Meg Mackintosh and The Mystery at the Soccer Match by Lucinda Landon, 1997.
Meg and her brother Peter play on opposing soccer teams, the Hawks and the Panthers. Peter is brags about how good he is at being a goalie, and Meg hopes that, in this game, she can score a few points off him. There are prizes for this soccer team, and the winning team will get to keep a medal that Coach Lee won playing international soccer until next year’s game. Everybody admires the medal, which is displayed on the awards table.
Meg’s teammate, Alex, is less thrilled about the game. He has an injured leg and can’t play, and his mother is busy campaigning against awarding prizes for children’s soccer. She thinks that giving prizes isn’t fair and hurts the feelings of kids who don’t get prizes.
It’s true that there is some pressure from the parents for their children to play harder to win prizes than the kids really want. Peter accidentally collides with one of his teammates, Heather, and they both end up with scrapes and are temporarily removed from the game for first aid. Heather’s father pressures her to get back in the game as soon as possible and win, but Heather privately admits to Peter that she doesn’t really feel like playing anymore. She only does it because she knows her dad would feel bad if her team doesn’t win.
It starts to rain during the game, and the adults and kids cover the awards table with a blanket. When they remove the blanket later, the gold medal is gone! Who could have taken it? Meg invites Alex to join her detective club and help investigate the mystery while she plays soccer!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
Meg inviting Alex to help her investigate the case and consider motives makes this book a little different from other books in the series, where Meg usually does that herself. The mystery is good because there are several suspects to consider, each of whom was seen near the table and left signs of their presence there. Did Heather’s dad take the medal because he once almost won a similar soccer medal and was jealous that Coach Lee won the prize he didn’t? He certainly seems very prize-oriented. Did Alex’s mother take it because she disapproves of sports prizes and wanted to make a statement about it? Could one of the children have taken it, either because they wanted to claim the prize they didn’t think they could win honestly or because they wanted to impress one of their parents?
As with other books in the series, readers are given the chance to review the evidence Meg and her friends have collected and see if they can spot the clues along with them in pictures taken at the scene. There was a clue that I thought was pretty obvious in one of the pictures but which Meg and the other kids didn’t spot at first. They only notice it when another clue makes them take a second look at one of the pictures. I think many young readers might also spot the clue I did, although if they do, it might make them feel clever for noticing something before Meg and her friends do.
When I first noticed that clue, I was inclined to think the solution to this mystery was too obvious, but there is another twist to the story that makes it more interesting. The medal was actually stolen twice. After the original thief put it back, someone else took it again, so there are two thefts to figure out instead of one.
The Legend of the Christmas Rose by William H. Hooks, paintings by Richard A. Williams, 1999.
Dorothy is a 9-year-old girl with three brothers, who are all much older than she is. Her three brothers are all shepherds, and her daily chore is to take water to them when they’re out in the fields with the sheep. Her brothers love her, but they always treat her like a small child because they’re so much older.
One day, she spots some strange travelers on the road. She worries that they might be robbers, but her brothers tell her not to worry. There are more travelers on the road these days because the Roman Emperor has ordered everyone to return to their home towns to be taxed. However, because there are so many strangers traveling through the area, Dorothy’s brothers plan to spend the night in the fields with their sheep to keep an eye on them.
Early the next morning, the brothers return to the family home, excited. They tell their father that they saw angels in the field during the night. An angel appeared to them and told them that they would find a newborn Savior in a manager in the City of David, which is Bethlehem. Their father says that there is a prophecy about this. Because God has sent His messengers to announce the birth of the Savior to them, the brothers should go to the city and take a lamb with them as a present to the Savior.
Dorothy helps her brothers to pack their supplies for the journey to Bethlehem, but she knows that she will not be allowed to go with them because she is too little. In spite of that, Dorothy makes the sudden decision to follow her brothers secretly. However, as they travel, Dorothy suddenly realizes that she doesn’t have a present of her own to offer when she arrives.
When Dorothy begins to cry about her lack of a present to give, an angel appears to her and produces snowy white flowers. Dorothy is happy because she can bring the flowers with her as a present.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
There is an Author’s Note at the back of the book that explains about the Christmas Rose plant and its associated legends. The Christmas Rose is a real plant, but technically, it’s not a rose, and it doesn’t always bloom at Christmas. It’s native to southern and central Europe, where winters are relatively mild, and the flower can bloom in Christmas, but in colder climates, it tends to bloom in spring. It’s actually a member of the hellebore family, which is toxic to humans, although it has been used medicinally as a purgative, and it does contain a chemical that can be used to treat heart conditions. The story in the book also references the plants’ medicinal uses.
There are multiple legends about the origins of the plant. The version presented here, the legend about an angel giving the flower to a young shepherd girl to offer as a present to baby Jesus, comes from Medieval nativity plays. There is an older Greek legend where the plant was discovered by a shepherd around 900 BC. In that version of the story, the shepherd used the plant to cure three princesses who were afflicted with delusions that they were cows. After he cured them, the princesses’ father, the King of Argos, allowed the shepherd to marry his youngest daughter.
Overall, I liked this picture book version of the legend. I like books about folklore, especially ones that use lesser-known stories. The pictures in this book are also realistic and beautiful, taking up full pages.
Frankenstein Moved In on the Fourth Floor by Elizabeth Levy, illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein, 1979.
Sam lives with his brother and mother on the 19th floor of a large apartment building. One day, when he and his mother are going to meet his brother at a friend’s house, they try to take the elevator down to the ground floor, but it doesn’t seem to be working. With no other choice, they take the stairs, and when they reach the fourth floor, they discover the reason why the elevator isn’t working.
A new neighbor, Mr. Frank, is moving into the apartment building, and he’s stopped the elevator at his floor to unload all of his stuff. He has boxes and boxes of wires and other electronic components, and he gets really upset when anybody else touches them. He has refused all offers of help to unload the boxes, he’s kept the elevator tied up, and he’s been rude to his new neighbors about these things.
Sam thinks that Mr. Frank is frightening. He looks weird with those strange headphones with an antenna he keeps wearing. When he and his mother go to pick up his brother, Robert, Sam tells him about Mr. Frank and his theory that Mr. Frank is actually a monster. Sam thinks that Mr. Frank looks like Frankenstein. Both of the boys are into movie monsters, but Robert thinks at first that Sam is making it up. The boys have a debate about whether Mr. Frank would actually be Frankenstein the scientist or the monster that Frankenstein created in the book and movie because, although many people call the monster Frankenstein, that was actually the name of the monster’s creator. When the boys consult an abridged version of Frankenstein, Sam becomes convinced that the book’s description of Frankenstein the scientist sounds like Mr. Frank.
The next day, the boys go down to the apartment house’s basement, where tenants have storage rooms. Sam wants to see what Mr. Frank is storing in his storage room, but when the boys start talking about the possibility that he might keep bodies in there, they chicken out. In the meantime, Mr. Frank gets on everyone’s nerves at the apartment house. He’s always bringing in new boxes of stuff and leaving empty ones around. Neighbors hear weird noises coming from his apartment that sound like moans and groans. Mr. Frank claims that the noises are his music. Then, he overloads the electrical circuits in his apartment and causes the entire building to black out. Nobody knows what he’s doing with all that electrical equipment of his. Mr. Frank’s weird electrical experiments make Robert think maybe Sam was right about Mr. Frank being Frankenstein.
The boys decide that it’s important for them to take a look in Mr. Frank’s storage room, but when Robert accidentally leaves his Dracula doll behind, they realize that Mr. Frank will find out that they’ve been snooping. They may have to face the wrath of Frankenstein!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). There is a sequel to this book called Dracula is a Pain in the Neck.
My Reaction and Spoilers
This story is a kind of mystery story because the boys are trying to figure out if Mr. Frank is actually Frankenstein and if he’s making monsters with his electrical experiments. However, it really reminds me of the The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids, a series about kids who suspect various people in their town of being different supernatural creators. This book is older than that series, and from the way the story goes, there are more logical explanations for Mr. Frank’s behavior. However, like with The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids, the kids don’t really get firm answers at the end. It looks like Mr. Frank is probably just some weird, temperamental musician who likes to experiment with electronics, but the story leaves it open to interpretation.
The Case of the Bicycle Bandit by James Preller, 2001.
Jigsaw Jones and his friend, Ralphie, have to go to the library to get books for a book report at school. While they are at the library, somebody steals Ralphie’s bike!
First, it’s strange that Ralphie’s bike was stolen because Ralphie is sure that he locked it up using the same chain that he used to also lock up Jigsaw’s bike. How could someone take a bike that was chained up, and since the two bikes were chained together, why is Jigsaw’s bike still chained up, as if the lock was never opened?
Second, if someone could get the chain open to take one of the bikes, why did the thief take Ralphie’s bike? Jigsaw’s bike is new and in good condition, while Ralphie’s bike, which he calls “Old Rusty”, is old, beat-up, and always breaking in some way. Ralphie is fond of “Old Rusty”, which was a hand-me-down from his older brother, but if some stranger had a choice of stealing one of two bikes, wouldn’t it make more sense to take the one that’s in better condition?
Jigsaw Jones calls his friend, Mila, to help him investigate and find Ralphie’s missing bike, and they get some help from a classmate who is good at drawing portraits to interview witnesses and do sketches of suspects. Their most likely suspect is a skateboarder whose face nobody saw clearly. But, how did the skateboarder know how to open the lock on the bike chain, and why did he take only the old bike and lock up the newer one again?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
Books in this series are easy, beginning chapter books with pictures that accompany the story. The mystery in this book is pretty simple, although it might seem more difficult to younger readers. I liked the way the characters reasoned it out, logically confronting the problem of how the thief opened the bike chain and why the thief took the older bike instead of the new one. I also enjoyed their use of an amateur sketch artist to find one of their suspects.
Even after Jigsaw does a stakeout and realizes who is responsible for taking the bike, he doesn’t seem to quite understand the motive until the thief explains it, although the motive was what I figured it was. Revealing the culprit in this book also includes a spoiler for an earlier book in the series.
I was amused when Jigsaw said that he charges a dollar a day for his detective services. At first, I thought that shows the inflation that’s happened since Encyclopedia Brown charged his clients a quarter. Then, Jigsaw checks out an Encyclopedia Brown book from the library, showing that Jigsaw is familiar with the books and also giving kind of a nod to an earlier boy detective who may have somewhat inspired this series. I always appreciate children’s books that reference other books.
David is supposed to be watching his younger brother, Adam, while his mother is gone, but he gets absorbed in his new book. When David’s friends come to see him, they realize that Adam is missing!
The kids look for Adam everywhere, but they can’t find him. David is very worried.
Walter tries to use his dog, Watson, to track down Adam, but Watson hasn’t been trained to track people. When that doesn’t work, Walter tries writing down everything David can remember about Adam’s disappearance, but because David was reading instead of watching, he can’t remember much.
One thing that David remembers is that Adam wanted to go for a walk. David didn’t want to go, so he let Adam play with his compass instead. David explained to Adam that a compass always points toward the North Pole, and that fascinated Adam because the North Pole is where Santa Claus lives. The kids realize that Adam still has the compass, so he is probably using it to go north and find Santa!
What they need to do is go north themselves to find Adam, but they don’t have another compass. What can they do?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
It’s a fun picture book mystery, but it’s also educational. The books in this series use scientific concepts to explain the mysteries or to help solve problems. This book explains how a compass works, and to find Adam, the kids have to create a compass of their own.
There is also a vocabulary list and glossary in the back of the book.
Thirteen-year-old twins Ryan and Chris Taylor are visiting Kansas State University during homecoming week because their parents used to attend the university, and the boys are looking forward to getting their first look at life on a college campus. They’re also looking forward to the big football game. At least, Chris is looking forward to the game. Ryan isn’t as athletic and doesn’t see the appeal of sports as much as Chris does. Ryan is more studious. However, both of the boys are hoping to meet Trent Dasher, the star quarterback on the Kansas State football team. Chris wants to ask him for sports advice, and Ryan is hoping to get some pictures of him for their school’s newspaper. Meanwhile, their parents are looking forward to reliving their college years. They met in college, and they spent their honeymoon at the same hotel where they are now staying with the boys.
The twins go in search of Trent Dasher. They contacted him before arriving, so he should be expecting them, but they discover that he is missing. When they go to his dorm room, his roommate doesn’t know where he is. Then, the boys overhear a conversation between Coach Butler and Dean Murray in the athletic offices, in which the coach says that Trent has been behaving oddly recently, and now, he can’t find him. The twins ask Trent’s roommate, Danny, for more information about Trent and if he knows anything about where he might be. Danny says that he and Trent don’t really confide in each other. Even though they’re sharing a dorm room, they’re both pretty busy with their own activities. Danny has noticed that Trent has been unusually nervous recently and that he’s missed some classes, which is out of character for him. Danny suggests that they look for Trent at the Wildcats’ Lair, a snack bar in the University Union where Trent likes to hang out.
Before they leave Trent’s dorm room, the boys sneak a look at Trent’s belongings, and they learn a few things about him. Trent has a girlfriend named Jeannie who lives in their town and has written letters to him. He’s also in danger of failing his chemistry class if he doesn’t get some extra help, and if he fails chemistry, he could lose his scholarship. The boys figured that his problems with his classwork and the threat of losing his scholarship are probably what was worrying him so much.
When the boys go to check out the Wildcats’ Lair, they meet a girl who says that she’s Trent’s girlfriend. Unfortunately, she isn’t Jeannie. When the boys address her as Jeannie, assuming that she’s the one who wrote the letters, she says that’s not her and gets angry. The twins are embarrassing, thinking that they might have just accidentally created a new problem for Trent by complicating his love life.
The boys finally locate Trent talking to a tutor called Wilson about getting help to pass his chemistry exam. It seems like the mystery of the missing athlete is over, but then, Wilson tells Trent that the way he “helps” students is by selling them the test answers. Trent gets angry and refuses to cheat. The boys try approaching Trent, but he doesn’t want to talk to them because he has too much on his mind.
The twins are a little offended at being brushed off by Trent since he knew they were coming and had agreed to meet them, but they can also see that Trent is in trouble and could use some help. They decide to go after him, and they hear him talking to someone on the phone about a special “deal.” Since they just heard him turn down an opportunity to cheat by purchasing test answers, what kind of “deal” is he looking into to solve his problems?
The boys follow Trent and see him meeting with Coach Hatfield from Flint Hills University, Kansas State’s rival. It seems that Coach Hatfield has made Trent an offer to come play for their team, or at least, that’s how Trent interpreted his offer. With his scholarship to Kansas State in danger, Trent is considering the possibility of switching schools. However, it turns out that Coach Hatfield wants something very different. He wants to bribe Trent to throw the upcoming homecoming game and make sure his team loses! He says that he’ll make sure that Trent has enough money for his tuition if he does. Trent is appalled and refuses.
The twins continue to follow Trent as he goes to talk to his girlfriend, Cindi, who is the girl they met earlier. She asks him about Jeannie, but Jeannie is just a high school girl from his home town who has an unrequited crush on him. He’s really serious about Cindi. Trent tells Cindi everything about the troubles he’s been having and the unethical offers he’s had. She asks him why he hasn’t gotten help from the legitimate tutors or from his professor, but he says that the chemistry tutor quit and hasn’t been replaced yet and that his professor seems to have a prejudice against athletes. Trent is thinking that maybe he should just quit college and get a construction job so that he and Cindi can get married, but Cindi doesn’t think that’s a good idea.
Even if Cindi can help Trent find a solution to his problems in chemistry, Trent’s football problems are just beginning. He turned down Coach Hatfield’s proposition, but the Flint Hills football team isn’t going to take no for an answer. They’re prepared to use violence to make sure that the upcoming football game goes their way. Chris and Ryan witness some of them kidnapping Trent! They’ve got to get help and prove that Trent is in trouble to save him!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
There wasn’t really much mystery to the story, which was a disappointment to me. The boys figure out where Trent is and directly witness his kidnapping, so there’s nothing really for them to figure out. It’s more about how they manage to rescue him. It’s more of an adventure story than a mystery. Part of the premise of this series is also that the twins have a kind of psychic connection and can sense each other’s thoughts, but that didn’t really enter into this particular story. The resolution of the situation didn’t depend on them having this ability, and for most of the story, the twins just talk to each other openly about everything without a need to communicate anything silently.
Things turn out okay in the end because Trent is able to make it to the football game and help his team win. The book doesn’t mention any of them going to the police about the coach and football team participating in an actual kidnapping, which made me feel a little weird. It’s great that the boys were able to rescue Trent and that he was able to win the football game honestly. Trent never compromises his values, in spite of the pressure he’s experiencing from all sides, and in the end, there’s an honest solution to his problems with his grades, but still, kidnapping is a serious crime, and I thought that there should have been serious consequences to go with it.
As for Trent’s troubles with chemistry, it turns out that his chemistry professor is actually an old friend of the boys’ parents, and he isn’t really against athletes. The only reason why he hasn’t noticed Trent failing and helped him to get the extra tutoring he needs is that, at a large university, classes are made up of hundreds of students, and professors rely on graduate assistants to help manage the grading. The professor doesn’t know that much about how individual students are doing. They mainly help when students approach them for help, which Trent hasn’t done. When the twins explains Trent’s problems to the professor, the professor talks to Trent, telling him that he should have come to him earlier and that he will help him improve his grades, not because he’s a star athlete but because he’s a student in need of help to complete his degree.
Although I wasn’t thrilled by the mystery itself because it wasn’t much of a mystery, there are some interesting points in this story about both prejudices people have about athletes and the system of success/failure at universities. First, the prejudice part is an obvious one. Many people assume that people are either smart and good at studying or that they’re not smart and that’s why they’re mainly good at sports – like life’s options are brain vs. brawn, with no in-between. The twins themselves represent this notion because Ryan is the studious one and Chris is the athletic one. This seems to be how other people think of them and how they think of themselves.
Ryan in particular has this view. He’s good in school subjects, better than his brother, but not that good at sports and has no interest in sports. Chris is offended that his brother seems to think that his athletic prowess also makes him the dumber twin and that Ryan is often telling him that he needs to read more and study more or he’s not going to make it in college. Chris argues with Ryan and tells him that just because he’s into sports and not as good at studying as Ryan is doesn’t mean that he can’t manage. Ryan is correct that a student athlete can’t just be all about sports and neglect his school work, as Trent’s situation indicates, but he does underrate the athletes’ abilities to manage and think their way through problems. The boys also have some prejudices against girls, with Ryan particularly thinking of cheerleaders as being brainless, but Cindi, who is also a college cheerleader, comes through for them and helps to rescue her boyfriend. I didn’t like the way the boys talked about girls in the story, but Cindi’s role helps to highlight that theme of underestimating people and their abilities.
Success and failure are major themes in the story. Trent is a successful athlete, and generally, a pretty good student, apparently. However, the failure of one single class could endanger his scholarship and end his entire university career. As the chemistry professor points out later, it’s not just a matter of Trent losing his scholarship because of failing that class; this is a class that is required to complete his degree. We don’t actually know what Trent’s major is, but he apparently needs to understand at least some chemistry for it. Failure of this particular class is just not an option. A student whose scholarship was assured or who had other resources for paying for their education could simply retake a failed class and try to pass the next time, but there’s pressure for Trent because he really relies on his scholarship. Without it, there won’t be a next time for him. What the story points out is that it’s not just Trent’s failure but also the system’s failure. Professors with hundreds of students, and also the pressure of having to do their own researching, writing, and publishing on the side, just can’t keep up with every individual student and give them all the support they need. They rely on graduate assistants and tutors to fill in the gaps and provide that support. Trent falls through the cracks because the chemistry tutor left and hasn’t been replaced yet, and he was reluctant to talk to his professor about it. His lesson is one about how the university system functions and his need to go to his professor about his problems to get the help he needs.
It turns out that Trent isn’t the only one whose future hangs by a thread because of one possible failure. The reason why Coach Hatfield and his players are so desperate to win this upcoming football game is that Coach Hatfield will be fired if they don’t. The Flint Hills football players are desperate to save their coach. They see it as loyalty and as avoiding having to get a new coach that they won’t like as well, but that doesn’t justify engaging in a serious crime to accomplish their goals. In real life, they would be endangering their own futures by pulling this kidnapping stunt. The fact that the coach is willing to go along with such a thing may be a sign of why his career has reached this desperate point in the first place. It might not be just that he’s been unable to deliver the football victories that his university wants but that he also engages in reckless, irresponsible, and unethical behavior. At the very least, we know that he is likely to lose his job because his team lost the football game, but I still think that there are serious legal consequences for his actions.
The Rover Boys in the Jungle by Arthur M. Winfield (aka Edward Stratemeyer), 1899.
My Foreword
I wasn’t particularly eager for this book after the first one in the series. I didn’t think the Rover Boys was as much fun as later Stratemeyer Syndicate books and there are some instances of racial language that are uncomfortable to explain. However, this is the book where the boys actually go to Africa in search of their missing father, and it resolves one of the major problems that the first book in the series set up, and I wanted to see it end.
As the book says at the beginning, the boys’ father went to Africa before the beginning of the series to look for gold mines and hasn’t been heard from since. The boys don’t know if their father is alive or dead, and meanwhile, the boys’ enemies from the first book in the series are still hanging around. The Baxters were put in prison for attempting to kidnap Dora at the direction of Josiah Crabtree in the book immediately before this one, but Dan Baxter escapes early in this book, and Crabtree is still around somewhere. The introduction and first chapter to the book brings readers up to date on developments from the previous books, sort of like the introductions to episodes of movie serials that didn’t exist at the time these books were written. Books in this series really need to be read in order, and if you skip any, like I did, you really need the introduction to bring you up-to-date.
The Story
There is a new boy at school, Hans Mueller, who is from Germany. This book was written before World War I, so there is nothing critical or derogatory about Germans, but the boys decide to tease Hans a little by playing up myths of the Wild West to scare him. They tell him that the school will be teaching them how to fight Indians (Native Americans) and that he’ll have to learn how to scalp people. Hans doesn’t know what they’re talking about at first, and when they explain it to him, he’s alarmed. (Good, Hans. That’s a sign of sanity.) Hans says that the only time he’s seen American Indians was at a traveling Wild West show that came to Germany, and he thought they looked scary. The other boys have a laugh about spooking poor Hans and drop the matter.
I mentioned in my last Rover Boys review that early Stratemeyer Syndicate books had archaic racial language and sometimes questionable racial attitudes that was later rewritten when various series were reissued. This early series hasn’t been revised. This first scene with Hans isn’t really so much a slur against Native Americans as prank with the boys playing up Wild West stories, but the book is just starting out.
Hans becomes the boys’ friend, but they prank Hans again later, scaring him with Tom wearing a Native American costume as he threatens to scalp him to continue their earlier joke, and they use the term “red man.” (We haven’t even gotten to Africa yet, so I was cringing at this point at what might be in store.) When Hans realizes that it was all just a prank, he tries to get the better of Tom by taking away the gun that Tom was using as a prop to scare him, and Tom tells him that the gun is too old to fire and isn’t dangerous. He just found it in the barn, and it’s all rusty. Tom tells Hans to pull the trigger and see that it won’t fire, which is the dumbest thing that anybody can do with a random old gun they just found somewhere. The gun explodes in Hans’s hands, knocking both Hans and Tom unconscious and scraping them with shrapnel. The other boys are scared, but they finally manage to bring them both around. Tom is horrified when he realizes what happened, saying that he’s been playing with that gun for awhile and pulled the trigger a dozen times himself, which is why he thought that the gun was unloaded and harmless (meaning he did the dumbest thing that anybody can do with a random old gun they just found somewhere repeatedly because, up to this point, dumb luck was on his side). He is shocked to realize that he’s lucky that he hasn’t shot somebody before and that he and Hans weren’t killed by the exploding gun. He apologizes to Hans and promises that this is the end of the pranks. Tom was always the lead prankster in earlier books, but he grows up a little here, realizing that reckless pranks have consequences.
At school, the boys participate in a kite flying contest, and Sam is almost pulled over the edge of a cliff by his kite. (Seriously.) Dora tells Dick that her mother had a dream that Crabtree tried to shoot him in a forest. (Prophetic?) The boys also have a run-in with Dan Baxter, who is still lurking around and swearing revenge.
Then, the boys turn their attention to a thief at school. Sam witnesses someone, who is probably the thief, sneaking around at night. Unfortunately, he didn’t see the person’s face, only describing this person as tall. Captain Putnam comes to believe that Alexander “Aleck” Pop, a black man who works for the school, is the thief because he receives an anonymous note that says he’s guilty. Sam doesn’t trust the anonymous note and tells the Captain so, saying that he can’t believe anyone as good-hearted as Aleck is would be a thief. However, the Captain insists that Aleck’s belongings be searched, and some of the objects that have been stolen turn up among his stuff. It’s a pretty obvious frame, and Alexander protests that he’s innocent, but Captain Putnam doesn’t believe him. There’s some ugly racial language used during this part. The word “coon” is used twice, and when the students at the school discuss the situation, one says the n-word. Fortunately, our Rover boy heroes aren’t the ones using that language, and Tom even tells the boy who used the n-word that he’s just resentful against Aleck for catching him doing something he shouldn’t have done earlier. The boy who used the n-word, Jim Caven, is portrayed as mean and unreasonable, and he gets into a fight with Tom in which he almost hurts him very badly. I was uncomfortable with the language in this scene, although I was somewhat reassured to see that it was used to characterize the ones using the worst of it as being the bad characters. My reassurance wasn’t complete because that’s not the only questionable racial language in the book.
Captain Putnam sends someone to escort Aleck to the authorities. He says that he supposes that the boys think he’s being too harsh with him, but he’s also suspicious of Aleck because he knows that members of his family have been in trouble with the law, too. The boys say it isn’t fair to blame him for things his relatives did and that they still don’t think he’s guilty. However, Aleck escapes before they reach the authorities, and they hear rumors that he went to New York City and boarded a ship to go overseas somewhere. The boys are sad, thinking that maybe they’ll never see him again. (You know they will.)
It’s not much of a surprise when the Rover boys later learn that Jim Caven has sold some things that match the description of other objects that have been stolen. Apparently, he’s been the thief all along and deliberately framed Aleck to get revenge on him. (I partly expected that the thief might be Dan Baxter, considering that he’s escaped from jail and is hanging around somewhere, probably needing money.) When the other boys confront Jim Caven, he flees into the woods. The other boys explain the situation to Captain Putnam, and he searches Jim Caven’s belongings, finding the rest of the stolen items. (You know, they could have just conducted a general search of the school and everyone’s belongings before this. This is a military academy, so a surprise dorm inspection wouldn’t be out of character, and it would have settled the matter much earlier.) Aleck’s name is cleared, but since he’s fled, they don’t know how to find him and tell him. Captain Putnam is sorry that he didn’t believe Aleck before.
However, they don’t have much time to consider it because the boys are soon summoned home by their uncle because he’s had news of their father. A ship captain has written Uncle Randolph a letter saying that his crew rescued a man who was floating on a raft off the Congo River. The man died soon after they brought him aboard their ship. They don’t know who the man was, but he was carrying a letter from the Rover boys’ father saying that he found a gold mine in Africa but was taken captive by King Susko of the Bumwo tribe (not a real African tribe, I can’t find anything about it) in order to prevent him from telling the secret of the mine to outsiders. Specifically, the tribe is afraid that the English and French colonizers will come to loot the mine and kill them. (Actually, a depressingly reasonable fear.) Anderson Rover explains in the letter that they don’t understand Americans. (That wouldn’t help, Anderson. Your boys attend a school run by a man who served with General Custer, and if this tribe knew what happened to Native Americans when gold was discovered on their land, they wouldn’t be reassured at all.) Anderson Rover is in fear of his life and asks his brother Randolph to come and rescue him if he can, but the letter is dated a year ago, so his family still doesn’t know if he’s alive now or not.
Uncle Randolph tells the boys that he wants to go to Africa to find his brother and asks Dick to come with him, as the oldest of his nephews. Dick, of course, agrees to go, but Tom and Sam refuse to be left behind. They decide that all of them will go.
On the ship to Africa, they meet an English adventurer named Mortimer Blaze, who is going to Africa for big game hunting. Tom asks him what will happen if the big game decides to hunt him instead, and he just says that it will be a “pitched battle.” (Doesn’t sound appealing to me.) When they talk about the people in Africa, they use the word “native” a lot and not in a flattering way. The general attitude seems to be that the “native” Africans are not very civilized (I was expecting they would say that because of the time period of this book), and Mortimer Blaze tells stories about tribes of people who are either very tall or very short. (I think he’s really referring to people from folktales, which I covered in the Encyclopedia of Legendary Creatures.) At one point, the characters say that the warm climate is the reason why Africa hasn’t made more progress toward civilization, that the warmth makes people want to be lazy. The adults in the story shock the boys by saying that not only is there no Christianity but that people there don’t really believe anything in particular, putting them even behind people Christians would consider heathens. They also make a shocking comment at one point about unwanted children being fed to crocodiles. They conclude that “civilization” can’t come soon enough to Africa, even if it has to be forced in with weapons. (Wow. I knew there was bound to be a lot of generic “native” and “savage” talk when I started this book because of the time period, but these matter-of-fact slights and accusations sound like they came straight out of Mrs. Mortimer’s books about Countries of the World Described, which heaps criticism and accusations of violence and immorality on pretty much all of the people of the world. Mrs. Mortimer’s books are much older than any Stratemeyer Syndicate books, and I wonder if Edward Stratemeyer read them in his youth. It wouldn’t surprise me because the attitudes match, and here he is, passing it all on to the next generation of kids in the form of an exciting adventure story.)
In a stroke of good luck, they end up rescuing Aleck, who was stranded at sea from the ship he boarded during his earlier escape. Aleck is glad to see the boys again, and they tell him that his name has been cleared and the real thief was caught. Aleck is glad to hear that, but he’s worried when he finds out that the ship that picked him up is headed for Africa. Aleck reflects that he always heard that his ancestors came from the Congo region of Africa, but he doesn’t really want to go there because he’s used to life in America and wouldn’t know what to do in Africa. (The Rover boys and Aleck go on for awhile about how great the United States is, and I know they were trying to sound patriotic, but the way they said it felt oddly like a sales pitch to me. I felt like saying, “You don’t need to sell me on the place. I already live here.”) The boys explain how they’re going there in search of their father. Aleck decides that he’d rather join their expedition than stay on the ship, and he offers his services as a valet. Uncle Randolph and the boys are glad to accept his help, and Uncle Randolph says it might be useful to have a black man with them who they know and trust in case they need someone to blend in with the native population and spy for them.
In a surprising twist, the boys also run into Dan Baxter on their arrival in Africa. When they ask him what he’s doing there, he says that he got drunk and was Shanghaied onto a ship, forced to work as a sailor. He was treated cruelly on the ship and ran away as soon as he had the chance. Now, he’s alone and has no money and no way home. The Rover boys feel sorry for him and give him money for him to buy his passage back to the United States. Dan Baxter asks to join their expedition, too, and they consider it as a sign that Dan is starting to reform because of his expedition. However, Dan is still a bully and an opportunist, and when he gets a counter-offer from someone else who is willing to hire him to make trouble for the Rovers, he accepts that instead, still holding a grudge against the Rovers because his father always told him that Anderson Rover stole a mine from him years ago that would have made them rich.
When I reviewed the first book in this series, I complained about the various unresolved story lines and miscellaneous villains still running around at the end of the story, still left to work on their individual plots against the Rover boys and their friends. In this book, every unresolved story line and villain from the first book collides with each other in Africa. Not only is Dan Baxter in Africa coincidentally at the same time as the Rovers, but Josiah Crabtree is also in Africa, for completely unrelated reasons from either the Rovers or Dan Baxter. He does attempt to kill Dick, but Dick survives. He is even rescued from a lion by one of his brothers.
So, is there true resolution with the main villains of the story, Dan Baxter and Josiah Crabtree? Not really. I looked up summaries of other books in the series, and even after they get some comeuppance, they continue to come back in sequels.
What is resolved by the end of the story is that the Rovers find their father alive. They rescue him from the village where he was being held captive, taking some of the women and children from the village with them as hostages to keep the village warriors from attacking them. They say privately that they wouldn’t have really hurt the women and children, but they tell the men that they’ll kill them if they don’t let the rescue party go. (This was another shocking part for me because I wouldn’t have thought of any of the usual Stratemeyer Syndicate heroes doing this. Somehow, I can’t picture the Hardy boys going this far, taking women and children hostage and threatening to kill them.) Once the rescue party is sure that they’re safe, they release their hostages and head for home. Anderson Rover says that he did find a gold mine, and someday, he’ll come back and loot it, er, mine it, but right now, all he wants to do is go home with his boys. It would be heartwarming if I didn’t know that he’s going to come back someday for gold on land that belongs to someone else who would never willingly sell it to him, and his boys are talking revenge on the king of the tribe that held their father captive.
This book is in the public domain and is easily available online in various formats through Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive (which has an audiobook).
My Reaction
I already gave much of my reaction to this book during the description of the plot because much of my reaction had to do with the racial language of the book. I knew there were going to be problematic portions before I even started, but frankly, there were too many of them for me to go into detail on all of them. What I described gives the broad strokes. I won’t say the book is deliberately trying to be insulting to black people. Aleck is portrayed as a good character who was wronged by a white boy by being framed for theft. However, there is a kind of casual racism in the story, like the casual references to how “uncivilized” Africa is and the characters’ off-hand supposition that it’s probably due to the climate there. I wouldn’t say that the characters or author hate black people (except maybe the non-Christian ones who feed children to crocodiles, which sounds like things Mrs. Mortimer accused various people of doing in the worst parts of Countries of the World Described), but I would say that there is a kind of condescension and dismissiveness that everyone, characters and author, seems to take for granted.
I can’t recall any of the characters using the phrase, “you know how they are”, but that’s the vibe I was getting. I got the feeling like the characters were saying things to each other and the author was saying things to his child readers with that sort of knowing tone, like “we all know these things.” No. “We” don’t. I know that Stratemeyer probably got a lot of this from a combination of old minstrel shows and Mrs. Mortimer or something very similar because I’ve seen Mrs. Mortimer‘s books, and I know how she talks. I also know why she says the things she does, and I’m not putting up with her attitude, even when it’s coming from someone else. Maybe the Rovers boys as characters and their child audiences would have read her books or similar ones before and nodded along with what Stratemeyer says because it confirms “information” they’ve seen before, but I’ve had more than my fill of wild accusations and crazy conspiracy theories, and I have no more patience left for any of it.
Mrs. Mortimer portrayed her book series as a factual introduction to world geography and the habits of people in different countries, but the truth behind her criticism, condescension, outspoken rudeness, and many of the wild accusations she makes about badly-brought-up children, dead bodies floating in rivers or just left in the street (depending on nationality), or the “antics” of “savages” around the world is her religious agenda (and, I think, probably some personal emotional and self-esteem issues, but that’s just a guess). She used missionaries with their own agendas as references for anecdotes in her books and tried to make people of various religions around the world sound evil and crazy on purpose to emphasize why “the Protestant” is the best religion (her words – she was specifically Evangelical and downright pushy about it). I would say that she also never hated black people … except maybe non-Christian ones, who as I recall, she claimed didn’t know what religion they were and were given to “antics”, dancing around and yelling or something. She wasn’t too clear on that point, probably because she didn’t know what she was talking about herself. On the other hand, she seemed inclined to be sympathetic to black people in the US who were victims of ill treatment, probably because they were Christian and most likely Protestant, which would have made all the difference in the world to her. She probably would have been okay with Aleck because he’s a Christian who was born in the US and has definitely never fed a baby to a crocodile in his life. She did not approve of the the concept of slavery at all and wouldn’t have tolerated physical cruelty of anyone due to race, which is to her credit, but none of that stopped her from spreading stories and rumors of violent savagery and teaching children that anyone who believed anything other than Protestant Christianity was “ignorant”, “savage”, and “wicked”, all words she actually used in describing people from various countries around the world because that’s what she wanted young children to “know” about other people. Mrs. Mortimer’s religious prejudices probably would have gone over the heads of the children who were these books’ original readers, especially if it echoed the talk of the children’s parents, but that’s how we end up with generations of children who grow into adults with casually racist ideas, thinking nothing of it, throwing around racist language without a clue or a care for the consequences. It’s in the book because it’s what “we” all “know”, dear Mrs. Mortimer said as much before, and Stratemeyer is just saying what “we” were all thinking, right? I think that’s about how that goes.
Let me bring you into the real world. If readers want to know what was really happening in Africa during the 19th century, there are far better sources. Africa is an entire continent, and there were many complex events happening all over, particularly related to European colonization. Outside forces were claiming territory in Africa, not so much for benefiting the people there and bringing them “civilization” as accomplishing their own personal aggrandizement and enrichment. (You know, rather like a man who is already rich in his own country coming to find and claim a gold mine that’s on someone else’s land because he’s addicted to the thrill of the hunt and acquisition and uses that thrill to hide from his own personal problems that he doesn’t want to face at home, like dealing with the loss of his wife and the raising of his boisterous sons. Just saying.) There were wars, famine, and disease in various parts of Africa during this period, partly due to internal power struggles among different African groups and leaders. I don’t know if anybody ever fed anyone to a crocodile on purpose, but infanticide is part of the dark side of humanity that comes out when times are desperate and hopes of survival in general are low. It’s a symptom of a society that’s suffering, and societies have suffered in that way many times around the world. If someone is likely to die soon after birth anyway, the hopeless parents might say, why even try? I suppose some might be tempted to say that having a religion that forbids killing children would help, but it hasn’t always, and having food also helps. I don’t blame 19th century missionaries for attempting to help people, but those who came in with a sense of self-importance, deciding ahead of time what would help without understanding the situation they were walking into, often didn’t help. Missionaries sometimes ended up getting killed in the middle of the unrest and power struggles. Some were even actively deceptive, using trickery and their position to gain advantages for themselves or the governments they represented at the expense of the people they were supposedly trying to help. But, the 19th century wasn’t all war, famine, and exploitation in Africa. The missionaries who were serious about doing some good and set up practical schools did provide useful centers of learning that helped educate future leaders and professional people and gave them tools they could use to build the lives they wanted. African societies did continue to build their own nations and identities. Overall, the colonization of Africa was more of an intrusive, disruptive force, providing additional hardships and obstacles to success more than solutions to any problems that Africa had before, not the glorious “civilizing” force that prevents people from feeding children to crocodiles that the book described.
So, now that I’ve talked about the historical and cultural influences behind the more uncomfortable parts of this book, I think it’s pretty obvious why early Stratemeyer Syndicate books had to be rewritten and revised in the mid-20th century. I knew this book was going to be cringe-worthy in places, but I have to admit that I was surprised at just how bad certain parts got. I hadn’t even considered that the word “coon” might appear. I never heard that word growing up and didn’t even know what it meant until I was in college, so I was pretty taken aback that a just-for-fun book for kids would use it, even one from the late 19th century. I suppose having grown up with the tamer, revised versions of books from the Stratemeyer Syndicate, I underestimated what the older series were like. I can only hope that I’ve made it pretty clear for people reading this review what the problems with this series were.
I debated about whether or not to even post this review, but I’ve talked about some uncomfortable books before (and said many highly critical things in my earlier rant about Mrs. Mortimer, my favorite example of a very popular bad influence in children’s literature – if you only know about her from The Peep of Day, you haven’t seen anything yet, even though the first chapter of that book is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever read that was intended for small children). I’ve been planning a page discussing Stratemeyer Syndicate series books because they have been an important force in American children’s literature for so long, and it seemed only right to talk about their first series. So, now I’ve talked about it, and nobody else has to suffer through this book if they don’t want to. I found the characters, language, and situation aggravating, and the rewards for perseverance were inconsequential. This is certainly not something to spring on suspecting people, especially modern children, who might try using certain words for the attention-getting shock value without really understanding what they mean. I would say that this series should be primarily for adults interested in the history of children’s literature and others who know what they’re reading, understand what’s behind it, and can draw the line between fictional book and real life.
I’m not sure if I want to read any further books in this series because the unresolved problems of the stories get on my nerves, and there will probably be further issues with racial language, and I’d just have to repeat all the same explanations I’ve already given. I’m not saying a firm “no” to the rest of this series because there are indications that some people would like to see more coverage of them, but if I do any more, it’s probably going to be awhile and will only be delivered in small doses.
I wasn’t quite expecting to have these Mrs. Mortimer flashbacks from this book, but in honor of that experience, I might as well say that even though I’m leaving the Rover boys behind for now, I’m planning to go read many other useless novels “about people who have never lived”, which Mrs. Mortimer despised, and because I have access to some of them in audio book format, I can listen to them while knitting something completely unnecessary just because I want to. (If you read my rant/review about Countries of the World Described, you know what I’m talking about.) I’m not going to do it just because it would annoy Mrs. Mortimer. It’s something that I enjoy and do routinely anyway. I would do it even if it was something I thought Mrs. Mortimer would actually like. It’s more that knowing that she would have disapproved and can’t do anything about it makes me feel like we’re even because that’s the way I feel about her books and others like them.
Mystery of the Green Cat by Phyllis Whitney, 1957.
Things just haven’t been the same for twins Andy and Adrian Dallas since their mother died two years ago. Now, their father has remarried to a woman he met through his work, and Adrian has been having an even harder time coping with it than Andy has. The twins have always been different from each other, not identical in appearance or personal interests, but now, Adrian is frequently angry and moody, and he’s getting on Andy’s nerves.
Their new stepmother, Emily, isn’t bad, and Andy can tell that she’s trying hard to be nice to them so that they’ll like her, but it does make the boys uneasy that their father seems to be having an easier time moving on from their mother’s death than they are. Also, Emily has two daughters, Jill and Carol, who have been living with their grandmother. Now that Emily has remarried, Jill and Carol are coming to live with her, her new husband, and the two boys in San Francisco. Emily has been saying that they’ll all be one big family now, but all of the children have misgivings about it. The twin boys have never lived with girls before, and they’re not looking forward to having a bunch of girly stuff around or Carol practicing her dancing in their new house. Meanwhile, the two girls aren’t sure that they’re really looking forward to suddenly having a couple of brothers. Carol is optimistic and thinks it might be fun, but Jill remembers that she hasn’t gotten along with the brothers of some of her friends. This new blended family is a major adjustment for everyone.
Adrian is so angry and upset about the coming of the girls that he refuses to go meet them at the airport with the rest of the family. Andy goes, although he is uneasy about meeting his new stepsisters, and Jill can tell that he’s not really happy to see them. Andy’s father explains Adrian’s absence by saying that he had a summer school art project to work on, although he does warn Jill that Adrian might need some time to get used to being around girls because he doesn’t make friends easily. Jill bluntly asks if that means that Adrian doesn’t want them around, and her stepfather says that it’s more that Adrian is still mourning his mother and having trouble adjusting to his new stepmother. But, he adds that he and his sons have really been lonely since his first wife’s death, and they’ve really needed someone like Emily in their lives, and he’s sure that Adrian will eventually realize that. He asks Jill, as the oldest girl, if she would try to make friends with Adrian. Jill’s not sure how she’s going to do that if Adrian doesn’t want to be friends with her. (This is a recurring theme in other mystery stories by Phyllis Whitney. The solution usually involves shared experiences binding people together, and this is partly the case in this book, too.)
The Dallas family house is situated on Russian Hill, and as they approach it, Jill’s mother points out another house higher on the hill, which she calls a “mystery house,” knowing that Jill loves mystery books. Her stepfather says that there are two women living there, Mrs. Wallenstein and Miss Furness. The two women are somewhat reclusive, and nobody really seems to know much about them. Andy says that Mrs. Wallenstein is a baroness, but his father says he thinks that’s just a rumor. The two elderly ladies also have a Japanese family working for them. The wife is their cook, and the husband is their gardener. Later, Jill spots someone spying on the Dallas house, peeking down from a wall surrounding their property, and Andy says that’s probably the daughter of the cook and gardener. Andy and Adrian have seen her around before, although they haven’t spoken to her much.
While they’re all sitting at the table, eating and talking, someone suddenly throws a rock through one of their windows. The rock came from the baroness’s house, so the father of the family says he’s going to call her and talk to her about it. However, when he calls, Miss Furness answers the phone, denies that anyone at her house would do such a thing, and hangs up. The boys tell Jill that this isn’t the first time someone has thrown rocks, but the last time, the rock just landed on the terrace and didn’t break anything. The boys haven’t wanted to tell the parents about the last time. Jill asks why not, and Andy refers to a “green cat” but doesn’t really explain what that means.
Later, the Japanese girl from the house next door stops by and introduces herself to Jill as Hana Tamura. (Hana’s English is imperfect, and this is one of those books where the author tries to write like the character is speaking to reflect the accent. Hana switches her ‘r’s and ‘l’s when she speaks in that stereotypical way Asians in old movies speak.) Hana admits to breaking the window and says that she did it by accident. She was just climbing the wall to see the new children who moved in next door when she kicked a stone loose from the wall that broke the window. She offers to pay for the damage. Jill’s mother says that won’t be necessary, but Hana insists that she accept some money. Jill’s mother invites her to stay and visit with Jill and Carol, but Hana says she can’t because Miss Furness doesn’t like her visiting with neighbors. Miss Furness doesn’t seem to like people much. Jill is disappointed because she could use a new friend in her new home, and Hana is interesting because she’s the first Japanese person Jill has ever met. (That’s interesting to me because Jill and Carol were originally from New York, and I would think that they’d see all sorts of people there.) Before Hana leaves, Jill asks her if she knows anything about a green cat. Hana refuses to answer, but Jill can tell that she’s a little disturbed at the mention of the cat. Jill’s mother is a little concerned that Hana isn’t being allowed to associate with neighborhood children and says that she’s going to try to talk to Miss Furness about it.
It turns out everyone has completely misunderstood the relationship between Miss Furness and Mrs. Wallenstein (“the baroness”). Rather than Miss Furness being the housekeeper for Mrs. Wallenstein, she’s actually Mrs. Wallenstein’s sister and the head of the household. When Jill spots Mrs. Wallenstein watching her with binoculars, Adrian says that she’s done that before and also finally confides that Mrs. Wallenstein was the one who threw a rock at him and Andy when they were on the terrace, not Hana. The “rock” Mrs. Wallenstein threw was actually just a little pebble, and Andy scooped it up, refusing to even show it to Adrian, although he doesn’t immediately explain why.
After a visit to the house next door to deliver a letter for Mrs. Wallenstein that was accidentally delivered to the Dallas house, Jill comes to realize that Miss Furness doesn’t treat her sister well, reading her mail and keeping people from her, and that Mrs. Wallenstein is in need of help. Andy finally explains to Jill that the rock Mrs. Wallenstein threw had a note tied to it, asking them to help her find her “little green cat.” He didn’t want to tell Adrian before because he didn’t think Adrian would take it seriously. The kids aren’t sure what the “little green cat” is, but both Jill and Andy want to help poor Mrs. Wallenstein.
Miss Furness doesn’t really mean to be mean to her sister, but she is extremely overprotective of her and keeps her isolated from other people because she has been suffering from ill health and memory problems. Mrs. Wallenstein went through hard times in her life after her husband died, and she was badly injured in an earthquake in Japan, which is why she’s now confined to a wheelchair. Sometimes, when Mrs. Wallenstein starts reminiscing about the past, she becomes confused about what’s past and what’s present, and it all begins blending into one. Her sister has been trying to shield her from past traumatic memories, but Mrs. Wallenstein has the feeling that there’s something important that she wants to remember, and she can’t quite figure out what it is. The key to unlocking Mrs. Wallenstein’s memory and learning the truth about the past lies in finding the little green cat.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
Themes and My Reaction
Adjustment to changing family situations is a common theme in Phyllis Whitney’s young adult mystery stories, but this one is a little different from most. Most books by Phyllis Whitney are told only from the point of view of a girl, using third person limited. Even when boys play a major part in stories, the focus is usually on the girl. This book is told mostly from Jill’s perspective, but Andy is the one who begins the story, giving some insight into how he and his brother are feeling before the girls arrive. Although the boys and girls are separate when the book begins, their feelings toward each other are pretty similar. All of the children are trying to adjust to major changes in their lives and having misgivings about suddenly having new siblings of the opposite sex.
I think it’s also important to point out that, although the story focuses on a blended family, there is no divorce in the story. The two parents who are entering into a second marriage were widowed. This book was written in the 1950s, and in the first half of the 20th century, people didn’t talk about parents getting divorced as much. In children’s books of this time period, single parents and remarriages were usually the result of the death of a parent. It’s not that divorce was never mentioned; it’s just that it wasn’t nearly as prevalent in children’s literature, partly due to the social stigma against divorce at the time. I’ve sometimes thought that, in some ways, it was also probably easier for authors to explain the loss that accompanies a parent’s death, which would not have been the parent’s choice and was just a tragedy that couldn’t be helped, than the reasons why parents would willingly choose not to continue living with each other or why one parent would no longer live with the children. This is different from modern children’s books, where it’s usually more common to see divorced parents than dead ones. In fact, quite a lot of modern children’s books include divorced parents. Both death and divorce involve feelings of grief and loss, but if the loss is from a death that just couldn’t be helped, the author can avoid addressing the painful questions of “why” the separation happened. In real life, the reasons for a divorce can involve complex and sensitive issues that many adults would find difficult to discuss with children, including marital infidelity, emotional neglect, financial problems, addiction, and physical or psychological abuse. There’s never a happy reason for a divorce, so saying that the absent parents in the story died allows authors to skip over all of that. Death is sad, but it’s a little more self-explanatory. Andy and Adrian’s mother died from an unspecified long-term illness, and there’s no need for the characters to explain more than that. I could be wrong about some of my theories here, but that’s the impression that I sometimes get from older books. There is less social stigma surrounding divorce in modern times, and the prevalence of divorce in society has made it increasingly important to address children’s feelings about divorce in children’s literature, which is why there are now more books about it. That being said, the loss of a parent because of death is something that children still experience today, and the author of this story makes some important points about the feelings that someone can experience when they lose someone close to them.
As Jill gets to know Adrian, she comes to learn some of the reasons why he’s really unhappy. It’s partly because, when they moved to the new house after his dad remarried, he and Andy had to start sharing a room to make room for the two girls. Adrian and Andy have very different interests, and sharing the space has been particularly hard on Adrian. Adrian is a tidy person, and he’s very serious about art. He needs space to work on his artwork, and Andy is messy and likes to hoard pieces and parts for building things. Jill starts making friends with Adrian when she figures out how to make a better working space for him, but she upsets him again when she accidentally breaks the vase holding his brushes, which reveals the second reason why Adrian is unhappy. When the family moved to the new house, his father got rid of many of the things that used to belong to his first wife. Adrian has been blaming his stepmother for the loss of many of these sentimental reminders. Adrian doesn’t have many reminders of his mother left, and the vase was one of them, so now he blames Jill and her mother for the loss of that. As all the little reminders of his mother seem to be disappearing and Emily and her daughters are moving into the space, Adrian is afraid of losing all of the memories he has of his mother. It’s a situation that’s somewhat similar to Mrs. Wallenstein’s problem, using physical objects as a reminder of the past.
Mrs. Wallenstein has suffered sadness and trauma, which is part of the reason why her memory is so faulty. However she badly wants to remember some of the things she’s forgotten since her injury in the earthquake because they hold the key to the truth about her husband’s death. He died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and his business partner was murdered. Some people claimed that her husband might have actually killed his partner, but Mrs. Wallenstein doesn’t believe that. The clues to what really happened are tied up with the mysterious green cat.
However, part of the story also involves selfishness and self-centeredness. Mrs. Wallenstein’s husband’s business partner was a very selfish man, always needing to be the center of attention and taking credit for things that Mrs. Wallenstein’s husband did, and that’s tied in with the story of what happened to the two of them. In his own way, Adrian is selfish, too. It’s true that he’s still grieving for his mother, but the way he shows his grief is selfish, and Jill finally tells him so. Just because his stepmother isn’t his mother is no reason for him to be constantly cold and rude to her. Adrian is also rude and inconsiderate to other people, including Jill, their new friend Hana, and his own brother. Each of them is also dealing with something hard in their lives, but all Adrian cares about are his own feelings. While they all tiptoe around him, trying to make friends with him and be extra careful of his feelings because he’s “sensitive”, he says rude and condescending things to them or suddenly goes into a moody pout if he’s reminded of his mother’s death and/or his father’s remarriage. As Jill says, he’s sensitive, but only about himself; Adrian has no sensitivity for anyone else’s feelings. He’s even careless with Mrs. Wallenstein’s green cat after he learns that it has no monetary value, not considering what it means to her and her past. For someone who’s hyper-aware of belongings that have meaning for him, it’s an incredibly selfish thing to do. He not only doesn’t try to help the others solve the mystery of the cat, but when he finds out some information on his own, he deliberately doesn’t tell them until he can show off how clever he is while taunting the others about how they’re not as clever as they think they are. I honestly thought that he was going to be more help to the others in the story and reconcile his feelings through their shared adventure, but only Andy does that. Adrian resists right up until the very end, when Emily has a very honest talk with him about his feelings and hers.
I was a little annoyed at the way Hana’s speech was shown in the book because it always annoys me a little when authors try to show someone’s accent through spelling. It often seems to detract from what characters are actually saying, and the r/l swapping when Asians speak has a stereotypical feel to it. It’s not that Asians in real life never do the r/l swap, but it’s usually way overdone when it appears in books and movies, so it gets on my nerves. The real life r/l phenomenon is really based on the fact that Asian languages have a tendency to use the same symbol to represent r/l sounds, and the sound those symbols represent is about halfway between the two, depending on the language. In that case, it’s not really so much “swapping” the sounds as making one sound that is more in the middle than English speakers are used to hearing. The speaker may not actually be hearing the difference if they’re not accustomed to thinking of a difference between those two sounds, while listeners who are accustomed to listening for a difference in those sounds are confused about which of the two sounds they’re actually hearing when someone makes a sound that’s kind of in-between.
That being said, the perceptions of Asians, particularly Japanese people, in the book is favorable. This book was published about 12 years after WWII, so I thought it was nice that the characters were looking at the Japanese characters favorably. Jill is genuinely interested in being Hana’s friend, and Jill’s mother wants Jill to be friends with Hana. Later, Hana tells Jill and the boys a little about her own history, how her parents were married before WWII, but because her mother was unsure about coming to the United States, she ended up staying in Japan without her husband for a time. Hana was born shortly before the war started, and her father was unable to come to see her or bring his wife and child to the United States during the war. In fact, Hana and her mother were only reunited with her father a year before the story starts, so she was 13 years old the first time she met her father. Although the other children in the story have had their share of loss and family problems, Hana’s story about her own life helps to highlight that other people have their troubles, too.
The author, Phyllis A. Whitney, spent the first 15 years of her life in Asia because her father worked for an export business. She was actually born in Japan and also lived for a time in China and the Philippines. Because of all of the travel in her early life, Phyllis Whitney’s books often include travel to various countries around the world, people from different cultures, and children getting used to new homes or living among unfamiliar people, for various reasons.
There are some interesting tidbits of information about Asian cultures in the story, particularly about Japanese culture. I thought the part about how Japanese traditionally calculate age was interesting. There are also some interesting pieces of information about San Francisco and its landmarks. I’d heard of Telegraph Hill before, but I didn’t know the origin of the name until the book explained it.
I liked the book, both for the interesting tidbits of information and for the plot itself. This mystery is one of what I think of as the “mysterious circumstances” type of mystery. That’s a name I made up to describe mysteries where no crime (or at least no obvious crime) has been committed but yet there’s evidence of strange happenings and unknown events that must be figured out. I honestly wasn’t sure what direction this story was going to take when it started out, and I changed my mind several times along the way, but it has a very satisfying ending.
Emily Elizabeth and her enormous dog, Clifford, were both born in a big city, although they live in a smaller town now. They decide to go back to the city and visit Clifford’s mother, who is still there.
Clifford’s brothers and sisters all live with different people now, so they decide to visit them, too. Clifford’s sister, Claudia, has become a seeing-eye dog.
His brother, Nero, is now a fire rescue dog.
Clifford’s other sister, Bonnie, lives on a farm and herds sheep.
Clifford’s father doesn’t live with his mother. He lives in a house in another town with a lot of children, and he loves playing with them.
Clifford wishes that his family could live together, but he understands that every member of his family has other people who also need them.
I thought that this book did a good job of pointing out some of the jobs that dogs do, like seeing-eye dog, rescue dog, and herding dog. Clifford and his parents are all companions animals, like most pet dogs, but his siblings all have specific jobs to do for their owners.
The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume, 1972.
Fourth-grader Peter Hatcher is being driven crazy by his younger brother, Farley, who everyone calls Fudge because he hates his name. People think that two-year-old Fudge (he turns three during the book) is cute, and his mother sometimes spoils him or gives in to his tantrums. To Peter, Fudge is a little terror, and he feels like his parents don’t care as much about him as they do about Fudge.
Most of the book is kind of like a series of short stories about Fudge’s antics which take place over the course of several months.
When Fudge goes through a phase of refusing to eat unless he gets to eat on the floor under the table, like a dog, their mother allows Fudge to get away with it, even patting him like a dog. Peter thinks that his mother would be better to let Fudge not eat until he gets hungry, and Fudge’s doctor gives her the same advice, but his mother lets Fudge’s behavior continue until their father gets tired of it and dumps a bowl of cereal on Fudge’s head, declaring, “Eat it or wear it!”
Fudge sometimes gets Peter into trouble, too. Peter’s mother takes them to the park along with Peter’s friend Jimmy and Sheila, a girl they know from school who also lives in the same apartment building as Peter. Their mother has to run back to the apartment for a moment, so Sheila volunteers to baby-sit Fudge. Mrs. Hatcher only allows it on the condition that Peter help her. Of course, Sheila, who is a pest, decides to chase Peter and tease him about having cooties, so no one is watching Fudge until he falls off the playground equipment and knocks out a couple of teeth. Peter can’t help but notice that he gets more of the blame for that from his mother than Sheila does, even though she was supposed to be the main baby-sitter.
Fudge’s third birthday party is a disaster, with other little kids as messy and troublesome as Fudge himself. He gets into Peter’s room and messes things up, including a project Peter was working on for school. For many of Fudge’s antics, Peter is able to laugh about them in the end, but there is frequently frustration at his mother’s inability to stop Fudge from doing some of the things he does or her willingness to put up with them and her seeming favoritism at times for the cute younger sibling.
Then, Fudge does the worst thing he could possibly do and eats Peter’s pet turtle, Dribble, the one he won at his friend Jimmy’s birthday party. Peter loved Dribble, talking to him throughout the book when he didn’t want to talk to his parents, and while everyone else is concerned for Fudge’s health and giving him presents for getting better, Peter is angry that his pet is now dead and no one seems to care about him . . . or about Peter himself. Or so Peter thinks.
There is one more present from Peter’s parents and grandmother: a pet that Fudge would never be able to eat, and it’s for Peter alone.
Peter’s parents do care about him, even though they can get so caught up in Fudge’s antics and rescuing Fudge from them that it can be difficult to show it. Most of the time, Peter is able to laugh with his parents at Fudge’s antics, which are pretty funny, but once in awhile, he also needs them to understand how the things that Fudge does affect him, too.
Reading it again as an adult, I sometimes find myself getting a little annoyed with the mother in the story. Being a mother of a young child isn’t easy, but Mrs. Hatcher does take out her frustrations on Peter (something she even admits to at one point when he confronts her about blaming him for Fudge’s playground accident and she apologizes), and I take issue with some of her priorities and assumptions about Fudge’s behavior. Sometimes, it seems like she doesn’t know her own child as well as his brother does and she doesn’t take take pragmatic steps in dealing with him and preventing problems before they start. At times, I found myself thinking, “She’s making a mistake here. Does she really not see this coming?” Admittedly, I’ve read the book before, so I have an advantage, but putting a three-year-old into a suit he hates for his birthday party with other three-year-olds? Seriously? Suits are things adults are interested in, not three-year-olds, and many adults try to avoid wearing formal wear whenever they can. She was trying to dress him up like a doll, not a real small child, and it was more for her sake than for his. Sometimes, Mrs. Hatcher is reluctant to punish Fudge (admittedly, he is pretty young for most punishments), although she does spank him once when he ruins Peter’s school project, showing that she can stand up to him when it’s important.
Possibly, Peter was a different, calmer child when he was young, and Mrs. Hatcher sometimes expects Fudge to be the same way when he isn’t. That might also explain the episode when Mr. Hatcher invites a business associate to stay with them for awhile, not considering that not everyone is used to putting up with a young child and some of the chaos that goes with it.
The age difference between Peter and Fudge is also important to the story. Fudge looks up to Peter and wants to do a lot of the things he can do and have things like the stuff Peter has. Having two kids with very different ages also makes family life a little harder because the children are in different phases of life and have different needs and interests.
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume, 1972.
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