Posted on by TracyC

The Magician’s Company

The Magician’s Company by Tom McGowen, 1988.

This is the second book in the Magician’s Apprentice trilogy.

The story picks up where the previous book left off. Armindor the Magician, his apprentice Tigg, and their friend Reepah, who is a creature called a grubber, are on their way home with the “magical” devices that they retrieved in the last book, taking them back to their Guild for investigation. On their way home, they pass through a land consumed by civil war, and they pass a wagon surrounded by dead bodies. They can tell that the people were civilians, probably entertainers, and further down the road the find a young girl about Tigg’s age (around 12 years old), struggling along, carrying her belongings. They ask the girl about herself, and she breaks down crying, telling them how she and her family were fleeing the war, but her aunt and the other members of their puppeteer troupe were murdered by soldiers. The girl, whose name is Jilla, survived by hiding in a secret compartment in their wagon. After her aunt and the others were killed, Jilla gathered up what she could, taking the puppets that would help her to earn her living and a few other belongings not stolen by the soldiers, determined to continue her journey to a safer place, like the city of Inbal.

Armindor and Tigg have horses, and they offer to help the girl on her way to Inbal, a city in another territory. Along the way, Tigg tells Jilla the story of their previous adventures, and Armindor invites Jilla to stay with them awhile longer and even come home to Ingarron with them because it would be very difficult for a young girl to manage on her own in a strange city. Jilla is happy to stay with them because she is thankful for their help and worried about managing on her own yet.

In Inbal, Armindor and Tigg visit the sages in the city to show them their discoveries. They speak to Tarbizon, an old friend of Armidor’s, showing him what they found and explaining the threat posed by the reens, a species of intelligent but diabolical creatures that evolved/mutated from rats, have the ability to talk, use blowguns with poisoned darts, and are plotting to take over the world. (Yes, really. Even they think it’s weird.) Before they continue their journey to Ingarron, they decide to stay in Inbal for the winter because it would be difficult to travel until spring. Someone breaks into the place where they are staying and goes through their belongings. They have no idea who did it, but apparently, whoever it was didn’t find what they were looking for because nothing seems to be missing. Since they will be staying in the city for awhile, they decide to rent a house instead of staying in the guestinghouse (inn) where they have been staying.

While they are looking for a house to rent, Tigg is kidnapped. Fortunately, Reepah is able to sniff out where he is. Armindor pretends that his “magic” is what told him where his apprentice was in order to intimidate the kidnapper. Caught and frightened of the magician’s powers, the kidnapper admits that he was paid to abduct Tigg by Pan Biblo, who is the head servant of Councilor Leayzar, who is part of the High Council of Inbar and who has convinced the other sages that the reen do not pose a serious threat in spite of Armindor’s warnings. When they rescue Tigg, Tigg says that a man had questioned him about the spells that he and Armindor retrieved from the Wild Lands and Armindor would be willing to trade them for Tigg. From this information, Armindor realizes that Leayzar wants the lost technology they’ve discovered, but he can’t figure out why. It doesn’t take long for Armindor to realize that Leayzar is working with the reen. The reen have hired humans to work for them before, and they desperately want pieces of lost technology in order to gain dominance over humans.

Armindor and the others go to the sages in the city and tell them what they’ve discovered about Leayzar, and the other sages take it seriously. Some of them wonder why Leayzar would want to ally with a group that is an enemy of his own species, but Armindor says that it’s hard to say because they don’t know what the reen told Leayzar. Maybe Leayzar doesn’t understand what the reens’ full plans are and whatever they promised him in return was just too compelling to resist. At the end of the previous book, some of the weenitok gave Armindor a sealed box that they found, left over from the end of the Age of Magic. The sages decide that it’s time to open the box and study its contents in the hope of getting some answers. If the last book didn’t fully establish that their world is our world in the far distant future, the contents of the box explicitly state it.

Inside the box, there is a recorded message from the year 2003 (the future at the time this book was written, but the past to us in early 2021, and it’s interesting what this message has to say about the world in 2003). The message is from Dr. Dennis Hammond of the National Science Foundation Project for the Preservation of Civilization. He says that there has been a war between the “Pan-Islamic Brotherhood” (the closest real-life equivalent would probably be the Muslim Brotherhood, but that’s more of a social/political movement or terrorist group (depending on who you ask) rather than an official alliance of nations) and the United States and its allies, including Canada, Europe, China, and the Soviet Union (which stopped existing just a few years after this book was published in real life and would just be called Russia in 2003). Dr. Hammond says that thermonuclear war is pending, and he and other scientists are worried because they think the resulting destruction will be the end of civilization as they know it. (He doesn’t explicitly say this is World War III, but that’s basically what it amounts to. In real life, we haven’t actually had World War III yet as of early 2021, although in 2001 and the following years, there was some speculation that the destruction of the World Trade Center and other terrorist attacks might eventually lead to World War III, so it seems that the author has caught on to a source of world tension even if he didn’t predict how it would come out.) In order to preserve existing knowledge about science and world history, they made a series of these boxes containing small computers designed to last for about 10,000 years and hid them at various locations around North America (so now we know roughly where these characters are) so that future generations that find them will have access to knowledge that may have been lost. The computers even contain language tutorials just in case language has changed too much for this speech to be understandable. It’s fortunate that the early 21th century scientists thought of that because it turns out that none of the sages understood a word of what the voice in the box said. The readers now understand the full situation, but the characters don’t.

Everyone is astonished at this talking box. They’ve never even heard of such a thing, and they think that it must be a “spell” from a past “magician”, which he created to preserve his voice. They understand that the voice is speaking an unfamiliar language, and there is a picture on the included screen showing a finger poking one of the buttons in the box, so they get the idea that the box wants them to press buttons. When Armindor presses the red button indicated, the computer in the box begins a simple language tutorial, showing them pictures of familiar things and saying their names, like “sun” and “cloud.” The sages understand that they’re being taught an ancient language, and they quickly begin taking notes. Armindor is moved to tears because this is exactly what he has been hoping to discover for years, the secrets behind all of the ancient “magic.” They can tell that the “magician” who made the box was trying to teach them, and they’re more than ready to learn!

But, there is still the matter of Leayzar and the reen to deal with. When they learn that Leayzar is looking for Armindor, Jilla suggests a cover they could use to hide their identities: becoming a troupe of puppeteers with her puppets! Becoming puppeteers also gives them the opportunity to spread word of the reen threat to the public through their puppet plays.

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

My Reaction

I said in my review of the last book that Armindor and Tigg don’t find any easy answers or any miraculous device that instantly solves all of their society’s problems and launches them back into an age of technology. The computer in the box comes the closest to that, but it’s still not an easy answer because Armindor and the other magicians and sages of his time can’t understand the language it uses or how the computer works when they first find it. They understand enough to know that it’s trying to tell them something and that its creators are trying to teach them how to understand and use it, but it’s going to take some time before they reach the point where they will understand enough of the language to figure out all of the information that the computer has to share. There will be enough work cut out for future “magicians” (really, scientists) of their time, like Tigg, to figure out how the computer works, what information it has to share, and how they can teach the rest of their people what they’ve learned. It’s a turning point in their history, but it’s not an instant solution. Plus, although the characters don’t really understand it at first, the readers are told that there are other boxes that are still waiting to be found. Do these boxes all contain the same information, or are there other pieces of knowledge in each one? There are plenty of secrets for a new generation of scientist/magicians to unravel.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Magician’s Apprentice

The Magician’s Apprentice by Tom McGowen, 1987.

From the title of this book and others in this series, it sounds like the stories take place in a fantasy world. When you’re reading this book, it seems like fantasy at first, but it’s not. It’s actually science fiction.

Tigg is a poor orphan boy who makes his living in the city of Ingarron as a pickpocket because he has no other means for survival. One night, he notices that a sage has left the door to his house open, and although it’s a risk, he decides to enter and see if he can find anything worth stealing. The sage, a man called Armindor the Magician, catches Tigg. In fact, Armindor had deliberately left the door open for Tigg to enter. When, Armindor questions Tigg about who he is, Tigg says that he’s about 12 years old (he’s unsure of his exact age and defines it in terms of “summers”) and that he has no family that he knows of. He lives with an old drunk who makes him pay to live with him with the money he steals.

Tigg asks Armindor what he plans to do with him. He can’t really punish him for stealing from him because Tigg hadn’t had a chance to take anything of Armindor’s before he was caught. Armindor says that’s true, but he was planning on stealing something, so Armindor tells him that he will do the same to him – plan to take something he has while still leaving him with everything he has. Tigg is confused, and Armindor explains his riddle. He witnessed Tigg picking someone else’s pocket and was intrigued by the boy because he seemed to possess courage, wit, and poise. He left his door open for Tigg because he has been looking for a young person with those qualities to be his apprentice. If Tigg becomes his apprentice, he will have to put his good qualities to use for him, but yet, he would keep these qualities for himself as well.

Tigg likes the praise but has reservations about becoming a magician’s apprentice because an apprenticeship would limit the freedom he currently has. His current existence is precarious, but the long hours of work and study involved in an apprenticeship sound daunting. However, Armindor isn’t about to let Tigg get away. He takes a lock of Tigg’s hair and a pricks his thumb for a drop of his blood and applies them to a little wax doll. He tells Tigg that the doll is a simulacrum and that it now contains his soul, so whatever happens to the doll will also happen to him. If Tigg runs away from his apprenticeship, Armindor can do whatever he likes to the doll as his revenge or punishment. Tigg, believing in the power of the simulacrum and feeling trapped, sees no other way out, so he becomes Armindor’s apprentice.

Although Tigg is fearful and resentful of his captivity as Armindor’s apprentice, it soon becomes apparent that life with the magician is better than what he used to have living with the old drunk. Armindor gives him a better place to sleep and better food. There is work and study, but it’s not as difficult or unpleasant as Tigg first thought. At first, he is daunted at the idea of learning to read and do mathematics, but Armindor is a patient and encouraging teacher, and Tigg soon finds that he actually enjoys learning things he never thought he would be able to do.

Armindor’s magical work seems to mainly involve healing sick people. When people come to him with illnesses, he gives them medicines that he calls “spells.” He keeps a “spell book” with instructions for remedies that he’s copied from other sources. Armindor teaches Tigg about the plants he uses in these spells. Armindor also does some fortune-telling, and he teaches Tigg that, too.

However, Tigg is still uneasy because, although Armindor treats him well, he still has that simulacrum of him, and he can also tell that the money he takes in doesn’t seem to account for his personal wealth. Armindor sometimes goes to meetings with other sages, and Tigg is sure that they’re doing something secret.

It turns out that Armindor is planning a special mission involving Tigg, one that will take them on a journey through uninhabited lands to the city of Orrello. Tigg realizes that if he leaves the city with Armindor, he will be committed to whatever secret plans Armindor has. At first, Tigg wants to take the simulacrum and escape, but when Armindor intentionally leaves the simulacrum unguaded where Tigg can easily take it, Tigg realizes that Armindor is telling him that he’s not really a captive and that Armindor is giving him a choice, trusting him to make the right one. Tigg realizes that he likes being trusted and that he trusts Armindor, too. He decides to stay with Armindor as his apprentice and go with him on his mission.

Tigg and Armindor leave town with a merchant caravan. On the way, the caravan encounters a wounded creature called a grubber. Grubbers are described as furry creatures about the size of a cat and have claws, but they have faces like bears and walk on their hind legs and may be intelligent enough to make fire and have their own language. One of the soldiers with the caravan things that the grubber is wounded too badly to save and wants to put it out of its misery, but Tigg insists on trying to save it. Armindor treats the grubber for Tigg, and it recovers. It is intelligent, and Tigg teaches it some simple human words, so they can talk to it. He tells them that his name is Reepah because grubbers have names for themselves, too. Armindor asks him if he wants to return to his own people when he is well, but by then, the caravan has taken them further from the grubber’s home and people, and he says that he doesn’t know the way back, so he’d like to stay with Armindor and Tigg, which makes Tigg happy.

However, Tigg soon learns that their journey has only just begun. They’re not stopping in Orrello; they’re just going to get a ship there to take them across the sea. Their eventual destination is the Wild Lands, an uninhabited area said to be filled with monsters and poisonous mists. Tigg is frightened, but also feels strangely compelled to see the place and have an adventure. Armindor finally explains to Tigg the purpose of their secret mission.

Years ago, there was another magician in Ingarron called Karvn the Wise, and he possessed some rare “spells” that no one else had. Armindor now has one of these “spells”, which he calls the “Spell of Visual Enlargement.” Tigg describes it as looking like a round piece of ice, and when he looks through it, things look much larger than they really are. Tigg is amazed.

Anyone reading this now would know from its description that what Armindor has is a magnifying lens. Tigg and Armindor don’t know the words “magnifying lens”, which is why they call it a “spell”, but that’s what they have. This is the first hint that this book is actually science fiction, and the “spells” are really pieces of lost technology and knowledge that are being rediscovered. One of Arthur C. Clarke’s Three Laws of science fiction is “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Armindor the Magician thinks of himself as practicing magic with “spells” because he’s doing things and using things he can’t fully explain, but he’s actually a doctor and scientist. He doesn’t fully understand why these things work like they do, but he’s investigating how different forms of science, technology, medicine, and knowledge work, and he’s passing that knowledge along to his student and assistant, Tigg. So, you might be asking at this point, who made the magnifying lens and why doesn’t Armindor understand exactly what it is?

Armindor knows enough to understand that the lens is made of glass, not ice. He knows what glass is, but he says that their people don’t have the ability to make glass that clear and pure themselves. This lens is the only one of its type they have, and it’s more than 3000 years old, from what Armindor calls the “Age of Magic.” Tigg has heard stories and legends about the Age of Magic, when people apparently had the ability to fly through the air, communicate over long distances, and even visit the moon. The events that brought an end to the “Age of Magic” were “The Fire from the Sky and the Winter of Death.”

Spoiler: I’m calling it a spoiler, but it really isn’t that much of a spoiler because, by the time you reach this part in the story, it starts becoming really obvious, even if the characters themselves don’t quite know what they’re describing. This fantasy world is our world, but far in the future. For some reason, thousands of years in the future, so much of our knowledge and technology has been lost, society has reached the point where people don’t know what magnifying lenses are. Also, there are creatures in this world, like grubbers, that don’t exist in other times. Something major must have happened, and it doesn’t take too long to realize what it was. Even when I read this as a kid in the early 1990s, I recognized what the characters are talking about. This book was written toward the end of the Cold War, in the 1980s, and the concept of nuclear winter was common knowledge at the time and something that was pretty widely talked about and feared, even among kids. We know, without the characters actually saying it, that the winter was caused by nuclear weapons rather than an asteroid striking the Earth because Armindor knows from writings that he’s studied that animals mutated after the “Fire from the Sky.” An asteroid or massive eruption can cause climate change due to debris in the air, but they wouldn’t cause mutation like the radiation from a nuclear explosion would. People also mutated, and Tigg and Armindor and other people now have pointed ears. People have been like that for so long, they think of it as normal, and it’s only when Armindor explains to Tigg about the concept of “mutation” that Tigg wonders what people in the past looked like.

Armindor explains that Karvn had a nephew who was a mercenary soldier. One day, this nephew came home, seriously wounded. He died of his wounds, but before he died, the nephew gave Karvn this lens, explaining that it came from a place in the Wild Lands. He said that there were many other types of “spells” and magical devices there left over from the Age of Magic. The nephew and his friends had hoped to make their fortune selling the secret of this place, but there was a battle, in which the nephew was seriously wounded and his friends were killed. He told Karvn where to find this place in the Wild Lands, but Karvn was too old to make the journey himself. He wrote an account of his nephew’s story, and after his death, all of his belongings and writings became property of the Guild of Magicians, to which Armindor also belongs. Armindor has studied Karvn’s writings, and he thinks he knows where to find this place with magic and spells, and he is going there to claim whatever he can find on behalf of the Guild.

There is danger on this journey. These lands, which Armindor says were once one country long ago, are now smaller countries that war with each other. (This is probably the United States and the different lands were once individual states. When they travel across water, I think they’re crossing one of the Great Lakes, although I’m not completely sure. The author lived in Chicago, so I think that might be the jumping off point for the crossing.) There are bandits and mercenaries and the strange creatures that inhabit this land, and it’s difficult to say whether there is more danger from the creatures or the humans.

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

My Reaction

I remembered this series from when I was a kid. It made a big impression on me because of the way that technology was treated as magic. The types of futures depicted in science fiction books, movies, and tv series can vary between extremely advanced technology and civilization, like in Star Trek, and this kind of regression to the past, where even simple forms of technology that we almost take for granted today seem wondrous and are the stuff of legends. Nobody knows what the future actually holds, but I thought this series did a nice job of showing how people who had forgotten much of the everyday knowledge of our time might think and feel when encountering it for the first time, knowing that people who lived in the past were once able to make these amazing things themselves and use them every day.

Because of the mutations that have taken place in animals, probably due to radiation from nuclear fallout, some types of animals have become intelligent. The grubbers, who call themselves weenitok, are peaceful, but the reen (which Armindor realizes are a mutated variety of rat) actually want to gain access to old technology so they can conquer the humans and take over the world for themselves. These are Armindor and Tigg’s worst enemies, along with the human they’ve hired to do their dirty work. (Yes, the mutated rats are paying a human mercenary. Even the characters in the book realize that’s weird.)

When Tigg and Armindor finally reach the special place with the magical devices, it turns out to be an old military base. Much of what they find there has been destroyed by time. Armindor tells Tigg to look for things that are made out of glass, metal that hasn’t corroded, or “that smooth, shiny material that the ancients seemed so fond of” (plastic) because these are the things that are most likely to still be usable. Tigg makes a lucky find, discovering a “Spell of Far-seeing.” It’s a tube that can extend out far or collapse to be a smaller size, and it has glass pieces similar to the magnifying lens, and when you look into it, it makes things that are far away look much closer. (Three guesses what it is.) Tigg also discovers a strange, round object with a kind of pointer thing in the middle that moves and jiggles every time the object is moved but which always points in the same direction when it settles, no matter which way the object is turned. Most of what they find isn’t usable or understandable, but they do find four other objects, including a “spell for cutting” that Armindor thinks that they might actually be able to duplicate with technology and materials that their people have. Each object that they find is described in vague terms based on its shape and materials because Armindor and Tigg don’t know what to call these things. Modern people can picture what they’ve found from the descriptions, and it isn’t difficult to figure out what they’re supposed to be. Sometimes, Armindor and Tigg can figure out what an object is supposed to do just by experimenting with it, but others remain a mystery. Armindor explains to Tigg that is what magicians do, investigate and solve these types of mysteries, “to take an unknown thing and study it, and try it out in different ways, and try to think how it might be like something you are familiar with.” (They’re using a form of reverse engineering.) Tigg decides that he really does want to be a magician and make this his life’s work. He’s going to become a scientist.

I liked it that none of the objects they find are any kind of advanced super weapon or a miraculous device that instantly solves all of their society’s problems and launches them back into an age of technology (although there is an odd sealed box that proves to be important in the next book). There are no easy answers here. In the grand scheme of things, they risked their lives for things that nobody in modern times would risk their lives to retrieve, but they have to do it because, although these things are common in our time, they are unknown in theirs. If they can figure out not only how the objects work and what they were supposed to do but why they work the way they do, they can gradually rebuild the knowledge of the past. The objects that they find are generally useful. Some are labor-saving devices, some are examples of scientific principles they would use to create other things (demonstrating concepts like optics and magnetism) and one is a medical device, which if they can figure out how to use it, will help advance their medical knowledge and treatments.

One of the fun things this book inspired me to do was to look at the world around me while imagining that I had never seen some of the basic objects in the world before. This could be a fun activity to do with kids, something like the archaeology activity that some teachers of mine did with us years ago, where we had to intentionally create objects from some kind of “lost” civilization for our classmates to analyze, to try to figure out what they were supposed to do and how that civilization would have used them. But, you don’t even have to create anything if you use your imagination and try to think what a traveler from another time or another world might think if they saw some of the things in your own home right now. Imagine what someone from a world without electricity would think of something even as basic as a toaster. How would you explain such a thing to someone who had never seen anything like it?

Posted on by TracyC

An Early American Christmas

An Early American Christmas by Tomie dePaola, 1987.

A note at the beginning of the book explains the story behind the book, which is based on the history of early Colonial America. Although Christmas is now a popular American holiday with lavish celebrations, many early colonial groups didn’t celebrate Christmas much at all. Even among Christian groups, Christmas was not regarded as a major holiday. In particular, groups like the Puritans, Presbyterians, Quakers, and Baptists tended to avoid celebrating Christmas, seeing it as a frivolous sort of celebration. However, there were other groups, like Catholics, Lutherans, and Episcopalians, who did celebrate the holiday in a festive fashion. The author of this book imagines what it would have been like for a family that celebrates Christmas if they moved to a New England community that didn’t during the early 1800s. In particular, he used New Hampshire as his inspiration.

The beginning of the story describes a New England town that doesn’t celebrate Christmas with decorations or songs. Then, a new family comes to the village. They were originally from Germany, and they had lived in Pennsylvania before coming to the village. (This would make them Pennsylvania Dutch.) They are usual because of their festive Christmas celebrations.

They begin planning for their Christmas celebration in the fall. The women and girls pick bayberries and use them to make candles. They say that bayberry candles bring good luck when they’re burned on Christmas.

The men and boys gather the crops that they will need for their feast. The grandfather of the family carves figures for their manger scene.

In December, the whole family makes paper decorations and specially-shaped cookies. I liked the variety of baked goods that they show in the pictures. They pick out a tree and make strings of popcorn and dried apples.

On Christmas Eve, they read the story of Jesus’s birth and decorate their home with all of the decorations they have prepared.

As the years go by and other people in town see what the Christmas Family is doing, they begin to celebrate Christmas, too.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Legend of Old Befana

The Legend of Old Befana by Tomie dePaola, 1980.

The story is based on a Christmas story from Italian folklore. According to Italian tradition, Old Befana visits the houses of children on January 6th, the Feast of the Three Kings, and leaves treats and gifts. Legend has it that she is on an eternal search for The Christ Child.

Old Befana is a strange old woman who living in a village in Italy. She is a grumpy woman who spends almost all of her time sweeping. Sometimes, she bakes good things to eat and sings lullabies, although she lives alone, so there’s no one for her to bake for or sing to. People think that she is crazy.

One night, Old Befana wakes up to see a bright light. There is a dazzlingly bright star in the sky, and it makes it difficult for her to sleep.

The next day, as she is doing her usual sweeping, she hears the sound of bells. A strange and beautiful procession comes over the hill. Among the procession are three men in royal robes.

The three kings stop and ask Old Befana if she knows the way to Bethlehem. She says that she has never heard of the place. The kings say that they are looking for “the Child,” but Old Befana doesn’t know what child they mean. They explain to her that this Child is a king and that His appearance was signaled by a bright star in the sky.

Old Befana confirms that she has also seen the star. A boy among the procession tells Old Befana that they are bringing gifts to the Child because He has come to change the world. The boy urges Old Befana to come with them, but old Befana says that she is only a poor woman and continues her sweeping.

After they leave, however, Old Befana continues thinking about what they said, and she starts to think that maybe she should go see the Child. She bakes all kinds of cookies and candies as gifts. She also decides to take her broom so that she can sweep the Child’s room because His mother will be tired. However, she stops to do her usual sweeping before she leaves her home.

By the time she is finished with her sweeping, the procession is so far ahead that she is unable to catch up to them. Just as Old Befana laments that she cannot catch up to the procession, the angels declare that, “This is the night of miracles.” Suddenly, Old Befana can run fast, even running across the sky.

Unfortunately, Old Befana still doesn’t know the way to Bethlehem or who the Child is, so she doesn’t get to see the Christ Child. However, she still continues her search. Every year on January 6, she runs across the sky, carrying her broom and her basket of treats. At every house she finds with a child, she sweeps the room clean and gives the children gifts and treats because she never knows for sure which of them might be the Child she is seeking.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy

The Puppy Who Wanted a Boy by Jane Thayer, illustrated by Lisa McCue, 1958, 1985.

A puppy named Petey tells his mother that he wants a boy for Christmas. His mother says that he might get one if he’s good, and when Petey is a good puppy, his mother tries to find one for him.

Unfortunately, Petey’s mother just can’t seem to find a boy for Petey anywhere. She suggests trying to see if any other dog is willing to part with his boy. However, no other dog wants to give up his boy.

Eventually Petey comes to an orphanage with a sign that says Home for Boys. Petey decides that if the boys have no parents, maybe they could also use a dog. It’s Christmas Eve, and most of the boys are inside are singing Christmas carols, except for one boy, sitting by himself outside.

Petey jumps into the lonely boy’s lap, and the boy loves him right away. When a lady comes to check on the boy, the boy asks if he can bring the puppy in, and she says yes.

All of the boys in the home love Petey and want to keep him. The lady says that Petey can stay if his mother lets him, and Petey knows that she will. Instead of getting just one boy for Christmas, Petey found fifty!

The story was first published in 1958, but my edition is from 1985 and has different illustrations. In the older book, the puppy looked like a beagle.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Clifford's Christmas

Clifford

Clifford’s Christmas by Norman Bridwell, 1984.

Christmas is coming, and Emily Elizabeth and Clifford are ready to celebrate! Emily Elizabeth talks about how the Christmas season begins with Thanksgiving. (That’s not how everyone regards it, but it is a common way to mark the season in the United States. The day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, is considered the start of the Christmas shopping season, with people looking for bargains on Christmas presents.)

When it starts to snow, Emily Elizabeth, Clifford, and their friends have fun playing in the snow. They get a Christmas tree, prepare their stockings, and participate in other holiday activities leading up to Christmas. Clifford even gets a kiss under mistletoe!

When Santa comes, he lands on the roof of Clifford’s dog house and accidentally falls into Clifford’s stocking, dropping his sack of toys. Clifford has to rescue him.

The toys fall into Clifford’s water bowl, but Santa fixes them with his magic. No harm done, and it’s a Merry Christmas after all!

This is just a cute Christmas story with a popular children’s books character. I loved the Clifford books when I was a kid, but I have to admit that they don’t look as good to be now as an adult. The entire plot of Clifford books revolves around Clifford’s enormous size, which is the very idea of the series. However, the plot of this is light, the problem is both caused and immediately solved by Clifford’s large size, and I think I’m just not interested in the usual trope of Famous Character Saves Christmas In Some Way anymore. I think that some Christmas stories with popular characters are still good, but for them to work, they usually have to have deeper, more clever, more interesting plots. This book isn’t bad, but I just didn’t think it was particularly great.

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Fun of Cooking

The Fun of Cooking by Jill Krementz, 1985.

This cookbook was designed not only for children but includes real children making their favorite recipes, sometimes by themselves and sometimes with the help of their parents. The author, Jill Krementz, was also a photographer, and she photographed the children as they cooked. (Another interesting fact is that Jill Krementz was also married to Kurt Vonnegut, until his death. It’s not directly related to this book at all, just a fun fact.)

The recipes in the book aren’t arranged in any particular order, going back and forth between main dishes and desserts of various kinds. Some of the children included recipes for entire meals that included both main dishes and a dessert.

The children themselves are a range of ages from six to sixteen. The older children tend to make more complex dishes or meals, and the younger ones tend to make simpler ones, although even the younger children can make complex dishes with the help of their parents or grandparents. One girl, Michele, has a father who is a professional chef, and she says that it’s her ambition to be a chef, too. She and her father are shown making spaghetti together in the kitchen of his restaurant.

The children all seem to live in or around New York City, where the author lived, and they are from a variety of backgrounds. There are two girls who mention that they are Jewish, including the girl who makes matzo ball soup with her grandmother. There are also two black girls, and one boy with Greek ancestry. Not all of the children have obvious backgrounds like this, but I thought it was interesting where it was noticeable. I think that having a variety of children with different ages and backgrounds was a good idea because it could help many young readers to identify with different types of children.

I also liked the fact that there were both boys and girls cooking their favorite recipes. Not only did Michele cook a recipe with her father, but there are other fathers in the book, helping with the cooking, too. One of the boys makes dog biscuits for his dog with his father, and he comments, “I think men should cook the same as girls.” It’s nice to see cooking characterized as something that anyone can enjoy doing, both men and women, as well as children of different ages.

One of the cutest recipes is one for making loaves of bread shaped like teddy bears.

One of my favorite recipes was the one for pumpkin pie. I’ve made pumpkin pie from a whole pumpkin like this before, and it’s a lot of work, but it’s fun! The girl making the pie also roasts the pumpkin seeds.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Kids Cooking

Kids Cooking: A Very Slightly Messy Manual by the editors of Klutz Press, 1987.

This book is part of the classic children’s hobby and activity series from Klutz Press. Originally, this book came with a set of plastic measuring spoons, which was attached to the book at the hole in the upper left corner.

The recipes in the cookbook are listed in categories by the type of meal: breakfasts, lunches and snacks, dinners and salads, and desserts. There is also a section of recipes for non-edible things, like play dough and finger paint.

The food recipes are fairly simple, but not the overly-simple, boring recipes that I’ve seen in some children’s books, like how to make a peanut butter sandwich.

Kids can make these recipes, but they’re not for little kids who are still at the level of learning to make their own basic sandwiches. They do involve things like using stoves and ovens and chopping ingredients with a sharp knife. It’s common in the book to include “grown-up assistant with knife” under the list of ingredients and tools needed for recipes.

Some of the recipes in the book include multiple ways to cook something, variations on popular foods or different ways of seasoning a dish. For example, the breakfast section explains different ways to cook eggs, including scrambled eggs, fried eggs, soft or hard boiled eggs, and eggs in a frame.

There are different ways of cooking potatoes in the dinner section, and I also like the popcorn variations in the snack section, which include different ways to flavor popcorn with cheese or peanut butter.

The dessert section includes brownies (“Disgustingly Rich”), chocolate chip cookies, and some more unusual desserts, like frozen bananoids, which are pieces of banana covered in chocolate and frozen.

The section of non-edible recipes also includes a recipe for dog biscuits, Fido’s Fabulous People Crackers. They’re edible for dogs, just not something people would enjoy.

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Secret of the Indian

The Secret of the Indian by Lynne Reid Banks, 1989.

This is the third book in the Indian in the Cupboard series.

This book immediately picks up where the last book in the series left off, with Omri injured after witnessing the battle in Little Bear’s time and he and Patrick and their small army having just fended off the gang of local hoodlums who had tried to break into Omri’s house and rob it. Omri’s parents return home from the party they had attended and are appalled to see Omri hurt, although the story of the burglary covers up the real reason for Omri’s injuries, which the boys don’t think they can tell Omri’s parents. Omri still can’t adequately explain how part of his head got burned, but he makes up a story about him and Patrick trying to light a bonfire and accidentally getting burned. His parents are occupied, alternately angry with the babysitter who was supposed to come and didn’t and with themselves for leaving before they were sure that she had arrived. The police come to question the boys and inform the parents that the reason why the babysitter didn’t come was that she was mugged that night. Omri knows who the thieves are, but hesitates to turn them in.

First, Omri needs to deal with Little Bear and his band of warriors. Some of them were killed in the battle, and others are injured. Patrick and Omri bring the Matron who treated Little Bear before to life to help them, but although she does her best, she says that her skills aren’t adequate to help them all and that they need a real surgeon. The Matron is sharp and tells the boys that it’s useless to insist that this is all just a dream because she knows that, strange as this situation is, it’s all real and that the death and pain she’s witnessed around her are real. The boys explain to her about the key and cupboard that bring plastic figures to life, and she asks them if they can get a doctor. It’s Sunday, so the boys can’t just go buy one, but the Matron came from a set owned by Patrick’s cousin, Tamsin, and there were other medical professional figures in it. When Patrick’s other cousin, Tamsin’s twin, Emma, comes to Omri’s house to see Patrick, Omri is forced to let her in on the secret and recruit her to help him.

Meanwhile, Patrick has gone back in time with Boone the cowboy. In Boone’s time, Patrick is tiny, the size of the figures in his own time. Unfortunately, Patrick made a terrible mistake by going back to Boone’s time with Boone as a plastic figure. That meant that Boone became a real person in the chest, trapped under Patrick’s body and almost smothered to death and needs to be treated by the Matron in order to survive.

In Boone’s time, tiny Patrick ends up in the company of Ruby Lou, a woman who likes Boone. Patrick knows that Boone is unconscious in the desert and helps Ruby Lou to find him. The doctor in their time doesn’t know what’s wrong with Boone and can’t figure out why he’s unconscious, suggesting only that they let him rest for the present and recover. Ruby Lou presses Patrick for answers, and he explains everything to her about how they travel through time using the magic key and how Boone has just left his full-size body behind to go into the future in the form of a little figurine. It’s an incredible story, but Ruby Lou believes him and expresses concern about getting Boone back safely. But soon, they’re all in trouble when there’s cyclone threatening.

Also meanwhile, Mr. Johnson, the headmaster of Omri’s school, has learned about Omri’s story that won the contest. Back in the first book of this series, Mr. Johnson actually saw Little Bear. At the time, he thought that he was hallucinating, but Omri’s supposedly fictional story has now convinced him that he really saw what he saw. He demands that Omri tell him the truth about his “Red Indian.” (Omri corrects him, saying that it isn’t right to say “Red Indian” and that they prefer to be called “American Indian” or “native American”, but Mr. Johnson angrily insists that he’s always said “Red Indian” and will continue to do so, establishing him as an unsympathetic villain in the story.) Mr. Johnson is relieved to know that he wasn’t hallucinating before, but since Omri is reluctant to explain anything, he decides to call Omri’s mother. When she answers, she demands that Omri tell her where Patrick is because his mother is frantically looking for him.

Of course, Omri knows that Patrick is still in the trunk in his room, in a coma-like state because he’s still in the past and there are living miniature people in his room who will also be discovered if people start searching. Can Omri fix everything in time to rescue Patrick and his little friends and prevent their secret from being exposed?

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

My Reaction

Although the story takes place immediately after the previous one left off, the rules of the magic in this world have changed a little. Before, when a person from Omri and Patrick’s time went back to the past, they kind of became part of the scenery. This time, when Patrick visits the Old West, he is there as a tiny person, although no figurines of the boys exist in the past. What this book does emphasize is that the magic key does change real people from modern times into little people into people in another time and real people from other times into tiny people in modern times. At this point in the series, it’s all still mysterious why the key is magic and why the little cupboard in particular only seems to affect plastic items and people. Some of those explanations come in the next book.

I did like the parts where other people, including Patrick’s cousin Emma and Mr. Johnson in the present and Ruby Lou in the past, catch on what’s happening with Omri and Patrick and their plastic figures. In so many children’s books, the magic absolutely depends on secrecy. In this series, Patrick and Omri both know that they don’t want most people to know their secret because they don’t want people either interfering or thinking that they’re crazy. With Patrick disappearing mysteriously and other things happening because of their interactions with the little people from the past, it makes sense that people would start noticing that the boys have become involved in something really strange, even thought some of them don’t know what it is. However, the magic still works for them even when other people find out and the people who could pose a threat to their activities either never find out the truth or are distracted or apparently discredited.

At the end of this book, Omri becomes more serious about the risks of the cupboard and decides that he wants the key put away, to be give to his future children in the event of his death. However, there are other books in this series to come, so they do use the key again.

Posted on by TracyC

The Return of the Indian

The Return of the Indian by Lynne Reid Banks, 1986.

This is the second book in the Indian in the Cupboard series.

Omri’s family has moved to a new house, but Omri doesn’t like it. The new house is bigger than the old one, but the neighborhood around it is a bit run-down and shabby. Most of the kids in the area go to the state school (public school in the US), but Omri attends a private school, and his school uniform makes him stand out from the other kids. The other kids in the neighborhood view him as an outsider and like to push him around, especially the group of bigger boys who like to hang out near the arcade. Omri is a little afraid of the local bullies, but he doesn’t like to show it. Instead, he remembers how brave his small American Indian friend, the one who came to life from his plastic figurine, was with him, even though Omri was many times bigger than he was. Still, Little Bear was a real warrior, who knew how to fight. Ormi wishes that he could fight like an American Indian or maybe a cowboy, like Boone. If he could do that, he wouldn’t have any reason to fear the local bullies.

Patrick, Omri’s best friend, is also living in a new house in the country and is now going to a different school because his parents have divorced. (The story indicates that Patrick’s father was abusive, hitting his wife and children.) When the two of them meet again, Patrick denies remembering their plastic figures that came to life. That bothers Omri, although he thinks that Patrick really does remember but doesn’t want to admit it because talking about things like that would make him seem weird when he’s trying to fit in with his new home.

Then, Omri wins a writing contest for a story that he wrote about his plastic Indian. He’s thrilled, although he also feels a little guilty because the contest was supposed to be for fiction, and his magical adventures with Little Bear were real. Although, his story is his own work, even if he didn’t exactly make up Little Bear.

Ever since his adventures with Little Bear the previous year, Omri has asked his mother to keep the key to the cupboard “safe” for him. Really, he has wanted to remove the temptation to bring Little Bear to life again. After their previous adventures, they had all decided that it would be better for Little Bear and Boone to remain in their own lives in the past. Yet, having won this contest, Omri has the sudden desire to see Little Bear again and tell him all about it. His mother usually wears the key as a pendant around her neck, and one day, when she takes it off, Omri decides that he’s going to use it.

However, when he brings Little Bear and his wife, Bright Stars, back to life from plastic, he finds that time has moved forward for Little Bear, just has it has for him. Little Bear is badly injured, having been shot by a soldier. Bright Stars begs Omri for help. Since Omri once brought a WWI medic to life to help with a wound before, he tries it again. Unfortunately, this time, all Omri gets is an empty pile of the medic’s clothes. Shocked, Omri realizes that this is a sign that the medic was killed in action. Time moved forward for him since their last encounter, and the medic, Tommy, who was a real person in the past, was killed during the war.

Still desperate to help Little Bear, Omri rushes to see Patrick at his aunt’s house and explains the situation. At first Patrick tries to pretend that the figures coming to life was just their imaginations, but when Omri impresses on him that Little Bear is in trouble and needs help, Patrick takes him seriously and comes up with a solution. One of his cousins got a set of plastic figures for her birthday, and they all have different professions. Among them, there is a nurse and two doctors. If they borrow one of those figures, they will have medical help. The cousin finds them messing with her toys and fights with them, so they have to rush off in a hurry, taking the nurse figure instead of one of the doctors, but she’s better than nothing.

After the nurse, known only as Matron, gets over the shock of finding herself very small, Omri explains Little Bear’s condition to her. She’s reluctant to try to operate on him herself because she’s not a surgeon, but since there is no one else to help, she does so anyway. Omri gives her Tommy’s medical bag so she’ll have the implements she needs. She manages to help Little Bear, and Little Bear recovers.

Although Patrick says that his mother got rid of most of his plastic figures when he stopped playing with them, he still has the cowboy, Boone, because he was special. Patrick uses the cupboard to bring him back to life, and they explain to him about Little Bear. When Little Bear is well enough to talk, he explains that his village was attacked by French soldiers, and many of his people are dead. Boone spots Omri’s collection of plastic figures, with soldiers from different periods and suggests sending them back with Little Bear to fight the French. Patrick is all for it, but Omri points out that there are problems with that. All of those figures aren’t just toy soldiers; they represent real people from history. They all come from different periods of history, and they all have their own goals and personalities. They would all be shocked at finding themselves in an unexpected place and a completely different time period than their own, and there’s no telling how these armed people might react. What would a Medieval knight, who might be on his way to the Crusades, understand about American Indians from the 18th century, and why would he be willing to fight on their behalf? Which side would a member of the French Legion pick? They wouldn’t be able to even speak to all of Omri soldiers because they come from different countries and speak different languages, and even if they choose modern British soldiers using modern weaponry, what would that mean for history? They don’t belong in the 18th century, and because they’re real people, they would be killing other real people and might get killed themselves.

Patrick thinks that Omri thinks too much, but Ormi knows that Patrick is too impulsive. Patrick does impulsively bring some modern soldiers to life, and they almost shoot everyone because they’re in the middle of a battle. Patrick quickly turns them back to toys and apologizes. Then Omri has another idea: they can’t explain to people from other time periods that Little Bear needs their help to fight in the French and Indian Wars, but they could appeal to other American Indians. Finding allies for Little Bear is fine, as long as they’re the kind of allies who could reasonably appear in Little Bear’s time and understand and be willing to aid him.

There are complications in this plan when Little Bear says that he wants modern weapons his people can use and a modern soldier to teach them how to use them. Omri has misgivings about this but gives in to Little Bear’s request. While Little Bear goes back to his time with his new allies and weapons, the boys worry about what’s happening in the battle and Bright Stars, who is still in their care, gives birth to Little Bear’s son. Boone suggests to Omri that, if he’s concerned about how the battle is going, there might be a way to go back in time and see it.

Ormi has an old wooden chest in his room, and Boone suggests that he could see if the key fits the box and use it to send himself back to Little Bear’s time. Not only does Omri help Little Bear and the others, but this odd army also helps Omri when the local bullies try to rob his house in the middle of the night.

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

My Reaction:

I read the first book in this series when I was in elementary school as part of a class assignment. There are parts of this series I like, but parts I don’t.

I like the way Omri thinks about the little people from his cupboard. He remembers that all of the plastic figures are only plastic when they’re toys, but as soon as they come to life, they are real people, pulled out of their own lives and into his, and they have a responsibility to them. He feels terrible when he realizes that his old friend, the WWI medic called Tommy, died during the war because he wasn’t just a toy, he was a real person who helped them when they needed him, and Omri realizes that he probably died not long after they returned him to his own time. Patrick is less thoughtful, but he does wonder if their interaction with him played a part in his death, and Omri thinks it probably didn’t because his full-sized body must have remained in the past and would have died anyway. When they last talked to him, Tommy said that he’d heard the sounds of an attack, and that could have been the attack that killed him. When Omri sends Little Bear back with his new allies and weapons, Omri feels guilty because he realizes that he’s basically playing God, sending real people to kill other real people in past, but he goes through with it because he feels committed to it at that point, having assembled and armed this fighting force and promised it to Little Bear.

I didn’t like some of the stereotypical stuff about cowboys and American Indians. This is one of those books where they try to write characters speaking with an accent, and that always feels awkward to read, and I’m not sure that everything Omri says about American Indians is true. At first, Omri says that American Indians gave birth alone, so he’s not too worried about Bright Stars. When I read that, I wasn’t sure if any American Indian tribes had that as a custom, so I looked it up. Apparently, there is some basis for that happening, although sometimes women would also help each other, and since most of the white people who said that Native Americans gave birth alone were men and wouldn’t have been involved in assisting the birth anyway, they may not have been fully aware of who else would have been involved. When Bright Stars starts giving birth, Omri remembers hearing that, when women give birth for the first time, it can take a long time for the baby to arrive, and he wonders if that’s true of American Indians as well as white women. That question made me cringe a little. As an adult white woman, I would assume it probably is because there many aspects of the human condition that are just universal, but again, Omri’s a boy who doesn’t have any relevant life experience experience, and even I can’t swear what Native American births are like, so I suppose I can’t fault him for wondering.

This is the book that establishes that the key used with the cupboard is magic by itself. It seems to fit in any lock and can send people back in time. When they’re sent back from the present day, Omri observes that the person sent to the past is cold and motionless in the chest, which scares him. Also, the boys observe that when they go to the past, they seem to be part of the scenery, part of the paintings on the side of Little Bear’s teepee, unable to speech or move by themselves, just watching what happens. It’s odd, but in stories where there’s magic, there are still rules, and as the boys experiment more with the key, part of the rules start becoming more clear to the readers.