book-review – Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories

Posted on February 1, 2026 by TracyC

The Moorchild

The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw, 1996.

When Saaski was only a few months old, her grandmother, Old Bess, started to notice that she didn’t look right, compared to the rest of the family or even compared to the way she looked when she was a newer baby. The grandmother tried to brush those thoughts aside, thinking that children change as they grow, and people of the village think that she’s odd herself as a widow who lives alone and knows about herbs. All the same, Saaski seems unusually fussy and throws tantrums, becoming a child who’s difficult to control. It could just be colic, or it could be something stranger.

Old Bess begins to put the pieces together about Saaski’s strange behavior. Saaski seems to hate or fear her own father, and Old Bess realizes that it’s because he is a blacksmith and wears an iron buckle on his belt. Saaski has an aversion to iron. She also has an aversion to salt, and only honey seems to soothe her. Saaski’s eyes change color from time to time, and Old Bess realizes that Saaski not only isn’t her grandchild but that she isn’t even human. Saaski is a changeling, a fairy child switched out for the human child before her christening.

When Old Bess tries to tell her daughter and her husband that Saaski is a changeling, her daughter refuses to believe her. Her husband seems to consider that Old Bess might be right, but he absolutely refuses to do the cruel things to the child that Old Bess tries to tell them will cause the fairy folk to take the changeling back and bring them their real daughter. Old Bess says that Saaski must either be made to tell her true age, which she cannot do because she cannot talk yet, or the parents must do cruel things to her, like beat her, burn her, or throw her down a well. The parents say that they cannot do such things to a baby, no matter what kind of baby it is, and they no longer want to discuss the matter, forbidding Old Bess to tell anyone else of her suspicions.

However, in this case, Old Bess is correct. The child known as Saaski is a changeling, and she knows it herself. Although she is in the form of a human baby, she knows that she is not really a baby. Her fairy name was Moql. She doesn’t know her true age, but she knows that she is a fairy youngling and that she used to live among the other fairies in the fairy mound. She doesn’t like being part of this human family, and she wishes that the fairies would take her back, but she knows that, whatever happens, they never will reclaim her. Even if this family treats her cruelly and the fairies decide to remove her from their house, she knows that they will just place her with a different human family.

The problem is that, unlike other fairies, Moql has no ability to hide from humans. Other fairies can change their shape or color, fade, or just wink out of human vision entirely, but Moql can’t. The fairies discovered it one day when Moql was unable to hide from a human shepherd. She is able to escape from the shepherd, but her blunder isn’t forgiven by the other fairies. Moql’s inability to hide from humans was considered a danger to whole band of fairies. She was taken before the prince of the fairies. When he sees that Moql cannot hide from humans, he remembers that a human man entered the fairy mound some time ago and stayed awhile with a fairy woman. Moql’s mother was a fairy, but her father was that human. As a half-human, Moql will never have the abilities that the other fairy younglings have.

When Moql is considered a danger to the other fairies, they feel little attachment to her or desire to keep her. They don’t consider a half-human likely to work out among the fairies, so they decide to swap her for a human child who might make a good servant to the fairies. They’ve done this before with other younglings like Moql. Moql is frightened because she doesn’t know how to be human. Life in the fairy mound is all that she knows. She is only half human, and if she’s not working out as a half fairy, how can she possibly work out as a human? What if she can’t work out as a human? Will she belong anywhere? What if she belongs nowhere?

The fairies tell her that she will start life all over again as a human baby and that she will forget all about the mound and her past life. The other fairies think nothing of casting her out. None of them really care about her. The fairies don’t feel emotions like humans do, and they don’t feel very much about anybody. Moql’s birth mother doesn’t feel anything for her but a mild curiosity and no concern for her future. Fairy mothers don’t really develop an attachment to their children, who are raised communally in the fairy nursery and school. Most fairies don’t even know who their parents are, and they don’t really develop feelings for their parents any more than parents feel attached to their children. Even fairy couples don’t stay together very long, forgetting about each other when they become bored with the relationship and moving on to others. Fairies don’t really care that much about relationships, like brother and sister, and fairies don’t even have a sense of what being a “friend” means. So far, even Moql hasn’t felt that much for anybody, either. Moql’s first human feelings come with her despair about being torn away from everything and everyone she’s ever known, made worse from realizing that nobody else feels anything for her. In their position, she might not feel anything for the loss of one of them because that’s the fairy way, but the human part of Moql longs for belonging and fears what will happen to her if she can’t find a place or people to belong to.

When Moql wakes the next day, she finds herself as the baby Saaski, but in spite of what the fairies said, she still retains her memories of her fairy life. Everything in this human household is strange. She fears the people who are supposed to be her parents, and most of the things that they offer her to soothe her aren’t soothing to a fairy or half-fairy, which is why she screams and throws tantrums. When she hears Old Bess describe her as a changeling and tries to urge her parents to do things to get rid of her, Moql realizes that she is stuck as a human, no matter what happens. Her only hope is to make herself forget or at least pretend that she doesn’t remember being a fairy and to try her best to be the human baby Saaski. It means pretending that she doesn’t have the ability to do things that a human baby shouldn’t be able to do and that she doesn’t know things that she actually does know. It’s not easy, but Saaski’s memories do fade a bit with time. She has vague memories of her past life, but the longer she lives as a human, the less she remembers of her past.

Time passes, and Saaski grows into a child, but the humans around her have an odd feeling about her. They whisper about her behind her parents’ backs. She doesn’t look like other human children, and odd things seem to happen around her. Saaski doesn’t trust Old Bess because she knows that Old Bess has always suspected she was a changeling. Other children in the village have heard their parents whispering about Saaski, and they start asking her if she really is a changeling. By that point, Saaski isn’t sure anymore what that means.

Old Bess does look for an opportunity at first to get the fairies to take back the changeling, considering shoving her into a pond at one point. However, when she realizes that Saaski has real feelings, she cannot bring herself to do it. She realizes that Saaski is also a victim of the switch when she was exchanged for the real Saaski. She doesn’t really belong among them, Saaski knows it, and Old Bess can tell that it hurts that she’s different and that others don’t accept her. Old Bess isn’t sure how much she understands about herself, her past, or her situation, but it’s been as unfair to her as it has been to the real Saaski and her family. The sense of belonging Saaski craves eludes her.

The only place Saaski really feels at home is out on the moor by herself, although she doesn’t really remember why anymore. That is where she first meets the orphan boy, Tam, who travels with the tinker. Tam knows what other people say about Saaski, but he isn’t afraid of her and likes her anyway. He is the first person who really seems to accept Saaski. For a time, her father forbids her to go on the moor again after she has a distressing encounter with a shepherd, who seems to recognize her as being a fairy.

Surprisingly, Old Bess turns out to be an ally of Saaski’s, urging her parents to let her go to the moor again. She knows how restless Saaski has been, confined to their home. The only thing that has soothed her is the old bagpipes that once belonged to her father’s father. She seems to know how to play them without anyone ever teaching her. Eventually, her parents allow her to return to the moor, partly so she won’t keep playing the bagpipes at home. When she’s able to see Tam again, he is happy to see her, and she shows him how she can play the bagpipes.

There are other things that Saaski seems to know without knowing how she knows. She sometimes sees strange symbols that no one else seems able to see. When Old Bess realizes that she can see these symbols, called runes, the two of them discuss it. Old Bess can’t see them herself, but she knows about them. She learned a lot about such things from an old monk she once cared for and from the books he left behind, which is also where she gained her knowledge of herbs.

Old Bess admits to Saaski that, like her, she is considered strange and that she doesn’t quite belong to the village where they live. She was brought to the village as an infant after she was found abandoned in a basket at a crossroads. They left her at the miller’s house, and she was raised by the miller and her wife. She doesn’t know who her birth parents were, where they came from, or why she was abandoned as an infant, and she was told that the gypsies who found her almost drowned her as a changeling before deciding to leave her in the village.

Saaski also knows that she doesn’t belong in the village, although she can’t think where she does belong. She can’t explain how she is able to see and understand fairy runes or do the other things that she seems able to do, apparently without anyone teaching her. Over time, she gradually discovers or rediscovers the things she could do and knew as a fairy. She discovers that she can see fairies when she spots one stealing Tam’s lunch. Later, a group of fairies try to steal her bagpipes. To Saaski’s surprise, she is able to understand their language, and they seem to recognize her.

Then, after the children in the village bully Saaski again, an illness comes to the village, afflicting all of the children but Saaski. Old Bess says it’s a normal childhood illness she’s seen before, and the children probably got it from the gypsy band who recently passed through town. However, the villagers, who have always been suspicious of Saaski whisper that Saaski is responsible, that she has cursed the other children. Saaski denies is, but the villagers are becoming increasingly hostile. They want her out of the villager, but if Saaski can’t stay there, where can she go?

When Saaski tries to bargain with a fairy for some help to hide from the villagers, the fairy reminds her that she was a fairy herself and that she was never able to disappear. Saaski is stunned at this confirmation of the villager’s suspicions about her being a changeling. When she tells Old Bess about it and about the memories that are now returning to her, Saaski realizes that she really doesn’t belong in this human village, at least not fully. Yet, she remembers that she doesn’t fully belong among the fairies, either. Once again, it leaves her the question of where she does belong. Saaski is going to have to take her fate into her own hands, but before she does, she wants to do something for the family that raised her and has loved her, in spite of everything: find the original Saaski in the fairy mound and return her to her parents.

The book is a Newbery Honor Book.

My Reaction

I enjoyed the story because it is a unique portrayal of the folkloric idea of changelings. Another book I read on the same topic, The Half Child, is told from a real world, historical point of view, without fantasy. In that book, changelings are disabled children or children who aren’t “normal” in some way who are labeled as being something other than human or “real” children because people of the past couldn’t understand why they were different or what was wrong with them.

The Moorchild, however, is fantasy and builds on the folklore concept. In other books with changelings, we see the changelings from the point of view of other people, who wonder about their true nature, but this book includes multiple viewpoints, including that of the changeling herself. In folklore, it isn’t entirely clear why the fairies would want to change their children with human children, leaving them to be raised by other people and possibly never seeing them again. This book builds on that concept, portraying the changeling children as being half human and/or flawed in some way, compared to the other fairies. They do use the human children they gain in the swap as servants, which is a folkloric concept, but this story explains why the fairy child left in exchange for the abducted human child is an acceptable loss to the other fairies.

Fairies in this story don’t have the same types of feelings as humans. In fact, they don’t seem to feel much at all, making most of their lives literally care-free because they just don’t care that much about others or the consequences of their actions. However, they don’t feel much emotional attachment to each other, either. Saaski/Moql’s birth mother doesn’t feel much of anything for her daughter or for the man whose life she changed and worsened through her seduction and rejection. She is completely unconcerned about what has happened to them or what will happen to them because of her. Later, Saaski realizes that the fairies are aware that Saaski is blamed for pranks they played, but they don’t mean it spitefully. They genuinely don’t care whether Saaski or someone else is blamed for things they do as long as they never get caught themselves. When Saaski realizes that the other fairies genuinely don’t care about her or what happens to her, she knows that they will never take her back and that she will never rejoin them.

Saaski feels more emotion than full fairies feel, but she doesn’t always respond in acceptable or predictable ways to the humans she lives with because she doesn’t share all of the emotions they feel. She craves a sense of belonging, but she doesn’t really know how to get it or create it. At times, she feels love and gratitude without being entirely sure what she’s feeling or how to express it. Strangely, she also doesn’t experience hate and resentment in the same way humans do. Tam tries to explain it to her, and Saaski recognizes that the children in the village who bully her feel hatred and resentment to her, but she doesn’t feel those emotions herself. She doesn’t like it when they bully her, and she feels hurt by them, but the emotion of hating and wanting to hurt them back isn’t there. I thought that was an interesting concept, exploring someone with non-conforming emotional reactions. Saaski’s emotions in the story are explained by her fairy heritage, but what made it interesting to me is that neurodivergent humans also have different ways of experiencing and showing emotions that can change the way they are accepted by or interact with other people, which brings the idea of changelings full circle, back to the concept of children who aren’t like other children from birth or a young age.

I thought it was fascinating that we get to see things both from Saaski’s point of view and from the point of view of other people, particularly Old Bess. Old Bess is the first to realize that Saaski is a changeling and not her “real” granddaughter. She understandably wants her real granddaughter back, and she knows the folklore that fairy folk will take back a changeling who has been abused. However, Saaski’s parents, even knowing or suspecting that Saaski might be a changeling, cannot bring themselves to do anything cruel to her, and Old Bess comes around to that point of view herself. By observing Saaski, she sees that Saaski is a child, if not an entirely human child, and an innocent victim of the switch herself, with feelings and a difficult life ahead of her because she doesn’t fit in with this community.

Old Bess also recalls and admits to Saaski that her own past isn’t quite normal and that she also doesn’t quite fit in. I wondered if we would ever get the full story of Old Bess’s past, but unfortunately, we don’t. We know that she was abandoned as an infant, apparently rejected by her birth family or guardian, but we never learn why. I had wondered at first if Old Bess would turn out to be a grown-up changeling. It seems that people once suspected that about her, but apparently, she isn’t because she can’t see the fairies or fairy writing in the way Saaski does. It seems that Old Bess is fully human and not half fairy. In the end, the important point is that, when Old Bess is honest with herself and Saaski about her past, her story has some elements in common with Saaski’s situation. They have both known rejection and abandonment, the difficulties of trying to fit in when they don’t entirely fit in, and the love of people who accepted them and cared for them in spite of it all.

I appreciated that Saaski’s parents do their best to love and care for Saaski even when they know she’s strange and may not be their daughter. They stand up to the people who bully their daughter and pressure them to get rid of her. In fact, in the end, even after Saaski and Tam set out into the world together and they have their birth daughter back, they still think of Saaski and miss her sometimes. Saaski was no replacement for the daughter they lost when they were switched, but at the same time, they realize that their birth daughter doesn’t entirely replace Saaski in their lives and affections. In the end, it’s like they’ve had two daughters, both of them “real”, although one didn’t fit in and eventually left to start a new life elsewhere.

Posted on January 29, 2026January 29, 2026 by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Half Child

The Half Child by Kathleen Hersom, 1989.

Lucy Emerson (Lucy Watson after her marriage) and her family live in an English village in the 17th century. As an elderly woman in her early 60s, she looks back on her sister, Sarah. She has actually had two sisters named Sarah, but it’s her first sister Sarah that she thinks of.

Little Sarah was always a strange child. From when she was very small, she would do odd things, like rocking back and forth while singing odd little wordless songs and being very clumsy. She could never talk clearly, and most people couldn’t really understand her. Because she is abnormal, she is quickly labeled as a “changeling” – a fairy baby substituted for a regular human child. Those who don’t call her a changeling call her a “half-wit.” Only Lucy really values Sarah, whether she’s a little human child or a fairy child, and she tries hard to understand her and take care of her. What Sarah likes best are the little “stone dollies” – small statues of praying children – in the local church, and she always asks Lucy to take her there to see them.

Lucy and Sarah’s mother is often harsh with Sarah out of frustration because she’s difficult to understand and difficult to deal with. Some people in the community think that she should be even more harsh with Sarah than she is because, if she really is a changeling, the fairies or Little People might snatch her back if she isn’t being treated well, being beaten or starved. Their Granny believes that Sarah is a changeling, and she implies it often, comparing a changeling child to a cuckoo’s egg, substituted in the next for another’s bird’s egg. However, their mother never refers to Sarah as a changeling and doesn’t seem to believe that Sarah isn’t really her daughter.

Then, one day, they can’t find Sarah. It seems like she’s wandered off by herself. Lucy looks in the church to see of Sarah went there to look at the “stone dollies.” Sarah isn’t there, but one of the dollies has the daisy chain that Lucy made for Sarah. According to superstition, a daisy chain helps to protect a child from the fairies, and Lucy thinks that, without it, maybe the fairies did carry Sarah away. On the other hand, maybe Sarah fell in the river, and it carried her away. Worried, Lucy desperately searches the village for Sarah, until one woman says that she saw Sarah in the churchyard. She would have walked Sarah home, but Sarah didn’t want to come with her, so she came to get Lucy to take her. Lucy hurries back to the churchyard and finds Sarah there, waiting for her. Lucy demands to know what Sarah has been doing, and she says that she’s been playing with the “little people.” Fearing that Sarah is talking about the fairies, Lucy demands to know if she’s seen them before or had anything to eat from them, but Sarah just says, “Not telling.” Lucy considers that maybe Sarah meant something other than fairies when she said, “little people.” Maybe Sarah just met some other young children, or maybe she was talking about playing with the stone dollies again.

One day, Lucy leaves Sarah at home with their mother when she goes to visit their older sister, Martha, who is working at a farm near a neighboring town. Lucy’s mother tells her that Sarah should stay home because it’s such a long walk to the farm, and Sarah is too little to handle it. When Lucy returns home from the visit, she discovers that something disastrous has happened while she was away. Lucy’s mother, who was pregnant and due to give birth in another month or so, accidentally tripped over Sarah in some way and fall, bringing on the birth of the baby too soon. A neighbor who came to borrow some salt found her and called the midwife to come and tend to her. The baby is safely delivered and survives, but Lucy’s mother is in bad condition.

While everyone was busy attending to the mother, little Sarah apparently ran away from the house and disappeared. Lucy is too worried about her mother and the baby at first to leave the house and go looking for Sarah, although she sends her brother to ask the neighbors if they’ve seen her. Her uncle promises to look for her in the countryside and to send out criers to the neighboring towns if she isn’t found. However, the town is also disrupted that day by soldiers who vandalize the town’s church! Later, Lucy goes to look for Sarah in her usual favorite spots, but she doesn’t find her. When Lucy returns home, her brother tells her that their mother has died.

Their father says that their mother’s last wish was that this new baby girl will be named Sarah. Lucy is shocked because she is sure that the sister named she already has is still out there somewhere, lost. Lucy’s father isn’t so sure. He seems to suspect that the rumors were right, that Sarah was always a changeling, that maybe she has gone back to the fairies now, and that this new baby may be the Sarah they were always meant to have. At least, Lucy’s mother seemed to believe that when she told him that this new baby was to be named Sarah. Lucy never thought that her father believed the changeling stories, but he privately admits to Lucy that he doesn’t really know what to think. None of it makes sense to Lucy because, after all, her mother was pregnant with this new baby while Sarah was still at home with them. If the first Sarah was taken away and the “real” Sarah left her in place, surely there would be two babies now – the “real” Sarah plus this other new sister. As it is, there’s only one baby and one missing sister. Lucy father says that if Sarah returns before the baby’s christening, they will choose another name for the baby, but if she’s still gone, she is probably gone for good, and the baby will be named Sarah.

Sarah is not found by the time the baby is christened, so the new baby becomes the “new” Sarah. Sarah’s father and sister, Martha, try to console Lucy about the loss of the first Sarah, saying that it might be for the best and that Lucy’s life will be easier now because Sarah was too wild, too strange, and too difficult to care for. Lucy feels even worse then they say that because, although Sarah was difficult to look after, Lucy truly loved her and didn’t think of her as a burden. Lucy takes care of her new sister for a couple of years, never giving up hope that she will find the first Sarah or at least learn what happened to her. When Lucy’s father decides to remarry, Lucy goes to work on the farm where Martha is working, leaving the new Sarah to be cared for by their stepmother.

It’s only after Lucy goes to work on the farm that she eventually meets someone who is able to tell her at least some of what happened to the first Sarah after she was lost.

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

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

I first read this story as a young teen in middle school, and I found it fascinating for the historical and folkloric connections. This story takes place over a period of years. The year when the older Lucy reflects on her sister Sarah is 1700. During the year that the first Sarah disappeared, Lucy is talking to someone else, and they mention the Roundheads and that the king was executed the year before, so they are referring to the execution of Charles I in 1649, putting the year of that conversation at 1650. Most of the book is set around the middle of the 17th century.

In real life, there were stories about changelings, fairy children substituted for human children as infants, and stories like this seem to have been used to explain human children born with deformities or disabilities of various kinds. Modern people might recognize that young Sarah was born with some kind of developmental disability, which is why she’s not like her siblings, but people in the past didn’t have as much ability to diagnose or understand people who were born “different” from others. They couldn’t understand how children with disabilities could be born to apparently healthy parents, especially ones who had produced other healthy children, so they explained it by saying that those children were not the “real” children but substitutes left by the fairies in exchange for the healthy human children, like a cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of other birds, to be raised and cared for by them. In the story, Lucy’s grandmother makes the comparison between Sarah and the cuckoo bird, although Lucy is very upset by that description.

During the course of the story, Lucy, as the one who seems to understand Sarah the best and love her the most, struggles to find her missing sister and learn what happened to her. At various times, she also struggles to reconcile what other people tell her about Sarah being a changeling or being taken away by fairies with her own love for Sarah as her sister, a real sister and not just a changeling, and her own worries about the more mundane tragedies that can befall a lost and neglected child. There are times when Lucy finds it difficult to ignore the superstitions of the people who raised her, and she finds herself at least halfway believing in fairies and that the girl she loves as a sister is in danger from them. While Sarah is with her, she makes daisy chains for her to wear as a precaution against the fairies taking her, although those who seem to most believe that Sarah is a changeling would be happy to see her reclaimed by fairies in the hopes of getting the “real” child back.

When their dying mother insists that the new baby girl be named Sarah, Lucy is heart-broken, realizing that her mother believes that Sarah was a changeling all along and that this new baby is the “real” daughter that Sarah should have been. However, to Lucy, who always loved the first Sarah, this new baby is the imposter Sarah, the “new” Sarah, taking the place of the Sarah she has loved and cared for. She never feels the same way about the new Sarah as she did for the first Sarah.

What always interested me about the story since I read it when I was young was how it demonstrates that real phenomena and the more inexplicable parts of human nature are part of the basis behind folklore. All through the book, people refer to children like the first Sarah as being “changelings” because they simply don’t understand why these children are the way they are, but the superstition is ultimately less about people genuinely trying to understand something and more finding a way of taking out their emotions on the “problem” or finding an excuse for not really dealing with it. Beyond the adults simply failing to understand children like Sarah and help their development to the best of their ability, their superstitions lead some of them to be deliberately cruel to children like her in the hopes that the fairies will decide to reclaim them. When a child like that runs away or is lost and never recovered, the adults tell themselves that the child was simply taken by the fairies, apparently both as an excuse to stop looking for a child they don’t know how to handle and also to soothe themselves that they don’t have to worry about her anymore because she is being taken care of by her “real” supernatural family. Whether they really believe that’s what is happening on an intellectual level or not, if they can convince themselves and others that it’s true on an emotional level, then they’re basically letting themselves off the hook and getting rid of an unwanted responsibility without guilt, which sounds a lot less noble than trying to understand and help make the situation better. I think that attitude comes from the sense that these people didn’t think it was even possible for them to understand or deal with the situation. From that attitude, the notion of the “problem child” magically vanishing would be appealing.

It’s sad because, as readers realize, that is not actually the case. Sarah’s disappearance isn’t magical. What Lucy learns about Sarah after the time she disappeared contradicts that idea because she did almost die but was rescued by a kind stranger who happened to be in the right place to find her. Sarah’s eventual whereabouts are unknown at the end of the story because she seems to have wandered off when her caretaker died or shortly before that. Until the very end of the story, elderly Lucy thinks that Sarah is probably dead, having spent some time wandering wild somewhere, but the fact that she never learns for sure leaves it open that Sarah could be alive or for Lucy to convince herself that maybe she finally got Sarah back in the end. When another child, who is very like Sarah, is born into the family, elderly Lucy finds herself wondering again about changelings. Is this new child just another unfortunate child who happened to inherit the developmental disability that Sarah had, or has the original Sarah managed to come back to Lucy in another form? They are so much alike that Lucy begins speaking to her as Sarah, and the new child answers just like Sarah always did, leaving the situation ambiguous in Lucy’s mind.

Although Lucy is ambivalent in her feelings at the end of the story, modern readers will likely side with the more scientific explanation of heredity and genes that sometimes reappear in later generations, producing lookalikes and people with similar health conditions. However, I think that the author did a good job of depicting the uncertainty that affects people confronted by situations and conditions they have no capacity to understand. The people of Lucy’s time did not understand what causes developmental disabilities. Because they needed to come up with an explanation for something they couldn’t understand, they developed the superstition about children like Sarah not being fully human or being substitutes for the “real” children, who were abducted by supernatural beings. Lucy finds herself torn between her own sense that Sarah is her real, human sister and that there must be more logical explanations and her own inability to understand what ultimately happened to her sister.

The book is a little sad because readers can recognize that, with better understanding and support, the original Sarah would have lived a much happier life and that Lucy (and others who appear later in the story) wanted to give her the support she needed but just didn’t know how. At the end of the book, Lucy reflects that times have changed since she was younger. Most people don’t believe in changelings and other old superstitions in 1700, not as much as they did in 1650. The Puritans, in particular, reject all such ideas as “pagan superstitions.” Society seems to be moving more in the direction of rationalism. Lucy says, “So there are plenty boasting nowadays that they cannot believe in such hocus-pocus, and that they have what they call a scientific reason for explaining any strange happenings that occur, instead of blaming the fairies, duergars or witches even. Though much that some call scientific I would say was just plain common sense.”

Even though Lucy generally believes in the rational explanations for what likely happened to the first Sarah, she experiences some doubt again at the end of the story, when she’s confronted with the young relative who looks so much like her. I liked the way the story ends on a slightly ambiguous note, with Lucy reconsidering whether or not Sarah was a changeling and if she has come back to her in another form. Modern readers know that’s not likely, but it does speak to the lifelong uncertainty that Lucy has lived with and the element of uncertainty that often surrounds the human experience in general. Even in modern times, there are many things that we don’t fully understand. In the 21st century, we’re more likely to accept the idea that, just because we don’t know the explanation for something doesn’t mean that there is no explanation that humans can understand but that we just don’t understand it yet. Still, that feeling that there are things beyond our mental grasp still appeals to the human imagination. If Lucy wants to believe that she has found Sarah again, after a fashion, it might give her some peace. For me, though, I just feel a little reassured that this member of the next generation might get more of the love, attention, and support that Sarah always needed, at least from Lucy, and less of the superstition surrounding her condition.

In the section at the back of the book about the author, it says that Kathleen Hersom used to volunteer at a hospital working with mentally disabled children. She was inspired to write this story both because of that experience and because of her interest in folklore.

Posted on January 23, 2026 by TracyC

Princess Megan

The Magic Attic Club

Princess Megan by Trisha Magaw, 1995.

Meg and her friends are planning to perform a short play of Peter Pan at a local nursing home. Her friends chose her to be their director, and Megan is really looking forward to it. Then, her mother does something that threatens to derail the project.

Megan’s mother is a lawyer, and she frequently has to work late. The problem is that, this time, she’s going to have to work on Saturday, interviewing witnesses for a trial. However, that Saturday, Megan’s mother was supposed to be at the high school, receiving donations for a food drive. She asks Megan to take care of the food donations, but the problem is that the play Megan and her friends are supposed to perform is also on Saturday. Helping with the food drive would make it difficult for Megan to get to the play on time. Megan’s mother is tired and in no mood to listen to Megan’s objections that it wouldn’t be fair to derail her project with her friends. Her mother just wants Megan to take care of her obligations for her.

While Megan is fuming about the unfairness of the situation and worrying about what to do, she decides to visit their neighbor, Ellie Goodwin. Megan and her friends have a standing invitation to visit and explore her attic, which has the ability to send them to other places and times when they put on different costumes and look at themselves in the mirror.

This time, Megan tries on a purple princess dress, and she finds herself in a Medieval village in France, near a castle. She meets a peasant girl named Michelle. Michelle tells her that there’s been trouble over the matter of the unicorn and the feast.

When Megan asks what she means, Michelle explains that Lord Claude and Lady Helene are hosting a feast and joust at their castle and that the king (who is supposedly Megan’s father in this world) has been invited as an important guest. At the end of the feast, they want to give the king a unicorn’s horn as a gift, but the problem with that is that they have to kill the unicorn to do that. Alternatively, it is possible to befriend a unicorn and get filings from its horn that also have magical powers, but Lord Claude and Lady Helene want to give the king the whole horn. Michelle confesses to Megan that her mother, who works in the castle’s kitchen secretly released the unicorn that they’d captured for the purpose. If they knew she was the one who did it, she would be in serious trouble.

Megan wants to help Michelle and her mother, and as someone who supposedly has the rank of princess, she should have some authority. However, she’s not entirely sure what kind of influence she can have because she knows that she’s not a “real” princess. Everyone thinks that she’s the king’s daughter, but Megan knows that she’s not. Can Megan find another way to save the unicorn’s life and Jacqueline from punishment, without revealing herself as an imposter princess?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

Some children’s books that involve time travel have real, historical information for educational value, but this one, and others in the series, are pure fantasy. Megan doesn’t visit real Medieval France. This is a fairy tale version of the Middle Ages with a unicorn and an invisibility cloak. There are a few accurate details for the Middle Ages, like the practice of using straw or other plants on the floors and the fact that intricate tapestries took years of work to complete. However, the focus is definitely on fantasy.

The invisibility cloak is critical to Megan’s plan to save the unicorn and make the king realize the value and beauty of the unicorn before someone can kill it on his behalf. When the king sees the unicorn for himself and reads the note that Megan wrote for him, he accepts the living unicorn and its presence as his gift instead of the horn. The problem with the unicorn is resolved pretty quickly, and so is Megan’s situation with her mother.

At first, I was expecting that the situation that Megan encountered in the fantasy world would have more of a direct parallel to Megan’s situation in her regular life, but it doesn’t really. It mostly serves as its own adventure, although it does highlight that Megan is creative when it comes to problem-solving and can be relied on in difficult circumstances. What Megan really needs to do is to explain to her mother why it would be difficult for her to take over her mother’s project without compromising her own. When Megan finally explains, it turns out that her mother didn’t know about her project with her friends. Handling both of their projects requires some careful scheduling and a little help from a friend, but they manage to work it out.

I really like the pictures in the Magic Attic Club books because they remind me of the ones in the American Girls books. They have a similar quality.

Posted on January 14, 2026 by TracyC

Amelia Bedelia and the Baby

Amelia Bedelia and the Baby by Peggy Parish, pictures by Lynn Sweat, 1981.

A friend of Mrs. Rogers, Mrs. Lane, asks Amelia Bedelia to babysit her baby. Amelia Bedelia says she doesn’t know anything about babies, but Mrs. Rogers says that Amelia Bedelia is good with children and points out that babies are also children. When she puts it that way, Amelia Bedelia agrees to babysit. Fortunately, she doesn’t have the idea that babysitting involves sitting on the baby, but being Amelia Bedelia, she finds plenty of ways to misinterpret the list of instructions that Mrs. Lane gives her for taking care of the baby.

When the baby starts to cry, Amelia Bedelia consults the list and sees that she’s supposed to give the baby a bottle. She worries that a baby might break a bottle, though. She tries giving the baby a box and a can instead, but of course, that doesn’t work. Fortunately, Mrs. Carter stops by to drop off some strawberries and helps to fix the baby a bottle.

Amelia Bedelia successfully manages to give the baby a bath but thinks that the instruction to use baby powder means that she should use it on herself and that putting on the baby’s bib means that she should wear it herself. Similarly, Amelia Bedelia thinks that the instruction for naptime mean that she should take a nap herself, and she refuses to do it because she hates naps. Instead, she decides to make strawberry tarts while the baby takes a nap in her play pen.

Amelia Bedelia has some misinterpretations about what the baby is supposed to eat, and when Mr. and Mrs. Lane arrive home, the baby is a mess. Mrs. Lane is upset, realizing that Amelia Bedelia doesn’t understand anything about babies and baby food, but her husband gives her one of Amelia Bedelia’s amazing strawberry tarts. That, and realizing that the baby likes Amelia Bedelia makes Mrs. Lane change her mind.

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

My Reaction

Amelia Bedelia books aren’t supposed to be taken seriously. They’re just funny stories about the ways Amelia Bedelia misinterprets instructions people give her. She gets things wrong because she doesn’t understand certain expressions and words with multiple meanings.

In real life, putting someone like Amelia Bedelia in charge of a baby would be a complete disaster, and it could even be dangerous to the baby. Although things work out with the food Amelia Bedelia gives the baby, a real baby could choke on food they’re not old enough to handle. I couldn’t really blame Mrs. Lane for being upset when she realizes that she put someone who didn’t know what they were doing in charge of her small child. No real parents would be willing to let the matter go or invite her to come back in those circumstances just because they liked her strawberry tarts. However, because this is just meant to be a humorous story, everything works out okay in the end.

I did think it was kind of funny, in hindsight, that they never made any jokes about a babysitter sitting on the baby, which would be the kind of literal interpretation that Amelia Bedelia does. They probably couldn’t make that joke because, if Amelia Bedelia made any comment about that, nobody, not even Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, would dare leave Amelia Bedelia in charge of an infant. They also probably wouldn’t want kids to think that might be a funny thing to do. They also never made any jokes about “changing” the baby or having Amelia Bedelia wonder in what way she was supposed to be changed. That’s probably all for the best.

Posted on January 7, 2026 by TracyC

Amelia Bedelia

Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish, 1963.

Amelia Bedelia is just starting her new job as a maid with Mr. and Mrs. Rogers! Mr. and Mrs. Rogers can’t be there to supervise her on her first day, but Mrs. Rogers leaves her a list of things to do and tells her to do exactly what the list says. Little does Mrs. Rogers know just how literal Amelia Bedelia can be!

When Amelia Bedelia reads that she’s suppose to “change the towels”, she thinks that she’s supposed to change the way they look instead of replacing them with new ones. To Amelia Bedelia “dust the furniture” means to add dust to the furniture instead of removing it. The instruction to “draw the drapes” sounds like she should draw a picture of them instead of closing them.

When Mr. and Mrs. Rogers return to see how Amelia Bedelia is doing, they are shocked at what she’s done!

There is only one thing that can save Amelia Bedelia’s job: her ability to make an amazing lemon meringue pie!

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

My Reaction

This is the very first book in the Amelia Bedelia series, and I remember reading it when I was a kid. The point of the Amelia Bedelia books is to introduce kids to expressions and words that have multiple meanings. They’re pretty funny to read, although even as a kid, I had trouble believing some of the phrases that Amelia Bedelia takes literally. For example, when she “dusts” the furniture, she thinks that Mrs. Rogers should have told her to “undust” the furniture instead. I see what the author is saying, that it’s funny that we say “dust” the furniture when we’re actually removing dust instead of adding it, but I’ve never heard anybody in real life use the term “undust” the furniture. Amelia Bedelia is funny, but sometimes, it seems like it’s reaching a little to find terms she can credibly misinterpret.

I also don’t think I fully understood the parts about trimming the fat on the steak and dressing the chicken as a kid because I wasn’t used to cooking. I think I got the concept that she was supposed to cut the fat off the steak rather than decorate it as one might trim a Christmas tree (a concept that Amelia Bedelia interprets the opposite way in her Christmas story). What she was supposed to do with the chicken she ended up “dressing” in clothes was a little more confusing. When I was a kid, I knew that people make stuffing or dressing to put in poultry, like chicken or turkey, when they cook it, or they can rub herbs and spices under the skin for flavoring, and I think that’s what Amelia Bedelia was supposed to do here. Even so, there are different types of stuffing or dressing to make and different mixtures of herbs and spices to use, and Mrs. Rogers doesn’t say what kind she wants. Of course, if she was more specific, Amelia Bedelia couldn’t have gotten so confused, and that’s really the point of the story.

I don’t know whether any teachers still use Amelia Bedelia books as examples of words and phrases with multiple meanings, but they are fun in that fashion. A good accompanying activity for these books is a project that I had when I was in school and that I’ve heard students still do – explain how to make a peanut butter sandwich (or any other kind of sandwich) to someone from another planet, who has no idea what a sandwich is or how to make one. Students doing this activity need to be as careful and detailed as they can because some phrases are easy to misinterpret if you assume that the person you’re talking to has no idea how anything works. I remember my old teacher would act out our instructions literally, almost like Amelia Bedelia. For example, if you said, “Put peanut butter on bread” without saying that you need to open the jar first and remove the peanut butter from the jar with a knife, the teacher would set the whole jar of peanut butter on top of the bread and just stare at it. If you explain the peanut butter sandwich instructions well enough that there’s no room for misinterpretation, you may have a future in technical writing!

The pattern established in this first book continues through other books in the series. In many other Amelia Bedelia stories, Amelia Bedelia misinterprets instructions she’s given by taking things too literally or misunderstanding words with multiple meanings, but she always manages to keep her job because she’s really good at baking and makes cakes, pies, and other treats that Mr. and Mrs. Rogers love.

If you read the 50th Anniversary edition of the book, there’s a section in the back about the Amelia Bedelia series and how it’s changed over the years!

Posted on January 2, 2026 by TracyC

A My Name is Alice

A My Name is Alice by Jane Bayer, pictures by Steven Kellogg, 1984.

I remember this book from when I was a kid! I always liked the pictures in the book, which are by Steven Kellogg, who also did the pictures for The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash.

This book isn’t a story. It’s based on a talking game that’s often played on car rides called A My Name is Alice or Alphabet Chant. Like many casual folk games or childhood playground/car games, it goes by different names and has variable rules. In the back of the book, the author, Jane Bayer, says that she learned the game on a playground when she was a child in the 1950s. When she played it, they would bounce a ball while playing. This book was a favorite of mine when I was little because it was the first place I learned about this game.

This game is an alphabet game where players have to follow the alphabet, giving the names of people, objects, and places all according to which letter of the alphabet they were currently on, using the following format: “(Letter) my name is (female name) and my husband’s name is (male name). We come from (place name), and we sell (object name).” (Because the rules vary, some people who have played this game with a slightly different format, possibly using the male name first.) First, you give all A names and words in this format, then you do the same for the letter B, then C, and so on to the end of the alphabet. (Or until you reach your destination, get stuck, get bored, etc.)

The fun of the game is that you can be as silly as you want with the names, places, and things to sell. The challenge is that it’s harder to think of names, places, and objects for certain letters than it is for others. Many kids playing this name will use the most common words they can think of first, took keep the game going quickly. However, the author deliberately goes for silly and unusual, which makes the book and the pictures fun and interesting.

She also adds the element that all of the “people” she’s talking about are animals, and the types of animals they are also fits the alphabet theme. It can be difficult to think of animals for certain letters of the alphabet, but again, she goes for the unusual ones. The husband/wife pairs being named aren’t always the same animal, either. When they match, it’s usually because it was too difficult to come up with two different animal names for particular letters. The types of animals are given under each picture.

X is always the most difficult letter in an alphabet game because there aren’t many words or names that start with X. However, I liked the way the author dealt with it, just using aliens!

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

Posted on December 19, 2025 by TracyC

An Ellis Island Christmas

An Ellis Island Christmas by Maxinne Rhea Leighton, illustrated by Dennis Nolan, 1992.

A six-year-old girl, Krysia Petrowski, knows that her family is preparing to leave Poland for the United States. Her father went ahead to America to establish a home for the rest of the family, and she knows that she, her mother, and her brothers will soon follow him. She doesn’t want to leave her home and her best friend, but her mother explains that life will be better in America because there is more food and there are no soldiers in the streets.

When the family begins packing to leave for America, they cannot bring everything with them because they have a long walk to get to the ship that will take them to America, and they can only bring what they can carry with them. The girl can only bring one of her two dolls with her, and she is sad at having to leave one behind.

When they board the ship, the conditions are cramped and cold. The food isn’t good, either. The voyage is rough and stormy, and many people are seasick. The one bright point is that Krysia meets another girl she knows from school, Zanya, so she knows that she won’t be going to America alone and friendless. Krysia and Zanya play together on the ship when the weather is better.

Finally, they reach Ellis Island on the day before Christmas. Everyone lines up, and the family has to show their papers to the immigration officials. Doctors look at them to make sure they are healthy enough to go ashore and into the city. Fortunately, they pass the health tests, although Krysia sees another woman who is told that she will have to go into the hospital or back to Poland because she is ill. The family converts their money to American money and buys some food. A man has to explain to them how to eat a banana because they’ve never seen one before.

Because it’s Christmas Eve, there is a big Christmas tree, covered with lights and toys. There is also a man dressed like Santa Claus, although Krysia thinks of him by the Polish name, Saint Mikolaj. They don’t receive any new presents, but Krysia’s mother does have a surprise for her. The best part is when Krysia’s father comes for them and takes them to their new home.

The book ends with a section explaining the history behind the story.

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

My Reaction

The focus of this story is all on the feelings and experiences of the immigrant family, especially little Krysia. Krysia’s impressions of the journey and the arrival at Ellis Island are all a child’s impressions, and she often needs explanations of what’s happening and what’s going to happen next, which is helpful to child readers.

The historical context for the story is provided in the section of historical information at the end and in some hints during the course of the story. The section of historical information in the back of the book discusses the peak years of US immigration, from 1892 to 1924. They don’t say exactly what year this story takes place, but it mentions 48 stars on the American flag. That means that this is the early 20th century, after Arizona and New Mexico were admitted as states in 1912. During that time, 70% of US immigrants came through the immigration center on Ellis Island, just off the coast of New York City. Of those who arrived at Ellis Island, about a third stayed in New York, and the others spread out across the US. The family in the story seems to be going to stay in New York, but because the focus of the story is mainly on the journey, there are still few details provided about this family’s background and circumstances. The section of historical information also explains a little more about the traveling conditions of immigrants around that time and what typically happened at Ellis Island, so readers can understand how the experiences of the characters in the story fit into the experiences of other, real-life immigrants. (For more details, I recommend reading If Your Name Was Changed at Ellis Island and Immigrant Kids, nonfiction books which echo many of the details included in this book.)

There is some discussion in the section of historical information about the reasons why immigrants left their homes, and we told in the beginning of the story that there are shortages of food in Poland and soldiers everywhere, but there is more that I’d like to say about this. Because I like to add context to historical stories, I’d like to talk what was happening in early 20th century Poland and what’s behind the circumstances the characters describe. During the 19th century, parts of Poland were under the control of three different European empires: Russia, Prussia (a German state), and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (while later dissolved into Austria and Hungary). The oppressive control of these imperial powers accounts for the soldiers the family describes on the streets. There were Poles who resisted the control of these forces and wanted to reunify their country, so the soldiers were to keep the population under control and put down resistance. Around the turn of the 20th century, Polish territories were also suffering from unemployment and land shortages, which explains the food shortages the family experiences. Because of these conditions, there was massive immigration from Poland to the United States during the late 19th century and early 20th century. The Petrowski family in the story would have been on the tail end of this wave of immigration because circumstances changed for Poland after World War I (1914 to 1918), when Poland became an independent country again. Some Polish immigrants to the United States intended to stay only for a relatively short time, hoping to save up money and return to their homeland with the money to purchase land or improve their family’s circumstances, but many of these people remained in the United States anyway.

Because the main character, Krysia, is only six years old, she likely wouldn’t understand the full background of her family’s circumstances and the political causes of the hardships in her country, but I like to explain these things for the benefit of readers. I think it’s also interesting that this story is a Christmas story. We are never told what the religion of the characters is, although it seems that they are Christian because they care that it’s Christmas. Many people from Poland were Catholic, so it’s possible that this family was Catholic, too, but it’s never clarified.

If you read the short biographies of the author and illustrator of the story, the author reveals that the inspiration for the story was the story of her own family’s journey from Poland. The illustrator says that he went on a tour of Ellis Island to prepare for producing the illustrations, and he tried to capture the “awe and anticipation” of the immigrants and the high vaulted ceilings and views of the New York skyline through the windows. I’ve also been to Ellis Island, and the illustrations in the book brought back memories of my trip there. I thought that the illustrator did a good job of capturing how big, impressive, and bewildering the Ellis Island compound would be to a young child.

Posted on December 16, 2025 by TracyC

When Jessie Came Across the Sea

When Jessie Came Across the Sea by Amy Hest, illustrated by P. J. Lynch, 1997.

Jessie and her grandmother live in a small, thatched cottage in a small village. The little village is poor, and so are Jessie and her grandmother. Jessie’s parents died when she was a baby. Jessie’s grandmother raised her, and she insists that Jessie have lessons with the village rabbi, like the boys in the village. Jessie can read and write, and she also tries to teach her grandmother. Her grandmother makes a little money by sewing lace, and she teaches Jessie how to sew. Although they don’t have much, they are basically content with their lives.

Then, one evening, the rabbi makes an important announcement. His brother, who was living in America, has died. Before his death, he sent a ticket for a ship traveling to America to the rabbi, asking him to join him in America. Now that his brother is dead, there is no need for the rabbi to go to America, and he would rather stay in the village with his congregation. However, he thinks that someone else should use the ticket his brother sent.

Various villagers ask rabbi if they can use the ticket, offering reasons why each of them would be the best person to go. They brag up their best qualities, boasting about how strong, smart, and brave they are. The rabbi knows that they’re boasting, so he just tells them that he will pray about it and let them know his decision tomorrow.

The next day, he goes to see Jessie and her grandmother and tells them that Jessie should be the one to go to America. His reasoning is that his brother’s widow owns a dress shop in New York City. Jessie can work there, and she would be a comfort to a lonely widow. Jessie doesn’t really want to leave her grandmother, and her grandmother fears to send her, but her grandmother can see the rabbi’s logic. She knows that this is an important opportunity for Jessie.

So, Jessie leaves her village and sets sail on a crowded ship for America. On the ship, Jessie is scared, lonely, and seasick. As Jessie spends time with the other passengers, she makes a few friends, and she sews a few small items for them. A boy named Lou, who is a shoemaker’s son, makes a pair of small shoes for a baby, and he and Jessie also become friends.

Finally, their ship arrives at New York. Everyone crowds around the rails of the ship to see the Statue of Liberty and their first glimpse of America. The ship docks at Ellis Island, and the passengers disembark to be inspected and questioned by immigration officials.

The rabbi’s brother’s widow comes to meet Jessie. She is a friendly woman, and she asks Jessie to call her Cousin Kay. Cousin Kay shows Jessie around the city. It’s a crowded, confusing place with fascinating sights, although the streets aren’t paved with gold, as Jessie has heard. Cousin Kay runs the dress shop out of her home, and she pays Jessie to sew for her. Jessie likes watching the busy street outside while she sews, and she saves the money she earns in a jar.

When Jessie puts some lace on a plain white dress, turning it into a lovely bridal gown, the shop becomes popular with young women who are getting married and looking for similar gowns.

Cousin Kay also insists that Jessie go to school and learn English. It isn’t easy, but Jessie learns. She likes walking around the city and going to the local library. Gradually, Jessie begins feeling more at home in New York, and she builds a new life for herself there. One day, she runs into Lou again in the park, and they begin meeting there regularly. Lou proposes to Jessie, and Jessie uses the money she has saved to buy a ticket so her grandmother can come to America for their wedding.

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

My Reaction

I remember reading this book when I was young! I was really older than the target audience when it was first published, but I enjoyed the story. It’s one of those books that I think takes on more significance when you’re older and understand more of the history behind the story. We don’t know exactly where Jessie is from because the book never says, but her journey resembles the kind of journey that many people made during this same period of history. We don’t know the year, either, but it appears to be set in the late 19th century or early 20th century.

Although coming to a strange country, alone and unable to speak the language, is a scary experience, Jessie is fortunate because there is a friendly and caring person waiting there for her, and she has a job lined up that suits her skills. In real life, not everyone was so fortunate, and it was more of a struggle for them to get established in their new home. Jessie still has to struggle with homesickness and missing her grandmother, but her life changes for the better because she took the chance to go to a new country and start a new life. Readers can emphasize with Jessie’s fears and uncertainty as she starts out on her journey and celebrate with her when things work out for the best.

The pictures in the book are beautiful! Readers really get the sense that they’re seeing another time, with Jessie’s tiny village, the crowded ship in the rain, and busy New York City, more than 100 years ago. Even when the environment and circumstances are harsh, the pictures are charming.

There is a note in the beginning of the book for parents and teachers about how they can use this book to spark discussion with children. They can use the opportunity to invite children to learn how their own families arrived in America, because this book was originally intended for an audience of young American readers, and most people who live in the United States (with the exception of Native Americans) are descended from people who came from somewhere else. It’s an opportunity for children to learn their family’s history and to see how it compares with that of other people, whose families also made a decision to come here and start over, going through their own struggles along the way. There is also some general advice about sharing books with children, and making a point of surrounding children with books and reading aloud to them.

Posted on December 13, 2025 by TracyC

The Christmas Doll

The Christmas Doll by Elvira Woodruff, 2000.

Young Lucy and Glory Wolcott are orphans in London during the Victorian era, 1848. Their parents died during a disease epidemic, and the penniless girls now live in a work house for orphans. They’ve been living there for 5 years, doing sewing for their support, although they are kept in terrible conditions there, with bad food. Then, another girl who lives in the work house dies of an illness, and people worry about the disease infecting others, as it did during the epidemic. Soon, other girls in the work house get sick. Lucy worries about her little sister, who is only 6 years old and already too thin from the bad food, will get sick and die, too. People begin saying that it may be safer living on the streets than being cooped up with the sickness.

The only comfort that Lucy and Glory have in their lives is each other and the story that Lucy tells Glory of her memories of Christmas with their parents. Glory was too young when their parents died to remember their parents or what life was like when their parents were alive, when they had someone to take care of them and actually had proper food. Glory loves the story that Lucy tells about the doll named Morning Glory that their mother gave her for Christmas but which was left behind when the girls were sent to the alms house and then to the work house when their parents died. Glory dreams that, someday, they’ll find that doll again. Lucy tells Glory that, when she finds her doll again, she’ll recognize her.

As more children at the work house die, Lucy increasingly fears that her sister will get sick and die. She thinks about running away from the work house with her sister, but she’s afraid of what they would do on their own. They don’t receive much food or care in the work house, and they’re subject to beatings and abuse, but what would they do on the streets, and how would they survive?

When Glory develops a cough, Lucy is sent to the sick ward at the work house, and Lucy is terrified that she will never come back. Both Lucy and Glory know that none of the girls who are sent to the sick ward with this cough have come back. Terrified, Lucy thinks that the only way to save Glory is to rescue her from the sick ward and get her out of the work house.

The two girls successfully run away, but once they’re on the streets, they have nowhere to go and don’t know what to do. They have nowhere to stay, and they have to sleep in the cold. Without food or money, Lucy trades a small pair of scissors that she brought from the work house for a couple of crumpets from a muffin seller, although a boy later tells her that the scissors were worth much more than that and that the seller took advantage of her. Lucy worries that they have no way to survive on their own because they don’t know what to do and have nothing else that they can sell or trade.

A kind washerwoman suggests to the girls that they go down to the river to join the mudlarks, who spend their days hunting for things to scavenge and sell in the mud at the river’s edge. Sometimes, she say, they find truly amazing things. With nothing else to do, the girls try it. The mud is smelly and disgusting, and at first, all they find are some old bones and bent nails. They’re about to give up when they find something that is truly amazing – a doll!

The doll is worn out, but its head is still good, and immediately, Glory declares that this is Morning Glory, the lost doll that has come back to them, just like the stories that Lucy has told her. With a heavy heart, Lucy realizes that they’re not going to be able to keep the doll. They have nothing else they can sell for money, and if they don’t sell the doll, they will have nothing to buy food and shelter.

At the suggestion of a rag and bone dealer, who is kind enough to let little Glory sleep by her fire for a time, Lucy takes the doll to a dollmaker. She hates having to do it and knows that it will break little Glory’s heart, but they are starving, and their lives are at stake. The doll is in such bad condition that only the head is worth something, and the dollmaker is prepared to offer Lucy a penny for it. That’s not much, but it’s more than Lucy was expecting. Then, something happens that changes everything for the better for Lucy and Glory.

The dollmaker notices the little morning glory flower embroidered on the apron Lucy is wearing. It’s actually Glory’s apron, and Lucy embroidered the flower for her because Glory was named after the morning glory flowers, just like her doll. The dollmaker asks Lucy who did the embroidery, and Lucy timidly admits that she did. At first, she worries that she shouldn’t confess that because she used thread from the work house to do it, and she would surely be punished for stealing if anybody knew. However, the dollmaker is impressed with Lucy’s sewing skills.

Then, before Lucy can leave the shop, the dollmaker gets word that Mary, the girl who sews the hearts on the dolls has been taken seriously ill and isn’t expected to survive. The disease that afflicted the girls in the work house is everywhere. The dollmaker worries because this particular doll shop is known for the signature hearts that are sewn onto their dolls, and the tradition is that only a girl can sew them, not an adult. Losing the girl who sews the hearts isn’t just sad but also serious for the doll shop because it’s only two weeks to Christmas, and they have a lot of orders to fill. If they can’t find another girl who can sew or break the tradition of the doll hearts, they won’t be able to complete their orders and will lose their shop’s reputation. Of course, it doesn’t take the the dollmaker long to realize that the solution to the problem is literally standing right in front of them.

Lucy is stunned when the dollmaker, Miss Thimbleby offers her the job of sewing the hearts on the dolls. It would only be through Christmas, but it would be regular work, something Lucy definitely needs. However, Lucy worries about what she will do with Glory. There doesn’t seem to be a place for her in the shop. Miss Thimbleby will let Lucy stay overnight in the shop to tend the fire, but Lucy isn’t supposed to let anyone else in after the shop is closed. Could she persuade Miss Thimbleby to let Glory in with her, or could Lucy find a place for Glory to be?

When Lucy returns to the rag and bone shop to talk to Glory, she discovers that the husband of the kind lady is much less charitable and has turned Glory out into the streets. In a panic, Lucy searches for her, losing their only penny out of her pocket. Eventually, she finds Glory with the boy who had told her that she was cheated over the matter of the scissors, Nick. Glory has told him about their escape from the work house, and Lucy sadly confesses her sale of the doll to Glory. Fortunately, Nick sees how Lucy’s new job at the doll shop can help them all.

Since the job requires Lucy to spend every night in the doll shop, tending the fire and keeping warm, Nick points out that Lucy can sneak him and Glory in after hours. In return for being allowed to sleep in the warm doll shop with the girls, Nick says that he will look after Glory during the day and that she can help him to make a little money that will help support them all. Nick is also a homeless orphan, and he get money catching rats and doing acrobatics on the streets. Glory doesn’t like the idea of the rats much, but Nick has her passing the hat while he performs on the streets. Her pitiful cough will help them get more charity.

It’s not an ideal situation, but Lucy agrees that this is the best way to manage things. Lucy continues to worry about her little sister, running around in the cold with Nick during the day, although they do have a warm place to sleep now. At night, Lucy lets Glory hold the doll Morning Glory, although she reminds Glory that the doll now belongs to the shop.

While working at the shop, Lucy notices that Miss Thimbleby also has a favorite doll, one that is never for sale. She calls this doll Charlotte and talks to it when she thinks nobody can hear here. The other women who work in the doll shop explain to Lucy that Charlotte, the real Charlotte, was Miss Thimbleby’s little sister. The sisters were orphans, like Lucy and Glory. Charlotte was much younger than Miss Thimbleby, and Miss Thimbleby raised her. Charlotte was the original hearts girl of the shop, the one who always sewed the signature hearts on the dolls and started the tradition. Sadly, Charlotte died young of an illness. The doll Charlotte was the very last one that the girl Charlotte gave a heart to before she died, and that’s why Miss Thimbleby refuses to sell it and sometimes talks to it, like she’s talking to her sister.

As Christmas approaches and Glory’s illness becomes worse, Lucy increasingly fears for her life. Glory’s illness is particularly bad on Christmas Eve. Miss Thimbleby has promised Lucy that, as part of the tradition of the hearts girl, Lucy may choose any unsold doll in the shop for herself on Christmas Eve. Lucy has her sights set on Morning Glory so she can return her to Glory, but a series of unexpected events and a generous, good-hearted decision from Glory lead to marvelous changes for the girls.

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

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

This story, set in a Dickensian London in the mid-19th century is touching and sometimes a bit tear-jerky, but it’s full of old-fashioned Christmas spirit! The book doesn’t minimize the risks to the children’s lives. The lives of poor people in this period were harsh, and children were vulnerable to being orphaned or even dying young of disease. The story even talks about children being taken advantage of by unscrupulous and uncaring adults, whether it’s being cheated out in a trade for food or the talk of children on the streets being kidnapped and forced into servitude as chimney sweeps. Parentless children on the streets wouldn’t know which adults to trust, and those realities are shown in the story. The children’s worries and hardships make the happy ending of the story touching.

Some readers might guess at the likely, most happy ending for the girls because there is one adult in the story who would have sympathy for a pair of orphaned sisters. The eventual fate of Morning Glory and whether her loss or gain would help Glory hangs in the balance for most of the story. The role Morning Glory plays in the ending of the story is important, and it’s Glory’s decision about Morning Glory that helps determine the girls’ fate and also touches two other lives. Don’t worry about the doll, though. The story works out well for the doll, being with someone who truly needs and appreciates her. The lives of all three children are changed for the better in the end, too.

Posted on December 11, 2025 by TracyC

The All-I’ll-Ever-Want Christmas Doll

The All-I’ll-Ever-Want Christmas Doll By Patricia C. McKissack, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, 2007.

Nella lives with her parents and her two sisters, Eddy Bernice and Dessa, during the Great Depression. The three sisters usually get along well and share everything with each other. Shortly before Christmas, Nella tells her sisters how badly she wants a Baby Betty doll as a present, but they tell her it’s useless to wish for that because they’ll never be able to get one during the Depression.

Nella decides to write a letter to Santy Claus anyway, asking for Baby Betty. On Christmas morning, the girls’ mother gives each of them a little bag of treats with peppermint sticks, nuts, oranges, and raisins. Then, their father gives them one special present: a Baby Betty doll.

The girls are overjoyed by this special present of a doll because store-bought presents are rare in this time when so many people struggle with money and families like theirs can’t afford much. The girls are all so eager to play with the doll that they start to fight over who gets to have her first until their father breaks up the fight and their mother confiscates the doll until the girls resolve the argument

Nella persuades her sisters that the only reason they got the doll was because she wrote the letter asking for one, while they didn’t think it would even work. Nella was the one who wanted the doll the most from the beginning. Because of that, her sisters agree that the doll belongs to her and leave her to play with the doll all by herself.

At first, Nella enjoys having her dream doll all to herself, but dolls can’t sing along with songs or clap or laugh at stories, like sisters can. Nella thought that Baby Betty was all that she wanted for Christmas, but she comes to realize that, even better than having the best doll in the world, is having someone to share in the fun.

My Reaction

This is a sweet Christmas story about how people are more important than presents. At first, Nella thinks that all she wants is that special doll, but having the doll all to herself isn’t as much fun as sharing her with her sisters. The doll is pretty, but she can’t do much more than sit there and blink her eyes. Nella needs her sisters to talk to and laugh with.

I like how the author set this story during the Great Depression. A story about siblings learning that it’s more fun to share rather than keep toys to themselves could take place at any time, but the fact that this is set during the Great Depression and the girls know that presents this nice are rare. This family is poor during a time when many people are out of work and money is tight for almost everyone. At the beginning of the story, the girls help their mother to line the walls of their house with newspapers to keep out the drafts, so the readers know they are very poor. The newspaper wallpapers are seen in the backgrounds of the pictures throughout the book, reminding readers how poor the family is. They consider themselves lucky just for betting the simple treats to eat, which we’re told are better than they’ve had other years. The girls know that they are incredibly lucky to get even the one doll for Christmas, and there was no way they could expect their parents to buy one for each of them. The girls fight over the doll because they are all so thrilled to get their hands on her, and they all can’t wait to play with her. We are told that the girls are usually pretty good about sharing with each other, but this sudden appearance of an unusually good present during a time of deprivation is just overwhelming for them.

Nella seems a little selfish at first for wanting the doll for herself, but her sisters agree that it was her particular wish. It was her idea from the beginning to ask for the doll, and it seems unfair to her that her sisters each try to claim it. Fortunately, it doesn’t take Nella long to realize that it’s more fun to have other people to play with and decides to share the doll with her sisters. The girls work out their differences, and they have a much better time when they all join the pretend tea party with the doll.

The book shows the family as being very close-knit. The parents were paying attention to the girls’ wishes when they chose their special Christmas surprise. The father is involved with the girls’ lives, telling them bedtime stories and dealing with their fights, and the mother helps the girls to realize what’s important and work out their differences. Their family doesn’t have much, but I liked the way the parents helped the girls learn how to think of each other, appreciate each other, and share with each other.

The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw, 1996.

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The Half Child by Kathleen Hersom, 1989.

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Princess Megan by Trisha Magaw, 1995.

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Amelia Bedelia and the Baby by Peggy Parish, pictures by Lynn Sweat, 1981.

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Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish, 1963.

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A My Name is Alice by Jane Bayer, pictures by Steven Kellogg, 1984.

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An Ellis Island Christmas by Maxinne Rhea Leighton, illustrated by Dennis Nolan, 1992.

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When Jessie Came Across the Sea by Amy Hest, illustrated by P. J. Lynch, 1997.

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The Christmas Doll by Elvira Woodruff, 2000.

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The All-I’ll-Ever-Want Christmas Doll By Patricia C. McKissack, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, 2007.

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