Posted on by TracyC

Cousins in the Castle

cousinscastleCousins in the Castle by Barbara Brooks Wallace, 1996.

Young Amelia Fairwick is living a happy life in London with her father and her father’s fiancée, Felicia, when her father leaves on a business trip and word reaches her that he has been killed in a hotel fire. Now, the poor orphaned girl must go live with her deceased mother’s cousins in New York. Amelia leaves behind everything that is familiar to her when she accompanies her stern and gloomy Cousin Charlotte on the ship to New York.

On the ship, she makes only one friend, a young actress and singer named Primrose Lagoon, whom Cousin Charlotte forbids her to see. Although the future looks gloomy for Amelia, there are far stranger and more sinister events in store for her. As soon as they reach New York, Cousin Charlotte abandons Amelia on the docks. A kind woman named Nanny Dobbins and her son offer help her, only to steal her luggage and make her a prisoner in a small cellar in a bad part of town.

When her jailer, the drunken Mrs. Shrike, falls asleep, leaving the door open, Amelia escapes and attempts to find Primrose, her only friend in the city. Throughout Amelia’s adventures, she doesn’t know who to trust, and every step she takes seems to bring her closer to the mysterious Cousin Basil, who is supposed to be her guardian, and his castle-like home.

The time period for this story is never exactly defined, but it appears to take place during the 1800s because of the gaslights in use.  Like many of Wallace’s books, things and people are not what they seem, but in spite of the villain’s sinister intentions, it all ends happily.

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The Battle for the Castle

battlecastleThe Battle for the Castle by Elizabeth Winthrop, 1994.

This is the sequel to The Castle in the Attic.

William is growing up.  As William’s twelfth birthday approaches, he feels like he and his best friend, Jason, are growing apart. Actually, what he fears is that Jason is out-growing him. Jason has grown taller than William and much more muscular, thanks to his off-road bike training sessions with his father. William, on the other hand, is still short and feels like a shrimp next to Jason.

In their town, it is traditional for boys to “jump the trains” when they turn twelve. It involves grabbing hold of a ladder on the side of one of the cars as the train reaches a point on the track when it slows down, climbing over the top of the car, and jumping off the other side. It’s a dangerous trick to pull, and parents try to keep the kids from doing it. Still, the boys who don’t do it are considered to be wimps by the others. When Jason and William try, Jason makes it, but William gives up when his hand starts to slip. William is not hurt, but he is embarrassed at his failure.

To show Jason that he’s not just a wimp, William decides to let him in on the secret of the castle in the attic. Mrs. Phillips decided not to drop the magic token into the sea along with Alastor as she said she would (see previous book), and she sends it to William as a birthday present. After William explains to Jason how the token works, he convinces him to become small with him and visit Sir Simon and William’s other friends. When the boys arrive, they are welcomed by Sir Simon, who is about to leave for a tournament. William and Jason agree to help look after Sir Simon’s castle until he returns, along with his friend Dick, Dick’s son Tolliver, and Dick’s niece Gudrin. Sir Simon’s old nurse, Callendar, has died, but before her death, she made a prophecy of death and danger. Almost everyone believes that she was just raving, but Gudrin knows that danger is approaching. A strange ship of skeletons has been seen approaching the town, and bones have been floating down the river. Sir Simon had the ship towed out to see again, and Dick thinks there’s nothing more to fear. However, the ship has returned, and the boys and Gudrin know that something must be done in order to keep Callendar’s prophecy from coming true.

There is an army of rats aboard the ship, led by a giant rat that walks on its back legs like a human. The boys and Gudrin attempt to burn the ship, but the rats escape and begin attacking people across the countryside. When one of these people makes it to the castle to warn everyone, Dick finally believes them that something needs to be done. Most of the people are sent away from the castle, Tolliver is sent to bring Sir Simon back to help, and the others stay to wait out the siege. Although William is scared, he manages to keep his head and come up with a plan that defeats the rats once and for all.

In the end, when the boys return to their own world, William declares that he will never jump the trains because he thinks it’s a crazy stunt. Jason doesn’t mind because, as he says, “there’s more than one way to jump the trains.” William doesn’t need to prove that he’s grown up by performing a crazy stunt because he’s already behaved with courage and maturity while facing real problems and saving the lives of other people.

Posted on by TracyC

Something Fishy at MacDonald Hall

somethingfishySomething Fishy at MacDonald Hall by Gordon Korman, 1995.

Time moves on, and Boots’s little brother, Edward, is just starting school at MacDonald Hall. He’s made it clear that he thinks his older brother and his friends are “over the hill” and uncool.  Mr. Sturgeon is also feeling “over the hill” and thinking about retiring.  Being the headmaster just doesn’t seem that exciting to him anymore.

But, MacDonald Hall just wouldn’t be MacDonald Hall without strange things happening, and some mysterious person has been playing a series of bizarre pranks that rival anything Bruno and Boots have ever done.

Naturally, Mr. Sturgeon suspects them of being the pranksters, but for once, Bruno and Boots aren’t guilty.  On the one hand, they’re a little envious of the prankster’s ingenuity, but on the other, they don’t want to take the rap for something they haven’t done.

Who could the mysterious prankster be?  It is Edward, trying to prove that he’s more clever than Bruno and Boots?  Could it be Cathy and Diane, the girls at Miss Scrimmage’s Finishing School for Young Ladies?  They’ve been somewhat distant this year, for some reason.  Maybe it was Mark, who runs the MacDonald Hall school newspaper, drumming up interest in the paper by creating the phantom joker so he can write stories about it.  Elmer Drimsdale, the school genius, has been acting pretty odd since he developed a crush on a girl at the summer science fair, a girl who also happens to attend Miss Scrimmage’s.

There are plenty of suspects to choose from, and time is running out.  Bruno and Boots may be facing expulsion if they can’t figure out who is behind all the pranks!

This book is part of the MacDonald Hall Series (or Bruno and Boots series).

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MacDonald Hall Goes Hollywood

macdonaldhallhollywoodMacDonald Hall Goes Hollywood by Gordon Korman, 1991.

MacDonald Hall has been picked as a location for filming a movie about a boarding school, and people are going crazy (or crazier than normal)!  Bruno hopes that he’ll be discovered and become a movie star. His attempts to insinuate himself (not very subtly) into various scenes keep getting him into trouble.

The girls at Miss Scrimmage’s Finishing School for Young Ladies all have a crush on the teen star of the movie, Jordie Jones, further annoying Bruno.  Cathy and Diane, Bruno and Boots’s friends at Scrimmage’s, are especially getting on his nerves with their wild schemes to meet Jordie in person.

Meanwhile, poor Jordie wishes that he could live life out of the limelight for awhile.  His manager worries about him excessively and never lets him do anything fun.  In spite of his many admirers, Jordie is lonely because he spends all of his time with the movie people and doesn’t have many friends his own age.  Nobody has even remembered his birthday!

Bruno and Boots discover Jordie’s woes when Bruno tries to play a mean trick on Jordie, due to his jealousy of all the attention Jordie gets.  After Jordie opens up to the guys about his problems, Bruno feels more sympathetic toward him and decides to help.  The boys invite Jordie to play poker with them (after lights out and against school rules), take him to a dance at Miss Scrimmage’s (in disguise as a prince from a made-up country), and even get him to help with a hockey game as goalie (which earns Jordie a black eye).

Jordie has been having the time of his life, but the boys still have to conceal his activities as much as possible and deal with his over-protective manager, his rabid fans at Miss Scrimmage’s, and as always, The Fish.  Mr. Sturgeon (aka The Fish), is sympathetic to Jordie because he knows that activities like these are important to his growth as a person, but the movie people crack down on Jordie’s activities because the black eye interferes with his filming.

Although Jordie is supposed to keep quiet and let his eye heal, he runs away to join Bruno and Boots and several other boys on the school’s traditional wilderness survival trip (known to the students as “Die-in-the-Woods”).  It isn’t long before Jordie is discovered among them, but before the trip is over, the others are going to be glad that he’s there.

This book is part of the MacDonald Hall Series (or Bruno and Boots series).  It is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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The Tap Dance Mystery

eeetapThe Tap Dance Mystery by Susan Pearson, 1990.

The kids in Ernie’s class are assigned to groups to plan different acts for the show that they will have when their parents visit the school on Parents’ Night. The Martians are assigned to different groups. R. T.’s group is going to do magic tricks. Michael’s group is going to pretend to be a music group from Jupiter and play different homemade instruments. Unfortunately, William and Ernie are in the same group as Marcie, a mean and bossy girl who always smells sticky and sweet, like Juicy Fruit gum.

Marcie convinces the others that their group should tap dance because she has been taking lessons and can teach the others. William and Ernie struggle to learn the steps and make homemade tap shoes by tacking washers onto the bottoms of their shoes. Jason, the fourth member of their group, really likes dancing and shows a lot of talent for learning the moves. Still, only Marcie really looks the part of a dancer in her fancy costume and beautiful tap shoes.

Several kids ask Marcie if they can try on her tap shoes, including Jason, but she refuses to let them. Every day, she hides her shoes in a different place in their classroom when she isn’t there to watch them. When the shoes disappear, Marcie is convinced that Jason took them, but he says he didn’t. Ernie believes him, but she has to hurry if she is going to find the shoes and clear his name before Parents’ Night.

The solution to this mystery is fairly simple, but the story also has some interesting insights into the reasons why Marcie acts the way she does and the effect that parents’ expectations can have on their children.

This is part of the Eagle-Eye Ernie series.  The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The Bogeyman Caper

eeebogeymanThe Bogeyman Caper by Susan Pearson, 1990.

This is part of the Eagle-Eye Ernie  mystery series.

Everyone says that the old yellow house in their town, White Bear Lake, Minnesota, is inhabited by a bogeyman, but Ernie doesn’t believe it. She decides to prove to her friends that there is no bogeyman in the old house.

Ernie finds ways for her and her friends to keep an eye on the house.  At first, all they see is a creepy-looking old cat. Then, William finds a strange bone in the yard, and Ernie sees a red glow inside and hears tapping sounds. Are her friends right about the bogeyman, or is there another explanation?

Ernie uses her powers of observation to determine that many of the spooky things about the house and its new owner are actually familiar, both to herself and her friends.

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

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Eagle-Eye Ernie Comes to Town

eeetownEagle-Eye Ernie Comes to Town by Susan Pearson, 1990.

Ernestine Jones, better known as Ernie, is upset because her family has moved from Newport News, Virginia to White Bear Lake, Minnesota. She has no friends at school, and the other kids all think she’s strange and that she talks funny because of her southern accent.

Worse yet, someone has recently started stealing things from people’s lunches at school, and some of the kids think that Ernie might be the thief. Ernie has a knack for finding things, and her father says that she has an eagle eye. To save her reputation and any chance she might have of making friends, Ernie needs to use her eagle eye to find the thief so everyone will stop blaming her.

Ernie not only figures out who the real thief is but even helps the person find a solution to a bigger problem.

This is the first book in the Eagle-Eye Ernie series. The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

The books are easy, beginning chapter books. The series starts with Ernie moving to her new town and making some new friends. These friends, William, Michael, and R.T. (Rachel) end up calling themselves the Martians because Michael is interested in outer space and likes calling everyone a Martian.

One of the cute parts of this book was when Ernie painted her saddle shoes to look like little bears in honor of “White Bear Lake.”  For a long time, this was the part of the story that I remembered best.

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The 123 Zoo Mystery

eeezooThe 123 Zoo Mystery by Susan Pearson, 1991.

Ernie’s class at school, Room 123, has some fun class pets. They have a duck, a boa constrictor, a pair of hamsters, a toad, a rabbit, and a worm farm. Mrs. Lettuce, the pet rabbit, is going to have babies soon, and everyone is excited about it.

After a new girl, Hisako, joins the class, strange things begin happening. Someone lets all the pets out of their cages, and some toads appear in the classroom. Ernie wants to figure out what is going on because she’s worried that all the chaos will upset Mrs. Lettuce when she should be resting.

At first, suspicion falls on Hisako, who really likes animals, but Ernie soon realizes that there’s another explanation.  William is the one who finds the clue that Ernie needs to figure out the mystery.  Part of this story is about the lengths that someone would go to for the sake of a friend.

This book is part of the Eagle-Eye Ernie series.

eeezoopic1

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Terror on Cemetery Hill

cemeteryhillTerror on Cemetery Hill by Drew Stevenson, 1996.

Halloween is coming, and spooky things are happening around Wilsonburg. Randall Davis, a new boy in town, comes to the diner looking for Sarah because he’s heard that she likes to investigate mysteries. Randall’s mother has recently become the caretaker of the cemetery, and Randall enjoys astronomy, so he decided one night to take his telescope up on top of Cemetery Hill. While he was there, he saw what looked like a hideous monster. Randall asks Sarah to have a look around the cemetery and help him figure out what he saw.

After some persuading, Sarah convinces Clark and Frog to come with her. Not only do they see the creature in the cemetery, but they find Mrs. Biddle, head of the town’s group of psychic investigators, unconscious in the Wilson family mausoleum. The Wilsons are the family that the town was named after. Mrs. Biddle and her group have been told before not to hold any ceremonies or investigations in the cemetery because they disturb people.  She insists that she was investigating the creature in the cemetery and that it pushed her and knocked her out. Something strange is going on in the cemetery, but is it a creature come back from the dead, or maybe something to do with the recent bank robbery in town?

Everyone believes that the bank robbery was just one in a series of robberies staged across the country by a robber known as the Village Bandit because he tends to rob banks in small towns.  However, Sarah has a different theory.

This is part of the Sarah Capshaw Mysteries series.  It is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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Toying With Danger

toyingwithdangerToying With Danger by Drew Stevenson, 1993.

Sarah Capshaw is lamenting to her friend Clark that she hasn’t had an interesting case to solve since she and her parents moved to Wilsonburg when their friend Frog tells them that the local bully saw a monster at the old Harley farm outside of town.  Rumor has it that a mad scientist bought the place.  Naturally, Sarah wants to investigate.

It turns out that the “mad scientist,” Dr. Becker, is actually an eccentric toy inventor.  The “monster” is an electronic Frankenstein monster.  Dr. Becker is actually pretty nice and is even interested in seeing the detective board game that Frog is trying to invent.

Even though the monster wasn’t a real monster, there are still strange things happening in the woods surrounding the old farm where Dr. Becker’s workshop is.  The local bully is hanging around in the woods and trying to scare everyone away.  The kids also see a mysterious man hanging around, and Sarah wonders if he could be spying on Dr. Becker in order to steal his designs.

toyingwithdangerpic2It seems that Sarah is right that someone is trying to spy on Dr. Becker.  The kids learn more about the money involved in buying and selling toy designs when they visit the Too Wonderful toy company for a tour with Sarah’s grandfather.  Making toys is serious business, and companies guard their designs very carefully.  The Too Wonderful toy company wants to purchase some of Dr. Becker’s designs, but one of the members of the company says some strange things about Dr. Becker.  Can the kids trust him?  Can they trust the strange Dr. Becker?  Can Sarah catch the spy before it’s too late?

This is part of the Sarah Capshaw Mysteries series.