Posted on by TracyC

Crispin and the Cross of Lead

Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi, 2002.

The story begins in 1377 in England. It begins with the death of the boy’s mother, Asta. The boy is only known as “Asta’s son” at this point. Nobody has ever called him anything else for as long as he can remember. Even his mother only called him “Son.” He is 13 years old and has no knowledge of who his father was, although his mother told him that he died of the Plague before he was born. As a fatherless child, he was often taunted by others in their little village, and he noticed that no one really seemed to like his mother, although he never really understood why. The only real friend they’ve had is the village priest. With his mother gone and John Aycliffe, the steward of the manor of Lord Furnival that controls the area where they live, demanding his only ox as the death tax for his mother, the boy fears starvation.

As a bleak future lies before the boy, something happens which makes his situation even more dire. He witnesses a secret meeting between John Aycliffe and a mysterious stranger. The boy doesn’t understand the significance of the meeting, but Aycliffe catches him watching and tries to kill him. The boy escapes, but it soon becomes clear that he can’t go home again. Aycliffe has people hunting for him, and he overhears a couple of them talking, saying that the steward has accuse him of stealing from him. No one actually likes Aycliffe and they don’t really believe that the boy is a thief, but they have no choice but to follow the steward’s orders because he’s a relative of Lord Furnival’s wife, and that’s how he gained his position.

Not knowing why Aycliffe has framed him for theft and not having anywhere else to go, the boy turns to the village priest for help. He discusses the meeting he witnessed between Aycliffe and the mysterious stranger, and the priest reveals that Lord Furnival, who has been away, fighting, has returned home but is now dying. The stranger, Sir Richard du Brey, brought the news of Lord Furnival’s impending death, but the boy knows that Aycliffe and du Brey seemed concerned about another matter, something they said posed a threat to them.

The priest tells the boy that Aycliffe means to have him killed and that his only choice is to run away. The boy doesn’t see how he can do that or where he’s supposed to go because he has lived all of his life as a serf, bound to the land. The priest tells him that he needs to go to a big town and stay there for a year and a day to gain his freedom from serfdom (this was a true historical way for people to escape serfdom in the Middle Ages). The priest also tells the boy that his real name is Crispin, but his mother didn’t want anyone else to know, for reasons that he doesn’t explain. He asks Crispin if his mother ever told him anything about his father, but the boy just says that all he knows is that his father is dead. Crispin asks the priest if there’s something that he’s not telling him about his mother, but the priest doesn’t explain. Instead, he tells Crispin that the most important thing is for him to get away. He tells Crispin to hide in the woods while he gathers some things to help him on his journey, and he promises to tell him more about his father when they see each other again. He says that it would be safer for Crispin to know more right before he leaves. (You just know that when someone has something important to say but would prefer to say it later, that person is probably doomed.)

When Crispin waits for the priest to come for him later, a boy from the village shows up instead, saying that the priest sent him. The boy, Cerdic, guides him to Goodwife Peregrine’s house, and she advises him to go to the south because the steward’s men are searching the road to the north. She gives him some food and a cross made of lead in a leather pouch. Before Crispin leaves the village, however, Cerdic says that maybe he should head north after all because the steward might have been lying about searching the north, just to make Crispin think that he should go south. Cerdic says that the priest told him that the best way for Crispin to go would be west because that’s what everyone would least expect. It would be the last thing anyone would expect because the Lord Furnival’s manor house lies in that direction. However, Crispin soon discovers that he has been led into a trap and that the steward is waiting for him. He manages to escape, but he discovers that the priest has been murdered, preventing him from telling him whatever he knew.

Crispin wanders by himself until he finds an empty village where everyone was apparently killed by the Plague. However, there is one other person in the village, a traveling entertainer. The entertainer gives Crispin some food, but he also forces him to tell him his story. Realizing that the boy is a runaway, he forces Crispin to become his servant on the principle that a runaway serf can be taken by anyone. Crispin doesn’t want him for a master, but he has no choice because, if he refuses, the entertainer could easily turn him over to the steward at his former manor, where he would be killed.

The entertainer explains that his name is Orson Hrothgar, but his nickname is Bear because he is a large man. He shows Crispin his juggling and explains that’s how he makes his living. He asks Crispin what he can do, but all Crispin knows is the farming he did as a serf. Bear says that there is no way he could make a living on those skills in any city he went to and he’s going to have to acquire some new ones. Bear is a strange master, giving orders like a tyrant but at the same time claiming to hate tyranny and keeping Crispin firmly in his service while refusing to be called “sir” because he thinks that it makes Crispin sound too servile. As Bear and Crispin get to know each other, it starts becoming obvious that Bear is actually trying to help Crispin when he’s hard on him and even forcing him to serve him is actually in Crispin’s favor because Crispin doesn’t know how to survive by himself in the wider world and hesitates to make decisions for himself without guidance or orders from someone. The threat against Crispin’s life is real, and he’s gong to need help and guidance to survive.

Bear teaches Crispin how to sing and juggle so he can perform with him, but he also teaches the boy how to have some respect for himself and how to take charge of his own life. He can tell that Crispin has been badly neglected in his early life, taught only to obey orders and not ask questions. Because, for a long time, Crispin didn’t even know he own name, he thinks of himself as basically a nobody who doesn’t have a place in the world and isn’t worth anything to anyone. Bear takes Crispin in hand and shows him that his life and his own self are what he decides to make of them.

Bear’s own history is a strange story, and he tells Crispin how his father originally enrolled him in a Benedictine abbey at a young age to be a monk. While he was there, he learned to read and actually became a scholar, but before he took his final vows, he happened to meet a group of mummers, and he was charmed by the life of a traveling entertainer. He abandoned the abbey and traveled with the mummers for a time. He has also been a soldier, and during his time as a soldier, he met Lord Furnival. Crispin asks him what Lord Furnival is like because, even though he has always served on his land, he’s never actually met him. Bear describes Lord Furnival as a cruel man who used other men for his own gain and killed them when he had no use for them.

When they arrive at a new town, Bear assumes that Crispin will be safe to perform in public, having left his enemies behind because few people would pursue a poor boy of no important family or position over the theft that he was accused of doing back in his village. However, Crispin is alarmed to see Aycliffe as they enter the town. Bear realizes that there must be more to Crispin and his situation than even he knows. The murder of the priest back in the village is a shocking crime and must have been intended to silence him from telling whatever he knew. If Aycliffe poses a threat to Crispin, it seems that Crispin must also somehow pose a threat to him, a threat that he thinks must be eliminated. Discovering the reason for targeting Crispin also means unraveling the secrets of Crispin’s past and parentage, and along the way, Crispin also comes to a new vision of the future that he may build for himself.

There is a section in the back of the book which explains the history of this time period and some of the wider events that are a part of this story. The copy I read also had the text of an interview with the author.

This book is a Newbery Medal winner. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). There is also a sequel to this book called Crispin at the Edge of the World.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I read this book partly because I liked Midnight Magic by the same author, and I was pleased to see another mystery story by Avi set in Medieval times. However, the two books have a very different tone from each other. Midnight Magic featured palace intrigue and possible murder, but it was a spooky mystery adventure. Although there were dark themes, it had a sense of whimsy and fun adventure to it, playing with superstitions and a kind of spooky prank, even though it had high stakes. Crispin begins immediately with a mystery orphan who has people who are actively trying to kill him for reasons he doesn’t understand and who is forced to flee for his life. It’s much darker and more serious in tone, and there are parts where dead bodies are actually described in detail. This is definitely not a book for young kids!

The mystery in the story centers around the boy’s true identity and parentage. I thought it was obvious even from the beginning that the boy’s father would turn out to be someone important, whose identity might become known through the deaths of his mother and Lord Furnival and who might pose a threat to the villains in the story through whatever position and inheritance he might have.

It isn’t that much of a surprise that Lord Furnival is Crispin’s father. When he was alive (he dies during the story), he used women for his purposes as well as men. Crispin is not the only child he had by women other than his wife, who apparently, was unable to bear children. The story doesn’t explain who Crispin’s other half-siblings might be or where they are, but the other characters quickly realize that the reason why Lady Furnival and her kinsman, Aycliffe, want Crispin dead is that he might make a claim on his estate, or worse yet, other people might use Crispin to undermine their power. This is a dangerous time, and many people are competing for power and influence. Crispin’s mother was also no ordinary peasant girl. She has kin who are still alive and may be in a position to use Crispin and whatever inheritance or title he could claim to solidify their own positions. Even Crispin’s grandfather, if he became aware of the boy’s existence, might look at Crispin less as a beloved but previously unknown grandson, but more as an unexpected windfall that he could control and use to his advantage. Bear is really the only person who cares about Crispin’s welfare for his own sake, not for what he might be able to gain or achieve through him.

The plot is further complicated because it turns out that Bear is no ordinary entertainer. He turns out to be involved with a real historical character, John Ball, the priest who helped lead the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. The pieces of philosophy that Bear discusses with Crispin throughout the story are not just academic, and for all of Bear’s apparent lightness as an entertainer, he is actually a deeply serious man who is participating in a clandestine organization that plans to put his principles into action in the form of a rebellion. In his travels, Bear acts as a kind of spy, carrying information to different leaders of his group. There are indications in the story of social unrest and the coming violence. Sadly, in real life, most of the leaders of this revolt were caught and put to death, including John Ball. This endeavor isn’t going to work out well for Bear’s associates and maybe not even for Bear himself, and that probably figures into the sequel to this book.

I particularly liked this book for the inclusion of many small historical details. Throughout the story, Bear and Crispin discuss aspects of Medieval law, social structure, and religion in England, and there are also some details about daily life and the Plague. The only Christian religion in the book is Catholic because the story takes place prior to the Reformation, so all of the religious talk in the book is from that perspective, although Bear and Crispin debate with each other about the role of God in determining a person’s position in life and human decisions (like when a person should wait to act on divine guidance vs making decisions for themselves) and the use of religious objects (like whether Crispin’s lead cross serves a purpose in prayer or if prayer should simply be private and mental, with no outside sign), which leaves room for readers to consider what they believe and their own views of the situation.

A small detail that I liked was Bear’s explanation of what the different colors of the robes of different types of monks mean. The different orders of monks and priests – Dominican (white robes), Franciscan (brown), and Benedictine (black) – still exist in modern times and still have a somewhat different focus from each other in their activities. As a Catholic, I know that Dominicans are usually (but not always) the priests who celebrate public masses in local churches (Bear describes them saying, “They preach well” because that’s a major focus of what that order of clergy does), and Jesuits (who don’t exist yet at the time of this story) are typically (but not exclusively) the ones who teach in Catholic schools (which I’ve never attended – I came up exclusively through public schools) and universities (Loyola Marymount University is an example). These are the two groups I’ve seen the most in my life in the modern southwestern US, but they are not the only orders of Catholic clergy. For example, the book didn’t mention the Cistercians, who also existed at the time of this story and are basically more strict, austere versions of the Benedictines. I like this particular detail because it shows how there is depth to every subject. A non-Catholic might not know that these different orders of clergy exist, and it matters because each of these groups does have a different focus in their views, methods, and lifestyles while still falling within the sphere of being Catholic. In Medieval England, because each of these groups would have performed somewhat different functions in society because of their different focus and people of the time would have been aware of the differences between them. If you’re a fan of Dungeons and Dragons, the concept of different subclasses of clerics have real-life parallels, not just in historical polytheistic religions but even in modern monotheistic religions.

It was common for Medieval monastic orders to support themselves through agriculture (when society was largely based on agriculture, abbeys kept their own lands and animals for support), but monks, priests, and nuns could also fulfill a variety of professions and services in society, some as charity and others as paid roles to support themselves and their orders. Aside from their basic religious functions, they could act as scribes, copying, writing, and illustrating religious and historical books and manuscripts on commission (essentially, the book publishers of their day, before printing presses were available). When Bear was young, his father enrolled him in a Benedictine abbey. He explains that he learned to read in different languages there, so this was probably the work they were preparing him to do if he had continued with his training there, rather than the public preaching he would have been taught to do if he had joined the Dominican order. It was one of the functions that Benedictines were known for, and it would have been a good order for someone to join if they wanted to lead an intellectual or academic life in the Middle Ages. Bear gets much of his philosophical attitude and reflection from his early Benedictine education, although he values the independent form of free thought that he developed through his years of travel to the more strict form of traditional scholarship the abbey would provide. Religious orders that emphasized reading, writing, and learning could also provide tutors to wealthy families to teach their children these skills and clerks (derived from the word “clergyman” or “cleric”), who would keep important financial, legal, and political records for influential people in society. Abbeys and monasteries might also provide lodging for travelers in places where there were no inns, hospitals for the sick and injured, and various forms of charity for those who needed it (the social services of their time). Although joining one of these orders involved strict rules and vows of chastity and poverty (any wealth they acquired was supposed to be used to support the group and their functions rather than mere personal gain), there were opportunities for intellectual as well as spiritual development and a chance to lead a more varied life than other parts of society might provide at the time.

In their travels, Bear and Crispin see many different types of people who would all have been part of Medieval English society. Not all of their jobs and positions are described in detail, but if someone was using this book with students working on a Medieval lesson unit, they could make notes about all of the different types of people Bear and Crispin meet and look up the details of their roles in society to get a more detailed picture of the world these characters are moving through.

Posted on by TracyC

Adam of the Road

Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray Vining, illustrated by Robert Lawson, 1942.

The story takes place in England in 1294. It’s summer, and eleven-year-old Adam Quartermayne is waiting for his father, Roger the minstrel, to come see him at the dormitory where he’s been living while he’s going to school at the Abbey of St. Alban. Roger Quartermayne has been in France, attending a minstrels’ school, where he has been learning new songs and stories. More than anything, Adam wants to go on the road with his father, traveling from town to town, playing their musical instruments.

Roger is a higher class of minstrel than most, truly skilled in his art, welcome even in noble manor houses and castles, and well-paid for his performances. Roger plays a viol, while Adam can play the harp. Adam practices his playing while at school and tells stories to the other students. Although his teachers would prefer that he spent his story-telling time talking about the saints, they allow him to entertain the other boys as long as his stories are tasteful and not rude or mocking. Adam’s father has impressed on him that a minstrel’s job is not to tell his own feelings but to choose entertainment that suits the mood of his audience, whether it’s happy or sad. (In other words, they know how to read a room, and a good minstrel can make the audience feel like he’s saying what’s on the minds of the listeners.)

Adam’s closest companions at school are his best friend, Perkin, and his dog, Nick. Since Nick isn’t allowed in the dormitory, Adam pays for him to board with a woman in town. He and Perkin go to visit Nick when they can. Adam has taught Nick to do entertaining tricks, as befits a minstrel’s dog.

When Adam’s father comes, he tells Adam that he has taken a position with Sir Edmund de Lisle and is now traveling with his party. Roger invites Adam to join him on their journey to London, and Adam eager accepts. His only regret at leaving the school is that Perkin cannot come with them, but Perkin says that they’ll see each other again. Perkin’s father is a ploughman (this video, from Crow’s Eye Productions, explains a little about the life of a ploughman and how they dressed), and he says that, if they pass through the village where he lives, they can stop and visit his parents and the parson who sent him to the abbey school.

The open road is like home to minstrels like Roger and Adam. They spend their journey entertaining Sir Edmund’s party with stories. Adam develops a crush on Sir Edmund’s pretty niece, Margery, although her brother, Hugh, is an annoying snob. Adam’s first efforts to join his father in playing music are awkward and embarrassing, but Roger says he will improve. Adam is also lonely without Perkin to talk to. There are other boys at Sir Edmund’s manor house, but they all ignore him. They become friendlier when Adam takes the advice of a friendly squire to lend them his horse for their jousting practice when Hugh’s horse is lame. At first, Hugh thinks that a minstrel like Adam wouldn’t know anything about martial arts, but Adam demonstrates that he has also had some training, causing Hugh to give him more respect. From then on, he is able to join the other boys in their games.

At the wedding of Sir Edmund’s daughter, Emilie, Adam has the chance to see many other minstrels and entertainers of various kinds. Although both Adam and his father are richly rewarded for their performance, Roger gambles away his share of the money playing dice with the other minstrels. He tells Adam to keep his own money close to him and not to hand it over to him, even if he asks for it. Roger recognizes that he has a gambling problem and can’t be trusted with money. Worse still, he gambled away their horse, too. It’s upsetting to Adam because they had never had a horse before, and he was fond of it. He also knows that Hugh was fond of that horse. Roger is embarrassed about what he has done, and Hugh worries that Jankin, the man who won the horse, will ride him to death because he doesn’t know how to take care of horses.

Although they are still in the employ of Sir Edmund, he will not be needing them for a while, now that the wedding of his daughter is over. Roger and Adam go on the road again, although they are supposed to return to Sir Edmund’s manor after traveling their route. In London, they meet up with Jankin again, and he tries to get Roger to gamble with him again for ownership of Adam’s dog, but Roger refuses, saying he doesn’t want to play anymore and the dog belongs to his son. However, when they happen to be staying at the same inn later, Jankin steals Adam’s dog!

Roger and Adam hurry after Jankin to get Nick back, asking people they meet on the road which way he went with their dog. They almost catch up to him at a ferry, but he gets on the boat and it leaves before they can reach it. Not wanting to wait for the ferry to return and desperate to reach his dog, Nick jumps in the water and tries to swim after the ferry, but he is still unable to catch up. When he climbs out of the river, he is alone and too tired to continue the pursuit anymore. He is separated from his father, but he still has his harp, thanks to a kind woman who helped him. What is he going to do? Will he ever find his dog or father again?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

The story offers a ground-level view of Medieval society. Through his travels, Adam mixes with children and adults from various levels of society. Adam begins at a monastery school, taught by monks. Then, he joins his father, working for a noble family and living at their manor, where Adam becomes friends with noble boys training to be knights. They meet other minstrels, and when they travel on the road, they also meet traveling pilgrims, stay at inns and speak to the innkeepers. When Adam is on his own, he briefly stays with a ferryman and his wife, travels with a merchant, is robbed by highwaymen and has to get help from local law enforcement, gets information from a shepherd, attends a large fair with people of all kinds, and toward the end of the book, spends time with Perkin and his family, helping his father with ploughing. Along the way, Adam learns many things about people and different members of society, including how girls are treated differently from boys, even in noble families and what common people think about the king and parliament and how they make laws.

During the course of the story, Adam and his father also discuss some of the philosophy behind their own profession. It begins with Adam’s reflection on what his father said about choosing his selections of songs and stories to appeal to his audience because his job is to please others, not merely himself. However, when Adam briefly joins up with some poorer minstrels, he comes to understand that it’s not just a matter of giving people what they want. A better minstrel not only gives people material they like but which appeals to the better sides of their personalities, elevating them to their highest versions of themselves, instead of just catering to everyone’s lower tastes. Understanding other people and their lives and tastes are critical to the job of being an entertainer. Adam also learns a little about the use of humor and how it can benefit both himself and others when used well. At one point, when Adam is recovering from an incident that was embarrassing to him, he makes a joke about it that amuses a new friend, and when his new friend laughs, Adam realizes that he feels better about the embarrassing incident. His use of humor softens his feelings of embarrassment and also provides a useful tool for entertaining and bonding with someone else. The story compares it to an oyster turning an irritant into a pearl that is both less irritating to the oyster and something beautiful for someone else. Although Adam goes through genuinely terrible circumstances through his travels, the experience shapes his views of life and the type of minstrel he wants to be.

I was genuinely worried about the animals in the story because I find it stressful to read about animal cruelty. Fortunately, both the horse and dog survive their experiences with Jankin, and Adam is reunited with his father and Nick.

I enjoyed the pieces of real Medieval songs that appear throughout the story, like Sumer is I-cumen In (You can hear the song in this YouTube video. This one explains what the Old English words mean. It’s about the beauties of nature and lively animals at the beginning of summer, apparently with a confusing line about farting billy goats.) and an old version of London Bridge is Falling Down, which also includes an explanation of the story behind the the song.

As another piece of trivia, Jankin is actually a Medieval nickname for John. In Medieval times, it was common to get new nicknames for certain common names by changing just one letter or sound in the name and/or adding “-kin” to the end of a name as a diminutive, like we might add a “-y” for Johnny. In fact, the name Jack that is used as a nickname for John comes from this earlier nickname – John to Jan to Jankin to Jackin to Jack. We get other nicknames that don’t completely resemble the original name from this same method of creating new nicknames, like the nickname Peggy for Margaret – Margaret to Maggie to Meggy to Peggy.

Posted on by TracyC

Johnny Tremain

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes, 1943, 1971.

The story takes place in Boston around the time of the American Revolutionary War, and famous historical figures appear in the story.

Fourteen-year-old Johnny Tremain is a young apprentice to a silversmith. Even though he is one of the younger apprentices, he has talent and is favored by the silversmith. His favored position allows him to boss the other apprentices, and the silversmith is even considering having him marry one of his granddaughters when he has completed his apprenticeship so he can inherit the business. Johnny doesn’t mind the idea of marrying one of the granddaughters, although he is in the habit of teasing them, and inheriting the business would give him a steady future, although the business isn’t particular lucrative. Most people basically like Johnny, although one of the older apprentices, a boy called Dove, resents him.

Johnny has one particular flaw, and that is that he is arrogant and prideful. While he is talented, he gets overconfident and too full of himself because of his talent. The silversmith even warns him and lectures him about it, telling Johnny not to lord it over the other apprentices that they are not as gifted as he is.

However, Johnny doesn’t listen to him, and he soon pays the price for it. The reason why the silversmith’s shop hasn’t been very lucrative is because the silversmith is getting old, and he can’t work as hard as he used to. That’s one of the reasons why Johnny feels like he has to push the pace in the shop and keep the other apprentices in line. When the silversmith is late making a particular order, Johnny takes it on himself to complete the work on a Sunday, which is forbidden by the laws of Boston at that time and would have been forbidden by the pious silversmith, too, if he knew what Johnny was doing. While Johnny is working, Dove hands him a crucible with a crack it in, thinking to embarrass Johnny by ensuring that the work will go wrong. Unfortunately, it turns out to be worse than that. Johnny’s hand is badly burned by molten silver.

With a crippled and useless hand, Johnny doesn’t see how he can continue his apprenticeship and become a silversmith. For the first time in prideful Johnny’s life, he is an object of pity, and he seems to have no future ahead of him. There aren’t many kinds of work a person in his time can do with only one usable hand. The silversmith’s youngest granddaughter has always been sickly, and people think that she isn’t likely to live to adulthood. Even the girl’s own mother says that it hardly seems worth the effort of raising her when she isn’t likely to survive, and privately, Johnny has also agreed. Now that Johnny is disabled, seemingly useless, and without a future, is he also hardly worth anyone’s help?

The silversmith’s daughter-in-law, Mrs. Lapham, seems to think he isn’t worth anything. In spite of her being the one who originally insisted that he do the task on Sunday that crippled him, she begins giving him repeated and casual insults like “lazy good-for-nothing” and “worthless limb of Satan.” Her previous praise and encouragement for Johnny and wish for Johnny to marry one of her daughters hadn’t been based on any liking for Johnny but only based on what she thought Johnny could do for her and her daughters in the future. Now that he can’t take over the business, Mrs. Lapham is ready to kick him to the curb. Mrs. Lapham discourages Johnny from eating much food, tells him that she’ll be needing the place where he sleeps soon for someone else to help her father-in-law with his shop, and tells the silversmith that he should get rid of Johnny. The silversmith refuses to kick the boy out onto the street with nothing and no prospects, especially since Johnny has been doing small chores for the family to earn his keep. The silversmith tells Johnny that he cannot continuing learning the silversmithing trade, so he’s going to have to find a new one. He encourages Johnny to explore the city and watch different people at their trades until he can find one that he thinks he can do, and then, he will give the contract for Johnny’s apprenticeship to his new master.

However, Johnny is still prideful and can’t see himself doing any of the unskilled trades that might take him, and he only half-heartedly tries to find a new position. He still sees himself as a craftsman, and that’s all he really wants to be. He still feels like other jobs are beneath him. One day, he goes inside the printing shop for the Boston Observer, which the silversmith disapproved of for trying to stir up dissent and resentment against the English king among the colonists, and immediately is fascinated at the way the boy working in the shop interviews a woman about an advertisement for her lost pig. Johnny feels an odd friendly feeling toward the boy, who is a good and patient listener. When the woman leaves, Johnny finds himself pouring out his own story to the boy, whose name is Rab, without his usual arrogance. Rab understands Johnny’s feelings and agrees that most of the jobs that would be open to him now are the unskilled jobs he doesn’t want to do. He says that the Observer could hire him, but it would be a position as a delivery boy and messenger, but that doesn’t sound like the kind of work Johnny really wants. Still, Rab tells him that if he can’t find anything else, he could come back and take the messenger job. Johnny hopes that he can come back and tell him that he’s found a much better job.

However, Johnny still can’t find someone to take him. When he tries to get a job from John Hancock, whose project was the one that ruined Johnny’s hand, John Hancock is repulsed at the sight of Johnny’s hand and won’t even take him as a cabin boy for one of his ships. Johnny is angry and despairing when John Hancock sends him away, but John Hancock sends a slave after him with a whole back of silver, apparently out of guilt. Hungry because he’s had so little to eat lately, he goes to a tavern and orders a great deal of food. He is disappointed to see how much of his money he wasted and realizes that he has been a fool for ordering too much all at once. He spends the rest of his money buying presents for the silversmith’s daughters and new shoes for himself. When Johnny comes home in his new shoes, Mrs. Lapham accuses him of stealing them from someone because she can’t imagine that he could earn enough money to buy them. The girls are happy with the presents until the youngest one suddenly gets upset at Johnny touching her with his bad hand because it looks weird and she’s afraid of it, ruining the moment.

There is one last thing Johnny has that might help him. He has had a silver cup his entire life with his full name on it: Jonathan Lyte Tremain. The cup also bears the family crest of the Lyte family, a wealthy merchant family in Boston. Johnny’s mother never introduced Johnny to her relatives before she died, although she said that she was from a genteel and educated background and their own names, Jonathan and Lavinia, were family names. Johnny knows that the head of the wealthy Lyte family is also named Jonathan Lyte, so he thinks that he could be a relative. For some reason, his mother didn’t want him to show the cup to anyone, although she told him to keep it in case he ever needed it. She said to only show it others if he was in dire trouble and it seemed like even God Himself had forsaken him, and his current situation certainly qualifies.

When Johnny goes to see Mr. Lyte, Mr. Lyte doesn’t believe that he’s really a relative. He thinks that it’s just a story to get some of the Lyte family’s money, and he’s heard stories like this before. Johnny argues unpleasantly with Mr. Lyte before telling him that he has a silver cup that will prove the relationship. Mr. Lyte seems interested in the cup and tells Johnny to bring it to him that night. Before returning to Mr. Lyte with the cup, Johnny goes to Rab and tells him what he’s about to do. Rab gives him some food and a change of clothes before he goes but warns him that Mr. Lyte has been deceptive and unethical in his business dealings.

Rab’s warning is prophetic. When Johnny produces the silver cup, Mr. Lyte agrees that it is part of a set that the family has, but he says that the cup was stolen from his house only two months before. He accuses Johnny of being the thief and has him arrested. Rab finds out about it and asks Johnny if he showed the cup to anyone else before the date when it was supposedly stolen. With his mother dead, the only other person who could vouch that Johnny had the cup before is Priscilla, the Lapham daughter that Johnny was originally supposed to marry before the accident that ruined his hand. Priscilla, called Cilla for short, is willing to testify in court that Johnny showed her the cup before, but Mr. Lyte begins exerting his influence on the Laphams. He places a large order for silver and pays in advance as a kind of bribe, and Mrs. Lapham, who has already decided that Johnny is no good, declares that she will keep Cilla locked up on the day of the trial so she can’t speak on his behalf, even though she knows young Johnny will be executed without her testimony.

Rab correctly realizes that some of the attitudes of people against Johnny are because Johnny is an arrogant hothead who has made enemies because of the sharp and snooty remarks he’s made to them and about them in the past. He points out that these people, who have felt oppressed by Johnny are now taking their opportunity to get even with him and get rid of him, just like the rival apprentice whose dangerous trick ruined Johnny’s hand. If Johnny is going to get out of this mess and change his life, he’s going to have to change his own attitude and behavior and learn to make friends, develop some humility, and show gratitude for the help that he receives.

Fortunately, Rab knows a lawyer who is willing to take Johnny’s case without pay, Josiah Quincy (historical figure – Johnny notices that he has a dangerous-sounding cough, like the kind his mother had before she died, and the real-life Josiah Quincy did die of tuberculosis), because Mr. Lyte is a Tory who has crossed the Colonial Patriots who call themselves the Sons of Liberty with his crooked business dealings. Johnny’s trial becomes the latest skirmish between the two sides of the Revolution that is building. For the first time in his life, Johnny does have cause to be truly grateful to others. Unfortunately, he has also made one more enemy. Mr. Lyte is publicly embarrassed at having been shown to bring a false charge against an unfortunate boy in court, and if anyone is even more proud and arrogant than Johnny has been, it’s Mr. Lyte.

Johnny takes the job of delivery boy for Rab’s newspaper and becomes more involved in the politics of the Colonies and the growing Revolution. He learns how to ride a horse for the first time, even learning to manage a previously abused and skittish horse. Johnny becomes known as a good messenger and finds other side jobs. He develops his use of his uninjured left hand and even increases his use of his damaged right hand. He becomes better read and educated as he builds his messenger career. However, Johnny is also drawn into the growing conflict and learning the truth about his relationship with Mr. Lyte.

The book is a Newbery Medal Winner and available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It was made into a movie by Disney in 1957.

My Reaction

The Background of the Book

Because this book is an award-winner and has patriotic themes, it is a popular book for children to read and study in American schools. I didn’t actually read the book when I was in elementary school, probably because it contains works like “slut”, but I remember our teacher showing us the Disney live-action movie version from 1957. I still sometimes think of the Liberty Tree and the Sons of Liberty song from that movie. If you read the comments below the YouTube clip of that song, some people were commenting about seeing this movie when they were in 5th grade at school, and that’s about when I saw it, too, back in the 1990s. I found the song stirring then, although it looks a little corny to me now. For patriotic musicals, I prefer 1776, which I saw in high school and which is also corny but brings up some interesting historical topics. 1776 was based on a Broadway play written as the US approached its Bicentennial. If you look at my page of books from the 1970s, you’ll see that people were writing books for children focusing on the American Revolution, Colonial America, and other patriotic themes because the Bicentennial was on people’s minds at the time. The 200-year anniversary of the country was something people wanted to celebrate, and they used it as an opportunity to educate children about the history and lore of the country. Part of what makes Johnny Tremain interesting is that the original book was written in the middle of WWII, which was more of a worrying time rather than a celebration. The Disney move was made after the war, when people were in a celebratory and triumphant mood about how well the country was doing, and it ends on a triumphant note, but the original book was much darker.

During WWII, children’s authors had a choice about whether or not to mention the war in the books they were writing. If you look at my page of books written during the 1940s, you’ll see that some children’s authors addressed the war directly and even worked it into the plots of their books while it was still happening. I’ve marked which ones did that on the 1940s page. However, for those who didn’t want to write contemporary stories mentioning WWII, there were other options. Some authors wrote just-for-fun stories that had nothing to do with the war at all, which were good for helping children relax and take a break from the harsh realities going on around them, and some wrote books with historical themes.

The books with historical themes, like Johnny Tremain, often had a patriotic focus, putting the current war into perspective by reminding children that the country had been through struggles and dark times before, and reinforcing the patriotic ideals that made the struggle worth it. You can see these themes in both American and British books written around the same time, trying to help children understand that concepts of the war, what people were fighting to protect, and why the sacrifices and deprivations of the war were necessary.

There is a scene in Johnny Tremain where James Otis tries to make sure that the Sons of Liberty who are ready to fight the British understand what they’re really fighting for, the larger implications for the rest of the world, and the sacrifices they might make, including their lives. Some of his speech seems a little anachronistic with its mention of rights for everyone, regardless of race, because slavery is practiced during this era. I suppose it’s not impossible that Otis said something like that at some point, but racial equality would not have been high among the priorities of these people in real life. It felt like it was meant more for modern, 20th century audiences. He also makes a reference to rich people in France running down poor children in their carriages, which sounds like a reference to a scene in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, from 1859. My impression is that Otis’s speech in the book is meant more for the book’s original audience of children during WWII than for the original Sons of Liberty. Dr. Warren later makes comments about young men who give up their lives so that others can stand up like men and how a hundred or two hundred years later, men will be doing the same thing. I think those comments are also meant to help 1940s children understand why the men of their time, possibly their own fathers and brothers, might be willing to sacrifice themselves as soldiers.

Johnny Tremain is really a rather dark story in places, which is probably why my teachers showed us the Disney movie rather than having us read the book. They did have us read plenty of other dark stories when I was in school, even ones much darker that this one, although most didn’t have the kind of objectionable language this book does.

Story Themes

Although this is an historical novel, the main focus of the story is the transformation in young Johnny’s life and character as he suffers from misfortune, redeems himself, and plays a part in larger events and history. At the beginning of the story, even though Johnny is an orphan, he seems to have his future made at a young age. He has a particular talent for working with silver, and he’s in an apprenticeship and poised to take over the master’s business someday. However, like many classic heroes, he has the fatal flaw of hubris – he’s too proud of himself. It makes him arrogant and overconfident. His arrogance makes enemies of his fellow apprentices, and in one moment when he pushes his luck, his chief rival does something that seriously harms Johnny and apparently ruins his future. Johnny, who has never had any real patience or sympathy for other people who are less gifted or fortunate than himself finds himself in the position of needing patience and sympathy from others. His master sees the difficulty Johnny is in and tries to help him learn the lessons of humility that he needs to cope with the situation, but for someone as proud as Johnny has been, it’s not easy to cope with his humbled position. It’s a serious struggle for Johnny to find a new place in the world and a new path for his future. There are people who openly despise him for his weakened condition, which is unfair, and initially, he passes up some opportunities for improvement because he considers the jobs beneath him.

Johnny life changes when he finds himself in a situation so hopeless that he is really dependent on the help of other people. Some of those other people help Johnny in the court trial, not just out of a desire to help Johnny but also to embarrass Mr. Lyte by publicly exposing him for bringing a false charge. Still, they save Johnny’s life, and Johnny gains a new life by working for Rab’s family as a delivery boy and following Rab’s example in behavior. Rab is calmer and more thoughtful than Johnny, and he encourages Johnny to learn to be more thoughtful and to think before he speaks and acts. As Johnny does so, he notices that people begin treating him better because he begins giving the chance to do so instead of thoughtlessly offending them or picking fights. With Johnny’s change of attitude and behavior, he is able to forge new relationships, and new opportunities open up for him. While Johnny’s hand getting damaged seemed to be the end of everything to him and the delivery job at first seemed to be beneath him, these changes in his life actually lead to personal growth for him.

Through his work for the newspaper and the Sons of Liberty, Johnny becomes part of the American Revolution. It brings him into contact with many notable Revoluntionary war figures, including John Hancock, Josiah Quincy, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, John Adams, and Dr. Joseph Warren. Not all of these figures are pleasant figures in the story. John Hancock, in particular, doesn’t treat Johnny well when he’s at the lowest point of his life. Dr. Warren is kind and attempts to help Johnny with his hand when they first meet, but at first, Johnny doesn’t want him to even look at it because he’s still ashamed of it and how it was damaged. Johnny later regrets that, and explains the details of his injury to him. The book ends with Dr. Warren performing a procedure to remove the scar tissue that has kept Johnny’s hand deformed. Without it, his hand will move more freely, and he will be able to fire a gun in the coming war and do other things he thought he would never be able to do again. It is uncertain whether or not he will ever regain enough dexterity to be able to return to being a silversmith, but his eyes have been opened to many other possibilities in life, and he has a cause to fight for first.

During the course of the book, Johnny also takes part in the Boston Tea Party and Paul Revere’s famous ride. His role as one of the participants in larger events is partly to teach and reinforce history lessons and patriotic feelings for the young readers of this book but also to show that even a flawed and somewhat disabled person like Johnny is worth something, has a future, and can participate in larger events and make their mark on the world. The more Johnny does participate in larger events and make connections with other people, the more his life also changes for the better and the more opportunities open up for him.

Life is Full of Mixed Feelings

I also noticed that there are many cases where people have mixed feelings about each other. As I said before, although Johnny becomes allied with the Sons of Liberty and believes in their cause, not all of them really treat him well, at least at first. Johnny also realizes that he doesn’t agree with all of their personal attitudes. At one point, he realizes that Sam Adams wouldn’t approve of the quality of mercy toward his enemies, but Johnny actually does. Although Johnny doesn’t like the British soldiers, there are moments when some of them do something kind or honorable. He doesn’t like them as a group, but he privately acknowledges that he can like certain ones as individuals in certain circumstances. Johnny comes to see the British soldiers as human beings who can be likeable, and as he sees that the situation around them is going to lead to war, he realizes that having to fight and maybe even kill some of these people would be painful. Although he still believes in his cause and is willing to fight for it, the seriousness and pain of war becomes clear to him.

Johnny’s ability to see multiple sides to people’s personalities and the capacity he has to show mercy even toward people he doesn’t like or who have actively tried to harm him are important developments of his character. Mrs. Lapham, Dove, and Mr. Lyte were all pretty bad to Johnny, in different ways. As the story progresses and Johnny’s condition in life improves and he has some separation and independence from both of them, he feels less resentful toward them both and even begins to see them in a better light. Personally, I don’t think that erases the unlikable and even dangerous sides of these characters. Mrs. Lapham would have happily watched Johnny be hung for a crime he never committed and was perfectly willing to take a bribe to lock up her own daughter, knowing that she was an important witness who could save him. That side of her personality is a definite side of her personality, and that is something that she definitely and knowingly did. However, Johnny later has a feeling of nostalgia when he remembers that Mrs. Lapham did have a hard life in some ways and yet was a hard worker, who always tried to look after her household, even when it was difficult, so she isn’t wholly evil. In some ways, her evil side and opportunism is a reflection of the hard life she’s lived and what she thinks she has to do to get ahead in the world and provide security for her fatherless daughters. Again, I don’t see her as being a really good person as a person because of what she does, what she thinks is acceptable to do, and how she treats other people, and I don’t believe that much of that was as necessary or excusable as she seemed to think it was. However, with some time and separation, Johnny starts to remember that she did have some relatively good sides.

I do note that, while it’s good that Johnny sees people for what they are, even acknowledging that unlikable people have their good sides, this does not mean that it would be good or healthy for Johnny to allow himself to be at the mercy or under the control of these people eve again. No matter how hard a worker Mrs. Lapham is, I can’t help but notice she is fundamentally untrustworthy. Knowingly helping to frame a helpless boy for a crime with a death penalty is pretty close to deliberate murder, and that’s about as bad as a person can get. The argument could be made that Mrs. Lapham didn’t know that Johnny didn’t steal the silver cup, but I don’t think that’s true. I’m sure that she was fully aware that he didn’t because of her declaration that she would lock up Cilla on the day of the trial, which indicates that Cilla told her what she knew and that the cup was honestly Johnny’s from the beginning, and she was determined to prevent Cilla from telling the truth in court, making sure that Johnny would die so she and her family could profit from Mr. Lyte’s bribe. No, from what I’ve seen of Mrs. Lapham, merely being a “hard worker”, while a good trait by itself, isn’t enough to redeem her as a character or make her trustworthy because she definitely doesn’t have that hard-working trait in isolation from her willingness to throw people under the proverbial bus and even try to get them killed for the sake of money.

Although Dove is never as sorry for the accident that hurt Johnny’s hand as he told their master he was. Behind the master’s back, he is gleefully cruel to Johnny when he has the opportunity. Admittedly, what Rab says about that being Dove’s form of retaliation for Johnny’s own arrogant meanness toward him is true, but it is equally true that Dove’s own behavior never improves even when Johnny’s does. Initially, Johnny swears revenge against Dove, but when he sees that his life isn’t really ruined by him and Dove gets some comeuppance in other ways, Johnny begins to feel a little more kindly toward him and no longer feels the need for revenge. (Although, he does get Rab to help him toss Dove into the harbor during the Boston Tea Party because Dove was trying to steal some of the tea for himself, in spite of the participants agreeing not to do that ahead of time, and attempting to lie about it. It’s not the grand revenge that Johnny initially envisioned, but it is a brief moment of comeuppance.) Johnny even treats Dove nicely after he goes to work as a stable hand for the British troops. Dove is loyal to the British, but the British are not nice to him in return, largely because Dove isn’t particularly competent at what he does and because he is obviously self-interested. Johnny realizes that he is lonely and could use friends, but even when Dove admits that Johnny and Rab treat him better than anyone else does (largely so they can pump him for information about the British troop movements), Dove still repeatedly tries to tell the British that Johnny is a spy for the Sons of Liberty and openly admits it to Johnny. Dove feels like it’s his duty as a loyal Tory to turn Johnny in, not showing loyalty to the people who have shown him the most kindness. Johnny understands all of that. While Johnny’s behavior has changed and improved, and because of that, Johnny is more respected by the even the British than Dove is. In the end, Dove is his own worst enemy, and his own behavior is the reason why more people don’t like him.

Mr. Lyte deliberately tried to have Johnny executed for a crime he didn’t commit. That was pretty horrible, and Mr. Lyte also steals the silver cup from Johnny when he attempts to sell it to him. It’s all the more horrible when Johnny is a young relative of his. However, there is something of an explanation behind it. Mr. Lyte didn’t recognize Johnny as a relative because he knew Johnny’s father under another name and had believed that Johnny’s mother, who was his niece, had died childless. Mr. Lyte is still an unethical man, both in his personal and business dealings, but although he was wrong about Johnny not being related to him, the one thing he was honest about was saying that was what he believed. His beliefs were wrong and the actions that were based on those beliefs were also wrong, but he wasn’t actually lying about those particular beliefs, even though he has lied about other things. Later, when Johnny’s life changes, he no longer cares about having the silver cup or any relation to the Lytes.

On the other hand, there are also some characters who seem likeable initially but who prove to have dark sides. The most notable character of this type is Lavinia Lyte, the daughter of the wealthy merchant, Mr. Lyte. At first, Johnny has a crush on her because she is pretty, although he knows that they are probably related in some way. However, he eventually discovers that Lavinia Lyte is silly, shallow, spoiled, snobbish, and uncaring. She takes Cilla and her little sister Isannah into her household as servants and companions when their family doesn’t have much money. It does help Cilla and Isannah monetarily, but Johnny notices that Lavinia treats them very differently. She initially only wanted Isannah because Isannah is a pretty and adorable little girl. Lavinia is supposedly mentoring Isannah as a protege and raising her to enter high society, but really, she treats her like a pet lap dog or a living doll she can dress up and play with. Isannah is young and impressionable and has never been much of an independent thinker, often imitating other people throughout the story. Under Lavinia’s influence, Johnny sees that Isannah is becoming spoiled and badly behaved, just like Lavinia, and is not developing properly, either intellectually, morally, or emotionally. Meanwhile, Lavinia treats Cilla like an ungrateful servant, calling her “stupid” when she doesn’t do things right, even when she is merely doing precisely what Lavinia told her to do in the first place. Johnny gets fed up with this situation and tells Lavinia off for it. In return, she snobbishly tells him that he’s just a ragamuffin boy. Although Johnny still feels some attraction for Lavinia because of her looks, he learns what her personal character is really like and what being around her really involves. This remaining attraction he feels for her dies when he understands their real family relationship.

Rab is generally a good character and a positive influence on Johnny, but even he has his faults. People in his family don’t communicate their feelings as much as they should, and Johnny becomes jealous and angry with Rab when he discovers that he’s been courting Cilla behind his back and not talking to him about it. Rab’s desire for a gun so he can fight in their cause also gets him into trouble a couple of times. Even as one of the nicest characters in the book, Rab isn’t perfect, either.

The characters in the story feel very real because they do have multiple sides to their personalities and often cause mixed emotions. Johnny also comes to realize that feelings about people and relationships can change over time. Some relationships develop for the best and others for the worse. It is a sign of Johnny’s growth as a character that he can see and acknowledge the complexity of the characters of other people and his own feelings regarding them. His ability to understand and manage his feelings grows throughout the story.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat

Five Find-Outers

The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat by Enid Blyton, 1944, 1966.

Bets is happy that her brother, Pip, is coming home from boarding school, and he’s bringing his friends to visit. Now that the children are reunited, Bets and the others hope that they will find another mystery to solve! The others ask Bets if anything interesting has happened since they were home last, and she says not very much, although someone has moved into the empty house next door. The new neighbor is Lady Candling, who keeps Siamese cats.

The boy who helps the gardener, Luke, is nice and allows the children to visit and see the cats. Lady Candling says that the Siamese cats are valuable prize-winning cats. She keeps them in a large cage most of the time for safety, but Miss Harmer, the housekeeper, takes one out to show the children. Unfortunately, one boy, Fatty, owns a Scottie dog named Buster, and Buster comes into the garden looking for him. Buster frightens the cat and chases her! The cat claws Buster after he chases her into the bushes, and they manage to get Buster under control, but they have trouble finding the cat. Miss Harmer is upset that her cat is lost, and Bets goes to search for the cat.

While Bets is looking for the cat, the gardener, Mr. Tupping comes to find out what the fuss is about. Mr. Tupping is a violent and short-tempered man. (They also emphasize that he has a hooked nose, which I think is probably a stereotype. Enid Blyton’s books often contain derogatory racial stereotypes, although later printings have been revised to remove them.) Mr. Tupping hates children and animals, and he grabs Buster and locks him up, threatening to beat him later. The children try to help Buster, but he chases them out of the garden. Bets is left behind, but she locates the missing cat, and Luke helps to free Buster and get Bets out of the garden without Mr. Tupping seeing her. However, Mr. Tupping threatens Luke with dire consequences if he ever lets the children into the garden again.

This is just the beginning of their troubles with Mr. Tupping. When Mr. Tupping finds out that Bets has visited Luke again, he storms into Bets’s own little garden, rips her strawberry plants out of the ground, burns them, and yells at her. Bets is afraid to report him to the adults because she’s afraid that Luke will get in more trouble with Mr. Tupping. Luke is a poor orphan who lives with his stepfather, and he desperately needs the job, which is the only reason why he continues to work with the nasty Mr. Tupping. Mr. Tupping is also friends with the local policeman, and the children know that the local policeman resents them for solving a mystery before he did, so they’re sure that he will side with Mr. Tupping, no matter what they say about him.

Then, Lady Candling’s prize cat, Dark Queen, disappears, and Luke is blamed for stealing her! The children are sure that Luke is being framed for the cat-napping, but the evidence is against him. Pip and Bets’s own mother saw the cat in its cage when she went to tea with Lady Candling, and Luke was working in a garden bed nearby. Even Luke says that no one else went near the cage between then and the time when the cat disappeared. When a wooden whistle Luke made is found in the cats’ cage, the children are sure that it was planted to frame Luke, but how can they prove it? Then, the cat reappears, and later disappears again! What is going on?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

I found this story frustrating because all of the adults in the story are so oblivious to Mr. Tupping’s violence and aggression. He is actively abusive to the children and animals, but nobody seems to notice or even inquire about signs of trouble. Bets’s mother never seems to notice that all of her daughter’s strawberry plants have suddenly disappeared from her garden and never asks her daughter what happened. Mr. Tupping is able to just march onto the family’s property and abuse an 8-year-old girl with complete impunity, and her mother never notices a thing. (Of course, if I were the girl in question, I would have done what I used to do when I was picked on as a kid – take a deep breath, throw back my head, and scream continuously until help arrives. I figured out at a young age that if you scream from your diaphragm, you can get extra volume and keep the scream going for longer without straining your throat, and it’s difficult for the adults to ignore. You can’t scream like that at every inconvenience or people will start to ignore it, but it’s definitely an attention-getter if you use it when it really counts! Just let Mr. Tupping explain his presence and actions when the adults come to find out why their daughter is screaming like she’s being murdered!)

Mr. Tupping is a very obvious villain. He’s also the first person on the scene each time the cat disappears, the one who strategically assigns Luke to work near the cats’ cages just before the prize cat disappears each time, and the keeper of the key to the cats’ cages when Miss Harmer is away, which she is each time the prize cat disappears. Yet, even though he has means (the key), motive (he hates the kids and animals and wants to get rid of Luke), and opportunity (always the first person in the cats’ cages whenever the cat disappears and the one person who controls where Luke is working), all of the adults immediately look at Luke as the thief, never even questioning Mr. Tupping. An adult would be more likely than a kid to know where to sell a prize-winning cat (heck, as a an adult, I wouldn’t even know where to deal in black market animals), but nope, all of the adults first think a kid did it, like kids have those kinds of criminal connections to the prize cat black market. It drove me completely crazy!

It’s worse because Mr. Tupping is friends with the local policeman and gets favoritism because of it. When the kids consult their friend who is a police inspector, he finds out that Mr. Tupping has a police record for being involved in a dog-napping case (surprise, surprise), which establishes his criminal history and connections to people who deal in stolen animals. I was disgusted that the local policeman never looked into his background himself, but I felt a little better when the inspector reprimands him for making friends with a criminal and overlooking evidence that implicated him and trying to prevent the children from bringing evidence and concerns to light. The local policeman is embarrassed, but at that point, I felt like he deserved to be.

The villain was obvious, but what saved this mystery was that he actually used a clever trick to confuse the time when he actually took the cat. I knew from the beginning who the cat thief was, so the real mystery for me was how he got the cat out of its cage without people seeing him. It turns out that Mr. Tupping takes the cat earlier in the day than everyone thought the cat was stolen. The Siamese cats look very much alike, but the one that was stolen had a marking that was different from the others. With a bit of paint, Mr. Tupping makes a different cat look like the missing one for most of the afternoon, quickly using a bit of turpentine to remove the paint at a strategic moment to make it seem like the cat disappeared at a time when Luke was near the cats’ cages.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Five Go Off in a Caravan

The Famous Five

Five Go Off in a Caravan by Enid Blyton, 1946.

The children (Julian, Dick, Ann, George) and their dog, Timmy, are all looking forward to the summer holidays.  They’re not sure what they want to do, but they think that it would be more fun to go somewhere without the adults instead of going home, but they can’t think of anywhere they can go without adults.  They doze off in the sun while talking about it, but Timmy wakes them when a circus procession passes by.

The children are fascinated by the circus and call to a boy traveling with them, Nobby, asking him where they’re going to be performing.  Nobby says that the circus is on a break, and they’re going to be spending some time at a lake that allows them to camp there with their animals.

As the children watch the caravans of the circus going by, they think that it would be great if they could hire a caravan (horse-drawn travel trailer) and travel in it themselves.  They have a horse, Dobby, who could pull one.  The children ask their mother if they can hire a caravan, and she says that she’ll have to talk to their father about it.  It turns out that their father needs to go up north for part of the summer and wants their mother to come with them, so he thinks that it’s alright if the children want to take a caravan and camp out while they’re away.  The parents decide that the children will need to hire two caravans and borrow an extra horse because they don’t think one caravan will be enough for the four children and their dog, and they insist that the children sent them a message every day to tell them where they are and how they’re doing.

As the children discuss their plans in more detail, they decide that it will be fun to go to the lake where the circus is and get to know Nobby better.  Nobby lives with his uncle, who is the chief clown of the circus, and the children didn’t like what they saw of him before because he didn’t seem jolly at all, but they think it would be fun to be friends with Nobby and get another look at the circus animals. 

The children are eager to get started, but their parents make them pack and plan properly.  When the caravans arrive, the girls choose the red one, and the boys get the green one.  The girls take the new horse, Trotter, and the boys take Dobby for their caravan.  The adults give the children a map of places where they’re allowed to camp.  On their way to the lake, the children camp on farms that allow caravans.

When the children arrive at the lake, Nobby is glad to see them, and he introduces them to his chimpanzee, Pongo, and his terriers, Barker and Growler.  Nobby is friendly, but his Uncle Dan (called Tiger Dan) and Lou the acrobat are rough and unfriendly and don’t want the kids around.  When the children camp near the circus that night, Tiger Dan and Lou try to run them out of the campgrounds, but the children send their dog after them.  The campgrounds are public property, and there isn’t any reason why the children can’t be there.  The children think that Tiger Dan and Lou stumbled on their campsite by accident when they were trying to have some kind of secret meeting.

The next day, the children decide to go camp in the hills, as they had already planned because they know it will be cooler in the hills.  Lou takes an interest in where the children are going, but they don’t want to tell him much because they don’t want Lou and Tiger Dan coming after them to harass them again.  They find a nice place to camp up in the hills on some land belonging to a pleasant farmer and his wife, who also provide the children with food.

However, it isn’t long before Tiger Dan and Lou locate the children’s campsite and try to talk them out of camping at that spot also.  Nobby doesn’t know why Tiger Dan and Lou are up in the hills anyway.  The circus people have been buying some of their food from the farmer, but Nobby says that it’s always the women who go to the farm to buy things, not the men.  It seems like Tiger Dan and Lou are up to something suspicious, but the children don’t know what.

Then, suddenly, the men seem to change their views of the children, encouraging Nobby to be friends with them and to bring the children to visit the circus camp.  The children are suspicious and leave Timmy to guard their caravans while they visit the circus camp, just in case the men try to mess with their camp while they’re gone.  When they return to their own camp, the children discover that the men have tried to poison Timmy with tainted meat!  Fortunately, Timmy didn’t eat the meat, but unfortunately, one of Nobby’s dogs eats some and is violently ill.  The children aren’t sure whether the little dog will survive or not, and they don’t know why the bad men want to get rid of them so badly that they would try to kill their dog.  Whatever’s going on is serious, and they need to get to the bottom of it!

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

My Reaction

Traveling without parental supervision is the stuff of vintage children’s books and the dreams of children from every era! The kids in the Famous Five series have far more independence that modern children have, and in fact, the authorities might be concerned about children their age traveling without their parents. Actually, I would think that few adults even at the time of the writing of this book would even consider letting their children travel alone like that. That’s part of the appeal of this type of story, children being able to do things that real children never do.

I didn’t like the part about the dog being poisoned because I always hate it when bad things happen to animals in stories, but don’t worry! Nobby’s dog is fine in the end!

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The House at Pooh Corner

Winnie-the-Pooh

The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne, 1928.

This is the last book in the original Winnie-the-Pooh series. Although other authors later wrote other stories about Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends, at the end of this book, Christopher Robin goes away to school and has to leave his toys and animal friends behind. It’s implied that his friends will continue to live and play in the woods without him and that they’ll all continue to be friends, but the ending is a little bittersweet because Christopher Robin realizes that he’s growing up and that things are going to be changing.

Each chapter in the book is its own short story. I didn’t read the original Winnie-the-Pooh stories when I was a child, but I was already familiar with many of the stories in this book from the cartoon versions that I saw on tv when I was young. I still think of the Pooh Sticks game whenever I cross a foot bridge (although, living in Arizona, few of the ones I cross have water under them). I also still joke about what Tiggers like best from time to time. (Tiggers apparently like everything best until they actually try it, and then they discover that they don’t really like it at all, not unlike the way my dog feels when she begs for food I’m eating that she wouldn’t really like if she actually got some.)

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

Chapters:

Ch. 1: In Which a House is Built at Pooh Corner for Eeyore

On a snowy day, Pooh gets the idea of building a house for Eeyore because he’s the only one who doesn’t have a house. However, Eeyore had built a house for himself, and strangely, it has disappeared. When Eeyore gets Christopher Robin to help him investigate, they realize that Pooh and Piglet have mistakenly taken the materials Eeyore used for his house and used them to build a new house for Eeyore in a different location. But, the new location is better because Pooh and Piglet built the new house in a warmer part of the woods, and they did a better building job. Eeyore thinks that the wind blew it to its new spot, and the others let him think that.

Ch. 2: In Which Tigger Comes to the Forest and Has Breakfast

Pooh is woken up suddenly in the night by a strange noise. It’s Tigger, a very bouncy kind of tiger. They’ve never met before because he’s new to the woods, but Tigger knows Christopher Robin, so Pooh invites him to breakfast in the morning. However, Tigger doesn’t like the honey that Pooh serves for breakfast, so they go to see Piglet to see if Tigger likes acorns for breakfast. However, Tigger decides he doesn’t like those, either. They continue visiting friends to find things that Tigger will like. They finally find something Tigger likes when Tigger samples little Roo’s medicine, extract of malt, so Tigger decides that he will live with Kanga and Roo.

Ch. 3: In Which A Search is Organized, and Piglet Nearly Meets the Heffalump Again

Rabbit tells Pooh that he is organizing a search and tells him where to search without telling him what they’re supposed to be searching for. Confused, Pooh decides to look for Piglet to ask him what they’re supposed to be searching for. It turns out that Piglet has accidentally fallen down a hole, and Pooh falls into the same hole while looking for him. Pooh remembers that they dug holes like that as traps for Heffalumps, and they worry that they’re in a trap that the Heffalumps set for them. Fortunately, they accidentally find the person Rabbit was originally looking for.

Ch. 4: In Which It Is Shown that Tiggers Don’t Climb Trees

Tigger brags about all the things that Tiggers are good at doing, but it turns out that they’re not as good at climbing trees as he claims. Tigger and Roo get stuck in a tree, and the others have to help them get down.

Ch. 5: In Which Rabbit Has a Busy Day, and We Learn What Christopher Robin Does in the Mornings

Rabbit finds a note from Christopher Robin, but he has trouble reading it and figuring out what it means. Rabbit tries to figure out what Christopher Robin does every morning, and Eeyore tries to explain education to Piglet.

Ch. 6: In Which Pooh Invents a New Game and Eeyore Joins In

Pooh invents a game that involves tossing pine cones and sticks into the river next to a bridge and seeing which of them is the first to come out the other side of the bridge. While he and his friends are doing that, they find Eeyore floating on his back down the river because Tigger bounced him in. The others have to figure out how to rescue him.

Ch. 7: In Which Tigger is Unbounced

Rabbit has decided that Tigger’s bouncing has gotten out of control and that he needs to be taught a lesson. He tells Pooh and Piglet that they should take Tigger to a part of the woods he hasn’t been before, get him lost, and leave him there for awhile. Rabbit’s reasoning is that they can then rescue Tigger, and Tigger will be so grateful to them for rescuing him that he won’t be so bouncy. Pooh and Piglet have doubts about this plan, but they agree to help Rabbit. However, it turns out that Tigger’s don’t get lost, but Rabbit does, and Rabbit turns out to be the one who is grateful for a rescue.

Ch. 8: In Which Piglet Does a Very Grand Thing

One very windy Thursday, Pooh and Piglet decide to go around and visit their friends, wish them a happy Thursday, and have snacks with them. While they are visiting Owl, Owl’s tree falls over because of the wind. When the tree crashes, they’re trapped inside, and they have to figure out how to get out. Their plan requires Piglet doing something brave, which isn’t easy for such a small, timid animal.

Ch. 9: In Which Eeyore Finds the Wolery and Owl Moves Into It

With Owl’s tree down, Owl has to find a new place to live. Eeyore thinks that he’s found the perfect place: Piglet’s house. It’s a great house, but with Owl living there, where will Piglet live? Pooh says if Piglet’s house had fallen down, Piglet would come and live with him, so that’s what he can do now. Piglet is happy about living with his friend Pooh, so he decides that it’s okay for Owl to live in his house.

Ch. 10: In Which Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place, and We Leave Them There

All of the animals know that Christopher Robin is going away somewhere soon, although they’re not quite sure where he’s going and why. The story doesn’t exactly say it,but it’s implied that Christopher Robin is going away to boarding school. All of the animals say goodbye to him, and Eeyore writes a poem for the occasion. Christopher Robin and Pooh have a quiet walk and talk together. While Christopher Robin realizes that he’s growing up and things are going to be changing, the two of them agree that they’ll never forget each other, no matter how old they get. They’ll always have their favorite place and continue to go there, and some part of them will always be playing together.

Posted on by TracyC

Where Will All the Animals Go?

Where Will All the Animals Go? by Sharon Holaves, illustrated by Leigh Grant, 1978.

This book is one of the Little Golden Book picture books.

A little boy named Matt goes to visit his grandfather on his farm. They notice a storm approaching, and Matt worries about where the animals will go when the storm comes. His grandfather tells him that the animals all know where to go.

The animals also notice the approaching storm. When the rain comes, Matt and his grandfather go inside the house with the cats. After the storm is over, Matt’s grandfather takes him outside to show him where all the animals went during the storm.

Matt watches as all of the animals, both the domesticated animals of the farm and the wild animals who also live there, emerge from their hiding places. Every animal has a place to go, and they’re all fine after the storm.

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

My Reaction

I like this story because it’s very calm. I think it could make a good bedtime story for young children. Although the boy in the story is concerned about the animals and where they will go during the storm, the animals are never in any danger. The grandfather knows that the animals will all be fine, and he reassures his grandson that they all have a place to go. It’s reassuring that the storm is natural, the animals know what to do when it happens, and the boy sees that everything is fine. The story ends with the boy and his grandfather watching the sun come out after the storm.

Posted on by TracyC

The Neverending Story

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, 1979, 1983.

Bastian Balthazar Bux has problems. He’s smaller and fatter than the other boys, no good at sports or fighting, and not even a particularly good student.  Because of this, other kids tease him, bullies chase him, and the one time that he tried to talk back to them, the mean kids shoved him into a trash can, so he was afraid to ever try it again.  One day, on the way to school, he seeks sanctuary from his bullies in an old bookshop that belongs to Carl Conrad Coreander.  Bastian loves books more than anything.  In fact, his love of books and his imagination are his only apparent strengths at this point in his life.

Coreander doesn’t like children, and as soon as he sees Bastian, he makes it clear that the boy isn’t welcome in his shop, that he doesn’t carry books for children, and that he won’t sell Bastian any books for adults. Coreander says that children are just noisy and make messes and ruin books.  Bastian protests that not all children are like that, and the two them talk about why Bastian is there and why the other children bully him.  Bastian says that one of the reasons why the other kids think he’s odd is that he likes to make things up, like imagining places and characters and odd names. He rarely shares these things because nobody else seems interested. Coreander asks what his parents have to say about all of this, and Bastian reveals that his mother is dead and his father doesn’t take much interest in him or things that happen to him in his daily life.  Coreander is rather condescending to Bastian but also strangely interested in some of the details about him and his life.

When Coreander gets up to take a phone call, Bastian finds himself looking at the book that Coreander was reading when he came into the shop.  It’s called The Neverending Story, a title which captures Bastian’s imagination at once because he always hates it when a book he likes ends. The book seems to call to Bastian, and he suddenly feels like he has to have it.  Because Coreander has already made it clear that he won’t sell any books to Bastian, Bastian simply snatches up the book and leaves the shop with it.

After he’s out of the shop, Bastian suddenly feels guilty for stealing the book, even though he still feels compelled to have it and read it. He knows that he can’t take the book home with him because, even though his father doesn’t notice much, he would notice if Bastian showed up at home when he’s supposed to be at school.  Bastian knows that he’s already terribly late for school, but he can’t bring himself to go to class, especially not with a stolen book.  Desperately, he tries to think of a place to go.  Then, he remembers that his school has an attic.  Hardly anybody goes up there, and even those who do don’t go there very often.  He can hide there for a while and read.

Without giving much thought to how long he’s going to hide and what he’s going to do for food when he gets hungry, Bastian hurries up to the attic of the school, locks himself in, and starts to read The Neverending Story.

From this point on, most of the book is the story in the book Bastian stole, but at the same time, it’s also a story about Bastian himself.  There are periods when things in the story remind Bastian of things happening in his life or times when he pauses to think about what his class at school would be doing at this time without him, things that he’s glad to be missing himself.  However, gradually, Bastian himself starts to enter the story.

The Neverending Story Begins

The story in Bastian’s book takes place in the magical land of Fantastica.  The first characters we meet are messengers who are on their way to see the Childlike Empress who rules the land.  Within that land are many fantastical people and creatures who inhabit countries of their own, but strange things are happening here that have nothing to do with the usual magic of Fantastica.  A small group of messengers who happen to meet each other talk about what they’ve observed and why they need to talk to the Childlike Empress.  Whole sections of their countries and even some of the people and creatures who normally inhabit them have simply disappeared.  By “disappeared”, they mean that nothing is left in their place.  Whenever people try to look at the areas that used to be there, they see absolutely nothing, as though they have all gone blind when looking in their direction.  Nobody knows why this is happening, and people are panicking.

The Childlike Empress lives in a beautiful tower.  When the messengers arrive there, they discover that so many messengers have arrived from every corner of Fantastica that they have to make appointments and wait their turn to talk to the Childlike Empress.  Everyone seems to have the same problem, and to make matters worse, word has spread that the Childlike Empress is ill, and the doctors can’t seem to understand the nature of her illness and have no idea what to do to help her.  The messengers wonder if the Childlike Empress’s illness could have something to do with all the strange things that have been happening.  All of the creatures in the kingdom know that the very existence of their kingdom depends on the well-being of the Childlike Empress.  If anything ever happened to her, the rest of them would simply cease to exist.

At this point in the story, Bastian is reminded of his mother’s death and stops to think about her.  He remembers being at the hospital with his father while his mother was undergoing an operation to try to save her life, but unfortunately, it was unsuccessful.  After that point, Bastian’s father changed, becoming mentally and emotionally withdrawn, so it seems as though Bastian not only lost his mother completely but also part of his father.  His father continues to look after him physically and even gives him nice things, like a bicycle, but he rarely takes much notice of his son’s day-to-day life, making Bastian feel almost like he isn’t there himself.  His father no longer talks to him about ordinary, everyday things, and he’s always preoccupied with his grief.

The doctors trying to treat the Childlike Empress say that she doesn’t have any obvious symptoms of illness.  For some reason, she simply seems to be fading away, making it seem likely that her malady is tied to the fading away of Fantastica itself.  Chiron the centaur, the greatest of the healers, says that the Childlike Empress has said that someone must go on a quest to find the solution to her problem. She doesn’t say what the solution is, but she has chosen the hero who will go on this quest by name and has given Chiron her medallion to give to this hero.  The Childlike Empress’s amulet, Auryn, takes the form of the twined snakes (it’s a sort of elaborate ouroboros) that appears on the cover of the book that Bastian is reading.

Chiron takes the medallion to the Greenskins, a people who resemble nomadic Native Americans who hunt purple buffalo, to find the hero called Atreyu.  Atreyu turns out to be a 10-year-old boy, and Chiron is upset at first that a child so young has been given this important mission.  Even though he is doubtful that a child could save the Childlike Empress, he has to trust the empress’s decision.  He explains the situation to Atreyu and his people, and Atreyu sets off on his quest, although he has little to go on.

Bastian comes to identify somewhat with Atreyu, who is an orphan, raised communally by his people.  In a way, Atreyu is like what Bastian himself wishes he was.  Atreyu is also an orphan, but where Bastian feels neglected by his remaining parent and has no one else to rely on, Atreyu is regarded as the “son of all” his people, with everyone raising him.  Bastian wishes that he could feel like he could rely on everyone around him to care about him.  Atreyu is also strong and brave, which Bastian is not, or at least, he doesn’t feel like he is.

Atreyu travels far and asks everyone where he stops if they know how to help the Childlike Empress, but no one does.  However, in a dream, a purple buffalo tells him that he must visit an ancient woman called Morla, who lives in the Swamp of Sorrows.  She is the oldest creature in Fantastica, and she will know the answer.  Atreyu loses his beloved horse in the Swamp of Sorrows because the horse is overtaken by a dreadful depression and cannot save himself from being dragged down into the swamp.  (This was the worst part of the movie version of this story for me as a kid although somewhat less traumatic in the book.)  Atreyu is protected from the depression by the Childlike Empress’s amulet and is able to reach Morla.

Morla turns out to be a giant and ancient tortoise.  She does know the answer to the problem, but Atreyu has trouble persuading her to explain it at first because Morla is so old that she has come to feel like life is meaningless and doesn’t really care if she and everyone else disappears or not.  Fortunately, Atreyu’s arguments with her revive enough of her interest for her to talk to him. Morla says that the Childlike Empress has always been young because her life isn’t measured by time like others’ lives.  The Childlike Empress’s life is measured by names.  She has had many, many names over the years, most of them forgotten now, and even Morla doesn’t know what her current name is.  In order for her life and existence to be renewed, the Childlike Empress needs a new name.  Atreyu asks Morla how she can get one, and Morla says that she doesn’t know who can give her a new name, only that it can’t be anyone from Fantastica.  Atreyu must visit the Southern Oracle to find the answer.

At this point, Bastian thinks it’s too bad that he can’t give the Childlike Empress her name because thinking up unusual names is something that he’s really good at, and this might be the one place where his talent has a use and people who would welcome it.  However, the things that are happening in the story are so scary that Bastian is also grateful that he is safe where he is, just reading about them.

Bastian reads that Atreyu wanders out of the swamp on foot. He doesn’t know where he’s going, and he lost all of his supplies with his horse.  Then, Bastian hears the clock chime and knows that school is out for the day. As the other children leave the school, Bastian has to decide what to do. He knows that he really should go home and own up to his father about stealing the book, but when he gets up to go, he has the feeling like he has to keep reading, to finish what he’s started, like Atreyu, who is still fulfilling his mission in spite of hardship.  Bastian feels a little proud of making a difficult decision because he’s not running away from his responsibilities so much as continuing a quest of his own.  He knows that he must finish that book. Indeed, he must because the existence of Fantastica now depends on him.

As he continues reading and following Atreyu’s adventures, Bastian begins to feel more like the story isn’t just a story, that there is something more to it. When Atreyu reaches the Oracle, which communicates only through rhyme, it tells Atreyu that nobody in Fantastica can give the Childlike Empress a new name because the truth is that all of them are only characters in a book who exist as they are because of the needs of the story.  The people of Fantastica didn’t invent their world, they don’t create it as it exists, and they don’t have any real power to change anything, even a name.  All of those powers belong to humans who live in what they call the “Outer World.”  The Oracle says that generations of human children have read the book that contains all of Fantastica, and they are the ones who have used their powerful imaginations to give the Childlike Empress new names, over and over.  The problem is that the book has not been read by anyone for too long and children tend not to believe in stories like theirs anymore, so it has been too long since the Childlike Empress was given her last name. The memories of all the names she’s been given have faded, so she is losing her ability to maintain her existence and the existence of all of Fantastica.  They need a human child with the ability to believe in Fantastica and think of a new name to rename the Childlike Empress.  They need Bastian … if Bastian can manage to believe in himself as the hero of his story.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, plus a computer game about it and the theme song from the movie). It was originally written in German, and the version I have is the English translation. There is a movie version from the 1980s that is very well-known among people who were young then and fantasy fans. There are also two movie sequels that aren’t as well-known.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I saw the movie version of this book long before I ever got hold of a copy and way before I was old enough to read a book that long.  The movie was big in the 1980s, when I was a young child, and it has a magical and very 1980s theme song that was also used as a cultural reference in the show Stranger Things.  I’m actually attached to that song because it’s one of the sounds of my early childhood. For reference, I’m younger than all the Stranger Things kid characters are supposed to be, even Erica, but old enough to have memories of the time period of that show. The mall scenes in that show are practically right out of my childhood. Those electronicized ‘80s songs, bright-colored clothes and clothes with paint splatter designs, Cold War with two Germanies – East and West – these things were all part of my early life, and that is the time period when this book was popular and the movie was new.  As Stranger Things points out, things like fantasy books and movies and playing Dungeons and Dragons were all considered part of nerd culture back in the day.  To a certain extent, they still are, but Harry Potter brought a renewed interest in and popularization of fantasy books in the late 1990s.

The story is about the power of imagination and the roles that fantasy play in human lives.  The story actually gets deep in places about the philosophy of stories and how people use them.  It explains that humans fear stories, particularly fantasy stories, because, when fantasy characters get out in the real world and take over people’s minds, they can cause madness and delusions or be used as lies by unscrupulous people to fool and manipulate others.  They don’t use the word “propaganda”, but that’s part of what they imply, and it’s a fitting concern for the Cold War era when this story was written.  Madness can also be a real risk for people who can’t separate reality from fantasy, as shown in Bastian’s further adventures in Fantastica, described below.  Humans are creatures that live and function in the real world, and while we sometimes venture into the realm of fantasy and stories, we can lose ourselves if we don’t know how to keep the two separate in our minds.  So, what’s a human supposed to do?

The book suggests the idea that people can’t simply avoid fantasy entirely for fear of the effect that it might have on them, like people who refuse to allow children to read fantasy books.  Even though people like that might think they’re smart for avoiding “lies” and “delusions”, but the problem with that is that there are many types of delusions that people have, even in their everyday lives, and people who are convinced that they’re being thoroughly realistic and avoiding any sort of fantasy actually make themselves vulnerable to lies and delusions of other kinds.  Anybody who’s lived through the era of accusations of “fake news” should be able to grasp that concept.  A real world fact is that people use stories of all kinds to explain and understand the world around them.  We all use stories, and those stories have shades of emotion and varying degrees of elements of fiction.  The principal of Fantastica is that fantasy is fine when people approach it as fantasy, coming to it willingly in the full knowledge that it is fantasy.  Even in fantasy stories there can be elements of realism, such as the reality of human emotions, but people can pick out the real bits from the fictional ones when they know what they’re dealing with and are willing participants, not having it pushed at them by people who are actively seeking to trick them. 

People with broad, real-world knowledge, who are used to stories of various kinds in the real world, get accustomed to distinguishing between different types of stories and recognizing fictional elements from false ones.  There have been a couple of times when I’ve actively pointed out to people on my neighborhood website who shared “shocking” stories about horrific kidnapping attempts of kids or young women that those stories were false.  The local police have even said that they were false, but I knew that they were even before getting that confirmed with the local police.  How?  I’ve seen them before, or ones very much like them.  Honestly, they were basically the type of kidnapping stories that appear on Wattpad, the infamous Internet home of badly-misspelled stories of that ilk, and because I read fanfiction, I’ve seen them before in all their grammatically-incorrect glory.  I recognized elements of the fake stories from ones that I read before in the full knowledge that they were completely fictional and probably written by teenagers, most of whom don’t understand how chloroform actually works.  I could see their ridiculously complicated premises anywhere and go, “Yep, it’s one of those stories.”  The people attempting to share these stories as shocking things that their neighbors need to know about have probably never read Wattpad or any similar amateur fiction and equally don’t know how chloroform works.  They just experienced a feeling of shock when reading these stories on Facebook (yes, that is where they said they got them) and did what they automatically do when they feel shocked about something, passed it on to someone else without asking someone more knowledgeable.  Some of the other people reading their posts on the neighborhood website called the local police to check their stories, but the original posters did not do that before posting them. It seems that never crossed their minds.  I’m telling you this because I’m pointing out that I’m immune to this particular kind of shocking fake kidnapping story because I’ve seen it before, I’m familiar with the general format, and I actually did look up what chloroform does and how it works because I was curious.  I’ve sort of inoculated myself against this sort of story.  I don’t feel shocked when I see it.  I roll my eyes. 

I’m not saying that it’s completely impossible to fool me on anything because human beings are limited, and I can’t say that I’ve heard every story out there, but I’ve heard quite a lot of them.  I’m a voracious, long-term reader in different genres, fictional and non-fiction, badly-written and award-winning.  I don’t fear fiction or fantasy or even “fake news” because I’ve seen it before in various forms.  I know how to verify information and already have reliable sources of information lined up on various subjects.  Above all, I have the knowledge that I’m always responsible for myself and in control of myself and that no amount of fiction or “fake news” can ever make me do anything without my consent.  Even people under hypnosis can’t be made to do anything that is truly against their will or morals, and I’m pretty comfortable with my sense of self and what I’m willing or not willing to do.  (By the way, I got the Pfizer vaccine back in April 2021 and the Moderna booster in December 2021, and I’m perfectly fine. It’s not poison, unlike some of those idiot horse cures some people try when they’re so afraid of being tricked by some people that they leave themselves open to being tricked by other people, who can see their real fears. It’s also not magnetic.  I used to stick coins to my skin way back in elementary school in the early 1990s, although I preferred the trick where you roll a coin down your forehead and nose. Sticking coins to your skin works because of sweat, not magnetism, like that trick of sticking a spoon to your nose because you licked it first. This is a digression, but honestly, how does anyone get out of childhood without knowing how that works? I wasn’t aware that anybody who had ever been to school with other kids in their childhood hadn’t seen this stuff before.) Fear is one element I know that can cloud people’s perceptions about what’s real and what’s not, and while I’m naturally a nervous person in a lot of ways, this isn’t something that scares me at all.  I’m not afraid of being tricked.  I never was.  I was a fan of magic tricks at a young age, and that led me to read about magic and the tricks that people use. None of them scare me because I’ve done them before myself and know how they work.  It’s like that with fiction, too.  Been there, done that, seen it, know it, and I urge other people to do the same.  This kind of mental vaccination works as well as the other kind.  At least, it always has for me.

Book vs. Movie

There are many incidents in the book that are not in the movie, although some appeared in the first movie sequel.  In fact, the original movie really only covers about the first half the book.  Rather than ending with Bastian giving the Childlike Empress her new name, Moon Child, while she and Atreyu are at the Ivory Tower where she lives, Bastian hesitates because he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do, if he’s really chosen the right name, if he’s really going to enter Fantastica and how, and above all, if a small, weak boy like himself can really be a hero.  Seeing that his indecision could ruin Fantastica forever, the Childlike Empress finds a way to put the story into a loop, repeating over and over, making it truly a never-ending story until Bastian finally names her.

After Bastian names her, Moon Child gives him the last grain of sand from Fantastica, like in the end of the movie, so he can rebuild it.  At first, Bastian isn’t sure how, but she explains to him that he can do it with his wishes. He has as many wishes as he wants, and he can wish for anything and everything.  Bastian feels overwhelmed at the thought that he can think of anything, and that makes it difficult to think of anything because he doesn’t know where to start. Yet, Bastian must make wishes to rebuild Fantastica.  From here, I’ll basically describe Bastian’s continuing adventures in Fantastica, although I’m going to leave out a lot of detail and individual incidents and characters because there’s far too much to describe:

Bastian’s Continuing Adventures

To get him started, Moon Child asks Bastian what made him hesitate before to name her.  Bastian explains how he doesn’t look or feel like a hero should. He thinks that heroes should be like princes, handsome and strong, not small, weak, and fat like himself.  With this first wish, Bastian becomes a handsome prince.  Moon Child gives Bastian the Auryn, which gives him the power to control things in Fantastica and yet keep him safe from all dangers at the same time.  Using it, Bastian makes himself strong and brave as well as handsome, and his wishes take him on new adventures through new lands, creating things as he goes.

Then, his wish for companionship leads him to find Atreyu.  He is glad to be reunited with him, but Atreyu remembers Bastian’s real appearance because he saw him in a mirror before.  By now, Bastian’s memories of his former self are fading.  The people of Fantastica appreciate Bastian’s ability to make new stories because they lack that ability themselves, but it starts getting out of hand.  Bastian’s creations start getting out of his control, and Atreyu realizes that Bastian is losing more and more of his memories, forgetting who he really is and what his home is really like.  As Bastian loses touch with his real self, he also gets confused about what he really wants, and his confusion is causing his wishes to produce uncontrollable results. To make matters worse, Bastian is losing his desire to return home along with his memories of home.  His friends are distressed because they know that Bastian must return home in order to inspire other children to come to Fantastica.  If he doesn’t, other children won’t come and give Moon Child new names in the future, and Fantastica will be in danger once again.  Basically, Bastian has lost of the plot of his own story.

Persuaded by his friends, Bastian makes a wish that will help him figure out what to do: he wants to see the Childlike Empress/Moon Child again.  Although Atreyu and Falkor wanted him to make a new choice to guide their quest, they’re not convinced this is the right one because one of the rules of Fantastica is that nobody can see her more than once.  Bastian says that he thinks he’s different because he’s human and not from Fantastica, and he’s already seen her more than once.  As they continue their journey, Bastian continues losing more and more of himself, getting offended with his friends because they treat him like a child, forgetting that’s what he actually is.

At one point, an evil character separates Bastian from his friends by feeding his vanity.  As Bastian loses more and more of his memories, he becomes uncertain about whether or not he really wants to continue his journey to see Moon Child, forgetting his original reason for wanting to see her.  They do finally arrive at the Ivory Tower, but the Childlike Empress is not there, and nobody knows where she is.  At the evil character’s urging, Bastian tries to make himself emperor in her place, thinking that she has left Fantastica forever and that the reason she gave him Auryn is because she wanted him to be her successor.  However, the other residents of Fantastica know that it’s not right.  Atreyu and Falkor end up leading the forces of Fantastica against Bastian to get the amulet, return his memories, and put things right.  I don’t like stories where people turn against their friends like Bastian does because it’s pretty uncomfortable.  In this case, many people are killed in the battle against Bastian, Bastian wounds Atreyu, and the Ivory Tower collapses.

At first, Bastian blames Atreyu for his own failures and tries to go after him to get revenge, but along the way, he stumbles on a town occupied with former emperors and empresses of Fantastica.  A little monkey explains to Bastian what the town is and who the people there are.  All of the people in the town were people who tried to take over Fantastica but lost their minds in the effort.  They’re humans and have lost their memories and now do crazy things.  Because they’ve lost their minds and memories, they’re unable to wish themselves home.  This is what happens to humans who lose their desire to go home to the real world.  Readers can look at it as people who become detached from reality and live in a madness based on fantasy.  Humans need reality to keep themselves grounded and sane, and they need their memories and their pasts to help themselves build a future.

The monkey shows Bastian how he taught the crazy ex-emperors a game where they spell words with alphabet blocks.  Most of what they create is gibberish, but the monkey says that, when they’ve played for a hundred years or so, they’ll occasionally spell out a poem, and since they play endlessly, they’ll eventually spell out all of the works of literature, poking fun at the theory that monkeys pounding endlessly on typewriters could do the same thing.  Bastian is horrified and questions the monkey about how he can avoid this fate.  Auryn is a liability because it’s removing the memories that Bastian needs to return home, yet the monkey says that Bastian will need Auryn in order to return home.

As Bastian journeys further, he finds a land where people always work together and use the word “we” instead of “I.”  It’s inspiring in a way, but Bastian is troubled because, in a land where nobody is distinctive or special, everyone is easily replaceable in the work force, and nobody seems to really love anybody else as an individual.  Here, Bastian realizes that his true wish, one that he has long forgotten, is not to be the strongest or handsomeness or most powerful but simply to be loved.  He wants to be loved for the person he really is, even with all of his imperfections.  The problem is that Bastian is uncertain now about who he really is because he’s changed so much since he came to Fantastica and has lost his memories of who he used to be.

Journeying further yet, Bastian meets a singing woman.  He has a strange feeling like he wants to run to her, hug her, and call her “Mama,” but he knows that this woman is not his mother.  He remembers that his mother is dead, and she was a very different woman from this one.  This is a plant woman who grows fruit herself.  The strange woman gives him some fruit to eat and begins telling Bastian a story.  The story she tells is Bastian’s own story, the story of how he came to Fantastica, how he gave the Childlike Empress her name, and how he had made wishes that were both good and bad and lost himself along the way.  The house where the woman is called the House of Change, which not only changes itself but changes people who are there.  The woman says that Bastian’s problem is that he always wanted to be someone else other than what he was, but at the same time, he didn’t want to change himself.

During his time in the House of Change, Bastian becomes like a child again, and the plant woman, Dame Eyola, is motherly to him, fulfilling the need for love that Bastian has had for so long.  He feels guilty about all the things that he’s done since he arrived in Fantastica, but Eyola comforts him and advises him to seek the Water of Life.  However, when he does, she cautions him that it will be his last wish.  Bastian is afraid because he knows now that every time he wishes, he will lose a part of himself.  Still, Dame Eyola fills up him with her motherly love, and Bastian finds himself needing less love himself and wishing that he also had the ability to love someone.  This is his last wish.  With that wish, Bastian forgets his parents, his last memory aside from his own name.  Dame Eyola says that Bastian will be able to give that kind of love to others when he has drunk the Water of Life, and he will only be able to return to his own world when he brings some of that Water of Life back to his world with him.

To get to the Water of Life, Bastian must pass through a picture gallery of forgotten dreams and find one of his own forgotten dreams.  His wish is to love someone, but to do that, he must choose someone in particular to love and forget the last person he still remembers – himself. 

Bastian has to dig to find his forgotten dream because it’s buried, but when he finds it, it’s a dream of his father, sad and trapped in ice, begging him to help free him.  Bastian’s troubled relationship with his father has been at the heart of most of his feelings, but now, he finds himself wanting to help his father.  He now has the power to reach the Water of Life.  There is another problem that he has to deal with before he can reach the Water of Life, and he encounters Atreyu and Falklor again. 

The Water of Life is inside Auryn itself, and Bastian reaches it when he finally takes it off.  When the three of them get to the Water of Life, he has trouble reaching it because he’s lost all memory of himself.  However, Atreyu speaks on his behalf as a friend because he remembers who Bastian really is.  Bastian sheds all of the changes that he’s gained in Fantastica, becoming fully himself again and actually being happy with himself for the first time, able to truly love himself and love other people.  Bastian wants to bring some of the Water of Life to his father.

There is some consternation when the white snake of the Auryn realizes that Bastian has left uncompleted stories in Fantastica.  It wants Bastian to stay in Fantastica and finish them all, but Bastian says he’ll never get to go home if he does that.  However, Atreyu and Falkor promise to complete all of the unfinished stories on Bastian’s behalf, and the snakes of Auryn allow Bastian to go home.

Bastian finds himself in the school attic once again.  He’s not sure how long he’s been there, but his clothes are still wet, like they were from the rain when he started reading.  Bastian remembers that he should return The Neverending Story to the bookshop, but he can’t find it.  It seems like the book has disappeared.  He decides all he can do is talk to the owner of the bookshop and explain the situation.  As he walks through the school, he can’t find anybody and worries that he’s completely alone in the world.  He’s forgotten that it’s Sunday, and there’s no classes on Sunday.  Since the school building is locked, he has to let himself out through a window and climb down some scaffolding, a fear that would have been terrible for him before his adventures in Fantastica.

Bastian goes home and sees his father, who is glad to see him.  His father hugs him.  He’s been worried about him and wants to know where he’s been.  Bastian learns that he’s only been missing for a day.  Bastian explains the whole entire story to his father, and his father listens in a way he hasn’t before and actually understands.  When his father holds him on his lap and cries, Bastian knows that his father has received the Water of Life.  His father says that things are going to be different between them from now on.  At this point, Bastian’s adventures might seem like the imaginings and dreams of an unhappy and neglected boy and his father’s changes as the realization that both he and Bastian experienced loss and that Bastian badly needs his love.  However, the story isn’t quite over yet.

The next day, Bastian feels compelled to visit Mr. Coreander and explain to him about the book.  When he does, Mr. Coreander questions him about which book he took.  Bastian tells him, but Mr. Coreander says that none of his books are missing.  He denies ever having had a book called The Neverending Story.  Bastian insists that he’s telling the truth, and Mr. Coreander says that he’d better tell him the whole story.  Bastian once again tells the whole story.  When he’s finished, Mr. Coreander says that Bastian isn’t a thief because the book he took wasn’t from his shop.  He says that the book is from Fantastica and it has now moved on to another reader.  Mr. Coreander admits that he knows about Fantastica, and the book that Bastian read is only one door into it.  Mr. Coreander didn’t read that one, but he has read others, and he also gave the Childlike Empress a name.  He says that maybe Bastian will find other books that will return him to Fantastica.  When Bastian says that he was told that he could only meet Moon Child once, Mr. Coreander reveals a secret that only humans know: humans can see the Childlike Empress again if they give her a different name.  People can only see her once under each name she has, but humans can name and rename her again and again.  Mr. Coreander appreciates that he can discuss Fantastica with Bastian because there aren’t many people who have experienced what they’ve experienced, and Mr. Coreander thinks that Bastian will guide others to Fantastica and all of them will also bring back the Water of Life.

Posted on by TracyC

The Phantom Tollbooth

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, 1961.

Milo is a boy who never really knows what he wants or what to do with himself.  He is always bored because he doesn’t really know the purpose or point of doing anything.  Nothing he learns in school interests him because he can’t see what he could ever do with the knowledge.  He never bothers to read the books he has, play with his toys, or learn to use his tools because he just doesn’t have the imagination to appreciate them or what he could do with them.

One day, when Milo gets home from school, he finds an unexpected package.  It’s not his birthday or Christmas, but the package is definitely intended for him because it has his name on it: “For Milo, who has plenty of time.”  There is a list of items contained in the package: 1 tollbooth (which must be assembled, according to the directions), 3 precautionary signs (“to be used in a precautionary fashion”), some coins for the tollbooth, a map (with no familiar places on it), and a driver’s rule book (which must be obeyed).  Interestingly, it promises that if Milo is not satisfied with his tollbooth experience, his time will be refunded.  Since Milo doesn’t think he has anything else to do anyway, he decides that he might as well unwrap the tollbooth and set it up. 

Although Milo thinks that the map is purely fictional and that the tollbooth is just a playset, he decides that he might as well select a destination on it for his trip through the tollbooth.  He closes his eyes, puts a finger on the map, and selects a place called “Dictionopolis.” He gets in the toy car, puts a coin in the tollbooth, and goes through it.

To his surprise, Milo suddenly finds himself driving down a real highway, no longer in his own apartment.  He sees a sign pointing the way to a place called Expectations, and he stops to ask a man about it.  At first, he thinks he’s talking to a weather man, but the man corrects him, saying that he’s really the “Whether man.”  Part of his job is to hurry people along, even if they have no expectations.  Nothing the Whether Man says to Milo makes sense to him, so he decides that he’d better just get going.

As Milo drives down the highway, he gets bored and starts daydreaming.  As his mind wanders, the scenery gets duller and grayer, the car slows down, and eventually, the car stops and won’t move further.  Milo looks around and wonders where he is.  It turns out that he’s in the Doldrums, the home of the Lethargarians.  They tell him that thinking isn’t allowed there.  Milo says that’s a dumb rule because everybody thinks.  The Lethargarians say that they never think and Milo must not have thought either because, if he had, he wouldn’t be there.  People usually get to the Doldrums because they’re not thinking, and once they’re there, nobody is allowed to think.  They refer Milo to the rule book that came with the tollbooth.  Milo looks in the rule book and sees that is a rule.  There are also limits on laughing and smiling in the Doldrums.  Milo asks the Lethargarians what they do if they can’t think or laugh.  They say that they can do anything as long as they’re also doing nothing.  Mainly, they do things like daydreaming, napping, loafing, loitering, and wasting time.  They say it gives them a full schedule and allows them to get nothing done, which they consider an important accomplishment.  Milo asks them if that’s what everybody here does, and they say that the one person who doesn’t is the Watch Dog, who tries to make sure that nobody wastes time.

At that point, the Watch Dog shows up.  The Watch Dog looks like a dog, but his body is an alarm clock.  The Watch Dog asks Milo what he’s doing, and is alarmed when Milo says that he’s “killing time.”  It’s bad enough when people waste time, but killing it is horrible!  (The book is full of these kinds of puns. It’s just getting started.)  Milo explains how he got stuck in the Doldrums while he was on his way to Dictionopolis and asks the Watch Dog for help.  The Watch Dog explains that if he got there by not thinking, he can also get out by thinking and asks to come along because he likes car rides.  Milo agrees, and the two of them get in the car.  Milo thinks as hard as he can (which the book notes isn’t easy for Milo because he’s not used to thinking and doesn’t do it too often).  Gradually, as Milo thinks of various things, the car begins to move.  The faster Milo thinks, the faster the car goes.  Milo learns that it’s possible to accomplish a lot with just a little thought.

The Watch Dog’s name is Tock because his older brother is named Tick. However, their names are a mistake because his older brother only makes a tock sound, and Tock only makes a tick sound.  It’s a source of pain and disappointment.  Tock tells Milo about the origin of time and why Watch Dogs find it important to make sure that people use time well.  He says that time is the most valuable possession because it always keeps moving.

When they arrive at Dictionopolis, the gatekeeper won’t let them in immediately because Milo doesn’t have a reason for being there.  Nobody gets let in without a reason.  Fortunately, the gatekeeper always keeps a few spare reasons lying around, and he decides to let Milo have one.  The one he selects is “WHY NOT?”, which the gatekeeper considers a good, all-purpose reason for doing anything.  (I don’t know. I’ve heard that one followed up by an angry “I’ll tell you why not!” before.)

As readers have probably guessed, Dictionopolis is all about words. When Milo enters the city, he finds himself in the marketplace, which is called the “Word Market.”  The ruler of Dictionopolis is Azaz the Unabridged, and when Milo is welcomed to the city by the members of the king’s cabinet, they do so in multiple ways, using synonyms.  Milo asks them why they don’t just pick one word and stick with it, but they’re not interested in that.  They say that it’s not their business to make sense and that one word is as good as another, so why not use them all?  (That isn’t true, but the story tells you why not later.)  They go on to tell Milo that letters grow on trees here, and people come from all over to buy all the words they need in the Word Market in town.  Part of the cabinet’s duty is to make sure that all of the words being sold are real words and have real meanings because people would have no use for nonsense words that don’t mean anything and that nobody will understand.  The cabinet doesn’t seem to care about whether or not the words are being used in a way that makes sense as long as they’re real words. (If you’re familiar with business speak or buzzwords, you’ve probably noticed that much of it works on a similar principle.)  Putting the words into a context that makes sense isn’t their job.  (Later, you meet the person who had that job.)  However, the cabinet does advise Milo to be careful when choosing his words and to say only what he means to say.  They excuse themselves to get ready for the banquet and say that they’ll see Milo there later, although Milo doesn’t know what banquet they’re talking about.

Milo and Tock explore the Word Market.  Milo is fascinated by the variety of words available.  He doesn’t know what they all mean, but he thinks that if he can buy some, he can learn how to use them.  He chooses three words he doesn’t know: quagmire, flabbergast, and upholstery. (I’m surprised he didn’t know the last one because, surely, he has upholstered furniture in his apartment.)  Unfortunately, Milo quickly realizes that he has only one coin with him, and he’ll need that coin to get back through the tollbooth.  Eventually, he finds a stall selling individual letters for people who like to make their own words.  The stall owner gives them some free samples to taste. They taste good to Milo, and the stall owner tells them that sets of letters come with instructions.  Milo doesn’t think he’s very good at making words, but the Spelling Bee, a giant bee, begins showing him how to spell words.  However, the Humbug, a grumpy bug, tries to tell Milo not to bother learning.  The Spelling Bee tells Milo not to listen to the Humbug because he just tells tall stories and doesn’t actually know anything, not even how to spell his own name.

The Spelling Bee and the Humbug start fighting and knock over all the word stalls around them. There is a big mess, all the words get scrambled, and it takes some time before everyone sorts everything out.  By that time, the Spelling Bee is gone, and when the policeman comes, the Humbug blames everything on Milo and Tock.  At first, it seems like Milo will get off lightly because the policeman (who is also the judge) gives him the shortest “sentence” he can think of (“I am”).  Unfortunately, he’s also the jailer and takes Milo and Tock to prison for 6 million years.

In the prison, Milo and Tock meet the Which.  At first, Milo thinks that she’s a “witch”, but she says many people make that mistake.  The Which is King Azaz’s great-aunt, and her job used to be to make sure that people correctly chose which words to use and didn’t use more words than necessary. (A problem that Milo noticed in the market.)  The Which explains that she was thrown into prison because she got too carried away with her job and became too miserly with words. Word economy is good (and something I struggle with), but rather than promoting brevity, the Which started promoting silence instead,. It got so bad that people eventually stopped buying words and the market was failing, so the king had to put a stop to it.  The Which says that she understands now where she went wrong, and Milo asks her if there’s anything that he can do to help her.  The Which says that the only thing that would help her would be the return of Rhyme and Reason.  When Milo asks who they are, she tells him the story of the founding of the Kingdom of Wisdom.

Years ago, the King of Wisdom had two sons, and he was proud of both, but one of them had an obsession with words, and the other had an obsession with numbers.  The king didn’t realize how bad their conflict was growing, and it got worse over time. One day, the king found a pair of abandoned infant twins.  The twins were both girls, and the king had always wanted daughters as well as sons, so he adopted them and named them Rhyme and Reason.  Everyone loved Rhyme and Reason, and they had a talent for resolving problems and disputes. When the king died, he left his kingdom to both of his sons and left instructions for them both to look after Rhyme and Reason. The word-obsessed son, Azaz, established a capital city of his own, Dictionopolis, and the number-obsessed son, the Mathemagician, established the city of Digitopolis.  Rhyme and Reason remained in the city of Wisdom and acted as advisers to the brothers, mediating their disputes.  This system worked until the brothers got into their worst fight over whether words or numbers are most important.  They took this dispute to Rhyme and Reason, who said that both are of equal importance. This satisfied most people, but both brothers were angry because they had wanted the girls to make a definite choice between them. In their last joint act, they banished Rhyme and Reason to the Castle in the Air. Since then, there has been continued fighting between the two brothers and their respective cities, the city of Wisdom has been neglected, and there’s been no Rhyme or Reason to any of it. (Ha, ha.)

Milo says that maybe they could rescue Rhyme and Reason from the Castle in the Air. The Which says that would be difficult because there’s only one stairway to the castle, and it’s guarded by demons. Milo remembers that there is also the matter of them being stuck in prison for 6 million years. The Which says that being in prison isn’t really a problem. Although the policeman/judge/jailer likes putting people in prison, he doesn’t care much about keeping them there, so Milo and Tock can leave when they like, and he probably won’t notice. (Sounds like he’s not very good at the “jailer” part of his job.)  The Which points out a button on the wall, Milo presses it, and a door opens.

When they step outside, the king’s cabinet members come to take him to the banquet that they mentioned earlier. They have Milo and Tock step into their wagon and tell them to be quiet because “it goes without saying.” (Ha, ha.) They take Milo and Tock to a palace shaped like a book, where they meet King Azaz and join the banquet.

The banquet is a pun-filled meal where everyone has to literally eat their words and have half-baked ideas for dessert.  (Half-baked ideas look good, but you shouldn’t have too many because you can get sick of them. Tock says so.)  Nothing makes sense, and even the king realizes it, which gives Milo the opportunity to suggest bringing back Rhyme and Reason.  The king isn’t sure that’s possible, and the Humbug, of course, volunteers Milo and Tock for the job.  The joke turns out to be on him because the king volunteers the Humbug to assist Milo.  Reaching Rhyme and Reason will be a perilous journey, and possibly the most difficult part will be getting the Mathemagician to agree to let them do it.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). There is also a movie version of this book (mostly animated but part live action) with songs. You can see a trailer for it on YouTube.

My Reaction

The Phantom Tollbooth is a fantasy story, but like many fantasy stories, it’s also a morality story.  It’s a little like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which aims to correct children’s bad habits.  Milo’s boredom problems are due to his lack of thought for the things he could do and imagination to figure out how to make use of what he has.  His adventures after he goes through the Phantom Tollbooth help him to see things differently and to learn to use his mind creatively.

However, I wouldn’t say that the story is too preachy.  A couple of parts started to feel a little like a lecture, but it’s set in a fantasy land that feels a little like Alice in Wonderland.  There’s a healthy dose of nonsense that keeps things interesting and fun.  The book is peppered with puns and peopled by a fascinating variety of characters.  There’s the boy who can see through everyone and everything, who teaches Milo to look at things from an adult perspective and helps him to realize the benefit of keeping his feet on the ground (both of those are also puns). There’s the man who is the world’s shortest giant, the world’s tallest midget, the world’s thinnest fat man, and the world’s fattest thin man all at the same time.  Basically, he’s just an ordinary guy who’s noticed that people think of him in different ways when they compare him with themselves.

I was first introduced to this story when I was in elementary school, as many people were.  Our teacher read it to us and showed us the cartoon version.  Parts of songs from that version still get stuck in my head, almost 30 years later.  (“Don’t Say There’s Nothing To Do the Doldrums …”) The part of the story that stuck with me the longest was the Dodecahedron, a shape with twelve sides. If you’ve seen the twelve-sided dice used for Dungeons and Dragons and similar role-playing games, those are dodecahedrons. In the book, the Dodecahedron is talking character as well as a shape, but I remember it because our teacher gave us paper cut-outs to make our own dodecahedrons. I made two of them, and I might still have one somewhere.

Posted on by TracyC

A Pattern of Roses

A Pattern of Roses by K. M. Peyton, 1972, 1973.

Tim Ingram has been feeling depressed since his parents decided to move from London to an old house in the country that they’re fixing up. It’s hard for him being separated from his friends and living in this overly-quiet place, where it seems like nothing ever happens, but the truth is that he was depressed even before his family moved. A large part of Tim’s problem is not knowing what he wants out of life. He works hard in school to get good grades, and his school has a reputation for getting its students into good universities, but it all seems so futile because Tim doesn’t know what he really wants to study or what he’ll do when he gets out of school. His father quit school early and went to work, working his way up the ladder in an advertising firm and becoming monetarily successful. However, Tim doesn’t feel like he has either the wit or self-confidence for starting off from practically nothing and working his way up in a direction he’s not even sure he wants to go. His father’s plans and suggestions for the future don’t excite him or make him happy. They actually make him feel more stressed and depressed when he thinks about them. His father is in a position to just give him a job with his company, so Tim does have a guaranteed job if he can’t think of anything else, but advertising doesn’t appeal to Tim. He’s not sure what does appeal to him. He fears and dreads the future, specifically his own future. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, and in this new place, it seems like there isn’t a lot he can do.

Tim has also been arguing with his parents, discovering that he has different interests and priorities in life than they do. While they’re enthusiastic about expanding onto this country house with a new and stylish modern wing, Tim prefers the older part of the house and its simpler style. He thinks the modern additions his parents made look ugly and out-of-place, ruining the natural beauty of the countryside. His parents feel like he’s unappreciative of their standards and the sort of lifestyle they’ve worked hard to build, and his mother even goes so far as to call him “perverse and awkward.” He kind of feels that way, too. Tim often feels like he’s a nobody, not very outstanding at anything. His ambitious parents are disappointed in him because they’ve invested so much in his education to show him off as another one of their achievements in life, and he doesn’t think he’s much to show off. He’s even a little disappointed with himself because, not only does he not seem to live up to his parents’ expectations, he doesn’t even have it in him to stand out as a rebel or a troublemaker, like some of his friends. He’s not an aggressive person, and it’s just not his nature to fight or get into trouble, and that makes him feel like even more of a nobody. If he neither excels at meeting people’s expectations or at deliberately flouting them, what is he? Who is he? Where does he fit in? With all of this, Tim hasn’t been feeling well, and he fakes being sicker than he is so he doesn’t have to get out of bed and deal with any of it. Since he’s been unwell, he’s also excused from school until after Christmas, leaving him with nothing to do in this countryside house but lie in bed and think about all the things that are worrying him.

Then, one day, the builder who’s been working on their house finds an old tin box hidden in the chimney of the room that Tim has chosen for his bedroom. The box catches Tim’s attention. It looks like a very old biscuit (meaning cookie, this book is British) tin decorated with a faded pattern of flowers. The builder opens the box and is disappointed to see that it just contains papers, not anything that looks really valuable. However, Tim is curious and insists that he wants to see the papers.

The papers are drawings, quite old and done in black crayon. Most of them are landscapes and buildings, but there is also a girl, who is labeled “Netty.” Netty’s name is written in a heart, so the artist must have loved her. The date on one of the drawings is February 17, 1910 (the story seems to be contemporary with the time when it was written in the early 1970s because Tim thinks that was 60 years ago), and to Tim’s surprise, the author signed with his initials: T.R.I. Tim’s full name is Timothy Reed Ingram. Tim is intrigued that the artist who lived so long ago had the same initials and apparently lived in his room.

The builder, called Jim, asks Tim if he likes to draw or knows anything about art. Tim gets good grades in art, but he’s not very self-confident about his abilities. Still, he knows enough to tell that the artist wasn’t particularly great at his art. There are places where he got the proportions of his drawings wrong, but Tim is impressed that they convey a lot of feeling. Even though the drawing of Netty isn’t perfect, Tim feels like he can tell what kind of girl she was. She looks like she’s in her early teens and has a kind of proud, somewhat naughty or daring look. Tim asks the builder if he knows anything about the artist or the people who lived in the house back in the 1910s. The builder says that was before his time, but he thinks that he remembers hearing that the family name was Inskip, and he says that he could ask his father if he knows more. Tim wonders why the drawings were hidden in the chimney and begins to imagine what the first T.R.I was like, picturing a boy close to his own age.

Tim is surprised at how real the boy he imagines seems because he’s often found it difficult to imagine old people as once having been young. He’s seen old men and known that they were part of the generation that fought in WWI but is unable to picture them as once having been soldiers. In fact, he knows that his own father flew a Spitfire during WWII, but even though he knows it happened, he has trouble picturing that of the middle-aged advertising manager his father has become. Yet, somehow, T.R.I. seems incredibly real to him, someone he can connect with, even more so than his own father. Details of this past boy’s life flash through Tim’s head without him knowing quite where they came from. However, Netty seems even more real to Tim because of her picture.

When Tim’s mother makes him get out of bed and go visit the local vicar to get a copy of the parish magazine, Tim has a strange vision of the boy artist he imagines as being named Tom Inskip passing him in the lane. It’s so real that Tim feels like Tom is actually there. As he pauses to look around the churchyard, he spots some beautiful purple roses by a gravestone. Taking a closer look, he sees that the grave has the initials T.R.I., a birth date of March 1894, and a death date of February 18, 1910. Tim is shocked to realize that the artist was not only a little less than 16 years old when he died, just a little younger than Tim is now, but that he also died the day after he drew that last picture. It seems like the boy’s death was sudden and unexpected, more like an accident than a long illness.

Tim doesn’t meet the vicar, but the vicar’s daughter, Rebecca, spots him in the churchyard and asks him if he’s all right. Tim just says that he’s there to get a parish magazine. Rebecca isn’t too cheerful or friendly, and she just gives him one and sends him on his way. Tim later learns that Rebecca is the youngest of the vicar’s children and the only one still in school. Her older siblings are all grown up and have jobs working for good causes and charity organizations.

Tim talks to Jim the builder about the grave he saw, and Jim is interested. He suggests that, since T.R.I. is buried in the churchyard, there will be church records about who he was and how he died. Tim has another vision of the boy, and the boy says, “Find out. But be careful it doesn’t happen to you.”

Tim returns to the vicarage and talks to Rebecca about T.R.I. Rebecca says that she doesn’t believe in ghosts and that she thinks the visions he’s had are just his imagination. However, Tim’s guess that the artist’s first name was Tom turns out to be correct. His full name was Thomas Robert Inskip. The records don’t say how he died, but Rebecca suggests that Tim ask an old local man called “Holy Moses.” The old man says that he remembers Tom Inskip but he doesn’t know what happened to him because he left the village to work somewhere else and didn’t come back until after Tom was dead. When Moses shows them an old photograph of all the children at the local school, Tim recognizes Tom instantly as the boy from his visions and strangely even knows the name of Tom’s friend, Arnold, standing next to him in the photograph, without being told.

From this point forward in the story, scenes with Tom alternate with scenes with Tim. Tom’s scenes start with the day the photograph was taken, when Tom was eleven years old. It was also the day that Tom first met the new vicar of the parish, Reverend Bellinger, a fire-and-brimstone kind of preacher, very different from the gentle man who was the last vicar. Like Tim, Tom was bright, imaginative, and artistic, but he was not much of a worrier. Tom fails to impress the new vicar because he is not very good with religious knowledge and often doesn’t pay attention. Tom loves to draw, but after he gets out of school and starts working, he finds that he doesn’t have time anymore. The vicar’s daughter, however, is kind and encourages him to draw because it’s a talent from God and must be used. People often underestimate her and don’t appreciate her because she has a disability, so she understands what it’s like not to have the opportunity to use and develop her talents to the fullest. It’s only sad that a tragic accident cuts Tom’s life short before they can see what he might have developed into, although when Tim and Rebecca manage to contact the people who knew and remember Tom best, one of them points out that, if Tom hadn’t died when he did, he might have been sent off to fight and die with the other young men during WWI, and with his gentle soul, he might have suffered more from the war than he did from the accident that took his life, when died young in an act of self-sacrifice.

Tim’s scenes involve his parents and school discussing his future, asking for little input from him, not caring about how he feels or what he wants. Tim actually does love art, and his art teacher thinks he should go further with it, but his teacher realistically acknowledges that, with Tim’s good grades in his other classes, his family and the school will want to push him into more lucrative and higher-status fields. But, does Tim really care about money and status as much as his parents? Is that really what he wants?

Gradually, Tim begins to consider the idea of the legacies people leave behind. Few living people remember that there was once a boy named Tom Inskip who died young, and after those people are gone, no one will remember. It occurs to Tim that few people would likely remember either him or his father as advertising workers. If all you care about is just getting money to afford the good things in life, any job could do, and there are many well-paying jobs that make little lasting or meaningful impact on the world. On the other hand, if what you want is to leave a lasting and meaningful legacy, you have to think a little deeper and maybe sacrifice some material gain. Money comes, and money goes, and one coin or bill looks like another, but what lasts as long and has as much individual character as a collection of imperfect but evocative drawings hidden away in an old tin box?

The question of what Tim wants to do with his life becomes the question of what Tim wants to leave as his life’s legacy. The quietness of the country, rather than being the torture it initially seemed, gives Tim a chance to think and really consider what he wants. Through his search for Tom’s past and consideration of Tom’s legacy, Tim finds a new vision of his own future that makes him more hopeful instead of more frightened and that may lead him to find what one of Tom’s friends called Tom’s “perfect spiritual grace.”

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). Some US versions of the book are titled So Once Was I.

That alternate title is fitting for the theme of the story. Tom was once a living boy with choices to make in his future, much like Tim is now. That phrase also appears in the story as part of an epitaph from another tombstone, which I’ve also seen elsewhere. That same epitaph has been used in different forms in real life. It refers to the inevitability of human mortality – all those living will someday die, like every other generation before. As one of my old teachers used to say, “Nobody gets out of life alive.” But, I would also like to point out that the sentiment also refers to growing up. Every adult used to be young (although Tim has trouble picturing it), and every child will someday be an adult (if they live to grow up – Tom was unfortunate). Every person in a profession of any kind was once a student and a beginner, struggling to learn and find or make their place in the world, and every student will one day find or make some place for themselves and try to make a mark on the world. Change is inevitable. Time passes, people grow and change, and everyone moves on in one way or another. Tim won’t always be a student with his parents controlling his education. He will eventually grow up, graduate, and become an adult. That part is inevitable. What else he becomes is up to him and whatever opportunities he seeks and finds for himself. His future legacy is still in the making.

There is also a made-for-television movie version that is available to rent cheaply online through Vimeo. The movie version is notable for being Helena Bonham Carter’s first movie role. She played young Netty.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I found this story very sad, particularly Tom’s death, trying in vain to rescue beloved hunting dogs but drowning along with them in an icy lake when they all fell in. The death of the dogs was as traumatic as Tom’s, and it is described in awful detail. I also hated a part earlier in the story, where one of the dogs kills a pet cat. I love animals, and that was hard to take. It’s all a tragedy, but Tim’s story has a more hopeful ending. Besides leaving behind a box full of drawings, Tom’s effect on Tim’s life becomes a part of his legacy. Even though they lived in different periods of time, Tom and his life story helps Tim, who has been going through a personal crisis, to realize what’s really important and what he wants out of life.

Through much of the book, both Tim and Rebecca are in a similar situation when it comes to their future lives and their family’s expectations for them. As Tim gets to know Rebecca, he discovers that she has hidden depths and is inwardly quite sensitive. She often uses a blunt and abrasive manner to keep people at a distance and hide how sensitive she really is. Like Tim, she is also unimpressed by the money and business-oriented priorities of the modern world and Tim’s parents, preferring things with an old-fashioned, natural beauty – things that, sadly, are often cleared away by modern people in the name of money, business, and being modern. Yet, Rebecca also doesn’t feel like she fits with the lives that her family lives. She doesn’t have the patience to deal with the people her family tries to help, many of whom are nasty and ungrateful instead of kind and appreciative of the help they get, and she feels like her parents don’t have time for her because they spend all of their time helping everyone else. Rebecca is considering a career in social work, but it’s mostly because it’s what her parents want and expect of her. As they compare their family lives, Tim and Rebecca both realize that neither of them quite fits their families’ lifestyles and expectations. They both feel pressured. Their families are also extremes: extreme business and high-achievement vs. extreme charity. Tim and Rebecca are looking for a happy medium that neither one of them knows how to achieve. They feel overwhelmed by a world full of choices, their parents’ expectations, and their own uncertainty about what path to choose.

It occurs to them that a boy like Tom in the 1910s would have limited choices in life and expectations from his family and community. Tom died young, but if he hadn’t, he probably would have been expected to do what other young men in his community did, which was mostly farming or joining the army. In some ways, Rebecca thinks life was probably much easier for those who had no choices than it is for modern people with many more choices and little to no guidance about how to use them. Tim and Rebecca aren’t really bound to their parents expectations because there is less social stigma with being different in their time, but being young, inexperienced, and uncertain of their options in life, they aren’t sure what to do with their relative freedom. They feel trapped, but not in quite the same way as each other and in a different way from people in the past.

Perhaps all people have limits and obstacles no matter when or where they live, and nobody is ever fully in control of their destiny because they are subject to limits in knowledge, ability, and available options. Maybe not everybody is even really suited to where they end up in life. They learn that the man who was the vicar in Tom’s time was more of a bully than a loving and charitable man. Tim’s art teacher comments that he used to work in a job similar to Tim’s father before he found his calling teaching art. Having followed two different professions in his life and seen the people who thrive in each, he thinks that Tim’s personality fits better in the art world than the business world, but he can also see that Tim is going to have to learn to fight and stand up for himself to get where he really needs to be.

But, happiness in life depends on more than fighting or earning money. May, the vicar’s daughter, who is still alive and has lived a happier life than anyone expected after the death of her father, says that one of Tom’s greatest gifts was “perfect spiritual grace.” She explains that Tom never asked a lot out of life and was satisfied with what he had. His life was tragically short, but he enjoyed it to the fullest as long as he lived. Tim thinks that Tom might have gotten less satisfied with his limited prospects in life if he had lived longer, but it’s difficult to say. However, May’s description makes Tim realize that he wants that same sense of “perfect spiritual grace”, making the most of the opportunities open to him and being satisfied that he pursued those opportunities to the best of his ability.

Life has a way of taking many people in directions that they never expected. People often don’t know what they want to do with their lives when they’re young, some of us still question our career choices when we’re older, and many of us end up doing things we didn’t expect or entering fields we didn’t originally study. Tim’s new home and new acquaintances and the inspiration that he receives from Tom’s life story cause him to consider different directions that his life might take. Tim finds a job in the country as the local blacksmith’s assistant. Blacksmithing appeals to Tim’s creative side, and there is enough demand for specially-crafted decorative metal objects that Tim is confident that he can build his own business around it. He’s confident enough about it that he finds the ability to stand up to his parents and insist on the future he really wants. He probably won’t make as much money at it as his father does in his advertising firm, but he’ll be independent and creating real things that will leave the lasting legacy that he now craves. He hopes that, along the way, he’ll also find the “perfect spiritual grace” that Tom had.

Tim also comes to realize that the company that his father built was his father’s act of creation, and that’s why he takes so much pride in it, wanting Tim to continue it as his legacy. However, Tim also realizes that what his father did with his life was his decision, done for his own reasons and his own sense of fulfillment, and he doesn’t need to stifle his own creative urges to validate his father. Tim is adamant that he wants to create something of his own, to know the satisfaction of that kind of creation for himself. His parents are angry with him, seeing his decision as throwing away all that they’ve given him and all they say that they’ve sacrificed for. Still, Tim points out that the lifestyle that his parents chose was their choice, not his. He didn’t ask them to do any of it, they did it because it was what they wanted to do, and he wants the right to make his own choices. It affects their relationship, but Tim already had the feeling that their relationship was strained because of his parents’ expectations for his future, which were making him unhappy. When they argue about it, it becomes apparent that his parents have been emotionally manipulative, and having a say in his own future isn’t an unreasonable thing for Tim to ask for, even though his parents claim that it is. His parents really have been selfish and even neurotic, planning to use Tim as something to show off, ultimately depending on him to make themselves feel successful and fulfilled and validating their life choices. They make it clear to him that their support for him hinges on him doing exactly what they want him to do. Their love is conditional and transactional. In an odd way, it feels like a relief to Tim to have it all out in the open and to take control of his destiny in spite of their opposition. Whether or not his parents will eventually accept Tim’s decision and independence or whether they will remain estranged is unknown.

I don’t think I’d read this book again because of the sad and stressful parts, but it does offer a lot to think about. I’d also like to point out that this story is not for young kids because of the subject matter, and there are also instances of smoking and underage drinking.