Posted on by TracyC

The Vampire Mystery

The Boxcar Children

#120 The Vampire Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 2009.

The Alden children are introduced to a local author by their grandfather. Charles Hudson lives in an old house that his family has owned for years, next to a graveyard. He is known for writing a book about a vampire, and he explains to the Aldens that he was inspired to write the story because there are local stories about a vampire in that graveyard. He grew up hearing those stories, and he used to scare his brother with them when they were kids.

Mr. Hudson is now trying to sell the house. He doesn’t really want to, but he’s getting older, and the house is really too big for him to easily maintain it by himself. However, strange things have started happening since he decided to sell. His For Sale signs have been stolen and vandalized, people have been hearing strange sounds coming from the cemetery, and one of his neighbors, Mrs. Fairfax, found what looks like blood on her porch. His nervous realtor, Josh, seems to think that the vampire stories are real and that the vampire is trying to stop anyone new from moving into the house. He got that idea from the author’s book, where the sale of a house near a cemetery awakened the vampire’s wrath. Of course, Mr. Hudson and Mr. Alden say that’s just a story, but it’s still spooky to the Alden children. When they went outside to explore the cemetery, they also saw a mysterious figure lurking around. Mr. Hudson worries that the stories about the vampire will make it hard for him to sell his house.

The author says that he needs to out of town to meet with a movie producer about making a movie based on his book, and he’s a little worried about not having anyone to look after the house while he’s away. The Alden children offer to look after his house while he’s away, watering the plants and keeping things tidy for potential buyers. Mr. Hudson gratefully accepts their offer of help.

However, the next time the children go to the house to check on it, they find that the police are already there because someone vandalized the house during the night. The vandal ripped out some flowers in the garden and left a threatening message painted in red on the porch: “Leave me to rest in peace or you will be sorry.” The neighbor, Mrs. Fairfax accuses the children of doing the vandalism because she doesn’t like kids. Fortunately, Josh the realtor is there and vouches that the children are friends of Mr. Hudson and are just helping him with some things while he’s away.

At a local bake sale, the children have an odd experience when Benny bumps into a man who looks a lot like Mr. Hudson. In fact, he thought for a moment it was Mr. Hudson. The man left quickly, and he dropped a vial of something red, which the kids think looks a lot like blood!

Who could be behind the vandalism at Mr. Hudson’s house? Is Mrs. Fairfax so worried that a family with children will move in that she would fake the return of the legendary vampire to prevent anyone from buying Mr. Hudson’s house? Is Josh really as scared of the vampire as he pretends, or does he have his own reasons for wanting to sabotage the sale of Mr. Hudson’s house? What about the mysterious man who looks a lot like Mr. Hudson? Was that really blood in that vial, and could he actually be … the vampire?

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

My Reaction

I enjoyed this mystery! It’s mildly spooky, but not too scary. The children and the adults around them, for the most part, are pretty sure that whoever is doing these things isn’t a real vampire. They’re just not sure who’s pretending to be a vampire. There are some spooky moments, where someone is lurking around the cemetery, and later, someone enters Mr. Hudson’s house during the night, and the kids almost catch that person there. The person does some things to scare and distract them, but nobody gets hurt.

I had a couple of theories about who was doing what, and in a way, they both turned out to be right! It’s a bit of a spoiler, but there are two people who are doing secretive things in the story, and they’re not working with each other. They have separate motives for what they’re doing. Their separate plots just kind of build on each other’s, further building up the legend of the vampire.

It’s a fun, mildly spooky mystery that would be fun to read about Halloween, although it’s not specifically a Halloween story.

Posted on by TracyC

The Vanishing Passenger

The Boxcar Children

#106 The Vanishing Passenger by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 2006.

The Alden children have been working on a project at their public library to invite the author of one of their favorite book series to visit as a guest speaker.  However, when they go to meet his train, the author isn’t there.  He’s completely disappeared!

The Aldens know that he got on the train because they spoke to him on the phone earlier.  When they interview some of the passengers, they discover that the train trip was somewhat chaotic.  The train passed through a harsh storm.  A small dog disappeared, and his heart-broken family is searching for him as well.  The evidence seems to point to the author jumping off the train, but why would he do that?  Where is he now, and why hasn’t he tried to get in touch with them?

Carefully, the Aldens have to work backward through the train journey, piecing together the author’s movements to put together the whole story.

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

My Reaction

I really appreciated the premise of this story. A mysterious disappearance makes a more unusual kind of mystery than the more typical crimes that appear in mystery stories, like theft. This is a story of a trip in which quite a lot of things went wrong.  The kids do manage to track down their missing author with some surprising help from the author’s rival, who is also apparently his friend, showing the children that not all competition has to be unfriendly.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick

HarrisBurdick

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg, 1984.

Harris Burdick isn’t exactly a mystery story, not even really a story exactly, but it is mysterious.  Most of the book is pictures, and that’s kind of the point.  The premise of the book is that a mysterious stranger known only as Harris Burdick approached a publisher about some stories that he had written and illustrated.  As examples of his work, he gave the publisher a collection of illustrations he had done for each of his stories with accompanying captions.  The publisher loved the illustrations, but Harris Burdick didn’t keep his appointment to bring in the complete stories the next day.  When the publisher tried to contact him about the stories, he was never able to find Harris Burdick and never heard from him again.  However, the publisher continued to be intrigued by the pictures and wondered what the stories were like, so his children and their friends wrote their own stories about them.  The pictures are therefore presented as a collection, and readers are invited to imagine the stories that they are part of.

HarrisBurdickAnotherPlace

I remember one of my teachers using this book as part of a writing exercise, having us each choose a picture and write the accompanying story as we imagined it.  Over the years, I’ve changed my mind about which picture is my favorite.

HarrisBurdickLibrary

I thought for awhile that “The House on Maple Street” could have inspired the author himself in writing Zathura, the sequel to his other book, Jumanji, although there is apparently no direct link between the two.

HarrisBurdickHouse

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.  There is also a collection of stories called The Chronicles of Harris Burdick in which well-known authors present their own versions of each of the stories.

HarrisBurdickVenice

Posted on by TracyC

The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline

The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline

The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline by Lois Lowry, 1983.

Eleven-year-old Caroline Tate knows that she wants to be a paleontologist when she grows up, but she is also fascinated with her friend Stacy’s dream of becoming a great investigative reporter. For fun, the two girls begin investigating the people who live in their respective apartment buildings.

Caroline’s investigation focuses on the mysterious Frederick Fiske, who lives on the fifth floor of her building. In a wastebasket, she finds a letter written to him by a man she’s never heard of telling him to “eliminate the kids.” Also in the wastebasket, there is an overdue notice for Fiske from the library, and the book is about poisons. From this evidence, Caroline comes to believe that the strange Mr. Fiske is planning to murder some children.

The situation becomes worse when Mr. Fiske begins dating her divorced mother, and Caroline fears that the children Mr. Fiske is planning to murder are her and her brother, J.P.. Can Caroline, J.P., and Stacy prove that Mr. Fiske is a cold-blooded murderer before his relationship with the Caroline’s mother can go any further and before he succeeds in poisoning them?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers:

It’s a bit of a spoiler, but this is one of those stories where the mystery is largely based on a series of misunderstandings. The book is a comedy mystery.  Mr. Fiske isn’t really a murderer, although he has done some things which make the children suspicious.  It’s a humorous story, and the kids’ antics as they try to further their investigation and collect “evidence” against Mr. Fiske are hilarious.  Along the way, the kids end up helping Mr. Fiske with a problem he’s been having, and the kids realize that they’ve made a mistake about him and his intentions.  Whether Mr. Fiske learns of their suspicions about him or not is left to the imagination, although something at the very end of the story may bring everything out into the open.

The title of the book comes from a joke between Caroline and her mother.  Caroline’s mother is always talking about the things she loves about Caroline, giving them different numbers.