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The Little Witch’s Valentine Book

The Little Witch’s Valentine Book by Linda Glovach, 1984.

Like other Little Witch Craft Books, this one gives holiday-themed craft instructions, party tips, and recipes.  The book starts out with a brief explanation about the purpose and origin of the Valentine’s Day holiday and then gives a section about Valentine-themed crafts.  Some of them also relate back to the witch theme of our craft hostess, like Valentine-themed witch hats, which is a little odd, but fun.

There is a section of crafts that you can make as small gifts for people or prizes for some of the party games given later. The small crafts include finger puppets, a box decorated with an owl with a heart-shaped head, and a butterfly pin with heart wings.  There are also instructions for a Valentine-themed rag doll with a witch’s hat, and the instructions recommend that boys make an old man version of the doll by adding a beard.  The dolls have heart-shaped faces.

Under the party suggestions, the book recommends having a Queen of Hearts Tart Party for an Alice in Wonderland tie-in.  It gives instructions for making playing card costumes that are kind of like sandwich board signs. 

There are two party games described in the book, both based on the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland.  One of the games is the “Off With Your Head Hunt” where players have to find missing heart halves with matching symbols on them that are hidden somewhere in the room.  The name of the game comes from the person who will be playing the Queen of Hearts, who gives the players their instructions and shouts “Off With Your Head!” while the players hunt for the heart halves to appease the queen.  (Yep, really.) The second game is the “Pass the Queen’s Red-Hot Heart Game.” It says that “The Heart is red-hot because it belongs to the queen.” It’s similar to the game Hot Potato. The players stand in a circle, passing a paper heart very quickly from one person to the next while someone plays music. When the music stops, the person who is holding the heart is out of the game. The game continues until only one person is left, and that person wins.

The recipes section offers treats that you can make for your Valentine’s Day party or just for fun, including Queen of Heart Tart Biscuits, Heart Cookies, Strawberry-Banana Valentine Monster Mash, and strawberry pancakes.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault, illustrated by Lois Ehlert, 1989.

This is an alphabet book for young children, but it’s not like most alphabet books.  Most alphabet books try to tie letters of the alphabet to words that young children know, to emphasize the sounds that the letters make, like in A, My Name is Alice or the letter-themed tongue twisters in Animalia.

In Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, the letters of the alphabet decide to climb to the top of a coconut tree.  (Why not?)  They go up the tree in alphabetical order.

But, by the time they reach the end of the alphabet, there are too many letters in the tree, and they all fall out.

The uppercase versions of the letters are the adults of the story, like parents and aunts and uncles, and they comfort the lowercase letters who fell out of the tree.

At the end of the book, the letter ‘a’ tries to convince the others to climb the tree again.

As I said, this book struck me as unusual for an alphabet book because it doesn’t try to tie any of the letters to associated words.  Mostly, it just emphasizes the order of the letters, first in the order that they go up the tree, and then in the order that they recover from falling out.

The story is told in rhyme, and the “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” part is just sounds that fill out the story/rhyme, like it’s part of a song. At the end of the book, there’s a page with all of the letters of the alphabet, both upper and lowercase.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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The Silver Slippers

Magic Charm Books

The Silver Slippers by Elizabeth Koda-Callan, 1989.

A little girl (unnamed, like the other girls in this series) wants to be a ballerina. She takes ballet classes, but she never seems quite good enough, like the ballet posters on the walls of her room. She feels discouraged because she is not perfect.

When her ballet teacher tells the class that there is going to be a dance recital and that one girl in class will be chosen to be the prima and lead the others, the girl doesn’t think that she has a chance to be chosen because her dancing isn’t good enough.

The girl tells her mother about the recital and her doubts about being chosen to be prima, and her mother tells her that it depends on how much she wants to be prima and how much she is willing to practice to improve. If the girl is willing to put in extra practice, she still has a chance to be prima. To remind her of her goals, her mother gives her a silver charm in the shape of a pair of ballet slippers.

In order to improve her dancing, the girl has to focus on her goal and give up participating in other activities to find more time to practice. However, her practicing pays off, and she gets the role of prima. On the night of the recital, she is nervous, but her silver slippers charm reminds her of her dream of being a real ballerina and gives her the courage to go on with her performance.

All of the books in this series originally came with charms like the ones described in the stories. This book originally included a little silver slippers charm for the reader to wear. The hole in the cover of the book was where the charm was displayed when the book was new. The books in the series often focus on the unnamed main character (who could represent any girl reading this story – the books were aimed at young girls) developing new self confidence, and the charms were meant to be either a sign of their new self confidence or inspiration for developing it. In this case, the charm is a reminder of the girl’s goals and how much she really loves dancing, giving her the inspiration she needs to persevere even when learning is difficult.

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

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Shadow in Hawthorn Bay

Shadow in Hawthorn Bay by Janet Lunn, 1986.

Mary (or “Mairi,” they spell it both ways) Urquhart and her cousin Duncan had always loved each other.  They were always close as children, feeling more like two parts of one person than separate people, and they always imagined that they would spend the rest of their lives together.  Then, Duncan’s parents, Mary’s Uncle Davie and Aunt Jean, decided that they wanted to travel to Canada, while Mary and her parents stayed at home in the Scottish Highlands.  Duncan hadn’t really wanted to go.  He was only eleven, and he promised Mary that when he was older, he would work hard to earn enough money to come back.  However, Duncan never came.  He only sent Mary a brief letter about the dark forest where he now lives.  Mary feels like the Duncan she knew is gone forever.

Four years later, in 1815, when Mary is fifteen, she has a strange feeling, like Duncan is calling to her from across the ocean.  All of her life, Mary has had a strange gift for seeing into the future or reading others’ minds.  The “gift of two sights,” people call it, but Mary doesn’t feel like it’s a gift.  It makes her uneasy, and she can’t control it.  She hears Duncan’s calls to her through her “gift,” but she is afraid because she doesn’t want to leave Scotland.  She wants Duncan to come to her.

However, she is unable to resist Duncan’s calls.  She asks her parents for help with money for her passage to Canada, but they tell her that she is wasting her time and that, even if they sold their family’s most precious heirloom to give her the money, there would not be enough for the return journey.  A family friend gives her the money instead, and although Mary doesn’t really want to accept it and doesn’t really want to go, she can’t help herself.

The journey to Canada is miserable, and when she finally arrives at the place where her aunt and uncle live, alone and without money, she learns something which she thought she had sensed during the journey: Duncan is dead.  Duncan committed suicide while Mary was still on the ship to Canada.  Mary has arrived too late.  To make matters worse, one of the family’s neighbors, Luke Anderson, tells her that her aunt and uncle gave up the idea of farming in Canada and have already begun the journey back to Scotland.  Mary has no money to follow them, and they have no idea that she’s now in Canada, alone.

Luke takes Mary to Mrs. Colliver, who tells Mary a little about her family and their life in Canada and why they decided to leave.  Mary is devastated by the loss of Duncan and tries to tell Mrs. Colliver about how she felt that Duncan had been calling out to her, but Mrs. Colliver tells her that she doesn’t believe in ghosts or things like that.  Although Mary knows that her “gift” is real and so are spirits, she learns that others in the community share Mrs. Colliver’s no-nonsense, disbelieving attitude toward such things.  Mary, in her despair, wants to rush straight back to Scotland, but Mrs. Colliver, with her practicality, points out that Mary can’t possibly get there without money.  She tells Mary that she can stay with her family, that she will give her room and board in exchange for help with chores and that she can earn extra money for weaving and spinning.  Mary is clumsy at household chores because she was always better with animals at home, but when Mrs. Colliver sees Mary’s skills with animals, she is appreciative.

Life is hard in the small farming community.  Mrs. Anderson, Luke’s mother, explains to Mary that most of the people who live there are refugees.  When they were young, their families moved there from the Thirteen Colonies that now make up the United States because they were Loyalists.  When the Revolution came, they couldn’t stay, and so had gone north to Canada, where they struggled to establish a new community for themselves with their small homesteads. During her time there, Mary witnesses the death of a baby and the hardships of this strange place, seeing why Duncan didn’t like it there.  They tell her that Duncan was a strange boy who would seem bright and happy one day, but black with depression the next, something Mary remembers in him even before he went to Canada. 

The people are kind and welcoming to Mary, although they find her a bit strange.  As Mary struggles to make a life for herself, hoping to earn enough money to return home, she slowly comes to appreciate Luke’s kindness and help.  She learns healing arts and the use of herbs from another woman in the community, developing new skills.  In helping others, she earns their appreciation and a place in their community.  Luke Anderson becomes very fond of Mary, but she still mourns for her lost Duncan.  In spite of his kindness, she doesn’t see how she can make this strange, hard, dark forest of Canada her home, where it doesn’t even seem like the spirits she believed in and that seemed to protect her when she lived in Scotland exist.

Mary is melancholy and feels like she doesn’t belong in Canada.  It distresses her that she can no longer feel Duncan’s presence . . . although she can oddly hear him calling to her sometimes.  Mary also unnerves people when she makes predictions that come true and speaks about ghosts and spirits.  When she almost gives in to her homesickness and depression and kills herself, lured to the spot where Duncan drowned himself by his ghostly calls to her, she finally sees Duncan’s death for what it really was and finds the courage to refuse to follow him down the dark path that he chose for himself and to fight for the life she has been building, the one she really wants to live.

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

My Reaction

This book is part of a loose trilogy, involving ancestors and descendants of the Anderson and Morrisay families.  All of the books take place in or near Hawthorn Bay in Canada, but at different time periods.  Some of the characters are psychic, like Mary, or have the ability to travel through time, like Susan in The Root Cellar, who is apparently Mary’s granddaughter.  The connection between Mary and Susan is never stated explicitly, but it’s implied by their last name, shared psychic abilities, and comments that a friend makes about Susan’s grandmother in The Root Cellar.  In this series, the characters from each of the books generally don’t appear in any of the others (except, perhaps, for Phoebe, who appears briefly in this book and is the main character in the third story).  Most of the time, you only know about the family connections by reading the books and taking note of the last names.  The books go backward in time as the series progresses, and the connection between the Anderson and Morrisay families is only obvious in The Root Cellar.

With the deaths that occur in the book, discussions of suicide, and the influence of Duncan’s selfish, malevolent spirit, this is not a book for young kids. I’d say that readers should be middle school level or older. There is also some implied sex and pregnancy out of wedlock when one of Luke’s brothers gets one of Mary’s friends pregnant. Her friend doesn’t give the details of what happened, but from what she says, it’s implied that Luke’s disreputable brother forced himself on the girl and that she went along with it because she didn’t know what else to do. The description of that incident is minimal, but older readers will understand what happened. There is a scandal in the community because of it, and the disreputable brother leaves rather than face the consequences of his actions.

Themes and Spoilers

I enjoyed the book for its references to Scottish folklore, which Mary believes in and seems to be in touch with through her “gift” and for Mary’s growing confidence in her abilities and more mature understanding of what her cousin was really like and what her relationship with him really was.  In some ways, I do feel sorry for Duncan because he seems to have been suffering from some kind of mental illness, possibly bipolar disorder or manic depression, which would explain how his moods could shift so abruptly and dramatically.  However, Duncan was also a selfish and controlling person.  Although Duncan’s death was sad, Mary realizes that his end was of his own making, and it’s not the future she wants for herself.  There are some disturbing scenes in the story.  Mary witnesses the deaths of others, including a baby, because it is a harsh environment, where people sometimes succumb to sickness or bad weather, although these deaths are not described in too much detail. 

There are also some frightening moments, like when Duncan’s ghost almost convinces Mary to kill herself and when he similarly lures a young boy, Luke’s younger brother, to the spot where he drowned and almost kills the boy because Mary finds the little boy comforting and Duncan doesn’t want her to be comfortable and happy.  In the beginning, readers see Duncan through Mary’s fondness for him, so the true darkness of his personality isn’t immediately apparent, although I had some misgivings about him from Mary’s first description of how they played together as children.  I didn’t like the way she described how he would tease her until she became angry or hurt and then he would sulk until she comforted him.  She says that wasn’t really fair, but to me, it was disturbing because I have seen that kind of selfish personality before, and it’s never a good sign.  It shows right from the first that Duncan doesn’t really care about Mary’s feelings.  He cares only about his own feelings, and he has no interest in changing his behavior out of consideration for her.  In fact, the very idea that he should consider her feelings seems somehow insulting to him, even though he supposedly loves her.  He just thinks that she needs to reassure him that everything he does is fine whether it is or not.  In his view, Mary is obviously wrong to feel hurt even when he tries to hurt her because he has more right to his feelings than she has to hers and he should be able to behave any way he wants with no consequences.  That’s what Mary’s first description of Duncan said to me.  As soon as I saw that, even though some might consider it just the actions of an immature child, I had some suspicions about him.

My suspicions were somewhat confirmed before Mary left home. Her mother told her that she didn’t think Duncan was worth chasing after, calling him sulky and thoughtless, but the full truth of that doesn’t strike Mary until she confronts his spirit where he died. Because people in Canada don’t like to talk about Duncan much, when Mary first hears about his death, it isn’t immediately clear that he killed himself or how.  At first, it’s just somewhat implied, but when Mary is almost lured to her death, she sees the full truth about Duncan. 

Mary comes to realize that, although everyone, including Duncan and herself, felt like the two of them were two parts of the same person, they really weren’t.  Mary sees that not only can she live without Duncan, she has been living without him for years.  She lived without him for a time in Scotland, and she’s been living without him in Canada, and she can continue to live without him wherever she chooses to live the rest of her life.  When she was younger, she had thought of Duncan as being the stronger of the two of them because he was not plagued by the same “gift” she was, but she realizes that she is actually the stronger of the two of them.  Duncan’s “love” for her had also always been a selfish one.  He couldn’t bring himself to work hard and return to Scotland for her sake, but he expected her to give up everything, even her own life, to join him in Canada and in death.

When Mary realizes all of this, Duncan’s spirit loses its hold over her, and she comes to see that the darkness in him was darker than the forests that had seemed so frightening to her before.  Free from the shadow of Duncan’s death and his selfish spirit, Mary is able to see the beauty of Canada and to be more open to the good people around her, forging a new future with a better man.

Posted on by TracyC

Mazemaker

Mazemaker by Catherine Dexter, 1989.

Twelve-year-old Winnie Brown loves mazes, and she is very surprised when one shows up among all the other graffiti on the schoolyard.  The maze is painted on the ground in silver and is big enough for a person to walk through.  Winnie and her friend, Harry, try to walk the maze, but it makes them dizzy at first.  Then, a cat they’ve befriended finds its way to the center of the maze and disappears right before their eyes!

When Winnie tries to tell her mother about it, her mother doesn’t really pay attention.  Although Winnie and Harry try to explain it away as an optical illusion of some kind, Winnie is still convinced that there is something strange about the maze.  She feels drawn to it, and she tries to walk it one more time, even though Harry is afraid. 

The next thing Winnie knows is that she’s in a hedge maze.  She faints, and when she wakes up, she finds that she is being cared for by members of the Taylor family, who owned a large house in the area about a hundred years ago.

Somehow, Winnie must find the path through the maze again in order to go back home.  According to the Taylors’ creepy housekeeper, Violet Minot, the only person who really knows the maze is the mazemaker, a distant cousin of hers who disappeared many years ago.  Winnie wants very badly to return to her own time, but she fears that Mrs. Minot may have diabolical plans of her own for the mazemaker.

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

Themes and Spoilers

Winnie learns that a couple hundred years before the time of the Taylors and Mrs. Minot, a cousin of Mrs. Minot’s family came to live with them.  He was an orphan, and the father of the family liked him better than his sons because he was a good worker, and they were trouble-makers.  The cousin, William Sparrow, was afraid of his cousins because he knew they were jealous of him.  His grandmother was a witch, and she had taught him a little magic about mazes, like the one that was made near the village in England where he grew up.  William built the maze and used its magic to escape from his cousins, who were about to kill him.  He came to the Taylors’ time, when the maze had been built into a hedge maze and found work as the Taylors’ groundskeeper. 

However, even though William was not murdered by his cousins, they were blamed for his disappearance and looked at with suspicion for the rest of their lives. The locals, having noted their hostility toward their cousin, believed that they probably murdered William and hid his body somewhere. In the end, they were silently judged for the crime that they wanted to commit but didn’t actually commit because they never had the chance to do it. In a way, it’s a kind of justice, although Violet Minot doesn’t see it that way.

Violet Minot, one of their descendants, has been searching for years for the secret to the maze.  She believed that if her ancestors hadn’t been blamed for William’s disappearance, her family might have owned the big house and the estate around it.  She recognized William when he appeared in her time and threatened to tell everyone in the village who he was if he didn’t share the secrets of the maze with her.  To escape her, William went through the maze again and ended up in Winnie’s time.  He painted the maze on the ground where it was supposed to be, although it had been covered up by concrete for the schoolyard.  Then, William was picked up by the police for defacing public property.  His cat roamed the area and made friends with Winnie and Harry.

When Winnie goes back in time through the maze, Violet tries to use her to learn the secrets of the maze.  Winnie eventually figures out how to get home because Violet’s great-aunt tells her that there should be an extra turn in the maze, one that isn’t marked, which she made by accident before. Can Winnie and William both outwit Violet and get back to the times where they both belong? Where does William even belong? If he can’t go back to where he came from, where should he go?

The story ends happily and something that Winnie knows from her time settles the matter of where William should live the rest of his life. There is one person in time who loves him and never stopped looking for him when he disappeared from her time. William’s time quandary and the existence of his magic maze have accidentally trapped other people in time, and when he resolves his problem and decides where he really belongs, he is able to free the others who were trapped and put an end to the magic.

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Voices After Midnight

Voices After Midnight by Richard Peck, 1989.

Three children, Heidi, Chad, and Luke, are traveling from their home in California to spend a couple of weeks in New York during the summer because their father has to do some work for his advertising firm there.  Heidi, the oldest child, didn’t want to go on the trip.  She would rather have stayed at home with her best friend, but her parents insisted that she go because she borrowed her mother’s car without permission and took it out driving without an adult in the car even though she only had a learner’s permit, not a real driver’s license, and barely even knew where the car’s controls were (she took her younger brothers along just so they could tell her about the controls, which shows her level of driving skill).  The resulting accident she had took out a flower bed.  Although her parents didn’t find out about the accident, she decided that perhaps it would be a good idea to get out of town for awhile while the whole incident blows over.

Chad is the narrator of the story, and he explains that his father’s company has rented a house for them to live in while they’re in New York, or rather, part of an old house.  It’s a very old house, and it’s five stories tall.  There is an old cage elevator that has been repurposed as a telephone nook.  It’s a nice place, but there’s something strange about it.  Even before they arrive in New York, both Chad and Luke begin dreaming about snow.  Then, on their first night in the house in New York, Chad hears voices in the house after midnight.  It sounds like a man and a woman.  They are trapped somewhere, and they are cold.  Even the family’s dog, Victoria Alexandrina (Al for short) is frightened in the house.

Luke loves old houses and places with history, and he seems to have an odd ability to sense the past, even being able to describe what places looked like in the past without doing any research to find out.  Luke tries to tell Chad that he has the same ability to get in touch with the past, but Chad doesn’t believe it at first.  Luke thinks that they have a special mission in New York, to resolve some kind of unfinished business, although he’s not sure what. 

Then, Luke admits to Chad that he’s been hearing the voices in the house, too.  The two of them sneak up to the upper floors of the house, the part that they haven’t rented, and they see that the rooms are all empty and in bad repair.  When they look out of the windows, they see the landscape as it was years ago, with buildings being constructed that are already old in modern times.  Heidi finds them up there and becomes fascinated by a dress that they find in an old trunk.

The boys’ abilities to see the past keep getting stronger, and more strange things happen in the house.  A bouquet of flowers suddenly appears in Heidi’s room with a message from a mysterious admirer, and then almost as suddenly, the flowers wilt and the card with the message fades, as if they had aged suddenly.  The boys keep seeing people and things from the past all over town as they explore New York City.

At night, Chad and Luke find themselves going back in time in the house’s history.  Chad is frightened, but Luke knows that they’re looking for an event in the house’s history, something that must be changed.

Back in the late 1800s, the Dunlap family lived in the house, with two teenage children, Emily and her older brother, Tyler.  Their family is fairly well-off, but not as wealthy as the family of the girl Tyler has a crush on.  One night, Chad and Luke witness a conversation between Emily and her mother about Tyler’s marriage prospects.  Emily thinks that Tyler is making the wrong choice, pursuing the wrong girl in his romantic life.  It doesn’t seem like an earth-shattering tragedy, but events are moving closer to an even greater tragedy.  It is Emily and Tyler’s voices that the boys have been hearing after midnight in the house.

Chad finds their trips into the past unnerving and he fears that he and Luke might accidentally become stuck in the past.  He wants to stop, but Luke insists that they keep going.  The situation becomes more urgent because Heidi has also found her way into the past and is falling in love with Tyler!  When Chad and Luke go into the past, they are invisible to the people there, but Tyler not only sees Heidi but dances with her at a New Year’s ball.  From then on, Heidi is also involved in the adventure.  Like Luke, she has a sense that there is something that they need to do in that house, in the past.

Something bad is going to happen to Emily and Tyler.  Somehow, they are going to die.  Cold.  Trapped.  During the Great Blizzard of 1888.  The kids are not sure quite what exactly is going to happen until almost the end, but they can feel it coming.  It has already happened in the distant past, but they need to find the right moment in time to stop it from happening again!

All three of the children, Chad, Heidi, and Luke, have psychic abilities and are able to see and travel through time, although Chad and Heidi have mostly worked to ignore it in their lives, trying to just be normal kids.  When they succeed in saving Tyler and Emily Dunlap, they not only change the past but the present, eventually meeting some of Tyler’s descendants (who he marries is a bit of a surprise, although it’s not either of the girls that Emily had expected it to be).  There is a kind of odd time loop, though.  At the end of the story, they learn about their own, special, previously unknown connection to the Dunlap family and the possible reason why they are gifted with their time-traveling abilities.  In saving Tyler and Emily, they are also saving themselves, which oddly, begs the question of how real they were before . . . but, maybe they were always fated to succeed.  In the end, the house in New York is still “haunted”, but the final joke (unknown to the current owners) is that Heidi becomes the beautiful but mysterious “ghost” who appeared at the right time and then suddenly disappeared and whose story has been passed down through the generations.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Anna, Grandpa, and the Big Storm

Anna, Grandpa, and the Big Storm by Carla Stevens, 1982.

The story takes place during the Great Blizzard of 1888. Anna’s Grandpa is visiting her family in New York City, but he thinks the city is boring. He says that there isn’t much there for him to do. One day, Anna is worried about getting to school because it is starting to snow heavily. Anna’s mother says that she can stay home, but Anna is supposed to be in a spelling bee, and she doesn’t want to miss out. Grandpa volunteers to take Anna to school on the elevated train.

As the two set out, Anna begins to get scared because the storm is getting worse. Grandpa urges her on, and the two make it onto the train. Before they can go very far, the tracks freeze over, and the train gets stuck. Anna and her Grandpa are trapped in the train with a bunch of strangers, waiting for rescue.

Anna and Grandpa make friends with the other people on the train, finding ways to keep themselves moving and warm while they wait for help to arrive, like playing “Simon Says.”  Even though Anna doesn’t make it to school for the spelling bee, their adventures turn out to be good for the people they are able to help and the new friends they make.  Grandpa sees a different side of life in the city and decides to stay for awhile longer so he can spend time with some new friends.

The story is based upon actual accounts of the famous blizzard when many other people were trapped on the elevated trains around the city. The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Nutcracker

The Nutcracker by E.T.A. Hoffmann, retold by Anthea Bell, 1816, 1987.

The reason for the two dates of this book is that the original Nutcracker story was written by a German writer, E.T.A. Hoffmann, in 1816, as the novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. Some places, including the back of this book note different publishing dates for the original story because it was published more than once during the 1810s, as part of different story collections. This article gives more details about the original version of the story and different publications. Since then, it has been retold many times and in many different forms, including the famous ballet based on the story. In ballets and plays, the name of the heroine is often Clara, but in this picture book, as in the original story, the heroine’s name is Marie.

In the beginning of the book, which is set in the 19th century, Marie and her brother Fritz, are opening their Christmas presents on Christmas Eve. (The book explains that opening presents on Christmas Eve is a German tradition. A friend in Germany also explained that to me once because, in Germany, presents are supposedly brought by the Christ Child, not by Santa Claus. Since then, I’ve read that explanation may vary, depending on whether the household is Catholic or Protestant.) The children receive many wonderful presents, including a toy castle from their godfather, Mr. Drosselmeier. Marie’s favorite present is a nutcracker that looks like an odd little man. When Fritz is too rough with the nutcracker and breaks it, Marie takes care of it.

Marie stays up late, and when she finally puts the nutcracker away at midnight, she is astonished to see an army of mice coming out of the floorboards. The leader of the mouse army is the Mouse King, who has seven heads. The Nutcracker leads an army of toys against the mouse army. The mouse army appears to be winning, so, to save the Nutcracker, Marie takes off her shoe and throws it at the mice. Then, her arm hurts, and she apparently faints.

When Marie wakes up, she is in her own bed, and her mother tells her that she apparently put her arm through the glass door of the toy cabinet, cutting herself badly. When Marie tries to tell her mother about the battle between the toys and the mice, her mother and the doctor think that she’s ill and confine her to her bed for a few days. Mr. Drosselmeier repairs the Nutcracker and returns it to Marie, telling her the reason why nutcrackers look so strange and ugly, calling it The Tale of the Hard Nut.

Year ago, there was a royal banquet given by the King and Queen who were the parents of Princess Pirlipat. A mouse who claimed to be the queen of Mousolia demanded some food from the banquet as the Queen was preparing it. The King was angry that the mouse took some of the food and wanted revenge. The King asked his Court Watchmaker, who was also named Drosselmeier, to build some mousetraps to catch the mouse queen’s seven sons. When the sons were caught, the mouse queen vowed that she’d take her revenge on Princess Pirlipat. Princess Pirlipat was a pretty baby, but the mouse queen turned her ugly. The King took out his anger on the Court Watchmaker, ordering him to find a way to change Princess Pirlipat back to normal and threatening to behead him if he failed. After consulting the Court Astronomer, the Court Watchmaker learned that the key to breaking the spell on the princess was a special nut, which had to be cracked by being bitten by a man who filled certain special requirements, which all happened to be met by the son of the Watchmaker’s dollmaker cousin. The King had promised that the person who could break the spell could marry his daughter, but the mouse queen interrupted the last part of the ritual, causing the young cousin to turn ugly himself. When pretty Princess Pirlipat saw her rescuer turn ugly, she didn’t want to marry him anymore. The Court Astronomer said that the only way to break the spell on the young man was for him to defeat the new Mouse King – the mouse queen’s youngest son – and for him to find a woman who would love him regardless of his appearance.

Marie knows that the story is true because she has seen the Mouse King herself. She loves the Nutcracker and wants to help him. The Nutcracker returns to visit Marie during the night and makes repeated demands of her for her candy and toys. Marie knows that, no matter what she gives him, the Mouse King will keep returning to demand something else. The Nutcracker tells her that he needs a sword to fight the Mouse King. They borrow one from a toy soldier, and the Nutcracker successfully defeats the Mouse King, giving Marie his seven golden crowns.

As a reward for helping him, the Nutcracker takes Marie to the land where he is from, leading her there through a magic staircase in an old wardrobe. The Nutcracker’s land is beautiful, filled with candy and sweets and gold and silver fruit. (The Christmas Wood that they pass through reminds me of the woods in the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.) The Prince Nutcracker’s home is Marzipan Castle in Candy City, where his beautiful princess sisters live. They welcome Marie and the Nutcracker home.

Then, suddenly, Marie wakes up, as if it were all a dream. However, Marie knows that it wasn’t a dream because she still has the Mouse King’s crowns. Marie tells the Nutcracker that she loves him. There is a sudden bang, and Marie faints. When she wakes up, she is told that Mr. Drosselmeier’s nephew has come to visit them. The nephew is the Nutcracker, restored to human form and now a handsome young man, thanks to Marie’s love. Marie later marries the nephew, and the two of them rule magical Kingdom of Sweets.

There is a section in the back of the book that explains a little more about E.T.A. Hoffmann and the original version of the Nutcracker story.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Changes for Samantha

American Girls

Changes for Samantha by Valerie Tripp, 1988.

This book is part of the Samantha, An American Girl series. This is the last book in the original series of Samantha’s stories and explains the changes in the lives of Samantha and her friends, especially Nellie. When Samantha met Nellie in the first book in the series, Nellie was a poor girl working as a servant girl in a neighboring house. Later, Nellie and her family moved to Samantha’s town, Mount Bedford, and Nellie and her sisters were able to attend school for the first time.

Now, Samantha has moved to New York City to live with her Uncle Gard and his new wife, Aunt Cornelia. Samantha likes living with them, although their housekeeper, Gertrude, is strict and often makes her feel like she’s doing things wrong. Samantha’s grandmother, a widow, has remarried to her long-time friend, the Admiral. Samantha’s life has changed considerably since the first book. Since her move to New York City, Samantha hasn’t seen Nellie or her sisters, but their lives have also changed, and not for the better.

When the book begins, Samantha and Aunt Cornelia are making Valentines to give to friends and family. Samantha receives a letter from Nellie that says that her parents have died of the flu and their employer, Mrs. Van Sicklen, is sending her and her sisters to New York City to live with her Uncle Mike. Nellie says that she’ll try to visit Samantha in New York City soon. Samantha is upset to hear that Nellie’s parents are dead, but Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia reassure her that Nellie’s uncle will take care of her and that she’ll soon be living much closer to Samantha.

After some time goes by and Samantha doesn’t hear any more from Nellie, she begins to worry about her. Uncle Gard decides to call Mrs. Van Sicklen and find out Nellie’s new address, but she doesn’t know where Nellie’s uncle, Mike O’Malley, lives. All Mrs. Van Sicklen knows is that he lives on 17th or 18th Street, but New York City is so big, that doesn’t help much. Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia say that maybe Nellie has had to get a job or look after her sisters and that she’s just been too busy to visit, but Samantha is still worried that something is very wrong.

Samantha decides to start asking around 17th and 18th Streets to see if she can locate Mike O’Malley, and she finds a chestnut seller who knows Mike O’Malley. However, he warns Samatha not to get involved with him because Mike O’Malley is a “hooligan.” Samantha worries about that, but it’s just another reason for her to want to check on Nellie. When she reaches the apartment where Mike O’Malley last lived, he isn’t there anymore. His neighbor explains that Mike O’Malley was a drunk who simply abandoned his nieces in his old apartment. The neighbor took the girls in for a while, but she is a poor woman with children of her own to raise, so she had to turn Nellie and her sisters over to an orphanage, the Coldrock House for Homeless Girls.

Samantha tells her aunt and uncle what she’s learned, and they’re upset that she went to such a dangerous part of the city alone. However, Aunt Cornelia agrees to take Samantha to the orphanage to see Nellie. The directoress, Miss Frouchy, is a stern and sneaky woman, but she agrees to let Samantha see Nellie, even though it isn’t a visitors’ day. It is difficult for the girls to speak candidly with Miss Frouchy watching them and monitoring everything that Nellie says. When Aunt Cornelia asks if Nellie and her sisters need anything, Miss Frouchy interrupts and says that they don’t. However, Samantha notes how thin Nellie looks and suspects that there is more going on than Nellie is being allowed to say, and Miss Frouchy even confiscates the cookies meant for Nellie and her sisters right in front of Aunt Cornelia and Samantha.

Aunt Cornelia asks Miss Frouchy for a tour of the orphanage so that Nellie and Samantha can be alone, and so the girls are able to speak openly. Nellie confirms that things are hard at the orphanage and her sister, Bridget, isn’t strong. Miss Frouchy thinks that Bridget is lazy and doesn’t want to work, so Nellie tries to cover Bridget’s chores as best she can. Samantha says that Nellie could come and stay with her and her aunt and uncle, but Nellie says that they probably don’t need any more maids. Samantha offers to hide Nellie and her sisters, but Nellie thinks that plan is too risky. More than anything, Nellie wants to keep her sisters together. She says with a little more training, she could find a job as a maid and support them.

Samantha returns to the orphanage again with her aunt and uncle to visit all three girls, and she and Nellie arrange to meet secretly at the time when Nellie is supposed to take the fireplace ashes out to the alley for disposal. At their next meeting, Samantha finds out that Miss Frouchy took the gloves that they had given Nellie and even punished her for having them because she said that she must have stolen the gloves. However, there is worse to come. Soon, Nellie tells Samantha that she has been chosen to be sent out west on the Orphan Train, but because her sisters are too young to go, they’ll be left in New York alone. With the sisters about to be split up, Samantha’s plan to help the girls run away and hide is looking better.

Together, Nellie and Samantha help to sneak the younger girls out of the orphanage, and Samantha hides the three of them in an upstairs room in the aunt and uncle’s house that isn’t being used. She sneaks food and toys upstairs to them, and Nellie sneaks out during the day to go looking for work. However, Gertrude soon gets suspicious about how much food Samantha seems to be eating and how she seems to be sneaking around with it. When the girls are finally caught, Samantha owes her aunt and uncle some explanations, but admitting the truth of what has happened changes things for the better for all of the girls.

In the movie version of the Samantha series, which combined all the stories from the Samantha books into one, the story ends at Christmas, but in the book, it’s Valentine’s Day. The Christmas ending is nice, but Valentine’s Day does make for a nice difference, and love is appropriate to the theme of the story. Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia end up adopting Nellie and her sisters, so they officially become part of Samantha’s family. Unlike other characters in the story, who see the orphans as either an inconvenience or a source of cheap labor, Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia genuinely love them and want to raise them.

Something that struck me about the book was that both Nellie and Samantha are orphans, but their lives were very different at the beginning of the story because Samantha is from a wealthy family with an uncle who loves her and Nellie is a poor girl with an irresponsible uncle. If Samantha had been poor, she might have been destined for an orphanage or the orphan train herself. Because she wasn’t and because her family looks after children well and is willing to share what they have with others, Samantha has a secure future, and Nellie and her sisters become part of their family.

The book ends with a section of historical information about all the changes taking place in Samantha’s time, from technological changes, such as the first airplanes and new cars, to the increasing sizes of cities and new immigrants arriving in the United States.

As girls like Samantha grew up, society continued to change. In earlier books, Samantha’s grandmother talked about how young ladies aren’t supposed to work but learn how to be ladies and take care of a household. By the time Samantha was an adult, in the 1910s and 1920s, it was becoming more common for women to hold others jobs, although they would often stop working when they got married so they could focus on raising their children. The profession of social work evolved to help care for children like Nellie and her sisters. Some social workers also helped immigrants to learn English and train for new jobs when the came to the United States. The book specifically mentions Jane Addams, who founded the settlement house, Hull House.

Change is a major theme of all of the American Girl books, and a girl like Samantha would have seen some drastic changes in the ways that people lived as she got older. Over time, fewer immigrants looked for jobs as domestic servants, and newer forms of household technology, like washing machines, made it easier for housewives to do more of their domestic chores themselves. The section of historical information ends with examples of the changes in styles of women’s clothing through the 1920s, explaining how the changes in clothing styles were part of the changes in the types of lives the women wearing them were leading.

Although the book doesn’t go into these details, I would just like to point out how old Samantha would have been at various points in the 20th century. She was born in 1894, and ten years old in 1904, so that means that she would have been:

  • 23 years old when the US entered World War I in 1917
  • 26 years old when the 19th Amendment granted women’s suffrage in the United States in 1920
  • 30 years old in 1924 (Jazz age and Prohibition)
  • 35 years old when the stock market crashed in 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression
  • 47 years old in 1941, when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, and the US entered World War II, and 50 years old in 1944, when the Molly, An American Girl series takes place.
  • In her 50s during the early days of the Cold War. She would have to live to be 95 to see the end of it.
  • In her 60s through her early 70s during the Civil Rights Movement.

I like to think about these things because it puts history in perspective, and it gives us some sense of what Samantha’s future life might have been like. When she was a young woman, she may have joined the women’s suffrage movement with her Aunt Cornelia. She probably knew young men her age who went to fight in World War I. (Eddie, the annoying boy who lived next door to Samantha’s grandmother, would have been old enough to fight and may have been a WWI soldier himself.) Perhaps, Samantha’s future husband was a soldier. When she was older, Samantha could have either joined the temperance movement behind Prohibition or visited a speakeasy or at least knew people who did. It’s difficult to say what happened to Samantha’s family during the Great Depression. Depending on their professions and what they may have invested their money in, they may have lost their fortunes in the stock market crash, or they may have ridden out the whole thing in relative comfort. By World War II, Samantha may have had a son who was old enough to fight. One of the things I find interesting about historical novels with children is imagining what their future lives may have been like, and Samantha was born at a time when she would have witnessed many major events throughout her future life. The book shows how women’s fashions changed as Samantha grew up, but I’m fascinated by the events in Samantha’s life that I know must be coming, just because of when she was born. By the end of her life, the world would be a very different place from what she knew when she was young.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Samantha’s Surprise

American Girls

Samantha’s Surprise by Maxine Rose Schur, 1986.

This is part of the Samantha, An American Girl series.

Christmas is going to be different this year for Samantha and her family. Uncle Gard is bringing his girlfriend, Cornelia, to spend the holidays with them. Christmas had started out so hopeful for Samantha, with an invitation to a friend’s Christmas party, elaborate plans for building a gingerbread house, and the secret presents that Samantha has been making for everyone. Cornelia’s visit changes Samantha’s plans.

For Samantha, Cornelia’s visit makes Christmas more difficult. At first, she says that she will help make Cornelia feel welcome and thinks to herself that she will have to get a present for Cornelia that is as elegant as she is. However, when Samantha tries to put up the usual homemade decorations that she made herself, the maid angrily takes them down, calling them “dustcatchers.” The house must be perfect for Cornelia’s visit, and Samantha is insulted that people see her decorations as an eyesore or inconvenience. The cook, who was going to help Samantha with her gingerbread house, says that there probably won’t be time for it now because her grandmother has asked her to make extra, special foods for Cornelia’s visit. Grandmary even tells Samantha that it would be better for Samantha to “stay out of the way” of their Christmas preparations.

With Cornelia coming, no one seems to notice or care about Samantha. Samantha finds out that she won’t be able to attend her friend’s party because it is the night that Cornelia is arriving. It doesn’t seem likely that her grandmother will care about her secret Christmas wish for the beautiful Nutcracker doll in the toy store window. Samantha has been without a doll since she gave her own beloved doll, Lydia, to Nellie, who had never owned a doll before. Cornelia is an extra person Samantha needs to supply a present for, but she can’t summon up any enthusiasm for giving a present for someone who is making things so difficult for her.

Throughout the book, Samantha considers different presents that she could give to Cornelia, beginning with the most basic, convenient token gifts that she could give and then forget about, unlike her homemade, heart-felt gifts for everyone else. However, Samantha’s attitudes toward Cornelia change as she gets to know her better during the holidays and comes to see her as a source of fun and support.

When Cornelia actually arrives and begins participating in the usual Christmas activities, Samantha sees that she is far less fussy than the people who were preparing for her arrival. Unlike most other grown-ups, Cornelia is not too dignified to have fun while sledding or get messy while making gingerbread houses. Cornelia even suggests sledding, to Grandmary’s surprise. Cornelia always mentions how nice it would be to decorate a gingerbread house, like she did when she was a girl, Samantha says that she would like that too, but the cook is too busy to help this year. Cornelia says that is no problem because she and Samantha can make the gingerbread house themselves. Cornelia even makes sure that some of the decorations that Samantha made are prominently displayed on the Christmas tree.

By the end of the book, Samantha changes her mind about Cornelia completely. While everyone else seemed to be ignoring Samantha and going out of their way to make Cornelia feel welcome, Cornelia was paying more attention to Samantha and really thinking about what would make Samantha happy at Christmas. Cornelia is the one who correctly guesses what Samantha would really like for Christmas, and in return, Samantha decides to give her best present to Cornelia.

The story ends with Uncle Gard officially engaged to Cornelia.

In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about how people would celebrate Christmas during the early 1900s.

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