Posted on by TracyC

The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline

The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline

The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline by Lois Lowry, 1983.

Eleven-year-old Caroline Tate knows that she wants to be a paleontologist when she grows up, but she is also fascinated with her friend Stacy’s dream of becoming a great investigative reporter. For fun, the two girls begin investigating the people who live in their respective apartment buildings.

Caroline’s investigation focuses on the mysterious Frederick Fiske, who lives on the fifth floor of her building. In a wastebasket, she finds a letter written to him by a man she’s never heard of telling him to “eliminate the kids.” Also in the wastebasket, there is an overdue notice for Fiske from the library, and the book is about poisons. From this evidence, Caroline comes to believe that the strange Mr. Fiske is planning to murder some children.

The situation becomes worse when Mr. Fiske begins dating her divorced mother, and Caroline fears that the children Mr. Fiske is planning to murder are her and her brother, J.P.. Can Caroline, J.P., and Stacy prove that Mr. Fiske is a cold-blooded murderer before his relationship with the Caroline’s mother can go any further and before he succeeds in poisoning them?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers:

It’s a bit of a spoiler, but this is one of those stories where the mystery is largely based on a series of misunderstandings. The book is a comedy mystery.  Mr. Fiske isn’t really a murderer, although he has done some things which make the children suspicious.  It’s a humorous story, and the kids’ antics as they try to further their investigation and collect “evidence” against Mr. Fiske are hilarious.  Along the way, the kids end up helping Mr. Fiske with a problem he’s been having, and the kids realize that they’ve made a mistake about him and his intentions.  Whether Mr. Fiske learns of their suspicions about him or not is left to the imagination, although something at the very end of the story may bring everything out into the open.

The title of the book comes from a joke between Caroline and her mother.  Caroline’s mother is always talking about the things she loves about Caroline, giving them different numbers.

Posted on by TracyC

Secret of the Tiger’s Eye

tigerseyeSecret of the Tiger’s Eye by Phyllis A. Whitney, 1961.

Benita Dustin’s father is a writer, just like she hopes to be one day. When her father announces that they will live for a year in South Africa with his Aunt Persis so that he can do research, it sounds like a grand adventure. The trouble is that her father’s editor has given permission for her son, Joel, to accompany them because she thinks the experience would be good for him, too. Benita’s little brother, Lanny, gets along well with Joel, but Benita and Joel fight and tease each other almost constantly. Benita gets annoyed with Joel’s obsession with facts and information, and Joel thinks that Benita’s stories and flights of fancy are silly.

Aunt Persis’s house is wonderful with a beautiful tower room where Benita is allowed to stay. There is even a fantastic story about the ghost of a tiger that Aunt Persis’s husband shot years ago in India haunting the grounds of the house and the little cave in the garden. Although Joel scoffs at the idea of a tiger ghost, Benita is captivated by the story, especially when strange things begin to happen around the house. Benita learns about the tragic death of Aunt Persis’s adopted son, Malcolm, and the strange theft of the emerald diadem that Aunt Persis received from the rajah that her husband saved from the tiger years ago. However, she will need Joel’s help to make sense of the situation, a difficult prospect at the best of times but almost impossible to ask for after Joel plays a cruel joke on Benita and tries to get Lanny to help gang up on her.  Then, Benita’s father tells her something that changes everything, and all the time, someone with sinister intentions is watching and waiting . . .

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

My Reaction

Besides the mystery, there is also a subplot about the nature of hate and prejudice. In South Africa, at the time the story was written, apartheid was still in force. Benita makes friends with a girl of mixed race called Charis, and they talk about racial issues in South Africa and the U.S. during the 1960s. Although Benita wouldn’t think of being prejudiced against anyone on the basis of race, she finds it harder to understand people with different personalities, like Joel.  Although the story focuses on Benita and the lessons she learns, I personally found Joel and his mistakes harder to accept.  Both Joel and Benita need to learn to be more understanding of each other, but in a way, I think Joel is worse because of his deliberately cruel pranks and because he already knows a couple of things that Benita doesn’t which should have influenced his behavior. Joel is deliberately trying to pick fights, and the book never really explains what he expected to accomplish by that.  Everyone needs a motivation, and Joel never really explains his, so he comes off seeming like he’s just there to be a mean character for no real reason.

I also wish that the parents in the story had more frank and straight-forward discussions with the kids.  As a professional writer and a professional editor, they should have been able to settle the kids’ arguments about imagination vs. facts or at least put the situation into perspective by explaining what they do in their jobs.  After all, Benita’s father is going to South Africa specifically to do research.  In other words, even fiction writers need to have a nonfiction background and real facts to use as a basis for their fictional stories.  Realistic backgrounds give stories the grounding they need in order to feel real to readers.  (Although that does depend somewhat on the type of story.  Fantasy stories don’t need to be based on real life, although they do have to have a consistent logic within the story so readers feel like they can understand the world in which the stories take place and the rules by which the magic in the story works.  If the story is meant to be surreal, the internal logic can be more loose.)  Editors, like Joel’s mother, fact check stories as well as ensuring that they are compelling for readers, helping to make decisions about where fictional stories need to be factually correct and where the author can depart from the facts for the sake of the story.  I think that Benita and Joel really should have had a better grasp of their parents’ professions and the balance between fact and imagination in fiction.  Of course, if they did, there would be less conflict in the story.

Fortunately, Benita and Joel work out their differences while confronting the mysterious situation and become friends when they learn to allow each other to be themselves and to appreciate each other’s good points.

Posted on by TracyC

The Twenty-Four Hour Lipstick Mystery

24hrlipstickmysThe Twenty-Four-Hour Lipstick Mystery by Bonnie Pryor, 1989.

Cassie Adams, who is eleven years old, has never been happy with her looks, and now that her friends are starting to shave their legs and get interested in boys, she feels plainer than ever. One day, she sees an ad for Mrs. DuPrey’s School of Beauty and Charm and thinks that it might help her improve her appearance and develop confidence. The only problem is that she doesn’t have the money for it, and her parents won’t give her any. She decides that she needs to look for odd jobs in the neighborhood to help raise the money that she needs.

By coincidence, old Mr. Murdock’s granddaughter has recently moved into the old family house, which is huge and reputed to be haunted. In spite of the creepiness of the old place, Cassie finds a job there, helping Miss Murdock with cleaning and unpacking. Miss Murdock’s father made his money in cosmetics, and Miss Murdock employs a secretary named Victoria Presser, who used to be a model. Cassie admires Vicky for her beauty and elegance and looks forward to picking up some beauty tips from her. She also makes friends with Jason, a new boy in town, who also works for Miss Murdock, helping the gardener fix up the grounds. However, it isn’t long before Cassie, Jason, and Cassie’s younger brother, Danny, begin noticing that there is something odd about the old Murdock house.

lipstickmysterypicDanny is the first to notice that there is an octagonal window in the wall of the house, but none of the rooms has a window in that shape. Sometimes, lights can be seen through this window at night. Also, Cassie finds what looks like lab equipment among Miss Murdock’s boxes. Is Miss Murdock involved in something illegal? Does it have something to do with the burglaries that have been occurring around town? Why is the grumpy old gardener sneaking around? Just what is in that hidden room?

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

This is a good mystery for tween and early teen girls, who can identify with Cassie’s worries about being beautiful and popular. The moral of the story is that appearances are deceiving, and in the end, Cassie reconsiders what beauty really is and develops more confidence by appreciating the good qualities she already has and developing new interests.  While some of the other girls try to show how grown-up they are by looking grown-up, Cassie really grows up by taking responsibility for her life and the direction she wants it to go, making decisions about what she wants and who her real friends are.