Prayers at Eastertime by Pamela Kennedy and Stephanie McFetridge Britt, 1989.
This was a present given to me one Easter many years ago, and I always liked it, especially because of the nice pictures. Some of the prayers and accompanying Bible quotes are specifically for Easter and springtime, but others are just more general.
There are multiple copies of this book available online through Internet Archive.
Happy Easter!
#4 Mandie and the Forbidden Attic by Lois Gladys Leppard, 1985.
Mandie is unhappy because her mother and Uncle John are sending her to a boarding school in Asheville. It is the same school her mother attended years ago, and her grandmother lives in the same town. Mandie is upset about leaving all of her friends and family behind, but Uncle Ned says that he will still visit her.
By the time that Mandie arrives at her new school, everyone else already knows each other, and none of them seem interested in making friends with her. One girl in particular, April Snow, takes a dislike to Mandie, which is difficult because they have been assigned to the same room.
Things change when Celia Hamilton comes to the school. She and Mandie become best friends, and Mandie is allowed to share a room with her. Then, strange things start happening. Mandie and Celia keep hearing strange noises during the night from the attic floor above them, and some of Mandie’s clothes disappear. At first, they suspect that April Snow may be playing a mean trick on them, but it turns out that she is not actually at fault. There is someone at the school who doesn’t belong, but finding this person may get Mandie and Celia into trouble.
This adventure requires Mandie to meet with her grandmother again. Mandie is nervous about seeing her grandmother because her grandmother helped break up her parents’ marriage and sent her away with her father when she was a baby. Surprisingly, Mandie’s grandmother seems to like her and her friend Celia. She admires their spirit and even says that Mandie reminds her a little of herself when she was young. This meeting helps the granddaughter and grandmother to make peace with each other and the past.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
#3 Mandie and the Ghost Bandits by Lois Gladys Leppard, 1984.
Mandie and her family are going to proceed with the plan to create a hospital for the Cherokees with the gold that they found in the cave. To do that, they need to take the gold to a bank in Asheville. They decide to take the gold secretly on a train. Uncle Ned stays in the baggage car to watch the gold as they set out on their journey.
When the kids decide to leave their car to go visit him, strange things begin to happen. They see riders dressed as ghosts out the window. Then, the car with Uncle Ned and the gold inside is disconnected from the rest of the train, crashing into a ravine. The train comes to a stop, and the kids jump off to see if they can help Uncle Ned.
Before they can find him, the train starts up again, leaving them behind, and they are taken prisoner by the mysterious ghost bandits. They are after the gold in the baggage car, but how did they know it was there when Mandie’s family tried so hard to keep it a secret? Mandie and her friends must escape and find the others before it is too late!
In some respects, I would call this more of an adventure story than a mystery, although there is still the question of how the bandits knew where the gold was in order to steal it.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
#2 Mandie and the Cherokee Legend by Lois Gladys Leppard, 1983.
Mandie is going to visit her Cherokee relatives with her mother and Uncle John. Mandie is eager to meet her relatives, and she hopes that they all like her. The Cherokees all knew her father well, and most of them are eager to meet her. All except for her cousin, Tsa’ni, that is.
Tsa’ni knows the stories of how white men have oppressed the Cherokees and forced them to move off of their land years ago, and he resents all white people because of it. The others tell him that he is wrong to hate all white people because of what some of them did in the past and that Mandie and her Uncle John are good people. However, Tsa’ni doesn’t listen to them, and he plays a mean trick on Mandie, Joe, and Uncle Ned’s granddaughter, Sallie. He offers to show them a cave, but then he abandons them inside.
The three kids have to find their own way out, but they discover a fortune in gold nuggets in the process. First, the children have to make it back to Uncle Ned’s house after a frightening night in the woods. Mandie, Joe, and Sallie accidentally stumble onto a still (machinery for making alcohol) that belongs to a white couple while they are wandering around in the woods after leaving the cave. The couple are worried that they will tell people about their illegal still, so they hold the kids prisoner.
Although the kids manage to escape, they must return to the cave to find the treasure again (while dodging Tsa’ni’s tricks to foil their efforts) and keep it safe (from the still operators and anyone else who might want to steal it) until they can decide what to do with it. As far as Uncle Ned and the other Cherokees are concerned, gold is bad luck because it was the discovery of gold which forced the Cherokees out of their old homeland. However, the origin of this gold may help to change their minds.
This book is one of the Mandie Books. It is currently available online through Internet Archive.
Mandie and the Secret Tunnel by Lois Gladys Leppard, 1983.
Young Amanda Shaw is almost twelve when her father dies, leaving her with a bully of a sister and a mother who doesn’t really love her. Her only friends are Joe, who is the son of the local doctor, and Uncle Ned, a Cherokee Indian. Amanda and her father are part Cherokee, and Uncle Ned helps to look after her now that her father is gone. Then, Amanda’s mother remarries and sends her to live with another family who want someone to help them look after their young son. However, the family is rather mean to Mandie, exploiting her for cheap labor, and Uncle Ned offers to take Mandie to live with her uncle in the town of Franklin.
Mandie never knew that her father had a brother (Uncle Ned is Mandie’s “uncle” by affection, not blood), but she readily agrees to go to him. Uncle Ned and some other Cherokees help Mandie to sneak away in the middle of the night and make the journey to Franklin. When she arrives at her uncle’s house, she is taken in by the servants, but she is told that her uncle is away in Europe. Mandie’s uncle turns out to be rich, and Mandie is very happy in his house. She gets new dresses for the first time in her life and makes friends with Polly, the girl next door.
Then, word comes that her uncle has died in Europe. Her uncle’s will is missing, and no one knows exactly what will happen to her uncle’s property or to Mandie until it is found. Strangers come to the house, saying that they are also relatives of Mandie’s uncle, but Mandie wonders if they really are who they claim to be. With the help of Polly and Joe, who comes to visit her, Mandie searches for her uncle’s missing will and accidentally finds a secret tunnel leading out of her uncle’s house.
As Mandie and her friends investigate this mysterious situation, where things and people aren’t what they claim to be, Mandie learns that her own past isn’t what she believed it was. Her family has kept many secrets from her, and learning these secrets leads her to a better future than she’d ever imagined.
This book is one of the Mandie Books. It is currently available online through Internet Archive.
Silver Days by Sonia Levitin, 1989.
This is the second book in the Journey to America Saga.
Escaping from World War II Europe was only the first step for the Platt family. Now that they are reunited in the United States, survival is still a struggle. They have very little money, and Lisa’s father struggles to find work and a permanent place for his family to live. Along the way, they encounter people who are prejudiced against them, some because they are Jewish and some because they are German, and are forced to confront certain prejudices that they hadn’t realized that they held as they settle into their new country and learn to live alongside people from different backgrounds who live very different lives.
Lisa describes her family’s day to day struggles and adventures with understanding. In Germany, her father had his own business, selling coats, but he has to struggle to get into the clothing business in America. Her mother, who had once had her own servants in Germany, is forced to take a job as a maid to help make ends meet. Besides the basic problems of learning a new language, dealing with a lack of money, and trying to find work, she also describes the parts of American culture that take her family by surprise. There are religious issues because most of the people around them are Christian, and Lisa’s mother is upset when her youngest daughter, Annie, ends up getting a role in her school’s Easter play. Her mother also isn’t sure what to make of the Japanese family who lives next door when Annie makes friends with their daughter.
Meanwhile, the war that they had feared is becoming a reality. People in the U.S. are starting to support the war effort, collecting materials that the army can use, starting Victory Gardens to help support themselves during food rationing, joining the army, and volunteering as nurses. The Platts also experience survivor’s guilt as they hear reports of friends and family who weren’t lucky enough to escape the Holocaust.
The Platt family is realistic, and they have their arguments as the stresses of all these changes take their toll on them. But, they are a loving family and continue to support each other through everything. The title of the book comes from a song, “Golden Days”, about looking back on happy times. When Lisa’s little sister Annie asks her if these are their “golden days”, Lisa tells her that she doesn’t think so, but she thinks that they might be silver ones, days leading up to happier times ahead.
In some ways, the children of the family have an easier time dealing with all the changes than their parents. In the beginning, they are aware that they don’t quite fit in, although they desperately want to. However, they do manage to make new friends, and Lisa and her older sister, Ruth, even find their first loves. While the world around them is changing, the three sisters also change, growing up, finding new interests, and learning more about themselves and the kind of lives they want to live in their new home.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
#6 The Valentine Star by Patricia Reilly Giff, 1985.Emily Arrow and Sherri Dent have been fighting ever since Emily refused to play a game with Sherri at recess. It wasn’t because Emily didn’t like Sherri. She was just having too much fun running around with her toy unicorn, Uni. But, Emily made the mistake of running up on top of that huge snow pile near the school fence, the one that the kids aren’t supposed to play on. Then, Sherri told on her to Ms. Rooney. After that, it becomes a game of tit-for-tat, each of the girls telling on the other for little things. While Emily is acting as room monitor while Ms. Rooney is out of the room, Sherri gets out of her seat to get a book instead of doing her work, so Emily writes her name down and tells Ms. Rooney. Sherri promises that she’ll get even.
Around the same time, Ms. Rooney’s room gets a new student teacher, Ms. Vincent. Ms. Vincent is very pretty and nice, and Emily likes her immediately. The kids are making rhyming Valentine’s Day cards for each other because Valentine’s Day is just a few days away, and Emily wants to give a special one to Ms. Vincent.
But then, Emily and “Beast” (Richard Best) make a serious mistake. It was hot inside at lunch, and they couldn’t resist the urge to run outside in the snow for just a couple of minutes without their coats. Then, they got locked out and had to get Beast’s sister to let them in a different door. They thought no one saw them, but a neighbor did and contacted the school. Now, Emily is afraid of what will happen if their teacher finds out that it was her and Beast. Will the school be angry enough to hold them both back a grade or maybe worse? Maybe Emily will be spending Valentine’s Day in the school office instead of at the party, watching Ms. Vincent enjoy her special valentine . . . especially if Sherri happens to know what they did.
Many of the The Kids of the Polk Street School books are about the little problems that kids get into but that seem big because they’re young and inexperienced. Ms. Vincent’s kindness and understanding help Emily and Sherri to work out their differences, and a President’s Day lesson about the honesty of both Lincoln and Washington help Emily and Beast to realize that tattling on yourself makes you a better person than tattling on others.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, 1989.
Annemarie Johansen is ten years old and living in Copenhagen in 1943. Denmark is now occupied by the Nazis, and she and her little sister Kirsti have become accustomed to the sight of German soldiers in the streets and the food rationing and curfews that have come with the war. But, there are still worse changes to come in their lives. Jewish people like Annemarie’s best friend, Ellen Rosen, are in danger. The Germans have been closing businesses owned by Jews, and worse still, some Jewish families simply . . . disappear.
Annemarie comes to understand the disturbing truth behind many of the things that have been happening around her, including the sudden death of her older, grown-up sister, Lise. Although she had earlier been told that Lise had been killed in an accident, what happened to Lise was no accident. Lise and her fiance, Peter, were both part of an underground Resistance movement, working against the Nazis. Peter is still part of the Resistance, and he calls upon Annemarie’s family to help him save not only Ellen’s life but the lives of other Jews who are in danger.
When the Johansens learn that the Nazis are looking for Jews from the register at the Rosens’ synagogue, Annemarie’s family takes in Ellen and pretends that she is their third daughter, Lise, while Peter helps to hide her parents make preparations to get them out of the country. They journey to the seaside, where Annemarie’s Uncle Henrik prepares to help take the Rosens and others to safety on his fishing boat. At first, Annemarie is angry that the adults are telling her things that she knows aren’t true and keeping secrets from her about their plans, but they tell her that it is for her own good not to know too much because they don’t want her to be too frightened with the details. She soon comes to see their point because, as they set their plan into motion, Annemarie must perform an act of bravery for it to be successful.
Besides being an historical novel, this is partly a coming-of-age story as Annemarie goes from being an innocent young girl to being more fully aware of the problems and dangers surrounding her, her family, and her friends. The title of the book comes from a Biblical quotation about how God “numbers the stars” and Annemarie’s thoughts as she considers her situation and the danger everyone is in. Ellen’s mother said that she doesn’t like the sea because it is too big and too cold, and on a starry night in the middle of their peril, it strikes Annemarie that night sky and the whole world is like that, too: too big and too cold. Annemarie thinks that sky is full of more stars than anyone can count, and the world situation and its complexities seem too great for Annemarie to fully grasp. The immensity and dangerous nature of it all frighten her.
Annemarie’s older sister, the grown-up child in their family, understood the complexities and dangers of the world and risked her life to fight for their country’s freedom, ultimately losing her life in the process. Annemarie’s younger sister is still largely unaware of the risks her family is taking to save their friends, still thinking in her innocence that the explosions from the destruction of the Danish naval fleet when the Nazis invaded were “fireworks” for her birthday. At the beginning of the story, Annemarie is between her two sisters: more aware of what is going on than Kirsti is but not aware of what her older sister did or knew. By the end of the story, Annemarie has moved to a more grown-up understanding but uses her innocent, little-girl appearance to fool the Nazis into thinking that she is just an ignorant child so they will be less suspicious of her.
Although this story is fiction, similar incidents happened in real life when people took great risks to help Jewish people escape from the Nazis. In the back of the book, there is an Afterword that explains more about the historical events behind the story.
This book was a 1990 Newbery Award winner. It is currently available online through Internet Archive.
The Curse of the Egyptian Mummy by Pat Hutchins, 1983.
The 15th Hampstead Cub Scouts are looking forward to their camping trip. Miss. Hylyard, who runs a guesthouse for retired people, lets the scouts camp on her land and enjoys having them visit her house and entertain her guests. Mr. and Mrs. Webb are coming along to do the cooking, and their daughter, Victoria, will be there, too. She’s one of their friends from school.
Things start to get interesting pretty quickly when they hear that a man died from a poisonous snake bite not far from where they are camping. The boys are eager to show off their tracking skills by helping the police find the missing snake. But, strangely, no one can figure out where the snake came from because none of the zoos in the area have reported one missing. That’s only the beginning of what becomes a very strange trip for the scouts.
Sam finds a strange bird statue in a public wastebasket and decides to use it as the scouts’ new mascot. Then, someone trashes the campsite, and strange figures are seen running around the woods at night. When Albert makes copies of the bird statue to earn his art badge, the first one is broken, and the second is stolen after some adult shoves Albert into the river near the camp. Some of the guests at Miss Hylyard’s look suspicious, and when Victoria unexpectedly stumbles into an evening’s entertainment there still wrapped in bandages from the scouts’ first aid practice, a guest who was supposedly unable to speak suddenly blurts out, “The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb!” in Arabic (which Miss Hylyard knows from her travels with her father).
Who are these mysterious people? What is the importance of the statue? And, is there really a curse?
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
Class 3 from Hampstead Primary School is taking a trip to France with their teacher, Mr. Jones. Miss Barker, their headmistress, was supposed to go with them, but she became ill, so their substitute French teacher, Miss Parker, will be going with them instead. The kids aren’t happy about the substitution because they really like Miss Barker, and Miss Parker isn’t nearly as nice.
From the very beginning of the trip, strange things start happening. A black car follows them to the ferry and even around France. A doctor they meet on the ferry takes a room at their hotel, and unusual characters follow them everywhere they go, some of them in disguise. One of them even enters Jessica and Avril’s hotel room in the middle of the night.
At first, the children think that someone may be trying to kidnap Miss Parker since the mysterious strangers are showing unusual interest in her. Then, the Mona Lisa is stolen while the children visit the Louvre! The thief temporarily holds Jessica hostage before making his escape. Later, the painting shows up at their hotel, and Mr. Jones is arrested as a conspirator in the crime!
The children struggle to unravel the clues and the tangled mass of identities and prove their teacher’s innocence. Who was really following who, who is the real conspirator, and can the children prove it and find the missing painting?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
When I was a kid, I wished that my class could take a field trip to a foreign country! Technically, I suppose we could have since I live in a border state, but there’s nothing to see in the border towns here that would be as exciting as the Louvre. But, part of the fun of reading books like this is vicariously experiencing things you otherwise wouldn’t do.
This mystery story is the kind I think of as a fun romp – the characters are traveling around a bit and hijinks ensue as the students try to solve the mystery and save both the Mona Lisa and their teachers. One of my favorite parts as a kid was the running gag with the ketchup bottle.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 