Posted on by TracyC

Starlings

Starlings by Wilfred S. Bronson, 1948.

The title of the book tells you what it’s about; this is a children’s picture book about starlings. That sounds pretty straight-forward and even a little dull, but there is more to learn about starlings than I imagined, and the author of this book has an imaginative way of explaining information. I love books that cover odd topics in detail, and I enjoyed the whimsical quality of this book. The pictures are detailed black-and-white drawings, some with captions like comics. Most of them explain the anatomy of the birds or their habits, but they have some unique ways of expressing educational information.

The book begins by describing the singing of starlings and then explains how farmers view starlings. Starlings can be a pest to farmers when they eat their fruit or the seeds the farmers are trying to plant, but they can also be helpful when they eat weed seeds and prevent weeds from coming up in the farmers’ fields. Of course, the birds don’t know when they’re helping or hindering because, as far as they’re concerned, they’re just there to eat any food that happens to be available at the moment. I like the little picture of the bird reading a mystery book, trying to figure out why farmers don’t mind when they eat some seeds and try to scare them away from others. That’s an example of the whimsy I was talking about.

The book continues describing what starlings eat and places where they like to roost, and it explains how they affect people living in cities (mainly, messing up their cars). There were times when people in cities considered them such a nuisance that they would shoot them, and some poor people hunted them for food. Actually, the entire reason why we have starlings in the US is that people over-hunted other types of birds (there is a disturbing picture of hunters with piles of dead birds at one point in the book), and birds are an important part of the ecosystem. Even though they can annoy farmers when they eat seeds and fruit, they also eat bugs that are pests to crops.

I was really struck by the passage that explained how starlings were first brought to the United States and why they were brought here:

“Some people think that starlings have no right to food or nesting-places because they are not ‘American birds.’ Yet all the starlings you see were born in America. So were their parents and grandparents and great-great-grandparents and all their relatives clear back to 1890. In that year their ancestors were caught in Europe and brought in cages to America. So many American birds had been killed at that time by our own ancestors that our crops were growing wormier and wormier each year, while insect pests grew worse and worse. So starlings were imported to help us fight the insects. They were freed in Central Park in New York City and left to look out for themselves.”

This explanation uses simplified language for children, and it also oddly evokes imagery of human beings. We don’t normally refer to animals as “foreigners” because animals don’t speak different human languages or have allegiances to foreign governments like people from other countries do. When we talk about new species that have been introduced to an environment where they did not originally belong and quickly spread out and multiple, we usually call them “invasive species.” In that case, the ecological concern is that the new invasive species will disrupt the balance of the natural environment and crowd out native species, but the author is trying to point out that the situation with the starlings was different. The starlings were introduced to the environment in the US on purpose, not by accident, and it was done specifically because they were meant to a solution to a problem. The environment had already been disrupted by humans who had moved into areas where they had not lived previously and where they killed too many of the native species themselves without regard to what that would do to the natural environment and their own farming. The introduction of the starlings was meant to restore a balance that had been lost. However, the people who had originally caused the problem didn’t see it that way, seeing the starlings as pests because they were “foreign.” While birds in general may occasionally be a nuisance because they don’t understand human priorities, they still perform useful functions for human beings as they go about their lives, just being the birds they are – eating annoying weed seeds and bugs and scavenging food from what humans throw out.

“People who think that starlings should be starvelings because they are ‘foreigners’ should remember that these American-born birds save much of what they themselves throw away and are still helping us to fight insects as they did in 1890.”

I understand what the author is trying to explain about balance in the ecological system, but I was struck by the human imagery that the passage evokes: “Foreigners” who came to New York City, not unlike immigrants fresh off the boat from Ellis Island during the 19th century, set free to make their way in a strange environment among people who often regarded them as worthless pests, disliking them while still using the useful services they provided. The comparison still fascinates me. At first, I wasn’t sure that the author meant to make that broader comparison here. I thought he probably used that language just to simply the ecological concepts for children’s understanding, but the author does make another comparison a little further on:

“So let’s be fair. If American-born starlings are foreigners, then so are all people in America except the Indians (Native Americans). So are many kinds of birds, animals, and plants. Our ancestors brought them here from other countries. But if all these creatures, and ourselves, are American now, then so are the starlings. Yes indeed!”

So get off your high horse, starling-haters.

At several points in the book, the author compares birds to airplanes, explaining their muscles and flying mechanisms like machinery. I liked the page where the author compares different planes and helicopters to types of birds (cruisers being like gliding eagles and albatrosses, fast-turning speed planes like starlings and swallows, and hovering helicopters like humming birds). The parts that describe how birds cling to branches as they sleep and how their wings move look accurate and helpful. The part about how a bird creates eggs is hilarious. The text about the formation of the egg inside the bird isn’t bad. It completely skips over the subject of the fertilization of eggs (understandably), and the picture show the bird as a kind of egg-making factory with little men assembling the parts of the egg in stages instead of showing a bird’s reproductive anatomy.

In the upper right corners of this section of the book, there are little squares with a flying bird because part of the book is meant to be uses as a flip book to see a bird flying. The page shown above with the boy flipping through the book shows how to use the flip book portion.

There is a section of the book that explains how baby birds develop in the egg and eventually hatch.

There is also a section in the book that shows how adult starlings will prepare a nest for their eggs and how they raise their babies.

As I was reading the book, I wondered who the author, Wilfred S. Bronson, was. Bronson was an artist specializing in natural history, and he wrote and illustrated other books for children about animals and natural history. In the years before he wrote this particular book, he served in the US Army during World War I and painted murals for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression. He also participated in expeditions to gather specimens and create illustrations of wildlife for botanical gardens and museums.

I haven’t found a copy of this particular book to read online, but it was republished in 2008 and is still available from Amazon.

Posted on by TracyC

Fishes

Fishes by Bertha Morris Parker, 1943, 1957.

This is a reprint of an earlier book, and it’s interesting because this was part of an educational science series. The author was from the University of Chicago, and the accuracy was verified by Walter H. Chute, the Director of the John G. Shedd Aquarium at the time.

As a child, I was never particularly interested in fish. My mother had a fish tank with pet fish, but I lived pretty far from large bodies of water and never went fishing. For years, this book, probably purchased at one of the many used book sales my family attended over the years, went unread. However, as an adult, I like reading children’s books about very specific topics because they often include some fun and usual facts.

The book begins by explaining to child readers how goldfish are similar to and different from human beings. It seems pretty straight forward, but they point out some thoughtful similarities and differences. Both fish and humans need to breathe, but they do it in different ways, which is why humans drown in water and fish effectively drown in air. The book also points out that goldfish cannot move their heads independently of their bodies in the way that humans do.

In the section called “The Story of the Goldfish”, the book explains how wild goldfish were first kept as pets in China and Japan. Wild goldfish actually have a variety of colors, but hundreds of years ago in China, people liked the yellow or gold ones best as pets, and they began deliberately breeding fish with these colors, which is how they came to be known as “goldfish.”

The book defines “fish” as creatures with gills, fins, and backbones but no arms or legs. It uses this definition to separate fish from other aquatic creatures like whales (no gills, actually a mammal with lungs), jellyfish (no fins, gills, or backbone), crabs (gills but no fins, arms and an exoskeleton instead of a backbone), and starfish. It also explains the difference between fish that live in salt water vs. fish that live in fresh water.

The book explains what different types of fishes eat, how they’re born (most hatch from eggs), how they defend themselves, and how they migrate. In one section, the book explains how fish have some or all of the five senses that humans have (sight, hearing, smelling, taste, and touch), but they have them to different degrees and use them in different ways.

The book presents information about some specific types of fish, and it even mentions that some types of fish are endangered species. I usually associate environmental messages with the late 20th century, but this book discussed the over-fishing of sturgeon and the ecological dangers of erosion caused by deforestation on river banks and factory waste dumped in water in the mid-20th century.

The book ends with a list of tips for observing fish.

The book presents a pretty comprehensive beginner’s guide to fish in general, and I really appreciated the mentions of environmental issues. My one criticism is that the book could use more pictures and especially bigger pictures. All of the pictures are in full color, but most of them are rather small, just in the corners or edges of the pages, which are mostly full of text. I just think that larger pictures would be more appealing and more child-friendly. There are even places where the edges of the pictures and their captions are cut off by the edges of the book (as shown in two of the pictures of pages above), which looks clumsy and annoying. The book seems pretty authoritative, but I think it could have been presented better. I’m not sure how people who originally read this book looked at it, but I didn’t like the size and positioning of the illustrations.

I couldn’t find an online edition of this vintage nonfiction children’s book, but I did find online editions of other nonfiction books for children by the same author through Internet Archive.

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Bells

Bells by Elizabeth Starr Hill, illustrated by Shelly Sacks, 1970.

I love books about oddball topics, so a children’s picture book about the history of bells was irresistibly intriguing.

The book begins with the origins of bells in the Bronze Age. People had made rattles of various kinds before the Bronze Age, but after they learned to make bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, they discovered that they could make metal rattles with a much prettier sound. These metal rattles/early bells were made in the “crotal” design, which is the same shape as today’s jingle bells or sleigh bells. Other shapes of bells, like gongs and the classic bell shape may have been inspired when people realized that pleasant sounds could be made by banging bronze utensils against bronze dishes and bowls.

Bells have been used for thousands of years and have served many purposes. The oldest bell that has been found (at the time the book was written) was over 3000 years old and came from the area near Babylon. King Solomon of Israel used to have bells to frighten away birds from the roof of his temple. The Spartans were able to infiltrate a walled town in Macedonia because the sentry wore a bell on his uniform that helped them to keep track of where he was, but in other instances, nets with bells attached to them were used to warn of the presence of enemies. Bells have also been frequently used in religious services.

Sometimes, people wear bells to call attention to themselves. The classic jester’s cap with crotal bells (jingle bells) attached to it is meant to be attention-getting.

Bells can be made of many different materials, from different types of metal bells to glass bells to clay bells. There are even wooden ones, although they make more of a clunking sound than a ringing. People used to make bells by hammering pieces of metal into shape, but then they developed ways to cast bells in molds, which is how bells are made today.

There are many superstitions that have been attached both to the making of bells and their use. The book describes the Bilbie family, who famously made bells in Medieval England. The Bilbies were superstitious and consulted astrologers to determine the best times to make their bells. They also always rang bells for the first time on full moons. Various people have believed that ringing bells frightens away demons and witches.

The parts about superstitions and legends are my favorites. In particular, there is a legend in England about a town that was completely buried during an earthquake. The people in the town always rang their church bells at Christmas, and the legend is that if you go to a particular spot and put your ear against the ground, you’ll still hear them ringing the bells. However, the book says that there’s actually a scientific explanation behind the phenomenon. People who have put their ears to the ground at that spot have heard bells ringing, but they’re actually the bells from a nearby town, not one underground. The ground actually conducts sound very well, even better than sound waves moving through the air, so a person standing upright might not hear the bells ringing from another town, but someone who put their ear to the ground could hear the conducted sound vibrations. It’s not unlike the phenomena experienced by people who put their ears to the rails on railroad tracks to listen for the train. There are also stories of people having heard the approach of herds of animals, like buffalo, coming toward them in this way. The book doesn’t mention it, but “keep an ear to the ground” is actually an expression for watching and listening for signs of things that are going to happen because people noticed that vibrations in the ground could be indications of something coming toward them.

The book also describes some famous bells, like the Liberty Bell, Big Ben (Big Ben is actually the name of the bell in the clock tower, not the clock tower itself, although people informally think of the clock tower as Big Ben) and Tsar Kolokol, the largest bell in the world.

There are also a few nursery rhymes that mention bells (although the book doesn’t give any background information about the rhymes) and some information about change-ringing and carillons.

The book annoyed me a little in the way it kind of jumps around, telling some history, then some legends, then some more history, and then more legends. It’s a very easy read, and the information is interesting, but it’s a big disjointed. It sometimes feels more like a list of facts and short stories than one cohesive story. It might help if there were headings or chapter divisions in the book to organize the information, but there aren’t.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Hand Shadows

Hand Shadows to be Thrown Upon the Wall by Henry Bursill, 1859, 1967.

When I first read and started playing with this book as a kid, I didn’t stop to read the preface in the book or look at the publishing date, so I completely missed the fact that this is a reprint of a book from the late 1850s. The author, Henry Bursill (link repaired 9-11-24), was a professional artist

In the preface, Bursill refers to a well-known print from the early 19th century called The Rabbit on the Wall, which shows a father making shadow figures on the wall with his hands to amuse his children. Bursill says that there have been other books about hand shadows before his, but he emphasizes that his book is not the same as theirs because he has worked out his own hand shadows through experimentation. He says that it will take some practice for people making hand shadows to get them perfectly, but he encourages people to practice and not be afraid to work out new hand shadows of their own through experimentation. Bursill did the illustrations for the book himself, and he says that he began sketching some of the designs during his time as an art student and that he would amuse some fellow students by making hand shadows on the wall of his studio.

Other than the preface, the only words in the book are the captions on each of the pictures. I’ve tried some of the hand shadows in the book, and I had a more difficult time than the preface makes it sound. The only ones I’ve really been able to do well were the bird and the greyhound. I haven’t given up on mastering some of the more difficult ones someday, though!

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

Posted on by TracyC

Cat’s Cradle String Games

Cat’s Cradle String Games by Camilla Gryski, 1983.

Back when I was in middle school, I went through a phase where I was really into cat’s cradle. I’m one of those people who like to have something to fiddle with in their hands, and it was easy to carry a loop of string in my pocket. If I lost the string, I could always make another string loop and carry that. This was the book that I used to teach myself how to make cat’s cradle string figures.

The book begins with a section that explains the terminology of making string figures and how to start out with the string in a basic position on the hands.

From there, the book covers how to make various string figures. As the book demonstrates how to make different figures, it explains a little about which cultures use them. Cat’s cradle and similar string games are played around the world, and different cultures have had different names for some of the same figures. For example the “cup and saucer” figure can be called a saki cup or maybe a house if it’s held upside down.

Some figures can be made independently of each other, but what turns making string figures into the game of cat’s cradle is the fact that some figures can be turned into other figures in a sequence. The book demonstrates the sequence of making figures involved in playing a game of cat’s cradle. It’s a game for two players with the players each taking the string from each other to form each of the figures. The game ends when one of the players forms one of the ending figures that doesn’t lead to any other figure.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Understanding and Collecting Rocks and Fossils

Understanding and Collecting Rocks and Fossils by Martyn Bramwell, 1983.

This book is part of a series of beginning hobby guides for kids. It explains how to collect and study rocks and fossils and some of the deeper aspects of geology. The book emphasizes that studying geology helps us to understand the story of the Earth and the forces that have shaped our landscapes and formed the rocks and minerals we use. All through the book, there are suggested activities and experiments for readers, marked with the symbol of a red magnifying hand-lens.

The book explains some the large geological forces, like how the continents move and the plates that make up the Earth’s crust shift. Then, it explains the different types of rocks, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic, with examples of each type.

One of the sections I found particularly interesting is the one that explains about how to identify different minerals and what they’re used for. The activity on that page explains how to identify a mineral based on a series of factors, like whether or not it’s magnetic, the color of a streak it might leave when scraped against tile, and its hardness, which you can test by seeing what implement will scratch it.

I also liked the section about crystals and gemstones. There are instructions for growing your own crystals.

The section about fossils explains how to collect fossils, clean them, make plaster molds of them, and identify what organisms made the fossils. The book explains how fossils are made and had a timeline of past eras on Earth and the creatures that existed in each era.

The last section of the book explains the types of work that geologists do and the types of geological surveys they carry out to predict earthquakes and tsunamis and finding useful deposits of ore, minerals, oil, and natural gas.

There’s quite a lot of information to take in. Even though this is a pretty beginner guide to rock collecting and geology, I would say that the book would be better suited to older children than younger ones.

Posted on by TracyC

Voyage to the Planets

Voyage to the Planets by Jeff Davidson, 1990.

This was my second favorite book about outer space as a kid! It would have been the first favorite, but my first favorite had glow-in-the-dark pictures, and this one doesn’t. I bought them at the same time at a school book fair, but the one with the glow-in-the-dark pictures definitely caught my attention first. This book does, however, have pictures of the planets taken by the Voyager 2 space probe.

The beginning of the book explains a little about the solar system and its place in the galaxy and the Voyager 2 probe.

Then, it takes readers on a journey through the solar system, beginning with the sun at the center of the solar system and moving outward, planet by planet. The page about each planet explains the origin of the planet’s name in Roman mythology and gives facts about the planet, such as its size, distance from the sun, and rotation and orbit periods.

The page about Earth specifically mentions, “The Earth will only support life as long as we are careful to maintain its special conditions. If people continue to pollute the environment, the delicate balance of our planet may be destroyed forever.” Books, movies, tv shows, and teachers in public school gave us environmental messages very early in life when I was young in the 1980s and 1990s.

The book ends with Pluto as the ninth planet, which is what we were taught as kids in the early 1990s. There is no mention of “dwarf planets” or the Kuiper Belt because the book was published in 1990 and scientists didn’t find definite evidence of Kuiper Belt objects until 1992.

Posted on by TracyC

Discover the Night Sky

Discover the Night Sky by Chris Madsen and Michele Claiborne, 1989.

I bought this book at a school book fair when I was a kid, and it was my favorite book about the stars and outer space because it has glow-in-the-dark pictures. As a child, I loved anything that was glow-in-the-dark. Actually, I still do.

Every page in the book is designed to be interactive. There are pages that talk about different aspects of outer space, but the pages with the glow-in-the-dark pictures want you to guess what’s in the picture based on descriptions of it. Then, you’re supposed to turn off the light and look at the glowing picture to see what it is. You can see the what the glow-in-the-dark picture is without turning off the lights if you tilt the book and look at it at an angle or use a black light (like I did to take the pictures), but it is more fun if you really do look at it while it’s glowing in the dark. (Like other glow-in-the-dark toys, it glows better if the page has been in the light first to charge it.)

The pages after each glow-in-the-dark page have facts about the object in the glow-in-the-dark picture and an experiment for readers to do. The experiments help demonstrate the nature of the moon, stars, and planets, like what causes the phases of the moon, what causes seasons on Earth, and why you don’t see the stars during the day, even though they’re still there.

The information in the book is still factually correct, although it shows Pluto as being the last planet of the solar system. (Since people still quibble about this, I don’t consider it a big issue.) It isn’t a bad introduction to outer space for young children. The last page in the book is about the Voyager 2 space probe. Its primary mission ended around the time the book was first published, but we have contact with the space probe today (as of early 2021).

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. The online version of the book doesn’t fully do it justice because you can’t take advantage of the glow-in-the-dark feature, but you can still read the text and see the experiment pages.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy

Sammy Keyes

Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy by Wendelin Van Draanen, 1999.

At the end of the previous book in the series, Sammy was given a punishment from her school for causing a disturbance during an assembly that requires her to complete 20 hours of community service. She’s working off her volunteer hours at St. Mary’s Church under the supervision of Father Mayhew. When Sammy lived with her mother, they weren’t religious, and Sammy hadn’t even been baptized. However, her grandmother is much more religious, and she had Sammy baptized by Father Mayhew soon after Sammy moved in with her. Father Mayhew is kind and understanding with Sammy. There are also some nuns at St. Mary’s from an order called the Sisters of Mercy. They’re helping out in the soup kitchen. When elderly Sister Josephine sees that Sammy is painting a wall in Father Mayhew’s office, she complains that he’s always getting the services that the nuns ask for and never get. They’ve been asking to have the house where they live painted for years, and it still hasn’t happened.

Father Mayhew’s gratitude for Sammy’s help fades when a small ivory cross is stolen from his office, and he thinks that Sammy did it because she was in there. Sammy tells him that she didn’t take it, but he doesn’t believe her and sends her to go work in the soup kitchen for awhile. (He didn’t ask her to turn out her pockets before she left his office. I would have because that would settle the matter right there.) In the soup kitchen, Sammy sees another girl about her age who reminds her somewhat of herself, partly because of the high-top shoes she wear. Sammy wonders who the girl is and why she’s eating at the soup kitchen, but she isn’t able to talk to her there.

Later, Sammy discusses the missing cross with Father Mayhew again. This time, he seems less certain that Sammy took it, and Sammy asks him if it was something valuable that might have been sold for money or if someone who is angry with him could have taken it as revenge. The one person who seems angry with Father Mayhew is Sister Josephine, but he can’t picture her taking the cross. However, there are other people who might have a reason to be angry with Father Mayhew. Brother Phil, who works in the soup kitchen, wants to become a full priest, but Father Mayhew doesn’t think that he’s suited to it.

The thefts also continue. A couple of gold chalices are stolen from the church. The nuns who are part of the Sisters of Mercy turn out to be traveling and staying in a trailer, and they’re only staying at St. Mary’s temporarily to hold a fundraiser. They tell Father Mayhew that someone tried to break into their trailer, but they scared the thief off. One of the nuns ask Father Mayhew to keep an heirloom locket in his safe until she can deliver it to her niece.

Meanwhile, at school, Sammy is playing on one of her school’s two softball teams. Her school nemesis, Heather, plays on the other school team, so their feuding and rivalry has transferred to the school’s sports field.

This book is the first book in the series to bring up the subject of Sammy’s father. Sammy’s grandmother gives her a catcher’s mitt that once belonged to her father. Sammy’s mother was going to throw it out, but her grandmother rescued it from the trash, and it’s the only thing Sammy has that was once her father’s. She sees her love of playing catcher at softball as a connection to the father she’s never known. Sammy has never seen a picture of her father and doesn’t know his name, and her mother has admitted that he has no idea that Sammy exists. She has asked her mother about her father in the past, but her mother refuses to tell her who he is or what happened to him. All she has ever told Sammy is that she was young when they met and her relationship with him was a mistake. Sammy can’t help but feel that her mother things of her existence as a mistake as well, maybe even a bigger one than her relationship with her father. The fact that her mother has essentially abandoned her to pursue her dream of being an actress has left her feeling like her mother never really wanted her. Sammy has to stay with her grandmother, even though it means keeping her living arrangements a secret, because staying with her father isn’t even an option.

The next time that Sammy sees the mysterious girl in high-tops at the soup kitchen, she and her friends follow her to see where she lives. It turns out that she’s homeless and living in a cardboard box. This discovery raises some personal questions and concerns for Sammy. On the one hand, she’s unfortunate because her living situation is precarious and depends on not being caught in her grandmother’s apartment, which is meant only for seniors, but on the other, she does have her grandmother to rely on. This other poor girl doesn’t seem to have anyone. At one point, Sammy asks her grandmother about what would have happened to her if she hadn’t been able to take Sammy when her mother left. It’s an uncomfortable question for both of them because it raises the question of whether Sammy’s mother would have just abandoned her completely if she hadn’t had her mother willing to take her. Sammy’s mother doesn’t seems to care how awkward their living arrangement is because they have to keep Sammy’s presence in the apartment a secret. Without Sammy’s father in the picture, there is no one else but her grandmother to take her. There is also the constant question of what would happen to Sammy and her grandmother if someone manages to prove that Sammy is living with her against the rules. Sammy is better off than the homeless girl, not by much, but still better.

Later in the story, after Sammy’s beloved mitt is stolen, Sammy tells Hudson about everything that’s going on. She’s pretty sure that Heather is the mitt thief because she’s the one person who’s always doing awful things to her. Hudson points out that, in a way, Sammy is fortunate to know who she can trust and who she can’t, and she has one definite enemy. Holly has never really had anybody to trust before, and Father Mayhew has no idea who he can trust or not trust in his church. His thief is obviously one of the people who works with him on daily basis, someone who can come and go while seeming above suspicion, and Father Mayhew is only just beginning to realize that there are people around him he can’t trust as much as he thought.

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

My Reaction

For awhile, Sammy suspects that the homeless girl who visits the soup kitchen might be the thief who is stealing things from the church, but she’s not. The girl, whose name is Holly, becomes a regular character in the series. She is a runaway foster child who’s had an even tougher life than Sammy. When she and Sammy talk, she explains how she was abused in previous foster homes, which is why she ran away to live on her own. At one point, she is attacked by a man, and Sammy has to help fight him off. The girls realize that Holly can’t keep camping out on her own, and Sammy helps her find a place to stay with people who turn out to be able to provide a much more stable home for her, which is how she remains a character for the rest of the series. Holly begins attending school with Sammy and her friends, with her new foster family making up a story about how she transferred from New Mexico. Her new home seems to be a kind secretive foster home, not unlike Sammy’s living arrangements. Her new foster family doesn’t seem to try to legalize their custody of Holly (not in this book, anyway), possibly out of fear of her being taken away and put in other abusive or dysfunctional foster homes in the flawed system she came from. There is also a standalone book which focuses specifically on Holly called Runaway, which explains more about her personal history. Some of the things that happened to Holly are an indication that this series isn’t meant for young children. I would say that it’s best for tweens and up, probably about around the middle school level.

One of my favorite characters in this series is Hudson Graham, a retired old man who acts like a grandfather to Sammy. She often goes to see him when she needs help and advice. He is knowledgeable on an eclectic range of topics, and he has a massive private library that can answer most of Sammy’s questions. In this book, Sammy thinks about how, even though she and Hudson have talked about many things together, including his wide-ranging hobbies, she doesn’t really know that much about his past, even what he used to do for a living before he retired. Because he has a collection of foreign language dictionaries and recording devices, Sammy thinks that he might have once worked for the CIA or something. When the people who own the dog grooming business down the street lose the key to their safe because a dog ate it, Sammy asks Hudson what they can go, and he tells her some fascinated facts about safes and how to get into them. The fact that he knows about that suggested to me that he probably worked in law enforcement or security at some point. My thought is that he might have once been a private investigator because they do security work and would have some basic law knowledge and use devices that Hudson has, like recording machines and cameras. My next guess would be that he was a journalist, also because of the recording devices and cameras and because journalists can write on a wide range of topics, giving Hudson his eclectic knowledge and the need for his own private research library. Aspects of Sammy’s life and the lives of people she knows add extra mystery to the story. Hudson’s past isn’t explained in this book in the series, and I’m not sure if it ever is.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief

Sammy Keyes

Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief by Wendelin Van Draanen, 1998.

Samantha “Sammy” Keyes lives with her grandmother in her apartment because her mother (who she calls “Lady Lana”) left her with her grandmother a year before, when she left to pursue an acting career. Much of the time, Sammy doesn’t have much to do at her grandmother’s apartment, so she spends her time watching people and nearby buildings with her binoculars. Technically, Sammy isn’t supposed to be living in her grandmother’s apartment because the apartment building is for seniors only, so they have to keep her presence a secret. Sammy only keeps a few belongings that are easily hidden, and she has to hide in a closet when people they don’t know and trust come to the door. She can’t come and go as often as she wants because her grandmother’s nosy neighbor will notice and report her. One day, while looking at a seedy hotel nearby, she witnesses someone with black gloves stealing money from someone’s purse. As she watches, this man looks directly at her and can tell that she’s watching. Sammy has the strange feeling like she’s seen the man somewhere before, but she can’t think where, and she’s nervous that he saw her, too.

A little later, Sammy’s friend, Marissa, comes to the apartment and asks Sammy to help her find her younger brother, who’s missing. Sammy knows that the best place to look for Marissa’s brother is at the pet store, so the two girls hurry off to find him. On her way back to her grandmother’s apartment, Sammy sees that there are police at the hotel, so the theft has been discovered. There are other kids standing around and watching, so Sammy decides to take a look, too. She sees the police interviewing the woman whose money was stolen. As she listens to them talk and mention looking for fingerprints, she can’t help but comment that there won’t be any fingerprints because the thief wore gloves. When the police and victim all hear her say that, they realize that she’s the only witness to the crime. As they question her, she describes what she saw while giving them as little personal information as possible so her secret of living with her grandmother won’t be exposed. When the police take down her name and address, she gives them her real name but Marissa’s address in a wealthy part of town.

The next day, both Sammy and Marissa have their first day of junior high school. Sammy immediately gets the attention of the school mean girl, Heather Acosta (who becomes her school nemesis for the rest of the series). When Heather jabs Sammy in the butt with a sharp pin, Sammy punches her in the nose. Of course, the vice principal shows all kinds of sympathy to poor Heather and punishes Sammy because he claims that nobody saw Heather jab Sammy in the butt with a pin. He makes her sit alone in a tiny closet that the school calls “the Box” to think about what she’s done. Even when Marissa tells the principal what really happened, supporting what Sammy said, the principal just says that there’s never any excuse for punching anybody and that Sammy is suspended. The vice principal expects Sammy to shake hands with her rotten abuser and make peace when she returns to school. (Ooh, I hate that. I’ve got a rant for later.)

After Sammy’s suspension, she and Marissa walk home together, and Sammy tells Marissa about what she witnessed at the hotel. When the two girls stop at the store, they see the woman whose purse was robbed and learn that she’s an astrologer called Madame Nashira (real name Gina). Surprisingly, she admits that she doesn’t really believe in fortune-telling, but she does it anyway because she needs the money. She likes drawing up astrological birth charts for people, though. There’s an interesting scene in the book where she does one for Sammy and explains how it works. (I’ve never been serious about astrology, and I doubt it even more since I took an astronomy class and my teacher showed us how to use a star globe and used it to explain why people’s birth signs aren’t their real birth signs, but it was still kind of fascinating just to think about. I’ve never actually seen a real birth chart before.)

When Sammy gets back to her grandmother’s apartment, Sammy’s grandmother’s nosy neighbor, Mrs. Graybill, tries to find evidence that Sammy is living there against the rules, or Sammy has to pretend like she’s only visiting and leaves to visit a nearby friend, Hudson Graham, an old man who has a lot of books. The two of them talk about other robberies that have happened in the area recently. When Sammy gets back to the apartment, she finds Mrs. Graybill angrily telling her grandmother that Sammy wrote her a threatening note and slipped it under her door. Of course, Sammy didn’t do any such thing. When Sammy sees that the note says, “If you talk, you’ll be sorry,” she knows that the threat is actually from the thief. The thief knew that someone from the apartment building was watching him, but he accidentally delivered the threat to the wrong apartment. With a threatening thief wanting to keep her quiet, Heather and the school principal wanting her butt to suffer at home, the nosy Mrs. Graybill wanting her sent away from her grandmother’s apartment, and the police wanting Sammy at her friend Marissa’s house, Sammy’s witnessing of the theft threatens to expose her own secrets.

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

My Reaction

One of the things that stands out to me is that neither Marissa nor Sammy really live in the best homes. Marissa’s family has a lot more money, and they live in a big house, but her parents are busy business people who spend most of their time working and traveling, often leaving Marissa alone with her younger brother, fending for themselves with Pop Tarts and tv dinners. Marissa feels neglected, and she really is. She also doesn’t have many real friends. A lot of the other kids who play up to her, like Heather, are trying to get her to give them money because they’re aware that her parents give her a lot of spending cash, and Marissa has had trouble saying “no” to them in the past. One of the thing Marissa likes about Sammy is that she’s never asked her for money. Sammy likes Marissa for herself.

Sammy is surprised when she finds out that Marissa actually envies her because her grandmother is always there for her in ways her parents aren’t. Sammy doesn’t feel lucky because, even though her grandmother cares about her, she always lives on the edge, having to pretend like she’s not really living with her grandmother, keeping only a few belongings that are easily hidden, and ducking into a closet to avoid being caught. She can never be completely at home in her grandmother’s apartment because she isn’t supposed to be there at all. Sammy’s mother occasionally calls, but Sammy always feels uncomfortable and neglected by her mother’s abandonment of her, which is why she refers to her as “Lady Lana” instead of as her mother.

I thought at first that Sammy’s housing situation might be solved by the end of the book, but it wasn’t. At the end of the story, she’s still secretly living with her grandmother and lying to the police about being Marissa’s foster sister. However, there are hints in this book about another possible place for Sammy and her grandmother to live in the future, so that situation might change. At no point in the story does anyone mention who Sammy’s father is, where he is, or why he didn’t take Sammy when her mother left. The identity of Sammy’s father is actually an over-arching mystery in this series, something that they discuss later.

As for the book’s introduction of “Rear” Admiral Heather the Butt Poker, the book doesn’t use the phrase “rotten abuser”, but that’s my take on it. Get ready for another one of my anti-bullying rants, or skip the rest of this long paragraph and the next two after that. I always find bullying in books stressful, especially when adults take the side of the young bully. It’s not as bad when a bully is punished or at least called out for their bullying, but when adults refuse to believe the victim, it’s awful. I know from long, bitter experience how the worst, most twisted mean kids provoke fights so their victims end up looking like the bad ones when they finally snap. The abusive kids know that the adults like them and will favor them every time. I’ve seen it happen before, and the fact that situations like this end up in books like this shows that it’s a sadly common experience that many people relate to. The abusers’ behavior never changes because they never experience consequences. The adults delude themselves that the abusers are either “normal” kids or will change (somehow, magically) as they get older and gaslight the victims that the situation is their fault and that it’s possible to be friends with the abuser without the abuser changing their behavior and continuing to act the same mean way they always act. I appreciate that the book shows the unfairness of the situation by adults who just want the situation easily resolved and make the kid they don’t like as well take the brunt of it. I know that Sammy’s use of physical retaliation is what put her in trouble, but honestly, I feel more inclined as an adult to think that sometimes physical force is necessary when dealing with a physical abuser. I’ve never heard of anyone who stopped being physically or emotionally abusive because they were asked politely, and when people in authority refuse to do anything, there sadly isn’t much recourse. Heather should not be touching anyone else’s butt, not with a sharp object, not with her hands, and not with anything else. It’s someone else’s butt. Heather should NOT be touching anyone else’s butt for any reason at all, let alone inflicting pain to someone else’s butt by penetrating it with something sharp. At her age, she should be old enough to understand that sort of thing has connotations other than a kid’s prank, and if she isn’t, someone needs to have a long, serious talk with her to explain why. I know that Heather’s meant to be just a thoughtless mean kid and not molester or something, but she’s still young and someone should put a stop to this before it goes any further. Understanding of these things has to come at some point in a person’s life. If there’s any lesson that’s difficult to carry too far, it’s the concept that no one should mess with someone else’s butt and cause pain. If Heather is allowed to mess with people’s butts in this school, understand that there is absolutely nowhere else in this society where she would be allowed to do that without repercussions. There’s no shame in having some weirdo you don’t even know assault your butt, but there’s a whole world of shame for being that weirdo who can’t leave someone else’s butt alone. Also, Heather jabbed Sammy with something sharp that penetrated her skin. Am I the only adult thinking about tetanus and blood poisoning?

Kids who are bullies in school are more likely to engage in aggressive, anti-social, and criminal behavior in adulthood. Shrugging and saying “Kids will be kids” while doing nothing is one of the worst possible things to do. Bullies don’t magically get better when they hit a certain age. If no one intervenes and teaches them that there are some forms of behavior that are never acceptable and really enforce the rules, they will continue their bullying for the whole rest of their lives, seeing the whole rest of the world as being in the wrong for complaining about their behavior, causing workplace stress, family turmoil, and failed relationships. It’s a serious problem. It’s not harmless. It seems like decades past time for the school vice principal to have this explained to him as well. A school can have all kinds of anti-bullying rules, but if they never enforce them for all parties involved, they’re completely useless because it’s like they don’t even exist at all. Kids are pretty good judges of who’s a pushover and what they can get away with, so anyone who’s worked with them should realize that the only rules that matter are the ones that actually get enforced. Unless the vice principal is one of those grown-up bullies himself who never got a clue and can’t stand to realize the reality about himself, which is always a possibility. I just have no sympathy for that.

I wonder if the vice principal considered how his reaction to what Sammy told him about being jabbed in the butt by a sharp object, actively punishing Sammy for what she said and for her physical retaliation to the violation of her body, might be teaching her some terrible lessons about how to respond to a sexual assault, including the one that people in authority will never believe her and will actively punish her because it’s the easiest thing for them to do and that’s all that matters. That happens quite a lot in real life, as the #MeToo movement has shown. This video, which is rather explicit in its descriptions and not for kids, explains about university officials who act like this vice principal and the harm they do when they let sexual violators go unpunished and even rewarded, while their victims are sent jumping through hoops for justice they never plan to give them because they just want them to shut up, go away, and not make trouble for the bullies they really like. At their core, bullying and sexual violence are both about power and control over other people and using people for the perpetrator’s purpose. It’s not really surprising that there is a connection between the two and that young bullies can turn into perpetrators of sexual violence. I wonder if the vice principal’s response would have been different if it had been a boy who jabbed Sammy’s butt instead of a girl. Actually, I don’t really wonder. I’m sure he would never think of that and would spend a lot more time coming up with reasons why this situation is different is different from any form of sexual assault, so harmless, and how he shouldn’t have to think of it if someone asked him. I liked the part where Sammy offered to show him the mark from the pin if he refused to believe her, an offer the vice principal didn’t accept. I know he’s just taking the easy way out here, punishing the person who didn’t lie and deny throwing a punch and maybe sympathizing with Heather because she got noticeably hurt in a place that isn’t covered by pants and underwear, but as an adult who remembers kids like Heather, I have absolutely no respect for this vice principal for his hard-line punish-the-bullied stance. I don’t feel for Heather at all because she got what she provoked, and there was repeated provocation followed up by a physical attack before Sammy finally broke. Every human on Earth has a breaking point, anyone might snap when pushed too far, and nobody is clever for exploiting someone’s human emotions to the point where they break. Learning that is a valuable life lesson. Of course, I know Heather sticks around as a bully for other books, so she’s not learning a thing.

While Sammy is suspended, Heather and her friend Tenille start a scheme at school to get money from other students by milking their sympathy for her “broken nose” (what they call the “Help Heal Heather Fund”). Of course, her nose isn’t really broken. Sammy realizes it because she’s seen someone with a broken nose before, and the bandaging on Heather’s isn’t right. (The book doesn’t mention it, but people with a broken nose also typically get two black eyes or at least dark, obvious bruises under the eyes from the broken blood vessels. I didn’t know that as a kid, but someone told me about that as an adult, so that’s one of the first things I’d look for.) When Sammy realizes that Heather is faking a broken nose and putting bandages on herself, she figures out how to expose her scheme. She calls the office of the doctor Heather mentioned to someone else, pretending to be Heather, and has the doctor’s office call the vice principal to explain that she doesn’t really need to wear bandages, implying that the vice principal is forcing her to wear them against her will out of an abundance of caution. After the vice principal gets the call from the doctor, who chewed him out for forcing a girl to cover her nose in bandages over just a little nose bleed, he marches into the cafeteria and tells Heather to take her bandages off in front of everyone, exposing her fraud. He tells her that they’re going to have a talk in his office about her lies, and Heather tries to hit Sammy, accidentally hitting the vice principal instead. Heather gets suspended for much longer than Sammy was, and the other students are angry with both her and Tenille for taking their money. The vice principal never apologizes to Sammy for his earlier implication that she was lying and for making her sit in that little closet called “the Box” to think about it, but her reputation is restored at school.