The Case of the Crazy Collections by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1991.
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!
The Bobbsey twins’ neighborhood is having their annual block party, and the Bobbsey twins and their parents are helping to set up for it. As part of the party, the neighborhood has rented a tent, where kids from the neighborhood are displaying their collections. The neighborhood kids collect all kinds of things, like baseball cards, comic books, soda cans, autographs, and coins. One boy, Kevin, has an autographed baseball that his grandfather gave to him. The neighbors are charging people money to see the exhibit of collections, and the money will be used for a pizza party later.
Later, Kevin’s autographed baseball disappears. Could the baseball thief be Mr. Sher, a visitor staying with their neighbor, Mr. Andersen? Mr. Sher tried to buy the baseball from Kevin earlier, but Kevin turned him down. Then again, Kevin’s cousin, Steve, was jealous that Kevin has the baseball. Steve turned down the offer of some of his grandfather’s old collectible items in favor of a savings bond, which he has already cashed in and spend on video games. Steve tried to borrow more money from Kevin earlier, but Kevin turned him down because Steve hasn’t yet repaid him for money Kevin loaned to him before. Danny, the neighborhood bully, was also mad at Kevin earlier. He’s a friend of Steve’s and didn’t want to have to pay to see the collections. Then again, another local girl, Jennifer, collects autographs, and they see her at a collectors’ shop. Would she know the value of an autographed baseball, and was she trying to sell it? With so many people coming and going from the tent where the collections were on display, it’s hard to say who might have taken something. The thief may have even been the Bobbseys’ own dog, Chief, who has developed a habit of collecting and hoarding baseballs.
Then, another boy realizes that his prized hologram sticker is missing. Could the thief have taken that, too? Their clues are an unexplained slit in the back of the tent, some footprints, and a pin with Greek letters on it. Can the Bobbsey Twins find the valuable baseball and return it to Kevin?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
Something I thought was interesting about this story was that it brings up the concept of collecting things for fun or sentimental value vs. collecting things because of their monetary value. Most of the kids in the neighborhood collect things just for fun. At first, Kevin doesn’t seem to fully realize the value of the autographed baseball. His attachment to the baseball is because he got it from his grandfather. When he had the offer to sell it to Mr. Sher, he refused because the baseball reminds him of his grandfather.
I had a strong suspicion about the identity of the baseball thief early in the story, and my guess turned out to be right, but I liked it that there were plenty of other suspects to consider. There are child suspects, adult suspects, and even the Bobbseys’ own dog. Any of these could be plausible. When they realize that the hologram sticker is missing, it raises the question of whether the person who took the baseball also took the sticker, if the sticker was taken by someone else, or if the missing sticker is just a red herring. Overall, I enjoyed the mystery, and I liked the abundance of suspects.
Kirsten’s Cookbook by Terri Braun, Jodi Evert, and Jeanne Thieme, 1994.
This cook book is one of the activity books that was written to accompany the Kirsten series that is part of the American Girls franchise. The American Girls books were written to help teach American history (as well as sell the accompanying dolls and accessories), so this book has recipes of the type that people would have eaten on the American frontier during the mid-1800s, when the character of Kirsten lived, and some historical information.
The book begins with some historical information about cooking on the frontier. Pioneer families like Kirsten’s family ate what they grew themselves and things they could gather from the woods around them. They ate certain foods only in the season when they could get them, and it was hard work to produce food and process it before using it in recipes. There were certain types of food that they had often because the ingredients were simple and often available, like potatoes and bread, and they rarely had time to prepare special or elaborate meals. However, they would take the time to make some special treats for holidays.
There are special sections that describe what pioneer kitchens were like and the dishes and table settings they would use. Pioneer families like Kirsten’s lived in one-room cabins, so her family cooked, ate, and slept all in that one room. They had a wood-burning cookstove, but stoves like that did not come with temperature settings. (This is why you don’t see temperatures specified in old recipes from the 19th century, although this book does include that information for modern readers.) People learned to judge roughly whether the temperature was right to bake bread or cook other recipes by feel, and could regulate the approximate temperature through the type or amount of wood they burned.
There is also a section of cooking tips and kitchen safety tips for modern child readers. Then, the recipes are organized by type of meal with a section of Kirsten’s favorite recipes. Each section and recipe is accompanied with additional historical information and trivia.
Breakfast
Pork sausage patties
Hard-boiled eggs
Swedish rice porridge
Round rye bread
Homemade butter
Ginger cookies – Although cookies seem like an odd thing to see at breakfast, a pioneer family might have them and save some for a snack in the mid-morning, before lunch, or as they called it, dinner.
Dinner
“Dinner” is usually the biggest meal of the day, but depending on when and where you live, that might be either the midday meal or the evening meal. In modern times, it tends to be the evening meal, after a family or individuals are home from work or school and have more time for a large meal. Modern people sometimes use the terms “dinner” and “supper” (the evening meal) interchangeably for that reason. In Kirsten’s time and, sometimes, in rural areas even in modern times, the biggest meal is the midday meal, what most of us would call “lunch.”
Baked ham slice
Swedish potatoes
Cabbage and apple salad
Fruit Soup
Swedish Almond Rusks – Swedish rusks are crunchy sweet breads, a little like biscotti.
Favorite Foods
This section just has an assortment of recipes for Kirsten’s favorite foods. Some of them are traditional Swedish foods, and others are more American. There is a mention in this section that pioneers learned how to make maple syrup from “Indians”, meaning Native Americans.
Potato soup – Soup with bread and cheese was a popular supper meal for farming families in the 19th century.
Swedish meatballs
Fresh applesauce
Swedish pancakes – These thin pancakes are rolled and filled with jam.
St. Lucia buns – These special buns are topped with raisins, and it’s a tradition in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries to serve them on St. Lucia Day, December 13.
Pepparkakor cookies – These are thin, spicy cookies that are cut into shapes and served at Christmas.
The book ends with a section of tips for having a pioneer-themed party. When real pioneers had parties, they were often organized around chores they had to do or tasks to accomplish. They called these work-play parties “bees”. Besides accomplishing a task, friends and neighbors would also bring food and share a meal, talk, and have fun. The suggestions in this section are organized seasonally. A Winter Baking Bee could involve everyone getting together to bake holiday treats, like the ones included in this book for St. Lucia Day and Christmas, or whatever the guests want to bake. At a Spring Gardening Bee, guests can get together to plant a garden or potted plants, with plants for guests to take home themselves. For a Summer Berry Bee, guests can pick berries (if they grow locally or at a “pick-your-own” farm) or make jam, with some for everyone to take home. For a Fall Apple Bee, guests can pick apples and make recipes with apples, like applesauce.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
Samantha’s Cookbook by Polly Athan, Terri Braun, Jodi Evert, and Jeanne Thieme, 1994, 1998.
This cook book is one of the activity books that was written to accompany the Samantha series that is part of the American Girls franchise. The American Girls books were written to help teach American history (as well as sell the accompanying dolls and accessories), so this book has recipes of the type that people would have eaten during the early 1900s, when the character of Samantha lived, and some historical information about cooking and dining during that period.
The first section in the book discusses innovations that made cooking easier in Samantha’s time than it had been in earlier time periods. The kitchen in Samantha’s house had running water, a gas stove, and an icebox for refrigerating food. Because Samantha comes from a wealthy family, who can hire people to cook for them, Samantha’s education focuses more on learning how to be a good hostess, meaning that she would be more likely to be in the dining room, helping to entertain guests, rather than in the kitchen, preparing food. However, Samantha would have been familiar with cookbooks, discussing new recipes and studying sections of cookbooks that offered advice about dining etiquette. There are sections in this book that discuss the role of servants in shopping for and preparing food and the proper way to set a table for an elegant dinner party.
After that, there is a section of cooking tips and kitchen safety tips. The recipes in the book are divided into sections based on meals, followed by a section of Samantha’s favorite recipes. The recipes are also accompanied by historical information.
Breakfast
The book explains that, because Samantha is from a wealthy family, her family’s cook begins making breakfast before Samantha wakes up in the morning, so it will be ready for her as soon as she’s awake and dressed. In her time, breakfast was typically the lightest meal of the day, but wealthy households had a variety of foods at breakfast. Breakfast was typically served with hot drinks. Adults usually had coffee or tea, while children might have hot chocolate.
Strawberries with cream
Ham slice
Cheese omelet
Saratoga potatoes – These are fried potato chips, which were a relatively new innovation in Samantha’s time. The book explains that potato chips were invented by a Native American cook at a resort in Saratoga Springs, New York in 1853 after a customer complained that the fried potatoes should be thinner.
Blueberry muffins
Dinner
“Dinner” is usually the biggest meal of the day, but depending on when and where you live, that might be either the midday meal or the evening meal. In the past and in rural areas, “dinner” was often lunch. By Samantha’s time, as it typically is in modern times, it was the evening meal, after a family or individuals are home from work or school and have more time for a large meal. For wealthy families, like Samantha’s family, dinner was a very formal meal. They would often dress up for dinner, and at formal dinner parties, there would be name cards on the table to tell everyone where to sit. At a formal dinner in a household with servants, individual dishes and parts of the meal would be served in “courses”, but the number of courses could vary. Samantha’s family followed the English style, with fives courses at dinner. The book mentions Samantha’s family having soup, salad, appetizers, a main course with roasted meat, and dessert and coffee at the end of the meal. Some larger, fancier dinner parties could have many more, some as many as 18 courses!
Cream of carrot soup
Roasted beef tenderloin
Mashed potatoes
Fresh green beans
Corn oysters – These are fried corn patties.
French salad
Dressing
Ice cream snowballs – These are scoops of vanilla ice cream coated in shredded coconut.
Favorite Foods
This section has an assortment of recipes for Samantha’s favorite foods. The book explains that, while Samantha was being trained to be a hostess more than a cook, even wealthy girls like her would taught some basic cooking skills. Sometimes, Samantha would help the family’s cook in the kitchen and make some simple recipes.
Apple Brown Betty
Jelly biscuits
Cream cheese and walnut sandwiches
Chicken salad sandwiches
Gingerbread
Lemon ice
The book ends with a section about how to plan a tea party, like girls in Samantha’s time might have. The suggestions include themed tea parties, like afternoon tea, a color tea (a popular concept in the early 1900s, where everything at the party, from decorations to food, would be themed around a particular color), a garden tea party, and a doll tea party (girls would bring their dolls, and there would even be tiny treats to serve to the dolls).
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
The Ghost of the Gracie Mansion by Susan Kohl, illustrated by Ned Butterfield, 1999.
The year is 1803, and the Gracie family has decided to temporarily leave New York City because of the Yellow Fever Epidemic. William Gracie, the eldest son of the family, is disappointed because he has started working for his father’s shipping business, and he was looking forward to being promoted to clerk this spring. He wants to follow in his father’s footsteps, and he’s serious about wanting to learn the business. The trip that they’re taking to their new country home at Horn’s Hook, north of the city, seems to delay his plans because it’s so far away from everything, from his father’s business and from the Tontine Coffee House, where businessmen and other important people meet to discuss the issues of the day. However, William can’t help but admit that the situation in New York is serious. People are dying of Yellow Fever every day, including children, and his parents just want the family to be safe.
William begins to feel a little better when his father tells him that he’s arranged for them to work together from the family’s country mansion. His father says that captains of the ships he owns will stop at Horn’s Hook on their way to New York Harbor to report to him, and William will help him to prepare the cargo lists and timetables for the ships. Their temporary exile from New York hasn’t put a stop to their business or William’s education in that business; they’re just going to be doing things a little differently until the crisis is over.
While the family is traveling to their new country house, Mr. Gracie tells them about the history of the place. There used to be another house on that land, but it was destroyed during the American Revolution (an event still in relatively recent memory at the time this story takes place) as the British and the Patriots struggled to control it because that location is a strategic spot on the Harlem River. Mr. Gracie says that their new house is built over the basement of the old house, and that’s important because he’s aware that the former owners had a secret tunnel that led out of their basement in case they needed to use it as an escape route during the war. He told the builders to look out for it while they were building the new house, but if any of them ever figured out where it is, they never admitted it. The Gracie children are excited about the idea of their new house having a secret tunnel, and they’re eager to find it!
The new Gracie house is beautiful, really more of a mansion than just a house. However, there is something strange going on there. Soon after they arrive, William’s younger sister Sarah sees someone in the house dressed all in white. Sarah thinks that she saw the ghost of the person who owned the house that used to be on their property. The others don’t believe her because Sarah has a vivid imagination and is always making up stories, but Sarah insists that she saw someone.
When things start disappearing from the house, the rest of the family begins to believe that there may be some unknown person in their house. Sarah still thinks it’s a ghost, but William thinks maybe someone has found the secret passageway into the house. Who is this mysterious intruder?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
I always like historical novels, particularly historical mysteries, and I really enjoyed this one. The mystery is meant for children in elementary school, and it isn’t too difficult, but it’s fun to see the Gracie children searching for the secret passage and trying to learn who is sneaking around the family’s country mansion. I also enjoyed that the story offers history lessons on multiple levels. The immediate situation for the characters is the yellow fever epidemic of 1803, but the story also touches on the American Revolution. The solution to the mystery is also related to Revolutionary War history. The Gracies, headed by father Archibald Gracie, were a real family who made their money in shipping, although the events in the story are fictional. There is a section in the back of the book that explains more about the family’s history. They associated with prominent people in New York in the early 19th century, and Alexander Hamilton makes an appearance in the story when he visits the Gracie Mansion. The Gracie Mansion is a real place. When it was first built, it was in the countryside outside the limits of New York City, but since then, the city has grown around it. It is now used as the home of the mayors of New York City.
Although this book was published before the coronavirus pandemic of the early 2020s, I also appreciated the part of the book at the beginning, where William is concerned that the current epidemic has changed his plans and impacted his ability to learn his father’s business. However, his father explains to him that they are still in business, and he has made arrangements for them to continue working in a different way during their time away from the city. People who lived through the quarantines and lockdowns of the covid pandemic will understand how it impacted the way people worked or continued their education and how people had to find ways to work around the problem. I appreciated that this story shows how people have had to deal with public health crises before in history and how they have always had to find creative solutions to deal with problems of this nature.
In this particular situation, the Gracies are a wealthy and privileged family, so their options for escaping from the crisis and working from outside the city are greater than other people of their time. Not everyone had a countryside mansion where they could go to escape the disease, and not everyone had employees who could report to them wherever they were. What Mr. Gracie and his son are doing during the course of the story is the early 19th century equivalent of “working remotely”, pre-Internet, and they accomplish it through people coming to report to them and taking goods and information into the city on their behalf. Even though the Gracie family can stay outside the city, they are still sending their ships into the city’s harbor because the cargo the ships carry is necessary there. There are people in the city who are waiting for the supplies the ships are carrying. The crews of the ships are what people in the 2020s came to call “essential workers” – the people whose type of work was necessary, no matter the circumstances, and who could not perform their duties from a remote location. The same is true for all the other people who must remain in the city because their jobs require them to work with or on behalf of the people who are still there.
The Secret Garden Cookbook: Recipes Inspired by Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden by Amy Cotler, illustrations by Prudence See, 1999.
This book is a cookbook with recipes based on the types of foods eaten by characters in The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Food is important in the story because Mary and Collin didn’t have any appetites when they were unhappy and unhealthy, but their appetites improve when they begin working in the garden and getting more fresh air and exercise. Most of the recipes are types of foods that are specifically named during the course of the story, but others are ones that the characters would have been likely to eat for the time and places where they lived. Because the original story focused on gardening, there is also an emphasis on using foods that would be grown in kitchen gardens
Most of the illustrations in the book are simple green and white drawings of different types of foods that accompany the recipes.
The recipes in the book are sorted into different categories, and each section has historical information about different meals and types of food. Individual recipes also have historical information, trivia, and quotes from The Secret Garden related to the dishes. Some traditional English foods need to be explained to Americans. For example, the word “pudding” refers to a specific type of dairy dessert in the US, but in England, it’s a more general word that can refer to any type of dessert.
I liked the selection of recipes, and I really liked the historical information provided with them!
The sections of the cookbook are:
Yorkshire Breakfasts
These are breakfast foods that the characters in the story ate or might have eaten during the Victorian era.
Porridge
Coddled eggs – Eggs cooked in a cup
Cheese muffins
Little sausage cakes
Cocoa
A Manor Lunch
This section explain the types of things that people of different classes ate as their mid-day meal in the Victorian era.
Yorkshire pudding – These are popovers with meat drippings.
Roasted fowl with bread sauce
Potato snow
Welsh rabbit – This is melted cheese on toast.
Cabinet pudding – This is a molded custard dessert with fruit.
Jam roly poly
An English Tea
This section explains things that Victorian people ate at afternoon tea.
A proper pot of tea
Cucumber tea sandwiches
Scones
Fruit tea loaf
Lemon curd tartlettes
Brandy snap baskets with whipped cream
The Kitchen Garden
This section is about things people would make from fruits and vegetables that they would grow in their kitchen gardens.
Fresh spring peas with mint
Glazed carrots
Summer pudding – This is a molded dessert made with bread and different kinds of berries.
Two fools – “Fools” are old-fashioned fruit-based desserts.
Raspberry jam
Raspberry vinegar
Molded spiced pears
Strawberries and cream
Dickon’s Cottage Food
Poor people, like Dickon’s family, would have eaten different things from the wealthier people in Victorian society.
Tattie broth – A potato soup.
Pease pudding
Yorkshire oatcakes
Cottage loaf – This is a basic bread recipe.
Dough-cakes with brown sugar – A basic dessert made with bread dough.
Parkin – A kind of oatmeal gingerbread.
A Taste of India
These are the types of foods that Mary might have eaten during the time she lived in India.
Fruit lassi – This is a kind of fruit shake made with yogurt.
Sooji – A hot breakfast cereal similar to cream of wheat.
Little bacon and coriander pancakes
Fresh mango chutney
Mulligatawny soup – This soup was invented in India for the British colonists. It’s curry coconut soup whose name means “pepper water.”
Florence Nightingale’s kedgeree – Florence Nightingale has nothing to do with the dish, but the Victorians named it after her because she was famous. It’s a rice and fish dish that was often made from leftovers and served for breakfast or lunch.
Garden Picnics
These are foods that can be prepared outside or are easy to pack for a picnic.
Roasted potatoes and eggs
Currant buns
Crumpets
Cornish pasties – These are savory pies or turnovers with meat and veggies, meant to be eaten with the hands. They’re sort of like larger, better-tasting Hot Pockets.
Chocolate picnic biscuits
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
When Aunt Lena Did the Rhumba by Eileen Kurtis-Kleinman, illustrated by Diane Greenseid, 1997.
Sophie’s Aunt Lena loves music, dancing, movies, and theater, and she especially loves Broadway musicals. She goes to a musical matinee every Wednesday. After seeing a musical, she comes home, singing and dancing and acting out parts from the play she’s just seen.
One particular Wednesday, when she’s acting out a particularly dramatic dance in the kitchen, she accidentally slips and sprains her ankle. She has to stay home and rest until her ankle gets better, which means that she won’t be able to go to next Wednesday’s matinee.
Aunt Lena is so sad about missing the musicals she loves that Sophie gets an idea to cheer her up. Sophie recruits other members of her family to put on their own musical to entertain Aunt Lena.
Not everyone is enthusiastic about the idea at first, but when Sophie gets her grandmother to help her put together a costume fit for a Broadway musical and choose some music, they begin drawing other family members in.
Aunt Lena loves their performance, and when she’s better, she takes Sophie to a matinee so she can see a real Broadway performance, too!
This book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It was also a Reading Rainbow book, and the episode of Reading Rainbow is also available to watch online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
I didn’t see the original episode of Reading Rainbow that included this book when I was a kid because this book was published after I was too old for that. However, I always liked Reading Rainbow when I was a kid, and later, after I started this blog, I decided to go back and check out some of the books covered by Reading Rainbow after I stopped watching it. If you’re not familiar with Reading Rainbow, it was a children’s television program on public television in the US that encouraged children to read by discussing books and showing children things that were related to the books they were reading. For example, if they were reading books related to animals in an episode, the host, Levar Burton, might take a trip to a zoo and talk to zookeepers about animals in the zoo.
The themes of this particular story and the Reading Rainbow episode are music, dancing, and theater. In the episode, they show a boys’ choir and dancing class and talk about how performing helps the boys and young men develop confidence and maturity. There’s also a comedian who specializes in physical comedy, who talks about how he does his stunts, and an actress who plays one of the cats in the famous Broadway musical Cats.
I love how the aunt in the book shares her love of dancing and theater with her niece. The two of them have similar personalities and interests, so when her aunt is injured, her niece knows how to cheer her up. The ending of the story implies that the niece will now be going to performances with her aunt, or at least, will sometimes go with her. I also liked how the rest of the family participated in the girl’s plans when they saw what she wanted to do, even if they weren’t as enthusiastic about the idea themselves at first. Enthusiasm can be contagious, and I do think that adults sharing their interests with kids can spark lifelong interests in the next generation.
I also noticed that this seems to be an unconventional family, although the family’s living arrangements aren’t the focus of the story. The girl’s parents are never mentioned. She seems to live with just her grandmother, her aunt, and a couple of uncles, and there is no explanation why because it’s not directly important to the story. In any case, it seems to be a happy, close-knit family, with family members caring for each other and supporting each other’s interests.
The pictures in the book are bright and colorful, fitting with the energy, enthusiasm, and theatricality of the story.
Fritz (real name Richard) and Helen Price are twins, and their mother runs a seaside guesthouse. Their younger cousin Jonathan, called Tubs (a nickname that annoys him), comes to visit during the summer, although the twins find him annoying. It isn’t really Tubs’s fault; it’s just that he’s three years younger than they are, and they find him childish. Then, one day, Tubs tells them that Uncle Grigorian is coming to visit.
Fritz and Helen say that they’ve never heard of Uncle Grigorian before, and they ask their mother about him. She says that Uncle Grigorian hasn’t come to see them since the twins’ father died in a car crash, and Uncle Grigorian came to the funeral. The twins’ father originally came from Poland as “more or less an orphan”, and his family was split apart during “the war.” Even he wasn’t sure exactly how many brothers he had, and he never heard from the rest of his family after he arrived in Britain.
(The implication is that he was probably one of the children brought to Britain by the Kindertransport, which transported refugee children from Nazi Germany and Germany-occupied territories, including Poland, to Britain between 1938 and 1940 and placed them with foster families or in temporary homes. The Kindertransport prioritized particularly vulnerable children, especially Jewish children whose parents were already in concentration camps or who were homeless, living in poverty, or were already orphans. The hope was that many of these children would be reunited with their parents after the war, but many of them never saw their families again and continued living with their foster families because their parents were likely killed during the Holocaust. The father in this story was likely very young at this time or even an infant and so didn’t understand his family’s full situation, didn’t have many memories of them, and never learned their ultimate fate. None of this is stated explicitly in the story, but it fits with the father’s apparent age, the time period, and Poland during “the war.”)
Uncle Grigorian was living in Germany at the time the father died about 10 years earlier, but he said that he happened to be on a business trip in England at the time the father died and saw the notice in the newspaper, so he came to pay his respects and check on the family. Now, Uncle Grigorian has bought a farm in Wales, and since he will be living in Britain, he would like to spend more time with the children and get to know them better. Although Tubs is related to the twins on their mother’s side rather than their fathers and isn’t a blood relation to Uncle Grigorian, Uncle Grigorian invites all three children to visit him on his farm. The children’s mother admits that the guesthouse is very busy at this time of year, and a family has shown up with more children than they originally said they would bring, so it would be helpful if the children went on a visit, and the children are excited about seeing the farm.
At first, this seems like just a fun farm visit. Uncle Grigorian is indulgent with the children, letting them eat as many chocolate cookies as they want, teaching the boys how to drive a tractor, and letting Helen play with the lambs. A man named Mr. Rhys manages the farm, and Mrs. Rhys is his cook and housekeeper, making them all a big, traditional, full English breakfast. Things get complicated when Tubs asks Uncle Grigorian what he does while Mr. Rhys manages the farm.
Uncle Grigorian shows the children his office in the farmhouse. At first, it just seems like an ordinary office. Then, Uncle Grigorian opens the filing cabinet, which contains dials and switches instead of files. The room changes so the ceiling and walls become transparent, and the children have a view of Earth from space. Tubs says that it looks like they’re on the moon. Fritz thinks that it’s just a trick with projectors, but Uncle Grigorian says that Tubs is actually correct, and they are on the moon. At first, Fritz doesn’t believe him, so Uncle Grigorian changes their location again, taking them to Trafalgar Square in London. Since they’re on Earth now, he invites Fritz to step outside and check their location. He does, and to his astonishment, they really are in Trafalgar Square. He buys a newspaper, and it has the current date on it.
Uncle Grigorian explains to the astonished children that the office actually contains his spaceship, which is about the same size as the room itself. He can travel through space easily, but traveling around Earth is more tricky because he can’t risk colliding with other objects. He has to know the exact coordinates for where to land, so it’s best for him to go to rooms that he has already rented as office space, where he will know the exact coordinates and knows that the room will be the right size for the spaceship.
At this point, Fritz begins to suspect that Uncle Grigorian, whose oddly-positioned thumbs were already a source of curiosity for them, might not actually be human. Tubs had earlier joked about those thumbs meaning that he’s from outer space, and once again, Tubs is more right than anyone else suspected. Uncle Grigorian admits to the children that they’re not actually related at all. Uncle Grigorian is a kind of sociologist from a planet called Klipst, and he’s also a kind of secret agent for the Galactic Empire. He studies societies on different planets and keeps an eye on planets that are just starting to discover space travel. He latched onto the children’s family as a cover for his identity and activities, specifically because their father had been a war orphan who didn’t know much about his family or what happened to them. Most people would be suspicious about an unknown relative suddenly turning up, but with their family, it would be entirely plausible for them to have an uncle they knew nothing about. He says that Earth is getting close to discovering hyperdrive travel, and when it does, the Galactic Empire will need to decide whether or not to admit Earth to the community of planets.
The reason why Uncle Grigorian is telling them all of this is that he needs the children’s help. There is a dispute that needs to be settled between planets, and he asks the children to be arbiters in the dispute. The planets involved specifically want the arbiters to come from outside the Empire, and they don’t want politicians, who would probably be motivated by biases and self-interest. They have decided that they want child arbiters to hear the dispute because children have a great sense of fairness, and adults are often hardened to the unfairness of life in general. Children would be completely unbiased in this situation and not have a jaded point of view. Uncle Grigorian tells the children that it’s up to them whether they would be willing to accept this mission or not. Tubs is eager to accept and go to outer space, but the twins are more hesitant. They’re not sure if they know enough or would be able to be arbiters in an intergalactic dispute. Uncle Grigorian tells them that, if they accept the mission, he will give them something that will change that, and they decide to accept.
Uncle Grigorian says that he will give them “the Powers”, which is a special mental weapon that’s only been recently developed. It works a little different for everyone, but it enhances people’s mental abilities. Anything that a person has as talent will be enhanced so they become a natural expert in it. To gain these powers, the children have to sleep for the night in Uncle Grigorian’s spaceship while wearing special earpieces.
In the morning, he checks on them and asks them if they notice anything different about themselves. Helen can tell right away that Fritz isn’t telling the truth when he says no because she has acquired the ability to read people’s emotions and body-language like an expert. Uncle Grigorian calls her a Reader because of her ability to read people. Further, Helen can tell that the reason why he denied noticing anything was because he wanted to hear what the others would say first. Fritz admits that this is true. He says that what he has noticed is that he went to sleep trying to figure out how the ship can travel such long distances so quickly, and when he woke up, the answers just came to him. Uncle Grigorian calls him a Synthesist, someone who can put together pieces of information quickly, seeing how things relate to each other and how they work.
At first, Tubs can’t figure out if anything about him has changed or not, but Uncle Grigorian tries giving him a small, round, fuzzy creature called a Petball. (Sort of like one of the Tribbles from Star Trek.) Tubs loves it immediately. It also seems to like him, and Tubs gives it the name Glob. Uncle Gregorian says that his attachment to the creature is a sign that he’s a Maverick. Petballs are strange creatures, and they don’t like everyone, but they do like Mavericks. Maverick Powers are difficult to understand because people who have them have an odd way of saying or doing unusual things that turn out to be the right decision or reaching conclusions that turn out to be unexpectedly correct. It’s hard to say exactly when or how Tubs will use his Power, other than getting along well with Glob, but Uncle Gregorian says that it will be there at the right time for him to use it.
Tubs’s Power begins to show after they arrive at Palassan, the capital of the Galactic Empire. A strange girl comes up to them soon after their arrival and tries to offer a flower to Helen. Without him being able to explain exactly why, Tubs automatically reaches out and knocks the flower to the ground. When it hits the ground, it breaks, and they realize that is it really an electronic device that was supposed to transmit a subliminal message to Helen. Someone is already trying to influence the children as arbiters in the dispute. Soon after that, Fritz begins to notice how closely they’re being guarded, but are the guards there for their safety or because they’re now prisoners?
When the kids begin hearing about the dispute, they are told that a new planet has been discovered in a place where there has not been any planet before. It is not near any star, and there doesn’t seem to be any explanation of how it got there. An expedition to the planet discovered that what looks like “clouds” is actually some kind of vegetation that emits light, and there are worm-like creatures living on the surface. The problem is that these large Worms spin a substance called Unilon, which is very valuable. Since the Worm World was discovered, people have flocked to the planet to harvest it for selling. Some of them have captured Worms and forced them to spin continually until they die. The League of Life says that it is concerned about the welfare of these creatures, and the Unilon Harvesters Association says that it’s concerned about jobs. With her Power, Helen can tell that neither side in this dispute is telling the truth. Fritz does some research and uncovers some ulterior motives and hidden sides to both sides of the dispute. He decides that finding a solution means going to the Worm World itself, but learning the secrets of the mysterious world will put them all in danger.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction and Spoilers
I thought that the premise of this story was interesting, a mysterious “uncle” who is actually an alien in disguise who gives the kids a mission in space and special powers. The secret of the Worm World is also intriguing. It turns out (spoiler) that the world itself is alive, and they have to find a way to communicate with it. It’s a plot that sounds a little like some of the early Star Trek episodes or maybe inspired by them.
Most of the emphasis of the story is on the twins, even though there are three kids involved. Tubs helps in the story, but I was expecting that he would be more central to the solution of the problem or that the solution would be more of a cooperative effort than it was. I was a little disappointed at how quickly the story ended.
One thing I’d like to point out that, even with their enhanced “Powers”, the kids aren’t perfect at them. Fritz puts information together pretty easily, but he still has to do research and observe things directly to get the information he needs. Even when he has it, he doesn’t necessarily understand its full significance right away. His comment about how it looks like they’re being held prisoner rather than being simply guarded for their protection turns out to be more accurate than I thought it might be at first, but he doesn’t seem to have fully realized the reason why or who they can’t trust. Even Helen, with her ability to read people’s emotions and body-language doesn’t realize at first that their guard isn’t trustworthy. She could tell that he was uneasy, but she attributed his uneasiness to the wrong reason.
Actually, I think the part about Helen not being perfect at reading people is a good callback to the argument between the children about Tubs’ nickname at the beginning of the story. Helen argues that Tubs shouldn’t mind his nickname because Fritz never complains about his, but Helen hasn’t accurately read even her own twin’s feelings about his nickname. The truth is that Fritz doesn’t like his nickname any more than Tubs likes his, but the book says that he’s old enough to have figured out that, if he makes a fuss about not liking it, people will use it even more. I know that people can be like that, but being even older than Fritz is, I’m old to have figured out that this rule only holds true as long as the people involved decide it does. This isn’t something everyone does naturally or all the time; it’s a thing that some people do habitually because they’re pushy and like provoking reactions from people. When they get a negative reaction from someone, they just push harder to get more reactions rather than realize that they’re getting on that person’s nerves and cutting it out. What I’m saying is that Fritz seems to have correctly realized that Helen is that type of pushy person, which is why he doesn’t complain to her about how much he hates his nickname, while Helen has totally missed both Fritz’s real feelings and the fact that he’s figured her out. We’re supposed to accept that Helen already had a natural ability to read people even before getting her enhanced “Powers”, but the whole nickname incident had me rolling my eyes about Helen’s ability to read even her own family members and wishing that she would get a clue.
I expected that the characters would eventually revisit this situation with Tubs’ nickname before the end of the book and that Tubs would do something to help the situation that would earn his cousins’ respect. However, neither of those things happened. Fritz is the one who mainly solves the problem, and he does so rather quickly toward the end of the book. I was surprised at how quickly the book ended. Because the kids all keep their powers and Tubs is able to keep Glob at the end of the story, I wondered if maybe the book was originally intended to be the first in a series, with further adventures and more character development in later books, but if that was the case, I can’t seem to find anything about it.
I found the issue of language in the story interesting. People in the Galactic Empire speak a common language that Uncle Gregorian describes as being sort of like Esperanto, no matter what planet they come from. The treatment that gave the children their powers also gave them the ability to speak and understand this language, even when they’re not fully aware that they’re doing it. I liked the idea of a common language that’s a kind of conglomerate of other languages with Esperanto as the inspiration. Because the characters aren’t fully aware of that they’re hearing or speaking this language, we don’t have any hints of what it would be like, but I just thought the concept was interesting.
Following the death of Jodie and Peter’s father in a car accident, Jodie’s mother decides that she want to move to a new town and have a fresh start. For some reason, people have been gossiping about the family, particularly Jodie’s Aunt Claire. Jodie doesn’t really want to leave her old home, but she does make a new best friend in her new school. However, they don’t return to their home town of East Hill until Great Aunt Winifred invites them to visit for Christmas.
Jodie loves Aunt Winifred and her big, old-fashioned house with the old toys in the attic. She has fond memories of her whole family getting together for Christmas there, and she thinks that if they visit for Christmas, things will be like they used to be. Jodie’s mother knows differently. Things are not like they used to be with Jodie’s father gone and the gossip still hanging over the family, although Jodie doesn’t understand why. Her mother refuses to return to East Hill, but she says that Jodie can visit Aunt Winifred if she wants. Jodie doesn’t want to be away from her mother and little brother on Christmas itself, so they decide that Jodie can visit Aunt Winifred the week after Christmas, between Christmas and New Year’s.
Jodie still can’t understand why her mother doesn’t want to see Aunt Winifred, but it’s really Aunt Claire that she doesn’t want to see. Jodie’s mother explains that, around the time that Jodie’s father died in the car accident, some money was stolen from Mr. Carrington. Jodie’s father was a lawyer, and Mr. Carrington was once of his clients, and the theft was discovered after Mr. Carrington himself died of a heart attack. Aunt Claire accused of Jodie’s father of stealing the money, but since he was killed in the accident, he never had a chance to defend himself against the accusation. Uncle Phillip, Claire’s husband and vice-president of the bank where Mr. Carrington kept his safe deposit box, never believed that Jodie’s father took the money, but it was bad publicity for the bank when it was stolen. He was trying to get to the bottom of the situation, but he had been in the car with Jodie’s father during the car accident and was also killed. That may have been why Aunt Claire started making public accusations against Jodie’s father – to deflect any blame or suspicion of Phillip because of his role in the bank and maybe also because she blamed Jodie’s father for getting him killed in the car accident when they skidded on a snowy road.
In spite of everything that’s happened, and even because of it, Jodie feels like she has to return to East Hill to see Aunt Winifred and face Aunt Claire. She’s not sure how, but she thinks that if she goes back to East Hill, she might find something that will clear up the situation. There had been another suspect in the theft, a nephew of Mr. Carrington, who was known to be in debt, but nobody could figure out how he could have stolen the money. When it comes down to it, Aunt Claire herself spends more money than she should.
When she gets to East Hill, she realizes that her mother was correct that East Hill doesn’t feel like it used to. Jodie no longer feels like East Hill is her home. She likes her new town and misses her best friend. Her older cousin, Lisa, who is Aunt Claire’s daughter, used to get on her nerves sometimes because she was always the “perfect” child. She is very pretty and talented on the piano, always seems to look great and do everything right, and is also kind of a snob. When Lisa is at the train station with Aunt Winifred to meet Jodie on her arrival, Jodie realizes that Lisa bothers her even more than she used did before.
Lisa is still fussy and snobby and impatient with Aunt Winifred, who sleeps more because she’s getting old. One thing that interests Lisa about Aunt Winifred is that she’s heard that Aunt Winifred is making a new will, and she openly speculates about who is going to get the most out of it. Jodie is disgusted by this talk and asks her why anybody has to get more than anyone else, and Lisa matter-of-factly tells her that there is always a favorite and that the favorite always gets the most. (I can guess that her mother probably told her this.) From the way Lisa talks, Jodie can tell that she thinks of herself as the “perfect” favorite and, therefore, already entitled to receive the most. It disturbs Jodie that Lisa doesn’t seem to care that Aunt Winifred would have to die for her to get anything at all. One day, she overhears Aunt Claire lecturing Lisa that she needs to practice her piano music more while visiting Aunt Winifred because she wants Aunt Winifred to pay for Lisa to study music in Europe. Aunt Winifred seems to want it even more than Lisa does.
While Lisa busies herself with practicing at the piano and calling her friends on the phone, Jodie goes up to the attic to see the old toys they used to play with. When she looks in the attic, she is surprised that her feelings about the attic have also changed. There is something about the attic that now bothers her, but she can’t quite think what it is. She feels like something in the attic has changed or that she wants to change something there, but she’s not sure why. When she looks for a log cabin toy with little pioneer and Indian (Native American) figurines that her father always loved, she is surprised that it is missing. Aunt Claire doesn’t think much of it, suggesting that Aunt Winifred might have just thrown it away, not knowing that it was Jodie’s father’s old favorite toy. However, Jodie knows that can’t be it. Aunt Winifred never had any children of her own, and she loved her two nephews as if they were her sons. She was very sentimental about the toys that they loved, and Jodie doubts that she would just suddenly decide to get rid of one of them.
When Jodie finally figures out what happened to the log cabin toy, the whole truth about the theft comes out.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction and Spoilers
I liked the setting of the story. Big old houses like Aunt Winifred’s aren’t very common anymore, and I always wanted to live in a house with an attic that had a solid floor to it, like the one in the story. Jodie’s memories of playing with the old toys and dress-up clothes there sound fun. Although Jodie doesn’t spend Christmas itself at the house, she is still there during the Christmas season, so the Christmas tree with its unique, old ornaments is still there, and the family enjoys Christmas treats, like chocolates and mince pies.
I had theories about the mystery right from the start. I hoped that Mr. Carrington’s nephew, who we never met, wouldn’t be the thief because that felt too much like bringing in an outsider as the culprit. When Jodie meets a boy named Kenny and becomes friends with him, I thought his family might have something to do with the theft, but they don’t. He’s just a boy who likes Jodie and has fun with her, doing things that Lisa thinks she’s too grown-up to do anymore, like throwing snowballs and making a snowman.
I really suspected Aunt Claire as the thief from the beginning. She definitely has expensive tastes, and when she appears in the story, her clothes and hairstyle sound much more expensive than I would expect from a widow raising a daughter in a fairly small town. The way she and her daughter talk about getting their hands on Aunt Winifred’s money emphasizes how callous and money-grubbing she is. Even Lisa admits that she doesn’t really want to go to Europe to study music. Her mother is the one who wants to go to Europe, and she’s using Lisa as the excuse to get money so both of them can go there. Lisa doesn’t like her mother’s plans because she wants to stay at her school with her friends. It occurred to me that Claire’s accusations about Jodie’s father taking Mr. Carrington’s money could have been to cover up for herself doing it. Since her husband worked at the bank, she could have used his position to get access to the money herself. That’s not exactly what happened, though.
Claire is not the thief. In a way, she was the motive for the crime, so when the truth comes out, it’s still going to hurt. When Jodie discovers what really happened, she even feels sorry for her aunt because she knows that the truth will be hard for her to hear and will affect her reputation in this town in the same way that the suspicions about her father affected her mother. Jodie also feels sorry for Lisa, which I felt was more justified than sympathy for Claire. However, the story ends with Jodie finding out the truth for herself, and we aren’t shown the moment when she reveals it to everyone. We don’t get to see everyone’s reactions, and if it changes any of Aunt Winifred’s thoughts about her will, we don’t see that happen. We don’t know what arrangements Aunt Winifred made originally, so that doesn’t matter too much. The talk about the will is really to establish the moral characters of Aunt Claire and Lisa.
I suspected that Aunt Claire was set up as being so awful and unlikable that readers wouldn’t be sorry if she turned out to be the thief, kind of like how the people who get murdered in old episodes of Murder She Wrote are usually the people who are the most nasty to everyone during the first ten minutes of the show, so viewers are not too sad about them dying and can get on with the puzzle of figuring out who did it. Aunt Claire makes a great villain because I disliked her so much that I wouldn’t have cared no matter what she was guilty of or what happened to her. She’s the snotty kind of woman who says awful things about other people, both behind their backs and to their faces. She criticizes people she sees for being fat and offers unsolicited critiques of their clothes, like she’s the fashion police. She’s extremely manipulative of other people and their emotions for the sake of getting what she wants and making herself feel good, and this even extends to her own daughter. Basically, she’s one of those middle school mean girls who never grew up beyond that point. That she’s good at being awful to other people and getting things she wants is enough justification to her that she sees nothing wrong with being the way she is. I’ve known so many other horrible adults exactly like that in real life that I knew I would cheer to see her shoved under the proverbial bus.
I was expecting that her greediness and high maintenance lifestyle were her motives and that her nastiness was a set-up so readers could focus on the puzzle of how she gets caught. I even thought that the story might take a dark twist with her tampering with Aunt Winifred’s medicine to slowly poison her for the inheritance she expected, since Aunt Winifred said that her medicine was making her unusually sleepy. However, Aunt Claire isn’t an attempted murderer any more than she’s a thief. She’s just an awful person who uses people, and her high maintenance lifestyle was the motive for the real thief, who was probably also manipulated by Claire and her expensive tastes.
Lisa’s character softens a little during the course of the story. She’s still fussy and a little spoiled because of the way her mother is, but Jodie realizes that Lisa isn’t very happy with the way her mother is. Lisa likes music, but her mother is manipulating her as much as anyone else to further her lifestyle. Lisa knows what she wants for herself, and hopefully, even though the truth about the theft is going to hurt her, it might actually change things for Lisa’s benefit in the long term.
I also wondered whether the car accident had anything to do with the theft, but apparently, it doesn’t. It doesn’t seem to have been caused deliberately or by anything directly related to the theft. It was just an accident that took place at an unfortunate time.
#6 The Mystery of the Magi’s Treasure by Elspeth Campbell Murphy, 1995.
Timothy, Titus, and Sarah-Jane go to visit their grandparents in the resort town where they live over the summer. Their grandfather is the pastor of a church, and in their Sunday school class, there are three boys, all named Kevin, who are close friends and have a reputation for being troublemakers and goofs. The three cousins have little to do with the three Kevins, but it’s because of the three Kevins that they are recruited to help with the community’s Christmas in July art fair.
The community holds an art fair every summer, and this year, they’ve chosen Christmas in July as their theme. Some of the local churches are holding a special concert of Christmas music as part of the event, and someone through it would be a fun idea to have children dressed in costumes from the Nativity play, like shepherds and angels, to hand out flyers for the concert. The three Kevins get the roles of the Three Wise Men, but it becomes obvious pretty quickly that this arrangement isn’t going to work because they’re more like the Three Stooges than stately wise men. The choir director says that they need more reliable children to be the Three Wise Men, so naturally, he gives the roles to the three cousins. After all, their grandfather is the pastor, and their grandmother is always bragging about how well-behaved they are.
As soon as they put on the wise men costumes, Timothy realizes that there’s method to the Kevins’ madness. If you get a reputation for being reliable and doing good work, people give you more work. If you get a reputation for not doing anything right, nobody will even let you do certain jobs. The job of being wise men in July is anything but fun. The robes are too heavy and hot for summer. They can’t even complain because everyone says they look adorable, which is humiliating, and their grandmother keeps telling everyone how proud she is of them. It’s almost like they’re being punished for being good, and they can’t say a thing about it without disappointing Grandma.
Then, something really strange happens while they’re passing out flyers. A woman they’ve never seen before runs up to them and gives them three boxes. She says that they’re supposed to be part of their costumes, the gifts for Baby Jesus. She seems a little flustered and has trouble remembering exactly what the gifts are supposed to be, forgetting the words “frankincense” and “myrrh.” She tells the kids that she’s in charge of the props and that they have to take good care of these boxes and only return them to her. Then, she rushes off again.
The kids think that it’s an inconvenience to have to carry around the boxes as well as pass out flyers, but the woman’s manner struck them as strange. When they look more closely at the boxes, the workmanship also seems unusually good for objects used only for a Nativity play.
Then, the kids overhear a couple of artists talking about some artwork stolen from a fellow artist. Suddenly, they have an uncomfortable feeling that they know what was stolen, who took it, and where it is now. The big problem is that the thief is watching them.
Theme of the Story: Goodness.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction and Spoilers
After the kids hear about an artist’s work getting stolen, it doesn’t take them long to realize that the boxes they were give were probably the stolen artwork and that the “prop” lady who didn’t seem to know what she was doing was the thief. She was just looking for a convenient place to leave her stolen goods so she wouldn’t be caught walking around with them, and she happened to spot the children in their wise men costumes. Three fancy boxes look like what people would expect the gifts of the Three Wise Men to look like, so the thief could essentially hide the stolen goods in plain sight. The artists talking about the theft were uncertain exactly what type of art was stolen, so most people at the fair also wouldn’t know what to look for and would just assume that the boxes were props.
The Kevins got them into this mess in the first place, and they turn out to be the way out of it, too. The thief was counting on the kids being easy for her to watch because they stand out in their costumes but almost invisible to bystanders because everyone else just disregards them as being in costume and doesn’t look closer. What the kids realize is that maybe she also hasn’t looked closely enough to really recognize them and is only following the costumes, no matter who happens to be wearing them. Once the cousins explain to the Kevins what’s happening, it’s exciting enough for the Kevins to be more than happy to participate. They finally put their playacting and thrill-seeking to a good purpose!
Weirdly, the thief also unintentionally did a good deed for the artist. The artist has been doubting herself and the quality of her work. While stealing from her was a bad thing to do, the thief unintentionally confirmed that her work was so good that she was willing to steal it! It reminded me of a funny line from an old episode of Remington Steele with an artist whose work was stolen: “I’ve finally hit the big time! I’ve been stolen!”
The theme of “goodness” sounds somewhat generic, but the story is really about turning something bad into something good. The kids didn’t really like getting the roles of the Three Wise Men, but if they hadn’t taken them, they wouldn’t have found this mystery and saved the stolen artwork. Instead of goofing off and messing up like usual, the Kevins came through when it was really important. The woman who tried to take something that didn’t belong to her proved that it was something with value. The boxes themselves were made from pieces of junk, but they’re beautiful. It doesn’t mean that stealing becomes right if it unintentionally accomplishes something good, but the kids come to realize that even things that don’t seem like they’re worth anything can have unexpected good sides. Even Baby Jesus was born in a humble stable.
The Mystery in the Snow by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1992.
The Alden children are disappointed because there is still no snow this winter, and they’ve really been looking forward to snow. Their grandfather tells them not to worry because, soon, they’ll have all the snow they want. A friend of his, Mr. Mercer, owns a ski lodge and has been urging him to visit and bring his grandchildren. There’s going to be a winter carnival there. The children are eager to go and have fun in the snow!
At the ski lodge, the Alden children meet a boy named Jimmy. Jimmy is a regular visitor to the lodge, but for some reason, he says that his parents never stay. There is also a girl called Freddie, which is short for Fredrica. Her parents aren’t at the hotel, either, because they’re visiting her sister, but she says that they will come later. Freddie could have gone to visit her sister, too, but she didn’t want to miss the fun at the ski lodge. She and Jimmy are both team captains for the winter games, which include skiing, skating, sledding, snow sculpting, and ice carving. Strangely, when the team captains get the box where kids are supposed to submit their names to join the teams, they can’t find the keys. The loss of the keys is worrying because, if they can’t find them, they won’t be able to get into the equipment shop for the equipment they need for the games. They still manage to put together the teams, and the Alden children also join.
Then, Mr. Mercer discovers that all four of the tires on his truck are flat. Grandfather Alden offers to drive him into town to get a pump for the tires and to talk to a locksmith about getting into the equipment shop.
While the adults tend to that, the kids talk about the try-outs for different events. The Aldens are all excited about different events. Violet notices that one girl, Nan, isn’t enthusiastic about the events at all and doesn’t want to try out for anything. Violet asks her why, and Nan says that joining in the games was her parents’ idea, not hers. They say it will be fun, but she never really enjoys herself at these things. She doesn’t think there are any events she can do, and she’d hate to be the one to lose an event for her team. To encourage her and build up her confidence, Violet suggests that they both sign up for the ice carving event, which doesn’t require a try out. Violet says that she doesn’t know how to do ice carving, and Violet says that’s fine because she doesn’t, either. She says that it would just be fun to try it out together. Nan points out that they would be competing against each other because they’re on opposite teams, but Violet says that doesn’t matter because they’re both equals, neither one of them knowing what they’re doing. Nan is cheered by Violet’s friendliness and signs up for ice carving.
Nan isn’t the only unhappy child involved in the games, and the Aldens begin to feel that the focus on competition instead of simply having fun in the snow is partly to blame. A boy named Pete is upset that he didn’t get selected for any of the events he tried out for, and he says he doesn’t want to be the time team’s time keeper, which is the default position. Pete says he no longer wants to be involved in any of it. Freddie is angry because she and Jimmy drew names for their team members at random, and she thinks that Jimmy ended up with most of the really good team members. She wants a way to even things out. When the Aldens ask Jimmy if his parents will come to the awards dinner at the end of the games, he seems upset and doesn’t want to talk about it much. They’re not sure if Jimmy is more upset about his parents not being there than he pretends or if he’s worried about the awards ceremony in general.
It soon becomes apparent that someone is intentionally trying to sabotage the winter games. Someone smashes the snow sculptures that the Aldens made for their team. Then, someone steals a skier’s skis and ruins the ice sculpture made by the other team. The entire skating event has to be postponed when someone ruins the ice.
Who is doing these things and why? It could be someone who’s trying to make their team win the competition, but the sabotage has been aimed at both teams and at the event in general. Is it a kid who is unhappy with the contest or their position on their team? Jimmy seems eager to cancel events every time something goes wrong. Can the Boxcar Children figure out who is responsible?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
There are themes in the story about competition and family. The Aldens aren’t accustomed to thinking competitively about other people because they’re used to doing things with each other cooperatively, as a team. Because they’re accustomed to thinking cooperatively, they are friendly with people on the other teams, like Nan, and they’re more focused on the fun of the events than on winning. That makes them different from some of the other kids, who are concerned about winning, but there are other issues in the book besides competition that matter more.
There are indications in the story that the parents of the children in the competition don’t always want the same things that their children want. Nan, for instance, didn’t even want to join contest, but her parents urged her to do it. Also, some of the children aren’t as good at others at conveying to their parents what they really want. When the most troubled child in the group finally manages to say what they really want, many things get straightened out.
I feel like there are many stories where the conflicts revolve around people who don’t really communicate with each other. In this story, there’s a character who blames others for not understanding how they feel, but even they have to acknowledge that they haven’t actually explained their feelings. They’ve just been expecting everyone else to know what they’ve been feeling. Some honest communication straightens out the problem, and that’s a good life lesson for kids and families.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 