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The House of Dies Drear

DiesDrearThe House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton, 1968.

Thomas Small, a thirteen-year-old African American boy, is moving from North Carolina to Ohio with his family in order to live in an old house with an unusual history.  His father is a history professor and has rented a house for them that was once owned by an abolitionist named Dies Drear.  Dies Drear was part of the Underground Railroad that smuggled escaping slaves out of the South around the time of the Civil War, and his old house still has secret passages from that time.  The local people believe that Dies Drear still haunts the house along with the ghosts of a couple of slaves who never made it to freedom.

The caretaker of this strange old house is a strange old man called Mr. Pluto.  He lives on the property in a cave that he has made into a house.  Mr. Pluto frightens Thomas, and Thomas is sure that he’s hiding something.

The Smalls’ new town is a close-knit community that doesn’t welcome outsiders. The people seem unfriendly and suspicious of the Smalls, especially the Darrow family.  They know something about the secret passages at the house, but Thomas’s parents don’t want him poking around the passages anymore after he is briefly lost in them.  However, that is where the real secret of the house lies.

Thomas comes to believe that someone is sneaking into the house at night, using the old secret passages.  One night, this person leaves three small metal triangles at the bedroom doors.  These mysterious triangles seem to fit together, but there also seems to be a missing piece.  The Smalls have no idea what these pieces mean or who put them there.  Mr. Pluto holds many of the answers, and he is going to need their help to protect the secret that he has kept safe for many years.

The book is currently available on Internet Archive (multiple copies).  The book won the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery in 1969.  There is also a made-for-tv movie version of the book.  Sometimes, you can find it or clips of it on YouTube.

There is a sequel to this book called The Mystery of Drear House.  There are only two books in this short series.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I love how the Smalls help Mr. Pluto deal with the Darrows in the end, using the ghost stories about the house to their advantage.  There are hints that besting the Darrows, although it hurt their pride, may actually lead to a better relationship with them in the future.

Thomas and Pesty (a nickname for the young adopted daughter of the Darrow family, her real name is Sarah) are also memorable characters.  Pesty is brave for learning the secret that her family has tried to learn but choosing to protect it instead of reveal it.  Thomas is a thoughtful boy who, because of his earlier upbringing, actually feels more comfortable around older adults than around people his own age.

If you’re wondering about why the abolitionist had a strange name like “Dies Drear”, it isn’t exactly explained.  At one point, the story says that he was from New England.  A possible explanation that I found online is that Dies might actually be another form of the Germanic surname Diess, which may be related to the Biblical name Matthias.  Perhaps Dies Drear might have some Germanic ancestry.  Some people use the mother’s maiden name as a first or middle name for a child.  But, that’s just a theory.

Some teachers use this book to introduce students to the concept of the Underground Railroad.  While I was researching the book online, I also found this pdf of classroom worksheets related to the story. (I had a link to a different set of worksheets before, but those were removed, and I found a different set.)  If you’re looking for additional lesson plans, I suggest looking at Teachers Pay Teachers, where teachers can buy lesson plans from other teachers.  (I’m not sponsored by them, I just know about them from a friend who is a teacher and think it’s a useful resource.)

One final point that I would like to make is that there are no white characters in the story.  Dies Drear was a white man, but he doesn’t actually appear in the book, having died over 100 years before.  Every character who does appear in the book is black.  The funny thing is that I can’t remember any point where the book explicitly describes the characters as black.  It might be my memory playing tricks on me, but I seem to remember knowing that they were all black as I read the book, but I can’t think now why I knew it, and I don’t remember a point where the book actually described anyone’s appearance.  I think I probably knew it partly from context, perhaps subtle hints in the story, but it might also be that I knew what the book was about before I read it because someone told me.  I might even have seen the movie version at some point before reading the book, although I’m not sure now because it’s been years since I first read this story, and I can’t remember if I read the book or saw the movie first.  The movie or clips of it sometimes appear on YouTube.  It’s also available on dvd, although I haven’t seen many copies available.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Hundred Penny Box

The Hundred Penny Box by Sharon Bell Mathis, 1975.

Michael’s great-great-aunt, Aunt Dew (short for Dewbet), has moved in with him and his parents because she is one hundred years old and no longer able to live on her own.  It has been a big adjustment for the entire family, but even though Michael has had to give up space in his room for her, he is glad that she has come to live with them because the old woman fascinates him.  She is (apparently) extremely absent-minded, often calling Michael by his father’s name, John, although some of that seems to be deliberate because she wishes that Michael’s parents had named him after his father.  Other times, she seems to forget that she’s no longer living in her old house or just starts singing an old spiritual song, forgetting what she was talking about before.

John is extremely fond of his elderly aunt because she raised him after his parents died in a boating accident, and she loves him like a son.  Aunt Dew’s own sons are long grown and gone.  However, Michael’s mother, Ruth, finds Aunt Dew’s presence in the house difficult.  Ruth thinks that Aunt Dew doesn’t appreciate some of the nice things that she does for her, and she thinks that Aunt Dew doesn’t like her.  It’s not completely true, but Aunt Dew does seem more comfortable around Michael after spending many years of her life raising boys, and Aunt Dew admits to Michael that she finds it difficult to talk to Ruth because they don’t know each other like she and John do. Aunt Dew and Ruth also have a conflict over some of Aunt Dew’s old possessions.

Aunt Dew is upset that Ruth got rid of some of her old things after she moved in with them.  Michael thought it was a mean thing to do, and Aunt Dew misses these objects.  When Michael argues with his mother about these objects, Ruth explains to him that she’s not trying to be mean.  Ruth compares Aunt Dew to a child, like Michael, saying that she “Thinks she needs a whole lot of stuff she really doesn’t.”  Ruth sees it as just clearing out things that are old and worn out and no good in order to make room for newer, nicer things, comparing it to when Michael got old enough to realize that he didn’t need his old teddy bear that was falling apart and was willing to get rid of it along with some other things in order to make room for Aunt Dew to move in.  Ruth sees clearing out old things as a way to move forward in life and thinks that it’s important to help Aunt Dew adjust to her new life with the family.  However, a lot of Aunt Dew’s long life and past are tied in with some of these objects, and as a one-hundred-year-old woman, Aunt Dew has more past behind her than future life to make room for.  Michael helps her to hide some of them in her closet to keep them from being thrown out, but he’s particularly concerned about her hundred penny box.

When Aunt Dew’s husband was alive, he started a penny collection for her with one penny to represent every year that Aunt Dew has been alive.  After his death, Aunt Dew continued to collect pennies, putting another penny into the box every year to represent her age.  Michael loves the pennies in the box because, when he counts them with Aunt Dew, she will stop him at certain years and tell him stories about things that happened during those years, telling him a lot of family stories.  Michael’s mother isn’t interested in taking the pennies, but she thinks that the old box they’re in is too worn out and should be replaced with something else.  However, Aunt Dew sees that box as being like herself: old and worn and holding all of the years of her life.  To throw it out would be almost like throwing out Aunt Dew herself.  Michael’s mother doesn’t see it that way, but Michael sees the connection.  To try to save the box, Michael hides it from his mother.

The conflict about Aunt Dew’s things isn’t really resolved by the end of the story because Michael’s mother still doesn’t understand how Aunt Dew feels, and we don’t know if she will come to understand or if the box will remain hidden or not.  I found parts of the story frustrating because Ruth doesn’t seem to want to listen to either Aunt Dew or Michael, discounting them as the kid and the old lady.  Even though Ruth is frustrated with Aunt Dew, I think that part of it is her fault for not really listening or trying to understand how she feels. This may be part of the reason why Aunt Dew feels like she can’t really talk to Ruth. To be fair, Ruth doesn’t mean to be mean, but at the same time, she kind of is because she’s too stuck on what she thinks is best and that idea that she knows better than a young boy and an old woman to consider that her ideas might not be what’s best for her family and family relationships and that she needs to give a little. My guess is that she’ll understand how Aunt Dew feels when she’s also an old woman, with more past than future ahead, but with a little imagination and empathy, I think she could see that decades sooner.  I remember reading this book when I was a kid and liking it for the concept of the hundred penny box and the old woman’s stories, but I find the lack of resolution a little frustrating now.  It’s one of those books that makes me want to sit the characters down and explain a few things to them, but I can’t.

Besides the concept of the penny box, I’m also fascinated by the name Dewbet, which I’ve never heard anywhere else besides this story.  The pictures in the book are also unusual, and there’s a note in the back of the book that explains a little about the art style.  The pictures, which are in sepia tones, are painted with water colors, and the light areas were made with water and bleach.

This is a Newbery Honor Book, and it is currently available online through Internet Archive.

There is also a short film version that is available to buy or rent from Vimeo. Teachers Pay Teachers has lesson plans for this book. If you would like to see a reading and discussion with the author of the book, there is a copy on YouTube.

Posted on by TracyC

Steal Away

StealAwaySteal Away by Jennifer Armstrong, 1992.

Most of this story is framed as a flashback, actually two of them.  In the beginning, during the late 1800s, a girl named Mary is taken by her grandmother, Susannah, to visit an old friend of hers who is dying.  The friend, Bethlehem, is a black woman who is a teacher in Canada and has a student living with her, a young black girl named Free, who is about the same age as Mary.  At first, Mary doesn’t completely understand who Bethlehem is and why they are there to see her, and Free is somewhat aloof and suspicious of these white people, but together, Bethlehem and Susannah explain to both the girls about their unusual friendship and a shared history that changed both of their lives forever.  As they explain, Mary writes down their story.

Years ago, before the American Civil War, Susannah was a young teenage orphan.  She traveled from her home in Vermont to the home of her aunt and uncle in Virginia, her new guardians.  Homesick, missing not only her deceased parents but the friends she left behind, especially a boy who is her best friend (and who eventually becomes her husband, Mary’s grandfather), Susannah finds life in Virginia strange and unpleasant.  Her aunt and uncle own slaves, which is something that makes Susannah uneasy.  She was raised not to believe in slavery, but her aunt and uncle give her a slave of her own to take care of her, a girl about her age named Bethlehem.  Susannah is extremely uncomfortable with the situation, not really being the kind of person to get others to do things for her or order anyone around, and Bethlehem isn’t happy about being saddled with this sad, somewhat weak and clueless, white girl.

Bethlehem already has serious problems.  Susannah’s older, male cousin has taken a liking to Bethlehem and pursues her, trying to force his attentions on her.  Bethlehem resists but knows that one day she might not be able to stop him because she’s in his family’s power.  They own her and have authority over her.  Susannah is unaware of this situation at first, being a rather naive girl.  However, Susannah’s unhappiness at her new home increases, and more and more, she longs to return to her real home in Vermont, and her desire to escape also becomes Bethlehem’s ticket to freedom.

Both of the girls long for freedom, although each craves a different kind of freedom and has in mind a different kind of life they long to live elsewhere.  Together, they team up to run away in disguise as boys, although Bethlehem does not trust Susannah at first because she resents white people and the slavery that has been forced on her for her entire life. However, with their common interest in escape, they learn to rely on each other.  They come to trust and understand one another much better during the course of their journey.  It is an eye-opening and life-changing experience for both of them.  Then, when it comes time for them to say goodbye and go their separate ways, it is one of the hardest things that either of them have had to do.

It is a story about lives with separate directions but which crossed in unexpected ways to the benefit of both of them.  Because Susannah and Bethlehem have different destinies and different things that they want in life, they cannot live their lives together and do not see each other again for many years after their adventures, but because of their shared experiences, they still share a bond that lasts across time.

After Bethlehem’s death, Mary becomes concerned about the young student of Bethlehem’s, Free, who was living with her as a part of her family, but Free doesn’t want their help.  Susannah tells Mary that they have to let her live her life and establish her own independence in the way she wants, just as Susannah had to let Bethlehem go her own way years before as a strong, independent young woman who only wanted the freedom to choose her own course in life.

In the end, Mary, as an adult looking back on the one and only time she met her grandmother’s old friend, just before her death, realizes that she has also learned much from the experience, not just about her grandmother’s history, but about herself, other people, racial differences and attitudes, and some of the realities of the world, absorbing vicariously some of the lessons her grandmother learned years ago through her story and Bethlehem’s.

This isn’t really a happy story.  The ending kind of leaves readers with an unsettled feeling because there are many things left unanswered and unresolved.  The book does explain a little about what happens to the characters at the end, but for the most part, they all kind of go their separate ways.  Although they’ve had an effect on each other, nothing is clear-cut, and they share moments together more than lives.  I have to admit that I felt like some of the story dragged in places and others were downright depressing, making this a difficult book to get through.  However, it is interesting for showing a part of history, a life-changing event from different points of view, and some poignant thoughts about caring but letting go.

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