Posted on by TracyC

The Witch’s Spoon

The Witch’s Spoon by Mary Cunningham, illustrated by Marilyn Miller, 1975.

Tom and Lauren are spending a week with their grandmother at her beach cottage during the summer. They have visited the cottage many times before, and they love revisiting all their favorite places, the bunk beds on the cottage’s sleeping porch, like the tree where they always see baby owls (which they call the owl tree), and the place where they once found some lost coins (which they call the money spot). They know the cottage well, inside and out. This summer, though, there are a few things that are different.

The first thing that the kids notice that is different is that their Grandma has added a new item to her curio cabinet: a big silver spoon with a long handle. They ask their grandmother about the spoon, and she explains that it’s a witch’s spoon. She recently inherited it from the children’s Great-Aunt Hannah (that would be their grandmother’s sister), who used to live in Massachusetts. The spoon is a family heirloom from the time of the witchcraft trials in Salem (“when witches were thought to be as much of a problem to people as air pollution is now” – this is from the mid-1970s). Their grandmother says that there are good witches and bad witches, and good witches would use spoons like this one to stir love potions. Tom doesn’t believe in witches, but Lauren is fascinated by the spoon and the idea of love potions. She is sure that she senses magic from the spoon.

The next thing that will make the children’s visit here different from previous years is that their grandmother has decided that they’re old enough to have a June Day. June Days are a family tradition, and it’s not just because it’s June. During a June Day, the usual household rules are suspended for one day, and the children are allowed to go wherever they want and do anything they want, all on their own. Grandma says that she will prepare meals at the usual times, but for that day, it’s up to the children whether or not they show up for them, so they don’t need to interrupt their adventures. If the children aren’t there to eat their meals, Grandma will share the food with their nextdoor neighbor, Mr. Bunby. There are only a few safety rules that the children have to follow: they are expected to by careful when attempting any activity that might have an element of danger, and they have to leave their grandmother a note about the general area where they are going, like the beach or the nearby woods, so if they’re not back by dark, she’ll know where to look for them. The June Day ends when it gets dark, and the children must be home by then.

The grandmother understands that there is a certain element of risk in letting the children go off by themselves, and she reminds them that “every box has its pill.” That means that, while their children can choose what they’re going to do, they have to face the consequences of their choices, no matter what they might be, good or bad. “If you open the box and find a bitter pill, you have to swallow it.” Getting to make their own rules and decisions for a day doesn’t get them out of taking the consequences of whatever they do. If they get hurt or get into serious trouble, not only will they suffer the hurt or trouble they cause, but their parents may not let them come back next summer, so they need to keep that in mind when making their choices. Freedom still comes with responsibility, and that’s what the children need to be old enough to understand before they can have a June Day. Tom says that they understand, and that they won’t do anything too wild. Their grandmother tells them that they can have their June Day in two days, so they will have time to look forward to the treat and plan for it.

Tom and Lauren have different interests, so each of them decides to make up their own plans for a private adventure. Tom already knows what he wants to do for his June Day. There is a cave near the beach where the children usually aren’t allowed to go, but there are rumors that there is a giant cavern inside where pirates have hidden their treasure. Getting inside the cave will be difficult and involves an element of risk, but he is determined to spend his June Day hunting for pirate treasure. He doesn’t want to persuade Lauren to join him because he thinks she’ll be too scared to do it.

Meanwhile, Lauren thinks how she’s always wanted to hold a baby owl in her hands. She loves animals, and she decides that she’ll try to hold a baby owl on her June Day. She decides she won’t tell Tom about it, because he would probably think that was a silly thing to do. Lauren thinks that she even might try to make a baby owl a pet, just for the rest of the week.

There is one other thing that is different about this year, though. Their grandmother informs them that their cousin, Elizabeth, will be joining them at the cottage this year. Elizabeth’s father is the brother of Tom and Lauren’s father. Years ago, he moved to Italy and married a woman there, and they had only one daughter, Elizabeth. Unfortunately, Elizabeth’s parents died in a car accident, and Elizabeth has been living with her three aunts in Rome. She has never been the United States before and has never met either her grandmother or cousins, so the children’s grandmother has decided to invite her to visit this year.

Tom and Lauren aren’t thrilled at the idea of meeting their Italian cousin. It’s partly jealousy at sharing their grandmother with a girl they don’t really know. Elizabeth was named after their grandmother, and Lauren worries that Grandma will like her better because of that. Tom complains that she’ll probably be fat and smell like garlic because people in Italy eat a lot of spaghetti. It’s a mean thing to say, and even Lauren thinks it sounds ridiculous, but the children’s negative attitudes are also because they realize that Elizabeth’s presence will complicate their secret plans for their June Day. In order to have their secret adventures by themselves, they will also have to avoid their cousin trying to tag along.

In spite of their negativity and thoughts about playing pranks on Elizabeth so she won’t want to stay, Lauren realizes that she is also curious about this cousin and seeing what she’s like. When Elizabeth arrives the next day, she is a slim girl with dark hair, who doesn’t smell like garlic at all. Elizabeth speaks fluent English as well as Italian because she goes to an international school in Rome, so the children are able to talk to each other easily. Lauren feels jealous about the attention that their grandmother showers on Elizabeth, but Elizabeth is nice to Lauren. Elizabeth likes to knit, and she says that she would like to make a sweater for Lauren. Lauren asks her if she’ll have enough time because she’s only visiting for a week, and Elizabeth says that if it’s not finished by the time she has to leave, she will mail it to her. Lauren begins to feel a little sorry that she thought bad things about Elizabeth, but she also still feels jealous because of all the things Elizabeth knows how to do. Elizabeth can play the flute and wears pretty clothes as well as knitting and speaking multiple languages. Then, their grandmother announces that Elizabeth will be allowed to choose one item from her curio cabinet to take back to Italy with her. Tom and Lauren aren’t even allowed to open the curio cabinet without permission!

Their grandmother tells Tom and Lauren that they will each have a chance to choose something from the cabinet when they’re older. The only reason why Elizabeth is choosing now is that she lives far away and can’t come very often. Tom and Lauren each have favorite items in it that they tell Elizabeth to definitely not take before they get a chance to choose, and Lauren suggests that Elizabeth take the witch’s spoon. The witch’s spoon hasn’t been in the cabinet long enough for Tom or Lauren to have developed an attachment to it. Elizabeth is intrigued by the story that witches used it for making love potions, and their grandmother says that, in times of trouble, you can look into the bowl of the spoon and see answers. Elizabeth says that it’s an Italian tradition that a good witch gives children presents on January 6th (see The Legend of Old Benfana). She tries to see her deceased father in the spoon and is disappointed when she can’t. Their grandmother says that it might not be magical anymore or maybe people only saw in the spoon what they wanted to see.

Tom and Lauren continue making their secret plans for their June Day, each kind of wondering what the other is planning to do. When the day arrives, they each get up early and put their plans into action before anybody can ask them what they’re going to do. Of course, their plans don’t turn out the way they thought. Lauren’s attempt to hold a baby owl and maybe make one a pet don’t take into account how the mother owl would feel about that. In the cave, Tom accidentally falls and drops his flashlight, so he’s trapped and unable to find his way out. Neither one of them was specific enough in their notes for anybody to find them quickly when they get into trouble. Fortunately, Elizabeth turns out to be not only a tag-along but a helpful partner in their adventures. Through their various adventures and disasters on this special June Day, the three children come to feel like they really are cousins. At the end of the story, the grandmother makes a special tea blend, and Elizabeth stirs it with the witch’s spoon, turning it into a love potion, but for family love.

I bought my copy of this book through Amazon. I haven’t found a way to read it online.

My Reaction and Spoilers

The book doesn’t say exactly where the story takes place, but I think it’s supposed to be the California coast because that’s where the author lived. The descriptions of the pine forest near the cottage and beach fit the California coast, and the same author wrote another book called The Rescue that takes place at a cabin in California.

The story has some nice cottagecore vibes, with the children having fun and adventures in nature. There are times that they reminisce about past summers at the cottage as well as enjoying the current summer. They once kept a lost, wild baby ferret as a pet temporarily one summer before releasing it back into the woods, and they always have to look for baby owls in the owl tree when they arrive at the cottage. They spend time at the beach, swimming, wading, sunning themselves, and looking for seashells. Lauren has a favorite type of seashell, called angel’s toenails. When Tom explores the cave, he likes seeing the stalactites, and he sees bats and a type of blind fish in the stream of the cave.

Few children these days have the same level of freedom that these children have at their grandmother’s seaside cottage, although for somewhat obvious reasons. Their grandmother speaks to them honestly and sincerely about the nature of risk-taking and accepting the consequences of their actions, but adults will realize that there are obvious problems with each of their plans for June Day. Even as a kid, I would not have tried to pick up a baby owl or keep one as a pet. Wild animals do not want to be made into pets, and they don’t want their babies to be picked up and held by humans. Owls are cute, but they are also birds prey with sharp beaks and talons and will fight back if they feel like someone is intruding on their personal space. Even my child self would have thought of that long before Lauren tries her June Day experiment. Of course, that’s mostly because my elders impressed on me that nobody should mess with wild animals. The reason why we know that certain things are bad ideas is that people actually tried them and found out from personal experience. Maybe some people have to try things themselves before they understand or believe why they’re bad ideas. I have to admit that I once tried to pick up a dead cactus pad when I was about four years old because I had the idea that dead things couldn’t hurt me, so I figured out that it wouldn’t hurt to touch dead cactus. That’s the Arizona version of this type of experimenting with interacting with the natural world, and I was very, very wrong. One benefit of this kind of hands-on experimenting is that the lessons you learn stay with you forever, but as the grandmother of this story says, you have to accept the results of your experiments, whether it’s a clawed head or a handful of cactus spines.

Tom is the one who takes the greatest risk in this story. When he first considers using the June Day to explore the cave, he knows that they’re not usually allowed to go there. The question that immediately came to my mind was why, and the obvious answer is that the adults know that the cave is too dangerous. Tom considers the difficulties of getting into the cave but not the dangers he can encounter inside. Just because the rules have been suspended for the day doesn’t mean that the dangers have also been suspended for the day, which was what their grandmother was trying to get the children to understand. It’s not unlike learning that cactus spines are just as sharp when the cactus is dead as when it was alive. Fortunately, Lauren and Elizabeth manage to rescue Tom without anyone getting hurt.

The adventures that Tom and Lauren end up sharing with Elizabeth help them bond as cousins. They also learn that, while Lauren has some unique skills and lives a very different kind of life in Rome that is exciting in its own way, she isn’t perfect and neither is her life. Elizabeth is an orphan who still misses her parents. The skills that she has are ones that she’s learned from her aunts, who each have their own standards for what Elizabeth should learn and do. Elizabeth’s aunts love her and care for her, but she isn’t always allowed to do what she wants. This summer represents an unusual amount of freedom for her, too.

I think Tom and Lauren might have taken Elizabeth’s sudden arrival better if their grandmother had prepared them for it instead of springing it on them without warning or discussion of how it would affect their summer plans. The grandmother might have also prevented some hard feelings by talking to all of the children about the gift for Elizabeth from the curio cabinet. I understand why Tom and Lauren wanted to prevent Elizabeth from suddenly taking things that they were attached to. If she had, it would have caused some hard feelings among the cousin. If I were the grandmother in this situation, I think I would have sat all three children down and told them that I wanted to give each of them a special gift from the cabinet. Tom and Lauren would have to leave their gifts in the cabinet for the present, partly because the heirloom Tom values most is a pearl-handled gun, and I think he’s too young to have that unsupervised. However, it would be understood that each of the children would own a special heirloom, and they could discuss their choices among themselves so there wouldn’t be hard feelings or the impression that one child was given more choice than the others.

There aren’t really occult themes in the story. The witch’s spoon only does one thing that appears like magic at one point, and there is a logical explanation for that. The love potion tea really just caps off the children’s day of adventure, when they bond over helping each other. The children know that the spoon probably really isn’t magic. The real magic in their imaginations and the time they spend together as family.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Gone-Away Lake

Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright, 1957.

Eleven-year-old Portia and her six-year-old brother Foster are traveling alone by train to visit their aunt and uncle and twelve-year-old cousin Julian in the country for the summer while their parents are on a trip. Portia likes spending time with Julian because Julian is an amateur naturalist and tells her things about animals and birds. When Portia and Foster arrive, their aunt, uncle, and cousin tell them that their dog has had puppies. Portia is allowed to name them, and if her parents agree, she and Foster will even be able to keep one!

While Portia is out exploring the countryside with Julian one day, they find some garnets in a rock. They start chipping some out to take to Julian’s mother, and they find a carved inscription in Latin on the rock with the date July 15, 1891. They’re not sure what the Latin words mean. They figure out that part of the inscription refers to the Philosopher’s Stone, which was supposed to turn different substances to gold. Portia asks if this stone could be the real Philosopher’s Stone, but Julian says that’s impossible because they’ve been using knives to pry out the garnets, and they haven’t turned to gold. They continue to wonder what the inscription really means and why someone put it there.

They explore the countryside further, getting lost. They aren’t too worried because they don’t need to be back soon. They follow a brook and find themselves in a swampy area. Strangely, they stumble over an old rowboat. Then, they spot a row of old, abandoned houses. The houses are in bad condition, but the kids can see that they were built in elaborate Victorian styles. The children wonder why those houses are there on the edge of swamp. Portia finds it a little creepy, but Julian wants to get a better look.

Then, the children hear a voice. Strangely, the voice is repeating an advertisement for medicine for indigestion. The children think it’s funny because no ghost would say something like that. Taking a closer look at the houses, they notice that one seems to be in better condition than the others that it has animals and a garden, so someone must be living there. Thinking about it more, Julian says that the swamp was probably once a pond or a lake, and that’s why it had houses and a rowboat. He hasn’t heard of a lake in the area, but he and his parents haven’t lived in the area for long. The children wonder who lives in the house and decide to find out.

They find an old woman in old-fashioned clothing, listening to a radio. The old lady is surprised to see them but welcomes them, saying that it’s been a long time since she has seen children. She invites them to come inside her house, and the children find themselves in a cluttered and chaotic parlor with each wall covered in a different kind of wall paper. The woman introduces herself as Minehaha Cheever.

The children explain how they ended up there by coming through the swamp, and Mrs. Cheever says that they shouldn’t go through the swamp because there is a dangerous sinkhole there that they call the Gulper. She says that when it’s time for the children to go home, she’ll have her brother show them a better and safer way. Mrs. Cheever says that there used to be a lake there, and that her family and about a dozen others had summer houses there, but the lake largely dried up when a new dam was built. After that, the summer houses were abandoned, and many of them were vandalized. However, her father and another woman locked up their houses with the furniture inside, thinking that they would come back and move them, but they never did. The large and fancy old Villa Caprice is still untouched, but Mrs. Cheever says that she supposes that much of the contents is probably deteriorated. She says that the Villa Caprice gives her the creeps.

The children ask Mrs. Cheever why she’s there, and she says that she used to live somewhere else. After her husband died, she didn’t have much money, and she remembered that the house at the former lake was still there. Her brother, Pindar, also wanted to retire somewhere quiet, so they decided to go live in their family’s old summer house. There was enough furniture and old clothes left there for the two of them, and it suits them. They keep animals. Pindar still has their old car, so he can sometimes go into town for things they need. “Pindar” was one of the words in the inscription on the rock.

Pindar explains that he and his best friend when he was a kid, Tarquin (another of the words on the rock), were the ones responsible for the inscription on the rock. Tarquin was three years older than Pindar, but they were still close friends. However, they had a temporary falling out when Tarquin was 13 years old. Tarquin had gone away to boarding school for the first time, and the next time they met at their summer homes, Tarquin had brought a friend from his new school with him, Edward. Tarquin and Edward were putting on airs and showing off how sophisticated they were because they were 13 years old and knew so much more now that they had been to boarding school. Pindar felt bad about his old friend shunning him and treating him like a little kid, so he started hanging out with his other best friend, Barney. Then, Pindar had the idea of showing Barney the big rock with garnets stuck in it where he and Tarquin used to meet and hang out together.

When Pindar and Barney got to the rock, they discovered that Tarquin and Edward were already there, and the older boys said that they had claimed the rock for themselves. They called the rock the philosopher’s stone and wrote the inscription labeling it as the philosopher’s stone in Latin, which they had learned at their boarding school. The older boys said that the younger ones were too little to be philosophers, like the two of them. Pindar’s feelings were hurt all over again, and he told his father about the situation. Pindar’s father was amused by the older boys and their sophisticated philosopher talk. He said that there was no age limit on who could be a philosopher and explained to Pindar what a philosopher’s stone was supposed to be and how it was supposed to turn things to gold. Then, he suggested a prank that Pindar and Barney could play on the older boys, convincing them that the stone really did have the power to turn things to gold. The older boys were temporarily fooled by the trick. At first, Tarquin was angry about being tricked, but then, he had to acknowledge that he had provoked Pindar and that the trick was a clever one. Tarquin made up with both Pindar and Barney, and he added Pindar’s name and his own to the inscription on the rock. Pindar still considers Tarquin and Barney to be his best friends, and they still write letters to each other in their old age.

Julian and Portia are fascinated by the stories that Pindar tells about the childhood summers he and his siblings and friends spent at this now-vanished lake. Mrs. Cheever said that she loves having children around the place again, and she suggests that Julian and Portia could use one of the old houses that is still in reasonably good condition as a kind of clubhouse. Julian and Portia love the idea, and Pindar and Mrs. Cheever suggest that they use the old house where Tarquin and his family used to stay. It’s in disrepair, but it’s much better than some of the other houses. There is plenty of furniture in the attic that the children can use, too. The children decide to invite some other kids to join them, and they call their club the Philosopher’s Club, after Pindar and Tarquin’s old group of friends.

Julian and Portia invite some other local children to join the Philosopher’s Club and spent a magical summer exploring this abandoned community, picking blackberries, learning about local plants and their uses, and scavenging things from old houses and trying on the clothes from Pindar and Mrs. Cheever’s youth. The boys help Pindar build a bridge over the large sinkhole they call “the Gulper” after Foster falls into it and has to be rescued. When Julian and Portia’s parents meet Uncle Pin and Aunt Min (as they come to call Pindar and Mrs. Cheever) and come to see Gone-Away Lake, the adults also experience the magical, dream-like qualities of this place, and Portia’s parents consider plans that may make the children’s future summers magical.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies – including a couple of copies of the sequel, Return to Gone-Away).

My Reaction

I remember a teacher reading this book or part of it to us when I was in elementary school, but I couldn’t remember much about the story except for the lake that had gone away and caused the town to be largely deserted. For some reason, I had thought this story was a mystery story, but it’s not.

In many ways, I think this is the perfect nostalgia book because a large part this story is about the nostalgia that the elderly brother and sister in the story have for the place where they used to have their childhood summer adventures, even though the place isn’t what it used to be. Through the stories that they tell the children and the children’s own adventures and explorations of this largely abandoned summer community, they begin building their own attachments to the place and their own nostalgic summer memories.

Because the story takes place in such a unique location, I think it would make a fun kids’ movie with a vibe of nostalgic summer adventure. Although, because the story is largely low-key slice-of-life and the flashbacks of Uncle Pin and Aunt Min to incidents in their youth, I can see that the story might have to be changed a bit to fit the usual movie format, focusing on one definite problem or a particular adventure to give the story its climax. I picture the kids and their Philosopher’s Club making it their mission to preserve this vanishing community, which fits with the way the original story goes, although the kids in the book enjoy the old community for the magic of its dilapidated state rather than wanting to fix it up and restore it to its former glory. I think they could lean into promoting the preservation of nature and the ecosystem of the area, with Julian in particular pointing out what makes this environment unique and how it has become home to animals and insects since the lake changed to a swamp and most of the people left. The Philosopher’s Club might connect with a local naturalist society, and they could build the bridge in the story together to make the swamp safer to traverse for nature lovers and bird watchers. Uncle Pin and Aunt Min could remain on the site as its caretakers. Perhaps, the kids might even find some old notes and drawings in one of the old houses that show some interesting aspects of how the environment has changed and some of the unique animals that make their home there. That didn’t happen in the book, but it would be a sort of environmentally-connected treasure the children could find.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Surprise Island

The Boxcar Children

Surprise Island by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1949.

Mr. Alden has promised his grandchildren a special surprise for their summer vacation. He tells them that, years ago, his father bought a small island because he kept horses and wanted a quiet place for them.  The island has only one little yellow house, a barn, and a fisherman’s hut where Captain Daniel lives.  Captain Daniel operates the motorboat that can take people to the island.  Mr. Alden plans to take his grandchildren to the island to look over the house, and if they like, they can spend the summer there.  The children think that it sounds like fun.

When they get to the island, the children decide that they want to stay in the barn instead of the house.  Captain Daniel also tells them that he has a young man staying with him, a friend who hasn’t been feeling well.  The Aldens’ old friend, Dr. Moore, has come to see the island with them, so he looks in on the young man.  It turns out that the young man was in an accident and had lost his memory for a time, although he has been gaining it back.  He says that he used to live with an uncle but that he didn’t want to go home again until he was sure that he was completely well.  He is going by the name of “Joe”, which is short for his middle name, Joseph.  Captain Daniel says that he’s known the young man all his life, and Dr. Moore also seems to know him, but Joe doesn’t seem to want to talk about himself to Mr. Alden.

The kids enjoy setting up housekeeping in the barn.  It reminds them of when they used to live in an old boxcar.  They use old boxes for furniture, dig for clams, and eat vegetables from the garden that Joe and Captain Daniel have tended for them.  Their grandfather allows the children to stay on the island in Captain Daniel’s charge, but they are mostly allowed to take care of themselves.  Joe sometimes brings them supplies that they ask for from the mainland.  (One of the themes of the Boxcar Children Series is self-sufficiency.  At one point, Jessie comments about how much better things seem “when we have to work to get it.”)  For fun, they go swimming, and Joe spends time with them, telling them about different types of seaweed.  They are surprised at how knowledgeable Joe is.

Henry gets the idea that they can set up a kind of museum of interesting things that they find on the island, like samples of different types of seaweed, shells, flowers, pictures of birds that they’ve seen, etc.  The other children think that it sounds like fun, and they begin thinking about the different types of things that they can collect.While they’re searching for things to collect and add to their museum, the children find a cave and an old arrowhead and ax-head.  They are authentic Indian (Native American) relics!  When they show Joe what they’ve found, he gets very excited, especially when they tell him that they saw a pile of clam shells, too.  Joe explains to the children how Native Americans used to use shells as money called wampum.  He thinks that what they saw was wampum, which the people who used to live there might have made after drying the clams to eat later.  Joe explains to the kids some of the process they would have used to turn the shells into wampum.  He’s eager to go to the cave and look for more Native American artifacts with them, but he urges them not to say anything to anyone else about it because other treasure hunters will probably show up if they do.  The children agree to keep their find a secret until their grandfather returns.

When they return to the cave with Joe, they make an even more incredible find: a human skeleton with an arrowhead inside.  It looks like they’ve found the bones of someone killed by an arrow!

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

My Reaction

As with some other vintage children’s mystery series, the early books in the series were more adventure than mystery.  The most mysterious part of this book concerns the real identity of the young man they call “Joe.”  The truth begins to come out when a strange man who calls himself Browning comes to the island in search of a young man who disappeared the year before while doing some exploring for him.  The young man he’s looking for worked for a museum.

This is the book where Violet first learns to play the violin.  This is a character trait that stays with her for the rest of the series.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Mother Carey’s Chickens

MotherCareysChickens

Mother Carey’s Chickens by Kate Douglas Wiggin, 1911.

The book begins with a quote from an older children’s book, Water Babies:

“By and by there came along a flock of petrels, who are Mother Carey‘s own chickens…. They flitted along like a flock of swallows, hopping and skipping from wave to wave, lifting their little feet behind them so daintily that Tom fell in love with them at once.”

This book is very different from the story in Water Babies (which is actually a very dark book for children), but the quote is foretelling some of the events of this story, and the characters refer to the story now and then throughout the book.  Mother Carey’s Chickens is the book that the Disney movie Summer Magic was based on.  The basic premise of the story is the same between the book and the movie, but there are also many differences in details.  For example, in the movie, the Carey family had only three children, and in the book there were four.  The oldest children in the family also seem older in the movie than they were in the book, and their stuck-up cousin Julia was also much younger in the book.

When the book begins, Mrs. Carey is not yet a widow, but she has received news that her husband, a Navy captain, is ill with what appears to be typhoid.  She has to go to him, leaving her four children Nancy, Gilbert, Kathleen, and Peter, at the house with their two servants.  (Kathleen was the child who did not appear in the movie.)  She gives them some instructions to call on their relatives if they need any further help and refers to them as her “chickens” in reference to the bit of seafaring folklore that the earlier quote mentioned.  They explain that this nickname for the children was based on a joke made by their father’s Admiral back when Nancy turned ten years old.

Nancy is the eldest of the Carey children (played by Hayley Mills in the movie), and from the way that the book describes her, I suspect her to be something of a Mary Sue for the author.  Nancy has a knack for making up and telling stories, and at one point, the book says, “… sometimes, of late, Mother Carey looked at her eldest chicken and wondered if after all she had hatched in her a bird of brighter plumage or rarer song than the rest, or a young eagle whose strong wings would bear her to a higher flight!”  Nancy and her younger sister, Kathleen, are both pretty, but Nancy is definitely the center of attention and a much livelier personality.  The book is complimentary to all of the children, however.  Gilbert is described as a “fiery youth” and little Peter, the youngest, as “a consummate charmer and heart-breaker.”  Although Peter is only four years old, the book says, “The usual elements that go to the making of a small boy were all there, but mixed with white magic. It is painful to think of the dozens of girl babies in long clothes who must have been feeling premonitory pangs when Peter was four, to think they couldn’t all marry him when they grew up!”  So, the Carey children are generally idealized as children, something pretty common in older children’s literature, especially in stories that are meant to teach certain lessons or morals, as this one does.

While the children wait for their mother to return home, they are on their best behavior even more than usual, with Nancy and Kathleen having the following conversation:

“It is really just as easy to do right as wrong, Kathleen,” said Nancy when the girls were going to bed one night.

“Ye-es!” assented Kathleen with some reservations in her tone, for she was more judicial and logical than her sister. “But you have to keep your mind on it so, and never relax a single bit! Then it’s lots easier for a few weeks than it is for long stretches!”

“That’s true,” agreed Nancy; “it would be hard to keep it up forever. And you have to love somebody or something like fury every minute or you can’t do it at all. How do the people manage that can’t love like that, or haven’t anybody to love?”

“I don’t know.” said Kathleen sleepily. “I’m so worn out with being good, that every night I just say my prayers and tumble into bed exhausted. Last night I fell asleep praying, I honestly did!”

“Tell that to the marines!” remarked Nancy incredulously.

So, the kids are pretty good, but perhaps not perfect. Still, Mary Sue characters usually do have a flaw that’s not really considered much of a flaw, making them more endearing.

Even if you don’t know the story from the movie, you may have guessed that when the children’s mother returns home, it is with the news that their father has died.  With the father’s death comes many changes for the Carey family, which is the point in the story where the movie begins.  Without the father’s salary, and with all four children less than fifteen years old, the family has to cut expenses, letting the servants go.

MotherCareysChickensJuliaComingThen, the family receives word that Captain Carey’s brother is in failing health and that his business partner, Mr. Manson, is seeking to place his daughter, Julia, with a relative.  Mr. Manson has already spoken to a cousin of the family about Julia, but this cousin has refused to take her.  The now-fatherless Carey family knows that taking on another relative will be an added burden on them, but Julia has no other family and nowhere else to go, so they see it as their duty to help her.  Admittedly, none of them likes Julia very much.  They remember her as a spoiled child who was always bragging about the wonderful things that her wealthier friend Gladys Ferguson had or did.  Even now, the Ferguson family has invited Julia for a visit before she goes to live with her aunt and cousins, but unfortunately, they have no intention of adopting her or even trying to care for her until her father is well themselves.  Nancy sees them as simply spoiling Julia and preparing her for a life that the Carey family can’t possibly support.

Then, Nancy has an idea that changes everything for the family.  She reminds them all of a trip that they took to Maine years ago and a beautiful old house that they saw in a small town called Beulah.  The memories of that happy time and idyllic house and small town call to them, and Nancy and her mother wonder what happened to the house.  They decide to talk to a friend of Captain Carey’s who had a small law office in the area, sending Gilbert to Beulah to find him.  In Beulah, Gilbert learns that the Yellow House (as people commonly call it, although it also has the name Garden Fore-and-Aft) belongs to the wealthy Hamilton family, who don’t live there but have used it as a kind of vacation home.  The father of the family, Lemuel Hamilton, is in diplomatic service and lives overseas.  During the last few years, the younger Hamiltons had used the house to host house parties of other young people they knew from school, but now the young people are living all over the world, and the house has been empty.  Gilbert’s father’s friend, Colonel Wheeler, and a local store owner, Bill Harmon, describe the house’s current condition to Gilbert.  Since the younger Hamiltons renovated the barn and put in a dance floor for their parties, it’s too fancy and no longer usable for its original purpose, which is why no farming families have been interested in the house themselves.  The men say that they can rent the house to the Carey family on behalf the Hamilton family (who, after all, still have to pay taxes on the property and wouldn’t mind a little extra money to cover it) for a sum much less than the rent of their current house.  The house could use a few minor repairs, and the barn is more fixed up for holding dances than keeping animals, but that’s no problem for the Carey family.  Living there would save the family a lot of money until the children are grown and able to start earning their own livings.  Even though Gilbert is only about fourteen, he is able to rent the house on his mother’s behalf.

MotherCareysChickensHome

The entire family is pleased, except for Julia, who is still a snob.  The book explains that Julia had always been a very well-behaved little girl although neglected by her somewhat flighty mother.  (The book doesn’t say exactly what happened to Julia’s mother, although she is no longer part of Julia’s life.  She may be dead, or she may have run off a long time ago.)  Because she was an only child and always seemed the “pink of perfection” (which provides the title of a song about Julia from the movie version of the book), always seeming to say and do the right thing, her father spoiled her from a young age, giving her every possible advantage he could.  When Julia first arrives at the Yellow House in Beulah to stay with her relatives, she still prattles on about her wonderful friend Gladys and all the luxuries she has.  The book says, “She seemed to have no instinct of adapting herself to the family life, standing just a little aloof and in an attitude of silent criticism.”  So, if Nancy sounded a little too wonderful in her earlier description, understand that Nancy thinks that Julia is too sickeningly perfect and smug.  Julia’s problem, as I see it, isn’t so much that she’s too perfect as she expects the rest of the world to be too perfect.  Because she is so focused on perfection, she isn’t sympathetic enough to other people or accommodating to imperfect situations.  As the book says, “She seldom did wrong, in her own opinion, because the moment she entertained an idea it at once became right, her vanity serving as a pair of blinders to keep her from seeing the truth.”  Besides being spoiled, she is very naive and rigid in her thinking.  She thinks that she knows what’s what and how things ought to be, and that’s all there is to it.

A major part of the story deals with Julia’s adjustment to family life and the realities of the family’s situation.  At first, she thinks that Mrs. Carey should save up for college for Gilbert and a proper coming-out for each of the girls in the family to give them all the advantages that life has to offer.  She’s sure that her father will get better and be able to help pay for everything when the time comes.  However, Mrs. Carey doesn’t want to wait on that hope.  She says that she’s sure that the children will be able to make something of themselves even without the advantages.  Matters come to a head with Julia when Kathleen gets tired of Julia complaining about everything and everyone and says that if her father hadn’t lost so much of her parents’ money as well as his own, the whole family would be better off.  Julia demands to know from Mrs. Carey if that is true, and Mrs. Carey says that she and her husband did invest in her father’s business, an investment which he may never pay back, due to his poor health.  She also tells Julia:

“You are not a privileged guest, you are one of the family. If you are fatherless just now, my children are fatherless forever; yet you have not made one single burden lighter by joining our forces. You have been an outsider, instead of putting yourself loyally into the breach, and working with us heart to heart. I welcomed you with open arms and you have made my life harder, much harder, than it was before your coming. To protect you I have had to discipline my own children continually, and all the time you were putting their tempers to quite unnecessary tests! I am not extenuating Kathleen, but I merely say you have no right to behave as you do. You are thirteen years old, quite old enough to make up your mind whether you wish to be loved by anybody or not; at present you are not!”

It’s an awful thing to say to a child that she isn’t loved, but it is something of a wake-up call to Julia to realize that the way that she was behaving was making herself unlovable to the people who should have been closest to her.  When she tells Mrs. Carey that Gladys loves her, Mrs. Carey says, “Then either Gladys has a remarkable gift of loving, or else you are a different Julia in her company.” Mrs. Carey tells her to consider what the Bible says about “the sin of causing your brother to offend.” It’s probably the first time that Julia was ever criticized for anything, breaking her perfect record of apparent perfection.  Julia has greatly provoked the rest of her family and realizes that she has earned whatever bad feelings they have toward her.  She has ignored their difficulties because she was too focused on what she wanted for herself and the way that she thought that life should be, not realizing how much harder she had made things for everyone.  For the first time in her life, Julia admits that she is not perfect and asks for another chance to make things right, marking a real change in her character.  Personally, though, I think that some of this drama could have been avoided if, knowing Julia and her behavior as she does, Mrs. Carey had spoken to her when she first came to live with the family, explaining the family circumstances in a straight-forward way and making it known that she expects certain standards of behavior from Julia when she’s in her house.  Making the rules and enforcing them them from the beginning may have prevented a lot of stress and saved Kathleen from exploding emotionally.

MotherCareysChickensLatinA character that appears in the movie, Ossian “Osh” Popham, is also in the book, although instead of being the store owner, he’s a local handyman who helps the family get the house in order.  His children, also characters in the movie, are in the book, too, although I didn’t like the way the book described his daughter, Lallie Joy.  It says that “she was fairly good at any kind of housework not demanding brains” and that she “was in a perpetual state of coma,” in case you didn’t understand that she’s basically stupid.  I always hate it when stories make a character intentionally stupid.  I did appreciate her explanation of her name, though: “Lallie’s out of a book named Lallie Rook, an’ I was born on the Joy steamboat line going to Boston.” I had wondered where the name came from.

While the family continues fixing up the house to make it nicer to live in, Nancy writes a letter to the owner of the house, 50-year-old Lemuel Hamilton, who is an American consul in Germany, telling him about her family and their life at the house.  Lemuel Hamilton finds her letter charming.  Seeing the picture of her family that Nancy encloses with the letter makes Lemuel think of his own family, scattered to the four winds, the children grown or nearly grown, either away at school or starting their first business ventures in various parts of the world.  He’s lonely for the comforts of having all of his family living together and surprised at how happy this much-poorer family looks in the old house in the small town that his ambitious, social-climbing wife always thought was beneath them.  Then, it occurs to him that his sons are of an age when they’ll start thinking about marriage soon, and he wonders what wives they’ll choose and what their family lives will be like.  On an impulse, Lemuel writes to the Carey family, telling them that they can live in the house rent-free as long as they continue with the household improvements, and he also forwards Nancy’s letter to his younger son, Thomas (tying the story back to the quote at the beginning of the book), who is living in Hong Kong and who was the one who always liked the Yellow House the most.

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MotherCareysChickensTomRosesWhen Lemuel tells the Careys that they can stay in the house for as long as they like, unless his son Tom wants the house, Nancy begins thinking of Tom as a possible threat to her family’s happiness.  (She thinks of him as “The Yellow Peril” in a reference for the old xenophobic term used by people who were afraid of immigrants from Asia, since he would be coming from China, and as a pun on the Yellow House that they might be competing for. This term is also mentioned in the Disney movie.)  Of course, Tom turns out to be no threat.  Tom has been lonely pursuing his tea business in China, and Nancy’s letter and happy family life call him home to a romance that will change the lives of the Careys as well.  By the end of the book, Nancy is seventeen years old, old enough for romance and charmed by the romantic Tom.

The lessons that the story emphasizes are the importance of family relationships and togetherness over personal ambition and developing the ability to triumph over adversity instead of waiting for life advantages that may never come.  Like other books from the early 20th century, the values of hard work and cheerfulness are emphasized, and there is the implication that important people will recognize and reward these qualities when they see them.  Pretentiousness and snobbery are criticized.  A settled, happy family life is the ultimate goal.

Overall, though, I really prefer the movie to the book.  I think that cutting down some of the side plots improved the story.  Besides removing the younger daughter, Kathleen, from the story, the movie also eliminated other side characters, like Cousin Ann and the Lord siblings, Cyril and Olive, who also live in Beulah and become friends of the family.  Also, making Julia older than she was in the original book, closer to Nancy’s age than Kathleen’s, improves the sisterly relationship that the girls eventually have.

My copy of the book originally belonged to my grandmother, who was born the same year that this book was originally written.

The book is now public domain and available online through Project Gutenberg.

Posted on by TracyC

Just Tell Me When We’re Dead!

JustTellMeJust Tell Me When We’re Dead! by Eth Clifford, 1983.

This is another book in the Mary Rose and Jo-Beth series.

Mary Rose and Jo-Beth are visiting their Grandma Post with their father while their grandmother is getting ready to go into the hospital for an operation. Their cousin Jeffrey, an orphan who lives with their grandmother, is supposed to come and stay with them until their grandmother is better, but he doesn’t want to go.

Jeff has never really gotten over the hurt from when his parents died. They used to travel a lot, but they would never take him along because he was too young. Then, one day, they were killed on one of their trips, which is why Jeff now lives with his grandmother. Now that his grandmother is going to the hospital, Jeff is afraid that she will die, too, and unable to face that, he runs away to be on his own.

JustTellMePic2The first place he goes is to an island in the middle of the lake near his house. The island has campgrounds and an amusement park, which is now closed for the season. Mary Rose and Jo-Beth, realizing where Jeff has gone, follow him there. But, the children are not alone on the island. When Jeff is captured by two criminals who are looking for loot that they stashed on the island years before, he has to keep his wits about him to find a way to summon help. Meanwhile, Mary Rose and Jo-Beth have no idea what they’ve just walked into.

At the end of the adventure, Mary Rose, Jo-Beth, and their father help Jeff to make peace with the loss of his parents and to understand that, even though unexpected and scary things can happen in life, his parents never meant to leave him. They loved him, and his grandmother and other relatives also share his sense of loss.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Triple Trouble

TripleTroubleTriple Trouble by Michael J. Pellowski, 1988.

Randi and Sandi Daniels have a cousin named Mandy who is only slightly older than they are and who looks very much like the two of them.  Their two fathers were brothers, and their two mothers were sisters, which is why they look so much alike. When the three of them were young, they used to get along well and they were almost like triplets. However, when Mandy comes from California for a visit, it becomes apparent that she’s changed a lot.

The three of them still look a lot alike, but Mandy has become stuck up and snobbish. More than anything, she wants to be a big Hollywood star. Because she’s an only child, her parents have indulged her, but now they’ve become concerned that she’s become too wrapped up in her ambitions. She doesn’t really have any friends and isn’t interested in anything besides acting. They think that if Mandy spends some time with her cousins, it will encourage her to slow down and act her age more.

TripleTroublePicBut, Mandy’s snobbish attitude rubs Randi and Sandi the wrong way. Mandy doesn’t want to do anything because she might get dirty or break a nail, and she keeps bragging about how grown up she is compared with her not-much-younger cousins. The twins argue with their cousin, and they play tricks on each other. When Mandy takes advantage of acting skills and her similar appearance to the other girls to try spending time with a boy they like by pretending to be them, Randi and Sandi decide it’s the last straw! They decide to show Mandy that playacting is a game that three can play at.

Like the first book in this series, this one is also filled with black-and-white drawings.

This book is currently available through Internet Archive.