Posted on by TracyC

Witches & Magic-Makers

Eyewitness Books

Witches & Magic-Makers by Douglas Hill, 1997.

I always liked the children’s nonfiction Eyewitness Books because of their fascinating historical details and, especially, their pictures. I have to admit that I used this particular book for a college essay about witchcraft trials because, not only did it provide a good beginning overview on the topic but because, for some reason, books intended for adults tend to skimp on or forego pictures entirely. That always bothers me because there are so many things that can be explained better with a picture than a wordy description.

This book is about the history and legends of witches, wizards, and folk magic around the world. The concept that certain people have an ability to use magic for good or evil is an ancient one, found all over the world. The images we have of the sort of people who can use magic come from a variety of sources, from ancient folklore and legend to modern books and movies.

Real-life people who claimed to have the ability to practice magic or were suspected of doing it were very different from the fictional stories. From ancient times, people who were believed to have magical powers were both revered and feared. Ordinary people wanted the power of magic when they thought it could protect them from harm, heal their illnesses, or tell them important things about the future, but they were also afraid of the harm someone with magical abilities might do to them.

When witches were feared to be evil and harmful, they could be arrested, imprisoned, put on trial, tortured, and even executed. The book explains about witchcraft trials, including a section on the famous Salem witchcraft trial.

I particularly liked the pages in the book that explain specific things that witches and other magic-makers are believed to do and that show the objects and ingredients they use to conduct their spells. There is a page that shows magical amulets of all kinds, which are supposed to bring good luck or protection to their wearers. I noticed that some of these cross over into religion because they are specifically religious jewelry. It might be a matter of belief whether their effects would count under “magic” or the “power of the divine”, but I’ve always thought of magic and divine power as being separate. The linking quality here seems to be about physical objects that are believed to have a power that their owners wouldn’t have without them.

There are also sections about how people would use magic to try to tell the future and about the types of ingredients included in magic potions. (Actual results not guaranteed. I find it interesting, but I’m a skeptic.)

Of course, concepts like these vary around the world. Even when different societies share a belief that some people have the ability to use magic to do things like heal people or tell the future, they have different ideas about how that can be accomplished. The book has separate sections devoted to explaining the concepts of magic in different parts of the world, like Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. The final section in the book explains modern beliefs about New Age magic and Wicca.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including one in Chinese).

My Reaction

I already explained at the beginning about how much I like the Eyewitness Books and how I’ve used them before. I really think this series is fascinating and informative for adults as well as kids.

It occurred to me that this particular book is probably about the most potentially controversial book in the series, at least the most potentially controversial one I’ve ever covered. However, I’m not too concerned about it because this isn’t a how-to book about witchcraft. It’s more about history and folklore. I find folklore, history, and culture interesting, but I don’t actually believe in all of the things this book describes as magic.

I did once have an extremely brief foray into magic when I was about 10 years old, which I explained when I covered The Witches of Hopper Street, but I’m a person who comes with limits, which is basically the point of that particular story. I’m still not sure what book I read that time, but whatever it was, it had requirements that I realized I would never want to even try to meet. Let’s just say that people who feel like I do about animal entrails are probably not cut out to be witches, at least not the traditional kind. Since then, my interest in witchcraft has been limited to history and folklore, not actual practice.

As far as Wicca goes, I don’t know too much about actual practice, but for those curious about how it evolved, I recommend this documentary (not child-appropriate) on YouTube about the founder, Gerald Gardner. I love a fun eccentric, and as someone who grew up watching Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks, I have to say that, if you’re going to try to curse someone with magic, I think Hitler is a justifiable target.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Juniper

Juniper by Monica Furlong, 1990.

Young Ninnoc was born the daughter of a chieftan in Cornwall. She was raised as a princess in her father’s castle and educated as young royalty. She is generally loved and cared for, but there is one person in her father’s household who doesn’t like her, her father’s sister, her aunt Meroot. Ninnoc doesn’t know why her aunt hates her, but she knows early in life she can’t trust her. Meroot isn’t even nice to her own young son. She has ambitions for her son to be a great warrior, so she forces him to start training him early and purposely keeps him hungry and in discomfort to toughen him up. Ninnoc is friends with her cousin, and she and her nurse offer him food and comfort in secret. Her cousin really wants to be a musician, but his mother would never allow such a thing.

As the only daughter of a king, it initially seems that Ninnoc’s eventual fate will be to marry and to rule after her father, along with her future husband. However, Ninnoc begins showing signs early in life that she has other talents. It begins when she playfully joins a group of men who are dowsing for water, and she is the one who finds it. As she grows older, she also discovers a talent for healing when she heals her cousin’s wounds after his battle training. She adopts an orphaned baby owl as a pet, and when she realizes that she can hear it talking to her, both she and her cousin realize that Ninoc has a talent for magic. Strangely, her cousin comments that his mother also seems to have this ability, something that makes Ninnoc uneasy.

Ninnoc’s father trusts Meroot more than he should because he is strangely fond of his older sister, but Ninnoc and his mother know that Meroot harbors deep resentment toward them. Ninnoc’s father made Meroot one of Ninnoc’s godmothers, although her mother didn’t really approve. Ninnoc’s other godmother is a strange woman called Euny, who lives in a cottage in the wild areas outside of the protection of Ninnoc’s father. Ninnoc doesn’t like Euni when she meets her because she’s raggedy and unkempt, and for some reason, she insists on calling Ninnoc by the name “Juniper.” Ninnoc’s mother says that Euny is a wise woman and that she calls Ninnoc “Juniper” because she says that is her true name. Both of Ninnoc’s parents trust Euny because she has special abilities. Ninnoc’s mother explains that there are different kinds of power in the world. Some people have power like Ninnoc’s father does, with armies of knights and political authority, but Euny has a different kind of power.

Ninnoc isn’t sure what kind of power that is, but she realizes that this is something that she wants to understand it. As a young princess, she is accustomed to be around power and has the sense that she wants to grow into a position of power, expecting that she will probably be queen one day, but at the same time, she realizes that she isn’t a warrior like her father and his knights. Euny’s kind of power might be the kind of power that Ninnoc will one day need. Still, when Ninnoc’s father tells her that she will have to go live with Euny for a year and a day and study with her, Ninnoc doesn’t really want to go. She doesn’t want to be away from her parents, her cousin, and her friends at her father’s castle, and she doesn’t really like Euny. However, the more Ninnoc begins to sense her own growing powers and to become concerned about what powers her aunt might have, the more she realizes that she needs whatever knowledge Euny has to offer her.

When Ninnoc decides that it’s time to go to Euny for training, she is surprised and a little hurt that Euni doesn’t seem too happy to receive her. Euny explains to her that the power she has is that of a Doran, someone who is very in touch with the natural world and the rhythms of life, but she doesn’t explain too much about what that means. In fact, Euny’s lack of explanations and kind treatment almost cause Ninnoc to give up on the idea of training with Euny entirely.

Euny’s small cottage in the countryside is uncomfortable. It’s often cold, and Euny doesn’t feed her much, telling her that she needs to learn what it’s like for people who are born without privilege. Ninnoc tries to bear it as long as she can, but it seems like Euny uses her more as a servant than anything else and doesn’t really explain anything to her. Euny takes her to gather herbs and plants, but she doesn’t initially explain what they are or what they’re for. Euni questions Ninnoc about her observations of the natural world, and Ninnoc’s observations of the world increase, but somehow, Euny never seems satisfied with her improvement. It seems that Ninnoc has been left to endure this treatment and dig out what training she can, but Ninnoc hardly knows just what it is that she’s even supposed to be learning.

Things change for the better then Euny takes Ninnoc with her to visit another Doran friend, Angharad, and her apprentice. Angharad and her apprentice live simply but far more comfortably than Euny and Ninnoc. Angharad has at least provided her apprentice, another girl about Ninnoc’s age, with a proper bed to sleep in, a warm house, and adequate food, which Euny has not. Ninnoc can tell that Euny is uncomfortable at how much Ninnoc prefers Angharad, and she is embarrassed when Angharad insists that she leave Ninnoc with her for the winter. It’s only then that Euny awkwardly admits to Ninnoc that she really does care about her, even though she’s never said so before.

During that winter, Ninnoc comes to some important understandings of herself and what the path of a Doran can be like through her time with Angharad and her apprentice. However, Angharad says that Euny still has some important lessons to teach her. When Ninnoc complains about Euni’s lack of teaching, Angharad encourages Ninnoc to pay attend to Euny and dig out the lessons for herself. Euny has had a hard life, since she was orphaned and homeless at a young age, and she isn’t great at explaining herself or showing her emotions, but Angharad says that she’s still a powerful Doran and that Ninnoc can learn a lot from her. By the time Ninnoc is ready to return to Euny, she has come to understand more about Euny and is more sure of her path as a Doran, and Euny, for her part, comes to realize that the way she was treating her apprentice wasn’t helpful to her. Euny helps Ninnoc to increase her learning of the healing arts, saying that this will be important to her path in life. Ninnoc begins to embrace her true identity as Juniper the Doran.

When the year and a day are over, Ninnoc returns to her parents, but she is growing up and must now make some important decisions about the course her life will take and how to use her abilities. When she first returns home, she can tell that things have been bad while she was away. The harvest has failed, which is something her father says has happened before, but it seems especially bad. In spite of that, her aunt has decided to remarry and insists on a big wedding feast. Ninnoc is suspicious of her aunt and, because of her training, comes to suspect that Meroot used an evil curse to ruin the harvest.

Having learned things about power and how people crave it or grasp it, Ninnoc begins to understand her aunt in ways she didn’t before. Meroot has always been bitter because, as a princess, she was deprived of her chance to rule when her younger brother, Ninnoc’s father, was born. For a time, she harbored a hope that Ninnoc’s father might not have children, but because he married and had Ninnoc, Meroot found her chances of ever having the throne dwindling. In some ways, Ninnoc shares the feeling that it isn’t fair for a girl to be deprived of her place in succession just because she has a brother or that the “manly” powers of fighting and war are prized more for rules than the powers of wisdom and healing. Yet, she can’t allow Meroot to harm others because of that.

Using her own Doran healing abilities, Ninnoc is able to help undo Meroot’s curse. The land becomes prosperous again, but Ninnoc’s own destiny and desire for power and position are tested when she learns that her mother is expecting another baby and that she thinks it will be a boy. Ninnoc feels some of the jealousy Meroot has always felt at being deprived of power and position, displaced by a younger brother. With Euny’s help, Ninnoc/Juniper begins to see another destiny for herself besides the one she always assumed she would have as her father’s heir, but she must overcome her feelings to protect her mother and younger brother and find her real place in the world as Juniper the Doran.

This book is a prequel to the book Wise Child, written after it but showing Wise Child’s mentor Juniper and her own coming-of-age story. The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

I remember reading this book as a teenager, after I read Wise Child, and I liked it then, although I have some different perspectives now on the story and some of the characters. I think it’s important to note that the “Dorans” in the story are sort of pseudo-proto-Wiccans, but they’re not really historically accurate. “Doran” isn’t an historical term for a witch or wise woman; it’s just invented for this particular fantasy series.

I had forgotten how much Euny neglected and deprived Juniper during her time as her student. I remember that Juniper was initially a little spoiled from being raised as a princess, but as Angharad realizes, Euny’s lessons in living as an ordinary person and getting in touch with nature go beyond what is actually good for Juniper, keeping her underfed and inadequately housed. That level of neglect isn’t really necessary for Juniper’s path as a Doran, as her time with Angharad and her apprentice make her realize. The true is that Euny is a bad cook and housekeeper and settles for just barely scraping by in her life. Even though Juniper is initially inexperienced with cooking and cleaning, she soon realizes that she’s better at it than Euny is, partly because Euny hardly tries. Angharad says that Euny is a good teacher, but objectively, she really isn’t. What she’s actually good at is getting in touch with the powers of the natural world and healing, but she’s initially bad at explaining things, and her treatment of Juniper is actually preventing her from learning.

The book doesn’t explicitly say this, but Euny seems jealous of Juniper at first for her privileged early life. No matter what Juniper does, she seems determined to mock and humiliate Juniper as the privileged princess, and she is gleeful when Juniper realizes that she’s treating her less as a student and more as a servant because she relishes the role reversal. Euny has lived a life of deprivation, and I think some part of her is still bitter about it. Juniper knows that her father has offered Euny a nice place to live in the grounds of his castle and other gifts that she has refused. She lives the way she does because she has chosen this lifestyle. Juniper’s time with Angharad causes Euny to reconsider her treatment of Juniper and what she’s really been teaching her, so when she comes to reclaim Juniper from Angharad, things change between then. It’s partly due to Juniper’s growing understanding of the path she’s choosing in life, but I think it’s also due to Euny coming to understand the real relationship between herself and Juniper and to reconcile her own feelings. I think it’s important to consider that angle of things because it helps lay the groundwork for Juniper’s later struggle with her own emotions regarding her place in the world.

The society the characters live in relies heavily on social status or power of one kind or another. Juniper’s parents love her, but when her little brother is born, Juniper immediately knows that she is out of the line of succession for her father’s position. It hurts her, and Juniper has to acknowledge and come to terms with that hurt. It’s partly the hurt of being replaced and partly the loss of power, something which matters so much in their society. However, Juniper doesn’t want to become like her aunt, twisted by greed for the one kind of power and authority she can’t have and failing to use the powers she does have in the right way. Meroot uses her powers to manipulate and hurt others, while Juniper genuinely wants to heal and protect others. While it does hurt that others no longer see her as her father’s heir and that she won’t have that type of power, as she once thought she might, Juniper comes to appreciate the power that she does have and that she can use it to create a new destiny for herself.

I still hate the part in the story where Euny makes Juniper kill the pig for food. Like Juniper, I know, intellectually, that the pig is an important food source and that’s what it’s being raised for, but it’s still a bloody business, and I hated reading about it. When Euny neglects Juniper emotionally, Juniper bonds with the pig as one of the few animals Euny keeps, making killing him even harder for her, and it just seems like a cruel manipulation from Euny to make her do it.

Posted on by TracyC

The Lancaster Witch

The Lancaster Witch cover

The Lancaster Witch by Carol H. Behrman, 1993.

Thirteen-year-old Maddie Stoner is startled when her parents suddenly tell her that she has an English cousin named Clive who is going to be arriving for a two-week visit on Saturday. Maddie has never even heard of Clive before and wants to know who he is and what’s behind his sudden visit. Her parents explain that Clive is more like a second or third cousin, the son of her mother’s cousin, who moved to England years ago and married a British man. Her mother’s cousin has only occasionally kept in touch since her marriage, but her son, Clive is just a little less than a year older than Maddie and wants to visit the US. His mother has asked Maddie’s mother if she’s willing to have him at their home in New Jersey this summer, and her mother said yes.

Maddie gets the feeling like there’s something more behind this mysterious cousin’s visit than her parents are admitting, but they dodge her questions on the subject. When she tells her friend, Chloe, about her cousin, Chloe theorizes that maybe Clive is some kind of juvenile delinquent or is otherwise in trouble or into something his parents don’t approve of, so they want to send him overseas to get him away from his problems. (Chloe says that she read somewhere that people in England use the term “teddy boy” to describe boys involved in gangs. I looked it up, and it seems to be an older term from the 1950s and 1960s. It seems more associated with the aesthetic of certain types of rock and roll fans, although there were gangs associated with it as well. It’s just kind of an old concept for a 1990s book.)

When Maddie and her parents go to meet Clive at the airport, Maddie sees a creepy woman in black with a very pale face following Clive, her hand on his shoulder. Then, a traveler hurrying past accidentally bumps into Maddie with his suitcase and knocks her down. When she gets up and looks around, the woman is gone. She asks Clive who the woman was and where she went, and he says that there’s nobody with him. Maddie’s parents think she was just mistaken, that she just saw another traveler who happened to be near Clive at the time. Maddie is sure that she wasn’t mistaken, but Clive refuses to acknowledge that the woman in black was with him and her parents don’t want her to keep talking about it.

As Maddie and Clive start getting to know each other, Maddie decides that she likes Clive. Neither of them has any siblings. Clive and his parents live in a resort town called Morecambe outside of Lancaster in northern England. When Maddie asks Clive what made him want to visit the US, he’s a little evasive, just saying that his mother thought it would be good for him to get away for a while, making Maddie more suspicious that there’s something about Clive that no one wants to tell her. However, they discover that they have similar tastes in music, and when Maddie invites him to come to the community pool with her and her friends, Clive eagerly accepts, saying that he likes to swim.

At the pool, something happens that convinces Maddie that something truly sinister is happening. Clive and her friends all go swimming while Maddie takes some time to sun herself. Maddie is dozing in a lounge chair when someone starts yelling that someone is drowning! Clive is the one who almost drowns, but fortunately, he is rescued in time by the lifeguard. When he’s pulled out of the water, he tells Maddie that “she” pushed him into the water and made him hit his head and that “she” almost killed him. When Maddie looks around to see who “she” is, she sees the woman in black leaving the pool area. However, when the lifeguard starts asking Clive questions, he changes his story, saying that he just made a clumsy dive and hit his own head. Maddie later confronts him about what he told her, saying that she saw the woman in black, but Clive just gets upset and denies it all.

Maddie talks to her mother, and her mother confirms that Clive’s mother said that he’s been having a few problems lately that he needs to get away from. Clive’s mother was vague about what kind of problems Clive has been having, and Maddie’s mother assumes that Clive’s problems are just typical kid problems. She discourages Maddie from talking it about with Clive because she wants his visit to be pleasant and doesn’t want him to be upset.

Still, Maddie suspects that something much more serious is happening with Clive. Unable to shake the feeling that something bad is happening and that Clive is in real trouble, she snoops in his belongings, finding a letter that he started writing to his parents, saying that “it” followed him to the US. Clive also has books about ghosts and has written some notes about ghosts. Maddie wonders if Clive could be crazy, but she saw the woman in black herself. Clive’s panicked notes about ghosts might not be the imaginings of an unbalanced person but the reasonable fears of a person experiencing something truly unearthly.

Eventually, Maddie gets Clive to admit that the woman in black exists, but he refuses to tell her more about it until she promises that she won’t tell anyone else. Maddie promises, and Clive tells her that it’s the Lancaster Witch. In the 1600s, a group of women were executed for witchcraft in Lancaster, England. One of them, a woman named Elizabeth Device, was supposedly the head of a family of witches, and she cursed the judge in the trial and his descendants. Clive is one of those descendants. He’s been aware of her presence, following him around for about a year, and that was why he wanted to leave England, hoping to get away from her. His parents don’t seem to see her, so he hasn’t been sure whether she was real or just a ghost in his imagination. There have been stories about people in his family being haunted, but his father thinks that’s just superstition. Even though Maddie assures Clive that she’s seen the Lancashire witch, too, and that he isn’t imagining things, Clive says he can’t be sure. Maybe his imagination is now influencing her imagination.

For a while Maddie is persuaded that maybe the woman in black is all their imagination, and she tries to distract Clive from thinking about it. However, everywhere they go and everything they do, she always seems to be lurking around them, causing bad things to happen. She shatters a mirror in Maddie’s room at night and shoves Clive down the stairs. When Clive goes out for a bike ride with Maddie’s friend Tommy on a day when Maddie isn’t feeling well, he mysteriously disappears. Everyone assumes that he just got separated from Tommy and got lost because it’s an unfamiliar town for him, but Maddie is sure that it’s the ghost of Elizabeth Device and her curse!

As they search for Clive, Maddie and Tommy have to confront some truly dangerous things, both conventional and supernatural. There is a real ghost in the story, but there is also a more conventional form of danger. Dealing with the physical danger provides a solution for ridding Clive and his family from the curse of the Lancaster witch forever.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I remember reading this book when I was about 10 or 11 years old. A friend of mine had a copy, and I borrowed it from her. I remembered that I really liked it, but I had forgotten many of the details over the years. Now that I’m an adult, I understand more about the history behind the events in the story than I did as a kid. As a kid, I knew about witch trials, so I understood the basic concept behind the witch’s ghost, but I now know much more about the specific witch trial the story references.

There is a note in the back of the book about the historical basis for the story. In 1612, ten women were hanged for witchcraft in Lancashire, England, in front of Lancaster Castle, including Elizabeth Device. There have been many non-fiction books written about this case, and there are video documentaries on YouTube about the Lancashire witches, also known as the Pendle witches or Pendle Hill witches. One of the more shocking elements of that witch trial was that Elizabeth Device’s own nine-year-old daughter, Jennet, testified against her.

In the story, when Clive and Maddie are discussing the witches and witchcraft trials, they compare the Lancashire witch trials to the Salem witch trials, although Clive is wrong about the Salem witches being burned to death. It’s sloppy scholarship on the part of the author. The notion of witches always being burned is prevalent in popular culture, and it makes for dramatic scenes in movies, but that’s not how it went in real life, at least not in Colonial American. Nobody was burned in Salem because it was a British colony, and the British punishment for witchcraft was hanging, like in the Lancashire trials. Most of the Salem “witches” were hanged, and one person was pressed to death. It’s been a pet peeve of mine to point that out since I did some reports about witchcraft trials in college. It’s one of the first things people get wrong about Salem when they haven’t really researched the events there.

Maddie and Clive discuss some of the motives people had for accusing others of witchcraft, which could vary from suspicion that a neighbor was causing misfortunes to outright spite against someone they hated or envied for other reasons. Clive says that some of the people accused and executed for witchcraft believed that they were actually casting spells themselves. Whether they actually could do magic or if they were actually just following old superstitions is debatable, and Clive acknowledges that. Of course, since this is a ghost story with a witch’s ghost, the presumption here is that the witch had some kind of real power.

The story is suspenseful, but it has a good ending. Most people don’t know that the ghost is real, and they think that the danger Clive is in comes from another source. There is a conventional source of danger in the form of some criminal activity. Dealing with that situation helps to resolve the matter of the witch’s ghost because the ghost decides that Clive has repaid her family for what happened during the witch trial.

In the story, Maddie and her friends enjoy talking with Clive about differences between American and British teenagers, and they point out the differences in the ways each of them talk. Maddie also wonders if British kids play Monopoly, and the book says that she and her friend Tommy teach Clive how to play. However, I know that Britain has had its own versions of the game of Monopoly for decades, long before this story was written, so Clive should have at least known the premise of the game, even if he didn’t usually play.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Who Was That Masked Man, Anyway?

Who Was That Masked Man, Anyway? by Avi, 1992.

World War II is happening, but Frankie Wattleson mostly spends his time thinking about his favorite radio shows, like Captain Midnight, The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, and The Green Hornet. He spends a lot of his time listening to radio shows and daydreaming about them, and his parents and teacher are getting concerned about him. He doesn’t do his homework, just copying his friend Mario’s homework because he’s too busy with his favorite radio shows. He and Mario get caught reading radio fan magazines in class, when they’re supposed to be reading the class reader. Frankie keeps narrating his life like it’s a radio show or talking like a radio advertisement, and even Mario is getting annoyed with him.

Frankie gets Mario into trouble with escapades that he tries to act out like they’re radio shows, like when he sneaks Mario into his family’s house so they can sneak into the bedroom of the medical student who’s renting Frankie’s brother’s room while he’s away in the army. The boys wanted to get a look at the skeleton that the medical student keeps in his room, but the medical student catches them and reports them to Frankie’s mother. Frankie’s parents try to impress on him that his behavior is serious. His father works hard at two jobs and is frequently tired, his brother is away at war, and their boarder provides their family with another source of needed income. They don’t want to lose him as a boarder. Frankie’s mother forbids him to listen to the radio for a week, but he sneaks listening to the radio by visiting Mario and listening to his radio. The boys sneak back and forth between their houses, using a board between their bedroom windows.

Then, Frankie’s parents tell him that his brother, Tom, is coming home from the army. Tom has been wounded, and Frankie is thrilled at Tom coming home as a wounded hero. Frankie’s parents try to explain to him the reality of Tom’s condition. They don’t know how serious his wound is, but they know that he will need peace and to recover. At first, Frankie thinks that his parents will get rid of the medical student boarding with them so Tom can have his room back, but to his horror, his parents tell him that’s not the case. They still need the money from their board badly, so they’re giving Tom Frankie’s room.

Frankie protests that it’s not fair for him to have to give up his room, but his parents say it’s necessary. When Tom comes home, he’ll need quiet and privacy. Frankie asks where he’ll be sleeping, and his father says that they’re going to make up a new bedroom for him in the basement. It sounds terrible to Frankie. The basement is dark and smelly, and if Frankie goes down there, he won’t have his radio or the board for crossing over to Mario’s room. It’s like being sent to a dungeon!

However, when Frankie and Mario look through the stuff in the basement, they find what looks like some kind of old radio! Frankie’s father says that it used to belong to his Uncle Charlie. Frankie doesn’t remember Uncle Charlie, but his father is tired and doesn’t want to talk about him. Frankie isn’t good at fixing things, but he persuades Mario to help him repair the radio. It turns out to be a different kind of radio than Frankie thought, the kind for sending and receiving messages, not the kind of listening to radio shows. Still, Frankie thinks maybe Mario can help him use it to listen to the radio in Mario’s room when his family bans him from using the radio in their house.

When Tom arrives home, he’s different from how Frankie imagined he would be as a returning hero. He is wounded in the leg and uses a crutch to walk. He’s quiet and depressed, and he doesn’t want to go anywhere, do much of anything, or see anyone. Frankie, who is caught up in the ideas of the adventure stories that he listens to on the radio, tries to get Tom to tell him what the war was like and what it was like being wounded, thinking that the stories will be exciting, but Tom tells him he doesn’t want to talk about it.

The idea of having an adventure and being a hero is what keeps Frankie so enthralled with radio shows. His daydreaming and narrating his adventures with Mario as if they were a radio play is all based around his desire to be a hero and escape from the dull or difficult parts of his real life. The problem is that Frankie doesn’t know what it takes to be a real hero or what real-life “adventures” are actually like, and even when he tries to ignore real life, it doesn’t ignore him. His attempts to live out the adventures he imagines go awry, and his teacher makes it clear that, if he doesn’t start paying attention to reality, he’s going to fail the sixth grade.

My Reaction

I didn’t read this when I was a kid, although I loved historical novels and books by Avi. The boy in this story has an obsession with radio plays the way kids of my time sometimes got obsessed with tv shows. His family, his teacher, and even his best friend know that Frankie’s taking his obsession too far, but Frankie uses his love of radio to both hide from difficult things in real life and to imagine that he can be a hero, like the heroes on the radio.

In between parts of the story, there are interludes with snippets of radio programs and advertisements, showing readers what Frankie’s listening to and where he gets his ideas. I’m a fan of radio plays myself, so I was already familiar with some of the programs that Frankie listens to and their general style. I could recognize many of the tropes of the radio plays in Frankie’s fantasies from the beginning.

Frankie’s radio-based exploits are amusing, but also cringey because readers as well as Frankie’s family and teacher know that he’s headed for trouble by not paying attention to reality. Even his best friend is losing patience with him. I kept waiting for the moment when he would snap out of it and accept some of the hard realities around him. There is a moment when he does get a dose of reality that shatters some of his illusions, the moment when he meets is Uncle Charlie. Up to that point, Frankie was working his Uncle Charlie into his fantasies, imagining him as some kind of secret hero, but Uncle Charlie’s secrets turn out to be more ordinary and not at all romantic or noble. Uncle Charlie accepts the reality of his own situation for what it is, and he knows things ahead of him will be hard and that he has himself to blame for what his life is now. Frankie finds it hard to hear, and his brother’s confession of what war is really like similarly shatter’s some of Frankie’s illusions. It makes him realize that he’s made some mistakes in his thinking and plotting, and Frankie does try to put an end to a romantic scheme that he’s put in motion. However, Frankie’s scheme, while causing chaos, does actually result in a happy ending, so he is able to maintain some of his fantasies and illusions, even in the end.

This story contrasts with another by the same author, Don’t You Know There’s a War On?, which is also about a boy growing up in the United States during WWII, coming to terms with the effects of the war on daily life and the people around him, and indulging in a little fantasy and adventure based on radio plays and popular entertainment of the time. The difference between these two stories is that the boy in Don’t You Know There’s a War On? is more realistic in his views that Frankie is in this story. Both of them are inspired by radio play adventures, but the boy in Don’t You Know There’s a War On? isn’t living in a fantasy world as much as Frankie is and is more open to accepting the mundane and hard realities of life once he understands some of the situations around him.

Posted on by TracyC

The Bracelet

The Bracelet by Yoshiko Uchida, illustrated by Joanna Yardley, 1976, 1993.

Emi is a young girl, a second-grader, in a Japanese American family in 1942. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, there was widespread paranoia about people of Japanese descent in the United States. In response to the fear that these people could secretly be spies for Japan, many of them were ordered to go to internment camps for the duration of the war. Emi’s family is one of those families.

When the story begins, her family has packed and is preparing to report to one of these camps. Emi is sad to leave her home and worried about where they are going. It’s particularly hard for her to leave her best friend. Before they go, her friend stops by with a special present, a bracelet for her to remember her friend by. Emi promises that she will always wear it.

The move to the camp involves a long bus ride and crowds of people. When they get there, Emi’s family is assigned to a barrack made out of an stable because the camp is in an old, converted racetrack (this is a description of Tanforan Assembly Center from real life), and it’s not a very homey place. It’s dirty and still smells like horses. The camp is surrounded by barbed wired wire, and they have to line up with everyone else for meals. They know that this is a temporary camp and that they will later be sent somewhere else. (They will be sent to Topaz.)

Then, Emi suddenly realizes that she no longer has her bracelet. She must have lost it somewhere in the move to the camp! They look everywhere, but they can’t find it. How is Emi going to remember her best friend without that special present?

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

My Reaction

The author of this book, Yoshiko Uchida, has also written other books about Japanese internment camps during World War II and the experiences of the people there and their experiences with returning to normal life after the war. When she was a young woman, she and her family were also held in the Japanese internment camps, giving her direct knowledge of the conditions there and insight into the affect that the camps had on the lives of ordinary people. The experiences of the people in her stories follow the experiences of her own family.

This particular book would make a good introduction to the concept of Japanese internment camps for children. It shows one of the camps through the eyes of a young girl, and it’s not a very friendly or welcoming place because it is essentially a prison. It’s an unfair prison because the people there haven’t done anything wrong, and that comes through in the story. (“They hadn’t done anything wrong. They were being treated like the enemy just because they looked like the enemy. … They loved America, but American didn’t love them back. And it didn’t want to trust them.”) They’re only there because some people are suspicious that some of them might do something wrong because of their ethnic background. Kids can understand the unfairness of the situation and Emi’s feelings at leaving her home and her friend. It’s not an easy topic to discuss, but the feeling of unfairness is a universal one, experienced by humans of all ages. Everyone has experienced something in their life, big or small, that was unfair, so the emotion isn’t difficult to understand.

Nobody is physically hurt doing the story, and nobody is called any racial slurs, making this a relatively gentle introduction to a difficult topic. There are soldiers with guns watching the people going to the camp, and they wonder if those guards are really going to shoot anyone who tries to run away, but nobody is shot. The presence of the armed guards is the most overtly scary part of the book, although there is also an atmosphere of general uncertainty because Emi and her family don’t know what’s going to happen next.

Through Emi’s thoughts, kids can understand that these are ordinary people who have been caught up in something larger that has changed and complicated their lives. The book doesn’t cover much about life at the camp because it’s a short book that mainly covers Emi’s feelings at leaving home and her arrival at the camp, but it sets the scene well for longer, more difficult books, to fill in the blanks.

The bright side to the story is that Emi realizes that her memories of her friend don’t depend on a physical object, like the bracelet. She has memories of all the fun things she and her friend did together, and as long as they remember each other, they will still be friends. We don’t know from this book whether Emi will ever see this friend again or not, but I think that Emi appears as a secondary character in other books by the same author. I think she’s a friend of Yuki in Journey to Topaz and Journey Home.

The edition of the book that I used for my review is the one from 1993. There is a section in the back of the book with historical information about the Japanese internment, and the section in my edition has updated information that wouldn’t have been in the original version of the book. The story was first printed in 1976, but the historical section in my edition ends with the conclusions reached in 1982 by the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians established by President Carter to investigate the causes of the Japanese internment. The conclusion of that commission was the Japanese internment was the product of racism, paranoia, and hysteria on the part of the public and a failure in leadership on the part of the government for trying to placate the hysterics at someone else’s expense instead of holding firm, providing reassurance and firm leadership, and emphasizing the true reality of their unreasonable fears. (Remember, that doesn’t just come from me or from this picture book. Those were the very real conclusions of an official government commission. I do agree with that assessment of the situation, though. I strong feelings against people who are obsessed with conspiracy theories and insist on spreading them because rumors do very real harm.) I think the earlier edition also had different illustrations because the copyright on these illustrations is only for 1993. I really liked the pictures in this book. They’re colorful pictures that look like watercolor paintings. They have almost a dream-like quality that fits well with the theme of memory.

As I was reading this and writing my review, I tried to remember how old I was when I first learned about Japanese internment camps during WWII and what books I might have read about it when I was a kid. I want to say that I was probably about 10 to 12 when I was first introduced to the topic, and I’m positive that I knew about it by the time I finished middle school, but I can’t remember exactly. I don’t think I read many books about it when I was young, although I remember that Farewell to Manzanar was one that was often recommended. I think my first introduction to the topic was probably either non-fiction, from history class in school and things my parents told me, but I also have a vague memory of being told about Farewell to Manzanar and asking what it was about, so that might have been what started the conversation.

Posted on by TracyC

Coat of Many Colors

Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton, 1969, 1994, 2016.

It’s fall, and a little girl needs a new coat. Her family doesn’t have much money, but someone gives her mother a box of rags, which her mother sews into a patchwork coat for the girl.

As she sews, the mother tells the girl the Bible story of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors. The little girl loves her new coat, associating it with the Bible story and her mother’s love for her.

When the girl goes to school in her new coat, other kids tease her because having an improvised coat made from other people’s rags is a sign of poverty. The other kids know that her mother made her that coat because she couldn’t afford to buy one.

However, the girl looks at the situation differently. Rather than focus on what her family couldn’t buy, she loves what they gave her. The coat is a sign of her mother’s love and sewing skill. Whether a person is rich or poor depends not just on what they have but on their feelings about what they have. When a person looks at the good points of what they have rather than what they don’t have, they feel rich.

My Reaction

The reason why I put multiple copyright dates for this book is that the story has been printed in multiple versions. The text of the book is from a song called Coat of Many Colors written by Dolly Parton in 1969 (listen on YouTube). The text is literally the words of the song, and it’s fun to listen to the song and read the book together! The other two copyright dates are because the story has been printed as a picture book more than once, with different illustrators. The illustrations I show here are from the latest version, from 2016.

There’s a very similar story to this one that I reviewed earlier, The Rag Coat, which is also a picture book about a girl with a patchwork coat who is teased by other kids at school. The Rag Coat was published a few years before Coat of Many Colors was first published as a book, but years after Coat of Many Colors was published as a song, and a note in The Rag Coat acknowledges the song as part of the inspiration for the story. The story in The Rag Coat doesn’t take quite the same turn as Coat Many Colors because it doesn’t relate the girl’s coat to the Bible story and because the way the girl in that book reconciles herself and the other students at school to her rag coat is pointing out that the rags that make up her patchwork coat came from their families and that she knows the stories behind each of them, the stories of her classmates’ lives. It’s a little longer story with a little more depth and backstory behind the coat, but I like Coat of Many Colors for its lighthearted approach to the idea of what makes a person rich or poor and depths that are more implied than stated.

The connection to the story of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors is important because, in the Bible story, Joseph’s colorful coat was a sign of his father’s love for him, and in this picture book, part of what makes the patchwork coat made of rags important to the girl is the fact that her mother made it for her and it’s a sign of her mother’s love. There is a section in the back of the book where Dolly Parton explains that the story is based on a real incident from her life, and that’s why the song she wrote about it has always been special to her. She also wants people to consider what it really means to be rich or poor. In both the story and in real life, Dolly’s attitude was focusing on the richness of what she had (like an original coat, handmade by a loving mother) rather than the things she couldn’t afford, and that’s what she recommends to other people.

Actually, it occurs to me, too, that in the early 21st century, a bespoke patchwork coat might actually be considered both more stylish and more valuable than any ordinary coat bought off the rack from any store. It’s the stuff of cottagecore fans and Etsy aficionados! Sewing is a time-consuming hobby that requires skill and can cost considerably more than buying a cheap coat at Walmart. People who can do it really well can charge a fair amount for their work. The only ways to get something like that these days are either to do it yourself, know someone who’s willing to make it for you, or be willing to pay for it. (I wrote this in July 2025, and I checked the going rate for a patchwork coat on Etsy. It was about $100 at that time. The cheapest options were about $84 dollars, and some were more than $200, with some vintage coats priced at more than $300.)

I find this hilarious, that what the kids who went to school with Dolly Parton back in the day teased her about as a sign of poverty would cost quite a lot to buy from someone else these days, with older “vintage” ones costing the most of all. With the rise of cottagecore and other pop culture influences, some of their grandkids would probably have begged to own something like that. (Remember when Harry Styles wore a patchwork sweater, and a bunch of people made their own versions or sold patterns to make them? I do!) Their families might not have the skill to pull off making such a thing themselves, which may be yet another way of looking at who’s poor and who’s rich. Remember this the next time someone’s wearing something that seems a little odd or improvised. It might turn out to be ahead of its time, a smarter use of money, a unique demonstration of real skill, and a far more interesting or timeless fashion statement than something that’s more generically trendy that will look cringy in yearbook photos in 5 to 10 years. Take the long view!

Dolly Parton said that the original “coat of many colors” that her mother made for her when she was a child wore out long ago and was probably remade into something else, like a quilt, because her family never wasted anything. However, there is still a picture of young Dolly wearing the coat, and after she wrote her song about it, her mother made another one similar to it, as best she could remember, to show what it was like. This replica coat, made by her mother, is the one on display in Dolly’s Chasing Rainbows Museum. In 2015, this story was made into a television movie, although the movie had some darker themes in it, with the family coping with the death of Dolly’s baby brother.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery on the Train

Boxcar Children

#51 The Mystery on the Train by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1996.

The Alden Children’s Aunt Jane is planning to travel to San Francisco to join her husband, who is there on a business trip. Because the Boxcar Children have never actually traveled on a train trip before, she invites them to come with her. The trip will take three days by train. Then, they’ll spend a few days in San Francisco before flying hone. The Aldens love traveling, and they’re excited by the idea of a train trip!

When they arrive to catch the train, they witness an odd scene at the station. An older woman is fighting with a younger woman over what looks an art portfolio. The younger woman eventually gets hold of the portfolio, knocking the older woman to the ground, and runs for the train. The Aldens ask the older woman if she’s all right, and she says she is. They also ask her if the younger woman is the owner of the portfolio, and the older woman says yes. She doesn’t explain why they were fighting over it, but they later see her talking to the train porter and giving him some money. The Aldens wonder what that scene was all about.

On the train, they meet the young woman, whose name is Annie. She explains that she’s also heading to San Francisco because she wants to attend art school there. She tells them that she’s planning to stay with an uncle there and that her portfolio contains her art work. Annie and Violet enjoy talking about art together, but the Aldens have the feeling that there are things that Annie isn’t telling them. She seems very paranoid about her portfolio, always afraid to leave it unattended and panicking every time the porter tries to help her with it.

When the portfolio suddenly disappears, Annie admits to them that it doesn’t really contain her artwork. It actually has a set of vintage autographed movie posters that are valuable for collectors. They were part of an inheritance that she and her aunt shared, and she’s hoping that they will help fund her art school education. Who could have taken the portfolio on the train? Was it the man who actually told them that he collects old movie posters and that he’s hoping to purchase some in California, or maybe the mysterious man who wears sunglasses everywhere on the train? Could Annie’s aunt have paid the porter to retrieve the posters from Annie?

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

My Reaction

Mysteries set on a train are always fun because, like with mysteries set in isolated houses, there is a limited set of possible suspects, and they’re in a situation where people cannot easily enter or leave. We know that the portfolio is still on the train, somewhere, and the thief hasn’t left. It’s just a question of who the thief is and where the thief hid the portfolio.

There are some obvious suspects in this story, but there are a couple of points that make the mystery more complicated. One is that there are unknown relationships between different suspects, some which are easier to guess or figure out than others. Another point is that Annie is keeping secrets from the Aldens. Through the story, she isn’t entirely honest with them about what’s actually going on. There are also some things that Annie doesn’t fully understand. This is one of those stories where the stolen object is stolen more than once, changing hands before they fully grasp what happened to it the first time it disappears.

There are twists to this mystery that keep it interesting, and I love the train setting! The trains they ride on through their trip are real trains, and the experience of the trip is what the actual experience is like. They take two trains, changing in Chicago to the California Zephyr, which is a real Amtrak train that goes from Chicago to San Francisco. I’ve been on train trips before, and if you’re curious, there are YouTube videos people have made, showing their own train trips across the US, like this one showing a trip on the California Zephyr.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery Cruise

The Boxcar Children

Boxcar Children Mystery Cruise cover

The Mystery Cruise by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1992.

Boxcar Children Mystery Cruise meeting

Mr. Alden takes his grandchildren on their first cruise to the Caribbean! The Alden kids are excited to go because there are a lot of interesting things to do on the cruise ship. However, they begin to notice some strange things happening happening on the ship and some odd people among the passengers and crew.

The first person they meet is Max, a history professor who shares their table at dinner. The Aldens can tell that something is bothering him. He gets a telegram that upsets him, and he seems desperate to communicate with someone, but for some reason, the phone and radio systems on the ship keep breaking down. It looks like sabotage! Could someone be trying to stop Max from communicating with someone?

Boxcar Children Mystery Cruise girls bedroom

Eventually, Max explains that he was notified about the death of a great-aunt, but to claim the inheritance, he must be present at the reading of the will, and various problems on the ship seem to be delaying the ship from reaching its destination in time. Besides the sabotage of the phone and radio, someone also gives a false cry of “man overboard” to make the ship stop. The crew is able to verify that nobody is missing from the ship by doing a head count. Is someone deliberately trying to prevent Max from reaching their destination on time, so he won’t receive his inheritance? If Max isn’t there, he says another relative, his cousin, will inherit, but this cousin isn’t on the cruise with him. Could she have hired someone to keep Max away from the will reading?

Boxcar Children Mystery Cruise ship railing

There’s a new employee on the ship, Heather, who seems very nervous and secretive about some messages that she’s been receiving. Heather also seems to know the Rands, a family who says that they used to work for another cruise company and who keep saying that the other cruise company was better. Could Heather and the Rands be working together to sabotage the cruise? Tom, another passenger, seems friendly and likes working out and showing off how well he lifts weights, but he also seems too interested in Max’s business and too happy about the ship’s delays. Could he be the mysterious saboteur? How can the Aldens be sure that they can get Max to his destination on time?

My Reaction

One of the things I enjoy about the Boxcar Children mysteries is that they’re good at presenting multiple suspects. The story delays telling readers about Max’s inheritance, so the first part of the mystery centers on what’s going on with Max. When we find out about the inheritance, the mystery becomes a question of whether or not his cousin is trying to keep him from the inheritance. There is only one other possible motive under consideration – that the Rands are still working for a rival cruise company and may be sabotaging this cruise to draw more attention to their company. Sometimes, Boxcar Children books take twists, where the more obvious motive isn’t the culprit’s real motive, but in this case, the inheritance is directly related to the mystery. It’s more a question of who is helping Max’s cousin and what the Aldens can do to help Max reach the reading of the will. In this case, the Aldens get the crew of the ship to help them with their plan to outwit and catch the saboteur.

Boxcar Children Mystery Cruise chef

This is also one of those books where the Boxcar Children are given the opportunity to do things that most children in real life would never been allowed to do. Isaac, one of the chefs on the ship, is charmed by Benny and his love of food, and he invites him to visit the kitchen with his siblings to get free samples of different pastries and desserts. The children ask if they can help out in the kitchen in return for this special favor, and Isaac agrees. In real life, I don’t think most professional kitchens would just allow random kids to visit or to actually help with cooking. Professional kitchens have to maintain health standards, and people who work there have food handlers’ licenses. These things went over my head when I was a kid, but in some ways, they annoy me a little now.

One of the themes of the Boxcar Children books is that the Aldens are hard workers and are incredibly capable, even though they’re young. They often make it a point to earn any special treats or privileges they get or help out without being paid. I think it was the authors’ way of emphasizing the value of hard work. However, it bothers me now because situations like this in these books are very contrived, not things that real life kids would be given the opportunity to do, and probably not things they would even be allowed to do if they asked. Sometimes, the jobs the Alden kids get are due to their wealthy grandfather’s friends and connections, but other times, like this, it’s for no apparent reason. Benny just really liked the food, so they got an invitation from the chef.

Posted on by TracyC

Hattie and the Wild Waves

Hattie and the Wild Waves story and pictures by Barbara Cooney, 1990.

Young Hattie grows up as part of a wealthy family in a red brick house with beautiful woodwork because her father is in the woodwork business. She comes from a family of German immigrants living in New York around the turn of the last century. When she and her siblings start talking about what they want to do when they’re grown up, Hattie says that she wants to be a painter. At first, the others think she means painting houses, but what she actually means is that she wants to be an artist.

While Hattie’s siblings make life hard for the series of nursemaids who come to look after them (and are ultimately fired for reacting to their teasing) and play cards with the cook and maid, Hattie likes to spend her time drawing. The cook’s daughter admires her drawings. Hattie never minds it when she’s confined to bed with a cold because it just gives her more time to draw.

When Hattie’s relative come to visit, they always have a big dinner, and they admire a painting that Hattie’s grandfather painted years ago called Cleopatra’s Barge. However, Hattie’s father prefers a drawing that Hattie made of a barge because he thinks it looks more seaworthy. Hattie knows that the people on her mother’s side of the family tend to be musicians and artists. Hattie’s mother is one of the musical members of the family. She teaches Hattie and her sister how to play the piano and how to sew, but Hattie never does either of these very well.

The family spends their summers at a summer house at Far Rockaway with their relatives. The adults like to gather on the veranda and talk, the women sewing and knitting. Sometimes, they go sailing in their boat. Hattie absorbs the details of everything she sees at the seaside and paints pictures.

Hattie loves their summer house, but then, her father sells it and buys a bigger summer house on Long Island. Hattie’s brother and sister think it sounds exciting because it will be like a castle, but Hattie thinks she will miss the wild waves of Far Rockaway.

Their new summer house is incredible. The children ride horses there and have tennis parties. Hattie’s sister is now old enough to have suitors. While everyone is busy with her sister’s suitors and later, her sister’s wedding plans, Hattie takes walks by herself and finds new things to paint.

Hattie’s life continues to change, but she stays true to her dreams, joining the Art Institute to become the painter she’s always wanted to be. Her mother thinks that she will be like her grandfather, but Hattie knows that she will be her own artist.

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

My Reaction

Some aspects of the story are similar to Miss Rumphius, another book by Barbara Cooney about a young girl growing up around the turn of the century who has very definite ambitions early in life. Miss Rumphius’s life ambitions aren’t quite the same as Hattie’s, but they each know what they want to do with their lives from an early age and find their own way of adding beauty to the world.

This is a very calm and relaxing story about a girl with a strong ambition early in life to be an artist. She comes from a wealthy family, so she grows up in charming homes and summer houses, surrounded by beauty and with a family that includes other artists, so her family isn’t opposed to her ambition. There are changes that come in the girl’s life as she and her siblings grow up, but nothing tragic or traumatic happens to her. This is a book where readers can enjoy the beautiful atmosphere and artwork.

The author based the story on her own mother, Mae Evelyn Bossert, although the girl in the story is called by a different name. The hotel where the family lives at the end of the story is the Hotel Bossert, which Barbara Cooney’s grandfather built and which was the place where she was born. There are German words and phrases sprinkled throughout the story because this is an immigrant family, and they speak at least some German to each other. Readers can generally tell by context what the characters are saying.

Posted on by TracyC

Jessie’s Island

Jessie’s Island by Sheryl McFarlane, illustrated by Sheena Lott, 1992.

Jessie cousin, Thomas, thinks that life must be dull on the island where she lives because there are so many things to do in the city that her island doesn’t have, like arcades, museums, and concerts. However, Jessie’s mother decides to invite Thomas for a visit so he can see what life on the island is really like.

Much of the story takes the form of letters between the two cousins, first where Thomas brags about all the things there are to do in the city and then a letter from Jessie to Thomas, telling him all the things she will show him when he comes to visit.

Jessie describes animals, like bald eagles, seals, and killer whales. There also an old, abandoned cabin to explore that has trees growing through the roof. They can also climb trees, pick berries, go out in a canoe, dig for clams, and go fishing.

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

My Reaction

This book is fun because it points out that, no matter where you live, there are things to do and see that you can’t do and see everywhere else. It’s true that the island doesn’t have the shopping malls and museums that the city where Thomas lives has, but it has other things that Thomas can’t experience in the city. The natural environment provides interesting sights, entertainment, and scope for the imagination! Just because their environments are different doesn’t mean that there’s less to do or appreciate.

The pictures in this book are beautiful watercolor paintings that take up whole pages. I love the way the illustrator captured the colors and scenery of the island!