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Danny Dunn and the Swamp Monster

Danny Dunn

Danny Dunn and the Swamp Monster by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin, 1971.

Professor Bullfinch receives a cryptic message, which he says is written in the style of a telegram (he calls it “cablese” – a way of shortening messages because people pay for telegrams by the word). As Professor Bullfinch and Danny study the message further, they can draw more conclusions about the sender, who is not specified. They know it’s someone with money because the hotel it was sent from is expensive. From one of the terms used, they think the sender is a scientist, and because he sent a message written to be a telegram as a letter, he’s probably absent-minded. That description seems familiar to Professor Bullfinch.

Then, a strange man comes to the door who seems oddly distracted and confused. He greets Danny as if he were an old friend, but Danny has no idea who he is. He thinks the man is crazy, but Professor Bullfinch recognizes him as his old friend Dr. Benjamin Fenster. Of course, Dr. Fenster is the person who sent the confusing message. It turns out that Dr. Fenster meant to send that message to Dr. Ismail at the University of Khartoum, but he accidentally got it mixed up with the message he was going to send to Professor Bullfinch. Dr. Fenster is an absent-minded professor type, and he’s always doing things like that. Although, he does correct Danny when he mentions this, saying that he’s not actually a professor, and it’s not so much that he’s absent-minded so much as that he has a lot to think about and can’t think of everything at once.

Their conversation is interrupted when something goes wrong with the experiment that Professor Bullfinch and Danny were working on before Dr. Fenster arrived. A warning goes off, and Professor Bullfinch yells to Danny to shut off the machine. However, Danny can’t find the shut off switch, so he panics and pulls an electrical cord, sending an electrical current through the project before Professor Bullfinch turns off the switch. When they examine the results of the experiment, they’re surprised. Professor Bullfinch was trying to develop a new polymer, but the accident with the machine and the electrical current have turned the polymer into a superconductor and a very powerful ring magnet with a circular magnetic field.

While they’re examining the results of the experiment, Dr. Fenster wanders off, lost in thought. Danny worries if he’ll be okay, wandering around on his own, but Professor Bullfinch says that he’ll be fine. Dr. Fenster often does this when he’s thinking something through. Danny’s friends, Joe and Irene, arrive, commenting on seeing a man who was acting strangely and wondering if there’s something wrong with him. Danny explains to them who Dr. Fenster is and tells them about the ring magnet. Then, Dr. Fenster bursts back in, very excited, because he’s figured something out. He thinks the magnetic polymer ring might be the solution to a problem he’s been trying to solve.

Dr. Fenster is a zoologist, and one of his projects is to investigate accounts of legendary animals. Although many scientists tend to disregard stories of unknown animals as purely legendary, sometimes, they turn out to be previously unreported/undiscovered species. (“Undiscovered” in the scientific sense. Obviously, people have seen them, or they wouldn’t tell stories about them. These are species that haven’t been officially documented as having been discovered among the scientific community.) Investigating rare or possibly unknown species is what Dr. Fenster does.

Dr. Fenster is currently investigating reports of a creature called the lau, which apparently lives in swampy areas around the source of the Nile River in Uganda. The lau is supposed to be an enormous serpent with tentacles on its head. The legend around it says that if a person sees the lau first, the lau will die, but if the lau sees the person first, the person will die. When the others ask him if he thinks that’s real, Dr. Fenster says that he thinks that’s more metaphorical, like when someone says they felt petrified, it doesn’t mean that they literally turned to stone, or if someone says that their blood froze, it just means that they felt horrified. He thinks that the idea is that a serpent could kill a person, if they didn’t see it and disturbed it, but if the person saw the serpent first, they would kill it to avoid the threat.

The problem that Dr. Fenster has been trying to solve is how to move around the swamp and keep the area under observation during the night as well as the daytime, without possibly disturbing the creature he’s trying to find. It’s difficult to get around that swampy area in daylight, but it’s even more difficult at night, and he doesn’t want to use lights because that could frighten away the lau. He’s been thinking that he would like to mount some specialized cameras in certain strategic areas, but he couldn’t figure out how to mount them, and the cables he would have to use would be long and heavy. Having seen what the magnetic polymer can do, though, he thinks that could be the solution to the problem. It doesn’t weigh much itself, but when they test it, they discover it can support the weight of a grown man.

Dr. Fenster invites Professor Bullfinch and the children to join him on his expedition. He’s independently wealthy, and he can afford to pay for all them to come along. However, Danny’s mother has reservations about how safe this expedition is, and she can’t imagine that Joe or Irene’s parents will allow them to go on the trip, either. It takes time for Dr. Fenster to persuade the children’s families that the trip is safe enough for them. Eventually, they give in and allow the children to travel to Africa as a special Christmas present. Dr. Fenster doesn’t have any time limit on his own investigations, but the parents limit the children to only two weeks.

When they get to Africa, the first place that Dr. Fenster takes them is to Khartoum University in Sudan, where he introduces them to Professor Ismail, the Director of the Department of Zoology. Professor Ismail has helped Dr. Fenster with travel arrangements, equipment for the expedition, and the necessary government permits. Danny asks Professor Ismail what he thinks about the stories of the lau and whether it could be something like a dinosaur that has somehow survived. Professor Ismail says that many things are possible because there known oddities among animals, like the platypus, which lays eggs even though it’s a mammal. He shows them a fish called clarias lazera, which has the rare ability to leave water and live on land for a period of time.

The children get something to eat at a local cafe and talk excitedly about what the lau could really be and how its discovery could be “the most important discovery of the century.” Irene notices that a man in the cafe looks very interested in what they’re saying and follows them when they leave.

When the expedition reaches the site Dr. Fenster wants to investigate, they persuade some of the Nuer people who live there to show them where they’ve see the lau. They are initially reluctant and warn them that the lau is dangerous, but they do show them an area, and the members of the expedition start setting up cameras to watch it. As they begin exploring, they do find large trenches that are like the paths supposedly left by the giant serpents.

Dr. Fenster explains to the disappointed children that he won’t take them along to confront the lau directly, even if they do find it because of the possible danger. He and Professor Bullfinch will handle the creature, using the tranquilizer gun that Dr. Fenster brought along. They plan to have the children watch on the monitors and keep an eye on the base camp. However, the children see something unexpected when they’re looking at the monitors: the same strange man who was following them in Khartoum. Who is he and why has he followed their expedition?

When the children tell Professor Bullfinch and Dr. Fenster about him, they meet up with the man, and he introduces himself as a rare animal collector. He offers to join their expedition and help them, but Dr. Fenster refuses. One of the Nuer recognizes the man as a disreputable character who would do anything for money, and Dr. Fenster thinks he’s a poacher, who would try to capture rare animals and sell them, rather than simply study them scientifically. It seems that, aside from protecting themselves from the possibly dangerous lau while they study it, they might also have to protect the lau.

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

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

The lau is a cryptid in the real world as well as in the story, and the details Dr. Fenster offers about where it supposedly lives and historical mentions of the creature are accurate. Accounts of what the lau might actually be in real life vary. It could be a type of python or a very large fish, like a catfish. In the story, when they do find the lau, it turns out to be an enormous catfish, the kind that can live without water for a time and move on land, but it also turns out to be electrical, like an electric eel. Professor Bullfinch and Dr. Fenster decide that it’s related to the malapterurus, which is in keeping with real world theories about the lau.

The story makes some good points about known animals in the real world that are considered oddities because they have qualities that don’t normally apply to other animals of their type, like how the platypus is an egg-laying mammal. Just because something sounds unusual doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. There are wide variations among creatures in the animal kingdom. I thought it was interesting that they brought up the clarias lazera, which is a type of catfish that can live and move on land. A similar type of catfish that can live and move on land appeared in the children’s mystery book The Mystery of the Other Girl.

I’m not sure whether the accident that produced the magnetic polymer makes any reasonable scientific sense, but there a few interesting facts in the story. When they get to Africa, Dr. Fenster explains to them that there are actually two Nile rivers – the White Nile and the Blue Nile. They get their names because the soil they pass through gives them each a different color.

There are some words of another language included in the story when they reach Uganda, but I’m honestly not sure whether they’re real words or just made up to make it seem like Dr. Fenster can speak the local language. I tried putting them through Google translate to see if it could recognize them as anything, but it came out as nonsense. However, it’s supposed to be a language spoken by the Nuer people, so it might be something that Google translate doesn’t know.

Sometimes, I’m a little suspicious when I encounter obscure foreign words in old children’s books. I’ve read other old children’s books which use made-up words in place of an actual foreign language, probably because the writers didn’t know how to write something in a real foreign language but they wanted something that looked like it could be from another language. They were probably also acting with the assumption that kids wouldn’t know the difference, so it wouldn’t matter. I could be doing these authors a disservice by being a little suspicious here. Perhaps they did some extra research to learn a few phrases in a language that would be very obscure in the United States. It’s just that, having seen fakery elsewhere, it’s something I find myself looking for when I see instances of languages that would be difficult to fact-check.

Faking words in a real spoken language is less tolerated in the 21st century than it used to be, especially in a book that’s supposed to have educational qualities, so I hope they didn’t attempt to do that. Faking lesser details in a fiction book that’s supposed to have some real facts tends to cast suspicion on just how many of the other “facts” in the book are fake. This is an adventure story, not a textbook, so it’s true that some creative license is allowed. I still don’t know if their magnetic polymer concept is at all plausible, but the Danny Dunn stories are science fiction adventures, so some creative license there is allowed. However, readers like to feel that they can trust a certain amount of supporting detail to be correct. It’s also considered a cultural insult to use fake nonsense words in place of actual words from a language people really speak. Hopefully, that’s not the case here, but I wanted to point out the concept so readers can see how the use of real words strengths a story while faking them weakens it.

The story offers about the Nuer people, but I’m not sure how accurate they are. I don’t know where the authors got their information. They say that Nuer people don’t have chiefs and don’t follow orders from anybody, but according to the eHRAF World Cultures collection through Yale University, their clans do have headmen, and they also have sub-chiefs.

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The Mystery of the Eagle Feather

Three Cousins Detective Club

#9 The Mystery of the Eagle Feather by Elspeth Campbell Murphy, 1995.

Timothy is excited because he has a chance to meet his pen pal, Anthony Two Trees, for the first time. Anthony is a Native American, and he will be dancing at a powwow. Timothy’s cousins get to come along on the trip, too.

Soon after they arrive, though, they learn that someone has been taking pieces of the dancers’ costumes, like fans or headdresses made of eagle feathers. Who could be taking the costume pieces and why?

The costume pieces and the eagle feathers they contain are very expensive, and the kids realize that the thief might be thinking of selling them. It is illegal to deal in eagle feathers because eagles are an endangered species. Even the Native American dancers have to write to the government in order to get eagle feathers for their costumes from eagles that died in zoos. Therefore, the costumes are expensive and require a lot of effort to put together, and losing them is a real blow. The rarity and cost of the feathers might prove to be a temptation to a thief.

The theme of the story is self-control.

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

My Reaction

I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this story. I understand the fascination kids have with Native Americans and their costumes and dances. I felt like that when I was a kid, too, but there’s also an element of cringe to it. The cringiness comes from kids (and even adults) who get wrapped up in the fascination of the appearance of other people’s traditions and treat them more like playing dress-up than traditions with deeper, underlying meaning and significance or depicting Native Americans as being stereotypes from old movies and books rather than real, living people.

Fortunately, I was pleased at how this story shows that Timothy’s friend, Anthony, is a regular boy who shares his interest in baseball. They emphasize that Native Americans don’t live in tepees any more, and they don’t treat the Native American characters like stereotypes. I enjoyed some of the facts the story provided about Native American dances and costumes, like the regulations regarding the use of eagle feathers.

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Moonflute

Moonflute by Audrey Wood, illustrated by Don Wood, 1980, 1986.

One night, a little girl named Firen can’t sleep. It’s a hot summer night, the moon is full, and Firen feels like the moon has taken away her sleep, so she must go out into the night and look for it.

Outside, Firen raises up her hands to the moon and asks for her sleep back. The magical moon sends her a moonbeam, and when Firen touches it, she realizes that it’s solid. It’s actually a flute. When Firen plays the flute, it makes magical music that doesn’t sound like any normal flute, and it brings all sorts of wonderful smells of things that Firen loves. As she continues to play, she feels light and tingly, and she realizes that she is rising into the air!

Firen flies over the countryside, looking for her sleep. As she journeys through the night, she sees various animals and wonders if they have her sleep. She sees cats in a patch of catnip, whales playing in the ocean, and bats and monkeys in a jungle.

When Firen sees a couple of monkeys soothing a baby monkey to sleep, she thinks about her own parents and uses the flute to return home. Is the moonflute helping her find her sleep at home with her parents, or has she actually been asleep all the time?

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

My Reaction

This book follows the “It was all a dream” theme, where the main character experiences something fantastic, but they were dreaming all the time. While Firen was wondering where her sleep was, she apparently fell asleep. It isn’t definite that’s what happened, but it’s implied when her parents go to her room, and she’s in bed, without the flute. If readers would like to think of it differently, that Firen really did have her flying adventures, it’s possible to read it that way, too.

The pictures really make this book! The illustrations are oil paintings, and they are beautiful and ethereal. Firen witnesses some stunning scenes, like whales leaping in the ocean, with everything bathed in glowing moonlight.

I was intrigued by the name “Firen” because I don’t think I’ve heard it before, and I like unusual names. I couldn’t find much information about the name online, so it seems like it isn’t very common. I thought at first that it might be a modern, invented name, although one name site says that it has Arabic origins.

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The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum

The Girl in the Castle Inside the Museum by Kate Bernheimer, pictures by Nicoletta Ceccoli, 2008.

In this story, there is a little girl who lives in a castle in a museum, inside a big, glass globe.

Children love to come to the museum and look at her in her castle. The girl also likes it when the children come to see her.

Although the girl in the castle has other creatures to play with and things she likes to do, like making music, she sometimes gets lonely when the museum closes, and all the children go home.

When the girl in the castle dreams, she dreams of the children who come to visit her at the museum, imagining their journeys to come see her.

When the children are visiting or when she’s dreaming about them, the girl isn’t lonely, but when she wakes up from a dream and there aren’t any children, she gets lonely again.

However, the girl gets an idea. If you, the reader, want to be her friend, you can give her your picture. When she looks at your picture, she won’t be lonely anymore!

My Reaction

I love the surreal, fantasy pictures in this book! We don’t know exactly what the girl is or why this tiny girl lives in a miniature castle in a museum. The book says that people claim “she’s lived there forever.” She is alive and has feelings, but she seems to be surrounded by fantasy creatures as companions in her castle rather than other people. She doesn’t seem to have parents or family. My theory is that she is a magical, living toy because the museum seems to be filled with other toys, the fantasy creatures in her castle seem to be toys with little wind-up keys in their backs, and the castle itself incorporates little toys and odd-and-ends, like buttons and marbles. However, the girl’s backstory is left up to the imagination of the readers.

This book breaks the fourth wall of the book, with the girl inviting readers to put their own pictures into the book and saying that the girl can see them through the book when they read it. Readers looking at the book keep the tiny girl company when she doesn’t have visitors to her museum. It’s not the first book that I’ve seen that uses the concept of readers keeping a book character company through their books. There is a book from the 1930s called The Tale of Corally Crothers, where a lonely girl with no brothers and sisters goes in search of a friend and finds you, the reader. (I haven’t found a copy of it myself, but you can see some pictures of this book on this site.) Books that involve the reader and invite the reader into their world are charming, and I found the fantasy elements of this particular book delightful!

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Raggedy Ann’s Tea Party Book

Raggedy Ann’s Tea Party Book by Elizabeth Silbaugh, illustrated by Laura Francesca Filippucci, 1999.

This book is a children’s guide to planning a tea party with Raggedy Ann. As in the original books, Raggedy Ann is a doll who lives with a girl named Marcella, and she likes to have tea parties with Marcella’s other dolls and stuffed animals.

The book explains how to plan and prepare for a tea party, from figuring out how many guests there will be and making sure there are enough seats for everyone to choosing a menu and games to play. There are tips for making party invitations and a section of recipes in the back of the book.

The food ideas aren’t too complicated. The book recommends keeping preparations simple because a party is about having fun. Setting the table is an activity by itself. Raggedy Ann gets her guests to help her, and they put on music while they do it. They want to make the table setting pretty, and they make sure that everyone knows each other and is included in the conversation. Tea parties are a time to practice good manners and make sure everyone is enjoying the party. At the end of the party, guests can also help clean up while they play music.

For games to play, they recommend the classic game of Telephone, Fiddly Diddly (a guessing game), and Memory Tray, where guests look at a tray of objects for a limited amount of time and then try to remember everything they’ve seen.

The recipes included in the book are:

  • Easy Chocolate Cakes
  • Creamy Pink and White Icing
  • Tiny Sandwiches – They suggest a variety of possible fillings, including tuna, ham, tomato, hard-boiled egg, cucumbers, cheese, fruit, or jam.
  • Raggedy Ann’s Candy-Heart Cookies – These are heart-shaped cutout cookies because Raggedy Ann has a candy heart.
  • Uncle Clem’s Super-Simple Scotch Shortbread
  • Marcella’s Lemonade

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). There is another book by the same author called Raggedy Ann’s Birthday Party Book, about planning a birthday party.

My Reaction

I found it charming and nostalgic, and I loved the colorful pictures! I didn’t read this book as a child, but it is the kind of book I would have liked. The party-planning tips are useful, taking child readers step-by-step through planning the party, inviting the guests, and preparing food and entertainment. I liked the advice to keep things simple, so even the host/hostess can enjoy the party instead of getting stressed over complicating preparations. The recipes in the book fit the tea party theme, and they are simple enough for children to make or at least help in their preparation without being overly simplistic.

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Mrs. Gigglebelly is Coming for Tea

Mrs. Gigglebelly is Coming for Tea by Donna Guthrie, illustrated by Katy Keck Arnsteen, 1990.

Elizabeth Ann tells her mother that Mrs. Gigglebelly is coming for tea today, but her mother says that she’s in the middle of her spring cleaning and doesn’t have time to prepare for Mrs. Gigglebelly today. In fact, she suggests that Mrs. Gigglebelly might be busy today, but Elizabeth Ann says that Mrs. Gigglebelly always has time for tea with her.

Since her mother is busy with chores and can’t prepare tea or a cake for Mrs. Gigglebelly, Elizabeth Ann fixes some lemonade and crackers with grape jelly for their “tea.” While Elizabeth Ann waits in the garden for Mrs. Gigglebelly, her mother dashes about, doing her chores.

At first, it seems like Mrs. Gigglebelly isn’t going to come, but she eventually arrives because she always has time for Elizabeth Ann … so does her mother.

My Reaction

This is a cute story about a mother who makes time for her child, even when she’s busy. “Mrs. Gigglebelly” seems to be a game of pretend the mother and daughter play together when they have their tea parties. On this particular day, the mother is very busy, but she still throws together a costume for their game. The book doesn’t say that “Mrs. Gigglebelly” is Elizabeth Ann’s mother, but it’s implied in the story, and in the last picture, readers can see pieces of “Mrs. Gigglebelly’s” improvised costume around the room.

I thought it was sweet that the mother in the story took time for a little fun and silliness and a special moment with her daughter, even though she had work to do. Some mothers might just lecture their child about how they’re busy and the child just has to accept that, but this mother understands that her attention is important to her child. Sometimes, it’s the little moments that mean a lot, even if it’s just pausing to share a snack. She does make her daughter wait because there are things she has to do, but the wait is worth it because the mother follows through and makes the effort to make time for her daughter.

Elizabeth Ann also doesn’t nag her mother about hurrying up or try to convince her mother to drop everything she’s doing and play with her instead of doing her cleaning. Instead, she waits patiently, confident that her mother will have time for her eventually because her mother has already established that her daughter is a priority and that she will make time for her. It looks like this mother-daughter pair understands each other well and that they have a good relationship with each other, and I like that.

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Isabel’s House of Butterflies

Isabel’s House of Butterflies by Tony Johnston, illustrated by Susan Guevara, 2003.

The story begins by explaining that the forests of Michoacan, Mexico are a sanctuary for monarch butterflies, but that sanctuary is in danger because of logging activities. The large-scale industry is a major threat, but sometimes poor people living in the area also chop down trees because they need to sell the wood. The author notes that there have been efforts to preserve these trees, but it’s difficult to enforce laws protecting them, and no one is sure what will happen to the monarch butterflies if the trees disappear.

Isabel is an eight-year-old girl living with her family on a small farm, and the tree outside their house attracts butterflies on their migration route. She calls it, “La casa de las mariposas,” which means “The House of Butterflies.” Her family is poor, but they can’t bring themselves to chop down their special butterfly tree, like other families in the area have done. They love it that the butterflies appear there every autumn, and they think it’s a beautiful miracle to see them return every year. Sometimes, tourists come to the area to see the butterflies, and that brings the family a little extra money.

However, one year, there is very little rain, and they have a very bad harvest. The family sells their pigs and continues on as best they can, but their money is running low. They don’t have many resources left for money, and Isabel’s father is reluctantly considering cutting down their butterfly tree. He doesn’t want to do it, but he doesn’t know what else to do.

Isabel is distressed at the loss of the tree and the butterflies, so she suggests another plan to her parents. She often helps her mother to make tortillas, so she tells her mother that maybe they can set up a stand selling tortillas to the tourists who come to see the butterflies. The family decides to give Isabel’s plan a try.

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

My Reaction

The story ends on a somewhat hopeful note, but it bothered me a little because it’s not definite that Isabel’s plan is going to work. Isabel is hoping that they’ll be able to make enough money that they won’t need to cut down the tree, but we only see them getting set up, so we don’t know if they’re successful or not. I would have preferred to see them succeeding so we would know that things are going to get better, but the story just ends at that point, and it’s left up to the minds of the readers whether they were successful or not.

I think that hopeful but slightly worrying note at the end of the story is meant to reflect how people trying to preserve natural resources often feel – they have ideas and plans to help preserve natural areas and resources, but nobody knows for sure what will work or how well their plans will work. It’s realistic, if a little bit of a let-down. However, while nothing is guaranteed to be successful and life has its uncertainties, there is hope in the people who are willing to try different approaches to problems rather than simply giving up. The book does speak to the concerns that modern people, even children, have about the environment and the search for systems that work better than the ones that we already have.

The pictures in this book are soft, colorful, and lovely. Although the family is poor, they appreciate the small pleasures in their lives, like making the tortillas and the yearly appearance of the beautiful butterflies. I did also feel a little sorry for the butterflies the pigs ate, but the story doesn’t dwell on that part too much.

This book was published by Sierra Club Books for Children, and there is a small note with the publishing information about the origins of the Sierra Club, which is dedicated to protecting scenic and ecological resources.

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Flossie and the Fox

Flossie and the Fox by Patricia C. MicKissack, pictures by Rachel Isadora, 1986.

Little Flossie Finley’s mother asks her to take a basket of eggs to Miz Viola because a fox has been troubling her chickens, and they’re too scared to lay eggs. The fox is a sly creature, and he always seems to outwit the hounds.

Flossie doesn’t remember ever seeing a fox before, and her mother tells her that foxes will do just about anything to get eggs. Flossie isn’t sure what she’ll do if she meets the fox, but she remembers what her mother says about how “a fox be just a fox.” She decides that doesn’t sound too scary.

On the way, Flossie does meet the fox. The fox talks to her, and Flossie can tell that he wants the eggs she’s carrying. However, Flossie refuses to be impressed by the fox and tells him that she doesn’t even believe that he’s a fox because she’s never seen one before. The fox is surprised that she isn’t intimidated by him and tries to prove to her that he’s a real fox.

For everything the fox says to try to prove his identity, Flossie has an answer to deny it. He points out his thick fox fur, but Flossie says that rabbits also have thick fur. His pointed nose also doesn’t mean that he’s a fox because rats also have pointed noses. A cat they meet verifies that the fox is a fox, citing his yellow eyes and sharp claws, but since the cat also has yellow eyes and sharp claws, Flossie says that isn’t proof of being a fox. Even his characteristic bushy tail isn’t firm proof because squirrels also have bushy tails.

There is one being who knows for certain that the fox is a fox – the hounds that chase foxes. Flossie knows that as well as the fox does.

My Reaction

The author’s note in the front of the book says that the author enjoyed listening to stories told by her family when she was young, and the story in this book is one that she remembered from her youth. She particularly wanted to tell this story in a rural Southern dialect, like the one her grandfather used when he used to tell stories.

I enjoyed this fun story where a clever girl tricks a classical trickster. She knows that the fox is really fox, but she uses the similarities between the features of a fox and the features of other animals to pretend like she doesn’t and to keep the fox attempting to convince her until she reaches a point where the fox can no longer pursue her. Knowing the author’s connection to this folk tale style story adds an element of coziness, imagining the author hearing the story as a little girl herself.

The time period of the story is indefinite, but from the characters’ clothes, it looks like it might be some time during the late 19th century or early 20th century.

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The Talking Eggs

The Talking Eggs by Robert D. San Souci, pictures by Jerry Pinkney, 1989.

There was a poor widow who lived on a small farm with her two daughters, Rose and Blanche. Rose was the widow’s favorite daughter because she was so much like her mother. They were both mean and bad-tempered, and they had grand dreams of becoming rich someday, although neither of them had the slightest idea how to accomplish that. Blanche, on the other hand, was a sweet girl, and her mother made her do all the work while she and Rose just sat on the porch, talking about all of their grand dreams.

One day, when Blanche goes to fetch water from the well, an old woman approaches her and begs her for a drink. Blanche gives her some water, and the old woman thanks her, telling her that she will be blessed for her kindness.

However, when Blanche gets home, her mother and sister yell at her for taking so long. They hit her, and Blanche runs away into the woods. Then, she meets the old woman again. She explains to the old woman what happened, and the old woman invites her to come to her house. However, she cautions Blanche not to laugh at what she sees there. Blanche promises that she won’t laugh.

The old woman is no ordinary woman, and everything at her house is strange. Some of these strange things are amusing, some are amazing, and some are just plain weird and a little alarming. The animals are all strange, with chickens of different colors and cows with curly horns. Then, inside the house, the old woman removes her head and puts it in her lap to brush her hair. Then, the woman produces a fancy stew from just one old bone. After supper, they go outside and watch rabbits in fancy clothing dance.

In the morning, the old woman tells Blanche to go out and gather some eggs before she goes home. Blanche is allowed to take any that tell her to take them and to leave ones that say not to take them. Blanche does as she is told, although the ones that tell her to take them are the plain-looking eggs, and the others are covered in jewels. The old woman tells Blanche to throw the eggs over her shoulder, one at a time, and when she does so, the eggs break and wonderful things burst out of them – fancy clothes, coins and jewels, and even a horse and carriage.

By the time Blanche gets home, she has many beautiful clothes, money, and luxurious things. Blanche’s mother pretends to be nice to her when she returns, but it’s only so Blanche will tell her where she got all the rich things. That night, when Blanche is asleep, her mother talks to Rose, telling her that she should also befriend the old woman and get the same rich rewards as Blanche. Then, they will steal all of Blanche’s things and head to the city to live the rich life that they’ve always dreamed of.

Of course, lazy and bad-tempered Rose isn’t as kind or hard-working as her sister. She ignores the old woman’s instructions and does everything she shouldn’t do. When she tries to force the old woman to give her riches, the old woman’s magic gives her and her mother their just desserts.

This book is a Reading Rainbow Book. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Review

There is a note at the beginning of the book that this story comes from a Creole folktale that appeared in a 19th century collection of folktales from Louisiana by Alcee Fortier. It resembles folktales from Europe was probably adapted from fairy tales brought to Louisiana by French immigrants. It reminds me of the Mother Holle story, where a kind, well-behaved, hard-working girl is rewarded for following Mother Holle’s instructions, while her spoiled sister is punished for laziness and disobedience.

The old woman in this story is a similar figure to Mother Holle, with strange powers and magical objects, but there is no explanation of who she might be. The fact that she can remove her head just to brush her hair shows that she’s supernatural, but we don’t know if she’s supposed to be a witch or some other supernatural creature.

Personally, I don’t think I would laugh at any of the things in the old woman’s house. I think the strange animals sound more amazing than comical. I think I’d really be impressed by the different-colored chickens and the cows with the weird horns. I have to admit, though, that if someone takes off their head, my first reaction would probably be to run for it.

Posted on by TracyC

Harlequin and the Green Dress

Harlequin and the Green Dress by Laura Fischetto, illustrated by Letizia Galli, 1994.

What I love about this book is that it’s a fun introduction to commedia del arte and its stock characters! A figure that looks like Charlie Chaplin holds a card that summons readers like guests to a play and introduces our characters like this:

  • Columbine – “a scheming maid …”
  • Harlequin – “a sly servant …”
  • Pantalone – “a stingy old man …”
  • Punch – “who now heaves a hungry sigh …”
  • Rosaura – “a lady fair …”
  • The Doctor – “a menace … and”
  • Florindo – “a handsome knight.”

There is going to be a costume ball. Rosaura, a wealthy young lady, has a beautiful green dress to wear, but she is unhappy because her father, Pantalone, refuses to let her marry the man she loves, Florindo. Florindo is a poor knight, and Pantalone hopes that Rosaura will meet a wealthier suitor at the costume ball.

Meanwhile, Rosaura’s maid, Columbine, wishes that she had a beautiful dress so that she could go to the costume ball herself. She thinks that, if she went to the ball, she might also meet a rich man.

Harlequin is in love with Columbine, and he wants to do something that would impress her. He decides to borrow Rosaura’s dress and give it to Columbine as an anonymous gift so that Columbine can to go to the ball, but unbeknowst to him, Florindo is coming up with a scheme that will allow Rosaura to run away with him and get married. Florindo enlists his servant, Punch, to pretend to kidnap Rosaura, to provide a reason for her sudden disappearance. He tells Punch that he will know Rosaura at the ball because of her magnificent green dress, not knowing that Columbine has already received the dress from Harlequin and is wearing it at the ball.

Chaos ensues when Punch abducts Columbine, thinking that it’s Rosaura and that she’s just playing along with Florindo’s plan. When Punch says that he’s taking her to her suitor, Columbine assumes that he’s taking her to the secret admirer who gave her the dress.

In the meantime, poor Rosaura is having hysterics because she can’t find her dress and can’t go to meet her suitor. When Harlequin discovers what a mess all the scheming has caused, he comes up with another scheme to straighten out everything. Can he reunite Rosaura with Florindo, convince Pantalone to allow their marriage to take place, make her that Punch gets all the snacks he wants, and make things right with Columbine?

My Reaction

I love books that introduce lesser-known topics, and I imagine that few young readers would know anything about commedia del arte. For kids who are old enough to appreciate a little theatrical history and expand their cultural horizons, this is a fun introduction to an art form that they may have never seen before!

My first introduction to the stock characters was in Agatha Christie movies because Agatha Christie was fond of commedia del arte and put references to it into some of her stories, like The Affair of the Victory Ball. There is a section at the back of this book that explains the historical background of this type of theater and more about the characteristics of the stock characters.

I did think that the story in the book jumped around oddly in some places, and the role of The Doctor wasn’t very well explained. I think part of the reason was that the action would be easier to understand if we were watching it on stage rather than reading it in a book. The pictures are also chaotic and a little difficult to follow. I think they’re meant to convey the shifting scenes and the fast and chaotic movements of the characters as they go about their various schemes. The story itself is meant to be chaotic and action-filled because of all the characters’ schemes and counter-schemes. The action and visual jokes would probably make more sense seeing them performed rather than hearing them described.

I did like the part at the end, where we see the actors taking their bows and some of them removing their masks because the story was a play the entire time. The story isn’t meant for readers to see the characters as real people and events that are actually taking place. It’s all been a stage play the entire time. The pictures also indicate that it was always a play, with its flat scenery, objects at strange angles, and characters that seem to be separated from each other by thin walls. It’s all a bit unreal because it is unreal.

To get around some of the chaotic nature of the story and make it more fun for kids, I think this is a good book to read aloud with a lot of enthusiasm and maybe even act out rather than just telling it, encouraging young listeners to get involved in the story and the imaginary world of the theater.