Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Gulls

The Mystery of the Gulls by Phyllis Whitney, 1949.

Taffy Saunders and her mother are heading to Mackinac Island for the summer while Taffy’s father is in the hospital, recovering from a car accident. Taffy’s mother’s Aunt Martha has recently passed away, and she left the hotel she owned to Taffy’s mother. It’s a strange bequest because Aunt Martha hadn’t gotten along with her niece for years because she had disapproved of her marriage. There is also a condition on the inheritance. In order to retain ownership of the hotel, Taffy’s mother has to run it herself for a summer. Taffy thinks that it all sounds strange and mysterious, but her mother says that her aunt was an eccentric, and it was often difficult to understand why she did some of the things she did.

Taffy’s mother worries that something will go wrong over the summer that will prevent her from owning the hotel. It isn’t really that Taffy’s mother wants to be a hotel keeper, but since Taffy’s father’s accident, they’ve spent most of their money on medical bills. When he gets out of the hospital, he won’t be able to do his old job, which involved a lot of travel, so they’re going to have to settle down in a new city. Taffy is happy about living a more settled life than they used to live, but they’re going to need all the money they can get to buy a new home. Taffy’s mother is hoping to sell the hotel to pay their bills and buy a new home, but she can’t do that unless she can prove that she can manage the hotel first. Mrs. Saunders is hoping that her aunt’s long-time housekeeper, Mrs. Tuckerman, will help her make this summer a success, while Taffy is hoping that Mrs. Tuckerman’s daughter, Donna, will be a friend for her. Because their family has moved a lot, Taffy hasn’t had many opportunities to make and keep friends.

On the boat ride to Mackinac (which they point out is pronounced “Mackinaw” by locals), Taffy meets a boy about her age, David Marsh, who is going to Mackinac to visit his grandmother, and they talk about the sights to see on the island. There is an old fort on the island that is now a historic site for tourists, and David offers to show Taffy around. He tells her where his grandmother’s house is and says that she can come see him there, or he’ll come to the hotel, Sunset House, to see her.

When Taffy sees Sunset House, she thinks it’s charming. The hotel is a large, old house with turrets, cupolas, and a widow’s walk. Mackinac Island in general seems charming. Cars are not allowed on the island, so people get around with horses, carriages, and bicycles. Taffy’s mother talks about wanting to “wake this place up”, but Taffy thinks that the calm, sleepy atmosphere is right for the house and doesn’t want to disturb it. Since Taffy has moved a great deal with her parents because of her dad’s job, she has lived in many hotels and apartments, and she finds the old-fashioned and comfortable furniture at Sunset House to be homey. Taffy thinks that the home-like atmosphere of Sunset House is a nice change and that she will like it there. The room she shares with her mother is beautiful, also filled with old-fashioned furniture and a charming alcove with a lovely view.

It seems like Aunt Martha’s usual guests prefer the place quiet, too. The first guests that they meet are the Twig sisters, a pair of elderly ladies who are at first concerned about a new child in the house. Until Taffy arrived, the only child at Sunset House was Donna, who is described as a quiet child. Aunt Martha only rented rooms to adults with no children. Taffy learns that Donna, who is about her age, is usually never even allowed to bring other children to visit her. Taffy feels sorry for Donna and hopes that she will want to be friends as much as she does.

Besides Mrs. Tuckerman, the housekeeper, there is also a cook named Celeste. When Taffy and her mother first arrive, they are told that Celeste hasn’t prepared lunch because she’s been seeing “omens.” Apparently, this is something that she does periodically, and Mrs. Tuckerman thinks that, this time, it’s just because she’s upset about Mrs. Saunders arriving. There are three other people who also work in the kitchen, but they all seem pretty useless without Celeste’s direction. Fortunately, Mrs. Saunders is a woman of action, so she immediately takes charge of making sandwiches for lunch. To speed things up, she even offers to let guests come to the kitchen to make their own sandwiches, any kind they want, if they wish to. Although Mrs. Tuckerman isn’t sure that will work, lunch turns out fine. However, Taffy has a strange encounter with Celeste in the garden.

In the garden, Celeste asks Taffy what word the gulls are saying. Taffy did have the feeling before that the gulls are saying a word, and it sounds like the word “help” to her. Celeste says that’s what she thought, and she says that’s a sign that a storm is coming. Her fear of the bad storm coming is why she feels like she can’t cook, and it bothers her that nobody else seems to understand, implying that there is impending doom. Taffy shows Celeste a map that David drew to his grandmother’s house, which she is having trouble understanding. Celeste explains to her how to get to the house, and she also mentions a shortcut, but she warns Taffy not to take the shortcut after dark because it goes through a “goblin wood.”

Taffy meets Donna for the first time at lunch. Donna is a shy girl, but she is glad that Taffy is there because she has spent much of her time alone since children are not usually allowed at Sunset House. Taffy asks Donna about Celeste and what she means about the “goblin wood.” Donna explains that Celeste and her family have lived on Mackinac for a long time because they are descended from fur traders (this is why Celeste has a French name, although the book doesn’t mention it directly) and Native Americans (the book uses the word “Indians”). Because of this heritage, Celeste has a lot of superstitions about the island and the spirits that supposedly inhabit it. Taffy doesn’t believe in spirits, but she can’t resist taking the shortcut to David’s grandmother’s house, just to see what it’s like. She has an odd encounter in the woods with a Native American boy (called an “Indian”) wearing overalls, who refuses to speak to her and seems hostile toward her.

When Taffy sees David, she tells him everything about Celeste and her encounter in the “goblin wood.” David says that he’s taken the shortcut through the woods many times without a problem, and he never had any reason to think that it might be haunted. Taffy is a little insulted at his comment that maybe girls get scared easier than boys, and David explains that the boy might not have been as unfriendly as she thought because her imagination might just have been fueled by Celeste’s stories, so she was primed for something scary or sinister to happen. They reconsider that theory when the two of them walk back through the “goblin wood” and find a note left on a tree, telling her that she’s not wanted on the island and that her presence makes the “manito” angry. David says that the “manito” is one of the Native American gods or spirits who supposedly inhabit the island. (This is a real concept in Native American lore, but I’ve seen it spelled “manitou.”) Whoever wrote the note was trying to scare Taffy, but why?

David is intrigued by what Taffy has told him about Celeste and her “omens” and the “goblin wood”, the note left for Taffy, and the unfriendly boy in the overalls (who Taffy sees again, talking to Donna, when she and David try out his grandfather’s binoculars), and he says he is willing to help her investigate further. The two of them work out a code, where Taffy can hang things of different colors in the window of her bedroom to send him messages.

The mystery deepens when Taffy’s mother tells her that there are two vacancies in the hotel after Taffy heard Mrs. Tuckerman turn away a man who wanted a room. There is also a locked room off of Aunt Martha’s old office that Donna says no one is supposed to enter. She says that they can’t even find the key, that no one has seen it since Aunt Martha died. When Taffy talks to her mother, she says that the locked room is a library and that the boy in overalls she’s been seeing is named Henry and that he does odd jobs for the hotel. Taffy tells her mother that it seems like people don’t want them on the island, including Henry, Celeste, and Mrs. Tuckerman. Even Donna has been acting strangely. Even though she said that she was glad Taffy was there, she’s been strangely unfriendly, and she’s been telling her mother that Taffy is the unfriendly one! Taffy thinks that’s really unfair, but her mother thinks that it’s just because everyone is adjusting to the changes since Aunt Martha died. Donna isn’t used to being with other children, and Celeste and Mrs. Tuckerman may be worried about their jobs since the ownership of the hotel depends on how well Mrs. Saunders manages it this summer and what she plans to do with it when she takes full ownership. Taffy and her mother don’t even know what will happen to the hotel if Mrs. Saunders can’t prove that she can manage it well enough. Aunt Martha’s will deliberately keeps the alternate heir secret until the end of the summer.

This is only the beginning of the mysteries and puzzles. Taffy learns that the man Mrs. Tuckerman turned away from the hotel was actually an old friend of Aunt Martha who has worked in hotels in Asia and says he would like to own a hotel of his own. The storm that Celeste predicted comes, and a baby seagull crashes into the window of the Twigs’ room. Celeste thinks that’s another bad omen and that Taffy and her mother should leave. Then, someone leaves a bat skeleton in Miss Twig’s bed. Donna says that Aunt Martha used to collect things like that and that maybe her spirit put the skeleton in the bed because she’s not happy. Of course, Taffy doesn’t believe that. Too many living humans seem unhappy that she and her mother are there. Donna admits that Aunt Martha was originally going to leave the hotel to her mother before the two of them had a quarrel, and Aunt Martha changed her will. Whether Mrs. Tuckerman might still be the alternate heir to the hotel is still unknown. Donna thinks the alternate heir might be some bird society because Aunt Martha was an amateur naturalist with a fondness for birds. Could there be another heir who is hoping to drive Taffy and her mother away so they can have the hotel? Could Donna and her mother still be hoping that the hotel will come to them? Could Celeste or Henry be trying to drive them away for their own purposes?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. Like other Phyllis Whitney books, this book is something of a collector’s item now, and copies are not cheap through Amazon.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I’ve been to Mackinac Island before, when I was in my teens, and I didn’t know about the pronunciation until I read this book. I had even forgotten about the horses and carriages since I’ve been there (which might seem odd, but I only spent one day there and I was obsessed with the fudge), but Mackinac Island is still car-free today. Reading this book revived some old memories for me, and it makes me want to go back and spend more time there! I didn’t stay overnight while I was there last time, but there are plenty of hotels there, including ones that resemble the one in the story, with turrets, cupolas, and widow’s walks.

Culture and Folklore

The book mentions that there are many Native Americans living on Mackinac Island, but it doesn’t mention a specific tribe. Even though some of the spooky and ominous things that happen in the story appear to have their roots in Native American folklore and superstition, I’m not completely sure how accurate the descriptions of the folklore aspects are. From what I’ve read, it seems that manitous (or manitos) really are a part of Native American folklore in that region, but there are a couple of aspects of it in the story that I haven’t been able to verify. As a slight spoiler, we eventually learn that Aunt Martha used to collect not only animal skeletons but dead birds, which she would turn into taxidermy. Celeste didn’t think that this was fully respectful to the spirits of the creatures, although she did seem to think that Aunt Martha had some kind of special connection to the spirits of birds because she was so good with them, living, injured, or dead. Because the author, Phyllis A. Whitney spent her youth in Asia because of her father’s job, she also has a habit of introducing Asian elements to most of the books she wrote at some point. In this one, although the main focus is on aspects of Native American folklore, there is also an Asia folklore story about a Chinese gong in the hotel, which seems to have a connection to birds or winged creatures, and that complicates the situation. The effect is that Taffy sometimes feels like she is dealing with forces that she doesn’t understand, which adds some suspense, although she is also sure that there’s a person behind it all because she doesn’t really believe in all the folkloric superstitions and physical objects are being used for the strange things that are happening.

One thing that I like about Phyllis A. Whitney’s juvenile mysteries is that they do frequently include history and folklore of different places and people around the world, and they do seem generally well-researched and presented with empathy. This book and other she wrote were published in the middle of the 20th century, around the same time that other books I’ve read were also published. Some mid-20th century books for kids lean into racial or cultural stereotypes, but Whitney’s book often subvert that or show characters rethinking some of their preconceived notions. The book does use the word “Indian” instead of Native American, which isn’t preferred, but apart from that, Taffy’s attitudes and ability to look at things from someone else’s point of view are good. Taffy is characterized as a very imaginative girl, and one of the ways she uses her imagination is to picture what other people think or how they would feel about different things. At one point, David says that Celeste is crazy for all of her superstitious talk, but Taffy defends her, saying that she’s not crazy. Taffy doesn’t believe in Celeste’s superstitions, but she recognizes that Celeste believes and acts the way she does because she has spent her whole life being steeped in stories of the history of spirits. These stories don’t make sense to Taffy and David, but Taffy recognizes that they make sense to Celeste. Celeste is wrong about the spirits being responsible for everything weird that’s happening, but being wrong about something isn’t the same as being crazy.

Later in the story, the kids form a club for exploring the island and giving hotel guests tours of some of the scenic spots. Taffy, David, and Donna ask Henry to be their “Indian guide” for the tours, and Henry sarcastically asks if they’re expecting him to wear feathers. The others quickly reassure him that they’re not asking him to be the guide because they want him to put on a kitschy show for the tourists or anything embarrassing like that. They just think he would make the best guide because he knows the island better than the rest of them and all the history and stories of the island. They want to call him an “Indian guide” to emphasize his Native American heritage and provide a credential for his knowledge for the sake of the tourists, but they say they would still want him to be part of the tours even without that, just because they want to be friends and include him. This explanation satisfies Henry, and he joins their tour club. For those who would like to learn more about the history of real Native American life on Mackinac, I recommend the Biddle House Native American Museum.

Time Period and Atmosphere

This book is set contemporary to when it was written, the in late 1940s. Readers will notice that Taffy periodically mentions whether or not women are wearing slacks instead of skirts, and that’s because that was a modern fashion trend in her time. Taffy’s mother is very much a modern woman, and she wears slacks from the beginning. However, Taffy can see that many women who stay at Sunset House (although not all) are older and more old-fashioned women, who wear skirts, like the Twig sisters. At first Taffy worries about whether her mother is dressing appropriately for her new job, managing the hotel, but it works out fine.

Taffy and her mother have different views on the hotel from the beginning. Taffy thinks that the old-fashioned hotel is charming and that the quiet atmosphere really suits the place. However, Taffy’s mother thinks that the place seems depressing and wants to “wake it up” a little. Taffy worries that her mother’s attempts to “wake it up” might ruin the quietness and quaintness that appeals to their customers. This is one of the reasons why people who work at Sunset House are concerned about what Taffy’s mother plans to do with the hotel. On the one hand, they didn’t always like the way Aunt Martha did things, but Taffy’s mother is a newcomer, who might not understand which parts of the hotel’s atmosphere should be preserved.

It’s true that people often visit places like this hotel specifically for their atmosphere, and the kind of people who choose to stay at Sunset House are looking for exactly that quiet and quaint atmosphere. When she was alive, Aunt Martha cultivated that time of atmosphere and a client base who likes that. With Aunt Martha’s death, Sunset House is at a transition point, where the new ownership will set the tone for its future. I think Taffy is right that the old-fashioned charm of the house should remain because even modern people like to visit quaint and charming places that are very different from the places where they live the rest of the time, but at the time time, Aunt Martha’s ways were unnecessarily strict, and there is some room for relaxing the atmosphere without ruining the quaintness. Allowing families with children wouldn’t be bad, and when Taffy’s mother learns that Donna’s passion in life is dancing (something that Aunt Martha disapproved of), she arranges for Donna to do an evening show for the guests, which Donna and the guests love. A little live music and dancing is a way of adding some life to the old house without ruining the charm because Donna’s ballet and tap dance are also charming and tasteful.

For some context between Taffy’s mother and her Aunt Martha, I’d like to point out that, because this book takes place in the late 1940s, Taffy’s mother’s youthful visits to her aunt’s Mackinac Island hotel took place before her marriage, which was probably in the mid-1930s, given Taffy’s age. That means that she was there as a kid during the 1920s or early 1930s. Culturally, the 1920s and 1930s, post-WWI, was the beginning of the modern era, with flappers pushing the boundaries of women’s dress and behavior, and women needing to take on greater roles in working and supporting their families during the Great Depression and WWII. Taffy’s mother would have been growing up, coming of age, and marrying and having a child of her own during all of these changes, and I think this helps explain her practical, modern outlook on life and personal habits. (Remember, she wears slacks. Other women don’t, especially the older and more traditional ones.) As a member of the previous generation, Aunt Martha would have been a product of the late 19th century and early 20th century, which I think helps explain the Victorian/Edwardian style of her home and her apparent attitude that children should be seen and not heard, an attitude which seems to be shared by the Twig sisters. Not all Victorian era adults felt this way, and many parents genuinely loved and indulged their children whenever they could, but it seems like Aunt Martha clung to the strict aspects of Victorian upbringing. In fact, her resistance to listening to the needs of the young people is a central part of the mystery. In fact, it is the reason for the mystery, and we learn that Aunt Martha’s behavior wasn’t solely a matter of her upbringing but her own mercurial personality and moods.

Aunt Martha (Spoilers)

Understanding Aunt Martha is key to understanding the entire mystery because she is literally the one who set everything up. Although she is dead before the story begins, we actually do get more explanations of her thinking in her own words than almost anyone else, except for Celeste, because she left behind journals that explain everything. I got angry with Aunt Martha when I realized that her manipulation of everyone was deliberate and planned. Aunt Martha wasn’t just strict; she was controlling and vindictive. She expected everyone to consult her about everything going on in their lives and to do everything she said, just based on her say-so. Whenever anybody resisted that control because their lives were their business and not hers, she would get angry, and that’s when she would withdraw affection and support and renege on promises she had made, seeking to punish them for their resistance. As Taffy later observes, Aunt Martha was not a nice person, and in her journals, she even said that she distrusted people who were too nice and too liked by other people because she never was herself. Her hotel was charming, but she wasn’t.

The terms of Aunt Martha’s will were not so much designed to benefit someone as to punish them all. She didn’t leave the hotel to Mrs. Tuckerman, as she had originally planned, to punish her for not following her orders on how to raise Donna, even though Mrs. Tuckerman had previously let her control things for both her and Donna. Leaving the hotel to her niece wasn’t meant as a nice gesture, either. She thought her niece was an idiot whose decision to marry a man she didn’t approve of was a sign of ingratitude for all that she had done for her (whatever that was – apart from letting her visit during summer, we don’t know of anything else she did), so she expected that she would fail at managing the hotel and would be publicly embarrassed by the failure. Aunt Martha purposely set up a situation where some people would have to ensure that others would lose in order to “win” something because she liked the thought of them fighting among each other and having problems because of her.

While understanding other people’s thinking is important, I also think that it’s important to recognize that understanding does not equal approval. We can understand that Celeste’s superstitions make sense to her without believing that everything has a supernatural cause, and we can also understand why and how Aunt Martha decided to use her will to get back at everyone for defying her in some way while recognizing that everything she did was toxic and done out of malice. What eventually stops it all is the revelation of Aunt Martha’s thinking and the understanding of the motives of the people doing all the strange things at the hotel. Taffy and one other person realize that, in spite of Aunt Martha’s manipulation, there is still a way for everything to work out well for everyone, with no “losers” in the situation. Once they figure that out, they are able to explain things to the others and get them to cooperate.

There is a theme in the story about good people who do bad things, but that applies more to the people Aunt Martha manipulated than Aunt Martha herself. Aunt Martha was good to birds and helped them heal when they were injured, but she wasn’t so kind to her fellow human beings. Some of the characters in the story think that they have no choice but to do what they’re doing because of the way Aunt Martha set things up, and it’s very hurtful to Taffy because she thought they liked her and she liked them, yet they were plotting against her and her mother the whole time. Taffy’s mother says that they did like them and feel badly about what they did, that they just felt trapped. I was bothered by some of the characters talking about how likeable these characters were because I don’t like people letting others off the hook for doing harmful things just because they can be pleasant and charming sometimes. There are serious abusers who too frequently get off the hook for those reasons. Heck, people let Aunt Martha get away with many of the things she did because she was nice to birds and could be charming and helpful sometimes, but her journals explain detail how little she thought of other people and how she schemed to manipulate and control them. Her last act was to do something she knew would hurt and embarrass the people close to her and cause them problems with each other.

Fortunately, even though the offenders are otherwise nice and likable, the book doesn’t let them off the hook for their behavior. I was gratified that Taffy’s mother and other characters say that people need to take responsibility for their choices, even if they’re “all mixed up inside”, and that doing things that harm others can’t be excused. Even the miscreants just saying that they understand now that they were wrong about what they were thinking and doing doesn’t get them completely off the hook. Instead, the characters make the offenders each pick a way to punish themselves and make amends for the trouble they’ve caused, to show everyone that they’re genuinely sorry and really mean to make things right. I like it because, as Taffy points out, their behavior makes her wonder about their entire relationship. How much of their previous likeability was just an act while they were scheming against them behind their backs, and what is their relationship going to be now? Can they still be friends, or is that all over because they were plotting harm the entire time? The punishments they give themselves are a gesture to show that they really do regret what they did and that they are going to follow through on that regret and change for the better. Nobody gets away with causing problems just because they put on an outward show and come across as likeable. In the end, they’re not trying to insist on everyone letting them go because that’s what they want, and they’re not acting as though they’re entitled to anything or deserving of being treated as special exceptions. It’s just them, taking responsibility for themselves and owning their feelings and motivations, as Aunt Martha never fully did outside of her journals. As Mrs. Saunders says, “like anyone who does wrong, they’ll have to take their punishment.” Their willingness to do that and to admit that they were wrong and make amends is what paves the way to repairing their relationships with the others.

I was disappointed, though, that we don’t really get to see the miscreants explain themselves. The Taffy’s mother and others talk to them without Taffy being present, saying that they want to handle the matter privately, even though Taffy is the main character and the one who was investigating the mystery all along. It’s sort of weird that the main character was shut out of the final discussion. Because she’s not there, readers don’t get to “see” exactly what happened or hear the miscreants’ explanations in their own words. Taffy’s mother just tells her about it afterward, and that feels like a cheat. “Show” is generally better than “tell.”

A Touch of Cottagecore

I think this mystery story about a summer spent in an enchanting place, with an old-fashioned hotel and an island with horse-drawn carriages, might appeal to fans of the Cottagecore aesthetic. The kids in the story have some independence in where they go and what they do. Taffy is allowed to spend some time exploring the island with David, seeing the sights and enjoying the beauty of the island. The garden around the hotel has pretty flowers, and Taffy starts learning some of their names. She never had the opportunity before to learn much about flowers because she’s been living in hotels and apartments. She thinks that, when her family finally has their own house, she also wants her own garden with flowers.

Some characters in books make up their own special words which are only used in their story, and the word for this book is “exasper-maddening”, which Taffy and her father use to describe her mother’s behavior at times. The mother is a woman of action, which can be good when someone needs to take charge of the situation. However, she is also impulsive and stubborn, given to doing things as soon as she gets the notion to do them and sweeping everyone else along with her, and she also has a tendency to focus on whatever seizes her attention in the moment instead of what’s concerning someone else.

Posted on by TracyC

The Moon Jumpers

The Moon Jumpers by Janice May Udry, pictures by Maurice Sendak, 1959.

In this pleasant, relaxing children’s picture book, some children enjoy a beautiful summer evening! Some of the pictures are in black-and-white and some are in color, but the best pictures are the full-color, full-page illustrations. The illustrations are by Maurice Sendak, who wrote and illustrated Where the Wild Things Are. The story is told from the point-of-view of the children.

While their parents are in the house, the children go outside to enjoy the relative coolness of the evening. They run barefoot through the grass and play tag.

They climb a tree “just to be in a tree at night.” They set up their own camp, make up songs and poems, and tell each other ghost stories.

The moon is rising, and the children jump in the air, trying to touch it, although they know they can’t.

Eventually, their parents call them inside to go to bed. As the children go to bed, they say goodnight to the moon through their bedroom window.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It’s a Caldecott Honor Book!

My Reaction

This is a nice, calm book that would make a good bedtime story on a summer night! It reminds me a little of Goodnight Moon, Time of Wonder, and The White Marble, which are other calm bedtime stories. It isn’t told in rhyme like Goodnight Moon, but it does show the beauties of summer and evenings spent outside, like Time of Wonder and The White Marble.

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Time of Wonder

Time of Wonder by Robert McCloskey, 1957, 1985.

This is a beautiful, very relaxing picture book about a family’s summer vacation on an island off the coast of Maine. Although you can see from the pictures that the main characters are a pair of sisters, the entire story is told in the second person, from the point of view of “you.” Readers are meant to feel like they’re part of this magical summer trip!

“You” feel like you’re spending the morning walking in the fog along the bay, enjoying the plants and birds in the forest nearby, and sailing in the bay with seals and leaping porpoises.

During the day, there are other children playing on the beach, diving from the rocks, and swimming. In the evening, “you” row a boat out into the quiet water and use a flashlight to look at the crabs.

When it rains, “you” feel it! Most of the time the weather is peaceful, but there is a storm approaching, and people know they have to get ready for it. When it comes, it brings a strong wind that blows through the house!

The family reads together and sings songs until the storm is over and it’s time to go to bed.

The next day, trees are uprooted, and “you” get to explore what’s beneath their roots.

When it’s time to go home because school will be starting again, you’re a little sad to leave this place, although you’re also glad to go home again.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It’s a Caldecott Medal winner!

My Reaction

This is a great book when you want something calm and relaxing or you feel like you need to take a mental vacation, whether you’re a kid or adult! Nothing stressful happens in the story. It’s just a lovely memory of a peaceful vacation. Even the storm that comes doesn’t do anything worse than blow things around the room and knock over some trees and plants. The girls in the story help clean up after the storm, find ancient seashells under the roots of a fallen tree, and are happy that the sunflowers are looking toward the sun again.

When the girls are looking at the shells under the fallen tree, they think about the Native Americans who lived in the area before white people came and before the tree grew there. They call them “Indians” instead of Native Americans, but that’s the only thing I can find to nitpick about the story.

I think this would make a great, calming bedtime story for kids, especially during the summer! It reminds me a little of the song Verdi Cries, about someone’s memories of a special vacation.

The setting for the story, on an island off the coast of Maine, is based on the author’s family’s summer home, and the two girls in the story are based on his own daughters. They are not named here because the story is about “you”, but the older girl is Sarah (called Sal) and the younger girl is Jane. They appear in and are named in Blueberries for Sal and One Morning in Maine, where they are much younger.

Posted on by TracyC

Hilda’s Restful Chair

Hilda’s Restful Chair by Iris Schweitzer, 1981.

One hot morning, Hilda finishes watering her garden and decides that she needs to rest for a while.

When Hilda needs to rest, she has a special place she likes to go – an old armchair that she keeps in a shed. She calls the chair her “restful chair.”

Hilda is joined in her restful chair by Osbert the wombat and Cadbury the cat. However, Osbert and Cadbury aren’t the only animals who enjoy the restful chair. Soon, a pair of rabbits ask to join the others in the chair.

As Hilda and her animal friends sit in the restful chair, other animals come to join them. As the chair becomes more loaded with animals, it starts to creak and groan.

Eventually, the chair just can’t take it anymore, and it falls over, dumping everyone onto the floor.

Still, all the animals decide that they had a good rest. As the animals leave, Hilda sets the chair up again, and she and her animal friends go inside to have some watermelon.

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

My Reaction

This is a cute, fun story about animals who enjoy a comfortable chair as much as a little girl. Kids like stories with repetition, and they would probably enjoy seeing the parade of animals who come to join Hilda in her chair. They would probably also see the ending coming, that the chair won’t be able to hold everyone. It’s just a question of which animal is going to be the last straw for the chair. Fortunately, no animals were harmed by this experience, and even the chair seems okay, even though it fell over.

Because there is a wombat in the story, I assumed that the story takes place in Australia. It probably does, but from the publication information, it looks like it was first printed in Great Britain. The author was originally from Israel, but she was living in London at the time the book was published.

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Clifford Takes a Trip

Clifford

Clifford Takes a Trip by Norman Bridwell, 1966.

Emily Elizabeth and her parents don’t usually take long trips during the summer because it’s too difficult to bring Clifford along. He’s just too big to go on trains or buses. One summer, Emily Elizabeth’s parents decide to go camping in the mountains. They can’t take Clifford, so they leave him behind with a neighbor.

However, Clifford misses Emily Elizabeth too much, so he decides to go find her! A gigantic red dog can create a lot of chaos on a cross-country trip.

Along the way, he does help a man with a broken-down grocery truck, and the man is grateful enough to feed him.

He also arrives at the family’s campsite just in time to save Emily Elizabeth after she thought it would be fun to play with some baby bears she found.

The family considers that next year, they may find a way to take Clifford with them somewhere else.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including one in Spanish).

My Reaction

Like all Clifford books, the humor is based around Clifford’s enormous size. Even though the family thought that it would be too far for Clifford to walk to come to the mountains with them, he tracks them down there anyway. Then, after he rejoins his family, he sleeps with Emily Elizabeth, his ear propped up to be her tent. The idea they’re considering next for transporting Clifford is a flat-bed truck. I could well imagine my own dog trying to track me down if I went on vacation without her, but fortunately, when your dog is about the same size as Toto in the Wizard of Oz, traveling with a dog isn’t as difficult.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

The Secret at Sleepaway Camp

The Bobbsey Twins

The Secret at Sleepaway Camp by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1990.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge Sean Hagins, for supplying me with photos of this book! Usually, I take pictures of books myself, but I just couldn’t find a physical copy of this one. Sean is a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, particularly the New Bobbsey Twins mysteries, and you can see some of his video reviews as well as videos about his photography work on his YouTube channel, SJHFoto. Thanks, Sean!

The Bobbsey Twins are headed to Camp Evergreen this summer! Before they leave for camp, their mother, who is a part-time reporter for the local newspaper tells them that she was just covering a story about a baby polar bear who disappeared from the local zoo. Flossie is upset about it because she’s fond of the polar bear, Snowflake, and likes to see her when she goes to the zoo. Nobody knows exactly how Snowflake got out of her enclosure. All they know is that the gate was found open, and Snowflake was gone. Mrs. Bobbsey recommends that the kids forget about it for now and concentrate on having fun at camp.

Nan and Bert are going to be counselors’ helpers at camp, and all the kids are looking forward to activities like swimming, horseback riding, and archery. The only downside is that Danny Rugg, local bully and troublemaker, will also be there as a counselors’ helper. (Danny is a long-standing nemesis in the Bobbsey Twins series, from the original incarnation of the series. See The Bobbsey Twins of Lakeport.)

Strange things start happening at camp right from the moment that the Bobbsey Twins arrive. Tanya, the head counselor, tells them that, for some reason, all of the camp’s rowboats are leaking. When the kids investigate, they discover that someone has deliberately drilled holes in all of the boats.

The first thought that the Bobbsey Twins have is that Danny is responsible because he has a history of playing mean pranks, although he denies it. Danny does say that he doesn’t see why everyone else at camp should have fun while he’s miserable. His job as a counselors’ helper is working in the kitchen, and he hates it because it’s hot in there, and he thinks the cook is weird.

When Freddie goes to unpack in his cabin, he meets another boy named Ian. Ian is from the city and has never been to the countryside before. He’s a little nervous and homesick, and he says that the camp’s cook has told him that the camp is haunted. Freddie says that he’s sure there’s nothing to worry about and that they’ll have fun at camp.

Arts and crafts goes fine, and the kids enjoy meeting the camp’s mascot, a tame raccoon named Bandit. Tanya explains that they found Bandit when he was just a baby and that the kids should never try to play with wild raccoons. However, when the kids arrive at the archery range, they discover that someone has snapped all the arrows in half! Because of the stories the camp cook has been telling everyone, some of the campers think that it’s the work of the camp’s ghost. The Bobbsey Twins still suspect Danny, and they offer their services to Tanya, to investigate and find out who’s really causing all the trouble at camp.

Danny isn’t the only suspect. Nan overhears the cook, Sal, telling the kids about a hungry, child-eating bear in the woods who is supposedly friends with the camp ghost. Does he just like scary stories, or does he have a special reason for wanting to frighten the kids at camp? Even Tanya seems to have something to hide, getting mysterious notes and meeting someone in secret.

Soon, other strange things happen at camp. Someone puts a snake in Freddie’s bed, and the kids see strange lights in the woods at night. Then, someone steals all the ponies out of the corral and smashes the kids’ clay art projects. Some of the kids think that it’s the work of the ghost Sal has been talking about, but the Bobbsey Twins are sure that someone only wants them to think that. What are all the pranks and sabotage really about?

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

My Reaction

I was pretty sure I knew right away who was behind the camp sabotage, but this is one of those stories where there’s more than one person doing things that are unrelated. Danny eventually admits to playing some of the pranks, like the snake in Freddie’s bed, but not all of them. I was also wrong about who the main villain was. The missing polar bear at the beginning does figure into the mystery of the things happening at camp. I figured it would be important, but I didn’t guess how and why.

One of the clues the kids find is a lucky rabbit’s foot keychain. The kids comment that those used to be popular good luck charms, but not many people have them anymore. I have to admit that I had a pink one when I was a kid that I got from a novelty shop. I don’t think I realized at first that it was a real rabbit’s foot. I think I assumed that it was fake because I bought it in a place that sold magic tricks and costume props, so I figured it was imitation, like everything else. I figured it out eventually, and then, I didn’t feel quite so lucky about it. I’m sure that those keychains fell out of popularity because other people felt the same way I did about them, and they were concerned about animal cruelty. I believe it’s still possible to buy real and faux rabbit’s foot keychains, but it’s been a long time since I last saw them displayed at a store, so I think the kids were probably right about them not being as popular as they once were.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Secret of the Sunken Treasure

The Bobbsey Twins

Bobbsey Twins The Secret of the Sunken Treasure cover

The Secret of the Sunken Treasure by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1989.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge Sean Hagins, for supplying me with photos of this book! Usually, I take pictures of books myself, but I just couldn’t find a physical copy of this one. Sean is a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, particularly the New Bobbsey Twins mysteries, and you can see some of his video reviews as well as videos about his photography work on his YouTube channel, SJHFoto. Thanks, Sean!

The two sets of Bobbsey Twins and their parents are on vacation in Florida for a week. It’s just a fun family vacation, although Mrs. Bobbsey is hoping to write an article about a sunken treasure ship called the Granada. The Bobbsey Twins are intrigued at the idea of searching for sunken treasure, although nobody has detected a sign of the treasure since the ship sank in 1801. Dan Chester, he brother of a family friend, lives in the town where the Bobbseys are staying along with his 15-year-old daughter, Meg. Dan and Meg are divers, and they have been searching for the wreckage of the Granada, and they think they have a lead. The Bobbsey Twins are excited to think that they might be able to participate in the search for the treasure or be there when the Chesters find it!

However, when Dan and Meg pick them up at the airport, they have bad news. Although they were able to locate the wreckage of the Granada, they were delayed reaching shore to claim their find because their boat propeller broke, and someone else claimed the Granada before they could. Joe Lenox, the man who claimed the wreckage, runs an underwater salvaging company, and he’s tough competition for the Chesters because he can afford all the latest sonar equipment. It’s a heavy blow to Dan and Meg, losing such an important find when they were so close to claiming it. The only consolation is that everyone will be able to watch the old safe from the wreckage being hauled to the surface. The safe is supposed to contain the treasure the ship was carrying.

When Joe Lenox learns that Mrs. Bobbsey is an out-of-town reporter, he invites the entire Bobbsey family to come with him on his boat to see the treasure being recovered. They accept the invitation, although the kids feel a little funny about it because Joe is Dan and Meg’s competitor.

On the boat, Joe shows the Bobbseys his equipment and explains how everything works. (I grew up in Arizona and have never been diving, so I have very little context for understanding diving equipment. This part looks informative, but since this book was published decades ago, there may have been some changes in equipment since then. I wouldn’t know.) Flossie is hoping that, when the treasure is brought up, she will get the chance to try on the famous tiara that is supposed to be in the safe. However, everyone is in for a shock. When the divers go to recover the safe, they discover that someone has already managed to open it and remove the strongbox containing the treasure!

Now, Joe feels cheated out of a treasure he thought he had safely claimed, and he wants to know who’s responsible. The logical suspects would be Dan and Meg, who felt cheated out of their opportunity to claim the treasure first and who have the diving skills needed to reach the safe. A charm belonging to Meg is found in the safe, making Joe and the police believe that the Chesters are guilty. Although, there are also the other members of Joe’s crew to consider. They were the only other people who knew where the wreck was. Could any of them gone out to raid the wreck before the official salvage operation? Can the Bobbsey Twins find the real thieves?

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

My Reaction

I had a couple of favorite suspects early on in the story. The book establishes that it would have taken at least two people to deal with the safe, so I was looking for a pair of people. I was only partly right, though, because there’s another suspect who isn’t introduced until later in the book. The first person I suspected is guilty, but there were more people involved than I thought.

The book explains a little about how a person can lay claim to a sunken ship. The characters say that they have to fill out paperwork at the courthouse. There are laws regarding claiming a sunken ship and official procedures to follow. It’s not as simple as finders keepers. It does matter who found it, where they found it, and who the ship belonged to originally. There were also some changes to the laws around the time this book was written and published with the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987. I’m not completely sure whether each Joe or Dan and Meg could have legally claimed the ship. It partly depends on whether or not it was within US territorial waters or outside the official three-mile limit, and it also depends on whether or not the ship was property of a foreign government which could lay claim to it. For the purposes of the story, we have to assume that Joe Lenox was able to successfully lay a claim to the ship and that Dan and Meg could have done so if they had reached the authorities first. What makes me doubt this is how it would have worked in real life is that the treasure on the ship belonged to a Spanish countess, which makes me think that it could be regarded as property of the Spanish government, but it would be difficult to determine that without additional information.

Posted on by TracyC · 12 Comments

The Secret in the Sand Castle

The Bobbsey Twins

#4 The Secret in the Sand Castle by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1988.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge Sean Hagins, for supplying me with photos of this book! Usually, I take pictures of books myself, but I just couldn’t find a physical copy of this one. Sean is a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, particularly the New Bobbsey Twins mysteries, and you can see some of his video reviews as well as videos about his photography work on his YouTube channel, SJHFoto. Thanks, Sean!

The two sets of Bobbsey Twins and their parents are spending a few weeks in an old house at Beachcliff Bay. It’s sort of a working vacation for their parents. Mr. Bobbsey owns a lumber yard, and he’s helping a local builder, Jim Reade, to either find some antique Victorian wooden gingerbread house trim or make new ones to match a home restoration project. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bobbsey is planning to write a travel article about the area for their local newspaper.

The house where the family will be staying is called the Wilson house, and it’s one of Mr Reade’s recent renovation projects. Flossie is the first in the family to go inside, and she is startled by what she thinks is a ghost. It turns out that it’s only the caretaker, Pete Smedley, taking the old dust sheets off the furniture. It’s not entirely reassuring because Pete says that there are stories about the old Wilson house being haunted by the ghosts of its former owners, who drowned in the nearby bay. He says that he knows when the ghosts have been there because they move things around and leave trails of water, seaweed, and seashells. Mr. Reade thinks that Pete’s stories are nonsense and that the strange things he’s observed are due to windows in the house being left open or something like that.

The inside of the Wilson house is as elaborate as the outside. The Bobbsey twins unpack their things and claim rooms for themselves upstairs. Flossie is quick to claim the biggest room with the best view for herself, and she asks Bert to help her move a mirror she likes into her room. They don’t have anything to hang the mirror, so they set it on Flossie’s bed. Strangely, they later find the mirror still on the bed but broken, and they don’t know how that happened.

Nan is curious about the Wilson family and the history of the house, so she and Freddie take a trip to the local library. There, Nan learns that the last two members of the Wilson family were a brother and sister, called Clay and Jennie. They were both artists, but they never made much money. Badly in need of money, they apparently robbed an armored car and stole gold bars. They tried to escape in a boat, but it was lost in a storm. The Wilsons apparently drowned, although their bodies were never found. The police thought they might have hidden the gold somewhere before getting on the boat, but nobody ever found the gold they stole.

Mr. Reade tells the children that his son, Jimmy, is entering a local sand castle contest, and the Bobbsey twins decide that they would like to enter the contest, too. Nan thinks they should try to build a replica of the Wilson house in sand. Unfortunately, Jimmy turns out to be a troublemaker, and it doesn’t look like he wants to be friends with the Bobbsey twins.

While the girls go to the store, Bert and Freddie decide to check out the old root cellar at the house, and someone traps them inside. The girls let them out when they get back. Then Flossie finds a secret passage and hidden stairs. Mr. Bobbsey says that it was once a servants’ entrance that had been sealed off. Later that night, a ghostly figure tries to enter Nan’s room! Could it have been Jimmy. playing a nasty prank, or is it someone looking for the lost gold? Could it even be a real ghost?

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

My Reaction

From the beginning of the book, I had a favorite suspect. However, this is one of those mysteries where there is more than one person involved, and they’re not working together. In the end, I was right about my main suspect, but having a second person doing suspicious things made the mystery more interesting. The title is a little misleading because the story is really about the search for the hidden gold from the robbery, not about the sand castle contest. The sand castle contest is more of a side issue, although studying the design of the house to build the sand castle version leads the kids to the solution of the mystery.

Because this book is from the late 1980s, there are things in the story that were more a part of my childhood than the lives of 21st century children, like renting videotapes. I was about the age of Freddie and Flossie when this book was first published, so it’s a bit of a fun nostalgia trip for me, both because I read books in this series when I was young and because some of the things the kids do in these stories are similar to things I did at their age.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

The Secret of Jungle Park

The Bobbsey Twins

#1 The Secret of Jungle Park by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1987.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge Sean Hagins, for supplying me with photos of this book! Usually, I take pictures of books myself, but I just couldn’t find a physical copy of this one. Sean is a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, particularly the New Bobbsey Twins mysteries, and you can see some of his video reviews as well as videos about his photography work on his YouTube channel, SJHFoto. Thanks, Sean!

Twelve-year-old twins Nan and Bert Bobbsey are part of a rock band with some of their friends. They call themselves The Aliens, and they’re participating in a Battle of the Bands at the amusement park Jungle Park. Nan plays the keyboard, Bert plays the drums, and their friends, Jimmy and Brian, play guitars. Flossie, their younger sister, wishes that she could join the band, too, but she’s still too young. Flossie and her twin brother, Freddie, are there to help their older siblings get ready and watch them perform. (And, the case of the boys, use some fake blood to play a trick on the girls.)

While they watch the first bands perform, they see some smoke. At first, they think that it’s just a stage effect, but it becomes thicker, and they realize that something is really wrong! Most of the audience flees, but Bert stays behind to save his band’s equipment. Nan tells him it was a dangerous thing to do, but Bert says that he doesn’t think it was a real fire. Fire fighters come, and so does their police officer friend, Lieutenant Pike. Lieutenant Pike also tells Bert that he took a foolish risk, but he agrees with Bert’s impression that the smoke was actually caused by a smoke bomb. Even though a smoke bomb isn’t real fire, setting one off in a crowded auditorium can still be very dangerous because someone could have been hurt in the panic when everybody rushed out.

Lieutenant Pike confides in the children that the police have been called to the park three other times recently for other apparent accidents and problems. He says that if things like this keep happening, they might have to shut down Jungle Park due to safety concerns. The four Bobbsey Twins don’t think that’s fair. They love Jungle Park, and they want to catch the person who set the smoke bomb!

Lieutenant Pike lets the kids look around after the police and fire fighters are finished with the auditorium. There are two clues that they find: a black eye patch and a swizzle stick. Bert doesn’t think that the swizzle stick is much of a clue, but Freddie thinks it might mean something. The eye patch points to two possible suspects that the kids know about: a member of a rival band in the contest and a man the girls saw who was lurking around the dressing room area. Bert thinks that the rival band was trying to disrupt the contest so they would win, but the others aren’t so sure. It turns out that the guy with the eyepatch was hired by one of the owners of the park to make some repairs, but could he have been hired to do more than that? Could one of the owners have a reason to make sure the park closes? What about the woman who takes care of the animals at the park? She doesn’t seem happy about the conditions they’re kept in.

As the kids investigate their suspects, they get chased by elephants, hunt for a suspect in a fun house, tackle someone in a gorilla suit, and win the band contest!

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

My Reaction

Like Sean, this particular Bobbsey Twins series was the one that I read as a kid. I didn’t even know the difference between the New Bobbsey Twins series and the earlier series until I was older. The Bobbsey Twins series, like other Stratemeyer Syndicate series, is typically set contemporary to when the stories were written, so the New Bobbsey Twins series is set in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when they were originally written and published.

That time period was when I was a kid myself, so things that the kids did in the New Bobbsey Twins series were very like things kids my age were doing when I was a kid. A lot of kids wished that they could be part of a band. At one point, Flossie talks about something she saw in a teen fashion magazine. Flossie isn’t a teenage herself, but as I recall, teen magazines were largely popular with pre-teens (or “tweens”), who wanted to look like teenagers. Later, she pretends to be collecting signatures for Save the Whales, which was a popular and well-known cause at that time.

The mystery in this book was pretty good. I was sure from the beginning that the kid from the rival rock band wasn’t the park saboteur, but I wasn’t completely sure which of the adults was responsible for much of the book.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

The Bobbsey Twins’ Adventure in the Country

Bobbsey Twins

The Bobbsey Twins’ Adventure in the Country by Laura Lee Hope,1907, 1961.

Before I explain the plot of this story, I have to explain that this is one of the early Bobbsey Twins books, originally published in the early 20th century, and like other Stratemeyer Syndicate books that were still in print during the mid-20th century, it was revised from its original form to update the language, culture, and technology in the story and, especially, to remove questionable racial terms and caricatures. The physical copy of the book I read as a kid was the revised version, and I didn’t know about the revisions until I was an adult. When I describe the plot at first, I’m talking about the revised version, but I’m also going to explain some of the differences between the original version and the revised version, so you can see what changed.

The two sets of Bobbsey Twins (Nan and Bert are the elder set of twins and Freddie and Flossie are the younger set) are enjoying their summer vacation at home when their mother receives an invitation for the family to visit the children’s aunt and uncle on their farm and to attend an auction that will be held somewhere nearby. The aunt says that there is something that will be sold at the auction that she thinks will interest the family, but the adults are keeping it as a surprise. The children are excited because they like visiting the farm, and they’ve never been to an auction before.

Mr. Bobbsey has to work at his lumber yard, so the children and their mother take the train to the farm ahead of him, accompanied by their cook/housekeeper, Dinah. (Dinah is black and is a recurring character in the series. The book refers to her as “colored.”) The train trip is a bit chaotic because they nearly forgot to bring their packed lunch, and then, Fred’s cat escapes from its carrier and is nearly left behind when they reach their destination. However, they do get there safely.

At the farm, the children enjoy seeing their cousin, Harry, and visiting all the animals. Freddie loses one of the calves when he tries to take it for a walk, like it’s a dog, and at first, the children fear that it fell in the river and drowned. Fortunately, someone from a nearby farm finds the calf and brings it home. These unrelated misadventures are just the beginning of the children’s summer because there is a mystery that seems to be unfolding at the farm.

On their first night at the farm, Flossie wakes up in the middle of the night because she hears someone playing the piano. She wakes Nan, and the two of them go downstairs, but by the time they get there, whoever was playing the piano is gone. At first, the children’s uncle thinks that it was just a dream, but Nan knows that it wasn’t because a piece of sheet music was knocked off the piano. Later, when they hear the piano at night again, there are smudges on the keys.

The auction is fun. The children each have a little money to buy something small for themselves, just for the experience of bidding on something at an auction. They all find something to buy, and some of the things they find are funny and eclectic. The mystery object that their mother is there to buy is a pony and cart. A neighbor of the aunt and uncle had a pony and cart that his grandchildren used, but they’ve moved away, and the Bobbseys have decided to buy it for their children. The twins’ aunt and uncle are willing to keep them at their farm because they can’t have a pony in the city, and their cousin can use them when the twins aren’t there. The children love the pony, and they have fun with him and the cart with some other kids. However, when they return to the farm after they auction, they discover that the family’s prize bull has been stolen!

The story is somewhat episodic, but there is a thread of mystery that runs through the whole book as the children try to find the missing bull. There’s a boy from New York City who was lost from a group heading to a nearby Fresh Air Camp (part of a charity that has existed since the 19th century to provide poor city children with enriching summer experiences in the countryside – I referred to it before in another vintage children’s book, Ruth Fielding at Sunrise Farm) who witnessed the theft but didn’t realize that the men he saw didn’t own the bull. There’s a Fourth of July celebration and a picnic with other kids, including a local bully. There is some real danger, where Flossie falls over the edge of a cliff and has to be rescued, and the family has to evacuate the farm temporarily when they fear that a nearby dam might break after a fierce storm. Along the way, the Bobbsey twins gather pieces of information that help them find the missing bull.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). The original edition of the book is public domain and available online through Project Gutenberg.

My Reaction

The Mystery

The mysteries in the story are pretty simple. The story is pretty episodic, and the nighttime piano-playing is unrelated to the theft of the bull. The reasons for that are partly related to the way the book was written in the original version. Originally, the book was more of a general collection of stories about how the Bobbsey Twins spend their summer on their aunt and uncle’s farm and have little adventures there, and it wasn’t really a mystery story. One of the features of Stratemeyer Syndicate books is that chapters are always supposed to end on cliffhangers to keep the stories exciting and encourage children to keep reading. That format lends itself well to the mystery genre, which is why some Stratemeyer series that originally started as more general fiction or adventure gradually evolved into mysteries, but some of the early books, like this one, kind of end up being somewhere between mystery and general fiction and read almost like collections of shorter, interrelated stories.

The theft of the bull didn’t occur at all in the original story, but there was a thread through the book about the piano playing at night. In both the new and the old versions, they eventually find out why, but there are different explanations between the versions. In both versions, the nighttime piano player is an animal, not a human.

Original Version vs. Revised

Like other Stratemeyer Syndicate books that were in print in the mid-20th century, the early Bobbsey Twins books were revised and reprinted around the time of the Civil Rights Movement, both to update the technology and slang in the stories and to remove inappropriate racial language. The 1960s edition of the book uses the word “colored” to refer to the housekeeper/cook who works for the Bobbsey family and her husband, which was an acceptable term in the early and mid-20th century (as in The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP), but the word “black” became the common accepted informal, generic term and “African American” became the accepted formal, specific term post-Civil Rights Movement because people were trying to distance themselves from racial words that, while they were not meant to be derogatory, had some emotional baggage attached to them. In the case of this particular book, the changes from the original version to the version I have include making Dinah more intelligent and eliminating the use of stereotypical black people speech. In the original book, even though she’s an adult, Dinah seems childlike in her reactions to things and seems to need the children to explain things to her, like the scale they see at the train station. When she speaks, her speech is spelled out with a strong accent (ex. “dat chile” instead of “that child”), and she throws out phrases like, “Lan’ o’ massy!” In the revised version, she acts and speaks more like the other adults.

Something else that changed from the original version is how much emphasis there was on poor people vs. upper middle class people, like the Bobbseys. The older version of the story emphasizes more how poor the kid from the Fresh Air Camp is and how charitable the Bobbseys are toward him. There are also other instances of charity toward the poor, like when Nan lends another girl a dress because they need to wear white dresses for the Fourth of July celebration, and the other girl doesn’t have a white dress. The book is careful to mention that nobody else knows that the other girl was borrowing a dress from Nan, with the implication that it would have been embarrassing or a mark of shame for people to know that it was a borrowed dress instead of one of her own. Things like this appear in many vintage children’s books from the 19th century and early 20th century, but it’s not something you find much in modern modern books, at least not described like that. Even when I was a middle-class kid in the late 20th century, it wouldn’t be assumed that a kid would necessarily have certain types of clothes for a special occasion or that their family would be able to just quickly buy something new for one-time use. It was also normal for people to borrow things from friends, even just on whims, so borrowing a dress for one-time use for a special occasion wouldn’t have been regarded as either an act of charity or anything to cause embarrassment, if other people just happened to know about it.

Even though there are things in the stories that were changed to make the stories contemporary with the time of the revisions, the 1960s, there are still aspects of the stories that would be out-of-date culturally by 21st century standards. One of those issues relates to how the adults in the story handle the children. One of the adults in the story tries to resolve the bully situation by letting Bert physically fight the boy who was picking on him, telling both the boys to wrestle with each other to settle their differences and get it all out of their systems. This is not advice that most modern adults would give to kids, and one good reason for not giving that advice is that it doesn’t work, not even in this book. First of all, the kid being bullied might not be the winner of the wrestling match in real life, and no kid should be forced to fight physically just because some bully wants to beat them up. In the book, Bert wins the wrestling match because he’s had wrestling classes before, but as the case would probably be in real life as well, it resolves nothing. The bully is resentful about losing the fight and continues to bully him and play mean tricks on the other kids. The bully episodes are basically there just to add conflict and excitement to the story, and they don’t do much more than that.

I was a little surprised that they left in the part from the original story where the kids put on their own circus, and they have an act they call the “Sacred Calf of India.” In the revised version, Nan wears an improvised sari for this act, and they teach the calf to do a trick. Animals doing cute little tricks are just fine, but adding in the exoticism seems in poor taste. I suppose that they left this part in the revised version because it’s not trying to be insulting to people from India, more that the kids are trying to play on the concept of circus acts and snake charmers, but it is another example of something that you find sometimes in vintage books but wouldn’t be likely to find in modern ones.