Posted on by TracyC

Double Trouble

Double Trouble by Barthe DeClements and Christopher Greimes, 1987.

Faith and Phillip are twins and the only members of their immediate family who are alive. Their parents and their older sister were killed in a car accident. Faith was taken in by their aunt, but their aunt didn’t think that she could manage to care for two children, so Phillip was sent to a foster home. The story is written in the form of letters to each other (this is called epistolary style) after their separation.

Separating is cruel, especially when they’re orphans, but there is something about Faith and Phillip that other people don’t know. They have psychic powers, and they have the ability to communicate their feelings to each other with their minds. They have to communicate specific information to each other in writing because their psychic abilities only communicate their general mood and circumstances, but their psychic link to each other makes them feel less alone when they’re apart. Apart from dealing with their grief over the loss of their parents and the changes to their lives, each of them is also in a troubling situation.

In her first letter to Phillip, Faith tells him about a disturbing encounter with a teacher at her new school. Faith was selling candy with another classmate, Sue Ellen, to support the school band. Sue Ellen gets the idea of going by Mr. Gessert’s apartment. Mr. Gessert is their social studies teacher and is considered one of the cool teachers in school. Faith can tell that Sue Ellen has a bit of a crush on him. He buys one of their candy bars, and Sue Ellen asks to use his bathroom. When Sue Ellen seems to be taking awhile, the teacher goes to see if everything is okay, and he catches Sue Ellen snooping around. He gets especially angry when Faith is about to touch his cane near the door. He grabs both girls by the arm and throws them out of the apartment. Although snooping in someone’s private rooms is rude, the girls are startled by how angry Mr. Gessert is. Faith asks Sue Ellen what she saw in his apartment, and Sue Ellen says that she didn’t see anything. She had just started to open the door to a room when he found her. The next day, Sue Ellen brags to other kids at school about having been in the teacher’s apartment, but Faith is still concerned about how angry Mr. Gessert was.

When Phillip replies, he says that he can understand why the teacher would be annoyed at someone snooping through his stuff, and he tells Faith about his new foster parents, the Wangsleys, Howard and Cynthia. He’s now living in Seattle, about 50 miles from where Faith is living. Phillip also got picked on at school by a bully, but a girl named Roxanne spoke up for him. He thinks Roxanne is pretty, and he describes her aura as being indigo. (The twins also have the ability to see people’s auras and use them to learn things about other people.) His new foster parents don’t take his vegetarianism seriously, trying to convince him to eat meat. They say that God put animals on Earth for people to eat and that he has to eat like they do. Their house is shabby, and Howard keeps Cynthia on a tight budget. That surprises Phillip because he thinks Howard must be making decent money at the shipyards. He wonders how Howard spends his money, if it’s not on his wife or home. He knows that Howard and Cynthia belong to some kind of religious group and that, whenever they return from one of their meetings, they act strangely, and their auras are weird. He’s still grieving their parents and sister, and with all the stresses of his new home, the only time he feels better is when he’s using astral projection, to get away from it all.

The twins learned their psychic skills from their sister Madalyn and Madalyn’s friend, Roger, who is an archaeologist. Faith doesn’t quite have Phillip’s ability with astral projection, but she can sometimes get visions of other people and what they’re doing. She uses this ability to try to learn more about Mr. Gessert, and she sees that his cane is actually a gun. She watches him loading it. Why would a teacher have a cane with a hidden gun?

Faith is still angry that her aunt didn’t take Phillip, too. She also hesitates to ask her aunt for things she needs because she doesn’t want to seem like a charity case. She has a part-time job taking care of her neighbors’ dogs while the neighbor is on vacation, and she uses the money to buy a pair of second-hand boots. When Aunt Linda finds out that Faith bought second-hand shoes, she says that Faith should have told her that she needed shoes because she doesn’t want people thinking that she isn’t taking care of her niece. Still, after she cleans them up, they don’t look bad, and she gets compliments on them at school.

The next time she sees Mr. Gessert in class, he seems normal at first. He gives the class a lesson on the Donner Party of pioneers, who were trapped by a snowstorm and resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. (This is actually described in gruesome detail in the book. Some kids like a good gross-out, but I never did.) After Mr. Gessert describes all the gory details in class, one of Faith’s other classmates comments that Mr. Gessert seems crazy. Faith knows that he was telling them the truth about what happened, but she finds it disturbing how much he seemed to enjoy recounting all the grossest parts, and other classmates agree. Phillip is concerned about Faith’s description of the teacher, so he uses astral projection to spy on him, and he agrees that Mr. Gessert gives off weird vibes.

Both Faith and Phillip connect with other kids at their schools who have an interest in psychic abilities. Faith meets a boy named Jake, who is intrigued because his father has been reading a book about remote viewing, which is what Faith does. As Phillip becomes friends with Roxanne, who is interested in the topic of astral projection. When Phillip confides in her about his astral projection abilities, she asks him to teach her how to do it.

One day, when Phillip and Roxanne are at the library, they see Mr. Gessert there. Mr. Gessert has an interest in Spanish treasure, and there is a special exhibit at the library with some very valuable pieces. Soon after that, the Spanish treasure is stolen from the library. It doesn’t take a psychic to see that Mr. Gessert, who has already been established as creepy and suspicious, might have a motive to steal it, but he’s not the only suspect. Working separately, with the help of their friends, Phillip and Faith use their special mental abilities to get to the bottom of Mr. Gessert’s secrets.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

Themes and Spoilers

There are a lot of metaphysical themes to this story with the kids exploring their psychic abilities. It is revealed that their old family friend, Roger, is a kind of archaeologist/treasure hunter, but he is regarded as unorthodox by his colleagues because he uses his psychic abilities to guide his discoveries. Roger is the one who taught the twins and their older sister how to use their abilities.

In the story, the people who are open to developing their psychic/spiritual/metaphysical sides are the heroes, and they thrive when they connect to other, like-minded people and share what they know with each other, helping each other to develop. However, there are unhealthy forms of spiritual development in the story. Phillip is unnerved about the Wangsleys and their religious group from the beginning because the Wangsleys always act strangely after one of their meetings. Initially, I was concerned that this group might be doing drugs or something like that, but that’s not the case. It’s a little vague exactly what group the Wangsleys are part of, but it seems to be a very conservative Christian group with a cult-like devotion to their leader, and the the Wangsleys have an unhealthy relationship with it.

I don’t think it’s an unhealthy group for being Christian, but it seems like devotion to this particular group encourages overly harsh discipline and emotional manipulation and that Howard and Cynthia’s relationship with each other is troubled because of disagreements about their level of devotion to the group’s standards. I sometimes think that people who don’t have a religion imagine that all Christian groups are like that, but I’ve been to various Christian churches throughout my life, and most are not like this. There are some extreme groups like this, but this is definitely an extreme group. It seems to be an isolated group that isn’t part of a larger denomination. It seems to have just one charismatic leader. I think it’s implied, although not directly stated, that the reason why Howard isn’t spending more money on keeping up his house is that he’s contributing a large portion of his income to this religious group. I’m a little suspicious about the money issue and the long periods that the group’s leader seems to spend in Hawaii, ostensibly on religious business. While it isn’t stated explicitly, and I could be wrong, I think there are some implications about the Hawaii trips and the money of this group that make them seem suspicious.

Besides the metaphysical elements, there are themes of children adjusting to loss and trauma and major life changes with the deaths of the twins’ parents and their adjustments to their new homes. Initially, Faith doesn’t have a very good relationship with her aunt. She’s angry that her aunt didn’t accept her twin brother and sent him into the foster system, and she finds her aunt’s manners cold. She doesn’t trust her aunt enough to ask for the things she needs, even basic clothing, and her aunt gets upset about that. Things improve between them when they learn to communicate more openly with each other. Aunt Linda does care about Faith, but she’s also dealing with her own feelings and uncertainties about raising her niece. She has never married or had children, and while she does want Faith living with her, becoming a single parent is a major adjustment for her.

The Wangsleys are completely unsuitable as guardians for Phillip. They don’t accept his vegetarianism and complain about having to make special things for him. They keep trying to convert him, both to eating meat and to their religious group. I feel like their religious affiliation should have been disclosed from the beginning and that there should have been some discussion between them, Phillip, and Phillip’s caseworker about the differences between their lifestyle and the lifestyle that Phillip is accustomed to living, so they could all reach an understanding about what living together would mean for them before he actually went to life in their house. Phillip does describe some meetings with the Wangsleys and his caseworker during his time with the Wangsleys, where the caseworker tries to mediate circumstances between them and offer suggestions, such as ways they can deal with Phillip’s vegetarianism. Cynthia does make some efforts to accommodate Phillip’s eating habits, but they’re kind of half-hearted, and the Wangsleys absolutely cannot accept that Phillip doesn’t want to join their religious group. They heavily pressure him to convert, and when they discover Phillip’s astral projection activities, they’re convinced that he’s having visions given to him by the devil and demons. They tell Phillip’s caseworker that they want to adopt him, but Phillip finally speaks out about what life with them is really like. In the end, Roger decides that he will take Phillip, and the Wangsleys are forced to relinquish him to his caseworker.

From now on, Phillip will be living with a family friend who understands him and shares his lifestyle, and there are even hints of a possible romance between Roger and Aunt Linda. The hints of romance with Roger and Aunt Linda feel awkward, partly because the kids know that Aunt Linda is about 10 years older than Roger, a significant although not insurmountable age gap. Mostly, it just feels awkward to me because it seemed like there had been a romance relationship between Roger and the twins’ deceased elder sister. Switching attention from the niece to the aunt, even if the niece is now dead, just feels odd. Although, it’s not definite that their relationship will really be romantic. It might just end up being friendly.

The authors, Barthe DeClements and Christopher Greimes, are a mother and son team, and the inspiration for this story came from their own shared interests in psychic phenomena and “nontraditional methods of expanding awareness.”

My Psychic Experiment Story

I remember reading this book when I was a kid, and I was fascinated with the idea of communicating psychically with other people or being able to do astral projection. I don’t really believe in all of the metaphysical ideas that the book presents, but I think most children go through a phase where they’re interested in things like ESP and try to test themselves to see if they can do it. I actually had an English teacher in middle school who tested the whole class for ESP after we read some science fiction or fantasy story, just for fun. I can’t remember which story that was now, although I don’t think it was this one. I think it might have been a story about a typewriter that predicts the future, although I can’t remember the name of that one. I didn’t do very well on most of the tests, although there was one in particular where I did pretty well. After thinking it over for about 30 years, I’ve decided that it wasn’t because I had any significant psychic ability. The one test I did well involved predicting another person’s actions, and I think anybody could do that fairly well if you know something about the other person’s personality. The teacher did say that people do this activity much better if they do it with close friends, implying that friends have a special connection to each other, but I think it’s more the case that friends understand each other’s thinking better.

I can’t remember whether I read this particular book before or after I was tested for ESP, but I think it was after. I still had an interest in the subject, and I remember, one night, I tried my own experiment in astral projection. When I did it, I had a vision of space aliens. It was probably because I was dozing off in bed at night, and I was going through a sci-fi phase at the time, but I got spooked. You see, the punchline to this story is that I grew up in Arizona, and the night of my experiment happened to be the night of the Phoenix Lights. I was so creeped out the next day, when people were talking about UFOs that I stopped the astral projection experiments. Although I’m sure that it was all a coincidence, just a dream brought on by my own fascination with science fiction and space aliens, I decided that, while I was curious about how such things worked, I didn’t really want them to work for me. I might have been a cowardly child with a habit of spooking herself, but I was also a cowardly child who decided that there was no point in continuing to do things that she knew would spook her. I had my fun with that phase, and then it was time to move on to my next obsession.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Cold Chills

The Twin Connection

Cold Chills by Adam Mills, 1989.

Fourteen-year-old twins Ryan and Chris Taylor are on a ski trip in Colorado with their parents, their eight-year old sister Lucy, and their friend, Billy Maguire. Although Billy is a friend of both of the twins, he’s really closer to Chris because the two of them are interested in sports. Ryan is more of an intellectual than either of them, and they tease him about not being as good at sports as they are. When the three of them get together, Ryan often feels left out, although he argues with them that he can do decently well at physical activities; he just cares more about other things.

The ski resort where they will be staying is called Moosehead Lodge. It used to be a very exclusive resort, but it’s fallen on hard times in recent years. The reason why they’re going there is that the current owner is an old friend of Mr. Taylor’s from college, and he’s asked Mr. Taylor to write a travel article about the lodge for a magazine to attract new customers.

It turns out that Dede and Wendy, two girls who attend the same school as the boys, will also be staying there over winter break. The twins have crushes on the girls, but they’re also at the age where they still think girls are weird or likely to spoil their fun, so they have mixed feelings about the girls joining them on the ski trip. The boys consider trying to avoid the girls for the entire trip and make them wonder what happened to them, but Ryan thinks that sounds like something a little kid would do. Billy says that, if the twins are going to hang around with girls, he wants a girl for himself, too.

When they arrive at the lodge, the girls greet them right away, so the hiding scheme definitely won’t work. The girls are enthusiastic that there will be a lot of fun things for them all to do. The lodge includes several stores for the guests to shop in, which the girls and Mr. and Mrs. Taylor find intriguing. However, the boys think that the lodge looks haunted. With all the old-fashioned furniture and paintings, it reminds them of something from a movie.

At their first ski lesson, Chris brags that he doesn’t really even need lessons because he’s such an athlete. However, skiing doesn’t come as naturally to him as soccer does. In spite of his bragging, he is clumsy at his first attempts. He apologizes to the instructor, saying that he’s just eager to get going because he knows that they’ll only be staying there a short time. The instructor says that he understands but that the instructions he’s giving them are important for keeping them safe while they have fun.

When the boys return to the lodge, Mrs. Taylor is very upset because a pearl necklace that’s a family heirloom is missing! When Mr. Taylor and the boys go to the manager to report the loss of the necklace, they find out that other pieces of jewelry have been stolen from other guests. The manager has hesitated to contact the police about it because he’s been hoping that the jewelry was merely misplaced and would turn up. The lodge is suffering financially, and if they have a bad season, they might have to close down. Mr. Taylor likes the lodge and wants to help his old friend, but the thefts have to be cleared up for the lodge to continue functioning. The twins decide that they’re going to be the ones to find their mother’s necklace, bring the thief to justice, and save the ski lodge!

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

My Reaction

I liked this book better than the last book I read in the series. It’s more of a mystery than the last one, although there’s still plenty of excitement and adventure. Unlike the other book I read, where the boys know right away who the villains are, in this story, the boys have no idea who the thief is for much of the book. They have to investigate different suspects, and their first suspects turn out to be completely wrong. The boys undertake a deliberate investigation into their suspects, moving from person to person. There are enough potential suspects with apparent odd behavior to keep readers guessing along with the amateur detectives. A skiing accident and a blizzard and avalanche add excitement and adventure to the story.

When the girls argue with the boys about one of their subjects, the boys say that girls would be more likely to fall in love with a jewel thief than to either be a jewel thief or catch one themselves. The kids turn their investigation into a contest, boys against girls, to see which of them can solve the mystery first. The competition between boys and girls gets carried over to the adults, and it even influenced some of my theories about the identity of the jewel thief. Part of what I suspected turned out to be true, but saying what it was would be a spoiler. 

The boys do solve the mystery before the girls, although the solution does disprove some of what the boys said earlier. Considering some of what they said, I would have liked to see more acknowledgement about that, but the book ends a little abruptly after the final solution is revealed. Overall, I liked the story, but I could see some room for improvement in the ending. Although I understand that part of the premise of this series is that the twins can sense each other’s thoughts, that doesn’t really enter into the story, either, which was also a disappointment.

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Dangerous Play

The Twin Connection

Dangerous Play by Adam Mills, 1989.

Thirteen-year-old twins Ryan and Chris Taylor are visiting Kansas State University during homecoming week because their parents used to attend the university, and the boys are looking forward to getting their first look at life on a college campus. They’re also looking forward to the big football game. At least, Chris is looking forward to the game. Ryan isn’t as athletic and doesn’t see the appeal of sports as much as Chris does. Ryan is more studious. However, both of the boys are hoping to meet Trent Dasher, the star quarterback on the Kansas State football team. Chris wants to ask him for sports advice, and Ryan is hoping to get some pictures of him for their school’s newspaper. Meanwhile, their parents are looking forward to reliving their college years. They met in college, and they spent their honeymoon at the same hotel where they are now staying with the boys.

The twins go in search of Trent Dasher. They contacted him before arriving, so he should be expecting them, but they discover that he is missing. When they go to his dorm room, his roommate doesn’t know where he is. Then, the boys overhear a conversation between Coach Butler and Dean Murray in the athletic offices, in which the coach says that Trent has been behaving oddly recently, and now, he can’t find him. The twins ask Trent’s roommate, Danny, for more information about Trent and if he knows anything about where he might be. Danny says that he and Trent don’t really confide in each other. Even though they’re sharing a dorm room, they’re both pretty busy with their own activities. Danny has noticed that Trent has been unusually nervous recently and that he’s missed some classes, which is out of character for him. Danny suggests that they look for Trent at the Wildcats’ Lair, a snack bar in the University Union where Trent likes to hang out.

Before they leave Trent’s dorm room, the boys sneak a look at Trent’s belongings, and they learn a few things about him. Trent has a girlfriend named Jeannie who lives in their town and has written letters to him. He’s also in danger of failing his chemistry class if he doesn’t get some extra help, and if he fails chemistry, he could lose his scholarship. The boys figured that his problems with his classwork and the threat of losing his scholarship are probably what was worrying him so much.

When the boys go to check out the Wildcats’ Lair, they meet a girl who says that she’s Trent’s girlfriend. Unfortunately, she isn’t Jeannie. When the boys address her as Jeannie, assuming that she’s the one who wrote the letters, she says that’s not her and gets angry. The twins are embarrassing, thinking that they might have just accidentally created a new problem for Trent by complicating his love life.

The boys finally locate Trent talking to a tutor called Wilson about getting help to pass his chemistry exam. It seems like the mystery of the missing athlete is over, but then, Wilson tells Trent that the way he “helps” students is by selling them the test answers. Trent gets angry and refuses to cheat. The boys try approaching Trent, but he doesn’t want to talk to them because he has too much on his mind.

The twins are a little offended at being brushed off by Trent since he knew they were coming and had agreed to meet them, but they can also see that Trent is in trouble and could use some help. They decide to go after him, and they hear him talking to someone on the phone about a special “deal.” Since they just heard him turn down an opportunity to cheat by purchasing test answers, what kind of “deal” is he looking into to solve his problems?

The boys follow Trent and see him meeting with Coach Hatfield from Flint Hills University, Kansas State’s rival. It seems that Coach Hatfield has made Trent an offer to come play for their team, or at least, that’s how Trent interpreted his offer. With his scholarship to Kansas State in danger, Trent is considering the possibility of switching schools. However, it turns out that Coach Hatfield wants something very different. He wants to bribe Trent to throw the upcoming homecoming game and make sure his team loses! He says that he’ll make sure that Trent has enough money for his tuition if he does. Trent is appalled and refuses.

The twins continue to follow Trent as he goes to talk to his girlfriend, Cindi, who is the girl they met earlier. She asks him about Jeannie, but Jeannie is just a high school girl from his home town who has an unrequited crush on him. He’s really serious about Cindi. Trent tells Cindi everything about the troubles he’s been having and the unethical offers he’s had. She asks him why he hasn’t gotten help from the legitimate tutors or from his professor, but he says that the chemistry tutor quit and hasn’t been replaced yet and that his professor seems to have a prejudice against athletes. Trent is thinking that maybe he should just quit college and get a construction job so that he and Cindi can get married, but Cindi doesn’t think that’s a good idea.

Even if Cindi can help Trent find a solution to his problems in chemistry, Trent’s football problems are just beginning. He turned down Coach Hatfield’s proposition, but the Flint Hills football team isn’t going to take no for an answer. They’re prepared to use violence to make sure that the upcoming football game goes their way. Chris and Ryan witness some of them kidnapping Trent! They’ve got to get help and prove that Trent is in trouble to save him!

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

My Reaction

There wasn’t really much mystery to the story, which was a disappointment to me. The boys figure out where Trent is and directly witness his kidnapping, so there’s nothing really for them to figure out. It’s more about how they manage to rescue him. It’s more of an adventure story than a mystery. Part of the premise of this series is also that the twins have a kind of psychic connection and can sense each other’s thoughts, but that didn’t really enter into this particular story. The resolution of the situation didn’t depend on them having this ability, and for most of the story, the twins just talk to each other openly about everything without a need to communicate anything silently.

Things turn out okay in the end because Trent is able to make it to the football game and help his team win. The book doesn’t mention any of them going to the police about the coach and football team participating in an actual kidnapping, which made me feel a little weird. It’s great that the boys were able to rescue Trent and that he was able to win the football game honestly. Trent never compromises his values, in spite of the pressure he’s experiencing from all sides, and in the end, there’s an honest solution to his problems with his grades, but still, kidnapping is a serious crime, and I thought that there should have been serious consequences to go with it.

As for Trent’s troubles with chemistry, it turns out that his chemistry professor is actually an old friend of the boys’ parents, and he isn’t really against athletes. The only reason why he hasn’t noticed Trent failing and helped him to get the extra tutoring he needs is that, at a large university, classes are made up of hundreds of students, and professors rely on graduate assistants to help manage the grading. The professor doesn’t know that much about how individual students are doing. They mainly help when students approach them for help, which Trent hasn’t done. When the twins explains Trent’s problems to the professor, the professor talks to Trent, telling him that he should have come to him earlier and that he will help him improve his grades, not because he’s a star athlete but because he’s a student in need of help to complete his degree.

Although I wasn’t thrilled by the mystery itself because it wasn’t much of a mystery, there are some interesting points in this story about both prejudices people have about athletes and the system of success/failure at universities. First, the prejudice part is an obvious one. Many people assume that people are either smart and good at studying or that they’re not smart and that’s why they’re mainly good at sports – like life’s options are brain vs. brawn, with no in-between. The twins themselves represent this notion because Ryan is the studious one and Chris is the athletic one. This seems to be how other people think of them and how they think of themselves. 

Ryan in particular has this view. He’s good in school subjects, better than his brother, but not that good at sports and has no interest in sports. Chris is offended that his brother seems to think that his athletic prowess also makes him the dumber twin and that Ryan is often telling him that he needs to read more and study more or he’s not going to make it in college. Chris argues with Ryan and tells him that just because he’s into sports and not as good at studying as Ryan is doesn’t mean that he can’t manage. Ryan is correct that a student athlete can’t just be all about sports and neglect his school work, as Trent’s situation indicates, but he does underrate the athletes’ abilities to manage and think their way through problems. The boys also have some prejudices against girls, with Ryan particularly thinking of cheerleaders as being brainless, but Cindi, who is also a college cheerleader, comes through for them and helps to rescue her boyfriend. I didn’t like the way the boys talked about girls in the story, but Cindi’s role helps to highlight that theme of underestimating people and their abilities.

Success and failure are major themes in the story. Trent is a successful athlete, and generally, a pretty good student, apparently. However, the failure of one single class could endanger his scholarship and end his entire university career. As the chemistry professor points out later, it’s not just a matter of Trent losing his scholarship because of failing that class; this is a class that is required to complete his degree. We don’t actually know what Trent’s major is, but he apparently needs to understand at least some chemistry for it. Failure of this particular class is just not an option. A student whose scholarship was assured or who had other resources for paying for their education could simply retake a failed class and try to pass the next time, but there’s pressure for Trent because he really relies on his scholarship. Without it, there won’t be a next time for him. What the story points out is that it’s not just Trent’s failure but also the system’s failure. Professors with hundreds of students, and also the pressure of having to do their own researching, writing, and publishing on the side, just can’t keep up with every individual student and give them all the support they need. They rely on graduate assistants and tutors to fill in the gaps and provide that support. Trent falls through the cracks because the chemistry tutor left and hasn’t been replaced yet, and he was reluctant to talk to his professor about it. His lesson is one about how the university system functions and his need to go to his professor about his problems to get the help he needs.

It turns out that Trent isn’t the only one whose future hangs by a thread because of one possible failure. The reason why Coach Hatfield and his players are so desperate to win this upcoming football game is that Coach Hatfield will be fired if they don’t. The Flint Hills football players are desperate to save their coach. They see it as loyalty and as avoiding having to get a new coach that they won’t like as well, but that doesn’t justify engaging in a serious crime to accomplish their goals. In real life, they would be endangering their own futures by pulling this kidnapping stunt. The fact that the coach is willing to go along with such a thing may be a sign of why his career has reached this desperate point in the first place. It might not be just that he’s been unable to deliver the football victories that his university wants but that he also engages in reckless, irresponsible, and unethical behavior. At the very least, we know that he is likely to lose his job because his team lost the football game, but I still think that there are serious legal consequences for his actions.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Mystery of the Blazing Cliffs

The Three Investigators

The Mystery of the Blazing Cliffs by M.V. Carey, 1981.

Jupiter Jones and his friends are helping out at his uncle’s salvage yard when they have a strange encounter with a disagreeable customer and his wife. Mr. Barron is a very demanding customer who throws a fit whenever something goes wrong, blaming other people when he’s at least somewhat at fault for what happens. He gets upset when one of the employees of the salvage yard tells him that they need to move his car because they’re expecting a delivery truck, and his car is in the way where he parked it. Mr. Barron gets angry because he parked his car “perfectly”, and he calls them incompetent for making him move.

The only reason why Mr. Jones puts up with Mr. Barron is that he’s buying a large amount of stuff, and it’s stuff that few other people would want, like a buckboard wagon, an old stove and stovepipes, and a broken butter churn. The weird thing is that Mr. Barron doesn’t seem interested in these things as antique collectibles or unique pieces of vintage decor, which would be what most people would use such things for. (I’m thinking of those restaurants where they have miscellaneous farm implements, wagon wheels, and antique/vintage items on the walls, and I think that’s what they’re thinking about, too.) Mr. Barron actually seems to want to fix them up and use them for their intended purposes.

Mrs. Barron glosses over her husband’s rudeness and talks about her belief in aliens as described by a popular book called They Walk Among Us. This book describes “the time for deliverance”, when our planet will be in danger from some kind of disaster, and aliens from the planet Omega will arrive to rescue people from the human race so our species won’t be lost. Mr. Jones thinks that the Barrons are crazy, but his own wife interrupts the conversation before Mr. Jones can say something that will ruin the sale.

Jupiter is intrigued by these weird people, and he persuades his uncle to let him and his friends go along on the trip to deliver all of the things they bought to their ranch up north. Jupiter’s friends are a little reluctant to see the Barrons again, but Jupiter points out that going on the delivery trip will allow them to also go on a buying trip at the same time, something that his uncle has promised them they can do. Jupiter has been wanting to take charge of a buying trip, but he also wants to learn more about the Barrons.

Before they leave, the boys do some research on Mr. Barron and learn that he came from a wealthy business family in the Midwest. However, he has been in and out of trouble with every business he’s ever run. He did pretty well at first after he inherited his family’s business, which made tractors, but then, workers went on strike for better pay and working conditions. Mr. Barron was forced to give them what they wanted, but he was so angry about the strike and being forced to make concessions that he sold that business and bought a different one. In his next business, he had problems complying with government anti-pollution regulations, so he sold that business and bought another one. In his third business, he was sued for discriminatory hiring processes, so he once again sold out and tried another business.

Since then, he has had a string of different businesses, and each and every time, he ran into some kind of problem with government regulations or labor disputes. Every time he has any kind of problem in business, he immediately quits that type of business entirely rather than sticking to it and working things out. He just can’t accept imperfection in any form, and he defines imperfection as anybody or anything that goes against what he, personally, wants to do, regardless of circumstances. He denies that he could be imperfect himself, that he needs to adjust to new or changing situations, or that he needs to improve in any way, blaming everyone else for all of his problems. Finally, unable to find any business where everything goes absolutely perfectly all the time, where there are no rules or standards to follow other than his own and nobody to check that he’s following them, and where he never gets any form of negative feedback, Mr. Barron decided to sell off his remaining business interests and buy a ranch in California, which is where he is now. He’s planning to use the ranch to experiment with new crops and self-sufficient living.

When the boys arrive at the ranch with one of Mr. Jones’s delivery drivers, Konrad, they realize that the ranch is a kind of commune. The people who work for Mr. Barron and live at the ranch show them around and explain how the ranch has its own power supply and water supply. Elsie, who is the cook at the ranch, tells them that Mr. Barron seems to be preparing for some kind of “revolution”, when there will be some kind of catastrophe and society falls apart. (Remember, for Mr. Barron, society and all other humans besides Mr. Barron are idiots and incompetents, so of course, everything is falling apart.) Most of the people at the ranch don’t really believe that’s going to happen. They’re there mainly because Mr. Barron hired them to work there. However, it seems like the Barrons are deep into this notion of a coming disaster.

Konrad thinks that this ranch is very weird, and he wants to leave, but the boys persuade him that they should accept Mrs. Barron’s invitation to stay for dinner. Konrad chooses to eat with the staff rather than face Mr. Barron again. During dinner, the boys are treated to Mr. Barron’s negative attitude about everything, from his disappointment in his adopted sons (and, by extension, in young people in general) to “the evils of plastic in almost any form”, from synthetic leather to polyester clothing. By contrast, Mrs. Barron is very fond of her adopted sons, one of whom is part of a rock band and the other of whom is a poet who supports himself by making wooden clogs. Mrs. Barron says that the rock drummer son will be coming to the ranch in August for the Blue Light Mission convention, a meeting of other people who also believe in aliens who will save humanity. The author of They Walk Among Us will also be there as a guest speaker. 

Although Mr. Barron seems to have at least some belief in the idea that society is falling apart because of “anarchists and criminals who want to take over”, his criticism of people in general also extends to his wife and the other people who attend these alien conventions and believe in They Walk Among Us. Even though he’s hosting this convention for his wife’s sake, he thinks that the convention attendees are a bunch of kooks and crazies who would victimize his wife if he didn’t keep an eye on her. Basically, both of the Barrons are conspiracy theorists, but they’re not following quite the same conspiracy theories. Mrs. Barron is the more positive and hopeful of the two of them, believing that things will somehow turn out okay when the aliens show up, cheerfully ignoring her husband’s negativity, and continuing to talk about how much she’s looking forward the convention and meeting other, like-minded people. By contrast, Mr. Barron thinks society is just going to fall apart, and it will be everyone for themselves, and that’s about it.

The Three Investigators’ involvement with the Barrons would have ended after their delivery errand and dinner, but when they try to leave the ranch, they are stopped by army officers. The officers tell them that the roads are closed because of orders from Washington. The boys and Konrad are forced to return to the ranch, and Mr. Barron is angry about the roads being closed. The army officers tell Mr. Barron that they are just following orders. They further say that something has happened in Texas, and because of that, there is no electrical power, and the telephones, televisions, and radios aren’t working. Elsie has a battery-operated radio, and she turns it on to find out what’s happening. They hear a speech, apparently from the US President, about unidentified aircraft being seen around Texas, New Mexico, and California and possible landings in those states.

Naturally, when confronted with this serious situation, Mr. Barron is ready to take charge and deal with it in his usual way – by immediately finding someone to blame, dishing out criticism, and calling other people stupid and incompetent. He complains that the President gave a stupid speech that doesn’t provide any useful information and that he can’t understand how this guy ever got elected in the first place. Then, he goes off on a rant against communists and anarchists. (Seriously, that’s how both this book and his thought processes go. In a way, he’s very 2020s, a man decades ahead of his time.) Elsie points out that the people at the ranch are safe, no matter what’s happening, because the ranch is designed to be self-sufficient. Mr. Barron may be an angry mess of paranoia and negativity, but he is thorough and has been planning ahead for disaster this entire time.

The military officers say that the roads are being blocked off to the public so they can be used for military vehicles. Mr. Barron becomes convinced that either some disaster has happened or that the politicians believe that one is imminent. He also thinks that the politicians blocked off the road to the ranch so they can come and shelter at his amazing, self-sufficient ranch themselves. (Once again, everyone else, from the government to the general public, is incompetent, and only Mr. Barron does things right. He further assumes that the rest of the world must somehow secretly know this, quietly envies him, and plots to take advantage of him.) There’s no sign of anyone else arriving, at least not yet, but Mr. Barron, who has a deep disdain for fools of all kinds, doesn’t like the idea of welcoming a bunch of political fools. However, he does show sympathy to the boys and Konrad because he can recognize that nothing that’s happening is their fault. He tells them that they’re welcome to stay at the ranch until this situation, whatever it is, is cleared up.

The Three Investigators decide that they need to find out what’s really happening in the cities outside of this ranch and verify what they’ve been told about the situation because everything was fine when they left home. Since they can’t leave by the road, they do a little scouting around the area to see if there’s a route they can use to walk to another town. Since it’s getting dark, they decide that it would be too dangerous to try hiking and climbing in the area at night. They plan to wait until morning to actually leave, but while they’re looking around, they witness something very strange. They see what looks like blue fire on the cliffs near the ranch and some kind of silver, oval-shaped object in the sky! Have they really witnessed a flying saucer? Is what Mrs. Barron believes about aliens coming to Earth true?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

I love this Three Investigators mystery because the premise was so unusual! Three Investigators mysteries are often what I call Pseudo-Ghost Stories, like the mysteries in Scooby-Doo because any supernatural inevitably turns out to be faked in some way for some ulterior motive. This also applies to science-fiction other-worldly phenomena, like aliens. The great thing about this book is that the phenomena is so over-the-top that it’s difficult to think of a plausible way that it could be faked or a reasonable reason why someone would even do it. In this case, we know immediately that the boys see what looks like blue flames and a flying saucer, and there are either military personnel or people pretending to be military personnel blocking the roads out of the ranch. This is a plot that would seem to involve some impressive special effects and a significant cast of conspirators, and the purpose behind it doesn’t seem obvious.

Pretty early in the story, I had a couple of theories about who could profit from faking a UFO, but I had doubts about it because of the relatively small audience involved and because it seemed like there would be much easier methods of them accomplishing their goals. It is a pretty over-the-top plot, although it’s partially explained because Mr. Barron is a rather over-the-top figure to target. It is his paranoia and reluctance to call in authorities and outside help with anything that sets him up for this. Mr. Barron’s attitude that anything that contradicts him or his view of anything is inherently wrong cuts him off from the kind of reality checks he needs, even though he understands that his own wife can use some reality checks outside of her group of fellow alien enthusiasts. 

I knew that, for anybody to get the idea of doing this type of hoax and to plant the evidence to create the illusion of alien landings, one or more of the conspirators would have to be directly involved with the ranch. One of them is obvious, when you think about it, because it’s one of the people who directly supplies some of that evidence. Part of the mystery is about who else is involved. I could see multiple ways that could have gone, and I considered different possible masterminds for the scheme and different motives behind it. Most of what I considered turned out to be wrong, although my theory that Mrs. Barron could have engineered the whole thing with the help of her adopted sons and some friends from the alien conventions with the goal of demonstrating to Mr. Barron just how vulnerable his own paranoia and obsession with his personal conspiracy theories has made him would have been fun. Mrs. Barron may be gullible when it comes to her favorite alien conspiracy theory book, but I would have enjoyed a little role reversal, where she turns out to be more clued about human nature than Mr. Barron, who is so self-obsessed and ultra-skeptical about other people, refusing to receive information, advice, or criticism from anyone else, that he routinely fools himself without outside help. 

Alternatively, I though that the Barrons’ sons could have teamed up to pull this off to make both of the Barrons see the folly of their ways. In a way, I think that Mrs. Barron’s belief in the aliens is partly as a remedy to her husband’s relentless negativity. She believes him that disaster is impending because she actually thinks a lot of her husband and trusts his opinion on the way society is going, but being a more hopeful and trusting person, she has latched onto the idea of rescuing aliens because her husband doesn’t believe in fellow humans. Of course, Mr. Barron disdains that theory because he can tell that it comes from fellow human beings, who are all varying degrees of stupid, incompetent, and scheming, but Mrs. Barron clings to it as a hopeful thing that binds her to like-minded people because she needs that sense of hope and connection. At least, that’s how I read the situation. Mrs. Barron believes everything, even things she shouldn’t, and Mr. Barron refuses to believe anything, even things he should. There is a happy medium between believing everything other people say and allowing them to lead you around by the nose and being so paranoid that everyone is either wrong or out to trick you that you refuse to engage with the real world and turn aside legitimate sources of help and outside information. Neither of the Barrons represent that happy medium, and I would have liked the conspiracy to bring that to light. In a way, it does, but that’s not really the main focus. It’s more about taking advantage of the Barrons and their eccentricities.

I also considered the idea that the entire plot could have been a publicity stunt by the author of Mrs. Barron’s favorite book and the convention organizers. I even thought that Mrs. Barron might have been in on it as a true believer, trying to get her husband and others to believe. However, that’s not the case. The book and the convention just supply the inspiration for the conspiracy.

In a way, this story reminds me a little of the Sherlock Holmes story The Red-Headed League, where there’s a seemingly outlandish scheme to cover an ordinary theft. There is a twist to this one because nobody but Mr. Barron knows exactly where the thing they’re trying to steal is. In the end, only Jupiter reasons it out because he has really come to understand the way Mr. Barron’s mind works.

The mystery is intriguing because there are so many possibilities to consider. In a way, I preferred all the possibilities to the eventual resolution of the mystery, but the solution does make sense. It’s still an over-the-top plot that involves a significant number of people, equipment, and special effects, but it does appeal to my inner Scooby-Doo fan, who enjoys a good, complicated scheme and a villain behind the mask.

Posted on by TracyC · 6 Comments

The Case of the Close Encounter

The Bobbsey Twins

#5 The Case of the Close Encounter by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1988.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge Sean Hagins, for supplying me with photos of this book! Usually, I take pictures of books myself, but I just couldn’t find a physical copy of this one. Sean is a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, particularly the New Bobbsey Twins mysteries, and you can see some of his video reviews as well as videos about his photography work on his YouTube channel, SJHFoto. Thanks, Sean!

When Nan gets sick, her twin brother Bert, agrees to take over her babysitting job, looking after a 5-year-old boy named Artie. Artie has a reputation for being a troublemaker, but since he’s had experience looking after the younger set of twins in the Bobbsey family, Bert figures that he can handle Artie. Of course, Artie turns out to be a handful. Artie tries to paint his cat’s whiskers and juggle eggs, and he generally makes a mess. Then, he suddenly declares that they’re playing hide-and-seek and runs outside. When Bert goes out to look for him, he sees a bright light from the sky, and when he looks up, he sees what looks like a flying saucer!

Artie doesn’t see the flying saucer and thinks that Bert is making it up. Everyone is in bed when Bert gets home, so he phones the police and reports the UFO. He tells the rest of his family about it the next morning. He speaks to the police and a reporter from the newspaper where his mother works, but they all say the same thing: without more witnesses to the event or more information, there’s not much they can do. Since nobody seems to believe him, Bert decides that they only thing to do is to investigate the phenomenon himself.

Bert and his siblings go to the area where Bert saw the UFO to look for clues about what it could have been. Artie tags along, although he’s more of a distraction than a help to them. In a clearing, they find large patches of grass that have been flattened and burnt. They look almost like footprints made by some kind of fiery dinosaur. The kids aren’t sure what to think of them. Then, while walking along the road, they’re almost hit by an angry man on a motor scooter. When they get back to Artie’s house, Artie’s father identifies the man as Felix Usher, who is renting a cottage nearby. There are stories that the house he’s renting used to be used by smugglers and gangsters and that they might have left some kind of treasure behind, but Artie’s father doesn’t really believe that.

On the way home, the Bobbsey twins stop off at a diner called the Flying Saucer Diner. While they’re talking with the owner, they learn that he bought the place from Mr. Stockton, the same man who used to own the house that Felix Usher is renting. When Mr. Stockton owned it, he called it the Cup ‘n’ Saucer Diner, which is the name on an old coffee cup that Artie found in the field with the burn marks. The kids wonder if there could be some kind of connection between the diner and the UFO Bert saw. Then, they find a tape cassette on Bert’s bike seat with a threatening voice on it, telling him that he saw nothing and he should say nothing, or else!

It seems like someone wants Bert to forget what he saw and stop trying to figure out what it was, but that’s just more confirmation that Bert really saw something and that what he saw was significant. What did Bert really see in the sky? Was it really a flying saucer, and were the burn marks really caused by aliens? Or is something else happening in their town?

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

My Reaction

I liked the premise of this mystery immediately! Unlike many mysteries, it isn’t immediately obvious that a crime has been committed. It falls more under the category of what I call Strange Happenings, where the characters know that something weird is going on, but they’re not entirely sure what it is or why it’s happening.

If I read this one as a kid, I didn’t remember the story, but I had a theory from the beginning about what Bert could have seen because I’ve seen the episode from the old Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew tv series The Creatures that Came on Sunday (older than this book) and an episode of Psych (newer than this book) with a similar premise, that someone had seen an alien spaceship or UFO. I guessed right on the type of flying object Bert saw, but I wasn’t sure what made the burn marks on the ground or how the situation could be related to the old house that might have treasure in it. There is also a woman who comes to see Bert and interview him about what he saw for a book she’s writing, but Bert has the feeling that she isn’t really an author, and she dodges questions that he asks her about her other research into UFOs and the encounters other people have had. There is some doubt from the beginning whether or not Bert’s UFO was an alien spaceship, but the book provides enough doubt and suspects to keep the story interesting as readers speculate about who is playing what roles in the mystery.

This book is from the late 1980s, and there are a couple of dated references to technology and pop culture, although it’s not too bad. It’s enough nostalgia that people who were kids in the 1980s would identify with it, but not too distracting for modern kids to enjoy the story. The kids use a very basic modem to connect to their local newspaper’s archives to do some research. It’s not how the modern World Wide Web works, but Internet use wasn’t popular yet at this time. This is still the early days of civilians having remote access to archives and databases through their computers. There wasn’t much to see, and there weren’t as many people who had the ability to see it yet. There is one instance of someone who seems to be talking to themselves in the story, and then, the kids realize that this person is actually using a radio. The modern equivalent is realizing that someone is actually talking on their cell phone, but cell phones were a relatively new invention around this time. They were expensive, brick-like, and heavy, and very few people had them. A radio or walkie-talkie would have been a more practical choice for this time period. There is also a point where the neighborhood bully and his friend tease Bert about seeing a UFO, and they make some references to popular sci-fi movies, like ET and Planet of the Apes.

Posted on by TracyC

Apple Tree Christmas

Apple Tree Christmas book cover

Apple Tree Christmas by Trinka Hakes Noble, 1984.

A farm family in 1881 lives in their barn because they haven’t built a separate house yet. Outside the barn, there is an old apple tree that the family loves.

They like to pick the apples from the tree, and use them for cider and applesauce. The two girls in the family like to climb the tree. Josie, the younger girl, likes to swing on the vines that hang from the tree’s branches. Katrina, the older girl, likes to draw in the tree with her paper resting against a crooked branch. She thinks of that special limb as her “studio.”

Then, a terrible winter storm ruins the apple tree before Christmas. The whole family is sad at the loss of the tree, but Katrina is particularly devastated at the loss of her studio. Will she even be able to draw again if she can’t craw in her special place?

The family uses most of the ruined tree as firewood, and they use apples they’ve saved from the tree as decorations on their Christmas tree. However, because of the loss of the apple tree, it doesn’t really feel like Christmas to Katrina. Then, their father shows them that he has saved their favorite parts of the tree and turned them into special Christmas presents.

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

My Reaction

I thought this was a charming Christmas story! When I first saw the title, I guessed that the family would use an apple tree as a Christmas tree, but that’s not it at all. It’s just about the family feeling sad about the loss of their apple tree and how the remains of the tree made it a memorable Christmas. Because the father of the family saved their favorite parts of the tree when he was cutting up the rest for firewood, they will still be able to enjoy the things they loved about the tree, particularly Katrina, who receives a special drawing table made out her favorite branch of the tree.

The author dedicated the book to her own father because he made a special drawing board for her. On the inside dust jacket of the book, the explains that the inspiration for the apple tree and vine swing came from her own childhood in rural Michigan.

I love the artwork in this book! The pictures are realistic and detailed, and they have an old-fashioned charm that fits well with the modern Cottagecore aesthetic. I love the family’s home in the barn, with the girls sleeping in the loft and being wrapped in colorful patchwork quilts! The first book that I read by this author was The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash, but she wasn’t the illustrator for that book. I didn’t know the she did illustrations, but seeing the illustrations in this book makes me want to see more by her!

Posted on by TracyC

The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree

The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree by Gloria Houston, pictures by Barbara Cooney, 1988.

Ruthie is a little girl living on a farm in Pine Grove in the Appalachian Mountains during World War I. (The story calls it The Great War because that was its name before WWII.) During the spring, Ruthie’s father selected a tree for the village church’s Christmas celebration. The local families take turns providing the tree, and it’s their family’s turn. Ruthie goes with him to pick out the right tree and mark it with a red ribbon.

However, during the summer, Ruthie’s father has to go away to be a soldier overseas. Ruthie and her mother tend the farm while her father is away, but money is tight. Ruthie thinks ahead to Christmas and prays for her father to come home and for a special Christmas present for herself – a pretty doll with a cream-colored dress with ribbons and lace.

In the fall of that year (1918), Ruthie’s father writes a letter, saying that the Armistice has been signed, meaning that the war is over, so he’s sure he’ll be home for Christmas. Ruthie and her mother keep waiting for him to arrive any day, but he doesn’t seem to come, and they don’t know exactly when to expect him.

At school, Ruthie is told that she will have the role of the heavenly angel in the Christmas play and that they are still expecting Ruthie’s father to supply the Christmas tree. Ruthie is looking forward to it, but Ruthie and her mother don’t have enough money for a new dress for the angel costume, and there is still the worry about when her father will return home, and if he will make it in time to cut the Christmas tree and take it to the church.

The local preacher tells them that the person who is due to provide a Christmas tree next year is willing to do it this year instead, if Ruthie’s father can’t get home in time, but Ruthie’s mother is still sure that their family can manage the tree. Ruthie’s mother decides that she and Ruthie will go get the tree themselves. It isn’t easy, but they manage it, and Ruthie’s mother also finds a way to make a dress for Ruthie’s angel costume.

However, there are two more things that would make this Christmas perfect for Ruthie – if her father returns home in time for Christmas and if she somehow receives the doll of her dreams.

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

My Reaction

This is a sweet, old-fashioned Christmas story about wishes coming true. Wishes coming true at Christmas is a popular theme in Christmas stories, and in this book, they come true because Ruthie’s mother and Ruthie do what they need to do to make everything work out the way they want it to. They could have let someone else provide the Christmas tree, and no one would have thought less of them for doing it because the father of the family was still away, but they were determined to see their family’s promise to provide the Christmas tree through. The mother also uses her old wedding dress for the material for Ruthie’s angel costume, and it’s implied that she also made the angel doll for the top of the Christmas tree that becomes Ruthie’s special Christmas present.

The pictures are charming, and they fit well with the Cottagecore aesthetic that’s been popular in recent years.

Posted on by TracyC · 8 Comments

The Mystery of the Missing Mummy

The Bobbsey Twins

Bobbsey Twins The Mystery of the Missing Mummy cover

The Mystery of the Missing Mummy by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1989.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge Sean Hagins, for supplying me with photos of this book! Usually, I take pictures of books myself, but I just couldn’t find a physical copy of this one. Sean is a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, particularly the New Bobbsey Twins mysteries, and you can see some of his video reviews as well as videos about his photography work on his YouTube channel, SJHFoto. Thanks, Sean!

It’s only two days before Halloween, and the Bobbsey Twins are getting their costumes ready. Flossie is going to be a black cat, Bert is dressing as Frankenstein (the monster, not the scientist, for purists), and Nan is a traditional witch in a pointed hat. Only Freddie isn’t sure what he’s going to be yet. He could just put a sheet over his head and go trick-or-treating as a ghost, but that doesn’t seem exciting enough. He wants to be something really scary, but he doesn’t have much time left to decide.

The children’s mother offers Freddie some inspiration when she tells them that she will be writing a story about a new museum exhibit for the local newspaper. The new exhibit is an ancient Egyptian mummy. She asks the kids if they want to go to the museum with her to see the mummy, and they eagerly accept. Freddie thinks that a mummy would make a great costume idea, so he will be a mummy for Halloween.

The museum curator, Mr. Foxworth, gives the Bobbseys a special tour of the exhibit after hours, when there are no other visitors. The Bobbsey Twins are fascinated with the exhibit, and they talk about Egyptian hieroglyphics and the reasons why ancient Egyptians wanted their bodies preserved as mummies for the afterlife. Mr. Foxworth says that the mummy belongs to a wealthy woman named Mrs. Truesdale, who is also there to see the exhibit with her fifteen-year-old nephew, Lex.

The kids notice that Lex seems nervous, and he tells them that there’s a legend about the mummy coming to life. He even says that he’s heard strange noises coming from the mummy case. Mrs. Truesdale thinks that’s nonsense. The mummy has belonged to their family for 60 years. However, when the case is opened, Flossie is certain that she hears the mummy sigh. Then, when Freddie takes a closer look after the others leave the room, he sees the mummy breathing, and it tries to grab him!

Freddie and Flossie try to tell everyone what they saw, but everyone assumes that it was just their imagination. The kids go to the library to do some research about mummies, and they learn that Lex was telling them the truth about the legends surrounding this particular mummy. Nan doesn’t believe that the legends are real, but when the kids walk home from the library, they see the mummy walking in the park!

The kids run home and tell their parents what they saw. Their parents remind them that it’s almost Halloween, and it could have been somebody in costume, on their way home from a Halloween party. It sounds like a reasonable explanation, but the next morning, they hear a news report on the radio that someone broke into the museum and stole the mummy from the exhibit! The kids wonder if the mummy could have really come to life and broke out of the museum itself rather than being stolen.

The Bobbsey Twins decide to report their mummy sighting in the park to the police. At they police station, they see the security guard from the museum. The security guard tells them that the mummy did come to life and that it knocked him unconscious before leaving the museum, but nobody believes him because it sounds too crazy. The kids believe the security guard, but it also occurs to them that their parents might be right, that it could have been someone dressed as the mummy rather than the mummy itself. But, why would someone want to dress up like the mummy to pull a stunt like that, and if that’s what happened, where is the real mummy now?

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

My Reaction

I was pretty sure I knew right away who one or two of the culprits was because I figured that a theft and stunt like this would have to involve more than one person. However, I figured that there had to be another confederate involved because my favorite suspects were accounted for the first time the mummy moved. It turned out that I was way off base because there were suspects I hadn’t considered. The motive behind everything was different from the one that even the kids believed. I was pleasantly surprised by the twists in the story. There is a clue later in the book that more than one person dresses up as the mummy at different times when the kids realize that the mummy looked thin one time and fat the next time they saw him.

I liked the pieces of historical information about mummies included in the story, although the part about tanna leaves bringing mummies to life and attracting them is fictional, a concept created for a movie called The Mummy’s Hand from 1940. That’s why it’s important that one of the books Freddie finds at the library is about mummies in movies. At one point, Freddie and Flossie use what they’ve learned to build their own trap for the mummy.

I also noticed that the mummy’s legend comes with curse that rhymes when it’s translated into English, sort of like how the clues on the old Spanish map rhyme in English in The Goonies. In real life, things translated from one language to another don’t maintain their rhyme scheme. That went over my head when I was a kid, but I hadn’t studied other languages at that point, so the idea didn’t occur to me.

At one point in the story, the kids receive a message from the “mummy” that is clearly written on modern paper that someone tried to make look old, and the kids notice right away. They realize that it’s modern computer paper that someone yellowed with a candle, and they see where the holes at the sides were torn off. Modern kids might not understand what they mean about holes being torn off at the sides of the paper, but this was a familiar feature of computer paper at the time the book was written in the 1980s. Modern computer paper doesn’t have holes at the sides, but when I was a kid in the 1980s, there were perforated sections on both sides of the dot matrix printer computer paper with a series of little holes in them. The holes were where the printer would grab the paper and feed it through the machine. They later became unnecessary when printer designs changed, which is why you don’t see paper like that any more. When I was a kid, we would tear off those perforated sections with the little holes after printing. We would also have to break the individual sheets apart at perforated points because the sheets of paper were all joined together to feed continuously through the printer. That’s the type of printer paper that the kids in the story have. I don’t know if everyone did this, but I’d sometimes use those edging strips with the holes for little craft projects, or make them into little chains or bracelets.

Posted on by TracyC

The Time of the Ghost

The Time of the Ghost cover

The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones, 1981.

This isn’t a very long book, but it packs a lot in! This is both a time travel story and a supernatural ghost story, but with the odd twist that we don’t initially know who the “ghost” is, and she isn’t really dead. She’s trying to save her own life.

In the beginning, although this book is from the first person perspective, we don’t know quite who the narrator is. Even the narrator isn’t quite sure who she is or what has happened. Her last memory is that there was some sort of accident, and her mind doesn’t seem to be working right. Now, she seems to be walking through the countryside, but she can’t remember what happened earlier that day or even what she had for lunch. When she looks down to see what she’s wearing that day, she realizes in a panic that she can’t see herself. She has become a ghost!

It takes her some time to get her panicked thoughts together, but she gradually begins to recognize the countryside. She is surprised that she can look over a hedge, thinking that it was something she had always wanted to do before, and she must have grown. There is a small hut nearby, and she recalls that there is an old rag doll called Monigan inside. Exploring further, she finds herself at a school and locates a classroom she recognizes. To her surprise, she discovers that it’s a Latin class full of boys, and although she has no body, she is sure that she’s a girl, so this can’t be her class. However, she does recognize the teacher as someone familiar but also intimidating.

Leaving the classroom, she continues exploring the school, and she finds people she is sure are her family. She remembers that the woman is called Phyllis, and Phyllis is her mother. There are also girls called Imogen, Fenella, and Charlotte. The ghost thinks that these are her sisters and that her name is Sally because Phyllis seems to call her Sally, although nobody really seems to see her. Sometimes, people just seem to have a sense that someone is there, and the dog, Oliver, seems to know she’s there. Pieces of information click in the ghost’s mind. This family’s last name is Melford. The teacher in the Latin class is her father. Sally is short for Selina. Charlotte is called Cart as a nickname.

The ghost finds herself angry and hating her family. She wonders if she could have died in the accident she vaguely remembers and if she came back to get some sort of revenge on her family, but the idea horrifies her, and she’s sure that she wouldn’t have thought of it in other circumstances.

The ghost watches as Fenella goes to the little hut and pretends to worship the doll Monigan and call her forth, like the doll is some kind of oracle. The ghost remembers that Cart was the one who started this game a year before and that she always thought that it was a boring game. Cart started the game because the four sisters had been fighting over the doll or playing with it too roughly one day, and they had each grabbed an arm or leg and pulled the doll apart. Cart had felt guilty about that, so she sewed the doll back together (badly, because she’s bad at sewing), and she turned the doll into a kind of oracle that the girls would worship to make it up to the doll that she had been ruined. Now, the doll is moldy and mildewy from being left in the little hut for a year. Only little Fenella still plays this game, although the doll has never actually done anything magical when they’ve called on her.

Gradually, the ghost begins putting the pieces of her memories together. Her parents manage a boarding school for boys. The girls help out with chores at the school, but they’re mostly expected to stay out of the way. Although they attend a different school themselves, it feels like they never get a break from school because they live at one. They never even get summers off because there are summer courses for disabled children at the boarding school.

Sally the ghost listens to her sisters complaining about her in her absence. They resent her for being overly sweet and a perfectionist and for defending their parents when the other girls criticize them. Sally is angry with them for the things they say behind her back and for their constant bickering and drama. Imogen gets melodramatic and picks at her sisters because she’s worried about not achieving the music career she really wants. Cart keeps trying to shut Imogen down because she feels overwhelmed by sentiment and emotions, and admittedly, Imogen’s emotions are frequently overwhelming. This dynamic between Imogen trying to express her overwhelming emotions and Cart trying to shut her down is a large part of the quarreling between the girls. Fenella, the youngest of the sisters, is just being a silly little girl, and she is rather fed up with her older sisters. At one point, Sally finds a poem that Fenella wrote that explains her relationship with her sisters:

“I have three ugly sisters
They really should be misters
They shout and scream and play the piano
I can never do anything I want.”

It’s a pretty accurate description of what goes on in their house. All of the girls are loud and argumentative, and a large part of the tension in their house comes from the inability of any of them to do what they want to do. Sally notices some pictures on the walls and remembers their father (whom the girls only refer to as “Himself”, never as “father” or “dad”) yelling at them and calling them “bitches” for stealing art supplies from the school for drawing and painting. Imogen’s drama about her music career is because she’s not allowed to use the music room at the school for practicing, and she thinks that she’ll never get a chance to develop her abilities. The parents pay more attention to the students at the school than they do to their own daughters, even forgetting to leave the girls any supper sometimes. The girls’ home life is not happy, and that’s why they’re not happy with each other. The two oldest girls especially are not happy with their parents because of their neglect.

As Sally listens to her sisters talking about her, Cart and Imogen admit that they’re both jealous of Sally because she gets to be somewhere else that will be important to her future career. Sally wishes that they would say where she’s supposed to be because she can’t remember. She finds a few unfinished rough drafts of letters that she wrote to her parents, trying to tell them that life at the school didn’t have much to offer her and that she was going away, but Sally can’t imagine where she would have gone. One of the letters even says that her life is in danger, but from what?

There is a bright spot in the girls’ lives, and that’s a secret friendship they’ve developed with some of the boys at school. The boys visit them in the kitchen after dinner, and they have coffee together. As ghostly Sally watches one of these visits, the boys ask the girls what happened to Sally, which ghostly Sally is (literally) dying to hear. Sally’s sisters explain that Sally’s disappearance is part of a Plan the girls have.

It’s obvious that the girls’ parents neglect them. While Sally has always been defending their parents to the other girls, the other girls want to prove to her that their parents would never notice if something awful happened to one of them. A lot of the strange things that Sally has witnessed them doing that day are part of this Plan. Fenella has been going around the entire day with big knots tied in her hair, and their parents haven’t noticed. Fenella says that if they continue to not notice, she’ll act like she’s fallen seriously ill. Sally’s sisters say that Sally has gone to stay with a friend named Audrey Chambers, but their parents don’t know and still haven’t noticed that she’s even gone.

The sisters and the boys decide to try holding a seance for fun, and ghostly Sally uses this as an opportunity to communicate with them. Although she has some difficulty and misspells her message, she manages to convince Imogen that she’s the one communicating and that she’s dead. Imogen gets hysterical, but the others calm her down by phoning her friend’s house and confirming that Sally is there and that she’s fine. Ghostly Sally can’t understand it. She’s sure that she’s really Sally, but how can that be if Sally is definitely at her friend’s house?

Ghostly Sally seeks out living Sally, and to her surprise, she finds her, although she feels disconnected from this girl. She also learns that this Sally has been secretly doing things with a boy from the school, Julian, performing nighttime rituals with the doll, Monigan. Although ghostly Sally remembers having been friends with Julian, seeing him from outside herself makes her realize that Julian is actually sinister and disturbed. In her spirit form, she also realizes that their rituals with Monigan have stirred up something genuinely supernatural, apart from herself.

As things become more clear to her, the ghost begins to think that she was wrong about being Sally. She is still sure that she is one of the four sisters, neglected at her parents’ school, but she doesn’t think that she’s Sally after all, and that’s why she had no knowledge of Sally’s secret rituals with Julian and couldn’t remember where Sally was or what she was thinking. She also realizes that everything she has seen happened when she was younger. Somehow, after her accident, her spirit went back into the past, seeing things that she and her sisters used to do.

As the “ghost” wakes up in the hospital in the present day, she also realizes that she is not actually dead. She’s been having an out-of-body experience. Worse, her “accident” wasn’t really an accident. Someone tried to kill her. Julian, also older now in the present day, shoved her out of his car while they were driving somewhere. He was deliberately trying to kill her! Something that happened during that time in the past, during the time with the Monigan rituals and the girls’ Plan to confront their parents over their neglect led up to this attempted murder.

The “ghost” still can’t remember everything that happened in the seven years since then, leading up to the attempted murder, and she’s still confused about who she really is. She only senses that Monigan tried to kill her through Julian. Although the girls once thought that Monigan was just a game, Monigan is actually a real, evil spirit. Seven years ago, Monigan told them that it would claim a life, and now, Monigan is trying to do so. Can the “ghost” regain her memories and figure out what to do in time to save her life before the next attempt?

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

My Reaction

Earlier, I covered The Headless Cupid, in which children play at being witches and doing magical rituals that are clearly nonsense, but this book has children who are coerced by some ancient supernatural spirit into doing “real” occult rituals. The children’s rituals involve blood and cruelty to animals, which I didn’t like when I was reading the story. We don’t fully get to know what Monigan actually is, although there are indications that Monigan might be some kind of ancient goddess that craves sacrifices, especially human sacrifices. Monigan seems to remember receiving sacrifices before, in the distant past. Although Cart thinks that she invented Monigan, that Monigan is just a doll they tore, and that all of their rituals are just playacting, the “ghost” realizes that they were all being manipulated by the spirit called Monigan into thinking that. Monigan took advantage of the neglected children and their mentally ill friend for its own purposes. I think Monigan was based on Morrigan from Irish mythology. We are told in the story that this British boarding school is built on a site that has been inhabited from ancient times, and the girls’ father is obsessed with the archaeology of the area, which may also be responsible for stirring up this ancient spirit.

The intriguing part of this story is first that the readers aren’t sure whether or not the “ghost” is actually dead, and then, the readers as well as the ghost have to determine the ghost’s true identity. At first, the “ghost” thinks that she knows who she is, but then, she thinks that she was wrong. (Or was she?) Even when she is awake in the present day, her mind is still confused, and even two of her sisters, while they know that Julian’s attempt to kill her was part of Monigan’s curse, find it difficult to remember everything that happened when all of this started. The “ghost” has to go through the events of the past, with Monigan working against her all the time, to figure out what set off this threat against her before she runs out of time. She knows that Monigan plans to kill her before the day is over, and she doesn’t have much time left to break this curse or prevent it from happening in the first place. The “ghost” isn’t sure at first that she can change the past, but she gradually manages to get through to the other children and figure out a solution with the help of her sisters.

I found the parents in the story not just neglectful but actually cruel and infuriating. The father keeps calling his daughters “bitches” when he gets angry at them. When the girls appeal to their mother about how they’re not being fed and have to keep begging food from the school’s kitchen, the mother shuts her eyes and tells them to stop bothering the cook. The cook is also revealed to be stealing food from the kitchen herself, which may be the reason why both the girls and the students have little to eat, but when the girls tell their mother about it, their mother doesn’t want to hear about it. She just doesn’t want to go to the bother of finding another cook. I’m amazed that the girls haven’t actually died at some point before this or that social services hasn’t gotten involved. The girls do attend a different school from the one their parents manage, so they would have the opportunity to get help and attention from an outside source.

At one point, Fenella openly tells her mother that she’s neglecting them while she only pays attention to the boys at the school, and her mother says that girls can look after themselves while boys can’t. It’s like her mother looks at the girls like some people look at pet cats when they just let them roam and hunt for their own food. I don’t even approve of people neglecting their cats, like they don’t even have pets so much as a nodding acquaintance with feral animals. Even in the present day, when our “ghost” lies in a hospital bed after a murder attempt, their mother doesn’t come to see her because she’s too busy helping the boys at the school to pack their trunks. The father is openly hostile to his daughters, and the mother doesn’t seem to have any feeling or concern for them at all.

The concept of the book was interesting, but it’s not one that I would care to read again because I found it dark and frustrating, although it does end well. Things do improve for the girls in the past after their father discovers their weird rituals and sends them off to their grandmother’s house, angrily declaring that he never wants to see any of them again. The father’s rejection of them is actually a blessing. At their grandmother’s house, they get regular food and the attention that they desperately need. The mother partly redeems herself at the end of the book by coming to see her daughter after all, saying that she felt obligated to get the boys all packed but now that’s done, so she is free to stay with her daughter until she’s fully recovered. The girl does recover, and she begins reconciling herself to her past traumas, both the supernatural ones and the ones resulting from her parents’ neglect and her tumultuous relationship with her sisters.

One thing that the “ghost” accomplishes is that she gets a look at her past and herself as they really are, viewing herself and everything that happened from a neutral position as the “ghost.” Seeing herself from the position of a third person, she discovers that she doesn’t like the things she’s done or the person she’s been during these last several years. That’s why she has felt so disconnected from herself and her memories and why she couldn’t even recognize herself or the things she did in the past. The “ghost” is so upset with herself and ashamed of her life choices that she wonders if she’s really worth saving from Monigan. Fortunately, her sisters truly love her and know that she’s worth saving. Their bad choices and poor behavior to each other have been largely the result of their parents’ neglect, a trauma they all share and understand. Although the ghost doesn’t remember everything at first, the other sisters know that, after they went to live with their grandmother and received the attention and care they really needed, they all improved and their relationships with each other improved. They’ve been trying to move on from their past ever since, and they need to settle the matter about Monigan once and for all to truly be free to go forward in their lives. One of the sisters knows exactly what kind of sacrifice will finally appease Monigan and save her sister’s life.

Monigan wants something perfect as a sacrifice, but our “ghost” isn’t a perfect person. Nobody is perfect, and our “ghost” has become truly aware of her flaws and the nature of her troubled past through her out-of-body experiences. However, things can be perfect in someone’s imagination, and one of the sisters has a more powerful imagination than the others. Someone has a dream that is perfect, at least in her mind. When she gives Monigan that dream, she not only frees her sister from Monigan but herself from something that her future self has realized that she doesn’t really want. Both she and her sister have been clinging to things that were harmful to both of them, making them into the kind of people neither of them really wanted to be. It was their insecurity from their parents’ neglect that made them cling to things that they thought would make them special and distinct. Once they are free from these harmful influences, not only does Monigan stop trying to take their lives, but they are truly free for the first time to become something better. Monigan does claim one life at the end of the story, but in that case, it’s only justice.

Posted on by TracyC

Behind the Attic Wall

Behind the Attic Wall by Sylvia Cassedy, 1983.

This story is told as a flashback, so we know that things get better for the main character, but she is still haunted by her past experiences.

Twelve-year-old Maggie is an orphan who has been bounced around between foster homes and boarding schools because of her bad behavior. Her bad behavior is because she feels neglected and unloved. She eventually comes to live with her great aunts and an uncle in an old house that used to be a boarding school. Maggie has memories of the house where she once lived with her parents before they died, but no place she’s been since has seemed home-like.

When she first arrives, her eccentric Uncle Morris picks her up at the station. Uncle Morris has a sense of humor, which is both charming and also gets on Maggie’s nerves. When she gets a look at the institutional-looking old house where her great aunts and uncle live, she is physically ill. She has lived in various boarding schools and is horrified at the idea of living in another. Her last boarding school expelled her, and the headmistress called her a “disgrace.” Maggie had hoped that, for once, living with relatives might mean living in a real home.

Her two aunts, Harriet and Lillian, remind her of the headmistresses at boarding schools, although their rules are different from most headmistresses. They lecture her about health and nutrition and worry about her being undernourished. They give her old-fashioned, hand-me-down clothes to wear that Maggie assumes are the uniforms of this old school. One of her aunts gives her a baby doll, but Maggie tells her that she doesn’t like dolls and doesn’t play with them. She doesn’t have any dolls, and if she ever had any before in her life, she doesn’t remember. Her aunt thinks her rejection of this gift is horrible. Her aunts don’t seem to understand much about children, and they are both horrified when Maggie dumps out her glass of milk because they gave her warm milk instead of cold. However, her Uncle Morris is amused and tells her that she might be the “right one” after all. Maggie isn’t sure what he means by that.

After her aunt leaves her alone in her new room, Maggie plays with the doll a little, imagining that she’s explaining it to a group of girls who have never seen a doll. A game that Maggie often plays with herself is to mentally explain common things to a group of imaginary girls who don’t know what any of them are. Then, she goes exploring the rest of the old house. Because this building is so obviously an old school, she keeps expecting that she will eventually encounter other students, but there are no students. Maggie is the only child in the old house.

Maggie finds her aunts’ rooms and tries on their curlers, a necklace, and a fancy pair of shoes. She gets in trouble with her aunts for doing that, and that’s the moment when Maggie understands that there really are no other children around to see her get in trouble. At first, her aunts think that maybe agreeing to accept Maggie was a mistake and that they can’t handle her. However, they decide to keep her, at least for the present.

They explain to Maggie that the building where they live did use to be a boarding school for girls. It was founded by some ancestors of their, whose portraits hang in the parlor. Maggie is amazed at the idea of ancestors because she barely even remembers having parents and has little concept of her extended family. The old school closed after some kind of disaster, and it reopened in a new location down the road. Now, the new school is a private day school for both boys and girls, catering mostly to wealthy families, who can afford the fees. Maggie is horrified when she finds out that she will be attending this school because she knows that a poor orphan like her in her shabby, hand-me-down clothes is going to be an oddity among the wealthy private school students.

On her first day at the school, Maggie has a panic attack while imagining going through the routine of her teacher telling the whole class about her unfortunate history and the tragic deaths of her parents in a car accident when she was little and asking the other students to be patient and charitable to her. She’s experienced this before, and she knows that, while the other students start off treating her charitably, they soon get tired of being charitable and start picking on her. Maggie tries to run away from the class, and that earns her a reputation as a weirdo right off the bat. The other kids immediately start treating her like a weirdo and calling her the usual nasty names, and Maggie’s only relief is that, this time, they didn’t go through the false kindness phase first.

Uncle Morris doesn’t live at the old school with the aunts, but he lives nearby and sometimes comes to visit. He continues to spout his witty nonsense and plays weird practical jokes that make no sense. Maggie starts to understand that her uncle’s form of teasing isn’t meant to be mean, unlike the kids at school, but none of it really makes any sense to her. His jokes are pointless, and he doesn’t respond to anything, even Maggie’s emotions, in a normal way, turning everything into some kind of bizarre joke.

Then, Maggie starts to hear voices in the house. She can’t tell where the voices are coming from, but she knows they’re not her aunts, and her aunts never seem to hear them. They talk about random things, like tea, roses, a lost umbrella, and a dog. Maggie asks her aunts who’s talking, but her aunts say no one is. They think that it’s just Maggie’s imagination because she’s highly strung, but Maggie knows that she’s not imagining it. Her Uncle Morris also seems to hear the voices because he reacts to them at one point, but when Maggie tries to ask him about it, he dodges the question and makes another of his nonsense jokes.

One day, while her aunts are out of the house, the voices call to Maggie and ask her to join them. Maggie searches for the source of the voices, and behind the wall in the attic, she discovers a small room with a pair of mysterious dolls who are alive. They walk and talk. At first, Maggie thinks this must be some kind of trick, but it isn’t. She tries to ask the dolls what they are, but they speak in nonsense jokes in response to serious questions, like Uncle Morris.

Maggie is unnerved by the dolls at first, and she throws a fit about how stupid their pretend tea party is, kicking the dolls aside in fear because she can’t understand them and is afraid of what they might do to her. The dolls simply conclude that they must have been wrong and that Maggie isn’t the right one and stop talking to her. Maggie tells them that she doesn’t care and doesn’t want to be the right one, but actually, she can’t stop thinking about the dolls. She wonders what they mean about the “right one” and what kind of person would be the right one. She also feels guilty about damaging the dolls when she kicked them, so she returns to the attic to fix them. When she starts to fix them, the dolls begin speaking to her again.

The dolls become Maggie’s friends, giving her the love she so desperately needs. Maggie also feels needed by someone else for the first time in her life, enjoying the feeling of taking care of the dolls, sort of the way she took care of the girls in her imagination. However, the dolls have a spooky origin, and when Maggie realizes the truth about the dolls, it changes her life forever.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

About Maggie

I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this one or not because, while I like sort of atmospheric spooky themes, I have limits on how many scary and sad themes I can take. It did help that the book is divided into sections, each with a prologue about Maggie in the present day as she looks back on this strange period in her life. The prologues explain how Maggie is now in a happier home with people she has come to think of as her parents and younger children that she has also come to love as little sisters. The other kids are fascinated by the stories that she tells about her time with her aunts at the old boarding school, and Maggie enjoys explaining things to them, like she used to do to the imaginary girls, only she speaks more politely to the real girls. Since her time with her aunts, she has learned to get along better with people, and this ghost story is about how she learned how to build connections with people.

The book makes it clear that Maggie’s bad behavior is because she has been lonely, neglected, and mistreated since her parents’ deaths. She has been in various foster homes and boarding schools, but the people who were her caretakers didn’t really love her or have any patience with her. The other children in her boarding schools used her as a target for teasing and bullying, causing Maggie to look at everyone new she meets with suspicion, waiting for them to turn on her, even if they acted nice at first. The adults don’t really build a relationship with Maggie and just expect Maggie to be perfectly behaved, regardless of her provocation. Maggie remembers having spoken to psychologists before, who had her draw pictures of her feelings and family, but they never really solve anything for Maggie. Maggie still feels neglected and unloved, and when the adults at each place she’s been get tired of her, they just ship her off to somewhere else, where the process continues. Maggie’s bad behavior is like shooting herself in the foot, sabotaging possible friendships and relationships, but it becomes more understanding when you realize that this is the only pattern of relationships she knows. Children and adults have both mistreated her, so she doesn’t have any knowledge of healthy and loving relationships to draw on to know how people are supposed to treat each other.

That’s been Maggie’s life for as long as she remembers. The only clothes she has are old, worn pieces of various school uniforms from the various boarding schools where she’s been, and she has no toys or personal possessions except for a pack of cards that she uses to play solitaire, a game that one of her former boarding school roommates taught her. It’s the only game Maggie knows how to play other than imaginary games.

Maggie’s aunts and even her Uncle Morris aren’t particularly good for her. Her aunts have no patience or understanding for her. The aunts do care about Maggie. Maggie does become better fed and healthier because the aunts are concerned about her health, but they don’t understand how to take care of her emotional health. They also have some selfish motives in their care of Maggie, wanting to show off her improvement to their health society because they want to prove their health theories. Uncle Morris is quietly supportive of Maggie, but I found him rather trying because, when Maggie tries to speak to him seriously and sincerely, he just makes jokes and never really addresses her feelings or the realities of her situation. Admittedly, it’s partly because he knows the truth about the dolls but can’t admit it. Still, constant jokes aren’t what Maggie really needs, and his jokes and nonsense wear on her. The dolls also speak nonsense, but they give Maggie the opportunity to learn valuable lessons about how to get long with others and build relationships with them.

How to Build Relationships

One of the first lessons that Maggie learns is that, while other people have done things to hurt her, she also does things that hurt other people’s feelings. Before she can begin to develop relationships, she has to learn to control herself, to not treat other people in hurtful ways, and to apologize and do things to repair damage she’s done. She can’t begin to build a relationship with the dolls until she repairs the damage she did the first time she met them. Maggie is actually amazed that she was able to do it because she has never fixed anything in her life. She is unaccustomed to the idea that she can make things better when things have gone wrong or when she’s done something wrong. Most of her past problems have just ended in failure and with her being sent away.

Maggie also learns that building relationships with other people means caring about their needs, and Maggie likes the feeling of being needed by someone. Acting out the tea parties with an empty tea pot and wooden pieces of bread and watering the fake roses on the wallpaper is still ridiculous, but she does it all anyway because the dolls need her to do it. She gives them presents, too, the first presents that she’s ever given anybody. One of the girls at Maggie’s school, Barbara, sees Maggie making a present for one of the dolls and gives Maggie a little paper umbrella for a doll. Maggie learns that it’s possible for people to bond over shared interests.

What Are the Dolls Really?

However, there is a dark side to this story. There are hints all along about what the dolls really are. The man doll, Timothy John, is always reading a torn scrap of a newspaper about a fire, but he can never finish the story because most of it is missing. Every day is Wednesday for them, and they say that is the day they arrived in that room. When they show Maggie their best Sunday clothes, which they never wear because every day is Wednesday to them, Maggie is surprise to see that the clothes are burned. The dolls also speak of a third person who is supposed to join their doll household at some point, but they say that it can’t be Maggie because she’s supposed to be their visitor.

The truth is that the dolls are the ghosts of her ancestors, the ones who founded the school. They were killed in a fire in the 1800s, along with their dog, who is now a little china dog in their attic room. The story in the little newspaper scrap is about them, and the fire is the reason why the school had to be moved to another building. Maggie doesn’t realize the truth until she runs away after an argument with her aunts because she didn’t come to the party of their society and finds their grave stones. It’s the anniversary of their deaths, and she meets Uncle Morris at their graves. The only time Uncle Morris doesn’t make jokes is when he explains to Maggie how they died.

After the aunts catch her in the attic with the dolls and Maggie finds out who and what they are, the dolls stop moving and talking to her. Maggie tries moving them herself, acting out their tea party, and talking for them. Maggie is afraid that the dolls have now died forever, but there is the third person the doll spoke of to consider. The third person is Uncle Morris. It occurred to me that the story leaves it a little ambiguous about whether the dolls were really the ghosts of the ancestors or if Maggie’s own lonely imagination, inspired by Uncle Morris’s nonsense and bits of family history made her feel like they did. However, the ending of the story indicates that Maggie didn’t imagine any of it because her Uncle Morris dies of a heart attack and becomes a doll in the attic with the other dolls. When Uncle Morris joins the other dolls, the other dolls come to life again. However, it could still be the imaginings of a lonely and grieving child.

Maggie’s aunts decide that they simply can’t handle Maggie, so they are the ones who arrange for her to go to her new family. It was the best thing that they could have done for Maggie. The new family is the family that Maggie really needs, and they want to keep her permanently. She never tells her new sisters the truth about the dolls. Maggie misses being with the dolls, who are also her family, but the idea that they are still alive and that Uncle Morris is keeping the other two in the attic company so they won’t be lonely without her makes her feel better. It’s a bittersweet story.

One of the things that bothers me about ghost stories is that it’s sad to think about how the people got killed. I like stories that are kind of mysterious, but behind the ghost story, there is real tragedy. I feel really bad for Maggie’s ancestors and their poor dog, although they don’t seem to mind their condition too much. On the other hand, maybe some of their nonsense talk is to cover up the sad parts, so they can forget the tragedy and pretend like they’re still living their normal lives and make it so they don’t have to answer Maggie’s uncomfortable questions. Maybe that’s even where Uncle Morris learned that trick.

There are times when the dolls seem to have some memory of the past and what happened to them, but they’re kind of caught in a sense of timeless, so it’s hard to tell how much they really remember. If they really are ghost dolls and not just dolls who are alive in Maggie’s imagination, there’s no explanation about why they are dolls. Did they have dolls made of themselves while they were alive that they came to inhabit after death? Is it because they’re now playing at a life they’re no longer living? The story doesn’t say. Uncle Morris seems to know more than he tells, and he may have known somehow that he would also become a doll after his death. If he met the dolls himself when he was young, he may have made a conscious decision that he would join them one day. However, we don’t know for sure how much he knows or how or why the other dolls know to expect him after his death. Poor Maggie’s life has been about loss since the death of her parents. She lost them and her first home and every home she’s had since then. The idea that people she loves stay alive in the dolls could still be her imagination. The story indicates it’s all really happening, but readers can still decide for themselves.