Posted on by TracyC

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick

HarrisBurdick

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg, 1984.

Harris Burdick isn’t exactly a mystery story, not even really a story exactly, but it is mysterious.  Most of the book is pictures, and that’s kind of the point.  The premise of the book is that a mysterious stranger known only as Harris Burdick approached a publisher about some stories that he had written and illustrated.  As examples of his work, he gave the publisher a collection of illustrations he had done for each of his stories with accompanying captions.  The publisher loved the illustrations, but Harris Burdick didn’t keep his appointment to bring in the complete stories the next day.  When the publisher tried to contact him about the stories, he was never able to find Harris Burdick and never heard from him again.  However, the publisher continued to be intrigued by the pictures and wondered what the stories were like, so his children and their friends wrote their own stories about them.  The pictures are therefore presented as a collection, and readers are invited to imagine the stories that they are part of.

HarrisBurdickAnotherPlace

I remember one of my teachers using this book as part of a writing exercise, having us each choose a picture and write the accompanying story as we imagined it.  Over the years, I’ve changed my mind about which picture is my favorite.

HarrisBurdickLibrary

I thought for awhile that “The House on Maple Street” could have inspired the author himself in writing Zathura, the sequel to his other book, Jumanji, although there is apparently no direct link between the two.

HarrisBurdickHouse

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.  There is also a collection of stories called The Chronicles of Harris Burdick in which well-known authors present their own versions of each of the stories.

HarrisBurdickVenice

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Jumanji

Jumanji

Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg, 1981.

Judy and Peter, a brother and sister, are left home alone while their parents go to an opera. In spite of their parents’ warning not to make a mess because they’ll be bringing guests by later, the kids scatter all of their toys around while playing. Then, the kids go to the park to play for awhile, and they find a board game labeled Jumanji with a note that the game is free to anyone who wants to play it. Judy and Peter decide to give the game a try and take it home.

JumanjiPark

Jumanji turns out to be a kind of race game. Players are supposed to make their way down a path through a jungle, facing all kinds of dangers, until someone reaches the golden city of Jumanji. The instructions warn them that once a game has begun, it will not be over until one of the players reaches Jumanji.

JumanjiGameStart

At first, Peter thinks that the game is boring and easy, but it soon becomes apparent that things that happen in the board game are starting to happen in real life when a live lion suddenly appears after an encounter with one on the game board.  Peter is scared and wants to stop playing, but Judy reminds him that they can’t stop because the game won’t end until one of them reaches the end of the path on the game board. Until the game ends, they’re stuck with the lion and anything else that happens to appear because of the game. They have no choice but to keep playing, facing each danger as wild animals rampage through their house.

JumanjiLion

Chris Van Allsburg books always have amazing illustrations, and the pictures in this book are especially good!  At the end of the book, the children see two other children find the game, which leads to the sequel, Zathura.

JumanjiRhino

There is a movie version of this book, but the movie differs greatly from the original story. In the movie, the two kids were friends, not brother and sister, and the boy ends up trapped in the game for a period of years until, finally, a new set of kids starts playing and helps the original players to finish their game.  When their game ends, the original children are returned to their own time, and no one but them knows that they were ever gone.  Things turn out better for the future children as well because the older players make things better for everyone in their own time.  There were no players stuck in the game in the original book, and everything takes place during a single day.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

JumanjiParents

Posted on by TracyC

The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline

The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline

The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline by Lois Lowry, 1983.

Eleven-year-old Caroline Tate knows that she wants to be a paleontologist when she grows up, but she is also fascinated with her friend Stacy’s dream of becoming a great investigative reporter. For fun, the two girls begin investigating the people who live in their respective apartment buildings.

Caroline’s investigation focuses on the mysterious Frederick Fiske, who lives on the fifth floor of her building. In a wastebasket, she finds a letter written to him by a man she’s never heard of telling him to “eliminate the kids.” Also in the wastebasket, there is an overdue notice for Fiske from the library, and the book is about poisons. From this evidence, Caroline comes to believe that the strange Mr. Fiske is planning to murder some children.

The situation becomes worse when Mr. Fiske begins dating her divorced mother, and Caroline fears that the children Mr. Fiske is planning to murder are her and her brother, J.P.. Can Caroline, J.P., and Stacy prove that Mr. Fiske is a cold-blooded murderer before his relationship with the Caroline’s mother can go any further and before he succeeds in poisoning them?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers:

It’s a bit of a spoiler, but this is one of those stories where the mystery is largely based on a series of misunderstandings. The book is a comedy mystery.  Mr. Fiske isn’t really a murderer, although he has done some things which make the children suspicious.  It’s a humorous story, and the kids’ antics as they try to further their investigation and collect “evidence” against Mr. Fiske are hilarious.  Along the way, the kids end up helping Mr. Fiske with a problem he’s been having, and the kids realize that they’ve made a mistake about him and his intentions.  Whether Mr. Fiske learns of their suspicions about him or not is left to the imagination, although something at the very end of the story may bring everything out into the open.

The title of the book comes from a joke between Caroline and her mother.  Caroline’s mother is always talking about the things she loves about Caroline, giving them different numbers.

Posted on by TracyC

Who Stole Kathy Young?

KathyYoungWho Stole Kathy Young? by Margaret Goff Clark, 1980.

Kathy Young has had her share of problems.  Her mother died a year and a half ago, and now, her father has a housekeeper with a sour personality.  A couple of months after her mother’s death, Kathy was seriously ill, and her illness caused her to lose most of her hearing.  She now depends on a hearing aid and her improving lip-reading and sign language abilities.

This summer, Kathy’s best friend, Meg, is staying with her while her parents are on a trip to Switzerland.  Meg was of great help to Kathy when she was trying to adjust to her hearing loss, practicing sign language with her during her special lessons.  Kathy’s dream is to become an artist, but Meg now wants to be a teacher for the deaf, like the teacher who taught Kathy.  Kathy is still very unsure of her abilities to cope with her deafness.  She had the opportunity to attend a special art workshop over the summer but passed it up because she was worried about whether she would be able to communicate with and understand her teacher and the other students, and she knew Meg couldn’t attend to help her.

Kathy has been enjoying Meg’s summer visit, but the girls have noticed something odd.  It seems like a couple of strangers, a man and a woman, have been hanging around everywhere they go.  Meg is worried about it, but Kathy doesn’t want to worry her father.  She thinks that they’re probably tourists, like the housekeeper said.  They nickname the strangers Heron and Toad because of their appearances.

One day, Kathy is kidnapped!  Some men in a van stop to ask her directions and when she tries to explain where they have to go, they pull her inside and drug her!  Meg witnesses the kidnapping, but is standing too far away to help Kathy.

When Kathy wakes up from being drugged, she finds herself on a boat.  Her abductors have cut her hair and changed her shirt to disguise her from anyone who might spot her.  They’ve also taken her hearing aid, hoping to render her helpless and keep her from finding out their plans because she can’t hear them.  However, Kathy isn’t as helpless as they think.  She can still read lips, and she can still think.

Kathy learns to rely on herself and her own wits as she tries to gather as much information as she can about her kidnappers and to figure out how she can save herself.  Through this experience, she develops more self-confidence, realizing that she can do more and handle more than she had thought was possible.

While Kathy is struggling in captivity and her father is dealing with the police and the ransom demand, her friend Meg is trying desperately to find her.  The story alternates viewpoints between the two girls as Meg aids the investigation into Kathy’s disappearance and puts together clues that Kathy leaves for her as her abductors move her from place to place.  The mastermind behind the kidnapping plot is closer to home than they think.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Haunting at Cliff House

HauntingCliffHouseThe Haunting at Cliff House by Karleen Bradford, 1985.

This is a relatively short chapter book, but suspenseful, thoughtful, and well-written.

When her father inherits an old house in Wales from a distant relative, Alison, a young teenager, finds out that he plans for the two of them to spend the summer there.  Alison’s father is a university professor and is writing a book, and he thinks that the house in Wales sounds like a great place for him to get some writing done while he and Alison have a look at his new inheritance.  Alison isn’t enthusiastic about the trip, but she and her father are very close, especially because she lost her mother at a very young age.  Besides, the only place she could stay in Canada would be with her grandmother, and her grandmother didn’t seem enthusiastic about having her.

From the moment they arrive at the old house, called Pen-y-Craig or Cliff House by the locals, Alison has a bad feeling about it.  It stands on a lonely cliff by a small town.  The carved dragon over the door gives her the creeps, and there is something disturbing about a particular room in the house.  Sometimes, she can almost hear a voice calling out to her, and she has visions of another girl, about her age.  At first, she tries to tell herself that it’s all her imagination, but it soon becomes obvious that it’s not.

Some of the local people know that the house has an unhappy history, and Alison eventually learns that the great-aunt that her father inherited it from even refused to live there during her last years because it disturbed her too much.  A little more examination of the room that had disturbed her helps Alison discover the reason why.  After having a vision of a young girl hiding something behind a brick in the fireplace of one of the bedrooms, Alison searches the spot and finds a diary dating from 1810, written by a girl named Bronwen, who was the same age as Alison.  Like Alison, Bronwen was brought to the house by her widowed father and was unhappy about it, but those aren’t the only parallels between Bronwen’s life and Alison’s.

Alison becomes uncomfortable with her father’s new friendship with a Welsh neighbor, Meiriona.  Alison likes Meiriona’s younger brother, Gareth, but when it looks like her father’s friendship with Meiriona is turning into romance, Alison becomes jealous and fears changes in her close relationship with her father, a situation that mirrors Bronwen’s life when her father falls in love with her governess, Catrin.  Although Meiriona tries to be nice to Alison, Alison can’t bring herself to like her, and she argues with her father about it.

The only person who seems to understand her feelings at all is Gareth, and Alison confides her worries in him, both about Meiriona and about Bronwen, whose spirit keeps calling out to Alison to help her, although Alison doesn’t know how.  She struggles to read through the diary, whose pages are not all legible anymore because they’re damaged with age, to learn what happened to Bronwen and what Bronwen wants her to do now.  Gareth tries to reassure Alison that her father’s relationship with Meiriona will not be as bad as Alison thinks.  He thinks that the relationship would be good for both Alison’s father and Meiriona because they are both lonely, and he doesn’t think that Alison should worry about losing her father because he’s not worried about losing his sister, even if she goes to Canada to study and spend more time with Alison’s father.  At first, Alison isn’t comforted by these reassurances.  However, Gareth agrees that the matter of the ghost is serious, and he can feel her presence as well. Gareth warns Alison to be cautious about the ghost but to try to help if she can and to call out to him if she’s ever in danger.  Alison would really rather just go home to Canada, run away from her father and Meiriona, and forget the whole thing about Bronwen, but history seems to be repeating itself, and Bronwen’s voice calls out to her insistently for help that only Alison can give.

It’s a bit of a spoiler, telling you this, but although Alison at first thinks that the diary ends with Bronwen killing herself in despair, thinking that her father only loved Catrin and not her and that there was nothing left for her to live for, the truth is that Bronwen’s suicide attempt didn’t succeed and that she made another mistake that she wants Alison to help her to change.  Bronwen attempted to kill herself by going to a cave by the sea during a terrible storm, planning to allow herself to drown, but when the water started rising, she became too frightened and decided to leave by a secret entrance to the cave.  Not knowing that Bronwen was safe, Catrin attempted to save her and drowned in the cave herself.  As Bronwen was climbing to safety, she heard Catrin calling for her but was too frightened of the storm and angry at Catrin to go back for her.  Although Bronwen lived on after the incident, she could never get rid of her guilt at Catrin’s death, realizing that, even in the middle of her resentment toward Catrin, Catrin loved her more than she knew, even to the point of giving up her own life while attempting to save hers.

Now, the anniversary of Catrin’s death is approaching, and so is a storm very much like the one that killed her.  At the top of the cliff by the cave, Alison finds her time merging with Bronwen’s, and she will only have one chance to help Bronwen make the right decision the second time around.  Helping Bronwen to prevent the worst mistake of her life and to make a better choice also helps Alison to reconsider her own choices and future.  Just as Bronwen misjudged Catrin, Alison may have also misjudged Meiriona. Instead of losing her father or being forced to accept a poor substitute for her mother, Alison may be gaining a kind of sister who will love her more than she realizes.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Root Cellar

RootCellarThe Root Cellar by Janet Lunn, 1981.

Rose Larkin is an orphan, living with her grandmother, a stern businesswoman.  Her grandmother travels frequently on business, so from the time Rose came to her when she was three years old, she just took Rose with her wherever she traveled, tutoring her in school subjects in the evening after work.  Rose’s early life is largely one of travel to strange places and isolation.  When her grandmother is working, Rose is pretty much left to her own devices, often either reading alone in their hotel rooms or exploring strange cities by herself.  Not going to school, she has no friends her own age and doesn’t really know how to behave around other children or live as part of a normal family.

When her grandmother dies suddenly of a heart attack in Paris when Rose is twelve years old, her remaining relatives have to decide what to do with her.  She temporarily stays with aunts who are into fashion and high living before goes to live with another aunt and uncle and their boys on an old farm.  Aunt Nan (Rose’s father’s sister) and her husband are better suited to caring for Rose and can give her a more settled family life, but Rose’s other relatives don’t seem to think much of Aunt Nan, who is an author of children’s books.  Rose has heard that Aunt Nan has no sense and that the family has just moved to a shabby little farm house in Canada.  Rose is prepared not to be happy there, on a dumpy little farm, miles from anywhere, with a bunch of strange people.

Her new life gets off to a bad start when there is no one to meet her at the house when she arrives.  As she waits for her aunt and uncle to return, a strange old woman appears who seems to know her.  She calls herself Mrs. Morrisay and acts like she belongs to the house.  But, when Rose’s relatives arrive home, Mrs. Morrisay suddenly disappears, and none of them seem to know anything about her.  Later, Rose sees a girl making a bed upstairs, but her relatives just laugh when Rose asks them about the maid, which is who Rose thought the girl was.  There is no maid in this house, and Rose is the only girl.  To Rose’s annoyance, her relatives think she imagined the whole thing.

Actually, life in her aunt and uncle’s house in the country isn’t as bad as her other aunt has lead her to believe, but becoming part of their household isn’t easy because Rose is used to a very different kind of life.  The house is definitely old and in bad need of repair, and her relatives are noisy and disorganized, at least more so than Rose is accustomed to.  Rose isn’t used to the chaotic life of a family with a lot of children, and Aunt Nan has another on the way.  Also, tourists who are fans of Aunt Nan’s books sometimes stop by the house, and Rose doesn’t like dealing with their scrutiny and questions.  Sam, one of the older boys in the family, seems to resent Rose’s presence in the house, and Rose overhears him saying a lot of bad things about her to her aunt, calling her snobby and criticizing her appearance.  Rose takes his attitude as further evidence that she doesn’t really belong in their house and that she’ll never fit in.  If they think badly of her, why should she think any better of them?

Rose also becomes increasingly aware that there is something not quite normal about her relatives’ house, especially the old root cellar, and the people she saw on her first day in the house are part of it.  Sam thought that he might have seen a ghost in the house one day, an old woman, and Rose recognizes his description as that of the Mrs. Morrisay she saw on her first day there.  She sees Mrs. Morrisay in her bedroom later, suddenly walking through a wall.  Rose thinks Mrs. Morrisay is a ghost, but Mrs. Morrisay tells her that she’s not dead, just “shifting” through time and that she wants Rose to stay in the house and help restore it to its former glory.  Rose doesn’t know why or how she can possibly help Mrs. Morrisay.

Rose learns that her aunt’s house was once an old farm house that belonged to the Morrisay family, and there is still an old root cellar on the property, a relic from the time when people had to store certain kinds of food underground to keep them cool and prevent them from spoiling.  One day, Rose goes down into the root cellar and meets a mysterious girl dressed in old-fashioned clothes, the same girl she saw earlier, making beds.  Although Rose and the other girl don’t realize it immediately, Rose has gone back in time.  The girl was someone who lived on the farm in the past, during the 1800s.

Rose and the girl in the past, Susan Anderson, become friends, and Rose is grateful for another girl to talk to.  Susan is an orphan herself, living with the Morrisay family as a servant girl.  She and Will Morrisay, old Mrs. Morrisay’s son, are friends, and both of them are sympathetic to Rose when she tells them about her new life with her relatives and the problems she has. Rose finds herself wishing that she could stay in the past with them forever.  However, once they realize that Rose is traveling through time when she goes in the root cellar, they also discover that it isn’t reliable about exactly when Rose will reappear in the past.  Although at first there are only days between Rose’s visits from her perspective, months or years pass in her friends’ lives between her visits.  They eventually manage to solve this problem through a friendship pact where they exchange favorite objects.  It’s at a good time, too, because soon Rose’s friends need her help as much as Rose needs them.

After a terrible fight with her relatives in which her aunt slips and falls and Rose worries that her aunt and the baby might die, Rose runs away to the root cellar and goes to see her friends, discovering that in their time, Will has gone away to fight in the American Civil War alongside his favorite cousin and has not returned.  It’s been awhile since Susan has heard from him, and she fears the worst.  Rose suggests that they go to look for Will at his last known location, but it’s a difficult, perilous journey. At first, they’re not sure whether they’ll find Will alive or not.

When they finally find Will, he is a changed man from the war, and Rose and Susan have to help him to remember who he really is and where he really belongs.  In helping Will to remember where he comes from, his life before the war, and how much Susan needs him, Rose comes to realize some important things about herself and where she really belongs.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

As difficult as the choice is, Rose realizes that she must return to her own time, face the consequences of her earlier actions, and do what she can to become a real member of her new family.  After she returns home and the root cellar is destroyed in a storm, it seems as though she might never see her friends from the past again, but friendship can transcend many boundaries, including time.

I didn’t realize this the first time I read the book, but it’s actually part of a loose trilogy.  I say loose because none of the main characters from each story appear in the others (except, perhaps, for one who is in both the second and third books), which also take place in different time periods.  What binds the stories together is the location where the stories take place and also some distant family relations, particularly focusing on the Anderson and Morrisay families.

It is something of a spoiler, but it seems that the time travel in this story may not be so much a matter of the house being special or magical, but because Susan is special.  It is revealed in one of the other books, Shadow in Hawthorn Bay, that her grandmother was psychic.  Will and Susan briefly refer to Susan’s grandmother and her stories about ghosts when talking to Rose.  Susan seems to have little control, especially later in life, over her ability to shift through time, but it may be her special attachment to the Morrisay house and her need for Rose’s friendship and help that makes Rose’s time travel possible.  It’s never explicitly stated that Susan inherited her abilities from her grandmother, but I think that it is implied during the course of the books.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Merry Christmas From Eddie

MerryChristmasEddie

Merry Christmas From Eddie by Carolyn Haywood, 1986.

This is a collection of short stories, most of which involve one of Haywood’s favorite characters, Eddie.  Eddie is often full of big ideas and is eager to get involved in new projects.  Although this book was written in the 1980s, aspects of it seem more like Christmas in the 1950s in a fairly small town.  A few of the stories at the end focus around a special children’s program that the kids take part in.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Stories in the Book:

Merry Christmas from Eddie Fire EngineEddie’s Christmas Card

Eddie loves the decorations down at the used car lot, especially the fire engine with Santa Claus at the wheel.  Eddie thinks it would be great if his father could take a picture of him sitting next to Santa Claus so he can use copies of it as Christmas cards, but a surprise snow storm changes his plans.

How Santa Claus Delivered Presents

Every year, there’s a large public Christmas party at the town hall, and children from the local children’s shelter are invited and given presents.  This year, Eddie’s father is in charge of the celebration. Mr. Ward is loaning the fire engine from his car lot for transporting the presents, but they need some extra help transporting the extra-large Christmas tree.

Christmas Is Coming

Eddie and Boodles go Christmas shopping.  Boodles wants to get a pet bird for his mother, and Eddie has decided to buy a small present for a little boy on his street who has a broken arm.  Then, Eddie ends up winning a prize for being the ten thousandth child to enter the department store.  It solves the problem of what to buy for the little boy, but getting it home isn’t going to be easy.

Merry Christmas from Eddie TreeHow the Christmas Tree Fell Over

Eddie is old enough to figure out that his father is the one who puts the presents under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, eats the cookies they leave out, and leaves a thank you note from Santa.  This year, he gets a funny idea: he’ll leave extra presents under the tree for everyone and a second thank you note for the cookies and make everyone wonder where they came from.  But, his brilliant idea doesn’t quite go as planned.

Christmas Bells for Eddie

Eddie regrets that he never joined the school orchestra now that he’s learned that they will be performing for a Christmas program on television.  His mother suggests that Eddie could sing, but he says that the singing parts have gone to Anna Patricia’s cousin, L.C..  Then, Eddie’s father gives him an early Christmas present that will allow him to join the orchestra after all.

Merry Christmas from Eddie Christmas ProgramThe Christmas Concert

L.C. is spoiled and refuses to sing unless they give him chocolate-covered marshmallows.

New Toys from Old

Eddie’s third grade class is collecting and repairing old toys to be given as presents to the children at the children’s hospital.  Boodles has some fun making Anna Patricia think that Eddie painted the wrong colors on a doll’s face, and people question whether it was such a good idea to turn a nice white horse into a zebra.

The Christmas Program

Eddie has to be Little Boy Blue in the program that his class is putting on at the children’s hospital, but he has doubts about whether his old costume fits him well enough to get through the program.

The Mystery of the Christmas Cookies

Eddie’s mother plans to make some cookies for Eddie to give to his teacher, Mrs. Aprili, for Christmas, but a series of mistakes prevents him from giving those cookies to Mrs. Aprili.  Eddie finally gives up and orders some cookies from the bakery for her.  However, unbeknownst to Eddie, someone else tries to correct for his mistake and ends up creating a mystery for both Eddie and his teacher when a second batch of cookies unexpectedly arrives that is very different from both the cookies he ordered from the bakery and the ones his mother baked.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Biggest, Most Beautiful Christmas Tree

BiggestChristmasTree

The Biggest, Most Beautiful Christmas Tree by Amye Rosenberg, 1985.

This is a Little Golden Book.

Every year at Christmas, the Chipmunk children, Nina and Nutley, are disappointed because Santa doesn’t visit their home in a large fir tree in the forest.  They always hang up their stockings and put out cookies, but for some reason, Santa never comes.

BiggestChristmasTreeDisappointment

However, this year, their Aunt Mim has figured out the reason why Santa passes them by and what to do about it.  Aunt Mim has realized that Santa can’t find their tree because it looks like every other tree in the forest.  What they have to do is to decorate their tree so that Santa can find it among all the others.

Aunt Mim brings lots of things they can use as decoration, and all of the other animals who live in the tree help with the decorating.  They tie bows on the pine cones, hang strings of berries, and paint balloons to look like large Christmas tree ornaments.

BiggestChristmasTreeDecoration1
BiggestChristmasTreeDecoration2

Sure enough, once Santa knows how to find the Chipmunk children, they get the kind of Christmas they’ve been waiting for!

BiggestChristmasTreePresents

This is just a cute picture book that I liked when I was young.  It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Amelia Bedelia’s Family Album

ABFamilyAlbum

Amelia Bedelia’s Family Album by Peggy Parish, 1988.

Mr. and Mrs. Rogers realize that they’ve never met the rest of Amelia Bedelia’s family, so they tell her that they’d like to give a party for her and family. Amelia Bedelia is happy about the party and shows Mr. and Mrs. Rogers some pictures of her relatives.

It turns out that her tendency to be extremely literal is a family trait. Her father is a telephone operator who operates on telephones and her mother is a “loafer” who makes loaves of bread. One of her uncles is a “big-game hunter” and has a checkers set that takes up an entire room, and another “takes pictures” in the sense that he is basically an art thief.

With each relative introduced, readers can pause for a moment to consider what each of Amelia’s relatives do, in a very literal sense, based on Amelia’s description, before turning the page to confirm it.  (I kind of identify with the “bookkeeper” because my room looks kind of like that, for similar reasons.)

In this picture book, Amelia Bedelia isn’t doing any chores or getting confused about instructions, like in other books, but all the occupation-related puns have the same feel as Amelia’s routine misunderstandings about the multiple meanings of words from the rest of the series.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

ABAlbumReunion.jpg

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Merry Christmas, Amelia Bedelia

Merry Christmas Amelia Bedelia

Merry Christmas, Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish, 1986.

Christmas is coming, and once again, Mrs. Rogers has left a list of things for Amelia Bedelia to do while she goes to pick up her Aunt Myra, who is visiting for the holiday.

Leaving Amelia Bedelia unsupervised with a list of instructions can be dangerous at any time of the year, but this time, Amelia Bedelia is in the holiday spirit, determined to do her literal best to stuff stockings (with the same kind of stuffing you might use with a turkey), trim the tree (to the size that she thinks Mrs. Rogers would want it), deck it out with lights and balls (light bulbs and sports balls of all kinds), and find an appropriate star to put on top (and, you know, who wouldn’t want to be a star?).

Merry Christmas Amelia Bedelia Balls on Tree
Merry Christmas Amelia Bedelia Tree Star

So what will Aunt Myra think of Amelia’s special brand of literal kookiness? Fortunately, she loves the idea of being a star, too. Amelia Bedelia may be aggravating in the way she interprets the instructions given to her, but she’s also endearingly humorous . . . and she bakes a really good spice cake, too.

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

Merry Christmas Amelia Bedelia Aunt Myra