Posted on by TracyC

The Return of the Plant That Ate Dirty Socks

ReturnPlantDirtySocksThe Return of the Plant That Ate Dirty Socks by Nancy McArthur, 1990.

Michael and Norman’s father has finally gotten the chance to take a vacation, but his sons’ weird, sock-eating plants complicate things.  You can board pets or ask someone to come in and feed them, but how can you ask someone to leave out socks for your houseplants?  The boys’ parents still kind of think that the plants are more trouble than they’re worth, but the boys love them like pets and can’t bear to get rid of them.  Instead, they persuade their parents to rent an RV for the family’s vacation.  That way, they can take the plants along.

It seems like a good idea, although before they leave home, the boys notice that the plants are starting to produce seed pods, something that they decide not to tell their parents.  Instead, they simply remove the seed pods from the plants when they find them.  So, the family sets off for Florida and Disney World in their RV with the sock-eating plants sticking out through the sun roof.

At first, it seems like things might be okay on the trip, but one night, when the boys are visiting their grandmother and sleeping in the house instead of the RV, they forget to set out socks for their plants to eat.  When they wake up in the morning, the RV is gone.  The boys worry that the plants somehow got control of the RV and drove it off to find more socks, but it turns out that it was stolen by car thieves.  The police recover the RV but are puzzled when witnesses describe the thieves as abandoning the vehicle, screaming and running away without their shoes on, one of them only wearing one sock.  The family is relieved to get their RV back, not to mention their plants, however their adventures are just beginning.

The family has a good time when they get to Disney World, but the plants start drooping because they feel neglected, all alone in the RV all day.  To get the plants out in the sunshine and supervised more, the boys ask the people at the daycare center at the RV park if they can leave their plants there during the day.  The plants perk up a little more, getting attention from the staff and children, especially when they sing.

But, it turns out that the mother of one of the girls who has seen the plants, Dr. Sparks, is a botanist, and she’s very curious about the origin of these unusual plants.  The boys’ parents think that it might not hurt to get an expert opinion about their strange plants, but the boys worry that if the plants turn out to be very rare, scientists will want to take them away or their parents might decide to sell them.  Their parents still think that the plants are too weird and too troublesome to keep, but Michael and Norman think of them as their friends and pets.  They’ve been trying hard to keep their plants’ sock-eating abilities quiet.  Is it finally time to tell someone?  Can Dr. Sparks be trusted?

They end up asking for Dr. Sparks’ help when Fluffy accidentally eats something he shouldn’t.  Dr. Sparks knows that the plants are unusual, but by the end of the book, she’s still not sure that she believes that they really eat socks.  The boys give her some seeds so that she can experiment without taking their plants, knowing that she’ll eventually discover just how unusual the plants are.  By the end of the book, other people are also growing more plants like Fluffy and Stanley, partly because Michael’s friend Jason stole some of the seeds they were saving and sold them to other kids while Michael and Norman were out of town.  The boys can’t get back the seeds, but they force Jason to at least confess to the other kids that the plants will eventually eat socks.  Jason doesn’t think that they’ll believe him, but the boys know that it’s only right that the buyers be warned because they’ll discover the truth eventually.  Fluffy and Stanley are also starting to acquire the ability to move around on their own.

Posted on by TracyC

The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks

PlantDirtySocksThe Plant That Ate Dirty Socks by Nancy McArthur, 1988.

Michael and his younger brother, Norman, share a room, but it’s not a peaceful arrangement.  Norman is a neat freak, and Michael likes things messy.  Michael’s always saving random things that might turn out to be useful later, although how useful they are is questionable because it’s hard to even find anything in his pile of junk.  Michael also likes sending away for random things in the mail, like toys that require him to save a certain number of box tops.  Often, by the time these things arrive, he’s forgotten what he sent away for.

One day, Michael gets a couple of seeds in the mail that he doesn’t remember sending away for.  He plants one himself and gives one to his brother to plant.  The seeds come with a set of instructions, but Michael soon loses them, and the boys are left to care for their plants themselves.  Norman is very regular in his habits, watering his plant daily with his squirt gun and giving it the proper amount of plant food.  Michael is more experimental, dumping plant food on his plant haphazardly and even giving it bits of human food from time to time.  The boys have fun with their plants, treating them like pets, but soon, it becomes obvious that these aren’t normal plants.

It starts when socks start disappearing from Michael’s half of the room.  With Michael’s messiness, he often has to dig out his dirty socks from the rest of his stuff, but even after Michael cleans up his room, he still can’t find all of his socks.  The boys suspect that someone is stealing them, so they try to sit up at night (disguised as a robot and a gorilla, as if that would help) to find out who the thief is.  That’s how Michael discovers that his plant is actually eating his socks.  They try an experiment and discover that Norman’s plant also eats socks, except that Norman’s plant prefers clean socks, and Michael’s plant only eats the dirty ones.

When the boys demonstrate to their parents that the plants are eating socks, their mother wants them to get rid of the plants immediately, but the boys plead for their pet plants (which they name Fluffy and Stanley).  Michael promises to keep his half of the room neat from now on to keep his plant from eating anything it shouldn’t and proves that keeping plants for pets, even ones that eat socks, would be less expensive than keeping a dog or a cat, especially if they only buy cheap socks.  Reluctantly, their mother agrees to let them keep the plants, but their father forbids them to tell anyone about them because everyone will think they’re crazy.

However, with people at the store wondering why they’re buying so many socks, Michael’s friend Jason spending the night, and the upcoming science fair, for which Michael still needs a project, can Michael keep their weird plants a secret?  Does he even want to?

One of the things that I remembered from reading this book as a kid was the part where they invent Fudge Ripple Pancakes.  It starts because they were making up code words to use when talking about their plants, and someone overhears them saying “Fudge Ripple Pancakes,” so they have to make up a recipe to go with it.  The recipe isn’t exactly included in the book, but basically, it involves adding chocolate syrup to regular pancake mix.  The boys try it themselves and decide they like them.  Norman has a large squirt gun, kind of like a Super Soaker (but called by a different name), and he uses it to both water his plants and squirt syrup on his pancakes.

This is the first book in a series.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Zathura

Zathura

Zathura by Chris Van Allsburg, 2002.

This book begins where Jumanji ends. It’s not completely a sequel because it has a different set of children and a new game, but it’s connected because the two children from Jumanji left the board game in the park again after they finished it, and they saw two boys that they know pick it up and take it home.

ZathuraBrothersWrestling

However, the two boys, Danny and Walter, don’t end up playing the same jungle board game, Jumanji, that was in the previous book. They find a second board game in the Jumanji box called Zathura and decide to try it instead. Zathura is a space-themed game where players travel a path from Earth to the planet Zathura. Like in Jumanji, elements from the board game come to life as the boys play, and someone must reach the end in order to end the game.

ZathuraStartingGame

Danny and Walter, a pair of brothers, fight a lot. Walter hates doing things with Danny. However, when Danny starts playing the game, sending their house into outer space, Walter must join in and play with his brother in order to bring the game to an end so they can go home. The two of them learn teamwork as they help each other face the dangers of the game while trying to reach Zathura.

ZathuraOuterSpace

There is a movie version of this book, but there are major differences between the original book and the movie. The conflicts between the two boys are similar in the book and the movie, but the movie added a subplot about the boys’ parents being divorced (they weren’t in the original book), an older sister for the boys (it was just the two of them originally), and a kind of alternate reality where the older boy was trapped in the game by himself for years because he wished his brother away before finishing the game until his alternate self realized that he cared about his brother and wanted to cooperate with him.  In the original book, nobody was trapped in the game.

ZathuraAlienRobot

Chris Van Allsburg illustrations are always good, although I have to admit that I preferred the illustrations in Jumanji to the ones in Zathura.  It just seems to me that the pictures in Jumanji were more detailed and realistic.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

ZathuraGoingHome

Posted on by TracyC

The Five Chinese Brothers

FiveBrothers

The Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Hutchet Bishop and Kurt Wiese, 1938.

Although this picture book has faced some criticism for promoting Asian stereotypes (largely about the way the characters are drawn), it has nostalgic appeal for some people and is still in print.  What I find interesting about it is that it is actually based on an old folktale, Ten Brothers.  Folktales of this type, where people with different types of super-human powers must help each other to overcome obstacles, can be found throughout the world.  Another story on this theme is How Six Made Their Way in the World.

In this story, there is a family in China with five brothers who look alike, except that each brother has a unique super power (listed by birth order):

  • One can swallow the entire sea, although only for a limited amount of time.
  • One has a neck as strong as iron.
  • One can stretch his legs extremely far.
  • One is impervious to fire.
  • One can hold his breath for an unlimited amount of time.

They live in a village by the sea and make at least part of their living by fishing.  One day, a young boy asks to go fishing with the brother who can swallow the sea (they don’t have names in the story, they’re just referred to by ability or birth order).  At first, the brother is reluctant to allow it, but when the boy begs, the brother agrees only on the condition that the boy obey him and return to his side as soon as he gives the signal.  The brother swallows the sea and allows the boy to collect as much fish as he likes from the empty sea bed.  However, the boy gets too wrapped up in all the amazing things he finds on the empty sea bed and ignores the brother’s frantic signals to return.

FiveBrothersSeaSwallow

Finally, the brother cannot hold back the sea any longer and releases it.  The boy drowns, and the brother is arrested for the boy’s death.  The judge decrees that the brother will be executed by having his head cut off.  Before the execution, the brother has a last request: that he be allowed to return home to say good-bye to his mother.  The judge allows it, and the brother switches places with his brother who has a neck like iron.

FiveBrothersHead

Needless to say, the execution doesn’t go as planned, and everyone is astonished when the executioner cannot cut off the brother’s head.  The judge decrees that he will be executed by drowning instead.  However, he does grant the brother’s request to say good-bye to his mother once again, giving him the chance to switch places with another brother who can safely face the next ordeal.

FiveBrothersBurn

The process continues through one form of execution and another as each of the brothers survives, using his own special power.  Finally, the judge decides that if the man (he doesn’t know there’s more than one, apparently) cannot be killed, he must be innocent and pardons him.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

FiveBrothersFamily
Posted on by TracyC

Never Hit a Ghost with a Baseball Bat

GhostBaseballBatNever Hit a Ghost with a Baseball Bat by Eth Clifford, 1993.

Mary Rose and Jo-Beth are visiting another museum with their father, but they’re not happy about it.  Mary Rose is annoyed because there’s a boy she likes, and no matter what she does, he just won’t pay attention to her.  Jo-Beth is annoyed because she just turned eight years old, and well, . . . she just turned eight.  Nothing special happened on her birthday.  She doesn’t look different, she doesn’t feel different, and she just had to go to school like normal.  Their father, Harry, hopes that a visit to a strange museum dedicated to antique trolleys will help snap them out of their funks, although neither girl thinks so at first.

But, it seems like the trolley museum might be inhabited by a ghost.  The owner, Sam Thorne, doesn’t think so, but his assistant, Hoot Turner, can’t think of any other explanation.  Strange things are happening.  Food and other objects disappear.  Things are moved around.  Areas are . . . unexpectedly tidy?  What gives?  If it’s a ghost, it’s apparently a ghost that believes in cleanliness and doesn’t mind doing the dishes.  But, if the ghost is so friendly and useful, why do mysterious voices call out to them to beware?

GhostBaseballBatPicThe girls explore the trolleys parked in the museum and admire the manikins dressed in old-fashioned clothing that are part of the displays in each trolley car, but more strange things happen.  A teddy bear seems to speak to them, even though it isn’t the kind with a string and a talk-box.  The manikins start to seem creepier.  Mary-Rose and Jo-Beth are only armed with a baseball bat from one of the displays and the old teddy bear (which terrifies Jo-Beth).  But, Mary Rose is determined to find the ghost, even if it’s the last thing she does!

Telling you about one of the themes of this story would spoil the ending, but both the girls come to realize that there are people in the world with much more serious problems than the ones that they were worried about at the beginning of the story.  There is a happy ending for everyone as Mary Rose turns her mind to something more interesting than a boy who takes no notice of her and Jo-Beth appreciates her birthday more by throwing a special party for someone else.

This is part of the Mary Rose and Jo-Beth Mysteries series. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.