Posted on by TracyC

What Eric Knew

What Eric Knew by James Howe, 1985.

After his friend, Eric, moves away, thirteen-year-old Sebastian Barth receives strange messages from him, hinting at a mystery in the small college town of Pembroke. Eric always used to rope his friends into investigating things and having adventures, but before his family moved away, he started acting strangely and suffered an accident falling downstairs and breaking his leg.

Sebastian shares the notes with his best friend, David, and with Corrie, the new minister’s daughter. Corrie’s family has moved into the house where Eric used to live, near the church and graveyard. Eric’s notes seem to refer to a local legend about the ghost of a prominent woman, Susan Iris Siddons, who used to live in their town and supposedly searches for her lost wedding ring. Corrie thinks she sees this ghost in the graveyard. There is also something mysterious going on in the church, where the Siddons family still maintains a tradition of ringing the bell regularly at 9 o’clock in homage to their ancestors, Susan and her husband, Cornelius.

The dark secrets of the past mix with the troubles still surrounding the Siddons family. Can Sebastian and his friends solve the clues and learn what their friend Eric knew?

The book used to be available to borrow online through Internet Archive, but when I checked recently, it was no longer there.

My Reaction

The story leaves some things unresolved. The kids are never entirely sure how much Eric discovered before he moved, but they do learn that he recruited a couple of friends to help create the appearance of the ghost, possibly to draw attention to the real problem in modern times, which has nothing to do with the supernatural, although there is another troubling secret about the past that the kids uncover, too.

Both sets of problems do center around the prominent Siddons family and the pressures that the current family members, especially the younger generation, suffer as they try to keep up appearances and live up to images of their supposedly perfect relatives. The past secret explains one of the reasons why the Siddons family isn’t as perfect as they had always pretended to be and helps to put the “ghost” of Susan Siddons to rest. This is not a mystery story for very young children because of the dark and serious nature of the problems with the Siddons family. I would say the book would be best for ages 10 and up. The only question at the end is how much of these things Eric really knew.

Posted on by TracyC

Once Upon a Dark November

Once Upon a Dark November by Carol Beach York, 1989.

Katie Allen likes her part-time job helping Mrs. Herron with her housework. One of the best parts of the job is that she gets to see Mr. Herron, her English teacher, at home. Katie has a crush on Mr. Herron, although no one but her best friend knows it.

One day, while she’s at the Herrons’ house, Mrs. Herron tells her that her cousin Martin is coming for a visit. She says that Martin hasn’t been in Granville in years, although he used to live with their aunt when he was young. Their aunt is Miss Gorley, the creepy lady who lives across the street from Katie’s house. When Martin arrives, he turns out to be pretty creepy himself. He never says very much to anyone and spends a lot of his time just staring out the window. Mrs. Herron is not happy to have him there and wishes that he would leave.

One day, Martin disappears, and the next day, Miss Gorley is found murdered in her house. Did Martin return to Granville just to murder his aunt? Where is he now, and who is that mysterious person who tried to attack Katie at her house, dressed in a Frankenstein costume? Did Katie see something that she wasn’t meant to see?  Katie doesn’t remember seeing anything important, but now she has to figure out what it was before it’s too late!

This book is not for young children.  It would be best for kids in middle school (about 12 and up).  There is murder and attempted murder, including the attempted murder of Katie, who is a child, because the murderer of Miss Gorley thinks that she knows too much.  There is also some discussion of child abuse, which was part of the motive behind Miss Gorley’s murder.  Katie did see some things that are important to the case, but their full importance doesn’t occur to her until the attempt on her own life.  People are not quite who they seem to be, and some of Katie’s initial impressions were closer to the truth than someone wants her to know.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

In a Dark, Dark Room

In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories retold by Alvin Schwartz, 1984.

This is a collection of classic scary stories based on folktales from around the world.  A special section in the back of the book explains more about where the stories came from.

This book was a favorite scary book of mine when I was a kid, and the stories are the type that kids commonly like to tell at camp or at sleepovers to spook each other.  Stories like these stay with you for years!

Sometimes, you can find individual stories from this book read aloud on YouTube. The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Stories in the Book:

The Teeth – A boy meets a series of strange people with increasingly long teeth.  Based on a story from Suriname. (Here is a video of someone reading this story as an example.)

In the Graveyard – A woman sees bodies carried into a graveyard. Based on the song “Old Woman All Skin and Bone.”

The Green Ribbon – A girl wears a green ribbon around her neck for her entire life, refusing to explain to even her husband why she wears it, until she is old and about to die.  Based on a European folk tale.  Originally, it was a red thread.

In a Dark, Dark Room – Classic slumber party story!  “In a dark, dark wood, there was a dark, dark house.”  What will it all lead to?  It is known in Europe and America.

The Night It Rained – A man gives a boy a ride home on a rainy night.  When he returns the next day to pick up the sweater he loaned the boy, he gets an eerie surprise.  Based on a class of ghost story known as “The Ghostly Hitchhiker,” which has many variants.

The Pirate – When Ruth visits her cousin’s house, her cousin tells her that her room is haunted by the ghost of a pirate.  Based on a British folktale.

The Ghost of John – A short poem. The author of this book first heard this from a young girl in California in 1979.

Posted on by TracyC

Who Knew There’d Be Ghosts?

Who Knew There’d Be Ghosts? By Bill Britain, 1985.

Tommy Donahue and his friends, Wendy “Books” Scofield (the smartest kid in their class as well as being pretty tough) and Harry “the Blimp” Troy (known for being the tallest and biggest kid in their class), prefer playing around the abandoned Parnell house instead of at the park because they like to play games of pretend, based on adventure stories that Tommy has read.  It’s hard to play games of pretend in such a public place as the park because other people either laugh or think that they’re just getting in the way.  Almost nobody goes near the old Parnell house because people think that it’s haunted.  They’re right; it is haunted.

Some people in their town have been trying to arrange for the Parnell house to be turned into a museum because the Parnells were the founding family of their town, but the movement hasn’t been able to raise the money needed to renovate the place.  Now, Tommy’s father, a lawyer, has been recruited to arrange for the house to be purchased by a private citizen who says that he wants to renovate the house and use it as his own residence.  However, Tommy and his friends overhear the buyer, Avery Katkus, and a confederate talking as they look over the house.  Mr. Katkus isn’t interested in the house at all; he wants something valuable that is hidden inside.  When they hear the two men plotting to sneak into the house at night to do some searching for this mysterious something, the kids decide that they will come back at night and watch for them to find out what they’re looking for.  The kids don’t want anything bad to happen to the house because they’ll lose their private playground.

Tommy is the first to go and check out the Parnell house at night, and that’s when he meets the ghosts, Horace and Essie Parnell.  At first, Horace tries to scare Tommy away, but when Tommy explains that he only came to keep watch, Horace asks him what he means by that.  Tommy explains to him about Mr. Katkus, and Horace says that he could use Tommy’s help.  Years ago, Horace’s father made a dying wish that all members of their family should be buried in the family cemetery on the property of the house.  Most of the members of the family are buried there, but Horace, who was killed during the Revolutionary War, and Essie, who accidentally fell overboard from a riverboat and was permanently lost in the Mississippi River, were only two Parnells who were not buried on the property, so their spirits are now bound to the house.  Naturally, Horace and Essie are concerned with the future of the house.

Tommy tries to tell his friends about the ghosts, but they don’t believe him until they see the ghosts for themselves.  When the three kids return to the house the next night, Horace saves them from being attacked by Mr. Katkus’s hired confederate.  Now convinced of the ghosts’ existence, Harry and Books are eager to help save the house, and the key in doing so is discovering what kind of hidden treasure the house holds.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Who Stole the Wizard of Oz?

Who Stole the Wizard of Oz? by Avi, 1981.

One summer, Toby and his twin sister Becky see the police go to their local library. To the children’s surprise, Mrs. Brattle, the librarian, phones their house and asks Becky to come down to the library and bring one of her parents.  The children’s parents aren’t home, so Becky and Toby go.  Mrs. Brattle doesn’t seem to want to say much over the phone, only that The Wizard of Oz was stolen, and they need to talk to Becky.

As Becky and Toby walk down to the library from their house, which isn’t far, Becky says that shortly before school let out for the summer, Becky’s teacher for sixth grade next fall handed out a summer reading assignment.  The kids have to write two book reports over the summer, and the books can’t be mysteries, fantasies, or romantic adventures.  Miss McPhearson, the sixth grade teacher, believes in only factual books.  However, Becky decided that the best thing to do was to get the book reports over as soon as possible, so she went to the library.  (Toby wasn’t involved because he has a different teacher.)  While she was there, she decided that she’d check out The Wizard of Oz for Toby, knowing that he likes fantasy books, but she was told that it was already checked out.  Mrs. Brattle told her that there would be a book sale at the library tomorrow and that she had a copy of The Wizard of Oz that Becky could buy for five cents, but since the librarian wouldn’t sell her the book that day and Becky didn’t want to make a special trip to the library the next day, she turned down the offer.

When they come to the library, the policeman accuses Becky of stealing the copy of The Wizard of Oz that the librarian showed her as well as some other children’s books.  According to the librarian, the books were actually valuable collector’s copies, worth thousands of dollars.  Becky asks the librarian why she offered to sell her one for nickel if they were so valuable and Mrs. Brattle says that it was a mistake.  The policeman says that if Becky has the books, she can return them now, and there will be no problem, but Becky is insulted and insists that she didn’t take them.  In the face of Becky’s denial, the policeman says that there isn’t much that he can do because there is only the librarian’s word that the books were valuable, and she doesn’t deny that she earlier tried to sell them for five cents each.  Missing children’s books worth less than a dollar isn’t exactly a police problem.  (I’d like to say here that I was very glad that the policeman took that attitude. I hate those children’s books where adults not only falsely accuse children of doing things that they didn’t do but also make petty incidents seem like major crimes. The policeman is correct that there is no proof that the books were as valuable as the librarian says and that this evaluation of their worth comes only after their sudden disappearance and after she was offering to sell them very cheaply.)

Even though the matter seems to be dropped for the moment, it bothers Becky that the librarian still thinks that she might have taken the books.  She suggests to Toby that they could investigate and try to find out what really happened to the books.  The first thing that they decide to do is to look for the original owner of the books.  After inspecting other children’s books at the sale and looking at the names in the front covers, they decide that Gertrude Tobias is the most likely former owner because many of the other books at the sale belonged to her.  Unfortunately, Gertrude Tobias died a few months ago.  However, it turns out that her niece is Miss McPhearson.  Becky hurriedly finishes her book reports so that she and her brother will have an excuse to visit Miss McPhearson and ask her about the books.

When they ask Miss McPhearson about her aunt, she calls her aunt a “foolish woman” who “didn’t know any better.”  However, she refuses to explain any further what she means, and the children see her crying before they leave.

When the children speak to Mrs. Chesterton, they get a very different picture of Miss McPhearson’s aunt.  When Gertrude Tobias was a young woman, she was wealthy. She could have gotten married if she wanted to, but most of the young men didn’t like women who seemed too smart, and Miss Tobias prided herself on her intelligence and cleverness.  She resented the idea that adults seemed to want women to play dumb to get a husband, so she refused to get married and spent most of her time in the company of children.  Mrs. Chesterton remembers her saying, “Children like me smart. Grown-ups want me stupid.”  She liked to read children’s books, and she often volunteered to read books to children at the library.  The children liked her and often confided in her, just like she was their aunt.  She spent a lot of her money buying children’s books for her collection.  Mrs. Chesterton says that Miss Tobias and her niece never really got along well and that Miss McPhearson used to tease her aunt about her love of children’s books.  However, Miss Tobias was rich, and Miss McPhearson didn’t have much money at all.  Miss Tobias told her that she would leave her all of her “treasure.”  When she died, it turned out that she had left her niece five children’s books – the five that are now missing.  The others were willed to the library.

At first, the picture seems like it’s becoming more clear: Miss Tobias had one last joke on her niece by giving her valuable children’s books that Miss McPhearson thought were worthless simply because they were children’s books, and the person who took them recognized what they were worth as collectors’ items.  However, the situation is actually more complicated than that.  A series of strange break-ins have been occurring around town. Nothing else has been taken, but someone is clearly searching for something.  Miss Tobias was clever, and her books have an even deeper meaning than most people have realized.  To learn Miss Tobias’ secret, Toby and Becky have to learn the secrets of the books themselves.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

I really loved the puzzle in this book! There were parts that I got before the kids did and parts that they realized before I did. It isn’t a kind of puzzle that readers call fully solve before the characters in the book because it requires knowledge of their home town to get the full answer.

As an unmarried, childless adult who also enjoys children’s books, I could kind of sympathize with Miss Tobias. Children’s books, like some adults, are often very clever but go unappreciated by people who underrate them for what they appear to be. For example, Through the Looking Glass, which was one of the books featured in the story, involves a game of chess. The author, Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Dodgson), was a mathematician. His books are full of word games and logic puzzles, and the chess game described in Through the Looking Glass is an actual chess game that can be played with real pieces on a real board with a definite ending square, where Alice the pawn becomes Alice the queen (one of the clues to solving the final mystery in this book). To many adults who only know the basic story of Alice, it might just seem like a silly, nonsense children’s story, but they miss the real, clever puzzles planted in the story, just like Miss McPhearson did with her aunt’s legacy.

In the end of the story, Miss McPhearson never learns the truth about her aunt’s legacy, just as her aunt knew she would miss it. Toby and Becky come to an understanding with the real thief about Miss Tobias’ treasure that allows the library to benefit from the legacy, which is something that Miss Tobias would have appreciated. Miss McPhearson decides to give up teaching and leaves town to find another job, working with computers, a very “adult” field indeed. It’s only a pity that she wasn’t mature enough to behave nicely with her aunt and not tease her, so that her aunt would be more generous with her. People who play childish games are sometimes surprised when they meet a better game player.

Like Miss Tobias, I have little patience for people who try too hard to be “adult” or are too concerned with whether certain things are right for adults to do, especially when they show their immature sides in other ways. In the story, Miss McPhearson makes a point of being “adult” in all situations, but she wasn’t above childishly taunting an older woman about her hobbies, still expecting that woman to leave her all of her money. It reminds me of the kids I knew in elementary school who liked to act really grown up at age ten. Kids go through a phase where they start talking about doing grown-up things like having first boyfriends and girlfriends and wearing makeup and watching adult tv shows and listening to adult music, but in between doing all of that, they still act like childish brats because what they’re doing is trying on the trappings of adulthood without the real substance. Until they get some real maturity and better behavior, they’re just kids playing dress-up. Sometimes, I think that some people never quite leave that phase, which is how I view the character of Miss McPhearson.

I think of this every time I hear some adult my age or older talking about how real adults drink alcohol or real women wear high heels and lipstick. To hear them talk, there are quite a lot of rules to being grown up that very few people I know actually follow. Alcohol is expensive, plenty of people abstain for health or religious reasons, and driving drunk certainly isn’t mature behavior. High heels damage your feet the more you wear them. I’ve forgotten how much makeup I’ve thrown away because, most days, I’m just too busy to even think about putting it on, and they eventually dry out and get gross. It would be a waste of money for me to buy more, knowing I’ll never use it all. To my way of thinking, if you really are an adult and you know who and what you are, you have nothing to prove. If you aren’t mature as a person, things like high heels and lipstick aren’t going to help you, and alcohol just lowers your inhibitions and makes the immaturity more obvious. Maturity is a way of looking at things, assessing situations, and acting accordingly. It can be difficult to define, but you know it when you see someone living it, not just looking the part. Real adults don’t need to “act” like adults at all times because they aren’t “acting”; they’re just being themselves, confident that they are mature enough to handle what life throws at them along the way.

Posted on by TracyC

Cam Jansen and the Mystery at the Haunted House

Cam Jansen

#13 Cam Jansen and the Mystery at the Haunted House by David Adler, 1986, 1992.

Cam’s Aunt Katie and Uncle George take Cam and her friend Eric to an amusement park.  When they stop to buy food at the refreshment stand, Aunt Katie realizes that her wallet is missing.  She isn’t even sure exactly when it disappeared.  Cam thinks that someone stole her aunt’s wallet.  Who could have taken it?

Cam thinks at first that it might have been a couple of boys on roller skates who ran into her aunt earlier, but it wasn’t them.  Cam notices that another woman is complaining about a lost wallet and realizes that she had gone through the haunted house just before they did.  Someone in the haunted house is taking people’s wallets!

When they all go through the haunted house a second time, Cam figures out that a man dressed in black has been stealing people’s wallets.  When they went through the haunted house the first time, he jumped out at them, and they thought that he was just a part of the attraction meant to scare them.  She spots the man leaving the haunted house and tells the park’s security guards.  Everyone gets their wallets back, and the park’s owner gives Cam four free passes to the park for a month.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Stolen Diamonds

Cam Jansen

#1 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Stolen Diamonds by David A. Adler, 1980.

This book is the first in the Cam Jansen series, introducing readers to her amazing photographic memory. Cam’s real name is Jennifer, but when people discovered her photographic memory, they started calling her “The Camera,” which was later shortened to Cam. When Cam wants to remember something, she says “click,” which she says is the sound that her mental camera makes.

While Cam is at the mall with her friend, Eric, and his baby brother, Howie, a jewelry store is robbed.  The thief got away with some diamonds.  Although the police caught the man who ran away from the scene of the crime, the people who witnessed the crime say that he was not the thief.  As Cam goes over the pictures in her mind, she realizes that something strange is going on.

Partly, Eric and Howie give Cam the clue that she needs to solve the mystery. Cam is an only child, but as she watches Eric taking care of Howie, she realizes how much stuff a baby needs. Howie has an entire diaper bag full of supplies. However, a couple who left the jewelry store earlier appeared to have only a baby in a blanket and a rattle. Cam realizes that a couple with a real baby should have been carrying more than that.

The man and woman with the “baby” were the running man’s accomplices. It was that man who actually committed the crime.  The other man who ran was a distraction.  The couple carried a doll and pretended it was their baby.  They hid the diamonds in the baby’s rattle.  Cam realizes that they were strange because they didn’t have a diaper bag or anything else with them that parents would normally carry around for their baby, like the bag that Eric’s mother has for Howie. 

Cam and Eric follow the thieves to their hideout and then get the police, although there is a tense scene where Cam is caught by the thieves, and she must hide with Howie until the police arrive.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Norma Jean, Jumping Bean

NormaJeanJumpingBean

Norma Jean, Jumping Bean by Joanna Cole, 1987.

Norma Jean, a kangaroo, loves to jump!  She goes hopping and jumping everywhere, all the time.

NormaJeanJumpSchool

It’s pretty normal for a young kangaroo, but it sometimes causes problems.  She keeps wanting to jump when her teacher wants her to sit still and and listen.  Sometimes, accidents happen because she’s jumping around.

NormaJeanLunch

Without meaning to, she sometimes plays too rough with her friends because she has so much energy.  One day, when her friends stop wanting to play with her after a series of disasters, Norma Jean decides that the only thing to do is to give up jumping.  It makes her sad, but she doesn’t want to be thought of as a rough, clumsy klutz, who can’t sit still – a jumping bean.

NormaJeanSad

But, with the school’s field day coming up, Norma Jean realizes that jumping is okay, at certain times and certain places.

NormaJeanFieldDay

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Sixteen and Away from Home

Sixteen and Away from Home by Arleta Richardson, 1985.

The year is 1889. Mabel O’Dell turns 16 years old at the beginning of the book, and her mother gives her a journal as a present. Soon, she and her best friend, Sarah Jane Clark, will be starting the final years of their education at the academy in town. Mabel worries about going to the academy, first whether they’ll pass the entrance exams, and then whether they’ll be homesick because they will have to board in town. Sarah Jane assures her that it will be okay because they’ll be going together, and they’ll probably be too busy at school to think about homesickness much. Mabel’s mother is a little worried about the foolishness that young women can get into when they’re on their own. However, the girls do pass their exams and are admitted to the academy, and their parents agree to let them go.

In town, the girls will be staying with Sarah Jane’s Aunt Rhoda. Aunt Rhoda’s housekeeper, Lettie, seems to resent the girls being there for reasons they don’t understand. When school begins, the girls are shocked to learn that they’ll have to wear bloomers for “physical culture” classes. The teacher gives them a sewing pattern so they can make the uniform themselves. The girls imagine that their parents would be shocked to see them running around without skirts on. Fortunately, Mabel and Sarah Jane will have all the same classes, along with all of the other first year students. They have to take Grammar and Rhetoric, Biology, Latin, History, Calculus, and Physical Culture (physical education or PE).

They also quickly realize that the class troublemaker is going to be Clarice Owens, who unfortunately sits near Mabel because they all sit in alphabetical order by last name. Clarice deliberately picks on Mabel and Sarah Jane for coming from the countryside, calling them “hayseeds.” Mabel is disgusted because she can never think of a good comeback until after Clarice walks away. (Yeah, I’ve been there before.) Sarah Jane thinks she’s jealous of Mabel for being prettier. Mabel doesn’t really believe that, but she appreciates the thought. Molly, one of the other town girls, is friendlier. She says that she knows Clarice has always thought she was better than everyone, but she’s not usually this deliberately mean. Mabel says that maybe it would help if they knew the reason.

Through the rest of the school year, Clarice tries one scheme after another to cause trouble for the girls, especially Mabel. Mabel tries to be as patient as she can with Clarice, trying to let her know that she’d rather be a friend than an enemy, but Clarice gets angry and upset when Mabel tells her that she forgives her for all the awful stuff she does. Mabel thinks that there’s something hurting Clarice and affecting her behavior, although Molly tells her that she shouldn’t waste her sympathy on Clarice because “she gets what she wants.” Molly thinks that they should just be grateful for those times when Clarice isn’t immediately stepping on them to get what she wants because that happens, too.

When Mabel is injured in a sledding accident and has to stay in bed for awhile, she worries about falling behind in her classes. Lettie talks to her and brings into question the reason why she’s so concerned about her standing in class. Is it really because she loves learning, or is it because she’s trying to compete with the other students? Mabel starts to consider how too much competitiveness can spoil a person’s attitude and take the enjoyment out of things. Competition has much to do with Clarice and her attitude.

Things get worse when Clarice’s grandmother becomes ill and her parents arrange for her to stay in the house with Mabel and Sarah Jane while they go to see her grandmother. Clarice is rude to the servants in Aunt Rhoda’s house and sneaks out of the house during the night. Lettie tells the girls that Clarice’s mother was strong-willed as a girl, and she’s given a lot of her attitude to Clarice. There was a boy that Clarice’s mother had always wanted for herself, but he married someone else. Although Clarice’s mother also married and had a child, she never completely got over losing her first choice to someone else. Since the man she originally loved has a son the age of her daughter, Russell Bradley, she might be hoping that Clarice will marry him. Clarice certainly is interested is Russ … who is apparently more interested in Mabel.

Mabel considers that allowing Clarice to be with Russ and not trying to compete with her would help settle things between them, but as Sarah Jane says, Russ’s feelings on the issue matter. To get the most out of her education, Mabel needs to focus on her love of learning instead of comparing herself to her classmates, and to get the most out of their relationships with other people, all of the girls need to focus on caring about other people and their feelings.

The book is part of the Grandma’s Attic series. It is available to borrow and fread for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

The problem with Clarice and her mother and their attitudes and expectations is that they do not take anyone else’s feelings into account other than their own and don’t even inform people of what they really want, yet they expect everyone else to somehow accommodate their wishes and feel toward them exactly how they want them to feel. These are not reasonable expectations at all. For most of the book, Mabel is completely unaware that Clarice’s meanness comes from the fact that she sees her as competition, and even then, it’s not really clear at first what Clarice is trying to compete for. Mabel didn’t ask or agree to be Clarice’s competitor in anything, and she’s not even trying to be. In fact, she’s been trying everything that she can to avoid it. Russ also apparently has no idea what Clarice is really after because he doesn’t have the same feelings about Clarice that she has about him. He’s just trying to live his life and focus on his own feelings and interests, and as far as he’s concerned, Clarice doesn’t really enter into it. Russ has no obligations to Clarice and her mother, and even Mabel doesn’t have the right to tell him how to feel or what to do to get rid of Clarice’s ire.

When Clarice pulls one last trick on Mabel, and she still forgives her, Clarice finally tells her that she gives up because, “You can’t go on disliking someone who refuses to be disliked.” I have to admit that I found the end to be a bit unbelievable. I’ve never encountered anybody who was that much of a pain and who ever let someone else’s kind behavior stand in the way being a pain. The response that I’ve usually seen is that they congratulate themselves on finding someone who’s never going to fight back and use that opportunity to run roughshod over them. They usually blame the kind person for making it easy to take advantage of them. As even the book says, people cannot decide how anyone else should feel or force them to feel anything in particular. It just doesn’t work. Mabel cannot “refuse to be disliked” because what Clarice likes or dislikes is all in her own mind. All that Mabel can decide is how she feels and what she’s going to do about it.

What Mabel really does decide is that, whether she likes or dislikes Clarice, she’s not going to compete with her and try to fight or match her meanness. It isn’t so much a matter of likes and dislikes in the end as Clarice discovering that she’s running a race with no other runners. If there’s no one to race against, there isn’t really a race at all, and no one cares if you walk off with the trophy or not. Maybe there was never even a trophy there to begin with.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times, I don’t like bullying or one-upmanship, and I have no interest in sympathizing with anyone who does those things. Part of the trouble I have with overly-competitive personality traits is the same trouble that actors sometimes suffer when they’re out in public: they don’t always know when to stop acting, stop posing, or stop performing. Overly-competitive people don’t know went to stop competing. Where does the one-upmanship end and the human person actually begin? Or is that their personality all by itself? Do they have any interests outside of being competitive, or are they only about competition just for the sake of competition? Do they wan to be good at something for a purpose or because they just love it, like the love of learning, or is everything they do just about trying to look better than someone? I was reading this article recently, about how trying to keep up an image all the time too often leads to a person having no real substance or sense of self.

By herself, Clarice doesn’t present much to connect with or sympathize with. Clarice doesn’t really seem like a real person to me. She’s rather a one-dimensional character. This is a problem with a lot of bullies in children’s books. She apparently has very generic family issues that are supposed to explain her behavior with little insight into how she really feels about anything. At least, that was how she seemed to me. The explanation behind these family issues comes from a youthful romantic trauma of her mother’s, but what does that really mean to Clarice herself? She seems to have some kind of fear of being second-best, possibly because her mother has pushed her in that direction, but again, we return to the question of second-best at what? Is it that she fears being rejected by classmates or potential boyfriends, or does she fear not living up to her mother’s expectations? If her mother is still pining for her first boyfriend, what does that say about her parents’ relationship with each other? Does her mother view her own husband as second-best, the consolation prize in the contest of life, and what does that mean for Clarice’s relationship with her father? What does Clarice really want out of life and what, specifically does she want to be the best at doing? The idea of romance with Russell may be wish-fulfillment for her mother, but what do she and Russell really have in common? What does she have in common with anybody, when we mainly see her in competition with everyone?

I wouldn’t have nearly as much patience with her as Mabel because, when it comes right down to it, I wouldn’t see Clarice’s friendship as a prize worth winning. Mabel went through quite a lot to get through to Clarice, but her efforts only pay off right before the end of the book, so we don’t really see much of what Clarice is like after she says that she’s giving up the competitive mean girl act. Apparently, Mabel will get the benefit of not having to put up with Clarice’s mean tricks from now on, which is something, but if Clarice isn’t being mean and sneaky, what is she? Who is she, really?

In real life, people have hobbies, interests, and life goals, but Clarice doesn’t seem to have much that really interests her. Are Clarice’s goals really hers or her mother’s, as they hint? What does Clarice want, or has she even thought about what she wants? In modern times, a sixteen-year-old still has years of education ahead of her because more people attend college these days, but once Clarice finishes at the academy in town, her education is likely over. She only has a couple of years left to think about a direction for her life before she has to get on and live it as a full adult. Even if her destiny seems to be someone’s wife and mother, connecting with someone emotionally to the point where they would want to be married and sharing a life with her would be difficult for someone who has no real interests to connect to or a sense of how to build a shared life with someone else. For a while, she seemed to do well at memorizing the reading from Alice in Wonderland that she was going to perform with Mabel at the end of the school year, but that was just another part of her tricks so that she could back out at the last minute and let Mabel down. It was all part of an act by itself. Does Clarice really like acting? Does she like books? Does she like anything?

Clarice doesn’t even seem to have any close friends of her own, which is very unlike the real-life bullies I’ve known. Most of them do have friends and hangers-on who enjoy their mean humor (the thing that often binds them together and bolsters their bad behavior) or who put up with it because of some other benefit they get from that friendship, but Clarice doesn’t seem to have anybody and isn’t really offering anything. It just doesn’t seem realistic and makes me feel like Clarice is there mostly to be the cardboard cut-out of a nemesis. That may be why she gives up so easily in the end.

I would have found her change more believable if Russ had straight-up told her that her mean tricks and selfish attitude are the reasons why he doesn’t like her and isn’t interested in her. That would have been motivation for Clarice to change because it would give her both something to lose by not changing (Russ and others getting angry and saying they’ve had enough of her attitude) and something to gain by taking on different habits (like the possibility that Russ might change his mind if she can demonstrate that she can do as many unselfish deeds as Mabel, something that might actually appeal to Clarice’s competitive personality). I would also have found it believable if Clarice changed her mind about Russ because she ultimately realized that Russ is what her mother wants for her, not what she wants for herself, and that there are other possibilities that she likes better. I would also have liked it if Clarice had been planning to back out on the reading of Alice in Wonderland in order to ruin the presentation for Mabel but changed her mind at the last minute because she realized that she loves the story or performing so much that she just can’t bring herself to miss the event, that she has found something that she loves doing more than causing problems for someone else. Reassessing the consequences of behavior or finding different goals are the kinds of self-motivation that provoke real people to change.

On the other hand, maybe the real issue is Clarice has sensed that she’s fighting a losing battle for Russ, and as Sarah Jane noted, you can’t control the way other people feel. If Russ doesn’t love Clarice, he’s just not going to love her. Perhaps she can tell, even when he’s with her, that he’s not thinking of her and just isn’t going to be interested in her the way she is with him. There’s only so much effort that a person can pour into getting someone’s attention before it starts to get really awkward when they don’t get the attention they’re looking for. Even if Russ doesn’t spell it out for her, she can probably tell that she doesn’t want to be with someone who clearly doesn’t want to be with her. Clarice still might not know quite what she really wants yet, but she might have figured out that’s one thing she doesn’t want, to be with someone who doesn’t think of her as his first choice or even much of a choice at all. All along, she’s been trying to compete with someone who doesn’t even want to compete for a prize that doesn’t want to be won by her because he’s already picking another winner. It brings us back to the idea of one person attempting to run a race all alone. It’s not really a race, it’s just one person running down the street, getting sweaty and tired, with no real prize to win, and who is there to care when they start or stop? That might actually be the most believable explanation of them all.

The books in this series have Christian themes, including this one. As the characters discuss the problem of Clarice and other situations, they often turn to the Bible for inspiration, sometimes discussing specific quotes that relate to the concepts they consider, like forgiveness and revenge.

On a fun note, I liked the description of the Halloween party activities. I was born around Halloween, and I often have a Halloween-themed birthday party. I’m sometimes fascinated by the traditions of Halloweens past. In the book, they call it a Halloween party, but the activities are more harvest-themed than spooky. They bob for apples and run races with apples balanced on their heads, and they also play tug-of-war and Skip to My Lou.

Posted on by TracyC

Samantha Saves the Day

American Girls

Samantha Saves the Day by Valerie Tripp, 1988.

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

Samantha and her family are spending the summer at their summer home at Piney Point. Besides Grandmary, Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia will be there. Cornelia has also brought her younger sisters, a set of twins named Agnes and Agatha. They are close in age to Samantha. Grandmary’s friend, Admiral Archibald Beemis, is also visiting from England.

The family’s summer home isn’t just a single house. They have a lodge in the style of a log cabin and separate guest cottages. This summer, Samantha and the twins will get a cottage to themselves with no adults. The girls have fun exploring the area around the lake together. However, there is one place that Samantha is afraid to go, the island in the lake called Teardrop Island. The only way to get to the island is by boat, and there are sharp, treacherous rocks in that part of the lake. That was where Samantha’s parents had their boating accident and drowned during a storm. To Samantha, Teardrop Island is a place of sadness and danger.

One rainy day, the three girls go up to the attic of the lodge to look for more paintbrushes so they can paint pictures. In the attic, they find old clothes and pictures of Samantha’s family. They also find Samantha’s mother’s old sketch book, labeled “Happy Memories of Teardrop Island.” In the sketch book, she drew pictures of Samantha and her father as they had picnics and played by a waterfall. Samantha was a very young child at the time, and she has no memories of having been on the island with her parents. From the pictures, it looks like it used to be her family’s favorite place.

Seeing the pictures makes Samantha want to visit the island once more, hoping to bring back memories of her earlier visits and her parents. The next day, the three girls go out to the island and try to find the places that Samantha’s mother drew in her book. Teardrop Island turns out to be a beautiful place, and Samantha loves it. The more time she spends there, the more she feels like she has been there before, although her memories are vague and dream-like.

However, the girls forgot to tie up their boat, and they find themselves stranded on the island! A storm comes, and the girls are afraid. When the Admiral tries to come out to the island to help them, he is injured, and the girls realize that they are going to have to find a way to save him! Can they make it home through the storm, or will they meet the same fate as Samantha’s parents?

In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about how people would spend their summers during the early 1900s. Wealthy families like Samantha’s would go to summer homes in the countryside to escape the heat of the cities.

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