Posted on by TracyC

Mystery of the Strange Traveler

Mystery of the Strange Traveler by Phyllis A. Whitney, 1951.

This book was originally published under the title The Island of Dark Woods.

Laurie Kane and her older sister, Celia, are traveling by train without their parents to visit their Aunt Serena in New York. Aunt Serena has invited the girls to come stay with her while their parents are traveling in Asia for one of their father’s newspaper assignments. In her letter to the family, Aunt Serena hints at exciting things that are happening. She used to be a schoolteacher, but she says that she’s starting a new business, and the girls can help her with it, although she won’t say what it is until they arrive. Also, Aunt Serena has recently moved to a new house. When their father sees where she’s living now, he’s intrigued because it’s the location of their “ancestral mystery.” He would tell the girls the story himself, but Aunt Serena says in her letter that she would like to be the one to tell them about it. There father says that Aunt Serena loves being tantalizing and mysterious. Laurie, who loves mystery stories, wonders about it all the way to New York.

Aunt Serena lives in a wooded area on Staten Island, near Clove Lakes Park. She has a small red brick house with another outbuilding on her property that she says used to be an old cobbler’s shop. Her new business idea is to turn it into a small bookshop. Laurie loves it immediately because she loves books. She wants to be an author herself, and Aunt Serena says that she might even get a chance to meet her favorite author, Katherine Parsons, because she lives in the area. Celia is the practical one, and she asks Aunt Serena all the practical questions about how she plans to get people to come to her little shop when there are no other stores around them to draw customers in. Aunt Serena says that she’s not expecting her shop to turn into a big business. It’s more of a small hobby business to bring in a little extra money and also be a fun activity.

Laurie and Celia begin unpacking some of the books that Aunt Serena will sell in her small shop, and Laurie is pleased to see a collection of books by Katherine Parsons. On the back of one of the books, there’s a picture of the author and a short biography. Laurie is pleased to note that Katherine Parsons is left-handed, like herself. There are times when Laurie has difficult with things because she’s left-handed, and she feels a kinship toward the author because she shares that trait.

Meanwhile, Celia has noticed that there is a boy next door, moving the lawn. Laurie is more interested in books than boys, so she doesn’t find this exciting news. Celia tries to get the boy’s attention, but he seems to be ignoring her. When he does seem to notice the girls, he turns away quickly, like he wants to avoid them. Celia points out to Laurie how the house where the boy is looks very different from the rest of the houses around it – big, old-fashioned, dark, and creepy. Laurie comments that it looks haunted, and their Aunt Serena surprises them by saying it is.

The boy, Norman, lives with his grandfather, Mr. Bennett, in the old house. Mr. Bennett is a difficult man, and Aunt Serena admits that she got on his bad side when she first moved to the area by asking him if she could buy his house. Aunt Serena admits that she didn’t actually want to buy Mr. Bennett’s house; she was only using her inquiry as an excuse to talk to him and maybe get a look inside the house. However, Mr. Bennett took offense at the inquiry.

There is another boy in the neighborhood called Russ Sperry, and he’s friendlier. His mother sends him to bring a cake to Aunt Serena, and Aunt Serena says that she hopes he will be friends with the girls and show them around. Russ stays awhile to have some cake and chat, and he mentions that Norman Bennett’s father is in South America because he has a job there, which is why he’s staying with his grandfather. Aunt Serena says that Norman’s mother is dead and that his father rarely comes home. She doesn’t approve of the lonely way Norman’s grandfather seems to be raising him because it seems like Norman doesn’t have any friends. Laurie thinks that Norman’s loneliness is at least partly his own fault because he seems to avoid contact with people when she and Celia try to approach him. Celia decides that Russ is cute, but Laurie finds herself intrigued by Norman, not because she wants to flirt with him but because there’s an element of mystery about him.

The girls try to ask Aunt Serena more about what she means when she says that the Bennett house is haunted, but she says that she would rather talk about that later. She gets the girls busy unpacking their belongings, arranging things in her shop, and talking to Russ about the area. Russ helps to explain the geography of Staten Island, and Aunt Serena tells the girls more about the history of the area. Aunt Serena mentions that there are dances in the park on Wednesday nights, which sounds exciting to Celia. When Laurie spots Norman passing by, wearing riding clothes, Russ explains that there are a couple of stables in the area, where people can rent horses. There are plenty of things for the girls to do in the area, and Aunt Serena begins planning an opening party for her bookshop, with Katherine Parsons there as a special guest to sign her books.

Laurie is excited about the party and the opportunity to meet Katherine Parsons, but she continues to think about the mystery of why Norman seems so unfriendly. Soon, other strange things start happening. One night, she sees a light in Aunt Serena’s bookshop, as if someone were sneaking around in there. However, when Laurie goes to wake Aunt Serena to show her, the light is gone, and the next day, there aren’t any obvious signs that anything in the shop was disturbed.

When Laurie has a chance encounter with Mr. Bennett, where she asks him if he’s ever seen the ghost that haunts his house, he says, no he hasn’t seen it. The ghost is supposedly a phantom stagecoach, but Mr. Bennett doesn’t believe it exists. Once Laurie knows that there’s supposed to be a phantom stagecoach, she tries to press Aunt Serena for more details, but Aunt Serena refuses to tell them the rest of the story until she can tell them on a gray, stormy day, when the atmosphere is right.

When a stormy day comes and Aunt Serena agrees to tell the story, she allows Celia and Laurie to invite Russ and Norman over to hear it, too. Norman comes to hear the story without his grandfather’s permission because he’s always known there was some story about the house, but his grandfather hasn’t wanted to talk to him about it. When Aunt Serena tells the ghost story, the connections between the Kane family and the Bennett family become clear.

About 100 years before, there was a stagecoach route that ran through this area. One stormy day, a stagecoach was passing through the area, and one of the passengers, a woman with an infant daughter, was seriously ill and had become delirious. The stagecoach driver sought help at the Bennett house. The Bennetts brought the sick woman inside the house, along with the infant daughter. The stagecoach driver sent a doctor to tend to the woman, but she died in the Bennett house. They had no idea who the woman was and were unable to trace her origins or family. If the woman had a husband or the infant girl had a living father, the man never showed up to inquire after his wife or to claim the baby. All the Bennetts had do go on were the meager possessions the woman was carrying with her, and the little girl herself, whose last name was unknown but the mother had called “Serena.”

At this point, Serena explains that this Serena was the ancestor of the Kane family, the great-grandmother of Celia and Laurie. Since nobody was able to discover where she and her mother came from or locate any relative, the Bennetts adopted the first Serena and raised her until she grew up, got married, and moved away from the island. However, local people still tell stories about the terrible day when the first Serena and her ill mother were brought to the area, claiming to have seen a ghostly stagecoach pull up to the Bennett house and a ghostly woman get out.

Laurie is intrigued by the mystery surrounding her family’s origins. Aunt Serena shows them some of the belongings that the first Serena’s mother had when she died, which have been passed down as heirlooms. There was a doll with doll clothes, a woman’s dress with bonnet and gloves, a sewing kit, a fan, an old novel the woman must have been reading at the time, and a purse containing a very old coin. The old coin is another oddity about this strange situation because it dates from before the Revolutionary War and would have been long obsolete by the time the woman died during the 19th century. Is it still possible to solve a mystery that’s about 100 years old? Will Laurie and her family ever learn who their ancestors really were? Why does Mr. Bennett not want them to visit his house or talk about the old mystery or the ghost story? Does he know more about them than he wants to admit?

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

My Reaction and Themes

The mystery in the story unfolds slowly, which might make people who are used to faster-paced modern stories a little impatient. Aunt Serena takes quite a while from the time when she first mentions that the house next door is haunted until she actually explains what the ghost is supposed to be and what the mystery surrounding their family is. However, Aunt Serena values atmosphere, so the story could appeal to people who don’t mind a slower-paced mystery as long as it has a good atmosphere.

When the mystery does begin, some parts are resolved quickly and others are more of a puzzle. The idea of an orphan with an unknown identity and a hidden past is always intriguing. The light in the bookshop at night, on the other hand, turns out to be less of a mystery, and Mr. Bennett’s reluctance to discuss the ghost story and the old mystery turns out to be nothing sinister. Mr. Bennett doesn’t really have any hidden knowledge about the orphaned child or her dead mother. It’s just that he’s a very reclusive person who craves peace and quiet so he can work on his private projects. He also has some resentment toward the Kane family because, while they used to be very close, Laurie’s grandfather was the one who inspired Mr. Bennett’s son to take a job in another country, which is why Mr. Bennett and Norman rarely see him. By the end of the story, though, things get patched up between them.

Every time the matter of the mysterious orphan and the question of whether or not the house is haunted by her mother is raised, Mr. Bennett has had to deal with a bunch of people and reporters stopping by his house, harassing him with questions and asking for tours of the place, and he’s sick of it. He doesn’t want Aunt Serena or the kids raising the issue again because he doesn’t want to deal with everybody’s questions anymore, and he has no more information to give anyone. As far as he’s concerned, the mystery is unsolvable because he thinks whatever trail there might have been has long since grown cold, and if it were ever possible to learn the dead woman’s identity or the real origins of the child, someone else would have figured it out a long time ago. However, Laurie tells Mr. Bennett that she thinks that there’s still a chance to figure it out, and that plays into one of the major themes of the story.

The Atmosphere and Location

The atmosphere of the story is pleasant, with Aunt Serena’s cheery little house decorated with bowls of wildflowers and her little bookshop. Aunt Serena greatly believes in establishing atmosphere, creating scene, and setting a mood. On the stormy day when Aunt Serena finally tells the girls the local ghost story, she makes it a point to set the atmosphere for the story by making popcorn and lighting candles.

Like other books by Phyllis Whitney, this story is set in a real location and uses some of the history of that location. The original title of this book came from the original Native American name for Staten Island, Monocknong, which the fictional author in the story, Katherine Parsons says means “The Island of Dark Woods.” Mr. Bennett disagrees, though, saying that it actually might mean, “The Place of the Bad Woods,” and they debate about different possible translations and meanings of the phrase. The history of the Staten Island plays directly into the story because it turns out that Laurie’s ancestors were involved with the historical events of the area, particularly Santa Ana’s stay on Staten Island after the Battle of the Alamo in Texas that was part of the Texas Revolution against Mexico.

A couple of other points I’d like to make regarding history are about race in the story. Toward the end of the book, Mr. Bennett hires “a young colored woman” as a housekeeper. “Colored” is a dated term in the 21st century, but this book was written in the 1950s, when that was considered one of the more polite ways to refer to black people. The popular terms we use now (“black” as the informal generic term and “African American” as the formal term specific to black people of African descent who live in the United States) came into use after the Civil Rights Movement as people tried to distance themselves from older terms as a way to shed the emotional baggage associated with them. The housekeeper, Anna, becomes friendly with Laurie, and she offers her a new perspective and some helpful advice about a different approach to tracing her family’s roots. Anna enters the story late, so she doesn’t appear much, but she is helpful, and I didn’t notice anything particularly stereotypical about her, although I suppose the idea of a black person in domestic service might be kind of cliche.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that American Indians are referred to multiple times in the story when the characters discuss the island’s history. The characters always refer to them as just “Indians” instead of “American Indians” or “Native Americans”, which is typical of the 1950s. At one point, Celia and Laurie are discussing their role in the island’s history. Celia talks about how she was glad that she wasn’t around then because there were massacres and “the Dutch kept buying the island from the Indians and the Indians kept taking it back.” However, Laurie says that was “because the white men cheated them.” I appreciated that Laurie acknowledged that, and I think that this exchange not only highlights some of the stereotypical views people had in the 1950s about Native Americans and history, but also differences between the ways Celia and Laurie look at other people. I have more to say about that below, but Celia tends to cling toward accepted views and the general social rules of society while Laurie has a talent for empathy and looking at situations from another person’s perspective. I’ve noticed that the author, Phyllis Whitney, has used this technique in other books of hers to subtly challenge stereotypes, pointing out that different groups of people have their own perspective and their own side of the story.

This book is fun for book lovers. Laurie’s favorite author, Katherine Parsons, is fictional, but the story captures the spirit of book lovers. It turns out that Norman is a book lover, too, and Laurie is able to draw him out and bond with him over their shared love of books. Aunt Serena also praises Laurie for her ability feel empathy for other people, a quality that she believes comes partly from Laurie being a book lover. After all, readers are accustomed to the idea of seeing circumstances through the eyes of someone else and experiencing their thought processes when they read a story. Aunt Serena believes that one of the benefits of reading it that it helps to cultivate a person’s skills in using empathy to understand other people and that readers carry that technique over into the real world.

I will say, though, that Laurie’s story took an unexpected turn. Laurie is a book lover, but through her association with Katherine Parsons, she unexpectedly realizes that, while she’s always dreamed of writing stories and being published, she doesn’t actually like the writing process. She enjoys the stories other people have written, and she has a knack for understanding characters, whether real or on the page, but she’s surprised to realize that the routine of writing doesn’t appeal to her. She feels a little sad at the realization because it means giving up an old dream but also a little relief because her life is now open to more possibilities that she might like better.

The Sisters and 1950s Social Rules

I also enjoyed the relationship between the two sisters in the story. They get on each other’s nerves and fight with each other sometimes, but they also care about each other and make up with each other after fighting. Celia, as the older sister, is more interested in boys than Laurie is, and she has all kinds of social rules about how to talk to boys and how to get their attention. Laurie knows that Celia and her friends talk about these things a lot, but Laurie doesn’t really understand all of their little rules and thinks a lot of them sound silly, like the idea that girls can’t invite boys to things but have to wait for the boys to ask them or that they should pretend like they’re not too interested in a boy so the boy will approach them first. This book was written in the 1950s, so a lot of Celia’s social expectations about how girls and boys should act around each other sound dated, but I enjoyed Laurie questioning Celia’s rules.

Laurie thinks it more important to know about what specific people like and how to appeal to them as individuals than to adhere to more general social rules. This is especially apparent when the girls try to get Mr. Bennett to let them in his house and talk to him. When the sisters compete to ingratiate themselves to Mr. Bennett so they can get access to the house and talk to him about the mystery, their different approaches play on their concepts of social rules and human empathy. Celia tries a very conventional approach, trying to appeal to Mr. Bennett in a general way, but Laurie decides that “Mr. Bennett was too much of an individual to be governed by rules that worked for most people” and tailors her approach to him as an eccentric individual.

Celia’s idea is to make some homemade cupcakes and take them to Mr. Bennett as a gift because she believes in the old axiom that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. As Laurie suspects, though, this approach falls flat because Mr. Bennett isn’t interested in baked goods. Laurie has a better idea of what Mr. Bennett really likes because she has talked to Norman about him, and she decides that the way to get his attention is to demonstrate a shared interest in something he likes. Knowing that he likes nature more than anything else, she starts putting together a collection of interesting leaves and asks Mr. Bennett if he can help identify them. Mr. Bennett isn’t really impressed by her collection because she didn’t mount the collection properly, most of her collection is very common leaves that he thinks she should be able to identify if she knew anything about trees, and she also included a sample of poison ivy, which she should have known better than to touch. However, he is sufficiently amused by her efforts and her mistake to talk to her for a few minutes.

No Man is an Island

One of the major themes of the story is that “No man is an island”, meaning that people do need other people. Aunt Serena is concerned that Mr. Bennett’s obsession with solitude is hurting his grandson because he’s making it difficult for Norman to make friends. Mr. Bennett has forbidden Norman to bring any other kids to the house because he doesn’t want to deal with the noise and disturbance. Because she’s been a teacher, Aunt Serena knows that Norman needs more opportunities to socialize with his peers. Mr. Bennett doesn’t even seem to pay much attention to Norman himself because he’s too absorbed in his own work.

What Laurie points out to Mr. Bennett when Mr. Bennett tries to tell the kids that the old mystery is unsolvable is that a group of people working together can accomplish more than any one person, working alone. They don’t have many clues to the past, but just because they don’t all make sense to any one of them doesn’t mean that parts of them wouldn’t make sense to different people. By pooling their knowledge and consulting other people, they could still put together the pieces of the past.

Along the way, Laurie also makes Mr. Bennett realize that there are many things he doesn’t know about Norman. Even though he and Norman have been living alone together for a long time, Mr. Bennett hasn’t paid much attention to Norman or things Norman has been doing. Norman has felt lonely and neglected, although he hasn’t wanted to admit how much. When Mr. Bennett realizes that Norman is an artist and has been developing his skills to an impressive degree without him even seeing any of Norman’s projects, he realizes that he has been too absorbed in his own concerns and starts to make an effort to learn more about what’s happening in the lives of the people around him. This is a similar situation to a grandmother in another of the author’s books, Mystery of the Angry Idol.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Lost Village

The Boxcar Children

#37 The Mystery of the Lost Village by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1993.

Grandfather Alden is going on a fishing trip with a friend, and he arranges for his grandchildren to stay with a family on a Navajo reservation. They’ve never been to a reservation before, and there will be hiking and a powwow. The kids are all eager to go!

The family the Aldens are staying with is the Lightfeathers, and they have two children about the same age as the Aldens, Joe and Amy. The Lightfeathers tell the Aldens interesting things about Navajo history, culture, and crafts. What grabs their attention the most is a story about an ancient village nearby that was abandoned due to drought. The stories that have been passed down through the generations tell them roughly where the village was supposed to be, but the remains of the lost village have never been found.

Joe, Amy, and the Aldens ask if they could try digging for the lost village. Mrs. Lightfeather once studied archaeology, and they ask her if she can help them. Mrs. Lightfeather says that, although the village may be gone, traces of it should be left. The children begin laying out an orderly dig and start their search. They find some arrowheads and pottery, but when they show Mrs. Lightfeather what they’ve found, she says that they can’t continue their dig for much longer. The adults have just heard that a developer is taking over the land to build vacation homes. The children are dismayed when they find out that the developer is going to clear all of the trees. Of course, if the children can find signs of the lost village, the site would become an archaeological site, and the developer would have to stop. They only have two weeks to find some evidence of the lost village before the development starts!

There are some suspicious people hanging around. Michael Runningdeer, who works for the real estate developer, has been checking the boundaries of the reservation to check where they can develop. While they’re working on their dig, the kids meet a woman called Rita Neville, who says that she’s working on a documentary. Ted Clark is a genealogist who says that he has come to the reservation to trace his family’s roots, but Amy thinks it’s strange that he doesn’t seem to know things that someone with Navajo roots would usually know.

As the children work on their dig, they start finding more things, but someone also starts filling in places where they’ve been digging. In other places, someone has been digging where they haven’t dug yet. Then, someone steals an impressive bowl that Violet found. Is someone trying to prevent them from making a discovery that would stop the development, or is this a case of greed for Native American artifacts?

My Reaction

I liked this mystery as a kid, but I have a bone to pick with this story now. Perhaps the rules have changed since the book was written, but I know from living in Arizona that it’s routine to call in professional archaeologists to survey sites before digging and development take place. Because this area was inhabited by different groups over the centuries, archaeological finds can be just about anywhere.

I was attending ASU when they build the bio-sciences building, and people were allowed to watch the archaeologists survey the site. They did find an old Native American burial ground on the site. It didn’t stop the development completely, but they did record and catalog all of their finds before reburying them in the same locations where they were found. The logic of that is that Arizona is a very dry climate, and it preserves things buried in the ground very well. Putting a building over the site will prevent the site from being disturbed again for a long time. In the future, there may be better archaeological tools and scientific techniques that can be used to reevaluate the site and the things in it, and by then, the building may no longer be there.

What I’m saying is that there are rules and practices regarding archaeology and development in this region. Because this book was written about 30 years ago, when I was a kid, I’m not sure how different the rules were then, but I’m sure that archaeological surveys of this type were conducted back then, too. One of my old college teachers was an archaeologist, and he told us about digs he participated in around one of the reservations years before. I’d be surprised that development so close to a reservation, as in this story, would be allowed to go ahead without an archaeological survey from one of the universities or other archaeological organizations in the state. I just think that there should have been professionals working in the area before the kids started their dig.

I liked the pieces of information that the Lightfeathers explain to the Aldens about Navajo history and culture. My favorite piece of trivia was the explanation about how, rather than putting clay cooking pots directly over the fire, historical Navajos would heat a stone in a fire and then put the stone into a pot of water to heat the water for cooking. I think it’s a creative solution to cooking in a vessel that can’t be used directly over fire.

Jessie is allowed to participate in a dance at the powwow as a guest of a Navajo family, and Amy helps her put together regalia for the dance. (See Jingle Dancer for an example of this in a different tribe.) I sometimes find it a little cringey now when characters in stories too easily participate in Native American events and are quickly called honorary members of the tribe, but in this case, the Aldens do help make an important discovery.

Posted on by TracyC

The Castle Mystery

The Boxcar Children

#36 The Castle Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1993.

Mr. Alden takes his children to Drummond Castle because an old friend of his is helping to clean and organize the place before it becomes a museum. The Drummond family used to live there, and they had the castle built to look like a castle in Germany. However, the last of the Drummond family has died, so turning the mansion into a museum will give the place new life. When the Aldens first arrive, they think the castle looks more like something from a scary story than a fairy tale, but Mr. Alden’s friend, Carrie, shows them some of the more whimsical elements of the place.

However, Carrie’s assistants aren’t happy about the Aldens helping. None of them really seem like team players, even with each other, and they’re not sure how much help the Alden children can be. There are a lot of things that the assistants won’t let the Aldens do when they try to help. They also seem a little suspicious of each other because a valuable Stradivarius violin that once belonged to the Drummond family has disappeared. Carrie insists that they don’t know that the violin has been stolen. The last of the Drummonds may have just hidden it somewhere, and they will find it when they’ve finished cleaning and organizing the place.

Then, the Alden children begin to notice strange things happening in the castle. They see lights in parts of the castle where no one is supposed to be and hear violin music coming from somewhere. Sometimes, the furniture covered in dust sheets gives them the feeling that someone is hiding under the sheets. When it seems like the kids are poking around the castle too much, the assistants all suddenly find tasks for them to do.

The kids catch one of the assistants, Mr. Tooner, looking for something under the floorboards in their grandfather’s room. He claims that he was fixing the floor, but Mr. Alden says that nothing was wrong with the floor. Sandy, another assistant, seems to know her way around the castle better than the others, but she’s oddly defensive about why she knows the place so well. She also makes an odd comment about how it would be nice to hear the Stradivarius “again”, but she dodges questions about when she heard it the first time. Tom is the antiques expert, and he insists that his work is highly specialized and that he wants to work alone.

The Aldens explore the spooky castle, the girls get trapped in the cave under the castle, and they find a secret, hidden room that brings them closer to the solution of the mystery. Each of these assistants has a previous connection to Drummond Castle that they don’t want to discuss, but only one of them is a thief.

My Reaction

I remember liking this book as a kid, although I’d forgotten what the solution of the mystery was until I reread it. It holds up pretty well, and I enjoyed how everyone associated with the castle has their own secrets and past connections to the place. It makes them all really great suspects and also gives readers some subplots to figure out along with deciding who the violin thief is!

The castle setting is also great! Technically, I suppose that it’s really more of a castle-like mansion, but it has all the trappings of a castle, some fanciful, some whimsical, and some spooky. There is also a cave under the castle, which features in a part of the story where Jessie and Violet get locked inside the cave because there is a gate that closes it off. One of the best parts of the book is the discovery of a hidden room because what castle would be complete without one!

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Mixed-Up Zoo

The Boxcar Children

Boxcar Children The Mystery of the Mixed-Up Zoo

#26 The Mystery of the Mixed-Up Zoo by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1992.

Boxcar Children The Mystery of the Mixed-Up Zoo wrong labels on animals

The Aldens are visiting an old friend of their grandfather’s, who owns a zoo. The friend, Edward, lives alone and isn’t very organized, so the Aldens offer to help him straighten up the house and do some cooking. Edward is pleased with their help and few home-cooked meals. However, strange things start happening at the zoo.

First, someone switches around all the signs identifying the animals, so each sign is next to the wrong animal. It looks like a silly prank, but then more things happen. Then, someone sabotages the electricity, making it difficult to keep and prepare the food for the animals. It gets worse when someone sabotages the temperature controls in the animals’ habitats, making it too hot for some animals and too cold for others. The Aldens help the zoo staff to fix the temperatures because the animals could actually be killed by being kept at the wrong temperature! Finally, someone steals the zoo’s monkey! Who could be behind these things?

Boxcar Children The Mystery of the Mixed-Up Zoo monkey in a cage

The man who owns the local bookstore helps the Aldens find books about animals, but he seems oddly reluctant to talk about the zoo. A local woman, Helen Brooks, thinks that the zoo should be shut down because supporting it costs too much money for taxpayers. She doesn’t care what happens to the animals, and although many local people love the zoo, she plans to bring up the issue at the next town council meeting. When someone tries to sell the monkey to the local pet store, the Aldens start to get the answers they’re looking for.

My Reaction

Boxcar Children The Mystery of the Mixed-Up Zoo giving seal water

I thought the mystery was all right, but I had some mixed feelings about the way the villain was handled. We see the villain and get to know the villain’s other role in the story before we know it’s the villains, but I just thought there could have been more build-up about the villain’s connection to the zoo before the person is revealed as the culprit. The attempted sale of the money kind of clinches the identity of the culprit without the Aldens really having to figure out why first.

I did think the book was interesting for the way they explain both how some of the pranks at the zoo are actually seriously dangerous to the animals’ health, like changing the temperatures in their enclosures. It also explains how the Aldens help the zoo employees to help take care of the animals, so the book has some educational quality.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Amusement Park Mystery

The Boxcar Children

#25 The Amusement Park Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1992.

The four Alden children go to visit their cousin Joe and his wife Alice. They work at a museum, but one of the best parts of visiting them is the amusement park nearby. The amusement park has a charming, antique carousel with hand-carved horses. The horses are valuable antiques, and Alice says that they are wonderful examples of Americana (American folk art).

The Aldens, especially Benny, think the carousel is wonderful, but not everyone feels the same away about it. When they talk to the owner of the amusement park, Joshua, they learn that he loves the antique carousel but his daughter, Karen, who works with him, thinks that they should get rid of old rides like that and add newer, more modern ones. What she really wants to do is add a roller coaster to the park, something that would appeal to older kids and adults rather than young children. The Aldens don’t see how she can add a roller coaster because the park isn’t very big, and a roller coaster would take up about half the park. They hear Karen later talking about it again with her boyfriend, who is a golfer. They notice the boyfriend doing some sketches of horses that he doesn’t seem to want to let them see.

The first time the Aldens ride the carousel, they have a great time, and Benny chooses a dappled gray horse as his favorite. However, when they return to ride the carousel again later, it seems like something is wrong with the horse. It used to bob up and down during the ride, but now, it doesn’t move. When they return again, a couple of days later, the dappled gray horse moves but now has a long scratch on its side that wasn’t there before. The Aldens also begin to notice problems with other horses. Another gray horse has stopped moving, and a chocolate brown one oddly has an unpainted stomach when they were sure it was painted before.

They talk to Joshua about the horses, and he becomes concerned. He has an expert examine them, and the expert assures him that these are the authentic antique horses that were always there, but the Aldens are sure that something suspicious is going on.

If someone has been taking the original horses and substituting fakes, why did the so-called expert say that they were the original horses? Who could be behind it? Is Karen trying to sabotage the carousel to get the roller coaster she wants? Her boyfriend seems to need money, so he could be selling off the horses. What about the cotton candy seller and his disagreeable wife or the man who actually runs the carousel ride?

My Reaction

I thought the book did a good job of providing readers with multiple suspects to consider. We know Karen isn’t fond of the carousel and wants more exciting, modern rides, so she could be selling off antique carousel horses to fund her ideas. Her golfer friend also needs money, and his sketches of horses might be for planning how to create counterfeits of the originals. Then again, the cotton candy seller and his grumpy wife are always around and acting suspiciously, and the man who runs the carousel ride has obvious access to the horses. I like mysteries where there are multiple suspects to consider!

The concept of the antique carousel reminded me of the Nancy Drew computer game The Haunted Carousel, but that computer game was based off of a Nancy Drew book, not this one. It’s interesting to notice some themes that appear in different children’s series. Not every kids’ mystery series features an antique carousel, making it a charming and uncommon theme. However, amusement parks are common themes in children’s books, and a mysterious, antique ride offers that element of both quaint nostalgia and spookiness together.

Posted on by TracyC

Meg Mackintosh and The Case of the Curious Whale Watch

Meg Mackintosh Mysteries

Meg Mackintosh and The Case of the Curious Whale Watch by Lucinda Landon, 1987.

Meg and her brother, Peter, are going on a whale watch trip with their grandfather. As they board the boat, their grandfather tells them that the captain is well-known as a treasure hunter, looking for pirate treasure.

On board the Albatross, they are greeted by Captain Caleb and meet his mate Jasper, and the other whale watch guests. The guests are Mrs. Clarissa Maxwell and her nephew Anthony, who seems to like gambling; a man named Oliver Morley, who likes stamps; a college student called Carlos de Christopher; and a marine biologist, Dr. Susan Peck.

Meg asks Captain Caleb about his treasure hunting, and he shows everyone an old map that’s been in his family for many years. The sailor who gave it to them also gave them a whale’s tooth with a scrimshaw carving of a whale on it. It’s supposed to help explain where the treasure is hidden. Some of the members of the expedition debate about how much money the treasure of the map would be worth, but Dr. Peck is completely opposed to treasure hunting because it’s disruptive to the environment.

The group enjoys watching the whales, although Meg’s grandfather has to go lie down for a while because he’s seasick, and lazy Jasper spends his time reading comic books in the lifeboat. When they encounter a storm, and everyone goes into the cabin to get out of the rain, they discover that the map is missing!

Who could have taken it? Various members of the whale watch have talked about their need for money, and Dr. Peck said that she thought the map should be destroyed to prevent damage to the environment. Meg goes over the pictures she’s take to find the thief!

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

My Reaction

I like the Meg Mackintosh books because it’s fun to solve the mystery along with the heroine. Like other books in the series, readers are supposed to use the story and the clues in the pictures to solve the mystery. At various points in the story, the story pauses for readers to figure out something about what’s happening, and these are good points for readers to check that they’re on track and to review the information they know so far. The story isn’t very long, but there are multiple points for readers to figure out something about what’s going on.

I did figure out the answer to this one very quickly. It’s partly because I’m an adult and this is aimed at children, but more importantly, I’ve seen the movie Charade with Audrey Hepburn, which used a similar plot device. The story did a good job of making all the suspects look like they had a motive, but when you figure out what the thief’s real goal was, there’s only one person who qualifies. Kids in early elementary school would probably find the mystery more challenging.

Posted on by TracyC

Meg Mackintosh and The Mystery at Camp Creepy

Meg Mackintosh Mysteries

Meg Mackintosh and The Mystery at Camp Creepy by Lucinda Landon, 1987.

Meg Mackintosh is at a summer camp in Maine! The camp is called Camp Crescent, but it soon gets the name Camp Creepy because there’s a ghost story about the camp. The story says that an old man named Stuart once lived in the building that the camp uses for a boathouse and that he still haunts the camp. When people start hearing strange noises at night, the campers start thinking maybe the ghost story is true.

To celebrate the Fourth of July, the camp decides to hold a treasure hunt with puzzles for the campers to solve. Everyone is excited about the treasure hunt, but Meg is especially excited because she’s solved treasure hunts before. However, in her excitement to start the treasure hunt, she accidentally drops the first clue on the camp fire, and much of it burns.

Everyone is angry with Meg for messing up the treasure hunt because they’re supposed to solve it before nightfall to enjoy the prize. Although they don’t know what the prize is supposed to be, they’re told that it won’t be any good if they find it too late. While the others go on a hike, Meg fakes a stomach ache because she just can’t face the other campers again.

At the camp’s infirmary, Meg meets two other campers who are staying behind. Russell has a bad case of poison ivy, and Tina has been dealing with homesickness. They ask to see what’s left of the first clue, and Meg shows them. Something in the clue reminds Meg of something she saw at camp earlier, and the three of them begin thinking that they might be able to solve the after all. If they can just get past that first burned clue, they can continue the treasure hunt like normal.

Can the three of them manage to solve the treasure hunt and save the prize for all the other campers? Will they meet Stuart’s ghost along the way?

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

My Reaction

I always enjoy treasure hunt stories, and like other Meg Mackintosh mysteries, this story gives readers the opportunity to figure out the clues and puzzles along with Meg. The information readers need is in the pictures of the story.

Most of the focus of the story is on the treasure hunt, and the ghost is kind of a side plot. Maybe the ghost would seem a little spookier to young readers, but I have to admit that I found it difficult to think of anybody named Stuart as sounding very sinister. The legend of Stuart doesn’t even seem to carry any consequences for people who see him other than it just being spooky, so I didn’t think the story was that creepy.

Posted on by TracyC

Lucky Dog Days

Pee Wee Scouts

Lucky Dog Days by Judy Delton, 1988.

Mrs. Peters tells the scouts that it’s Help-a-Pet month. The kids start talking about the kinds of pets they have, and Mrs. Peters asks them if they would like to do something to help a pet. She suggests that they could walk dogs at an animal shelter or raise money for homeless pets.

Mrs. Peters takes the scouts to an animal shelter. The kids like seeing all the animals, although Tracy turns out to be allergic to them. The other kids walk the dogs around the shelter yard. This turns into chaos because Rachel decides to walk a dog that’s really too big for her to handle, a St. Bernard. (The adults should have stopped her, but they never do in this series when a kid is about to do something they shouldn’t. They take Rachel’s word for it that she can handle a St. Bernard because she has walked her uncle’s Great Dane. However, even dogs of the same size don’t have the same temperament, and I think a real shelter worker would know the individual animal’s temperament and not offer an oversized dog with a lot of energy to a six-year-old child.) When her dog starts running and dragging her, the other dogs get out of control, too. Fortunately, they’re all in a contained yard, so none of them gets away. The incident ends with Rachel crashing into a lily pond in the yard.

Mrs. Peters tells the children that they will have a rummage sale to raise money for the animals at the shelter. All of the scouts will donate things to sell and collect donations from others. Tracy tells Molly and Mary Beth that she will help them collect donations. Molly is annoyed that Tracy is coming with them because she thinks Tracy is bossy and that her sniffling is gross. However, it turns out to be a good thing that Tracy comes because she brings a wagon with her to collect donations, which the other girls hadn’t thought to do. Unfortunately, their wagon disappears when the girls try to visit one last house to ask for donations and leave it unattended.

It turns out that some of the other scouts, Roger, Sonny, and Tim, found their wagon and try to claim the donations as their own at the next scout meeting. The boys say it’s theirs because they just found it on the sidewalk, but the girls tell Mrs. Peters what happened. Mrs. Peters smooths things over, saying that it doesn’t matter because these items will be sold to help the animals. Molly doesn’t think it’s fair for the boys to get credit for the work the girls did gathering donations, though. (I think Mrs. Peters should also have had a word with the boys about not taking things if you don’t know who they belong to and don’t have permission to take them. The adults in this series never explain things enough.)

There is one particularly fancy necklace that looks like diamonds among the donations. Mrs. Peters says that, rather than putting a price on it, they will auction it off to the highest bidder. They also have some adoptable dogs at the sale to attract people who might adopt them. It was Molly’s idea to have adoptable dogs there to sell because a lady expressed interest in Mrs. Peters’s big, black dog, Tiny. To Molly’s surprise, the lady who eventually buys the fancy necklace and pays a thousand dollars for it is the woman who donated it. When they ask her about it, she explains that it is a real diamond necklace and that she donated it by a mistake. However, even though she paid a lot of money to get it back, it’s still only a fraction of its real value, and she’s happy to make a big donation to a worthy cause.

In the end, Mrs. Peters congratulates the scouts on how much money they raised and how many animals were adopted that day. There is just one puppy left from the animals who were at the sale. The kids are attached to the puppy and don’t want to send him back to the shelter, so Mrs. Peters decides to keep him as a mascot for the troop. They name him Lucky, and Mrs. Peters says that they can take turns keeping him at their houses. (Except for the kids with allergies, like Tracy.)

My Reaction

The name of the book comes partly because the month is August, and Mrs. Peters explains to the kids what the “dog days” of summer are, although she just describes what the weather is like rather than explain why they’re called “dog days.” The term comes from the period after the rising of the dog star Sirius, but then again, I suppose that could be difficult to explain to six-year-olds. Not all adults would necessarily know it, either. I had to look it up myself to get the explanation. Even so, the name is appropriate because the theme of the book is pets, and it is set during late summer.

I still think that the adults in the story could explain some things to the kids more. That’s often a part of books in this series, although that’s also where much of the excitement of the story comes from, things going wrong because the kids don’t entirely know what they’re doing. Any lessons learned are more implied than spelled out.

The kids also keep insulting each other, even though they’re also kind of friends in the stories. We don’t really know why Molly thinks Tracy is bossy because she doesn’t really explain that. It just seems to her that Tracy tends to tell other people what to do and get her way. Molly relents a little in this book, though, because it turns out that Tracy has some good ideas, and even when she thought Tracy screwed up because they lost the wagon, everything worked out for the best.

Posted on by TracyC

Camp Ghost-Away

Pee Wee Scouts

Camp Ghost-Away by Judy Delton, illustrated by Alan Tiegreen, 1988.

The Pee-Wee Scouts sell powered sugar donuts door-to-door in their neighborhood to raise money for their trip to camp, and there is a special badge for the scout who sells the most. The kids all brag about how much they’re going to sell, each claiming that they can sell the most. Rachel teases Sonny because his over-protective mother will probably go with him while he’s going door-to-door. She calls him a “mama’s boy”, and he calls her “stuck up.” (There is some truth to both of these insults, but they’re still nasty, and no adult comments on it.) Molly and Mary Beth decide to do their selling together because they’re best friends.

In the end, Rachel and Sonny are the biggest sellers, each of them selling more than 100 boxes, in spite of Rachel’s teasing about his mother’s involvement and Rachel’s mother’s objection that donuts aren’t very healthy. However, there are some objections about how fair that is when Rachel and Sonny reveal the secrets of their success. Sonny’s mother sold 80 of his boxes at her workplace, and some kids object that it isn’t fair because Sonny didn’t sell them himself. He gets more teasing about being a “baby” and having his mother do things for him, but Mrs. Peters, the scout leader, says that it’s fair for a mother to sell on their behalf because the most important thing is the money they raise for camp.

Similarly, Rachel explains that her family went to a family wedding, and she sold most of her boxes to her relatives. Her family seems to have money, and her aunt and grandmother each bought 20 boxes. Jealously, Molly says that her relatives will get fat if they eat that many donuts. Rachel says that they won’t because they plan to donate the donuts to hungry people. Again, Mrs. Peters doesn’t say anything about the insults the children trade, just saying that the money they raised is important because they will now be able to afford to go to camp.

The camp is called Camp Hide-Away, and Mrs. Peters gives the children information about the camp and what to pack. They will go to camp next weekend, and Lisa’s mother will come with them on the trip. Rachel brags about how she has two swimsuits to bring, while the other kids only have one each, and she also shows off her new gold bracelet.

When they get to camp and Rachel discovers that they will be sleeping in tents, she isn’t so sure she wants to go camping after all. She doesn’t like bugs, and she worries about bears. The other kids call her “sissy” and “scaredy cat.” Mrs. Peters assures them that it will all be fine, and she has her large dog with them.

That night, they hear a strange sound, which sounds like the moaning of a ghost. The kids debate about whether it’s a ghost or some kind of wild animal. Either prospect is terrifying. When it starts talking, they’re sure it’s a ghost, but Mrs. Peters’s dog saves the day!

My Reaction and Spoilers

I’ve commented before that the kids in this book series do a lot of name-calling. In a way, it’s realistic for young children, but it’s also really annoying. Sonny inevitably gets called “sissy”, “baby”, and/or “mama’s boy” in every book I’ve read. It also bothers me that no adult ever tells the kids not to talk like that. The kids in the story are only six years old, so this kind of name-calling could be considered realistic, but adults telling kids not to talk like that is also realistic. I feel bad for Sonny because he often gets picked on in these books, and I think it’s unfair. Maybe his mother is a little over-protective, compared to the other parents, but at the same time, these kids are only six years old. Things like having a mom who walks to a six-year-old to school and doesn’t want a six-year-old to go door-to-door, selling things to strangers all by himself, are not outrageous. Even Rachel admits that she heard her mother saying that the kids were rather young to be away from home overnight for an entire weekend, and I think that’s true. There is some trouble with homesickness in the story, and I’m not surprised.

Like other books in this series, there are also multiple parts to the story, almost like short stories put together. The first part of this book is about selling the donuts to raise money for camp, and the second part is about their camping trip, although that part also has some smaller episodes. The highlight of the book is the spooky noise that the kids hear at night and think is a ghost. It is pretty quickly revealed that it’s just a couple of the scouts playing a prank on the others. The prank gets foiled by Mrs. Peters’s dog and the pranksters crashing into things because they have sheets over their heads.

There’s also a third part of the story, where Molly has more trouble with camp activities than the other kids. She can’t swim or row as well as they can, and when they look for interesting things, like rocks and wild flowers, on their hike, all she finds is poison ivy. But, she isn’t the only one having problems. Rachel doesn’t like bugs and the camping food, and Sonny gets homesick. Sonny’s mother comes to pick him up because he’s so upset. The other kids tease him again, but the truth is that other kids are also homesick and cry at night. Even Lisa cries, even though her mother is there on the trip. Molly realizes that she is the only one who isn’t homesick. Although she doesn’t get the badges for the standard camp activities, Molly does get one for not being homesick and another for finding Mary Beth’s lost ring. I was surprised that Rachel’s bracelet wasn’t the thing that got lost since she made a big deal of introducing it, but it was Mary Beth’s ring that got lost instead.

Although I often think that the adults don’t explain much to the children in this series, Mrs. Peters does tell the children that homesickness is natural. I think she could have given them a little more advice about it and defended Sonny from the teasing more, though.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

Cookies and Crutches

Pee Wee Scouts

Cookies and Crutches by Judy Delton, 1988.

This is the first book in the Pee Wee Scouts series. The children in Troop 23 meet after school on Tuesdays, and their leader is Mrs. Peters. One Tuesday, they meet at Mrs. Peters’s house to bake cookies. Mrs. Peters says that, to earn their cookie badge, they must each bake cookies at home without help and have their parents write a note that they have done it. She teaches the children an easy cookie recipe that they will use.

Roger White doesn’t want to bake cookies because he thinks that baking is for girls. Sonny Betz argues that it’s not just for girls, but many of the other children think that Sonny is a sissy because his mother still walks him to school. Sonny thinks that Roger is a creep. Mrs. Peters says that cooking is for everyone who eats. If boys can eat, they can also cook.

Mrs. Peters demonstrates making a recipe for chocolate chip cookies (and the book provides the recipe). Molly and Mary Beth ask if they can make their own batch of cookies for their badge together. They are not supposed to have adults helping them, but Mrs. Peters says that it is fine if they work with each other. In spite of their earlier argument, Roger agrees to make cookies with Sonny as a team.

However, when Molly and Mary Beth try to bake cookies by themselves, they don’t think the cookie batter looks right. It looks too pale, and when Mrs. Peters made her cookies, the batter was more brown. To fix the color problem, they decide to pour in some root beer, which is not part of the recipe. Then, they decide that the batter is too runny, so they add some gravy mix to thicken it. Because they added things they shouldn’t have, the cookies come out all wrong, and the girls worry that they won’t get their badge.

At their next meeting, though, they learn that nobody’s cookies look like they should. Mrs. Peters has the kids make cookies together while she supervises, although she doesn’t help them directly, so they can say that they did it themselves. This time, the cookies work out, although some of them are oddly-shaped. However, all of the kids get their cookie badges together.

The scout troop then organizes an ice skating party with the kids’ fathers. It’s a little awkward because not all of the kids have fathers living at home. Most of the kids without fathers bring an uncle or brother instead, but Sonny doesn’t have either, so his mom comes. The other kids tease him about it because they think he’s already too much of a mommy’s boy.

Some of the kids are also nervous because they don’t know how to skate, and they’re not even sure that their fathers know. Molly gets into trouble because Rachel makes a big deal about her fancy skates, which she owns so she doesn’t need to rent any, and about her dainty little feet. Molly rents a pair in the same size as Rachel’s, trying to prove that her feet aren’t too big, but they’re really too small for her. She has to take off her socks to put them on, and even then, it’s a hard squeeze. She ends up spraining her ankle badly because she’s wearing the wrong skates, and she has to use crutches. Molly doesn’t get her skating badge, but she does get one that’s almost as good as a consolation.

My Reaction

This is one of those children’s books/series where the kids in the story, although they are part of the same troop and seem to be friends for the most part, still say insulting things about each other, like when Roger called Sonny a sissy and Sonny called Roger a creep. I know that kids do things like this sometimes, but I don’t really like books that seem to promote or are permissive about that kind of talk. What bothered me is that, even though the boys were insulting each other in front of Mrs. Peters, she didn’t tell them to stop, which makes it seem like she tacitly thinks those insults are fine. I liked it that she contradicted Roger’s assertion that cooking and baking are only for girls, but I wish that she had said something about the way the kids were insulting each other.

I knew from the beginning of the story that the way Mrs. Peters was teaching these young children to make the cookies, just by watching her, and then expecting them to do it right completely on their own, with no adult supervision, was probably going to lead to a disaster of some kind. Of course, that’s because I’m reading this from an adult perspective. Nobody learns anything complex from only having seen it done by somebody else just one, especially if they just watched and didn’t actively participate. These kids are also young, just in the first grade of elementary school. They can read, but they don’t have advanced reading skills or much experience with cooking anything before. What I’m saying is that they really needed adult supervision, and I didn’t think that telling them that they had to do this completely by themselves wasn’t a great idea. Although, it’s possible that Mrs. Peters assumed that the kids would get more supervision than they actually got, even if the adults didn’t actively help. I think a lot of adults assumed that not helping meant no supervising and no advice or intervention when the kids were about to do something wrong. I have to admit, though, that there wouldn’t be much of a story if they did everything right, and this activity went as expected.

The story has two parts to it, which aren’t directly related. I thought, at first, that the kids would be serving cookies they baked to the dads, and that would be the tie-in between the cooking baking and the party with the fathers. They didn’t, though. The skating incident and Molly’s injury are unconnected to each other. The only connection I can see to the two incidents isn’t explicitly stated, but both of this incidents involve the kids doing something they’ve never done before and not really doing it right. They need to have experiences where things go wrong to start figuring out how to do things right. Although Rachel brags about her skating ability and her skates, after Molly is injured, Rachel admits that she fell down a lot when she was younger and was first learning. Molly feels a little better, realizing that nobody does things perfectly the first time. Although getting hurt isn’t great, learning to use crutches is also something new that Molly experiences that none of the other kids have experienced before.