about this story comes from realizing that the soldiers who are inflicting all of this death and pain either don’t feel empathy for the people they are harming or have actively chosen to ignore it to further their own purposes. That’s not a sign of being mentally or emotionally healthy or behaving in a moral way. When the readers feel repulsed by the soldiers and what they’re doing, it’s because they recognize that these people are a serious danger to others, and they are not functioning in a normal way. Your brain is warning you of a threat. It’s a past threat rather than an immediate one, but if you find the soldiers and their actions upsetting, it’s a sign that your brain has accurately assessed the risk associated with these people and the harm they do. You have accurately connected the suffering of other people for whom you feel empathy with the people who are the direct cause. I’m not saying that the soldiers were necessarily psychopaths, but lack of empathy and remorse and calculated manipulation are all symptoms of psychopathy and should raise alarms for anyone confronted with those signs. So, feeling bad about this situation and the people causing it is a sign that you yourself are mentally and emotionally healthy and have correctly recognized the seriousness of the situation and the harm being done to other people. What I’m saying is that, even when you’re feeling bad, it’s for good reasons, and that deserves recognition.

When I was young, I felt angry and frustrated by stories where people were doing terrible things to others. I still do because that’s part of empathy, but I also came to realize that part of my frustration when it came to historical situations came from my inability to change the situation. When harm has been done, it’s impossible to undo it. What was done was done. I can’t help the people who died, and I can’t even punish the wrong-doers because they’re dead now, too. It’s frustrating to find yourself confronted by a situation where nothing can change. But, I think it’s important to realize that change has happened and is currently happening. History is being written all the time, not even just through writing but through the ways that people live their lives every day. Even when a particular event is over, events and people keep moving. Bad events can cast long shadows, causing harm long after the initial event. That’s part of what makes them so bad. However, as time moves on, new people enter the scene, and new things happen, including things that people in the past would never have foreseen. It eventually reaches a point where the things that continue to happen rely on what we, the living, continue to do or allow to be done. History takes the long view, and I think people need to be reminded of that.

Do you suppose that the people in this story who act as villains thought of themselves like that? Further point, how much does it matter how they thought of themselves? Maybe they thought of themselves as winners at the time because they were getting their way and the people they were hurting were unable to stop them from hurting and killing them, but is that really “winning”? Lazy historians frequently brush things off by saying that “history is written by the victors“, but if that were really true, would we even be hearing or reading stories like this? Would we ever hear about slaves or care about the victims of war and atrocity? Would we ever consider the perspectives of people who died at all? Or does it change your mind about what “winning” really is and who’s really a “winner”? Maybe, in life and history, there aren’t any “winners” because neither of those was ever really a contest to begin with. (Or, as some put it, life is a collection of contests that people can simultaneously be both winning and losing. Personally, I think life is just for living, not for winning against someone else who is also trying to just live and probably couldn’t care less about you “winning” or not.) Apparent victories aren’t always real accomplishments, and people who see that reality are the ones who write the most accurate histories. Individual human lives only last so long, so any apparent “win” by an individual or group is never more than temporary. Our sense of what history includes and what people in the past were really like changes as we increase our knowledge of it and reconsider the context, not unlike the way my 40-year-old self has a deeper understanding of this book than my 13-year-old self did.

Remember that, at the beginning of this particular story, the Navajo warriors were going to raid the Utes. We never really find out in the book why they were going to do this, but does it matter anymore when the Navajos themselves get raided and subjected to something that might be even worse than what they were originally planning to do to their enemies? The story drops this subplot when the march begins. Life is like that, constantly moving, ever changing. History goes on and on. Sometimes, a young warrior who was praised for his prowess gets shot in the arm and can’t pull a bow anymore. Sometimes, a 40-year-old woman from the 21st century looks back on 19th century soldiers who may have thought of themselves as heroes and wants to tell them, to their faces, that they couldn’t be more wrong about that. If they’re not evil psychopaths, they’re doing a dang good job of pretending, and I never once thought of them as being “heroes” in my entire life. That’s life for you. Each of the people who have read this book or ever will read it are among the new people entering the story and its sequels, and we all have the ability to decide what role we want to play in the on-going story of history.

What happens after the book ends, is important, too. If I were teaching this, I would follow up this particular chapter of Native American and Navajo history by talking about some of the developments that continued to happen in their history, including some of the better moments, like the development of the written form of the Navajo language (for much of it’s history, Navajo was only a written language – that’s why the soldiers in the story couldn’t leave a written message in Navajo) and how code talkers used the Navajo language during WWII. The people who realized that these things were possible and something worth working toward were creative individuals. Rather than seeking to destroy something or repress it, they found creative ways to make use of what was there and put people’s talents to good use, helping others. The worst moments of history have been when people without empathy use others or seek to destroy them for personal gain, but the triumphant moments are when people take what they have and find a way to make it better. Noting these positive moments doesn’t make the bad parts of history any better than they actually were, but what we want is more of these positive moments of creativity and development and the type of people who are willing to work to make them happen.

It helps to balance out the explanations of what went wrong and people who did wrong with examples of what was better. Some teachers stress how we teach the bad moments so people learn from the past and don’t repeat it, and that’s true. However, I think we also need to add on what has worked and what we want people to do instead. A “don’t do this” needs to be followed up by “do this instead” to be an effective instruction. As a society, we don’t want more destroyers and takers. We want innovators and makers. We want creative people who find new uses for resources, including human resources and talents, and who are dedicated to truly helping others and human society as a whole instead of merely helping themselves to what others have that they want. This book demonstrates the dark side of humanity, but as I said, history is still being written every day with new players.

On the lighter side of this story, I enjoyed the descriptions of the coming-of-age ceremony for young women that Bright Morning has and the marriage ceremony later. During her time in captivity in the Spanish town, Bright Morning also attends Easter celebrations. She doesn’t understand Christianity and has never heard of Jesus before, and she doesn’t understand what the holiday is about or what’s going on. Rosita tries to explain to her who Jesus is in terms of Navajo religion. I found the explanation fascinating, but Bright Morning is still confused.

Posted on by TracyC

And This is Laura

And This is Laura by Ellen Conford, 1977.

Twelve-year-old Laura Hoffman feels out of place in her family. Her other three siblings are over-achievers. They all have particular talents and interests and earn awards for them or just have the ability to impress people. Laura gets good grades in school, but apart from that, she doesn’t seem to have any unique talents or interests. She doesn’t think there’s anything about her that would earn an award or impress anybody. Laura feels depressingly average next to the other members of her family.

It isn’t that her family is pressuring her to achieve anything in particular or to be like them or do what they’re doing. It’s just that Laura wishes that she had something more interesting and distinctive about herself. Other people who know Laura’s siblings keep comparing her to other members of her family. When she joins the drama club at school, one of her teachers seems a little disappointed that she’s not quite as good at acting as her older sister is. Laura’s friend, Beth, tells her that she’s good, but Laura feels like she’s never good enough, never as distinctive as she should be.

By contrast, Beth’s family is much more conventional. She only has one younger sibling, not three siblings, like Laura. Her mother is a lawyer, and their house is always neat and stylish. Laura’s house is noisy and chaotic, and she describes their household clutter as looking like a rummage sale. Laura thinks of herself as being a more ordinary, conventional person, and it occurs to her that she feels more at home in a conventional house. When Beth comes to visit Laura’s house, Laura worries at first that Beth will think her family is too weird. However, Beth is charmed by their eccentricity. In fact, Laura feels a little hurt at how interesting Beth finds the rest of her family. Laura worries that she’ll always be boring and ordinary compared to everyone else. However, Laura has a special talent that even she doesn’t realize that she has.

While Beth is having dinner with Laura and her family, Laura’s mind wanders from the chaotic conversation at the dinner table. She suddenly finds herself having a vision of her scientist father in his laboratory. She sees him meeting a man in a white shirt and then acting excited, like he’s just had an important discovery. The vision feels strange to Laura different from a daydream. When it’s over, she hears her father saying that he has a lot on his mind, and Laura absent-mindedly tell him that he’ll figure it all out tomorrow, after the man with the white shirt comes. Suddenly, everyone stops eating and stares at her, wondering what she meant, but even Laura herself isn’t sure. She’s aware that she knew her father was working on some difficult problem because he was juggling hard-boiled eggs earlier (something her eccentric father does whenever he needs to think), but she’s never had visions like that before and doesn’t know who the man in the white shirt is or what her vision really means. She just thinks it’s nice that everyone seemed to notice her.

There must be something to Laura’s visions because her father later tells her that he figured out his problem just like she said she would. Beth is intrigued by Laura’s apparent ability to predict things and tries to help her have another vision. Laura sees Beth on a stage with flowers at her feet and takes that to mean that she’ll be the star of the drama club play. However, Laura isn’t sure that her visions are always true because, when Beth tries out for the lead, she only gets the second best part in the play.

Another odd thing about Laura’s ability is that the girls realize that it doesn’t work well in a quiet environment, like Beth’s house. Laura gets visions when she’s surrounded by noisy chaos and starts to feel like she’s either outside of the situation or wants to be outside of it.

At first, Laura likes feeling special and noticed because of this unusual ability she seems to have, but it soon starts to worry her. She’s not sure that she can always trust her visions to be right or her ability to interpret them. She also begins to realize that it’s not so much that people are starting to notice her as a person but to pay attention to her ability, which is different. It starts to make her feel even more out of it than before.

Then, Laura has a terrifying vision where her younger brother, Dennis, is missing and her mother is frantic with worry. Is that vision real? Is something really going to happen to Dennis, or is there another explanation? The vision wasn’t clear on what would happen to Dennis, and if it is a real vision, can Laura do anything to protect her little brother?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

This story starts off like many other kids’ books I’ve read, where a character feels out of place in their family or wishes that they had some talent that would make them stand out from their siblings. Then, it takes a turn for the mysterious when Laura begins to have visions that make it seem like she can predict the future. At first, Laura enjoys the feeling of being special and noticed, but then, her visions start to frighten her.

Another girl at school, Jamie, hears her talking about it with Beth, and she tells Laura that she’s fascinated by people with psychic abilities. She’s read about it before, and she points out to Laura that not being right all the time or not knowing what a vision means at first doesn’t mean that she isn’t gifted. When she explains to Laura how alarming visions can have perfectly innocent explanations because visions can be metaphorical, Laura feels better.

Jamie persuades Laura to give psychic readings to classmates for money, but the idea of turning her newfound ability into a business doesn’t feel right to her. Sometimes, she sees things that she doesn’t like, things that frighten her. It’s bad enough to predict that a classmate will fail a class, but another vision suggests that a classmate will die. He doesn’t die, but he does get into a car accident, and that’s bad enough. Laura realizes that it’s horrible to see that bad things will happen without having a way to do anything about it. Also, instead of being pleased and proud of her, her family finds the whole business unnerving and all of the kids who come to see her for psychic readings too chaotic, even for them.

There are also the disturbing visions that Laura keeps seeing about Dennis. She takes her friends and her old sister, Jill, into her confidence. Jill says that she will keep a close eye on Dennis to make sure nothing happens to him. Dennis does disappear during the story, and people worry about him, but nothing bad happens to him. Nobody in this story dies, and Laura uses her visions to figure out where Dennis is.

Toward the end of the book Laura talks to her parents about whether or not they’re proud of her because of her psychic abilities. They have a family talk about what it means to be proud of someone. The parents say that they’re not proud of their children for being talented because they don’t see themselves as being directly responsible for their talents. They love all of their children simply because they’re their children, and they’re good people, who do what they think is right and care about others. As far as talents and accomplishments go, the parents see their role as parents as making resources available to their children so they can develop whatever talents they have to the fullest, whether that means letting them have music lessons or encouraging them to try out for the school play. Whatever talents the children have are simply what they were born with, and their achievements are signs that they’re making use of what they have. The children accomplish what they work for themselves, and they’re doing it because they love doing it, not because the parents require it. What makes the parents proud of their children is when they find out what they’re good at and what they love doing. It doesn’t matter to them what their children’s talents are or how their talents compare to each other’s; they just want all of their children to find fulfillment in what they do.

In fact, her mother says that she thinks part of Laura’s trouble is that she’s good at too many things. She’s always gotten good grades in every class, so none of her subjects seems to stand out. If she only got mediocre grades in most subjects and good grades in just one, she would feel like she had a particular talent for that one subject. When she gets equally good grades for everything, nothing stands out to her as her special talent. Rather than being “boring” and “ordinary”, as Laura thinks of herself, she’s actually well-rounded and multi-talented.

Her parents have always been confident that Laura would find her own interests and talents in life. She just feels unaccomplished next to her siblings because, except for Dennis, her siblings are older than she is and have had more time to figure out what their interests are and build up accomplishments. Laura is also a good, caring person, who has been using her talent to help other people to the best of her ability. She looked into everyone else’s future but her own. Her parents say that having a lovable and loving daughter means more to them than any number of impressive accomplishments would be. Whatever anyone else in the world thinks about Laura and her abilities, her family loves her for who she is, not her abilities.

I like the parents’ attitudes, and it seems that the rest of Laura’s family feels the same way, especially her older sister, Jill. I enjoyed how supportive Jill was about both Laura’s psychic abilities and about her acting. When Laura tells Jill that she’s thinking about quitting the drama club because her teacher seems disappointed that her acting isn’t as good as Jill’s, Jill persuades her not to quit. Jill tells Laura that she would understand if she wanted to quit the drama club because she discovered that she really didn’t like drama after all, but she doesn’t want her to quit because she thinks she isn’t good enough. Jill says that Laura is good but that she just needs a little more coaching. She wants her sister to see that she is more talented and capable than she thinks and to make the best use she can of her talents, all of them.

There were a few instances of mild swearing in the book and one semi-dirty joke. When Laura thinks that she’s hopeless at acting because her teacher is disappointed that she’s not like her sister and says that she’s going to give up the drama club, Jill insists that Laura read the role for her so she can see what her performance is really like. Laura doesn’t really want to, but Jill insists that she stand up and read it properly because “You can’t act lying down.” Laura quips that “You can if you’re in an x-rated movie”, and Jill wryly tells her that she’s too young for that. The joke only works if the reader knows what an x-rated movie is, so it would probably go right over the heads of anyone too young to understand it.

One part of this book that I thought was amusing was when Laura explains about her mother’s writing career. When her mother was younger, she played bit parts in movies, and now, she writes gothic romance novels and westerns. Laura doesn’t like the westerns, but she’s read a couple of the gothic romances, and she has noticed that her mother’s gothic romances are very formulaic – “heroines who go to live in crumbling old castles where dark family secrets are buried and everyone acts strangely and the heroine finds herself in Terrible Danger.” That is a concise and accurate description of that entire genre of books. Her mother says that’s part of the challenge of writing gothic romance – writing the same story over and over in different ways so readers can hardly recognize that it’s the same story at all.

The reason why that’s funny to me is that, years ago, my brother and I were sorting through some old books, and we found our mother’s old collection of gothic romance books. I was immediately struck that all the covers on the books looked alike. They weren’t completely identical, but they all had young women in dresses running away from crumbling old manor houses or castles while looking scared. Sometimes, the heroine had a blue dress and sometimes a red one. (More often than not, the dress was blue, but sometimes, there would be a girl in red, pink, or white. Other colors were rare.) There were a few where it looked like it was even the same girl or the same castle viewed from a different angle. I thought it was so funny, I picked up a couple more with very similar covers from a thrift store and made a couple of digital collages with them that I turned into backgrounds for my computer screen. The same story, told over and over in different ways. You can’t judge a book by its cover, but these covers do explain a genre. I’m not saying it’s not a fun genre, only that I find it funny. Whoever did the covers for these books was undertaking the same sort of challenge that writers like Laura’s mother did in writing them.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Sinister Scarecrow

The Three Investigators

#29 The Mystery of the Sinister Scarecrow by M. V. Carey, 1979.

Jupiter Jones is going on a buying trip with Hans and Conrad, the men who work for his uncle’s salvage yard, to see someone who had some things to sell to his uncle. Jupiter’s friends, Bob and Pete, go with them, but they’re all stranded when their truck blows a tire. They look around for a place where they can call the salvage yard to explain their situation and get help, and they see a large house with a cornfield nearby.

However as Jupiter approaches the house to ask to use the phone, he is suddenly tackled by a man with a jagged rock in his hand! Hans comes to his defense, and the man is surprised and sorry when he realizes that he’s just tackled a boy. It turns out that the man is nearsighted and has lost his glasses on the ground. He starts to explain that he thought that he was tackling a scarecrow, and then, he suddenly stops and says that he’s been having trouble with trespassers. Jupiter asks him what meant when he talked about the scarecrow, but the man dodges the question. Instead, he asks them why they’re there, and they explain about wanting to use the phone.

The man invites them into the house to use the phone. The man isn’t really a farmer. His name is Dr. Wooley, and he’s an entomologist who’s working on a book. He’s studying army ants, which are carnivorous. He shows them the colony he’s studying, but the sight of all those ants just encourages them to finish their call and leave fast.

However, Jupiter is still intrigued about why Dr. Wooley seemed to attack him because he thought he was a walking scarecrow. He persuades Bob and Pete to return to the area with him to investigate. When they stop in a cafe, a man there hears them talking about the scarecrow, and he says that he’s seen the walking scarecrow himself. He works in the area, doing security for a nearby museum. The boys ask him for details about his sighting of the walking scarecrow, and he says that he saw it near the Radford house, which is where the boys met Dr. Wooley.

When they go to the place where the man saw the scarecrow, they meet a woman named Leticia. Leticia asks them what they’re doing, and they explain about looking into a sighting of a walking scarecrow. Suddenly, Leticia gets very excited. She has seen the scarecrow herself, but no one will believe her. She asks the boys if they will come to the house and explain to Mrs. Chumley that she really did see a walking scarecrow.

Leticia Radford is a jet-setting heiress who lives in the mansion by the cornfield. Mrs. Chumley has been with her family a long time as a secretary and housekeeper, but she’s been confined to a wheelchair for years after being in a car accident. Leticia spends most of her time traveling in Europe, but she returns home periodically, usually after one of her disastrous romances. She has phobias of both insects and scarecrows. Actually, her fear of scarecrows is related to her fear of insects and other creepy-crawly things. Leticia explains that, when she was a child, a scarecrow fell on her when she visited a pumpkin patch one Halloween, and when it broke apart, it had spiders in it, so she always associates scarecrows with bugs. Until the boys explain that other people have seen the walking scarecrow, Mrs. Chumley had thought that Leticia had imagined it.

Leticia blames Dr. Wooley for the walking scarecrow because he made a scarecrow after he moved into the cottage on the estate property to do his research on the ants. Dr. Wooley makes her nervous because she associates him with both bugs and scarecrows. Leticia says that the scarecrow seems to be targeting her because it has shown up multiple times, seemingly looking for her, and once, it hid in her car and threw bugs on her.

While the boys are in Leticia’s mansion, explaining to the other people in the house that Leticia hasn’t imagined the scarecrow, Dr. Wooley shows up, angrily accusing the boys of faking their car trouble the day before just to get into his lab. Dr. Wooley says that someone dressed as a scarecrow entered his lab, hit him on the head, and stole a jar of some of the ants he’s been studying. It doesn’t take them long to figure out where the ants went because Leticia finds them in her bedroom, along with the jar from Dr. Wooley’s lab.

It’s obvious that someone is purposely trying to frighten Leticia by dressing as a scarecrow and tormenting her with bugs, the two things guaranteed to terrify her. The boys are surprised when Dr. Wooley is the one who hires them to find the person tormenting Leticia. Dr. Wooley says that he isn’t responsible for frightening Leticia, but he can see that it all looks bad for him because he was the one who made a scarecrow and the ants in Leticia’s room were his ants. He doesn’t want his professional reputation ruined, and he also feels sorry for Leticia. Leticia can’t figure out why anyone would target her because she’s never been a threat to anyone, but she may be more of a threat to someone than she knows.

My Reaction

The combination of a mystery involving scarecrows and insects and someone who is afraid of both scarecrows and insects is a little strange, but I thought the author did a good job of explaining how the two are related in this story. Leticia’s two fears are connected because she thinks of scarecrows as being homes for bugs.

One of my questions during the mystery was wondering whether someone is trying to convince Leticia that she is crazy (“gaslighting” her, like in the movie of the same name) or just trying to drive her away from the house. I had a couple of theories about what could be going on. Some of what I considered turned out to be right, but someone I suspected turned out to be completely innocent.

At first, I also wondered if there would be an unexpected romance between Leticia and Dr. Wooley because the story establishes that they are both single, and there are points when they hang out together when they don’t have to. However, the story doesn’t end with any clear romance. Leticia is still afraid of insects at the end, which would make romance with an entomologist awkward. She does allow Dr. Wooley to continue his work on her property, though. The boys also notice that Leticia seems to branching out and finding new interests at home rather than running off to Europe again, so that might represent some new developments in her character and a possible turning point in her life.