Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Eagle Feather

Three Cousins Detective Club

#9 The Mystery of the Eagle Feather by Elspeth Campbell Murphy, 1995.

Timothy is excited because he has a chance to meet his pen pal, Anthony Two Trees, for the first time. Anthony is a Native American, and he will be dancing at a powwow. Timothy’s cousins get to come along on the trip, too.

Soon after they arrive, though, they learn that someone has been taking pieces of the dancers’ costumes, like fans or headdresses made of eagle feathers. Who could be taking the costume pieces and why?

The costume pieces and the eagle feathers they contain are very expensive, and the kids realize that the thief might be thinking of selling them. It is illegal to deal in eagle feathers because eagles are an endangered species. Even the Native American dancers have to write to the government in order to get eagle feathers for their costumes from eagles that died in zoos. Therefore, the costumes are expensive and require a lot of effort to put together, and losing them is a real blow. The rarity and cost of the feathers might prove to be a temptation to a thief.

The theme of the story is self-control.

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

My Reaction

I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this story. I understand the fascination kids have with Native Americans and their costumes and dances. I felt like that when I was a kid, too, but there’s also an element of cringe to it. The cringiness comes from kids (and even adults) who get wrapped up in the fascination of the appearance of other people’s traditions and treat them more like playing dress-up than traditions with deeper, underlying meaning and significance or depicting Native Americans as being stereotypes from old movies and books rather than real, living people.

Fortunately, I was pleased at how this story shows that Timothy’s friend, Anthony, is a regular boy who shares his interest in baseball. They emphasize that Native Americans don’t live in tepees any more, and they don’t treat the Native American characters like stereotypes. I enjoyed some of the facts the story provided about Native American dances and costumes, like the regulations regarding the use of eagle feathers.

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Jingle Dancer

Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Leitich Smith, illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu, 2000.

Jenna is inspired to become one of the jingle dancers at the powwow because her grandmother has been a jingle dancer. She loves the way the little cone-shaped bells on the dancers’ costumes sing!

Her grandmother tells her that there won’t be enough time to get the tin for making the jingles for her costume this time, but next time, she can dance with the Girls group.

Jenna knows how to do the dance because she has watched old videos of her grandmother dancing and has practiced. However, she can’t really do a proper jingle dance without the jingles for her dancing costume.

However, her grandmother isn’t the only person Jenna knows who has been a jingle dancer. Other women in Jenna’s family and among her family’s friends have also been jingle dancers, and not all of them dance anymore. Perhaps, with their help, Jenna can get the jingles she needs in time for this powwow!

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

My Reaction

I liked the way the book showed how Jenna’s family and friend supported her and helped her to take part in a tradition that they have all shared. They can’t all be there to see Jenna when she dances, but Jenna dances for all them, her dress covered in borrowed jingles!

A section in the back of the book explains more about Jenna’s tribe and the traditional dance shown in the story. The story is set in Oklahoma, and Jenna is part of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and has Ojibway (Chippewa/Anishinabe) ancestry. Elements of both tribal cultures appear in the story. The tradition of jingle dancing originated with the Ojibway people, and the book describes details of the costume (called “regalia” in the book) that women and girls wear to perform the dance. The book also contains a glossary of words that appear in the story with some additional details about their significance.

I think this story is a fun way to introduce readers to Native American traditions that may not be familiar to them. I also enjoyed the pictures, which have a lovely, dream-like quality to them.

Posted on by TracyC

In the Sunken Garden

Kay Tracey

In the Sunken Garden by Frances K. Judd (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1952 (revised from 1941 edition), 1980.

Kay Tracey discovers that she has a doppelganger when she’s running some errands for her mother and some people in town act like they know her even though she’s never seen them before. As she heads home, a dog even follows her car, as if it thinks that she’s his owner. Kay is bewildered by this, but she decides to take the dog home with her until she can figure out who really owns him.

This is just the beginning of Kay’s entanglement with her mysterious double. Ronald Earle, the boy who likes Kay, gets angry because he thinks that he’s seen her out riding with someone else in his car after turning down a ride with him to attend her mother’s luncheon party. Kay straightens Ronald out only to be confronted with her cousin, Bill, who returns home, very upset because he has heard that Kay was in a car accident and is now in the hospital. Bill is relieved to see Kay perfectly fine at home, but that still doesn’t clear up the question of who this mysterious double is.

According to the hospital, the girl who was in the car accident told them she was Jane Barton, but she checked herself out of the hospital because she only had minor injuries. That isn’t the end of the matter, though. A man named Joe Craken shows up and accuses Kay of wrecking his car in the car accident. He says that the police identified her as the driver of the other car in the accident based on her physical description. With Joe Craken attempting to sue her for damages and the injuries done to a passenger in his car, Kay needs to find her mysterious double!

This mysterious double seems to have some connection to the old Huntley place, a mansion outside of town. The Huntleys were distant relatives of Ronald’s, and Kay learns about the family scandal from someone who used to work for the family. Years ago, Mrs. Huntley’s sister, Trixie Rue, was a dancer with a promising career, but she gave it all up to get married. Unfortunately, the marriage didn’t really work out, and she and her husband fell on hard times. Mrs. Huntley gave her sister some money to help her get by, but apparently, it wasn’t enough because the sister resorted to stealing to help support herself and her baby daughter and ended up having to leave town in disgrace. Does this local scandal have any bearing on the sudden appearance of Kay’s double? One night, while having a look at the old Huntley mansion, Kay sees a ghostly white figure dancing in the garden. Was it her mysterious look-alike or someone else? Before the mystery is over, Kay’s look-alike will need her help as much as Kay needs hers.

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

My Reaction

The various parts of this mystery fit together much better than the first Kay Tracey book I read. The first book I read in this series seemed rather awkward, but there is a more cohesive thread in this story. The mysterious double, the Huntley family scandal, and the ghostly dancing figure in the garden all fit together in a way that makes sense. However, there are two sets of villains in this story, and although Kay was not involved in the car accident, it turns out that, rather than her double trying to fob off responsibility on Kay, it’s actually the driver of the other car who was responsible for the accident and had always planned on trying to blame Kay for the accident to extort money from her. It was just his bad luck that he crashed his car into the car Jane was driving instead of Kay’s. This story also has a side plot involving a benefit show that Kay and her friends are putting on with others who are also taking dance lessons, and there’s more rivalry with Chris Eaton, the nasty snob they know from school.

I still find that the Kay Tracey books aren’t particularly good on readability, though. The language is a little old-fashioned, and at times, the plot seems to drag. I think this is one of the better books, plot-wise. The story felt more cohesive than the previous one and mystery stories with mysterious doubles, long-lost relatives, spooky mansions, and inheritance are pretty classic and compelling. However, I did get a little bored while reading it because I just didn’t find the writing style to be very engaging.