Posted on by TracyC

The Little Witch’s Halloween Book

The Little Witch’s Halloween Book by Linda Glovach, 1975.

This book is part of the Little Witch series of craft and hobby books.  This one is all about Halloween activities and suggestions for Halloween parties. The book is divided into sections for cards and decorations, parties and celebrations, and trick or treat.  The Little Witch’s Code in the beginning has rules for Halloween safety such as having an adult inspect Halloween treats before the child eats them and going trick-or-treating in a group instead of alone. It also advises collecting for charities while trick-or-treating and not playing tricks on people.

The section about cards has Halloween card designs in different shapes. The party section also has a pumpkin card design to use as an invitation, but really, any of the cards could be invitations or party decorations.

The party section has instructions for games and decorations. One of the games is a pumpkin cake eating contest and a recipe for a pumpkin cake, which oddly does not include any pumpkin, only the spices that are typically included in pumpkin pie. It’s more like a spice cake or gingerbread, and it’s decorated to look like a jack o’lantern face.

Other games and party treats include traditional ones, like dunking for apples and toasting marshmallows, but there are also some original games, like the Wicked Witch’s Candy House. That game involves party guests taking candy from a tray on top of a cardboard playhouse made from a large cardboard box while the “witch” inside tries to guess who they are. There is also a cute fortune-telling game.

The section about trick-or-treating has more recipes and instructions for making a treat bag and making jack o’lanterns out of oranges.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Little Witch’s Black Magic Cookbook

The Little Witch’s Black Magic Cookbook by Linda Glovach, 1972.

This book is part of the Little Witch series of craft and hobby books. This one is a cookbook with recipes that are simple enough for children to make (with some adult assistance). A note in the introduction says that this cookbook is good for boys as well as “little witches.” The Little Witch’s Code in the beginning has tips for understanding recipes, preparing to cook, and cleaning up after cooking.

At first, I thought that all of the recipes would be the types of food served at Halloween parties, but they aren’t. There is a special section about Halloween recipes, but there are also recipes for other occasions and some simple snacks and lunches.

Most of the recipes are really simple, like Pickled Peanut Butter Burgers, which are basically peanut butter sandwiches on hamburger buns with pickles. When I was a kid, I used to roll my eyes at people who thought things like that would be exciting or challenging for children. It probably depends on the age of the child, but I also wouldn’t have been impressed by the recipe for Cinnamon Toast. I used to make that by myself when I was little before turning on Saturday morning cartoons. My feeling is that kids who are old enough to read this book by themselves are probably old enough to know how to make these particular recipes by themselves. I guess everyone has to start somewhere, though.

I was more interested by the Halloween recipes and the Chicken Cones, which are listed in the lunch section. The Chicken Cones reminded me of the Tuna Cones recipe that I saw in a Klutz cookbook for children. The only difference is that this recipe uses a simple chicken salad in an ice cream cone instead of tuna salad.

In the section about birthdays, there is only one recipe for little birthday “cakes.” The “cakes” are actually chocolate wafer cookies, stacked with whipped cream, put in the freezer, and covered with more whipped cream. This is basically an old-fashioned icebox cake, a popular dessert from decades past. It’s not really a cake, but it does sound like a fun birthday treat!

Posted on by TracyC

The Little Witch’s Black Magic Book of Games

The Little Witch’s Black Magic Book of Games by Linda Glovach, 1974.

This book is part of the Little Witch series of craft and hobby books.  This one is all about games, but not board games. The games are more like party games or games that young children can play on playgrounds or while hanging out with friends.  The Little Witch’s Code in the beginning has rules for playing fairly and keeping a good attitude while playing.

The games in the book are grouped first by the number of players, with some games that players can play alone and others for two or three players and some for larger groups.  There are also some special games to play on holidays.

Most of the games are very simple and good for young children.  Some of them are classics, like Sardine; Stay Serious; Duck, Duck, Goose; and Rock, Scissors, Paper. These are games that most American children play when they’re in school or in other youth groups like after-school programs/daycare, scouting groups, church groups, or summer camps. In other words, kids naturally learn those games from other kids anywhere kids meet. Some of these games exist in different variations around the world, although the book doesn’t go into that. It just explains how to play them.

There are other games in the book that I don’t remember playing or hearing about as a kid. I don’t think that I’ve heard of Turtle Tag or Alligator and Fish before. I looked them up, and other people on the Internet know about Turtle Tag or variations of it, but I couldn’t find other mentions of Alligator and Fish. I think they might have started as regional games that I didn’t know about as a kid because people didn’t play them where I grew up.

The section that I particularly liked was the section of holiday games. I like the idea of theme parties, and the story-telling game that the book recommended for Halloween could fit with other theme parties as well.

Posted on by TracyC

Frankenstein and the Whiz Kid

Frankenstein and the Whiz Kid by Vic Crume, 1975.

This book is a novelization of a made-for-tv Disney movie called The Whiz Kid and the Carnival Caper (some editions of this book also use that title).  There was also an earlier movie with the same characters called The Whiz Kid and the Mystery at Riverton.  I haven’t been able to find either of these movies for sale or on YouTube.  Both of the movies are based on a character created for a series of books by Clifford B. Hicks.

The “Whiz Kid” is Alvin Fernald, a boy who is always creating amazing inventions.  He has quite a reputation in his town.  Sometimes, people also call him “The Magnificent Brain.”

One day, his sister, Daphne (called “Daffy”), borrows one of Alvin’s rockets, showing a friend how they work.  However, the rocket ends up falling down a storm drain, and Daffy climbs in to retrieve it.  Alvin comes along as Daffy has trouble getting out and gives her directions to the storm drain’s opening.  Daffy follows the directions and gets out, but while she’s still walking around in the storm drain, she sees a mysterious man with a gun.  Fortunately, he doesn’t spot her, but she wonders what he was doing in the storm drain with a gun.

The place where the storm drain comes out is near a carnival that has come to town.  Alvin, Daffy, and Alvin’s friend Shoie want to go to the carnival, but they need some money.  To get some, Alvin brings out one of his earlier invention, a car-washing machine.  The others are dubious about that invention because it has caused problems before, but Alvin says that he’s fixed it.

Their first prospect for a car wash is the person who has moved into a spooky old house in their neighborhood.  It turns out to be a beautiful young woman named Cathy Martin.  Alvin is eager to impress her, but unfortunately, his invention goes haywire and ends up making a mess that the kids have to clean up (as well as making apologies to other people affected by the chaos).  However, Cathy agrees to go to the carnival with Alvin.

The carnival turns out to be an opportunity for another of Alvin’s inventions when the automaton that they’re using as Frankenstein’s monster in a carnival show breaks down.  Alvin also has a robot that he has built, and he offers the use of it to the man who works on the carnival’s automaton, so the show won’t have to close down.  The man accepts Alvin’s offer, and Daffy volunteers to help with the robot’s costume.

Cathy meets them at the carnival, and to Alvin’s annoyance, suggests that the four of them have fun together, instead of just her and Alvin.  The four of them do have fun, but they stumble onto something strange about Cathy.  They spot a man who Alvin and Shoie met at Cathy’s house.  Cathy said that he was her younger brother, on leave from his base, and that he had to be heading back there soon.  But, Alvin and Shoie wonder what he’s doing at the carnival if he’s supposed to be back and his base.  Then, Daffy recognizes him as the man she saw in the storm drain with a gun!  Who is he really?

The kids decide to spy on Cathy’s house, and they learn that the man, called Ernie, and the magician from the carnival, Moroni, are planning a bank robbery and that Cathy is in on their plans.  It’s a terrible disappointment to Alvin because he liked Cathy, but he thinks that they have a duty to tell Police Chief Moody about their plans.

Chief Moody is somewhat skeptical about what the kids overheard, but he and he deputy stakeout the bank.  When nothing happens, he thinks that the kids raised a false alarm, but it turns out that the robbers’ plan is more complicated than they know.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Terror By Night

PFTerrorNight

Terror By Night by Vic Crume, 1971.

This book is part of the Partridge Family book series, based on the The Partridge Family tv show.

Shirley has been thinking that she and her children could use a vacation, and her family band’s manager, Reuben Kinkaid, suggests a place where they could have a little vacation and do some rehearsing.  Reuben arranges for the family to rent a large house with several acres of land attached in a small New England town not far from Salem, Massachusetts.  That should have been their first clue.  That, and the fact that the town’s name is Haunt Port.

At first, the Partridges are just thinking about how they can rehearse without disturbing anyone on such a big place, and Danny and Chris want to try camping out.  However, when they arrive in town, they learn that the name of the house they’ve rented is Witch’s Hollow and that it’s close to a place called Hangman’s Hill.  Soon after the family arrives at the house, Keith and Laurie also find a dummy hanging from a tree with a note that says, “Welcome! The Hangman.”  It’s pretty disturbing, but Keith and Laurie decide to hide the dummy and not scare the others.  They don’t know who is behind this awful joke, but they don’t want to give that person the satisfaction of seeing them react to it.

However, the disturbing things don’t end there.  The family’s dog, Simone disappears.  Also, people in town seem to have a strange attitude toward the house’s cook/housekeeper, Mrs. Judbury, and her daughter, Prudence.  Prudence is sullen and anti-social with a habit of catching toads for fun.  Keith has to admit that he can see how Prudence might have gotten a reputation for being a witch, but there’s more behind the strange happenings at Witch’s Hollow than that.

Simone eventually returns, although it’s clear that she’s frightened and hasn’t been fed well, and Mrs. Judbury tells the family the story of her family’s history in Haunt Port.  One of Mrs. Judbury’s husband’s ancestors was one of the accusers at the Salem witchcraft trials, but later, when people began to realize that they had executed innocent people, some of the accusers themselves found public opinion turning against them.  This ancestor decided to leave Salem and go to Judbury Port (the old name for Haunt Port) because he had family there, but he and his wife were never really accepted there, either.  This man later hanged himself in despair (at the place called Hangman’s Hill), and his wife later died alone, also shunned by the town.  Although some of the townspeople might feel bad about how things ended up with the Judburys, the old uneasy feelings about the family have remained, and Prudence’s stand-offish attitude, combined with her mother’s apparent psychic premonitions, has fueled some of the old stories.

At one point, Keith tells Prudence that he knows why she acts the way she does, because it’s much easier for her to keep her distance from people and behave strangely than it is for her to try to learn to get along with them and make friends.  Prudence isn’t responsible for what the townspeople did in the past, but she isn’t helping things in the present.  Jane Parsons, whose family owns the local store, also helps in a way because she and Prudence are cousins, and Prudence joins her in welcoming a cousin of their and his friend when they visit town.  As Prudence becomes friendlier, she and her mother become allies in trying to figure out the mysteries of Witch’s Hollow, which turn out to have less to do with past wrongs than current crimes.

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Haunted Hall

The Partridge Family

PFHauntedHall#2 The Haunted Hall by Michael Avallone, 1970.

The Partridge Family will be performing at the Larkland Rock Festival, which is great because, not only was their presence specially requested by the governor of the state, but Laurie will get the chance to meet her crush, fellow rock singer Jerry Jingo.  There is a catch, though.  Instead of arranging for the family to stay in a hotel, Reuben has rented an old mansion outside of town for them. 

Shirley isn’t thrilled about the accommodations because it sounds like a lot of extra work with no one to do the cooking and cleaning for them, but Reuben promises that he will arrange for a housekeeper, cook, and chauffer.  When Shirley asks Reuben about the owner of the house, Reuben says that the owner, J. Watterson Trumbull, doesn’t live there.  In fact, he is currently living in a sanitarium because he’s an incurable firebug.  That bit of disturbing news doesn’t daunt Shirley, though.  Reuben finally wins her over to the idea of staying in this nice, old mansion, and she even starts thinking that it might be fun.

Unfortunately, due to a mix-up at Reuben’s office, there are no servants waiting for the Partridge Family when they arrive at the Turnbull mansion.  The only person they find there is a young man named Duke, who says that he is the caretaker.  When Shirley asks him if Reuben contacted him about the family staying there, he says that he hasn’t heard anything from anyone because the phone is out.  However, he welcomes the Partridges in.  There aren’t many provisions at the house, so they make do with some canned soup for dinner.  There are plenty of beds, and bedding, though.  Laurie thinks that Duke is handsome, but the house is creepy.  She says that it reminds her of the Collins House from the Dark Shadows tv show.  Duke tells the family more about the house’s firebug owner and that the house is called Satan Hall (a detail which Reuben had not mentioned before).

All in Satan Hall is not what it seems.  On their first night there, Laurie hears crazy laughter coming from somewhere.  Duke is also not what he appears to be.  It’s soon revealed that he is not the caretaker, but he and his friends are rock music fans, squatting in what they thought was an abandoned house while they were on their way to the rock festival.  They’re worried about the family discovering the truth.  Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the people in the house, J. Watterson Turnbull has escaped from the sanitarium and is on his way home to stage what he hopes will be his biggest fire yet!

This story, while somewhat spooky, isn’t quite as mysterious as some of the other mysteries in this series because the reader ends up knowing the truth about Duke and that Turnbull has escaped before the Partridge Family figures it out.  Really, I thought that Duke and his friends didn’t behave very realistically.  When the Partridges moved into the house, most of Duke’s friends hid upstairs, in the attic, while he covered for them as the “caretaker.”  However, being rock fans on their way to the very festival where the Partridges would be performing and realizing that the Partridges were in need of help, I’m surprised that he didn’t just explain their circumstances, that they were looking for a place to stay and just happened to seek shelter there, and maybe apply for a job working for the Partridges during their stay.  It would have been a fairly easy way to earn a little extra cash doing some household chores or running errands for the family, it would have justified their stay in the house, and they would have gotten to brag about staying in a mansion with a rock group.  Instead, they try to hide and be mysterious.

However, the youths hiding in the attic are not responsible for some of the other strange things about the house.  Besides being a firebug, Turnbull also created some special illusions in different rooms in order to give guests a scare.  Before the end of the story, Turnbull does burn down the mansions (something he ends up regretting, although fortunately, no one gets hurt).  However, he does develop a new interest in music, which the sanitarium hopes will help take his mind off of fire.

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Haunted Underwear

The Haunted Underwear by Janet Adele Bloss, 1992.

Things have been rough for ten-year-old Kelly Towser since her parents decided to adopt a four-year-old boy named Stevie.  For the first part of her life, Kelly was an only child, and now she misses that peaceful period of her life.  Now, her parents don’t have as much time to spend with her.  Everyone showers little Stevie with attention and presents.  Although she doesn’t say so, Kelly worries that maybe her parents adopted Stevie because they were disappointed in her or secretly really wanted a boy instead.

To make things worse, Stevie’s little-kid antics get on Kelly’s nerves.  Stevie keeps making messes, throwing his toys all over the place.  Kelly’s parents tell her that she used to make a lot of messes when she was little, too.  Kelly doesn’t remember doing it, but her parents say that she used to like to throw her clothes all over the place, even hiding her underwear in random locations in the house.  They used to joke about her “haunted underwear,” mysteriously showing up in strange places.

Because Kelly complains that Stevie is getting all kinds of presents, and she isn’t, her parents agree to give her a special present to celebrate her getting a new brother.  After thinking about it a little, Kelly decides that she wants a new puppy.  The family already has a dog named Star, but Kelly thinks that the new puppy could be a friend for Star while she’s at school.

At the pound, Kelly selects a cute brown puppy.  One of the workers tells her that the puppy was found abandoned at the side of the road, dirty and hungry.  Stevie is excited about the new puppy and wants to play with him, but Kelly is determined to keep the puppy for herself, something that she doesn’t have to share with Stevie.  When Stevie insists that the dog’s name is Boscoe because he used to have a dog named Boscoe, Kelly insists that the dog’s name is Jingle.  Stevie gets upset that she isn’t sharing the dog, but Kelly doesn’t think that Stevie would be careful with the puppy because he has already pulled Star’s tail.

As older readers might guess, Kelly soon finds herself in a similar position with Jingle as her parents are with Stevie.  Star gets jealous of the new puppy in the same way that Kelly is jealous of Stevie, feeling like she’s been replaced in her own house.

Kelly does try to get her parents’ attention with some silly stunts, but when her clothes and underwear mysteriously start appearing around the house, she has no explanation.  Her parents punish her, thinking that this is just another attention-getting stunt, but Kelly knows it’s not her.  She starts thinking that the real culprit is Stevie, trying to steal her parents’ attention and affection more than he already has.  However, there is another explanation for the mysterious underwear ghost, and as Kelly investigates, trying to catch Stevie with her underwear, she learns a number of important things.

I figured out pretty early who was responsible for the underwear around the house, although it helped that I’ve had experience with dogs. Star, feeling neglected because of the new puppy, was trying to get Kelly’s attention in the same way that Kelly was trying to get her parents’ attention. Stevie does look guilty for a while because Kelly discovers that he is a sleepwalker and has been having nightmares.  However, when she gets up in the night to catch Stevie sleepwalking with her underwear, she finds Star taking it instead.  Understanding Star’s feelings help Kelly to better understand her own feelings, and she resolves to spend more time with Star so she’ll feel less neglected. When her parents discover the truth, they apologize to Kelly and reassure her that they didn’t adopt Stevie as a replacement for her and that they don’t love her any less.

Kelly’s mother also talks to Kelly about what she knows about Stevie’s history.  Although they don’t know the names of Stevie’s birth parents, Kelly’s parents know that Stevie’s mother wasn’t married and had no money and gave up him for adoption in the hopes that he would be raised in a more stable home.  Stevie has not seen her since he was two years old, two years ago.  Stevie is troubled by nightmares because his young life has been very chaotic, and he has been moved from foster home to foster home, with people always giving him up.  He deeply fears that his new family will also give him up and is terrified when they seem like they’re going to go somewhere, afraid of that they’ll never come back.  That is what his nightmares are really about.  Kelly comes to realize that his situation is very much like Jingle’s, that the fact that someone gave him up doesn’t mean that he’s bad and that all he needs is time, attention, and love to grow out of his problems.

Even though things work out okay, this is one of those books where I found myself getting impatient with the parents.  I think that some of Kelly’s bad feelings might have been resolved much sooner or avoided altogether if Kelly’s parents had spoken more honestly with her in the beginning, preparing her to be patient with Stevie and to understand when he has problems.  Apparently, they did tell her at least some of what they knew about Stevie’s past in the beginning, but they don’t seem to have spoken to her much about how that might influence his behavior and how he will need a lot of time and reassurance to get over his fears. 

When I used to volunteer at an animal shelter, we used to tell people who were adopting dogs that they would have to expect that their new dog would destroy something that they owned, especially if it was an energetic young puppy. When you bring a new dog into your house, it doesn’t know the area, it doesn’t know you very well, and it doesn’t know the rules that go with you and your house. It’s almost certain that, soon after arriving, it will relieve itself in the wrong place or pick the wrong thing to use as a chew toy. Something is likely to get ruined or some mess will be made. The best you can do is to take some preemptive measures, like securing valuables, closing the doors to rooms with things that the dog shouldn’t get into, and taking the dog to the place where it should relieve itself immediately on arriving at the new home. These steps can help head off problems, but at the same time, something is still likely to go wrong because the dog needs time to learn what you find acceptable and unacceptable and will probably do something wrong while learning. We didn’t tell the new owners this to scare them off from adopting but to help manage their expectations so that they wouldn’t panic and try to return the new pet at the first sign of trouble. I think that Kelly needed a similar warning about her new brother to help manage her expectations.

Early in the story, Kelly says that when her parents first started talking about adoption, she thought that it would be great because she’s always wanted a little brother that she could teach to do fun things like roller-skating or flying a kite.  Her attitude toward her new brother only soured when he seemed to be taking all of her parents’ attention and crying all the time and making messes.  She thinks at one point that it’s hard to love someone who seems determined to get you in trouble, which is what she thought Stevie was doing with the underwear.  My thought is that, if Kelly’s parents had explained more to her that Stevie might misbehave or be nervous in his new home and would need time to be taught how to live in their family, perhaps Kelly wouldn’t have been so upset and the parents would have been less quick to blame Kelly for the underwear issues. Knowing that there might be some problems that would be temporary would have been reassuring to Kelly that there were better things ahead for her and her new brother.

Also, even though the parents seemed to understand that Kelly was seeking their attention, they didn’t really do anything positive about it at first, just punishing her for leaving the underwear around.  If they had told her, straight out, in plain English, that even though they’ve been very busy with Stevie that doesn’t mean that their feelings for her have changed and that she doesn’t need to pull stunts to get their attention because they would be spending some quality time with her soon, it might have helped to head off Kelly’s bad feelings.  The closest they get to that at first is when they tell her that she’s old enough to know that there are better ways to get their attention than silly stunts.  They don’t mention what the better ways are, and they don’t follow it up with much of an attempt to give her a little attention. What annoyed me most was that Kelly’s mother waited for Kelly to approach her to talk, but in her place, I think I would have taken the initiative, especially after Kelly’s stunts included some potentially dangerous bike stunts. I’m a great believer in direct communication. I tell people if there’s something I want them to know, and if I want to know what they’re thinking, I ask. Over the years, I’ve discovered that if you leave people guessing what you’re thinking or what you want, you discover that most people aren’t good at guessing.  I won’t say that Kelly’s parents are the most clueless ones I’ve seen in children’s books because they made more of an attempt to tell Kelly things and talk to her than some other parents in books do. All the same, it always gets to me when problems in books could be avoided with just an extra conversation or two.  There were a couple of times in the book when I wished that I could step into the scene, call “Time!”, and make the characters just stop and really talk to each other and take a real look at the situation.

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

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Beware the Ravens, Aunt Morbelia

Beware the Ravens, Aunt Morbelia by Joan Carris, 1995.

This is the sequel to Aunt Morbelia and the Screaming Skulls.

Years ago, Aunt Morbelia inherited the Fearing family estate, Harrowwood, after her cousin died.  Aunt Morbelia goes to England to inspect the estate and make some decisions about its future.  The estate is in disrepair, and taxes have been eating up the funds intended for its upkeep.  Todd and his friend, Jeff, also go to England with Aunt Morbelia to see the family estate and famous places in London. 

Some of Aunt Morbelia’s fascination with creepy stories becomes apparent as she recounts the dark history of the estate and the mysterious death of her wicked, possibly murderous, uncle.  He was apparently killed by animals after his cruelty to the animals on his estate was discovered.  When they spend the night at the estate, Todd and Jeff hear a frightening howl.  They are only too happy to move on to London and go sightseeing. 

At Harrowwood, Todd finds an old journal belonging to his aunt’s cousin, Albert, and he thinks it would be interesting to see the places that he visited when he went to London years ago.  Albert was an eccentric man who died in an insane asylum because people thought he was crazy for going around town making bird sounds all the time.  Still, Todd is fascinated by the strange drawings and cryptic notes in the journal.   Before Todd can figure out what they mean, he and Jeff spot mysterious characters following them around, and someone leaves a threatening note at the bed and breakfast where they are staying.  Todd is determined to find out who their mysterious stalkers are and put and stop to it!

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

The first book in this two-book series wasn’t a mystery, but this one is. (The first book in the series focused more on Todd and Aunt Morbelia getting used to each other when she moved in with Todd and his parents, and it had more discussion of Todd’s dyslexia in it than this one did.) There are things that Aunt Morbelia doesn’t know about her family and the family estate. The estate has meaning for her, but it has greater meaning for someone else, and so does the journal that Todd found. The Fearings have always been an eccentric bunch, and when they learn who has been following them around, Todd and Aunt Morbelia have some suggestions that change things for the better.

Aunt Morbelia didn’t know it, but her cousin had a son before he died, and he is bitter that Morbelia inherited the estate instead of him.  He and his family have been secretly living on the estate for years, and they are afraid that Morbelia will have them thrown off.  They admit that they were trying to scare Aunt Morbelia and Todd away so they could have the estate to themselves.  They also want the journal that Todd found and has been carrying around the whole time.  The journal contains Albert’s notes of his research on birds and bird calls.  Albert believed that he had discovered the language of birds and could communicate with him.  His son wants to carry on his strange work and maybe learn to communicate with other animals, too.  Todd gives the journal back to them, and Aunt Morbelia assures them that she will not throw them off the estate.  In fact, she suggests that they give nature lessons to tourists in order to support the upkeep of the estate.  Because they demonstrated their skill with disguises and acting while following them around London, she also suggests that they put on mystery plays and host mystery weekends on the estate.  They enthusiastically agree to the plan, and Aunt Morbelia and Todd talk about visiting next year to see how things are going.

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Aunt Morbelia and the Screaming Skulls

Aunt Morbelia and the Screaming Skulls by Joan Carris, 1990.

Todd Fearing is worried because his Great-Aunt Morbelia is coming to live with his family.  He has never met her before, but he has heard that she is rather strange, and he knows that his life will never be the same again.  Aunt Morbelia is very superstitious, and she sees bad omens everywhere.  When she first arrives at Todd’s house and sees that the family owns both a black dog and a black cat, she takes it as a sign that she should leave right away.  It takes a lot persuading to get her to stay on a trial basis.  By Joan Carris.

Having Aunt Morbelia at his house is sort of a mixed blessing.  On one hand, Aunt Morbelia likes baking good things for him to eat and helps him with his homework.  Todd is dyslexic and has extra assignments to help him improve his reading.  Aunt Morbelia used to be a teacher, and Todd really appreciates the help she gives him. On the other hand, Todd doesn’t like scary stories, and Aunt Morbelia’s talk of ghosts and bad omens gives him nightmares.  His friends like to hear her stories, particularly Rocky, a girl who typically doesn’t like feminine things.  Rocky, whose real name is RosaLynn, constantly pesters him about when Aunt Morbelia will tell more stories. 

Eventually, Todd gets tired of Rocky’s obsession with ghost stories and the way she encourages Aunt Morbelia to keep telling them, and he and his best friend, Jeff, decide to play a trick on her to cure her appetite for scary stuff.  However, their trick backfires, and in their attempt to make it up to everyone, especially Aunt Morbelia, they end up making things worse. 

Todd and Jeff succeed in scaring Rocky by dressing up as ghosts and showing up at her house in the middle of the night. They have so much fun with their trick that they decide to go to their friend Alan’s house to try it on him. Alan lives in the house right behind Todd’s, and that’s where they run into trouble. When they start their ghost act, they can’t get Alan to wake up and come to the window to see them. Jeff decides to throw a rock at Alan’s window to wake him up, but the rock breaks the window. To make matters worse, they startle Todd’s black cat, causing the cat to yowl. The boys run back to Jeff’s house, but Jeff’s father catches them. Todd has to go home and apologize to Aunt Morbelia, who was frightened very badly when the cat started howling.

The boys decide to take Aunt Morbelia on a tour of the historic places in town to make up for scaring her. Unfortunately, Jeff includes the funeral home that his father runs on the tour because it is in one of the oldest buildings in town. Although Todd tells her that she doesn’t have to go in if she doesn’t want to, Aunt Morbelia thinks that it would be rude to refuse. Unfortunately, Jeff’s father arrives with a dead body before their tour ends, and Aunt Morbelia faints when she sees it. Aunt Morbelia tells the boys that it isn’t their fault, but she says that she’s not sure she really belongs in their town. Even with all of Aunt Morbelia’s superstition craziness and spooky stories, Todd still doesn’t want her to leave.  Is there still something he can do to convince her to stay?

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive. There is also a sequel to this book, Beware the Ravens, Aunt Morbelia!

My Reaction and Spoilers

When I first read this book, I was expecting a spooky mystery, but it’s really more about a boy adjusting to a relative coming to live with his family and dealing with his dyslexia. Although Todd initially has some reservations about Aunt Morbelia living with him and his parents and her spooky stories scare him, Todd and Aunt Morbelia gradually come to understand each other better, and Todd genuinely wants her to stay. To help Aunt Morbelia change her mind about leaving, Todd has all the people who have met Aunt Morbelia since she arrived come by the house and tell her how much they all want her to stay.  After everyone has visited her, Todd himself tells her that he doesn’t want her to go.  They talk about the scary stories and how Todd feels about them, and Aunt Morbelia tells Todd that if he doesn’t want to hear a scary story, he can be honest with her and tell her so.  Now that the two of them understand each other better, Aunt Morbelia agrees to stay, and she accepts the invitation that one of Todd’s teachers makes to help tutor children at the learning center.

I didn’t like the part where the boys played the trick on Rocky and how awkward things were with her afterward. Jeff’s father says that part of that, with Rocky drifting away from her friendship with the boys, is because the kids are growing up. He says that, as they grow up, girls start changing before boys do and have different interests from boys and different ways of looking at things, including more tomboy girls, like Rocky. Toward the end of the story, Rocky does appear to need more friendships with other girls, and Todd decides that Jeff’s dad is probably right, that Rocky thinks and acts differently from his guy friends because she’s a girl, even if she’s usually not a particularly “girly” girl. Part of that may be true, but the boys’ trick was pretty mean. I think that the real issue is that real friends shouldn’t do that to each other, and Rocky might really be questioning what she’s looking for in a real friend. Although, to hear some of my male friends talk about their youths, boys (at least certain ones) might be more accepting and forgiving of that kind of rough humor from friends than girls would be, so perhaps boys vs. girls issues are partly at the heart of it.

I thought that the parts where Aunt Morbelia was helping Todd with his dyslexia were interesting. I don’t really have any experience with the condition myself, and I’m not quite sure what techniques teachers really use to help dyslexics. One of the tricks that Aunt Morbelia uses is to break down tasks into smaller pieces to make them more manageable. For example, Todd feels badly that he can’t keep the orders of months straight. When he tries to recite the months of the year in order, he mixes them up, which makes him feel bad because most kids his age should be able to do this easily. When I first read this, I wasn’t sure if this is a common issue among dyslexics, although I thought that I remembered reading something about dyslexics having trouble remembering the orders of certain things, like lists of instructions. I looked it up, and apparently, it is a common issue, along with memorizing things like days of the week. There are different techniques for handling it, some of which involve associating the things to be remembered with something else that sticks in the mind more easily, such as a rhyme or song. Aunt Morbelia does some association with Todd but she also breaks the months down into groups of three, representing the four seasons of the year, and giving him small bits of information to memorize. She calls the spring months, “the flower months” and the fall months “the leaf months” and so on. Todd finds that technique helpful, and Aunt Morbelia says that once Todd has mastered the seasons of the year, they will put the season of the year together so that he can recite the entire year. Todd also describes other ways that he is affected by his dyslexia and techniques that his teacher uses to help him.

Posted on by TracyC

Who Stole the Wizard of Oz?

Who Stole the Wizard of Oz? by Avi, 1981.

One summer, Toby and his twin sister Becky see the police go to their local library. To the children’s surprise, Mrs. Brattle, the librarian, phones their house and asks Becky to come down to the library and bring one of her parents.  The children’s parents aren’t home, so Becky and Toby go.  Mrs. Brattle doesn’t seem to want to say much over the phone, only that The Wizard of Oz was stolen, and they need to talk to Becky.

As Becky and Toby walk down to the library from their house, which isn’t far, Becky says that shortly before school let out for the summer, Becky’s teacher for sixth grade next fall handed out a summer reading assignment.  The kids have to write two book reports over the summer, and the books can’t be mysteries, fantasies, or romantic adventures.  Miss McPhearson, the sixth grade teacher, believes in only factual books.  However, Becky decided that the best thing to do was to get the book reports over as soon as possible, so she went to the library.  (Toby wasn’t involved because he has a different teacher.)  While she was there, she decided that she’d check out The Wizard of Oz for Toby, knowing that he likes fantasy books, but she was told that it was already checked out.  Mrs. Brattle told her that there would be a book sale at the library tomorrow and that she had a copy of The Wizard of Oz that Becky could buy for five cents, but since the librarian wouldn’t sell her the book that day and Becky didn’t want to make a special trip to the library the next day, she turned down the offer.

When they come to the library, the policeman accuses Becky of stealing the copy of The Wizard of Oz that the librarian showed her as well as some other children’s books.  According to the librarian, the books were actually valuable collector’s copies, worth thousands of dollars.  Becky asks the librarian why she offered to sell her one for nickel if they were so valuable and Mrs. Brattle says that it was a mistake.  The policeman says that if Becky has the books, she can return them now, and there will be no problem, but Becky is insulted and insists that she didn’t take them.  In the face of Becky’s denial, the policeman says that there isn’t much that he can do because there is only the librarian’s word that the books were valuable, and she doesn’t deny that she earlier tried to sell them for five cents each.  Missing children’s books worth less than a dollar isn’t exactly a police problem.  (I’d like to say here that I was very glad that the policeman took that attitude. I hate those children’s books where adults not only falsely accuse children of doing things that they didn’t do but also make petty incidents seem like major crimes. The policeman is correct that there is no proof that the books were as valuable as the librarian says and that this evaluation of their worth comes only after their sudden disappearance and after she was offering to sell them very cheaply.)

Even though the matter seems to be dropped for the moment, it bothers Becky that the librarian still thinks that she might have taken the books.  She suggests to Toby that they could investigate and try to find out what really happened to the books.  The first thing that they decide to do is to look for the original owner of the books.  After inspecting other children’s books at the sale and looking at the names in the front covers, they decide that Gertrude Tobias is the most likely former owner because many of the other books at the sale belonged to her.  Unfortunately, Gertrude Tobias died a few months ago.  However, it turns out that her niece is Miss McPhearson.  Becky hurriedly finishes her book reports so that she and her brother will have an excuse to visit Miss McPhearson and ask her about the books.

When they ask Miss McPhearson about her aunt, she calls her aunt a “foolish woman” who “didn’t know any better.”  However, she refuses to explain any further what she means, and the children see her crying before they leave.

When the children speak to Mrs. Chesterton, they get a very different picture of Miss McPhearson’s aunt.  When Gertrude Tobias was a young woman, she was wealthy. She could have gotten married if she wanted to, but most of the young men didn’t like women who seemed too smart, and Miss Tobias prided herself on her intelligence and cleverness.  She resented the idea that adults seemed to want women to play dumb to get a husband, so she refused to get married and spent most of her time in the company of children.  Mrs. Chesterton remembers her saying, “Children like me smart. Grown-ups want me stupid.”  She liked to read children’s books, and she often volunteered to read books to children at the library.  The children liked her and often confided in her, just like she was their aunt.  She spent a lot of her money buying children’s books for her collection.  Mrs. Chesterton says that Miss Tobias and her niece never really got along well and that Miss McPhearson used to tease her aunt about her love of children’s books.  However, Miss Tobias was rich, and Miss McPhearson didn’t have much money at all.  Miss Tobias told her that she would leave her all of her “treasure.”  When she died, it turned out that she had left her niece five children’s books – the five that are now missing.  The others were willed to the library.

At first, the picture seems like it’s becoming more clear: Miss Tobias had one last joke on her niece by giving her valuable children’s books that Miss McPhearson thought were worthless simply because they were children’s books, and the person who took them recognized what they were worth as collectors’ items.  However, the situation is actually more complicated than that.  A series of strange break-ins have been occurring around town. Nothing else has been taken, but someone is clearly searching for something.  Miss Tobias was clever, and her books have an even deeper meaning than most people have realized.  To learn Miss Tobias’ secret, Toby and Becky have to learn the secrets of the books themselves.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

I really loved the puzzle in this book! There were parts that I got before the kids did and parts that they realized before I did. It isn’t a kind of puzzle that readers call fully solve before the characters in the book because it requires knowledge of their home town to get the full answer.

As an unmarried, childless adult who also enjoys children’s books, I could kind of sympathize with Miss Tobias. Children’s books, like some adults, are often very clever but go unappreciated by people who underrate them for what they appear to be. For example, Through the Looking Glass, which was one of the books featured in the story, involves a game of chess. The author, Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Dodgson), was a mathematician. His books are full of word games and logic puzzles, and the chess game described in Through the Looking Glass is an actual chess game that can be played with real pieces on a real board with a definite ending square, where Alice the pawn becomes Alice the queen (one of the clues to solving the final mystery in this book). To many adults who only know the basic story of Alice, it might just seem like a silly, nonsense children’s story, but they miss the real, clever puzzles planted in the story, just like Miss McPhearson did with her aunt’s legacy.

In the end of the story, Miss McPhearson never learns the truth about her aunt’s legacy, just as her aunt knew she would miss it. Toby and Becky come to an understanding with the real thief about Miss Tobias’ treasure that allows the library to benefit from the legacy, which is something that Miss Tobias would have appreciated. Miss McPhearson decides to give up teaching and leaves town to find another job, working with computers, a very “adult” field indeed. It’s only a pity that she wasn’t mature enough to behave nicely with her aunt and not tease her, so that her aunt would be more generous with her. People who play childish games are sometimes surprised when they meet a better game player.

Like Miss Tobias, I have little patience for people who try too hard to be “adult” or are too concerned with whether certain things are right for adults to do, especially when they show their immature sides in other ways. In the story, Miss McPhearson makes a point of being “adult” in all situations, but she wasn’t above childishly taunting an older woman about her hobbies, still expecting that woman to leave her all of her money. It reminds me of the kids I knew in elementary school who liked to act really grown up at age ten. Kids go through a phase where they start talking about doing grown-up things like having first boyfriends and girlfriends and wearing makeup and watching adult tv shows and listening to adult music, but in between doing all of that, they still act like childish brats because what they’re doing is trying on the trappings of adulthood without the real substance. Until they get some real maturity and better behavior, they’re just kids playing dress-up. Sometimes, I think that some people never quite leave that phase, which is how I view the character of Miss McPhearson.

I think of this every time I hear some adult my age or older talking about how real adults drink alcohol or real women wear high heels and lipstick. To hear them talk, there are quite a lot of rules to being grown up that very few people I know actually follow. Alcohol is expensive, plenty of people abstain for health or religious reasons, and driving drunk certainly isn’t mature behavior. High heels damage your feet the more you wear them. I’ve forgotten how much makeup I’ve thrown away because, most days, I’m just too busy to even think about putting it on, and they eventually dry out and get gross. It would be a waste of money for me to buy more, knowing I’ll never use it all. To my way of thinking, if you really are an adult and you know who and what you are, you have nothing to prove. If you aren’t mature as a person, things like high heels and lipstick aren’t going to help you, and alcohol just lowers your inhibitions and makes the immaturity more obvious. Maturity is a way of looking at things, assessing situations, and acting accordingly. It can be difficult to define, but you know it when you see someone living it, not just looking the part. Real adults don’t need to “act” like adults at all times because they aren’t “acting”; they’re just being themselves, confident that they are mature enough to handle what life throws at them along the way.