Posted on by TracyC

There’s a Body in the Brontosaurus Room!

Our Secret Gang

There’s a Body in the Brontosaurus Room! by Shannon Gilligan, 1992.

This is the last book in the Our Secret Gang series. This story takes place in a museum, and at the beginning of the book, there are maps of the interior of the museum, which help in keeping track of the action. Members of the detective gang in the story take turns narrating different books, and this one is narrated by Davey.

The fifth and sixth grade classes at the kids’ elementary school are having a camp-in at the Museum of Science in Boston. When the kids are getting on the school bus, Tim notices that a teacher is reading a copy of a newspaper with an article that says the police have received a tip that there will be a jewel robbery at the museum they’re visiting because there is a visiting exhibition of valuable gems. The kids think that they may have found the next case for their detective gang, and they’re glad that they brought some of their equipment with, like their walkie-talkies.

When they stop for dinner at a pizza place, they learn that students from Longmeadow Middle School will be joining them for the camp-in at the museum. By coincidence, Jeanine knows one of the boys from Longmeadow, Jeremy, because she takes horseback riding lessons from his mother. Jeremy ends up joining the others for dinner. Even though Davey rolls his eyes at his little sister’s jokes that Jeanine is his girlfriend, he feel unexpectedly jealous at the way Jeanine blushes around Jeremy.

While they’re having dinner, Tim notices a boy who is all by himself and crying. Jeremy says that he’s a new boy at his school named Matthew. Kids have been trying to make friends with Matthew, but Matthew never seems interested.

As they’re getting ready to leave, Jeanine makes plans to meet up with Jeremy and hang out at the museum. Davey gets angry because he wants the whole gang to investigate their possible mystery, and he doesn’t want Jeremy being forced on the group. Davey and Jeanine have an argument about his jealousy, and Jeanine separates from the group at the museum to hang out with Jeremy. Davey worries that this will split up Our Secret Gang or at least that they’ll lose Jeanine.

To make matters worse, Davey sees Mr. Berrar, the headmaster of the special school for science and mathematics that his parents and school principal wanted him to attend, at the museum because he is one of the museum trustees. Davey’s secret is that he is a genius at mathematics, and his parents and school principal wanted to send him to a special high school, skipping multiple grades, even though he didn’t feel ready to do that. Davey managed to persuade his parents that he would be happier remaining in a normal school with his friends, but he dreads other kids finding out and teasing him for being a nerd.

While Davey and the other kids are looking at the gem exhibit and talking about the security features they’ve noticed, still considering whether someone could be planning to rob the museum, Davey spots Jeremy in an area that’s marked “Private-Museum Staff Only.” What is he doing, sneaking around an off-limits area?

The rest of the detective gang, minus Jeanine, solves a small mystery for a girl from another school who lost her retainer, Lorraine. It only earns them $3 in detective fees, but Davey decides to hang out with Lorraine for a while and see if Jeanine gets jealous of them like he was of Jeanine and Jeremy, which she does. Davey thinks it’s only fair that Jeanine feel some of what he’s been feeling, and since she’s been giving him the cold shoulder and not helping with the detective activities of the group or joining her friends in looking at the exhibits, she deserves it.

Just as all the students are getting ready for bed, a girl starts screaming that there’s a body in the brontosaurus room! She says that it was lying right underneath the dinosaur, but when everyone rushes to look, it’s gone. Then, Matthew apparently has an attack of appendicitis and is taken away in an ambulance. Something about the ambulance strikes the kids have peculiar, but they have trouble thinking what it is at first. By the time they realize what was wrong, things have already started happening in the museum. The guards are missing, and security devices have been turned off. It seems that the robbery rumors were true. What can the kids do to stop it?

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

My Reaction

I first read this book as a kid, and one of the things I liked about it most was the title. I still think about when I’m at a museum with dinosaur exhibits. I never went on one of those camp-ins at a museum when I was a kid, but it’s something that I would have liked, especially if there was a mystery involved!

The romantic bickering in the story is juvenile, but I remember similar incidents from when I was about the age of the kids in the story. Some adults still do things like the kids in the book do, like seeming to flirt with someone else to make a partner jealous and get their attention. It’s never a good idea. It just adds another person to an already-complicated and highly emotional situation without resolving whatever was behind the initial problem.

As an adult, I thought that Jeanine was a little thoughtless and rude for ditching her friends to hang out with a guy she seems to have a crush on. When you already have plans with a group of people, suddenly tossing them aside to make plans with someone else and ignore them is rude. However, Davey’s jealousy and possessiveness is also inappropriate, and his behavior is part of the reason why Jeanine broke off from her usual group instead of just having her other friend join them. If Davey had either allowed Jeanine’s friend to join their activities or simply told Jeanine that he was hurt that she seemed to be abandoning the group and their latest project to pay attention to this other guy, his behavior would have been more reasonable. Part of the problem with simply inviting a new member on short notice is the secret nature of the group. To invite Jeremy to join them, the whole group would really have to agree on it, and that’s difficult in the public setting of the story. I think Jeanine should be a little more aware of the awkwardness of the situation because she knows why their group and its activities are secret, but it still doesn’t excuse Davey’s behavior. A large part of the problem is that Davey hasn’t given much thought to his real feelings about Jeanine, and he’s having trouble coping with the realization that he feels more strongly about her than he’s been willing to admit. The two of them sort things out when they have an honest talk with each other about their feelings.

One of the things that I particularly remembered about this book was the controversy over whether the brontosaurus is really an apatosaurus. Some of the thinking about the brontosaurus has changed in recent years.

Posted on by TracyC

Who Ran My Underwear Up the Flagpole

School Daze

Who Ran My Underwear Up the Flagpole? by Jerry Spinelli, 1992.

It’s still just a few weeks into the first new school year at Plumstead Middle School, and Eddie still feels a little out of place. He still feels like he’s a grade school kid at heart and doesn’t fit in with the big kids at middle school. The most grown-up impulse that he has is to frequently stare and smile at Sunny Wyler, and she doesn’t even like him to do that.

Then, something horribly embarrassing happens. Mr. Hollis, the social studies teacher is so late that the entire class gives up on him arriving and decides to go to the locker rooms to change early for gym. Mr. Hollis storms into the boys’ locker room a minute later and barks orders at the boys to return to his class immediately. Eddie, scared to death of his angry teacher, follows this order to the letter – forgetting that he isn’t wearing any pants and is just sitting there in his underwear. Eddie is the only person who doesn’t get any punishment from Mr. Hollis, who is sympathetic to his plight, but that’s not enough to make up for everyone seeing Eddie in his underwear.

Eddie’s underwear has cartoon characters on it, which is just another thing that makes him feel like a baby in middle school. He enlists the help of his best friend, Pickles, to help him burn his old cartoon character underwear, planning to buy some new ones with money he was saving to buy comic books. Then, Pickles suggests to him that he do something else to see how grown-up he is: try out for the school’s football team.

Unbeknownst to the boys, Salem and Sunny are both trying out for the school’s cheerleading squad. Salem isn’t at all the cheerleading type, but that’s the very reason why she wants to join the cheerleading squad. She wants to be an author, and she’s trying to understand different types of people so she can create more realistic characters. Therefore, she sometimes does things that would otherwise be out of character for her just for the experience or to get inside the head of different types of people. However, Salem realizes that she isn’t a very good cheerleader, so she invites Sunny over to consult her on what to do.

In spite of her grumpy, prickly personality, Sunny is actually a very good cheerleader, but she can’t help Salem to improve enough to make the squad. The girls do see Eddie at the football try-outs, though. Eddie’s uniform is really too big for him, his helmet gets turned around, and he ends up with a nosebleed. The coach complains about everything that’s going on with the team and how little time he has to train them and says that what he needs is a manager, so Salem volunteers for the position. Salem is very good at organizing things. With Pickles as part of the school’s small marching band, the entire group of friends is now involved in the school’s football games.

The four kids still have lunch with the school principal once a week, having developed a friendship with him during their rocky first days of school. They tell the principal about their football involvement, and Sunny brings up the subject of Eddie’s Superman underwear that everyone in the class saw him wearing. Eddie denies having any Superman underwear (which is now true), and Pickles backs him up, saying that one pair was just an old pair that he had to wear that day because the others were in the wash. The principal tries to hint to Sunny that she should stop teasing Eddie, but she takes it too far, and Eddie ends up smashing a Devil Dog snack cake (link repaired Nov. 2023) into Sunny’s face. The principal is actually impressed that timid Eddie had to the nerve to do it, and oddly, Sunny doesn’t even seem upset afterward.

Thus begins Eddie’s first steps at learning to be more grown-up. However, it’s not going to be easy for him. His current reputation is going to be hard to live down. The other guys on the football team are all bigger than he is, and he’s been bullied by the big kids since school started. At one practice meet, his pants fall down because his uniform is too loose, and a big kid hoists him in the air to show everyone that he’s not wearing Superman underwear.

But, what Pickles had told Eddie when they were burning Eddie’s old underwear was correct: Eddie might be a kid, but so are all the other sixth graders at their school. Eddie isn’t the only boy on the football team who is new and small. He’s not the only one who is sometimes timid and awkward, either. As team manager, Salem soon begins helping the new football players tie the drawstrings of their pants more tightly because other players are worried about losing their pants like Eddie did. She also begins soothing their various injuries, fears, and ruffled feelings. Around their coach, the boys have to act tough and not cry, even when they’re scared or hurt, but since their team manager is an understanding girl, the boys can sometimes let down their guard and be more human with her. Salem gets a lot of insight into the emotions of football players, and in return, she helps the young players to understand and manage their emotions, too. Eddie resists most of Salem’s help because he’s trying to prove that he’s tough and grown-up, but without her support, many of the other boys would have quit the team.

As the season progresses, Eddie gets the chance to a football hero, the very first player to score a touchdown at their brand-new school, and Sunny realizes that she’d rather be a mascot than a cheerleader because she’s too grouchy to be a cheerleader and nobody tells a Fighting Hamster to keep smiling. However, even Eddie’s football victory doesn’t end the teasing, and somebody runs a pair of Superman underpants up the flagpole to mock him. In a desperate attempt to cheer him up, Salem promises to arrange the thing she knows that Eddie wants the most – a chance to kiss Sunny. Will it work?

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

My Reaction

The kids do some growing-up in this book, but not unreasonably so for eleven-year-olds. The party where Salem tries to arrange for Sunny and Eddie to kiss is suitably awkward. As the kids talk about the idea of kissing, they tease each other. I didn’t like the part where Salem called Sunny a baby for not wanting to kiss Eddie. It’s not that I don’t think that’s realistic for some eleven-year-olds, but I believe more in the modern idea of giving consent and respecting someone’s “no” when it comes to anything romantic. That didn’t occur to me when I first read this book as a kid, but that’s what real maturity does for you. The word “sex” does appear in the story when Salem challenges Sunny’s maturity, saying that she probably still giggles when someone says that word, to which Sunny quickly replies, “Don’t you?”

“‘No,’ said Salem, ‘as a matter of fact, I don’t. What’s there to giggle about? It’s nature. It’s as natural as trees and cows. Do you giggle when somebody says trees or cows?’
‘If the tree tries to kiss the cow,’ said Sunny, ‘sure, absolutely.'”

As part of their maturity talk, Salem points out that women do mature faster than men, and that’s why some young women marry older men. Well, that’s one explanation for that, although, as an adult, I can think of at least two more.

To her credit, Sunny thinks of a way to deliver a kiss to Eddie without exactly kissing him. She does it in a joking way as part of a game of Truth or Dare.

As a side plot, the kids were also trying to decide whether or not they want to go to the Halloween Dance at school. On Halloween, they all meet in their costumes, and Eddie is over his Superman underwear embarrassment enough to wear a Superman costume. At first, the kids think that maybe they’ll go to the dance, but on the way, they can’t resist stopping to trick-or-treat and end up changing their minds. They’re not really ready to be completely grown-up yet, any more than they’re interested in romance in any serious sense. What’s more, they’re all fine with that.

This is the book where Pickles makes himself a new skateboard out of an old surfboard that’s big enough to carry not only him but all of his friends, too. He calls it the Picklebus.

Posted on by TracyC

Aria Volume 3

Aria Volume 3 by Kozue Amano, 2003, English Translation 2004.

This is the third volume of the second part of a fascinating manga series that combines sci-fi, fantasy, and slice of life. The series takes place about 300 years in the future, when Mars has been terraformed and renamed Aqua (because of all the water on its surface). The human colonies on Aqua are designed to resemble old-fashioned cities on Earth (called Manhome here). The people of Aqua prefer a much slower pace of life than people on Manhome, and aspects of life on Aqua more closely resemble Earth’s past.

The series is divided into two parts. The first two books are the Aqua volumes and introduce Akari Mizunashi, the main character, a young girl who came to Aqua to learn to become a gondolier in the city of Neo Venezia (which resembles Venice). Female gondoliers, called Undines, give tours of the city, giving Akari plenty of time to admire the beauty of her new home and meet interesting people. The two Aqua books are the prequel to the main series, Aria. Aqua covers Akari’s arrival on the planet, her introduction to life on Aqua, and the beginning of her training. The main Aria series show Akari’s continuing training, her progression to becoming a full Undine, her evolving relationships with her friends, and as always, her delight in learning more about her new home and admiring its beauty.

The series has received some criticism for being slow and lacking danger and adventure, but that is not really the point of the series. The main purpose is to show people how to appreciate the small pleasures of life. The sci-fi and fantasy elements (the spaceships, advanced environmental controls, intelligent Martian cats, and even the occasional appearances of the legendary Cait Sith) are mainly background to the stories about the magic of friendship and simple pleasures. Each volume contains a few short stories about Akari and her friends and the little adventures they have on a daily basis and the life lessons they learn. It’s a great series for relaxing when you’re stressed out.

The stories included in this volume are:

First Gale of Spring

It’s been a full year (full Martian year, which is equal to two Earth years) since Akari moved to Aqua and began her Undine training, and she’s happy that it’s spring again! While Akari and Aika are practicing their rowing one day, they meet another trainee Undine, Alice.

Alice is a young prodigy, only 14. Even though she is rather young and still in school, she’s really good at handling a gondola. However, Aika takes an instant dislike to her, partly because she belongs to Orange Company, a rival of Aika’s gondola company, Himeya. Akari tries to be friendly to Alice and tries to invite her to join them for lunch, but Alice is rude and unfriendly to them.

Aika thinks that Alice has an uppity attitude and is disrespectful to them even though they’re higher level trainees than she is. (There is some mild swearing in this part of the story. Most of the Aria series doesn’t have any swearing at all.) To prove her point and put Alice in her place, Aika decides to challenge Alice to a race.

Part of the reason why Alice is so prickly and unfriendly is that she thinks that people look down on her for being young and because they’re jealous of her skills , but she doesn’t realize how her abrasive attitude affects the people around her and their perceptions of her.

Aika has Akari row their gondola in the race, partly so she can use her secret ability to row a gondola backwards really fast, but Akari has her own ideas of how the race will end. Akari is still thinking of the beauty of spring, and even though she makes sure that her gondola will come in second by stopping to pick flowers (the fact that they had time to pick an entire boatload of flowers indicates just how much of a lead they had), she uses them to remind the other girls

Alice actually appeared in one of the prequel books to the Aria series, Aqua Volume 2, as the friend who went with Akari to visit Aika when Aika had a cold. It was the only Aqua story she was in, and this story in the third volume of the Aria series is the true introduction to her character.

Under the Cherry Blossoms in Full Bloom

Alicia and Akari decide to go on a picnic to enjoy the beauty of nature in spring. Alicia has a special place in mind for a picnic, but the two of them get lost on the way. Although Alicia remembers that getting to her special spot involves following some old train tracks, when they split off in different directions, she can’t remember which way to go.

Akari picks a random direction. It turns out that the direction she picks doesn’t take them to Alicia’s special place, but they find something else interesting: an abandoned train car underneath a cherry tree in full bloom.

The girls explore the train car and find that part of the roof is missing. They lie in the train car and enjoy the cherry blossoms raining down on them. Akari apologizes to Alicia for not finding her special place, but Alicia says that’s fine because this place is nice, too. She says that sometimes, you have to get a little lost to find something new.

Town Treasure

Akari, Aika, and Alice find a message in an old gondola that they borrow from the gondola repairman while Aria Company’s gondolas are being service. The message is in a small box in a hidden compartment of the gondola, and it turns out to be the first clue in a treasure hunt with a special surprise at the end.

Curious to find the treasure, the girls follow the clues through Neo Venezia, and their search leads them to take a second look at places they pass by all the time with little notice and takes them to lesser-known parts of the city that even Aika and Alice, who were born there, haven’t seen.

The treasure hunt finally ends on an often over-looked stairway that actually provides an excellent view of Neo Venezia, and the treasure they find there is the one that made Akari enjoy the treasure hunt from the very beginning.

The girls decide to put all the clues back where they found them, and to their surprise, they notice that there are marks that indicate that many other people have done the same.

Three Water Fairies

Akari and Aika are training under two of the Three Water Fairies, the best-known Undines on Aqua. However, Aika’s mentor, Akira, is much more strict than Alicia. One day, Aika gets fed up with Akira’s strictness and decides to run away and train under Alicia.

When Akira shows up to reclaim her wayward trainee, Akari learns more about Alicia, Akira, and especially about Aika. Akira was seen briefly in Aqua Volume 2, when Aika snuck out of her room to go buy some pudding, and she was the person Aika was trying to avoid because she was the one making her rest from her cold. However, Akira wasn’t actually introduced until this book, like Alice. This story reveals that Alicia and Akira were friends as trainees, like Akari and Aika, and have had a bit of a rivalry, being considered among the three best Undines, but they haven’t seen each other much in recent years.

Aika had reveals that the reason why she admires Alicia so much is that Alicia was nice to her when she was a child. One day, when she was upset about something, Alicia found her and gave her a ride in her gondola and cheered her up by trying different hairstyles with her hair. This experience is what made Aika want so badly to become an Undine herself. However, Aika could not train under Alicia at Aria Company because her parents actually own Himeya Company, something that Aika has never told Akari before. Aika’s family expects her to work her way up through the ranks as an Undine and eventually take over Himeya Company.

To settle the matter of Aika’s future training, Akira proposes a contest, a race between Aika and Akari, to determine whether Aika will become Alicia’s student or return to Himeya Company with Akira. As Alicia guesses, the “race” between their trainees gives Aika an opportunity to return to Himeya without sacrificing her dignity. It also gives both Akira and Aika an opportunity to consider how they really feel about each other and how much they appreciate each other.

While Akira and Alicia talk about Aika and how she’s both similar to and different from her mentor, Akari and Aika aren’t really having a race. Instead, they talk about how Aika feels about Akira.

Aika says that her position as the future heir of Himeya Company doesn’t matter much to her because she just wants to be an Undine, like Alicia, but she admits that people at Himeya treat her differently from the other trainees because they know who she is. They are extra nice to her and try to avoid getting on her bad side because they want to be friends with the boss’s daughter, who will be their future boss someday. Aika admits that, strict as Akira is, she’s also the one who’s the most honest with her, correcting her when she needs it and not worrying about making her angry. Aika realizes that she needs that honesty in her life and that Akira’s training is helping her. At Aika’s insistance, the girls end their “race” and go buy some walnut pastries for Akira, which Aika offers to her as an apology before returning to Himeya with her. Akari realizes the the bond between Aika and Akira is stronger than either of them wants to admit, and she hopes that, someday, she’ll have a bond that strong with Alicia.

This story is important for explaining more of the backstory of the characters and how they relate to each other. There is a running theme in these stories of having characters whose names begin with the letter ‘A’. In most cases, I don’t mind because the names are usually different enough that it doesn’t matter, but Akira and Akari are rather close.

Festa del Boccolo

Festa del Boccolo is the time when men give red roses to the women they love. Akatsuki has had a crush on Alicia for a long time, and he enlists Akari’s help to give her a boatful of roses to impress her. He needs her help because the town is flooded during high tide again, as it is every year during late spring.

Unfortunately, his elaborate gesture doesn’t go as planned because Alicia has already received many other roses from other people, and she assumes that Akatsuki has bought all of his roses for Akari.

Akatsuki accidentally spills the roses in the water, while trying to get Alicia’s attention. He thinks that he’s completely screwed everything up, but Akari points out that his gesture wasn’t futile because, like the roses floating on the water, his love for Alicia spreads out around him and touches everyone, and one day, Alicia is bound to notice. Akatsuki gives Akari a single rose to thank her for her help, and the two of them enjoy a walk together through the flooded city.

Posted on by TracyC

Cupid Doesn’t Flip Hamburgers

The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids

#12 Cupid Doesn’t Flip Hamburgers by Debbie Dadey and Marcia Thornton Jones, 1995.

Valentine’s Day is approaching, and Eddie is annoyed by all of the hearts and girly decorations around the school.  However, that’s nothing compared to Mrs. Rosenbloom, the new cook in the cafeteria at school.  The first time the kids meet her, she gushes about how much she loves Valentine’s Day.  Everything she serves them has a Valentine theme – lots of red foods and heart-shaped foods.  Most of the other kids don’t mind the Valentine theme because the food is better than it used to be, but Eddie resolves to do something about it.

Before Eddie can do anything, Carey, a girl Eddie normally doesn’t like, suddenly develops a crush on him after eating one of Mrs. Rosenbloom’s Valentine cookies.  The next day, Ben, the fourth-grade bully, gets a sudden crush on Issy after eating a Valentine cookie.  Even Mrs. Jeepers and Principal Davis are falling in love!  (Mrs. Jeepers is a widow.)  Eddie becomes convinced that Mrs. Rosenbloom has doctored the Valentine cookies with a love potion!  He thinks that she’s going to use it to take over the school!

At first, the others don’t believe Eddie, and in any case, what’s wrong with spreading a little love around?  The problems start when both Melody and Liza eat Valentine cookies at the same time and both of them fall in love with Howie.  The two girls, normally best friends, start fighting over Howie.  Howie is embarrassed and worried that this weird love fight will break up their friendship.  The two boys find themselves trying to dodge the girls while starting to worry that, if the romance between Mrs. Jeepers and the principal flourishes, Mrs. Jeepers will turn Principal Davis into a vampire. (One of the things I appreciate about this series is how it draws on real folklore and mythology. The boys are right that, assuming that Mrs. Jeepers actually is a vampire, she can’t be in love with the principal without revealing it to him and probably changing him into a vampire, too.)

The boys come up with a plan to change Mrs. Rosenbloom’s cookie recipe for the worst, but before this escapade is over, even Eddie gets a taste of love.  As with other books in this series, Mrs. Rosenbloom eventually leaves the school, and things return to normal (or what passes for normal in Mrs. Jeepers’ class).

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

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Sixteen and Away from Home

Sixteen and Away from Home by Arleta Richardson, 1985.

The year is 1889. Mabel O’Dell turns 16 years old at the beginning of the book, and her mother gives her a journal as a present. Soon, she and her best friend, Sarah Jane Clark, will be starting the final years of their education at the academy in town. Mabel worries about going to the academy, first whether they’ll pass the entrance exams, and then whether they’ll be homesick because they will have to board in town. Sarah Jane assures her that it will be okay because they’ll be going together, and they’ll probably be too busy at school to think about homesickness much. Mabel’s mother is a little worried about the foolishness that young women can get into when they’re on their own. However, the girls do pass their exams and are admitted to the academy, and their parents agree to let them go.

In town, the girls will be staying with Sarah Jane’s Aunt Rhoda. Aunt Rhoda’s housekeeper, Lettie, seems to resent the girls being there for reasons they don’t understand. When school begins, the girls are shocked to learn that they’ll have to wear bloomers for “physical culture” classes. The teacher gives them a sewing pattern so they can make the uniform themselves. The girls imagine that their parents would be shocked to see them running around without skirts on. Fortunately, Mabel and Sarah Jane will have all the same classes, along with all of the other first year students. They have to take Grammar and Rhetoric, Biology, Latin, History, Calculus, and Physical Culture (physical education or PE).

They also quickly realize that the class troublemaker is going to be Clarice Owens, who unfortunately sits near Mabel because they all sit in alphabetical order by last name. Clarice deliberately picks on Mabel and Sarah Jane for coming from the countryside, calling them “hayseeds.” Mabel is disgusted because she can never think of a good comeback until after Clarice walks away. (Yeah, I’ve been there before.) Sarah Jane thinks she’s jealous of Mabel for being prettier. Mabel doesn’t really believe that, but she appreciates the thought. Molly, one of the other town girls, is friendlier. She says that she knows Clarice has always thought she was better than everyone, but she’s not usually this deliberately mean. Mabel says that maybe it would help if they knew the reason.

Through the rest of the school year, Clarice tries one scheme after another to cause trouble for the girls, especially Mabel. Mabel tries to be as patient as she can with Clarice, trying to let her know that she’d rather be a friend than an enemy, but Clarice gets angry and upset when Mabel tells her that she forgives her for all the awful stuff she does. Mabel thinks that there’s something hurting Clarice and affecting her behavior, although Molly tells her that she shouldn’t waste her sympathy on Clarice because “she gets what she wants.” Molly thinks that they should just be grateful for those times when Clarice isn’t immediately stepping on them to get what she wants because that happens, too.

When Mabel is injured in a sledding accident and has to stay in bed for awhile, she worries about falling behind in her classes. Lettie talks to her and brings into question the reason why she’s so concerned about her standing in class. Is it really because she loves learning, or is it because she’s trying to compete with the other students? Mabel starts to consider how too much competitiveness can spoil a person’s attitude and take the enjoyment out of things. Competition has much to do with Clarice and her attitude.

Things get worse when Clarice’s grandmother becomes ill and her parents arrange for her to stay in the house with Mabel and Sarah Jane while they go to see her grandmother. Clarice is rude to the servants in Aunt Rhoda’s house and sneaks out of the house during the night. Lettie tells the girls that Clarice’s mother was strong-willed as a girl, and she’s given a lot of her attitude to Clarice. There was a boy that Clarice’s mother had always wanted for herself, but he married someone else. Although Clarice’s mother also married and had a child, she never completely got over losing her first choice to someone else. Since the man she originally loved has a son the age of her daughter, Russell Bradley, she might be hoping that Clarice will marry him. Clarice certainly is interested is Russ … who is apparently more interested in Mabel.

Mabel considers that allowing Clarice to be with Russ and not trying to compete with her would help settle things between them, but as Sarah Jane says, Russ’s feelings on the issue matter. To get the most out of her education, Mabel needs to focus on her love of learning instead of comparing herself to her classmates, and to get the most out of their relationships with other people, all of the girls need to focus on caring about other people and their feelings.

The book is part of the Grandma’s Attic series. It is available to borrow and fread for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

The problem with Clarice and her mother and their attitudes and expectations is that they do not take anyone else’s feelings into account other than their own and don’t even inform people of what they really want, yet they expect everyone else to somehow accommodate their wishes and feel toward them exactly how they want them to feel. These are not reasonable expectations at all. For most of the book, Mabel is completely unaware that Clarice’s meanness comes from the fact that she sees her as competition, and even then, it’s not really clear at first what Clarice is trying to compete for. Mabel didn’t ask or agree to be Clarice’s competitor in anything, and she’s not even trying to be. In fact, she’s been trying everything that she can to avoid it. Russ also apparently has no idea what Clarice is really after because he doesn’t have the same feelings about Clarice that she has about him. He’s just trying to live his life and focus on his own feelings and interests, and as far as he’s concerned, Clarice doesn’t really enter into it. Russ has no obligations to Clarice and her mother, and even Mabel doesn’t have the right to tell him how to feel or what to do to get rid of Clarice’s ire.

When Clarice pulls one last trick on Mabel, and she still forgives her, Clarice finally tells her that she gives up because, “You can’t go on disliking someone who refuses to be disliked.” I have to admit that I found the end to be a bit unbelievable. I’ve never encountered anybody who was that much of a pain and who ever let someone else’s kind behavior stand in the way being a pain. The response that I’ve usually seen is that they congratulate themselves on finding someone who’s never going to fight back and use that opportunity to run roughshod over them. They usually blame the kind person for making it easy to take advantage of them. As even the book says, people cannot decide how anyone else should feel or force them to feel anything in particular. It just doesn’t work. Mabel cannot “refuse to be disliked” because what Clarice likes or dislikes is all in her own mind. All that Mabel can decide is how she feels and what she’s going to do about it.

What Mabel really does decide is that, whether she likes or dislikes Clarice, she’s not going to compete with her and try to fight or match her meanness. It isn’t so much a matter of likes and dislikes in the end as Clarice discovering that she’s running a race with no other runners. If there’s no one to race against, there isn’t really a race at all, and no one cares if you walk off with the trophy or not. Maybe there was never even a trophy there to begin with.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times, I don’t like bullying or one-upmanship, and I have no interest in sympathizing with anyone who does those things. Part of the trouble I have with overly-competitive personality traits is the same trouble that actors sometimes suffer when they’re out in public: they don’t always know when to stop acting, stop posing, or stop performing. Overly-competitive people don’t know went to stop competing. Where does the one-upmanship end and the human person actually begin? Or is that their personality all by itself? Do they have any interests outside of being competitive, or are they only about competition just for the sake of competition? Do they wan to be good at something for a purpose or because they just love it, like the love of learning, or is everything they do just about trying to look better than someone? I was reading this article recently, about how trying to keep up an image all the time too often leads to a person having no real substance or sense of self.

By herself, Clarice doesn’t present much to connect with or sympathize with. Clarice doesn’t really seem like a real person to me. She’s rather a one-dimensional character. This is a problem with a lot of bullies in children’s books. She apparently has very generic family issues that are supposed to explain her behavior with little insight into how she really feels about anything. At least, that was how she seemed to me. The explanation behind these family issues comes from a youthful romantic trauma of her mother’s, but what does that really mean to Clarice herself? She seems to have some kind of fear of being second-best, possibly because her mother has pushed her in that direction, but again, we return to the question of second-best at what? Is it that she fears being rejected by classmates or potential boyfriends, or does she fear not living up to her mother’s expectations? If her mother is still pining for her first boyfriend, what does that say about her parents’ relationship with each other? Does her mother view her own husband as second-best, the consolation prize in the contest of life, and what does that mean for Clarice’s relationship with her father? What does Clarice really want out of life and what, specifically does she want to be the best at doing? The idea of romance with Russell may be wish-fulfillment for her mother, but what do she and Russell really have in common? What does she have in common with anybody, when we mainly see her in competition with everyone?

I wouldn’t have nearly as much patience with her as Mabel because, when it comes right down to it, I wouldn’t see Clarice’s friendship as a prize worth winning. Mabel went through quite a lot to get through to Clarice, but her efforts only pay off right before the end of the book, so we don’t really see much of what Clarice is like after she says that she’s giving up the competitive mean girl act. Apparently, Mabel will get the benefit of not having to put up with Clarice’s mean tricks from now on, which is something, but if Clarice isn’t being mean and sneaky, what is she? Who is she, really?

In real life, people have hobbies, interests, and life goals, but Clarice doesn’t seem to have much that really interests her. Are Clarice’s goals really hers or her mother’s, as they hint? What does Clarice want, or has she even thought about what she wants? In modern times, a sixteen-year-old still has years of education ahead of her because more people attend college these days, but once Clarice finishes at the academy in town, her education is likely over. She only has a couple of years left to think about a direction for her life before she has to get on and live it as a full adult. Even if her destiny seems to be someone’s wife and mother, connecting with someone emotionally to the point where they would want to be married and sharing a life with her would be difficult for someone who has no real interests to connect to or a sense of how to build a shared life with someone else. For a while, she seemed to do well at memorizing the reading from Alice in Wonderland that she was going to perform with Mabel at the end of the school year, but that was just another part of her tricks so that she could back out at the last minute and let Mabel down. It was all part of an act by itself. Does Clarice really like acting? Does she like books? Does she like anything?

Clarice doesn’t even seem to have any close friends of her own, which is very unlike the real-life bullies I’ve known. Most of them do have friends and hangers-on who enjoy their mean humor (the thing that often binds them together and bolsters their bad behavior) or who put up with it because of some other benefit they get from that friendship, but Clarice doesn’t seem to have anybody and isn’t really offering anything. It just doesn’t seem realistic and makes me feel like Clarice is there mostly to be the cardboard cut-out of a nemesis. That may be why she gives up so easily in the end.

I would have found her change more believable if Russ had straight-up told her that her mean tricks and selfish attitude are the reasons why he doesn’t like her and isn’t interested in her. That would have been motivation for Clarice to change because it would give her both something to lose by not changing (Russ and others getting angry and saying they’ve had enough of her attitude) and something to gain by taking on different habits (like the possibility that Russ might change his mind if she can demonstrate that she can do as many unselfish deeds as Mabel, something that might actually appeal to Clarice’s competitive personality). I would also have found it believable if Clarice changed her mind about Russ because she ultimately realized that Russ is what her mother wants for her, not what she wants for herself, and that there are other possibilities that she likes better. I would also have liked it if Clarice had been planning to back out on the reading of Alice in Wonderland in order to ruin the presentation for Mabel but changed her mind at the last minute because she realized that she loves the story or performing so much that she just can’t bring herself to miss the event, that she has found something that she loves doing more than causing problems for someone else. Reassessing the consequences of behavior or finding different goals are the kinds of self-motivation that provoke real people to change.

On the other hand, maybe the real issue is Clarice has sensed that she’s fighting a losing battle for Russ, and as Sarah Jane noted, you can’t control the way other people feel. If Russ doesn’t love Clarice, he’s just not going to love her. Perhaps she can tell, even when he’s with her, that he’s not thinking of her and just isn’t going to be interested in her the way she is with him. There’s only so much effort that a person can pour into getting someone’s attention before it starts to get really awkward when they don’t get the attention they’re looking for. Even if Russ doesn’t spell it out for her, she can probably tell that she doesn’t want to be with someone who clearly doesn’t want to be with her. Clarice still might not know quite what she really wants yet, but she might have figured out that’s one thing she doesn’t want, to be with someone who doesn’t think of her as his first choice or even much of a choice at all. All along, she’s been trying to compete with someone who doesn’t even want to compete for a prize that doesn’t want to be won by her because he’s already picking another winner. It brings us back to the idea of one person attempting to run a race all alone. It’s not really a race, it’s just one person running down the street, getting sweaty and tired, with no real prize to win, and who is there to care when they start or stop? That might actually be the most believable explanation of them all.

The books in this series have Christian themes, including this one. As the characters discuss the problem of Clarice and other situations, they often turn to the Bible for inspiration, sometimes discussing specific quotes that relate to the concepts they consider, like forgiveness and revenge.

On a fun note, I liked the description of the Halloween party activities. I was born around Halloween, and I often have a Halloween-themed birthday party. I’m sometimes fascinated by the traditions of Halloweens past. In the book, they call it a Halloween party, but the activities are more harvest-themed than spooky. They bob for apples and run races with apples balanced on their heads, and they also play tug-of-war and Skip to My Lou.

Posted on by TracyC

Lauren’s Treasure

Sleepover Friends

#8 Lauren’s Treasure by Susan Saunders, 1988.

The Sleepover Friends have volunteered to take part in an archaeological dig on the site of an old mansion, which is also on land where a Native American tribe once lived.  Other students from their school and a school in a nearby town will also be taking part.  Stephanie isn’t sure that she’s going to like being part of the dig because she doesn’t really like getting her hands dirty and she thinks it would be gross if they uncovered the bones of dead people during the dig.  The others are more excited about the dig, but at first, it doesn’t turn out as well as expected for Lauren.

First, Lauren’s hair is weird on the day of the dig because the other girls tried to give her a perm at a sleepover and it didn’t go well.  Then, she attracts some unexpected attention from Walter, a new neighbor of Stephanie’s.  Walter is in the fourth grade, but only because he skipped a couple of grades to get there.  He’s only eight years old, but he’s something of a child genius.  He’s not really a bad kid, but when he starts following Lauren around and acts like he’s got a crush on her, Lauren is embarrassed because he’s so much younger than she is.

Then Lauren makes an exciting discovery on the dig: a carved rabbit charm.  The archaeologist in charge of the dig is excited because its presence, along with some yellow paint, means that they’ve found a Native American burial spot.  She takes the younger children off the dig and has her grad students continue searching for the grave itself.  Lauren is pleased at being the one to make an exciting find, but the charm mysteriously disappears at the dig.

The archaeologist thinks that, most likely, the charm fell out of the tray Lauren was using to collect things on the dig when everyone started pushing to get a look at the spot where it was found.  She says that she and the grad students will keep an eye out for it as they continue the dig.  For Lauren, it just seems like another piece of bad luck in her bad luck streak.

Walter continues paying too much attention to Lauren at school, and later, writes an anonymous note, asking her to meet him at a local pizza place.  At first, Lauren thinks that the note was writing by Jenny Carlin, a rival at school, because of a series of pranks they were playing on each other earlier.  When Jenny denies being responsible for the note, Lauren goes to the pizza place and sees Walter.  Unfortunately, Jenny and her friend Angela show up there, too, curious to see who was meeting Lauren, and they tease her and Walter.  Lauren is embarrassed at having a kid so much younger than she is (genius or not) chasing after her, and she hates the teasing that she gets at school about it, but she’s not quite sure what to do about it, other than ignoring Walter as best she can.  However, Walter is actually the key to solving the mystery of what happened to the rabbit charm.

You might guess at this point that Walter was the one who took the charm in the first place.  I thought it was pretty obvious myself.  Walter wasn’t trying to cause trouble.  He explains to Lauren that he was trying to get her attention, and his first plan was to pretend that he found the missing charm after a search so that he could look like a hero to her.  He just never got the chance to give it back because he got interrupted, and then Lauren started avoiding him because of the teasing.  It all works out for the best because Lauren gives the charm back to the archaeologist, who doesn’t press her too closely about where she found it, and Walter gets a crush on a different girl who is a little closer to his age. 

Getting a crush on someone who either doesn’t feel the same way or just isn’t available is a normal part of life (if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t appear so often in tv shows, movies, and books – people find this type of situation relatable), and so is being the subject of a crush from someone you don’t love or find unsuitable (again, that’s why this situation comes up often in fiction – it happens often enough in real life that people understand the feeling).  When it comes to getting boyfriends or girlfriends, one of the people involved has to be the first to stick their neck out and say that they’re interested, and there’s no guarantee that the feelings will be returned.  It’s not easy, but this is a part of how relationships start.  When the feelings aren’t returned, which is bound to happen from time to time, there’s always some awkwardness.  The first person is usually disappointed, and there might be a struggle for the other person as they try to find a way to turn the other person down without hurting their feelings.  The situation in this book is especially awkward because precocious young Walter is so young, and it’s likely a first crush for him.  Lauren has also never had to deal with a situation like this before and isn’t quite sure how do handle it. 

In a way, having Walter simply lose interest in Lauren feels a little like a cop-out for the situation so neither of them really has to confront the situation directly, but there are a couple of things that Walter has come to realize by the end of the story that may be useful.  One good point is that there are limits on the things people should be allowed to do to get someone’s attention and start a relationship with him.  When Walter was just trying to strike up a conversation with Lauren or be helpful to her at the dig, it wasn’t bad.  It didn’t get Lauren’s approval for him, but it wasn’t because his behavior was bad (more about this later because it’s important).  The bad part came when he stole the charm to get her attention.  When Walter’s mother later finds out about his theft of the charm, she grounds him and makes him give the charm back and confess to Lauren what he did.  Learning that life has limits and that some behaviors don’t get you the kind of attention you’re really looking for is a good life lesson.  Some people do come on too strongly when they’re seeking attention, and I’m not just talking about kids who aren’t experienced enough to know how to behave; even adults don’t always know the best way to approach romantic relationships or understand others’ limits and boundaries regarding them.  I’m no relationship expert, but I think that the solution is partly developing a kind of situational awareness and an ability to empathize with other people and read their reactions.

Before the story is over, Walter learns more about reading other people’s reactions and understanding how his actions fit into the larger situation from someone else’s viewpoint.  At first, Walter doesn’t seem to sense Lauren’s discomfort, and her friends criticize him for not taking a hint.  Lauren felt a little awkward about his helpfulness at the dig not because it was a bad thing (he was really trying to be nice and there was nothing objectionable about what he said or did until he took the charm – I want you to understand that she wasn’t rejecting him for being a nice guy or anything like that) but because she had reservations about getting too involved with someone so much younger than herself, and she felt like his attention put her in an awkward position.  Walter is a genius, but he is still physically and socially about three years behind the other kids in the story, and at first, he can’t see why that would create awkwardness in a romantic relationship, especially for kids who are only just starting to get old enough to be interested in romance.  The difficulty for Lauren and the reason why she was so irritable with the situation was that she found it difficult to tell a younger kid who was being so nice to her that she didn’t welcome his attentions when he wasn’t doing anything really wrong and didn’t want to hurt his feelings.  As I said, an awkward situation.  Sometimes, even a person who is trying to be nice can unintentionally create awkwardness if they don’t understand the other person’s circumstances, and that’s something that adults do as well as children.  This is basically what’s at the heart of a situation where “nice guys” get rejected or “friend-zoned.” It’s not about the “nice guy” doing anything wrong so much as a case of the wrong relationship at the wrong time with someone who isn’t quite as compatible with them as they thought.  

In a romantic relationship, both of the people involved have to agree to it equally, one isn’t enough.  When Jenny and her friend start teasing Lauren and Walter after the incident at the pizza place, Walter comes to see why a relationship with him would make things awkward for Lauren because of their age difference and the reactions of the other kids.  If they were in their 20s or 30s, an age difference of two or three years wouldn’t mean anything, but for where they are in their lives now, as kids in elementary school, it means a lot.  At the end of the story, Walter’s new love interest is a little closer to his age, making less of a problem, and he has developed enough social awareness to use his age difference to get a little revenge on Jenny for her teasing by publicly asking her about meeting him at the pizza place later, as if she were interested in dating him.  Walter could have been hurt and insulted about being rejected and teased because of his age (and it would have been understandable), but he has realized that, under the circumstances, it would be better to move on and find someone who is more suitable for him and who might be more open to a relationship with him.  In the end, he feels good enough about the situation to use his age for the joke on Jenny, and his other classmates approve of his humor and the well-deserved jab at Jenny’s teasing.

The one thing that I really wish they had added to the story would be for Lauren to learn how to gracefully turn down an offer of a relationship when she isn’t interested because I think that would be an important life lesson for her and for young readers. Socially awkward situations occur in life, but there are ways of handling them to minimize the embarrassment for everyone involved. In the story, Lauren’s main tactic is trying to ignore Walter and hope that he’ll take it as a hint until he finds someone else, and in real life, that’s not good enough. I’m not sure what she would have said if Jenny and her friend hadn’t interrupted her and Walter at the pizza place, but I would hope that it would have been something like, “I appreciate the help you gave me at the dig, Walter, and you seem pretty nice, but I just don’t think that we have enough in common. I think that there is too much of an age difference between us, and I’m not interested in that kind of relationship.” The rejection still might sting, but some simple honesty would at least be more respectful than ignoring him and hoping that he’ll take that as a hint.

I read this book years ago when I was a kid, although there was only one part that really stayed with me, and for a long time, I thought that I was remembering the incident from one of the Baby-Sitters’ Club books.  The scene that stuck in my memory was from the sleepover at the beginning of the book.  The girls were angry at Jenny for some mean comments that she made, so they requested a song on the radio called “You’re a Jerk” by the Lurkers and dedicated it to her.  When they made the request, they told the radio station that they were “well-meaning friends” instead of giving their names, and the radio DJ made a joke about it when he played the song.  It was this incident that started off the series of pranks that Jenny and the girls play on each other throughout the book.  I think part of the reason this scene stuck with me was the “well-meaning friends” phrase and part of it was because I had always wondered if the song they requested was a real song.  I don’t think it is because I can’t find it on the Internet. The Lurkers are a real band, but I can’t find anything about that song. If that song actually exists and someone can find a video of it, let me know, and I’ll link to it!

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Queen of the Sixth Grade

QueenSixthGradeQueen of the Sixth Grade by Ilene Cooper, 1988.

This is part of The Kids From Kennedy Middle School series.

Robin Miller has been best friends with Veronica for years, although it hasn’t always been the easiest friendship. Veronica can be exciting. She gets lots of interesting ideas and her apparent confidence in herself can be contagious. Unfortunately, she isn’t really a nice person, not even to her closest friends. She likes to call Robin “Curly” because of her hair, which Robin hates, but she tolerates the nickname for Veronica’s sake. The way Veronica teases and bullies other people makes Robin uncomfortable, too, but Robin hesitates to speak up about it both for the sake of maintaining her friendship with Veronica and because she doesn’t want to get on Veronica’s bad side herself. However, now that the girls are in sixth grade, things are about to change.

Veronica has decided to start a kind of club with some of the girls in their class called the Awesome Kennedy Girls (or AKG for short). Of course, Robin is a member. Veronica chooses the other members herself from the girls in the class that she thinks are the coolest, at least by her standards.

Then, Veronica tells Robin that she has a crush on Jonathan Rossi, a cute boy in their class. Robin likes him herself. In fact, she’s had a serious crush on him for some time, although she’s never told Veronica about it. It’s been Robin’s good fortune that she and Jonathan have been assigned to be partners for an oral book report in class. While working on the project together, Robin and Jonathan discover that they have some interests in common and start becoming friends. However, somewhat like the love triangle in Cyrano de Bergerac, Veronica asks Robin to use her influence with Jonathan to tell him that Veronica likes him and wants him to be her date for the Halloween party she’s planning. Because she always does what Veronica wants, Robin does attempt to do so, even though it pains her. But, Jonathan really likes Robin and misunderstands what Robin is saying, agreeing to be Robin’s date for the party. That’s when Robin’s real problems begin.

Veronica is used to getting what she wants and having people do thing her way. Instead of accepting Jonathan’s decision that he likes Robin completely on his own, she decides that Robin has “stolen” Jonathan from her. Immediately, Robin goes from being Veronica’s best friend to her worst enemy. Worse still, Veronica starts spreading terrible rumors about Robin to the other girls in class. Soon, no one in class wants to be friends with Robin, and the other girls in the AKG go out of their way to make life miserable for her with their bullying.

At one point in the story, Robin remembers back to when she and Veronica first became friends in the third grade. Before she met Veronica, she was friends with Gretchen, a fat girl who is now one of Veronica’s favorite people to bully. While Robin is on the outs with Veronica and shunned by most of the rest of the girls in class, she tries to become Gretchen’s friend again out of loneliness, but to her surprise and shame, Gretchen tells her that she is no longer interested in her friendship. Gretchen correctly realizes that Robin is still too much attached to Veronica and the way she does things. There were many times when she could have stood up to Veronica and defended Gretchen, but she chose not to. Gretchen points out to Robin that if Veronica decided that she wanted to be friends with her again, she’d be off like a shot after Veronica, dropping Gretchen and forgetting all about her like she did when they were younger. Robin is ashamed when she realizes that everything Gretchen says is true. In becoming friends with Veronica, Robin lost part of the nice person she used to be. Although she is not as mean as Veronica, Robin isn’t completely nice and, in some ways, has become rather shallow. If getting dumped and bullied by a former best friend hurts, it hurts even more when Robin realizes that she partly deserves it because of the kind of person she’s been and the type friendships she’s chosen.

However, there is hope for Robin in realizing the mistakes she’s made. She comes to admire Gretchen for her ability to put up with the bullying she’s endured and for continuing to stand on her own, not come crawling to the first person who offers her friendship. Gretchen is sometimes lonely and she did once fall for a trick of Veronica’s when she pretended to offer her a place in the AKG, but Gretchen still respects herself, in spite of the bullying she’s endured. In a way, she has better self-esteem than Robin does. Gretchen has her problems, but she doesn’t define herself solely by her relationships with other people, like Robin does at first. When Gretchen can’t find friends who appreciate her, she simply does the best she can without them, pursuing her own interests by herself. In a way, that attitude becomes the solution to Robin’s problems. At her mother’s urging, Robin begins pursing new interests in life.

Robin’s mother correctly points out that Robin needs to develop her own interests for her own sake and to look for friendship beyond her cramped little circle of “cool” kids. There are many other options for good friends around her, but Robin has been stuck in a mindset that hasn’t allowed her to see them. By getting out, finding new interests, and learning to be her own person again after spending the last few years mainly being Veronica’s sidekick/puppet, Robin develops new confidence and new insights on herself and the people around her.

Robin is successful at finding new friends when she takes a drama class. She even connects with another girl from her school who was neither part of the in-crowd nor the bullied ones in her class, Sharon. For a time, Robin still feels badly about what happened to her friendship with Veronica, but the more time they spend apart, the less Robin misses her and the more she begins to see Veronica, her behavior, and the problems in Veronica’s life for what they are. In the process, she begins to recover a bit of her old self, the nicer, freer person she was before she became Veronica’s friend.

When a drama project allows Robin to meet a celebrity, she becomes something of a celebrity in her class. Suddenly, people who had shunned her before are anxious to be her friend again, making Robin feel awkward because she knows their motives are self-serving, not honest or sincere. At the same time, Veronica’s controlling behavior and the one-upmanship she encouraged in her little club backfire on her. The other girls get fed up with her behavior, and Veronica is put in the uncomfortable position of appealing to Robin for help. With her former best friend and tormentor at her mercy, Robin has to decide if she will use the opportunity to take revenge or if she will go forward with her efforts to be a better person and use her new popularity for good instead of evil. There is power in popularity, but there is also power in knowing who you are and what you really stand for.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.  I’d also like to give special kudos to this book for mentioning other books that Robin likes, including Where the Wild Things Are, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, and The Westing Game (the book Robin and Jonathan use for their book report, which they both like).

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

McGurk Gets Good and Mad

McGurkMad

McGurk Gets Good and Mad by E.W. Hildick, 1982.

The members of the McGurk Organization have been planning a kind of open house in order to show the other kids from the neighborhood the kind of mystery-solving work they do. However, someone seems to be doing their best to ruin it.

It starts with the mice that the members of the Organization find in their headquarters, which have already gnawed some of the exhibits for the open house. It quickly becomes obvious that the mice didn’t find their way in by accident when someone posts a sign warning people away from the open house because of the mice. There’s no way anyone could have found out that there were mice, especially not that quickly, unless they had planted them there deliberately. The mysterious sign is signed “Agent 93,” but who is that?

While Brains works on a way to get rid of the mice, the others begin thinking about who could have it in for the McGurk Organization. They consider past cases they’ve solved and villains that they’ve unmasked as well as some of the kids they know generally from school who don’t like them or were offended when they weren’t allowed to join the Organization.

By the time of the open house, they still don’t know who the saboteur is, and when it’s time to unveil the real police handcuffs that Patrolman Cassidy gave them as an award (the highlight of the open house for the McGurk Organization), they are suddenly and inexplicably replaced by a pair of fake mice and another note from “Agent 93.”

Whatever it takes, McGurk is determined to find the guilty person and get those handcuffs back!

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Fudge-A-Mania

FudgeAManiaFudge-A-Mania by Judy Blume, 1990.

Peter is horrified when he finds out that his family is going to spend their vacation in the same place as bossy know-it-all Sheila Tubman and her family.  Even worse, the two families are going to be staying to be staying right next to each other.  Really right next to each other.  They’re staying in the same house, which has been split into two halves.  As far as Peter is concerned, the only thing that might save his summer is that his friend Jimmy will be coming up to stay with them part of the time.

The arrangement turns out to be a little better than Peter thought it would be at first.  Sheila finds a way to make some extra money by baby-sitting Peter’s five-year-old brother Fudge.  Fudge says at first that he wants to marry Sheila, although it turns out to be mostly because he’s afraid of monsters in his room at night, and he thinks that if he gets married and shares a room with Sheila, it will keep the monsters away.  Then, he decides that marriage may be unnecessary when he makes friends with a little girl named Mitzi, who is staying with her grandparents nearby.  Mitzi’s grandmother makes a special monster spray for her to keep monsters away, so Fudge decides that he might not have to marry Sheila after all.

Peter is happy when he discovers that Mitzi’s grandfather is Big Apfel, his baseball hero, and that he holds baseball games that are open to the public, so he and Jimmy can also play with him.  He also gets a crush on Isobel (“Izzy”), a girl who works at the local library, although Isobel is a few years older than he is.  The baseball game goes well enough, but the crush, not so much.

Then, comes the most shocking news of the summer: Peter’s grandmother and Sheila’s grandfather decide to get married!  If that happens, Peter and Sheila realize that they’ll be related by marriage!

Big Apfel and his granddaughter Mitzi are fictional characters, but the book that Mitzi claims is about her, Tell Me a Mitzi, is a real book.

This book is part of the Fudge Series.  It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.