Posted on by TracyC

Mystery of the Haunted Pool

Mystery of the Haunted Pool by Phyllis A. Whitney, 1960.

At the beginning of the story, Susan Price is traveling alone to visit her Aunt Edith. Her father is in the hospital, and her mother and brothers are tending to things at home. Her family wants her to make a good impression on Captain Daniel Teague, who lives in Aunt Edith’s town. Her father’s doctor has advised him to move to the country, where there is less air pollution, and the family would like to move to the small town along the Hudson River where Aunt Edith owns an antique store. However, the only available house that would be big enough for the family would be the Teague house, and Captain Dan hasn’t decided whether to rent or sell his house to them or not. Before Susan arrives, she isn’t sure what’s going on with Captain Dan and the arrangements regarding his house, but it turns out to be a complicated situation involving her aunt’s antique business, the Teague family history, and Captain Dan’s grandson, Gene.

When Susan’s bus reaches the bus stop, Aunt Edith isn’t there to meet her, so she walks to her aunt’s store. Aunt Edith apologizes for not meeting her. The reason why she didn’t is that a woman named Altoona was hanging around her shop, and she didn’t want to leave Altoona there alone. Lately, Altoona has been acting suspiciously, snooping around the shop as though she’s looking for something but doesn’t want anyone to know. Aunt Edith doesn’t know what Altoona is looking for, but it’s making her nervous. In particular, Altoona seems interested in a barrel of old books that Aunt Edith is selling on commission for Captain Dan, but Aunt Edith doesn’t want her looking through them until she’s had a chance to examine them herself.

Aunt Edith says that she’s known Altoona since they were children. Altoona was raised by her father and an older sister, both of whom were strict and unloving. Altoona led a very restricted life until her father and sister both drowned in a boating accident. Since then, Altoona has been indulging herself by spending her inheritance on antiques. However, rather than being a good customer of Aunt Edith’s, Altoona has turned into competition. She seems to delight in trying to beat Aunt Edith to some fascinating antique. Altoona seems to be on the trail of some new discovery, but Aunt Edith doesn’t want to give her the chance to poach something that might be right under her nose in her own shop.

Since Aunt Edith’s husband died years before, she’s been living in a back room of her shop. With her brother and his family wanting to move to the country, she’s planning on helping them get a house and living there with them. Aunt Edith has her eye on a particular house owned by Captain Daniel Teague, but he’s been reluctant to sell, which is why it would help if Susan made a good impression on him. Captain Dan has been living in a big old house with his grandson, Gene, but it’s an expensive house to maintain for just the two of them. He’s been considering renting it to Susan’s family with an option for them to purchase it later. However, he’s been dragging his feet on making a final decision because he wants to make sure that he approves of the Price family and that Aunt Edith won’t sell any of the antique furnishings from the house in her shop without permission. Also, Gene is upset at the idea of moving, and Captain Dan is concerned about Gene.

Aunt Edith explains that Gene is just a little older than Susan and that he was injured in an accident a couple of years before. He was hit by a car, and he’s been in and out of the hospital for treatment. Even now, his leg is stiff, and he has to wear a brace. Susan witnesses his frustration when she watches him trying to play basketball alone the first time she meets him. She can tell that he’s been trying really hard to overcome his disability, but things are still very hard for him. Susan is touched by Gene’s struggles and his stubborn efforts to succeed. She also discovers that he has strength and coordination in his arms, even though his left leg is very weak. When she asks Gene to teach her how to shoot baskets so she can impress one of her older brothers, she begins to realize that sometimes Gene tries too hard, and it makes his situation harder on him. When he gets tense, he has more trouble than when he’s relaxed.

Gene confesses to Susan that he feels guilty about being hit by the car, not only because he got hurt but because of what it’s done to his family. He admits that it was his fault for not looking more carefully before crossing a nearby highway. He feels terrible because his grandfather has spent most of his savings to pay for the hospital and doctors’ bills, and his mother had to get a job in New York City to pay the rest. Gene’s reluctance to move out of the family’s old home is that he knows how much his grandfather loves it, and he would feel even more terrible if his family lost the house because of his careless accident. The two of them seem to be getting along until Susan tries to climb a nearby rock, and Gene angrily tells her not to.

Captain Dan turns out to be a nice man. He’s called Captain because he used to be a river boat captain. He comes from a long line of sailors. When Susan tells him about meeting Gene and how Gene got angry at her for trying to climb a rock, Captain Dan tells her not to try too hard to accommodate Gene and his moods. He says that Gene’s biggest improvements have only come recently, when he started pushing Gene to work harder to improve. He thinks that Gene was a bit coddled up to that point and that he was too discouraged by the doctors’ predictions about what he wouldn’t be able to do anymore without really trying to test his limits and see what he could do for himself. In a way, Captain Dan is actually in favor of the Prices moving into their big family home because he knows that Susan has brothers. He thinks that having other boys around will be good for Gene, getting him to participate in more activities and push himself a little more.

One thing that’s making Captain Dan hesitate is the idea of having Aunt Edith in his house. He admits that he finds it difficult to say no to her when she wants something, and she’s been urging him to let her sell some of his old things in her shop. He’s concerned about what she might talk him into parting with next if she were living in his house. When Gene finds out that Aunt Edith talked his grandfather into parting with that barrel of old books, he gets angry again and talks back to his grandfather.

Susan is surprised at Gene’s rudeness and disrespect, but his grandfather says that part of that comes from Gene not liking himself much right now. Because Gene is unhappy with and disparaging of himself, he’s unhappy and disparaging with everyone. That’s part of why Captain Dan has been pushing Gene to improve himself, to give him more confidence and self-respect because he will see that he still has the ability to improve. Captain Dan also realizes that Gene has an intense attachment to their family home and family heirlooms because he takes more pride in their family’s history than in himself, thinking that he’ll never be able to be proud of himself now. Aunt Edith says that Gene’s father, a pilot who died in a crash, was also a decorated pilot during WWII. When Gene was younger, before he was injured, he was a much more active boy, and his father was proud of him for it. Aunt Edith thinks that Gene worries that his father would be ashamed if he saw his current condition.

Susan likes Captain Dan for his kindness and understanding of Gene. She’s not sure how much help her brothers would be with Gene, though. Her brother Adam, the closest in age to Gene, probably wouldn’t have much patience with a boy like him. That’s probably why Susan’s family decided that Susan would be the best person to break the ice with Captain Dan and Gene.

Susan tells Captain Dan that she saw Altoona watching the house when she came up to see him, and he says that he knows about Altoona’s obsession with antiques. He’s not sure what Altoona is looking for, but he thinks it must be some kind of antique. Mrs. Bancroft, Captain Dan’s housekeeper, says that the family has a secret. Aunt Edith says that rumor has been around their small town for years, but she doesn’t know what sort of secret it’s supposed to be, and with a town full of people who all know each other and each other’s family history, she can’t imagine what could still be secret about the Teague family.

Then, Susan finds an old ship’s log book in the bottom of the barrel of books that Aunt Edith got from Captain Dan. It’s the log book for the Flying Sarah, the ship that one of the Teague ancestors sailed. Aunt Edith returns the log book to Gene because she knows it must be a family heirloom, more valuable to the Teague family than anyone else. However, Gene is still sore about Aunt Edith having the barrel of books, and Susan catches him sneaking into the shop one night while Aunt Edith is out. He says that he wants one of the books, but he refuses to say which one he wants or why. Susan thinks that Gene knows more about his family’s secret than he’s telling and that his concern about the books has something to do with it. It seems like Gene may be on the trail of the same thing Altoona is searching for, but what is it? Captain Dan also seems to know, but he tells Gene in Susan’s presence that it doesn’t matter.

Susan gets a hint from Altoona when Altoona tells her that the old Teague house is haunted by the ghost of Sarah Teague, the wife of the captain who sailed the Flying Sarah, which was named for her. Altoona says that Sarah’s husband was murdered on the Flying Sarah and that Sarah took over the family’s shipping business after his death. Then, Sarah drowned in the little pool in the woods near their house. Altoona says that Sarah promised to come back and haunt the house if things didn’t go her way, but what does that mean?

Susan does some research in an old book about ships and discovers that the captain of the Flying Sarah had been carrying a valuable shipment of jewels for a friend when the ship was attacked by pirates. He died from the wounds he received from the pirates, and the pirates apparently took the jewels along with other valuable objects from the ship. After her husband’s death, Sarah Teague insisted on taking responsibility for the lost jewels and repaying the owner for their loss, which was financially crippling for the family. The book also repeats the story about Sarah Teague haunting the old family home. Soon after Susan and Aunt Edith move into the Teague house, someone break in during the night, apparently looking for something. Susan goes to look at the pool where Sarah drowned and thinks that she sees a strange face looking back at her from the water. What message from the past does Sarah Teague have for them, and what secret has the Teague family been hiding for generations?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

For much of the book, the exact nature of the Teague family secret is a mystery to Susan, although readers can probably make a pretty good guess at what Susan eventually finds. Part of the difficulty is that the Teagues themselves don’t seem to quite understand what they really have. They know part of the secret, but only part of it. When Susan discovers the rest, it changes things for Captain Dan and Gene. Susan’s brother, Adam, helps Susan with the mystery for part of the book, but Susan is the one who makes the final discovery.

Altoona is kind of a rival/antagonist for solving the mystery, but not an evil one. She appears to be going through a kind of finding herself phase since the deaths of her father and sister. Her family was repressive, so for the first time in her life, she is taking advantage of opportunities to get involved with community activities and indulge her own whims. She dresses in strange ways because she’s trying out all of the things her father and sister would have never allowed her to wear when she was younger. She volunteers at the local library, but she has trouble deciding which books to recommend to the children who visit the library because she’s never read many of them herself. When Susan suggests to her that she should read some of the children’s books herself so she’ll know what they’re like and what they’re about, Altoona balks at the idea of an adult reading children’s books at first. However, she decides that maybe Susan is right, and when she tries some of the children’s books that Susan recommends, she says that she likes them.

Altoona’s pursuit of the Teague family secrets isn’t malicious. It seems to come from her newfound sense of independence and adventure. Figuring out the old mysteries of the Teague family is a sort of personal challenge for her and something that has fascinated her for her entire life, a fascination that she is now free to indulge. She almost messes things up by taking something that doesn’t belong to her, but it turns out to be an innocent mistake because of something Gene did, and she makes things right in the end. Altoona also comes up with a solution to the Price family’s housing problem. She says that she’s always wanted to travel, and at Adam’s encouragement, she’s decided to take an extended international trip for a year or so. While she’s away, she rents her house to the Price family so the Teague family can have their house to themselves again.

The book mainly focuses on self-discovery for Gene as a side plot to the story. At the end of the book, Gene’s problems aren’t completely solved, but he has become more reconciled to his condition and has a better understanding of things he can and can’t do because of the children’s adventures. By learning to get along with Susan and Adam, Gene becomes more ready to face other people and their reactions to his disability. When things improve for him and his family, he also seems less inclined to keep beating himself up over his accident. Things aren’t perfect for him at the end, and he’s probably never going to have completely normal use of his bad leg again. Still, there are signs that he’s mending, both physically and emotionally, and that things will get easier for him.

I like books that mention other books. In this book, the barrel of books that Aunt Edith gets from Captain Dan includes classics, like Little Women and Treasure Island. There are also books by Washington Irving, Gene Stratton Porter (known for A Girl of the Limberlost), and Harold Bell Wright and some “novels about an imaginary kingdom called Graustark.” These are all real authors and books. Aunt Edith says that some of them aren’t old enough to be considered real antiques, but this book was written more than 60 years, so modern standards would be different. Part of the story also includes books that have hidden pictures drawn on the fore-edges of the pages, which can only be seen when the pages are held at an angle. This type of fore-edge drawing or painting is something that can be found in real antique books.

Posted on by TracyC

Frindle

Frindle by Andrew Clements, 1996.

Nick is a creative boy in elementary school who is known for pulling elaborate stunts, like turning his classroom into a tropical paradise with fake trees and real sand. When he gets to fifth grade, he has Mrs. Granger as his language arts teacher. Mrs. Granger has a sense of humor about some things, but she also has some strict rules and is all business when it comes to her specialist subject. Her vocabulary lists for her students are extensive, and her favorite thing is the unabridged dictionary. Nick likes words and enjoys reading, but he finds the dictionary to be boring. When he sees a word he doesn’t know, he would rather ask someone else what it means than look it up in the dictionary.

In most classes, Nick is good at asking teachers questions to sidetrack them from assigning homework. The other kids know he does this, so they aren’t surprised when he asks Mrs. Granger about her big unabridged dictionary and where all the words in it come from. Unfortunately, for Nick, Mrs. Granger is also onto his trick, and rather than answering the question herself, she assigns Nick to look up the answer and tell the rest of the class what he’s learned the next day in addition to his usual homework assignment. Nick is upset because he usually doesn’t have much homework at all, and now, he has to do more.

When Nick gets home, he reads about dictionaries in his encyclopedia, but he’s not sure that he understand everything he’s read, and it all sounds terribly dull. Then, Nick gets one of his creative ideas that he thinks will make this boring assignment more fun. When it’s time for Nick to give his report, even he is surprised at how much he has to say about the dictionary. Mrs. Granger loves his report, although even she tries to cut Nick short when he goes on for too long. Although the other kids were initially bored, they begin to enjoy Nick’s report when they realize that he is actually using it to waste an entire class period. Eventually, Mrs. Granger tells Nick that he’s at a good stopping place in his report, and she praises him for all of his work. Nick, annoyed that she’s making him look like a teacher’s pet, decides to ask one more question. He says that he still doesn’t understands who decides what the meanings of words are, like who decided that the word “dog” refers to a dog. Mrs. Granger tells him that everyone who speaks English does. Words mean whatever the people who use them agree that they mean. People who speak other languages use different words to refer to the same animal, but those words are valid to them because they all agree on the meaning of the words.

Then, Mrs. Granger says something that really starts Nick thinking. She says that if everyone in their classroom decided that they wanted to call a dog by some other word, and they got other English-speaking people to agree on it, that word would come to mean “dog.” If enough people agreed to use their new word and agreed on its definition, the new word would be put into the dictionary. To answer Nick’s original question, people who speak a language determine the words of that language and whether they are included in the dictionary. Mrs. Granger adds that the dictionary is the work of many experts over many years, and there are good reasons why each of the words included in the dictionary are there. The dictionary contains the laws of the English language, and while those laws can change, it takes time.

Later, when Nick is walking home with his friend Janet, Janet finds a fancy pen. Nick thinks about what Mrs. Granger said about how people like him, who use a language everyday, decide what words mean. It reminds him how, when he was little, he used to use a baby word that his family understood meant “music.” He had to give up using that word when he went to preschool because nobody outside of his family understood that word, but Nick understands how the word had meaning in his family because they all understood what Nick meant when he used it. While he’s thinking about it, he bumps into Janet, who drops the pen. On impulse, when Nick gives the pen back to her, he decides to give the pen a new name. He calls it a “frindle.”

At first, Janet is confused about what Nick means by “frindle.” It’s the beginning of a new experiment for Nick. Out of curiosity, Nick tries to see if he can teach a saleslady at a local store that the word “frindle” means “pen.” He goes to the store and asks for a frindle, pointing to the pens. Then, he gets some of his friends to do the same thing. After several kids all ask the same lady for a “frindle”, she begins to respond to it by automatically reaching for a pen. Nick is excited because he has just created a new word. “Frindle” now means pen because he decided that it did, and he got other people to agree on the meaning. Nick is making language history!

To make sure his word becomes part of language, Nick gets his friends to use the word “frindle” instead of “pen” at school … in Mrs. Granger’s class. Mrs. Granger isn’t amused by the class’s excessive use of the word “frindle” for pen because she knows that this is another of Nick’s stunts, and it’s a distraction from school lessons. She tries to discourage Nick from promoting it at school, and Nick points out that he’s only doing what she said about how words are made. Mrs. Granger explains how words in language evolved from other words that also have meaning, but “frindle” doesn’t have that kind of evolution because Nick just made it up, based on nothing. Nick insists that “frindle” means something to him and his friends, and they’ve already sworn an oath to each other to keep using it.

To Nick’s surprise, Mrs. Granger responds by showing him a sealed envelope. She tells him that it’s a letter for him, but she doesn’t want him to read it now. The letter is for him after the question of “frindle” is resolved. For now, she just wants Nick to sign the envelope and date it so that he’ll know what she hasn’t switched envelopes or tampered with the letter in any way. Nick is confused, but he does sign the envelope, and Mrs. Granger mysteriously says, “And may the best word win.” It seems like Mrs. Granger is declaring a war of words, pen vs frindle, but are Nick and Mrs. Granger really on opposite sides?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

This is a fun and humorous story that does a great job of showing how languages evolve and the purpose and meaning of language. Nick and his friends unwittingly give themselves an education during the course of their stunt. The reason why Nick had to sign and date the envelope is that Mrs. Granger is also enjoying their experiment, and she has made a prediction about how it will all turn out. Anyone who has ever had to deal with a small child who has learned a bad word can guess what Mrs. Granger has realized and how her own actions are calculated to make sure she gets the result she really wants.

Something that not even Nick fully reckons with until his experiment is well underway is that, now that all of the kids at school know about “frindle”, he can’t stop them all from using the word, even if he wants to. Although Nick originally created the word, words in a language belong to everyone who uses them. This is both a thought-provoking book about the nature of words and language and a good story for stopping periodically and having kids make their own predictions about what will happen next.

Even kids have power because they are also language-users, and they have the ability to influence the language and understanding of everyone around them by the words they choose! Nick is very much an idea person, but after “frindle” starts getting so much national media attention, he starts to get intimidated by the level of power he has. He has become more conscious of the consequences of his ideas and how they can affect large numbers of people. For a time, he becomes more shy because of that realization, but Mrs. Granger gives him some encouragement. She tells him that he has many good ideas and that she’s sure he will go on to do great things with them. Nick regains his confidence and realizes that he can use his powers for good, supporting good causes.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Half-A-Moon Inn

Half-A-Moon Inn by Paul Fleischman, 1980.

Aaron is unable to speak and has been mute since birth, so he has to communicate with people mainly through writing messages he writes on a small chalkboard. His father was a sailor who died at sea, so he lives with only his mother. One day, his mother, who is a weaver, is planning to go to the market at Craftsbury so she can tell the cloth that she’s made. Usually, Aaron goes with her, but since he’s about to turn twelve years old, his mother decides that he’s old enough to stay home alone. His mother has always been protective of him because of his inability to speak, and Aaron is nervous at being alone at home overnight. Still, he agrees to stay home and look after the house while his mother is gone.

His mother warns him not to go far from the house until she returns home because they live far from the nearest town, and there are wild animals and brigands in the woods. She promises Aaron that she will bring him a special present for his birthday when she returns home.

However, his mother doesn’t return when she promised she would. Aaron begins to worry about her, thinking that she might have had trouble on the road because of the snow. Since he has traveled the road to Craftsbury with her before, Aaron decides to head to Craftsbury himself and see if he can find his mother on the way and help her. He assembles a pack with some supplies, and ignoring his mother’s instructions to stay at the house, he sets out to look for her.

The journey is more complicated than Aaron imagines, partly because, when he meets other people, not all of them know how to read the messages Aaron writes, making it difficult for Aaron to explain that he cannot talk and that he is looking for his mother. A ragman gives him some food and a ride on his wagon, but Aaron is frustrated because the man doesn’t understand what he writes or the pictures he draws.

The ride on the wagon takes a worrying turn when the ragman takes Aaron on a route he doesn’t recognize. When they come to an inn, the ragman drops off Aaron. Aaron thinks that he can stay the night at the inn and continue his journey on his own in the morning. Unfortunately, the woman who keeps the inn, Miss Grackle, can’t read Aaron’s notes, either.

Miss Grackle says that she’ll let him stay the night in exchange for a few chores, like lighting fires in the fireplaces, and Aaron nods that he accepts. He tries to show Miss Grackle the drawing he made of his mother, but she still doesn’t understand. Eventually, Miss Grackle comes to understand that Aaron can’t speak, but he still can’t seem to explain to her where he is going or why.

To Aaron’s surprise, Miss Grackle tells him in the morning that she looked into his dreams during the night. Through his dreams, she saw his mother and his home. She says that she knows he’s far from home and not likely to be found by anyone looking for him, if there is anyone looking for him. She has taken his belongings and boots, and she tells him that he will be staying at the inn, working for her and that he will now answer to the name of Sam, like the last boy she had.

Aaron has become Miss Grackle’s prisoner at the inn, unable to leave on his own without his boots! Miss Grackle is a thief, stealing from her guests, and she is confident that Aaron won’t be able to tell anyone about it. At first, Aaron thinks that he can get some help from one of the guests staying at the inn, but he encounters the same problem he’s had all along: he can’t talk to explain anything to anyone. The guests don’t even pay attention to him, Miss Grackle intercepts messages that he tries to write, and even when he manages to sneak a message onto the inn sign, other people can’t read it because they don’t know how to read. What can he do? How can he escape and find his mother?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

This story is an adventure story that takes place at an indeterminate location and an indeterminate point in history, when people traveled by horse and wagon. It’s not a long story, but it is an intriguing one where a clever boy manages to outwit sinister villains. It reminds me a little of The Whipping Boy in setting, but there was no magic in that story, and there is in this one.

The atmosphere of the story seems like a fairy tale or folk tale. The evil, thieving innkeeper has a potion of some kind that she uses to put her guests to sleep and look into their dreams, which is how she saw Aaron’s dreams. The reason why she looks into people’s dreams is so she can learn more about who they are and where they come from. She’s looking for people who are more wealthy and important than they seem so she can hold them for ransom instead of just robbing them.

Miss Grackle’s magic apparently comes from her parents. Her mother was the one who came up with the method of looking into people’s dreams and robbing them. Her father was honest, and his determination to enforce honesty is the reason why Miss Grackle can’t run the inn by herself. Miss Grackle needs Aaron to light the fires in the inn because no fire will light in the hearths there if it is lit by a person who has been dishonest, and Miss Grackle has never been honest with anyone. Aaron finds a way to turn Miss Grackle’s greedy schemes to his advantage and escape. With Aaron gone and the only other person left in the inn as dishonest as she is, the villains are left to their fate in a snow storm that lasts for days.

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.