Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Lost Village

The Boxcar Children

#37 The Mystery of the Lost Village by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1993.

Grandfather Alden is going on a fishing trip with a friend, and he arranges for his grandchildren to stay with a family on a Navajo reservation. They’ve never been to a reservation before, and there will be hiking and a powwow. The kids are all eager to go!

The family the Aldens are staying with is the Lightfeathers, and they have two children about the same age as the Aldens, Joe and Amy. The Lightfeathers tell the Aldens interesting things about Navajo history, culture, and crafts. What grabs their attention the most is a story about an ancient village nearby that was abandoned due to drought. The stories that have been passed down through the generations tell them roughly where the village was supposed to be, but the remains of the lost village have never been found.

Joe, Amy, and the Aldens ask if they could try digging for the lost village. Mrs. Lightfeather once studied archaeology, and they ask her if she can help them. Mrs. Lightfeather says that, although the village may be gone, traces of it should be left. The children begin laying out an orderly dig and start their search. They find some arrowheads and pottery, but when they show Mrs. Lightfeather what they’ve found, she says that they can’t continue their dig for much longer. The adults have just heard that a developer is taking over the land to build vacation homes. The children are dismayed when they find out that the developer is going to clear all of the trees. Of course, if the children can find signs of the lost village, the site would become an archaeological site, and the developer would have to stop. They only have two weeks to find some evidence of the lost village before the development starts!

There are some suspicious people hanging around. Michael Runningdeer, who works for the real estate developer, has been checking the boundaries of the reservation to check where they can develop. While they’re working on their dig, the kids meet a woman called Rita Neville, who says that she’s working on a documentary. Ted Clark is a genealogist who says that he has come to the reservation to trace his family’s roots, but Amy thinks it’s strange that he doesn’t seem to know things that someone with Navajo roots would usually know.

As the children work on their dig, they start finding more things, but someone also starts filling in places where they’ve been digging. In other places, someone has been digging where they haven’t dug yet. Then, someone steals an impressive bowl that Violet found. Is someone trying to prevent them from making a discovery that would stop the development, or is this a case of greed for Native American artifacts?

My Reaction

I liked this mystery as a kid, but I have a bone to pick with this story now. Perhaps the rules have changed since the book was written, but I know from living in Arizona that it’s routine to call in professional archaeologists to survey sites before digging and development take place. Because this area was inhabited by different groups over the centuries, archaeological finds can be just about anywhere.

I was attending ASU when they build the bio-sciences building, and people were allowed to watch the archaeologists survey the site. They did find an old Native American burial ground on the site. It didn’t stop the development completely, but they did record and catalog all of their finds before reburying them in the same locations where they were found. The logic of that is that Arizona is a very dry climate, and it preserves things buried in the ground very well. Putting a building over the site will prevent the site from being disturbed again for a long time. In the future, there may be better archaeological tools and scientific techniques that can be used to reevaluate the site and the things in it, and by then, the building may no longer be there.

What I’m saying is that there are rules and practices regarding archaeology and development in this region. Because this book was written about 30 years ago, when I was a kid, I’m not sure how different the rules were then, but I’m sure that archaeological surveys of this type were conducted back then, too. One of my old college teachers was an archaeologist, and he told us about digs he participated in around one of the reservations years before. I’d be surprised that development so close to a reservation, as in this story, would be allowed to go ahead without an archaeological survey from one of the universities or other archaeological organizations in the state. I just think that there should have been professionals working in the area before the kids started their dig.

I liked the pieces of information that the Lightfeathers explain to the Aldens about Navajo history and culture. My favorite piece of trivia was the explanation about how, rather than putting clay cooking pots directly over the fire, historical Navajos would heat a stone in a fire and then put the stone into a pot of water to heat the water for cooking. I think it’s a creative solution to cooking in a vessel that can’t be used directly over fire.

Jessie is allowed to participate in a dance at the powwow as a guest of a Navajo family, and Amy helps her put together regalia for the dance. (See Jingle Dancer for an example of this in a different tribe.) I sometimes find it a little cringey now when characters in stories too easily participate in Native American events and are quickly called honorary members of the tribe, but in this case, the Aldens do help make an important discovery.

Posted on by TracyC

Eyewitness Medieval Life

Eyewitness

Medieval Life by Andrew Langley, photographed by Geoff Brightling and Geoff Dann, 1988, 2004.

I love books that explain the details of daily life in the past, and I especially like Eyewitness books because they include such great photographs to show objects that people would have used in the past.

This book begins by explaining the time period of the “Middle Ages”, which was the period between Ancient Greece and Rome and the Renaissance, when culture and knowledge from Ancient Greece and Rome came back into vogue. The Middle Ages lasted about 1000 years, roughly from 400 to about 1540 AD. (Estimates of the start and end dates vary because this was a period defined by cultural changes, which are gradual and don’t have precise start and end dates.) This long period of time can also be divided into smaller periods and contained many important events that helped to shape society and culture, including The Crusades and The Great Plague.

Medieval society was hierarchical and was based on land ownership. The king and the highest nobles controlled the land and allowed people in lower levels of society to use it or grant farming rights to peasants in exchange for rent in the form of their services and a share of what they produced. The peasants or serfs were tied to the land they farmed, and the land was owned by the lords they served. They were not regarded as “free” people, and they couldn’t leave their lord or the land except by raising enough money to buy some land for themselves or by marrying a free person from a higher level of society.

A lord’s manor included not only his manor house or castle but the nearby village, church, and the farmland where his serfs worked. Often, villages and manors had little contact with the outside world, so the people who lived there had to make most of what they needed themselves. Most people never left their land or were only able to travel a short distance from it, so the only new people they might meet would be traveling peddlers, soldiers, or pilgrims.

The book explains what would be found in a typical Medieval home. Poor people lived in houses that had only one or two rooms for the entire family. Few people could afford to buy glass windows. Poor people only had wooden shutters to cover their windows. Others might have tallow-coated linen over a lattice frame, which would let in light, and some wealthier people had pieces of polished horn in their windows, which also let in light, although you couldn’t really see through them well. What people ate varied depending on their social status. Wealthier people could afford a wider variety of foods, and poor people mostly ate what they produced themselves.

Women’s lives also varied depending on their social status. Pleasant women farmed and provided for their families alongside their husbands. Women in families of craftsmen and tradesmen often worked alongside the men in the family business. Wealthy women managed their husbands’ households or could rise to rank of influential abbess if they joined religious orders. However, the highest ranks in society were occupied by men.

While peasants served their lords, lords also owed services to higher nobles and, ultimately, to the king, although sometimes the king struggled to control powerful nobles and assert his authority over them. The king generally had to keep his nobles satisfied with his rule if he wanted to retain their loyalty because, while he was the source of their land and authority, they were effectively ruling over their own smaller lands with their own troops. While nobles owed their king military service and support, if they were dissatisfied with the state of their lands or were just unoccupied with other battles to fight and saw an opportunity, they would sometimes use their troops to raid the lands of neighboring nobles. Part of the king’s job involved preventing his nobles from being dangers to him and to each other. The king also made and enforced laws, settled disputes, and oversaw the collection of taxes.

Christianity, specifically in the form of Catholicism, was central to the lives of people in the Middle Ages. During this time, stonemasons and craftsmen developed new techniques for building impressive cathedrals that still stand today. These cathedrals were lavishly decorated with statues, frescoes, and stained glass windows that depicted Biblical stories and the lives of saints. These works of art were important for helping to teach people who did not have the ability to read the Bible themselves about their religion.

Religious orders of monks and nuns performed important functions for society, such as caring for people who were poor or sick, providing safe places for travelers to stay, and copying written texts by hand. In the centuries before the printing press was invented, there were only handwritten books, and they took time and skill to produce. It could take an entire year for someone to copy an entire Bible. Few people were able to own personal books, and much of the schooling in this period was provided by religious orders.

The book describes the rise of Islam during the early Middle Ages, increases in trade and commerce, the growth of towns, and guilds that controlled different professions. It also describes Medieval music and entertainment, such as plays and parades. One of my favorite parts of the book is about fairs and feast days.

The book ends by describing the beginning of the Renaissance and the rediscovery of classical Greek and Roman culture as well as the beginning of the Reformation and the development of new scientific discoveries and artistic styles.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Eyewitness Castle

Eyewitness

Castle by Christopher Gravett, photographed by Geoff Dann, 1994, 2004.

Eyewitness books are always great for the photographs that they use to illustrate the concepts in the book!

This book is all about Medieval castles. It starts by explaining the evolution of castle-building from early wooden motte-and-bailey castles to the great stone castles that we often think of as being the classic Medieval castle. However, stone castles could come in different shapes and styles, depending on where they were located.

The book shows examples of castles in different countries. Most of the focus of the book is on castles in European countries, including Spain, Germany, and France. However, the book also includes information about castles in Japan.

Castles were built for defense, and the book explains the types of defenses that castles would have, such as gatehouses, murder holes, lifting bridges, battlements with corbels and machicolations, and loopholes. It also explains what a siege was like, what types of weapons would have been used, and what knights and soldiers were like.

The parts of the book that I liked best were the parts that described the rooms in a castle and the daily lives of the people in a castle. Among the rooms in a castles were the great hall, kitchen, and chapel. I like how they show the objects that would be found in different rooms and how they would be used.

The book explains the lives of the lord of the castle and women and children who lived there. There is information about the types of foods they would eat in a Medieval castle and the types of games and entertainment they would have enjoyed.

There is also information about other workers in and around the castle, including the castle builders and people who tended the castle’s animals and worked in the agricultural fields around the castle, producing food and textiles for the population.

There are sections in the back of the book with additional facts and information about castles and the people who lived in them and a glossary.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Eyewitness Ancient Egypt

Eyewitness

Ancient Egypt by George Hart, 1990.

I love the way this book, like others in the Eyewitness series, shows photographs of artifacts so readers can not only read about how people lived but see the objects that they used. Each photograph in the book has a caption to explain what it is.

The book begins with an explanation about the origins of Ancient Egyptian civilization thousands of years ago, before there were pharaohs. Then, it explains about the geography of Egypt and the Nile and how the Nile floods and fertile lands along the river made Egyptian civilization possible.

The book then explains the concept of the Egyptian king as a “pharaoh.” The title of “pharaoh” comes from an Ancient Egyptian word meaning “great house”, referring to the palace where the king lived, so the king was the one who lived in the “great house.” However, the pharaoh was more than just the an important man living in a palace; he was also regarded as being a god. Most Egyptian rulers were male, although queens also sometimes ruled and were also regarded as divine. The book shows pictures of statues depicting pharaohs and explains a little more about some of the most famous pharaohs and queens. Then, it goes on to discuss life in the royal court.

Of course, no book about Ancient Egypt is complete without a discussion of mummies and tombs. Much of what we know about Ancient Egypt comes from what the Ancient Egyptians left in their tombs because Ancient Egyptians believed in life after death. They developed methods of preserving their bodies after death, and they stocked their tombs with things that they wanted to have with them in the next life. The book explains the embalming process, what pyramids and royal tombs were like, who the Egyptian gods and goddesses were, and what Egyptians believed about the journey to the afterlife.

I liked how the book not only explains different types of gods and goddesses in Ancient Egypt but also the roles of priests and temples in Egyptian society, types of religious rituals, and the role of religion and magical rituals in Ancient Egyptian medicine.

As the book covers a wide variety of different topics in Egyptian society, including scribes and writing, weaponry, and trading. I particularly like the parts focusing on daily life, like what Egyptian homes were like and some of the tools and details of different trades, like carpentry. The book has details about foods Ancient Egyptians ate, what music and dancing were like, and types of clothing and jewelry they had.

One of my favorite sections in the book is about toys and games in Ancient Egypt. We don’t know all of the details of games that were played in Ancient Egypt, but we do know that they had board games because they were found in tombs. Children’s toys were whimsical and included moving parts. Some of the games children played are similar to ones that children play today, like versions of leapfrog and tug-of-war and spinning tops.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including some in different languages)

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Surprise Island

The Boxcar Children

Surprise Island by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1949.

Mr. Alden has promised his grandchildren a special surprise for their summer vacation. He tells them that, years ago, his father bought a small island because he kept horses and wanted a quiet place for them.  The island has only one little yellow house, a barn, and a fisherman’s hut where Captain Daniel lives.  Captain Daniel operates the motorboat that can take people to the island.  Mr. Alden plans to take his grandchildren to the island to look over the house, and if they like, they can spend the summer there.  The children think that it sounds like fun.

When they get to the island, the children decide that they want to stay in the barn instead of the house.  Captain Daniel also tells them that he has a young man staying with him, a friend who hasn’t been feeling well.  The Aldens’ old friend, Dr. Moore, has come to see the island with them, so he looks in on the young man.  It turns out that the young man was in an accident and had lost his memory for a time, although he has been gaining it back.  He says that he used to live with an uncle but that he didn’t want to go home again until he was sure that he was completely well.  He is going by the name of “Joe”, which is short for his middle name, Joseph.  Captain Daniel says that he’s known the young man all his life, and Dr. Moore also seems to know him, but Joe doesn’t seem to want to talk about himself to Mr. Alden.

The kids enjoy setting up housekeeping in the barn.  It reminds them of when they used to live in an old boxcar.  They use old boxes for furniture, dig for clams, and eat vegetables from the garden that Joe and Captain Daniel have tended for them.  Their grandfather allows the children to stay on the island in Captain Daniel’s charge, but they are mostly allowed to take care of themselves.  Joe sometimes brings them supplies that they ask for from the mainland.  (One of the themes of the Boxcar Children Series is self-sufficiency.  At one point, Jessie comments about how much better things seem “when we have to work to get it.”)  For fun, they go swimming, and Joe spends time with them, telling them about different types of seaweed.  They are surprised at how knowledgeable Joe is.

Henry gets the idea that they can set up a kind of museum of interesting things that they find on the island, like samples of different types of seaweed, shells, flowers, pictures of birds that they’ve seen, etc.  The other children think that it sounds like fun, and they begin thinking about the different types of things that they can collect.While they’re searching for things to collect and add to their museum, the children find a cave and an old arrowhead and ax-head.  They are authentic Indian (Native American) relics!  When they show Joe what they’ve found, he gets very excited, especially when they tell him that they saw a pile of clam shells, too.  Joe explains to the children how Native Americans used to use shells as money called wampum.  He thinks that what they saw was wampum, which the people who used to live there might have made after drying the clams to eat later.  Joe explains to the kids some of the process they would have used to turn the shells into wampum.  He’s eager to go to the cave and look for more Native American artifacts with them, but he urges them not to say anything to anyone else about it because other treasure hunters will probably show up if they do.  The children agree to keep their find a secret until their grandfather returns.

When they return to the cave with Joe, they make an even more incredible find: a human skeleton with an arrowhead inside.  It looks like they’ve found the bones of someone killed by an arrow!

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

My Reaction

As with some other vintage children’s mystery series, the early books in the series were more adventure than mystery.  The most mysterious part of this book concerns the real identity of the young man they call “Joe.”  The truth begins to come out when a strange man who calls himself Browning comes to the island in search of a young man who disappeared the year before while doing some exploring for him.  The young man he’s looking for worked for a museum.

This is the book where Violet first learns to play the violin.  This is a character trait that stays with her for the rest of the series.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of King Karfu

The Mystery of King Karfu by Doug Cushman, 1996.

Seymour Sleuth, an Australian wombat living in London, introduces himself as “the greatest detective in the world.”  His friend, Abbott Muggs, a mouse, is a photographer who assists him in his cases and documents them.  When the story begins, Seymour receives a telegram from his friend Professor Slagbottom, who is working on an archaeological site in Egypt.  Someone has stolen one of their finds, the Stone Chicken of King Karfu, and he needs Seymour’s help to find it!  Seymour and Muggs head for Egypt!

King Karfu was a wealthy pharaoh and a wonderful cook, and the Stone Chicken may provide clues about the Lost Treasure of King Karfu, the nature of which is unknown.  When they reach the dig in Egypt, Professor Slagbottom explains that he was researching a message in code on the outside of the Chicken when it was stolen.  The suspects are the other people on the dig, who may be trying to steal King Karfu’s Treasure.

Seymour interviews the suspects one at a time and considers their connection to clues found at the scene of the crime.  As an adult, I figured out who the culprit was pretty quickly, but for the benefit of child readers, Seymour provides notes about the clues and suspects to help them understand the connections. The pictures in the story also provide important clues.  After Professor Slagbottom’s decoder is stolen, Seymour realizes who the thief is.

After they get the Stone Chicken back, readers can use the decoder provided to solve the code and learn where the Treasure is.  It turns out that the Treasure is actually a recipe, written in the same substitution code – for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!

I always like mysteries that involve codes and puzzles, and this cute animal mystery would be fun and challenging for young kids.  With the key provided, it would be a good introduction to substitution codes for kids who have never seen them.  There is one other book with Seymour Sleuth, The Mystery of the Monkey’s Maze.  The author, Doug Cushman, is also the author of the Aunt Eater Mysteries.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The Haunting of Cabin 13

Cabin13The Haunting of Cabin 13 by Kristi D. Holl, 1987.

Thirteen-year-old Laurie is looking forward to her family’s vacation. They’ve rented a cabin for a week, Cabin 13, by the lake at Backbone State Park (It’s a real state park in Iowa. Link repaired 10-19-22.), and her friend Jenny is staying there with them. Laurie’s mother isn’t looking forward to the trip. She hates dirt and bugs and doesn’t like the cabin when they arrive. As everyone starts unpacking, Laurie looks around the cabin and finds a note that warns them to leave because the cabin is haunted. Supposedly, it was written by the ghost herself. The note is signed “Eleanor.” Laurie’s mother thinks that they should leave right away, but Laurie and the rest of the family persuade her that it’s just a joke. At first, Laurie’s sure that’s all it is.

Then, the park ranger tells the family that the other families who have tried to stay in that cabin this summer also found similar notes. It might be just a prank, but it might not. He also tells them that a girl named Eleanor, the same age as Laurie and Jenny, drowned there the summer before, and strange things have been seen there since, like lights around the lake. Laurie’s brother, Ricky, thinks it sounds cool that they’re staying in a haunted cabin by a haunted lake. Like others, Laurie thinks that the notes are the product of a prankster, but what would be the point behind it?

The girls meet a pair of brothers who are staying nearby, Kevin and Matt. When they tell them about the note, Matt is eager to investigate. Jenny enjoys flirting with boys, and she’s mostly interested in flirting with good-looking, athletic Kevin. Matt is in a wheelchair, so Jenny doesn’t pay much attention to him. She just makes an awkward comment about cripples being able to contribute to society that makes everyone feel uncomfortable. Although Laurie knows that Jenny’s comment was inappropriately personal and callous, Laurie also underrates Matt’s ability to help with their note mystery at first, and she’s shy about talking to him because she’s often shy around boys. However, needing someone to confide her thoughts in when Jenny isn’t interested, Laurie talks to Matt about her theories about the mysterious notes. Matt turns out to be easy to talk to, helping Laurie get over her nervousness about talking to boys.

At first, Laurie tells Matt that she thinks that the prankster is trying to drive people away from Cabin 13 because something important is hidden there. However, as she starts asking questions about Eleanor, she learns that the notes haven’t just been directed at Cabin 13. Staff at the park have also received notes from “Eleanor.” Laurie also sees a figure in black sneaking around the park, who she is sure is not a ghost.

It isn’t long before Laurie receives more notes from “Eleanor,” hinting that she might be in danger, and she and Jenny see the mysterious lights that people have been talking about. Then, when the children are out in a canoe together, it develops a leak and sinks. Matt panics because his legs are paralyzed, and he can’t swim, but Laurie saves him with the help of some people in another boat.

Was that accident just an accident, or could it have something to do with Eleanor’s “accident” last year? There are plenty of suspects who might have reasons for playing ghost and stirring up trouble at the lake. Matt’s father blames the park ranger for the accident that paralyzed Matt. At a previous visit to the lake, Matt was crossing a road with his father and brother and was struck by a speeding car. Matt father says it wouldn’t have happened if the roads had been policed properly. Laurie realizes that he might have a motive for revenge. Then again, some people have been coming to the lake, drawn by the ghost stories and hoping to see the mysterious lights. Could the ghost be a publicity stunt to drum up business?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

When Laurie discovers that Eleanor’s half sister has come to the lake to investigate Eleanor’s death herself, she thinks that she has the mystery solved, but she’s only half right. It’s true that Eleanor’s sister has been responsible for some of the things happening at the lake, but not all of them.  She explains to the kids that Eleanor loved mystery stories and was always playing detective games, but she thinks that perhaps the game got too real for Eleanor the summer that she died.  There is something sinister going on at the lake, something that Eleanor also realized before her death, and there is more to Eleanor’s death than most people know.

At the end of the book, Matt gets a chance to be a hero and stop the bad guy from escaping, using his wheelchair to his advantage because a person on wheels can sometimes move faster than a person on foot.  Even before that, Laurie had gained an appreciation for Matt and his sensible thinking, realizing that a person who is impaired in one way can still have great abilities in other areas of life.  She also comes to think of Matt as being brave for coming back to the site of the accident that made him a paraplegic.  Matt says that he had to come in order to prove to himself that there was nothing inherently bad about the  place and to stop the nightmares he was having about his accident.  Matt and Eleanor’s sister both make Laurie realize that everyone has something difficult or frightening that they have to deal with in their lives; it’s just that some people’s problems are more obvious than others.  Everyone can see what Matt’s dealing with at first glance because he’s in a wheelchair, but no one knew about the pain and fear that Eleanor’s sister was carrying around with her until she admitted it.

I consider this story a pseudo-ghost story because the obvious parts of the haunting were caused by living people, for reasons of their own.  However, Laurie seems to feel that Eleanor’s spirit was there with them, waiting to see the mystery of her death solved.  It’s left open to interpretation, but if Eleanor was there, it was only seen in the odd feelings that Laurie had from time to time, not in any more obvious or physical way.

Something that confused me a little in the book is that, at one point, Jenny tells someone that Laurie already has a reputation for being an amateur detective, having discovered that Jenny herself had been kidnapped when the authorities thought that she had run away from home. Jenny gives full details of the time when she was kidnapped, including who kidnapped her and why and how Laurie figured out where she was. When I read that section of the story, I thought at first that the author was talking about a previous book that she had written with these two characters, but I had trouble figuring out which it was, if any.

Interesting fact: some of the children in the story are named after the author’s own children.

Posted on by TracyC

Scared Silly

ScaredSillyScared Silly by Eth Clifford, 1988.

Grandma Post has decided that Mary Rose and Jo-Beth Onetree are finally old enough and responsible enough to have an antique doll house that has been in their family for years. But Jo-Beth is irritated because her family thinks of Mary Rose as the responsible one, and Mary Rose doesn’t take her seriously. Jo-Beth is the dramatic one, a day dreamer.

Although Jo-Beth is determined to prove that she can be as practical and sensible as her older sister, neither she nor her father can resist a look at the Walk-Your-Way-Around-the-World Museum when they spot the sign for it on the way to their grandmother’s house to pick up the dollhouse.  Practical Mary Rose thinks they should just continue with their journey and not get distracted, especially because the weather has turned stormy. Then, the bridge they had to cross over collapses behind them, washed away by rising river waters, so they have no choice but to keep heading toward the museum and call for help.

The Walk-Your-Way-Around-the-World Museum is a museum dedicated to shoes from different periods of history and different parts of the world. It’s owned by the eccentric Harper family, who also owns the strange house nearby called Harper’s Abode. Gus Harper made his fortune in shoes, and he’s the one who came up who built the museum. He’s also an inventor who creates magic tricks for stage magicians, and he decorated Harper’s Abode with them, almost like a funhouse. His brother, Razendale Harper, lives there, too. Razendale was an actor, and he now teaches drama and entertains children at the local hospital while wearing giant rabbit costume. Their nephew, Erik, lives with them, and Daisy Dorcet manages the family’s affairs.

ScaredSillyPicWhile the Onetree family is visiting the museum, a pair of shoes that once belonged to a Chinese emperor disappears. Like the two Onetree sisters, Gus considers himself the sensible brother and doesn’t take Razendale, the dreamier sibling, very seriously. He thinks Razendale ran off with the shoes as a prank. But, Erik, who seems more sensible than either of his uncles, says that they can’t just accuse him without proof. Gus provides them with an invention that could settle the whole matter, but that depends on whether or not they can trust Gus.

This book is a little different from the others in the series in that there isn’t just one issue that the girls consider along with the mystery. Jo-Beth considers whether or not she’s going to remain a dreamer or try to be more sensible (at least, part of the time, like maybe once or twice a week). Mary Rose is surprised that Jo-Beth can come up with some sensible solutions when she puts her mind to it. Then, there’s the shoe thief, whose motives are more altruistic than anyone suspects and who raises the question of where certain museum artifacts actually belong.

This is part of the Mary Rose and Jo-Beth Mysteries series.  It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.