Posted on by TracyC

Moon Window

Moon Window by Jane Louise Curry, 1996.

Joanna Ellen Briggs (usually called JoEllen or Jo) lost her father five years ago, when he died in a car accident. Since then, it’s just been her and her mother. Jo has adjusted to the loss, and she and her mother have been happy together. At least, that’s what Jo keeps telling herself. Now, her mother is getting remarried, and Jo feels like her life has been completely turned upside down. Her new stepfather, George, is a nice man, but Jo can’t stand the idea of her life changing. George is a law professor, and Jo’s other relatives like him, but Jo is afraid of what this marriage will mean for her. She and her mother will be moving to George’s house in Boston, and she is afraid that nothing will ever be the same again.

At the heart of her worries is the fear of losing her mother, just as she lost her father. The truth is that Jo has never fully adjusted to her father’s death. She participates in a wide range of classes and activities, but it’s not because she really loves any of these subjects or activities. Her gymnastics, choir practice, piano lessons, and the host of other classes and hobbies that she pursues with so much energy and perfectionism are to keep her mind occupied so she won’t have to think about her father or her worries about what might happen to her if something happens to her mother. Ever since her father died, there has always been the lingering fear of something happening to her mother, and that’s why Jo fears change in her life. She has settled into a routine that makes her feel relatively safe and keeps her from thinking too much about what might happen in the future. George’s entry into their lives has broken the routine, will bring even more changes, and has caused Jo’s tightly-controlled feelings to creep to the surface.

Even during the wedding, Jo privately hopes something will happen that will stop the ceremony and keep all of these frightening changes from happening, but nothing does. However, Jo’s grandmother has noticed how upset Jo is, even though Jo tries to keep a blank face and hide her feelings. Her grandmother realizes that Jo is bottling up her emotions, and she sees the moment when Jo finally lets loose, just as her mother and George leave on their honeymoon. Instead of throwing birdseed after the car, like everyone else, she turns and throws her little bag of birdseed at one of George’s young nephews, hitting him in the eye.

Originally, the plan had been for Jo to stay with George’s brother and his family while her mother and George are on their honeymoon. However, because of her bad behavior toward George’s nephews, the boys’ mother refuses to have her as a guest. Jo’s grandparents hurriedly consider other arrangements for Jo. They would take her themselves, but they will soon be traveling to a conference they are attending. Jo’s grandmother laments about Jo’s behavior and moods, and that reminds her of Witch Ellen, an ancestor in an old painting at Winterbloom, the old house where her frail great-aunt lives. Granty Nell, as they call her, is actually a distant cousin and is over 100 years old, but she loves children. Jo’s grandmother remembers that one of Jo’s cousins recently visited Granty Nell at Winterbloom and had a wonderful time. Winterbloom is a strange old house near Walpole, New Hampshire, but Jo’s grandmother has fond memories of the place, and Granty Nell has live-in help, so she won’t be dealing with Jo alone.

Granty Nell accepts Jo as a visitor, but Jo is stunned that she has so suddenly been dumped with a relative she doesn’t even know, in an old stone house in the middle of the woods. At first, Jo plans to run away and go back to the apartment where she and her mother have been living and stay there until her mother comes to get her so her mother will regret leaving her and think twice about ever leaving her again. However, Winterbloom is no ordinary place, and leaving is much more difficult than Jo realizes.

Granty is unexpectedly sharp in spite of her age, and she can read Jo like a book, noting her thinness and chewed fingernails. She speaks openly to Jo about her feelings about her new stepfather on her first day at Winterbloom. Granty lets her speak and doesn’t criticize her feelings. Instead, she tells Jo a little about the house and their ancestors, and she offers to let her explore the house and choose one of the guest bedrooms for herself. When she decides which room she wants, she can tell the housekeeper, Mrs. Craig. Mrs. Craig’s husband Thomas and son Tom take care of the grounds and garden of Winterbloom. The three of them live in a little cottage nearby, so only Granty and Jo will be living in the big house.

As Jo explores the old house alone, she notices that the furnishings are rich but old and shabby. She wonders why Granty hasn’t replaced them because she is supposedly wealthy. Each of the bedrooms has a fireplace that has an iron Franklin stove fitted inside and wardrobes instead of closets. The furnishings are all old-fashioned and a little shabby, but there is something in every room that catches Jo’s attention, like an interesting painting or an embroidered stool. In spite of herself, Jo finds herself liking things or becoming intrigued by them, although she is still determined to run away. Then, while exploring the attic, she finds an old turret room with a round window, the kind that her mother likes to call a “moon window.” Jo tries to open the window, but she discovers that someone has painted it shut. She manages to pry it open anyway, using a knife that she finds in Granty’s desk drawer. Outside the window, there is a large tree, good for climbing. Jo realizes that, with her gymnastics skills, it would be easy for her to climb down the tree and escape when it’s time for her to run away.

Thinking that she’ll probably only stay for one night before running away, Jo chooses the yellow bedroom, the one with a high bed with yellow brocade curtains that has a step stool for climbing into it. Granty tells her that is the room where her grandmother stayed when she came to visit Winterbloom when she was young. Winterbloom is undeniably charming, in spite of its shabbiness, and Jo can’t help but think that the dining room, with its tapestries and long, candlelit table looks like it’s set for a fairy tale feast.

To Jo’s surprise, Granty tells her a little of her own history at dinner. Like many of the women in their family, Granty’s first name is Ellen, although the younger generations think of her as Granty Nell. Jo had assumed that Granty had grown up at Winterbloom, but actually, she originally lived in New York. Like other young girls in the family, she also came to visit Winterbloom as a child when the woman that she once called Granty lived there. When Granty Nell was 17 years old and having one of her visits to Winterboom, both of her parents died in a flu epidemic. (I thought at first that she was referring to the 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic, but later events in the story show that the dates don’t line up. Her parents must have died earlier.) As an orphan, she continued living at Winterbloom with her Granty until the following September, when she went away to college. She was a schoolteacher for a time until her Granty died, leaving her Winterbloom and all of her money, on the condition that she change her last name to Macallan, which is the family’s maternal surname. Granty Nell wasn’t originally happy about having to change her name, but she did it anyway because she loved Winterbloom. Jo wishes that someone would give her a house to live in so she wouldn’t have to live with George. George’s house in Boston is very modern and definitely not charming. Granty Nell tells her to be careful about what she wishes for because, since she returned to Winterbloom, she hasn’t traveled very far from it, and there are many interesting places she has never seen. Clinging too much to one particular place can keep a person from moving on to other, more exciting places.

Although someone (possibly Mrs. Craig or Granty) has tried to make the yellow room more cozy for Jo by moving all the things that she admired in the other rooms into that room, Jo is still determined to run away. She almost resents how comfortable Winterbloom is for her, making it difficult for her to leave. Early in the morning, Jo slips out through the moon window in the attic and climbs down the tree from the house. She originally planned to ride her bike the two miles from Winterbloom into town because her grandparents left her bike there for her to use, but she can’t find the bike when she reaches the ground. She assumes that the Craigs must have moved it and that she’ll have to walk to town to catch the bus.

However, during her early morning walk to town, it slowly begins to dawn on her that something isn’t right. She overhears some children talking about a cannon, which is strange. Then, she has an encounter with a man on horseback, who talks like he’s a local doctor who’s been out to see patients. Since when do doctors ride around on horses to see their patients? Jo becomes more uneasy, and when she reaches the town, she realizes why. The town doesn’t look the way it did when she passed through it with her grandparents. Suddenly, there is no Interstate highway, and there is a covered wooden bridge that isn’t there anymore in Jo’s time. Somehow, it looks like going through the window has sent Jo back in time, although she’s not sure when or if that’s really what is happening. Disoriented and terrified, Jo returns to Winterbloom and climbs back up to the moon window, leaving her knapsack hidden in some bushes to retrieve later.

The next day, Jo tries to tell herself that what happened early that morning was only a dream, but there are hints that it wasn’t. Not only is her bike exactly where she left it, like it never moved, but the bush where she left her knapsack isn’t there anymore, and there’s no sign of the knapsack. Jo searches the area to check if she was just mistaken about where she left the knapsack, but it really isn’t there. When Granty suggests that they go into town for lunch, Jo sees that the gate to Winterbloom isn’t the same in the present as it was in the past, and the road to town is paved while the road she walked along in the early morning wasn’t. Yet, there are aspects of the countryside that are eerily familiar, which indicates that what she experienced wasn’t just a dream. She might have been able to dream about the road and town as they were in the past, but she shouldn’t have been able to accurately dream about features of the area that she hadn’t seen before and that have been there for a long time.

Their trip to town is cut short because Granty becomes ill. Young Tom, who is driving them, says that Granty suffers from agoraphobia, which is why she gets ill or panics when she gets too far from Winterbloom. This is part of the reason why she has not traveled very far since she inherited the house. Granty later says that this isn’t entirely the case, but through many years of living at Winterbloom, it has become more and more difficult for her to leave it.

Jo still plans to run away, and she realizes that she left her flashlight in her knapsack, wherever that is now. She decides to search the attic for something she can use instead. In spite of herself, she finds the old clothes in the trunks in the attic charming and decides to try wearing some of them. Then, at the bottom of one of the trunks, she finds her knapsack! The knapsack isn’t the way it was when she last saw it, though. It has clearly aged, and so have the things inside. The flashlight no longer works, the clothes are yellowed with age, and the leather and rubber on her hiking boots has hardened and cracked. It’s like they’ve been stored in the attic for more than 100 years! The boots are wrapped in a newspaper, now deteriorated, but when Jo examines it, she finds the date of July 1809 and references to some of the people and things she encountered during her early morning excursion. Now, Jo is really scared.

Jo races to the turret room and looks out the moon window, but what she sees frightens her more. Although it’s afternoon in Winterbloom, it’s dark outside the moon window. More than that, there’s no tree outside the window, and the countryside that she sees isn’t the woods that surround Winterbloom. Jo recognizes what she sees as the same scene in a painting in her room at Winterbloom. The moon window is no ordinary window. It looks out on different times and places.

Once she gets over her fear, Jo is intrigued at this “window of time” and wants to know more about how it works. She even thinks that, if she can learn to control it, she might be able to go back in time to just the right moment to keep her mother from getting married again, which she thinks will solve all of her problems. However, the next time she tries the window, she finds herself meeting a young Granty Nell in 1897, when she was just a girl about her age called Nell, which is short for Ellen. Nell catches her sneaking around in a dress that looks very much like her dress. (Really, it’s the same dress, just aged about 90 years because Jo found it stored in the attic and tried it on.) Jo attempts to explain to her who she is and how she got there, taking Nell to the turret room in the attic and showing her the moon window. Jo is curious where the moon window will lead if they go through it in the past, wondering if it will take them to the future, but it ends up leading them further into the past. Jo and Nell end up in 1764, when the house was first being built. They are both caught sneaking around by a young Indian (Native American) and the stonemason who is building the house for Ellen Hawke. Ellen is a common name for women in their family, and this Ellen was the one who created Winterbloom and the one for whom all the other Ellens were named, including JoEllen. She is also considered a “wise woman”, and she is the Witch Ellen who appears in a painting at Winterbloom. Jo recognizes the stonemason’s last name as her grandmother’s maiden name, making her wonder if they are also somehow related. She wonders if maybe the stonemason will marry Ellen Hawke, making him her distant ancestor.

As Jo begins to consider people’s complex relationships across time, it occurs to her that, if she and Nell aren’t careful, they might accidentally change something in the past that will endanger their own existence. For the first time, she also begins to wonder what might happen if she successfully changes things so her mother never meets or marries George. Is it possible that she would be preventing the potential birth of a half-sibling, and if so, is that what she really wants to do?

Back in the present day, Granty Nell begins remembering an incident from her youth that she always thought of as a dream with a girl named Joanna and a trip back in time, and she begins connecting it with some strange questions Jo has been asking her. Years ago, Granty Nell had removed the furnishings from the turret room (the ones which Jo had delighted in and are now her the Yellow Bedroom that she is using) and scattered them through the house. She had the moon window painted shut and kept the door to the turret room locked, sensing that the moon window was magical and dangerous. Now, in spite of Nell’s precautions, things are coming full circle, and Jo is doing what Nell realizes she has done before.

Although Granty Nell loves having Jo at Winterbloom, she begins to realize that she must get Jo away from the place as soon as possible, before Jo becomes trapped in the same web that has kept Nell herself tied so tightly to Winterbloom all these years. Solving the mysteries of Winterbloom and the spell it has on the other Ellens in the family means exploring the past of the first Ellen, Witch Ellen.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

I enjoyed this story and its atmosphere! I think fans of Cottagecore would enjoy Winterbloom, with its old-fashioned, comfortable shabbiness and rooms with quaint, magical touches. This is also one of those books that mentions what the characters eat. I’m not much of a foodie, but there were a couple of things that interested me about their meals at Winterbloom. I find it interesting when books mention unusual dishes or foods that they call by unfamiliar names. At one point, they have what Granty calls “Indian cake” for lunch. It’s described as a type of corn bread, so I think it’s named for Native Americans rather than Indians from India. (I ask that question almost every time I see “Indian” in writing, unless it’s specified.) I’d never heard of that before, so I tried looking it up, and from the description, I think it might be similar to this recipe for a corn bread pound cake from 1827. I’m not 100% sure it’s the same thing, but it seems reasonable because it’s described as both a corn bread and a cake. As charming as Winterbloom is, though, it also has a dark side that Jo must confront.

Themes

Jo’s immediate problem is obvious from the beginning of the story. There have been many other children’s books about children adjusting to changes in their lives, including the remarriage of a parent. It’s understandable that children who are accustomed to having only one parent might cling to that parent and be afraid of changes that might cause them to lose that parent or experience less of that parent’s attention and affection. Although adults might say that coming to love someone else doesn’t mean loving other people less, but Jo already knows that, when her mother spends more time with George, she spends less time with Jo. Her mother still loves her, but Jo feels neglected and forgotten, fearful of what this will mean for her future and her relationship with the only parent she has left. Even before her mother married George, there were times when her mother was so preoccupied, thinking about George, that she forgot to get breakfast for Jo or buy groceries, as she normally did, making Jo nervous about her mother still providing for her through this relationship with George. I’m sure that her mother doesn’t mean to give Jo this feeling. It’s just part of the awkwardness of making a major change in their lives and adjusting to a new normal. I’ve reviewed others on this theme before, including The Haunting at Cliff House, which also features time travel.

There are a couple of things that make this story different from others that I’ve read. One that surprised me at first is that Granty Nell knows about the magic of the window. In many books for kids that involve magic and time travel, the adults don’t know what’s going on and never learn. The magic or time travel is meant to give the children in the stories perspective on their lives and problems and teach them lessons, not to do anything for the adults. Typically, the adults either don’t know what’s going on, while the children learn about the magic or face their problems on their own, or the adults don’t find out what’s been happening until after the child has resolved the situation, like Rose in The Root Cellar, which is about an orphan adjusting to a new life with her relatives. In this story, Granty Nell has known about the magic of the moon window since she was young, when she first met Jo on one of her time travel excursions. At first, Nell thought that Jo was a dream, but through her years with the house, she came to understand the dangers of the window and the hold that the house can have on people, particularly on young girls named Ellen, who are coping with the loss of a home or a parent.

It isn’t obvious right away, but this is also a story about generational trauma, but with a magical/supernatural twist. Like other Ellens in the family, the first Ellen, Ellen Hawke (maiden name Ellen MacAlpin, also called Ellen MacAllan or Witch Ellen) also suffered the lost of her father and home early in life. The family’s ancestral home, Castle MacAlpin in Scotland, was destroyed by fire, and her father died in the fire. Ellen wanted to save him, but she couldn’t. The MacAlpins were unusual people, who possessed real magic, and Nell thinks that they might actually be descended from elves. After her father died, Ellen married, and later in life, after her husband died, she went to New Hamsphire to start over. People were always nervous about her and her magical abilities, so whenever it looked like people might be about to put her on trail for being a witch, she would move and start over.

Like Granty Nell, Witch Ellen has also lived an unnaturally long life, and (spoiler) she is still living secretly in Winterbloom. At least some of the other Ellens in the family were also her, pretending to be one of her own descendants. When she came to New Hampshire, she built a new version of the home that she had lost, which is Winterbloom. The shabby, old-fashioned belongings in the house are actually a clue to the house’s true problem. Granty can’t change things too much, even when she wants to, because Witch Ellen won’t let her. The house is a monument to her old life, and she can’t let go of it. However, Ellen eventually discovered that Winterbloom was a poor substitute for her lost home. It’s undeniably a charming house, but it’s not the original castle, so it just couldn’t be the same and would never feel the same to Ellen.

When Jo finally speaks to Witch Ellen directly, she admits that, rather than bringing her solace, Winterbloom haunts her because it can’t be what she wants it to be. Witch Ellen tells Jo that, for a long time, she has been waiting for a descendant of hers to undo a terrible mistake that she made years before, which has kept her bound to the house. That is, assuming that Witch Ellen is telling the truth.

For most of the book, readers don’t know what’s behind the magic of the house or if the witch in the family is in control of what’s happening. I expected at first that Witch Ellen would be a sympathetic character who would help Jo to understand the magic and maybe teach her something to help her cope with her situation, but that isn’t the case. Jo must confront the question of whether the mission that Ellen gives her would really break the spell of Winterbloom or if the curse of Winterbloom was always Ellen’s inability to accept life as it came and to try to control the outcomes. Ellen was always a controlling person, and her own children left her and Winterbloom years ago because she frightened them. Witch Ellen was never satisfied with her life, even the parts that were really good, because she couldn’t let go of the old home that she lost. Her new home, the men she married, and even her own children were never good enough for her because she was clinging to her memories of her old life and her plan to get it back. It was an obsession with her, and it has guided everything she has done. When Ellen became Nell’s guardian as her “Granty”, she began controlling her, keeping her bound to Winterbloom all these years to accomplish what she wanted. When Nell wouldn’t do it, Ellen began searching for another descendant who would, which is why she keeps inviting other young descendants to visit Winterbloom.

Jo is capable of doing what Ellen asks, but she has begun to see Ellen’s selfishness for what it really is. Ellen is prepared to sacrifice the lives and futures of her descendants to change the past, without regard for what that would mean for anyone else. Jo is different because she can see the bigger picture, and she does care about other people. She worries about her future, and that’s why she is afraid of the changes brought by her mother’s remarriage, but she has come to see that there are limits to what she’s prepared to do about that because of her concern for the welfare of other people. Jo realizes that she doesn’t want to be trapped at Winterbloom forever or to endanger her very existence and the existence of other people in her family to accomplish Ellen’s mission.

In many books about children coming to accept stepparents, the children come to suddenly love the stepparents at the end of the book, or at least find something about them to appreciate or an ability to see things as the adults around them do. That isn’t the case with this book. Maybe Jo will come to appreciate George once she becomes more accustomed to him and her new life, but for now, she has come to see that trying to control other people’s lives can be truly damaging, not just to them but also to other people around them and even to herself, and that it isn’t healthy to remain stuck in the past. Although accepting change can be difficult and can sometimes mean accepting bad outcomes along the way, Jo comes to see that she would rather keep moving forward in life and letting others move forward.

If something bad hadn’t happened in their family centuries before, maybe none of them would even exist now. Maybe accepting her mother’s marriage to George will one day mean accepting a younger half-sibling and having to share her mother with George and that sibling, but Jo recognizes that this half-sibling has the right to exist as much as she does. The half-sibling is only a potential idea at this point, not a firm reality, but the knowledge that there could potentially be one someday causes Jo to think about the effect that her decisions can have on people, including possible future generations. Letting her mother, George, and the potential half-sibling have their lives will mean having to make some changes to her own life, but Jo sees that it also allow her room to consider new possibilities for her own life in the future and to keep moving forward. The contrast between having the ability to move forward and being stuck in the past is enough to convince Jo to stop fighting her mother’s marriage and to focus on moving forward and seeing what life holds.

Children’s Literature References

This is one of those children’s books that also references other children’s books. Because generations of children have visited Winterbloom, Jo finds old children’s books on the shelves there, like The Five Children and It by E. Nesbit and a Nancy Drew book from the 1930s. When Jo reads The Five Children and It, she reads a part about how people can make themselves wake up at a particular time without an alarm clock by really focusing on the time they want to wake up before they go to bed. I haven’t read this book yet, but I have done that before, made myself wake up at a particular time because I had it in my mind that was when I wanted to get up. It does seem to work at least sometimes, although The Five Children and It says that it only works if you really, really want to wake up at that particular time. If you don’t really want to get up, it won’t work. When Jo reads the Nancy Drew book, she tells Granty that she’s surprised that Nancy Drew is that old, and Granty tells her how the Nancy Drew books are periodically rewritten to update them with the current time and habits, changing language and technology to be current. This is true, and I’ve talked about that on this site before. As this story notes, in the original books, people were driving roadsters and using typewriters, and in the updated versions, they have sports cars and computers.

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The Mystery of the Vanishing Treasure

The Three Investigators

#5 The Mystery of the Vanishing Treasure by Robert Arthur, 1966.

The Three Investigators don’t have a case at the moment, so Jupiter entertains himself and his friends with an intellectual exercise – figuring out how someone could steal the Rainbow Jewels from an exhibit at the Petersen Museum, an exhibit that has been promoted in the local papers. Pete and Bob object that they solve thefts, not commit them, but Jupiter says that figuring out how a theft could occur would be useful in helping them understand thefts that actually occur. The boys go to the museum to see the exhibit and study it for security weaknesses.

While they are at the museum, a theft actually occurs, but not in any of the ways that Jupiter predicted that a theft could occur. It happens in broad daylight, with a room full of people and security, and the object that was take, a golden belt, was actually the heaviest and least portable object in the exhibit. Jupiter and his friends witness the start of the crime when Jupiter runs into an old acquaintance from his childhood acting days. This actor gleefully tells Jupiter to watch the stunt that he’s going to pull. He pretends to feel faint and then drops a fake jewel that looks like one of the real ones. This is a distraction for the guards, who are all focused on him when the real theft happens. The actor is in trouble for providing the thieves with a distraction, but he tells the police that he was hired to do it both to prove himself for a role in a movie and as kind of a publicity stunt. Of course, the movie wasn’t real, and he was just duped into helping the thieves.

Jupiter is intrigued by the theft and offers the Three Investigators’ services to the man in charge of the exhibit, but he turns them away because they’re kids. However, they soon have another mystery to consider. An elderly children’s author thinks that she is being stalked by gnomes. She lives in the same old house where she grew up, and she is known for writing books about gnomes, inspired by stories that her old Bavarian nanny told her. Years ago, she used to invite neighborhood children to her house for parties, playfully calling them her “gnomes”, and she would read to them from her books. However, the old families have grown up and moved away, and many of the old houses around her have been torn down and replaced with shops and businesses. The author doesn’t want to sell her house, even though she’s been pressured to sell by a developer, but lately, strange things have been happening at the house. She keeps seeing little men dressed like gnomes, and they play mean tricks on her. She swears that she’s not dreaming or crazy, which is what her nephew seems to think. She does genuinely believe in gnomes, but what’s been happening could also be someone playing a trick on her.

The Three Investigators might think that she was imagining things, except that Bob sees one of these gnomes out the window while they’re talking to the author. The boys try to chase after it, but it disappears before Jupiter and Pete can even get a look at it. They consider the idea that Bob could have imagined the gnome, based on his reading about them and the author’s stories, but he swears he didn’t. They decide to approach the situation from the assumption that someone is playing tricks on the author, and Jupiter and Pete decide to spend the night at the author’s house to see what happens.

While the boys are exploring the area, they decide to check out the defunct movie studio next to the author’s house. There, they overhear the developer who wants to buy the author’s house talking to the security guard at the old studio. What they say makes Jupiter wonder if they could have something to do with the theft of the gold belt, but when they discover the boys listening, they insist that Jupiter misheard them.

The son of the man in charge of the exhibit at the museum comes to consult the Three Investigators about theft of the belt, having overheard them offering their services to his father. Jupiter gives him a suggestion to check on while the Three Investigators look into the matter of the gnomes. Jupiter’s first guess about the theft of the belt isn’t quite right, but it turns out that there is a connection between the gnomes and the theft. The gnome incidents could be part of an effort to pressure the author into selling her house to the developer, but the digging sounds that accompany the gnomes make Jupiter realize that the gnomes have other motives.

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

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

Many of the Three Investigators mysteries are a little like Scooby-Doo mysteries, with ghosts, monsters, or other supernatural phenomena that have logical or human explanations. I like this mystery because gnomes are an unusual mythological creature to find in that kind of story. There are plenty of mystery stories with faked ghosts but few with staged gnome appearances. It’s a little bit of a spoiler to say that the gnomes are fake, but not much of one because that is really the assumption from the beginning. The children’s author believes in gnomes, but nobody else does, and even the author isn’t convinced enough to stop her from hiring the investigators to look into the situation.

The introduction of the theft of the golden belt from the museum at the beginning of the story introduces the idea that the theft is somehow related to the gnome appearances, and that is the case. What complicates the situation is that there are different people involved with both the gnome appearances and the thefts, and not everyone who’s involved in one plot is necessarily involved in the other. One of the complications of the story is figuring out who is involved in what and who is the ultimate mastermind behind the main mystery.

The gnome appearances also put this mystery into the category of mysteries that I call Mysterious Happenings – where something strange is happening with no obvious explanation, and much of the mystery involves figuring out the motive behind the mysterious happenings, which is usually related to an actual crime that is initially unknown to the investigators. A classic example of a Mysterious Happenings mystery is the Sherlock Holmes story, The Red-Headed League, which involves a man who is invited to join a club that requires him to do some meaningless busy work for money but which he suddenly discovers is fake. In that case, the mystery is figuring out the purpose of the club and why someone would play such an elaborate prank on this particular man. This Three Investigators story has a similar premise to the Sherlock Holmes story in the sense that someone is playing an elaborate prank on the author with the gnome appearances, and the question is why anyone would do that. Part of the reason that I mention the Sherlock Holmes story is that the motive behind the prank in the Sherlock Holmes story is the same as the motive for playing the prank with the gnomes, making me think that the author was inspired by The Red-Headed League.

As for who/what the gnomes are, the presence of the old movie studio and the use of a hired actor to create a distraction in the museum are clues. It’s also important to the story that it was children’s day at the museum, so there were a lot of kids on the scene when the theft happened. I suspected who was playing the part of the gnomes from the beginning, but I didn’t guess the full motive for the crime, even though The Red-Headed League is one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes stories. There’s a dramatic scene at the end of the book where the “gnomes” storm the kids’ headquarters at the salvage yard to retrieve the golden belt from Jupiter after Jupiter figures out where they hid it.

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The Case of the Phantom Frog

McGurk Mysteries

The Case of the Phantom Frog by E. W. Hildick, 1979.

Mrs. Kranz, an elderly sculptor, has been looking after her nephew’s 7-year-old son, Bela, because his parents were in a car accident and are still in the hospital. She consults the McGurk Organization because strange things have been happening since Bela came to live with her. At first, she is reluctant to say what is really bothering her. She was referred to the McGurk Organization by Willie’s mother, and she frames her request as hiring the kids to watch Bela while she’s working. McGurk turns down the offer, saying that the oldest members of the McGurk Organization are only 10 years old, not really old enough to babysit, and babysitting isn’t the kind of job they handle anyway. Wanda tries to refer Mrs. Kranz to a regular babysitter she knows, but Mrs. Kranz is strangely desperate and insists that she wants the McGurk Organization.

Because they’re reluctant to accept the job, Mrs. Kranz finally admits that there is a mystery connected to Bela. She starts by telling them that she’s afraid of frogs, like some people are really afraid of bugs or rats or other creatures. Ever since Bela came to stay with her, Mrs. Kranz has been hearing an unusually loud frog sound in her house, particularly in the evening, after Bela is in bed. Bela insists that he never hears it, but it’s giving Mrs. Kranz the creeps. She’s tried to search the house as best she can, but she can’t find the frog anywhere. It’s not the kind of thing that she can go to the police about, but it’s driving her crazy. The real reason why she wants the McGurk Organization to spend time with Bela is to see if they hear the frog, too, and if they can figure out where it is.

This time, McGurk is intrigued enough to accept the case, plus Mrs. Kranz offers them a larger fee for their services than they usually have. They consider the idea that Mrs. Kranz could be making up the story about the phantom frog she hears just to get them to accept her babysitting job, but they decide that isn’t likely, both because of the generous amount of money she’s paying them and because she seems genuinely frightened.

When they get to Mrs. Kranz’s house, it’s a big place that looks almost castle-like, and it’s surrounded by trees. Mrs. Kranz invites them in and introduces them to Bela. Bela was born in Hungary, where Mrs. Kranz was from originally. He doesn’t seem glad to meet the members of the McGurk Organization. In fact, he tries to ignore them and talk to them as little as he can. He doesn’t really want to talk to them about the frog when they ask him about it. He just says that maybe he’s heard a frog and that his aunt has frogs on the brain.

McGurk is annoyed with the kid, so he teases him about his name, saying that Bela sounds like a girl’s name. Bela defends his name, saying it’s Hungarian. Joey tries to defuse the situation, saying that Bela Lugosi was a famous actor in old horror movies, and he was also Hungarian. McGurk is intrigued by the mention of old horror movies because he loves them, and he starts asking Bela about whether there are things like vampires and werewolves in Hungary. Bela says that monsters are just stupid kid things. Brains is inclined to agree with Bela because there’s no scientific evidence that such things exist, and McGurk gets irritated with both of them.

When McGurk consults with the other members of the organization about Bela, he says that he thinks Bela is hiding something. His theory is that Bela is making the frog sounds himself to scare his aunt as a prank and that his hostility toward their presence and their questions is to cover up for what he’s doing. Wanda takes a different view because she thought that Bela seemed scared of something when they were talking to him, and she thinks that Bela is covering up his fear. Maybe he’s afraid of the frog or the frog sound and doesn’t want to admit it. Brains thinks that the sound could have some ordinary explanation, like sounds from the plumbing system that have been misidentified.

Aside from his hostility toward their questions, Bela seems like a well-behaved kid to watch. When it’s time for bed, he doesn’t argue with the older kids or make a lot of special requests or excuses to stay up later. In fact, he seems eager to go to bed. His only requests are that they leave the lights on and the window slightly open for air. As soon as Bela is in bed, the members of the McGurk Organization station themselves at strategic points around the house, waiting to see what they can hear and where it seems to be coming from.

They do hear the frog, and it sounds unnaturally loud, like it’s a monster frog! Most of them aren’t sure where the sound came from, but Brains is pretty sure that it came from Bela’s room. When they go inside, Bela seems like he’s asleep, and they don’t see a frog anywhere. They’re convinced that Bela is faking that he’s asleep, although Bela puts on an act like he was really asleep. McGurk knows that he must have been awake while they were out of the room because they left the light on for him, and when they first entered the room, the light was off. At some point, Bela must have gotten up and turned it off himself, although they don’t know why he would do that. For some reason, he also shut his window.

It seems pretty clear that Bela has something to do with the frog noise. The next night, they rig up a microphone in Bela’s room so they can monitor the sounds there. When they hear a loud frog sound, they hurry up to Bela’s room and find a frog sitting on his pillow .. and there is no sign of Bela! McGurk stuns the others when he makes the announcement that Bela is a werefrog! McGurk thinks that Bela has the transformation powers of a werewolf, but he’s turning into a frog instead of a wolf. They go to the kitchen, where McGurk finds some garlic, and when they return to Bela’s room, the frog is gone, and Bela is back in bed. Is Bela really a werefrog, or is there another explanation for what’s happening?

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

My Reaction

I remember reading this book when I was a kid, and I did a book report on it for school. I even did a little diorama about the story that looked like Bela’s bedroom, with a little frog made out of modeling clay. It was cute, but I can’t show it because I don’t have it anymore.

I found the story pleasantly creepy when I first read it as a kid. Even though I was sure that there must be some logical explanation for the phantom frog and Bela’s apparent transformations, I honestly wasn’t sure what it was at first. The mystery isn’t that complicated for an adult, but it’s creepy and mysterious for a child.

It sometimes seems to me that kids in the McGurk books are a little mean to each other and call each other names too much. I didn’t like it that McGurk was teasing Bela about his name in this book. However, it does serve a purpose in this story because the discussion of Bela’s name is what introduces the mention of Bela Lugosi and the idea that there might be a supernatural explanation for the phantom frog and that Bela might be a werefrog. Mrs. Kranz doesn’t suggest that idea to the kids when she first consults them about the frog. McGurk is the one who thinks of it because he’s really into old horror movies, and Bela being Hungarian, like Bela Lugosi, suggests a connection to the supernatural to him.

Not all the others are really as convinced as McGurk is, but they are creeped out by the phantom frog that appears and disappears and Bela’s odd behavior. Brains is the least convinced of everyone that there’s a supernatural explanation for the frog, reminding everyone that he invented an “invisible dog” in a previous book. He knows that it’s possible to create some pretty convincing illusions. He’s the one who convinces McGurk to investigate the possibility that Bela is faking everything somehow.

I like to take note of times when characters in books reference pieces of pop culture from the time when they were written. At one point, the kids in the story are watching a Peanuts special on tv, based on the characters from the comic strip. That comic strip was still being written and published at the time this book was written, and I remember watching Peanuts specials on tv myself as a little kid in the 1980s.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Case of the Tricky Trickster

The Bobbsey Twins

The Case of the Tricky Trickster by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1992.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge Sean Hagins, for supplying me with photos of this book! Usually, I take pictures of books myself, but I just couldn’t find a physical copy of this one. Sean is a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, particularly the New Bobbsey Twins mysteries, and you can see some of his video reviews as well as videos about his photography work on his YouTube channel, SJHFoto. Thanks, Sean!

The PTAs at the schools the Bobbsey Twins attend, elementary and middle school, are holding a variety show to raise money, with students showing off their talents. A boy in Freddie and Flossie’s class, Brian, is going to put on a juggling act, but Freddie and Flossie are going to help another friend, Teddy, with his magic act. Nan and Bert have a rock band with some friends called the Aliens, and they’re going to be performing, too. Danny Rugg, the school bully, even has an act where he’s going to play the accordion.

However, things soon start going wrong with the show. During the rehearsal, someone turns on the Aliens’ amplifier, making a loud sound that startles everyone. Then, a pole falls and almost hits a student while she’s singing. Then, Brian slips on some floor wax. Freddie and Flossie suspect Danny of playing pranks on everyone because he was near the places where the pranks occurred, and it seems like the kind of thing he might do, but there are other suspects.

Some of the other students seem nervous about performing their acts or think that the show won’t really be that good. Could someone be trying to sabotage the show to get out of performing? Then again, there seems to be some kind of rivalry between the music teacher who is directing the show and Mr. Horton, the fifth grade teacher. Mr. Horton seems resentful that he wasn’t given the chance to direct the show, and he keeps trying to prove that the music teacher is doing things wrong and that he could do them better. Just how far would he go to prove that he would be the better director?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

I thought that the mystery was good, although I also thought that the culprit was obvious about halfway through the story. It might take kids longer to figure out who it is, but there is one person who gets more than their share of the sabotage, and some of the tricks are ones that a person could only play on themselves. There is a student who is trying to get out of having to perform, but once the Bobbsey Twins figure out why, they manage to work things out so that the student is able to go ahead with their act.

The story reminded me a little of The Tap Dance Mystery in the Eagle-Eye Ernie series, although the mysteries aren’t the same. What reminds me of the other book is that both stories involve family expectations. Performing in front of classmates is enough to make anyone nervous, but having family with high expectations present puts a great deal of pressure on a child performer. There is a bit more than that because there are reasons why the student doesn’t think they can live up to everyone’s expectations, but fortunately, a little help from a friend can go a long way!

Posted on by TracyC

Kirsten Saves the Day

Kirsten, An American Girl

Kirsten Saves the Day by Janet Beeler Shaw, 1988.

It’s summer, and for a frontier family, the summer chores can be the most fun! Kirsten and her younger brother, Peter, are going fishing. They’re hoping to get enough fish for their family and their Uncle Olav’s family to have for supper. There is plenty of trout in the stream, and they should be able to get enough fish, although sometimes, disasters happen on their fishing trips. Once, Peter chased a skunk, and their mother also warns them to be careful of snakes and bears. Kirsten wears a whistle around her neck that she can blow if they get into trouble. Kirsten thinks her mother worries too much.

The children take their dog, Caro, fishing with them. Kirsten is a little concerned because Caro likes to chase things, but Peter insists that he can watch the dog and fish at the same time. When they don’t seem to have much luck getting big enough fish in the stream, they decide to go upstream to the pool. The fishing goes well, but Caro is stung by a bee.

Kirsten realizes that Caro must have found a “bee tree”, a tree where bees have built their hive. Kirsten is interested in finding the tree because it’s a source of honey and honeycomb that their mother can make into special treats. If they can collect enough honey, their father might even be able to sell some and buy some of the things the family needs. They need to be careful while looking for the tree, though, or they might get stung themselves. Kirsten is pleased when she finds the tree, but she notices that there are marks on it from a bear’s claws, so it looks like a bear was trying to get the honey, too. Kirsten could ask her father how to get the honey and get him to help, but she wants to figure out how to do it herself and surprise everyone. She asks Peter to keep the bee tree a secret while she tries to figure out how to get the honey, and Peter reluctantly agrees.

Meanwhile, Kirsten’s cousins tell her about the town’s Fourth of July celebration. Kirsten’s family hasn’t lived in America for very long, so her cousins have to explain the significance of the holiday to her. Every year, the nearby town holds a parade and picnic with music and games. A lot of the local farmers also bring things to sell, like pies, butter, or preserves, and they use the money they make to buy things they need. Kirsten thinks again about the honey tree and the things her family could buy. She really wants a straw hat, like her cousins wear.

Later, when Kirsten is picking berries with her cousins, she sees a little black bear cub. She thinks it’s adorable, but Lisbeth says they have to leave the area immediately. If the baby is near the berries, its mother is sure to be somewhere nearby, and mother bears get dangerous if they think someone might hurt their cubs. Kirsten doesn’t really take the warning seriously until she tries to take Peter and Caro back to the bee tree with her to get the honey, and they meet the mother bear face-to-face!

The book ends with a section of historical information about the wilderness on the American frontier in the 1800s. Wild plants and animals were sources of food, but they were also sources of danger, like the bears in the story. The attempts of the pioneers to control the land were about securing sources of food and reducing sources of danger. There is information in the book about how pioneers cooked and how they dealt with changing seasons and weather. It also discusses the Fourth of July and how trips to town were rare treats for pioneer farming families.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

It’s a good story about the difference between bravery and being foolhardy. From the beginning, even young Peter reminds Kirsten that being brave and being foolish are not the same thing. After their hair-raising encounter with the bear, in which the children have a narrow escape and their dog is injured (but fortunately not killed), the children’s father lectures Kirsten about putting both her life and her little brother’s life in danger. When Kirsten explains what she was trying to do with the bee tree, her father also tells her that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing. She took his equipment, but if she had carried out her plan the way she was thinking of doing it, she would have both destroyed the hive and ruined the honey as well as getting badly stung. Kirsten should have just gone to her father as soon as she found the tree and got his help from the beginning. Kirsten is ashamed for getting their dog hurt and putting herself and her brother in danger and almost ruining her special find, and she apologizes.

Because Kirsten’s father now understands the situation, he gets Kirsten’s older brother, Lars, to help him move the colony of bees to their farm. He knows how to set up hives and keep bees long term, so instead of this being just a one-time find and honey harvest, they will be able to get honey from the bees regularly. Kirsten goes with her father and Lars to watch them move the bees. She does it because she’s been having bad dreams about the traumatic escape from the bear, and she thinks it will help her to recover if she goes to the area again and sees it with her father and brother, when it’s safe.

Kirsten still feels bad that she wasn’t able to get the honey all by herself and that her attempt to do it was a disaster, but her mother consoles her. She says that she and Kirsten’s father understand that Kirsten was just trying to help and that her discovery has helped them. She just needs to learn to be careful as well as being brave. I thought that it was also a lesson in learning to share the glory instead of trying to take all the credit by going it alone and risking the success of the project, but the book didn’t quite say that. Kirsten wanted to be the one to say that she did it all herself, but because she couldn’t really do it all herself, everything went wrong. She could have accomplished her goals by talking to her father in the beginning and still been the heroine who found the bee tree, as her mother pointed out. She still gets credit for what she did without needing to take credit for what she couldn’t do alone.

The book ends with the family enjoying the Fourth of July celebration. Thanks to the discovery of the bees, they are able to buy the things they need.

Posted on by TracyC

Meet Kirsten

Kirsten, An American Girl

Meet Kirsten by Janet Beeler Shaw, 1986.

It’s the summer of 1854, and Kirsten Larson is traveling by ship to America from Sweden with her family. There have been storms during the voyage, and the sailing has been rough. It’s crowded on the ship, and people have been seasick. On board the ship, Kirsten makes friends with another girl her age, Marta. The two girls play with their dolls together and talk about the things they’ll do when they finally reach America. The reason why the Larsons are traveling to America is that Kirsten’s Uncle Olav is already there. He has established a farm in Minnesota, and he has married a widow with two daughters. He wrote to the Larsons and asked them to join him and his new family in Minnesota and help on the farm.

When their ship finally reaches America, it docks in New York. No one is allowed to leave the ship until the health inspector declares that they are healthy. Health inspectors will not allow anyone with a serious, contagious disease, like cholera or typhoid, to go ashore. When they are allowed ashore, Kirsten’s father finds an agent to help them change their money at a bank and buy train tickets for their trip west. The agent, who is also from Sweden, will even accompany the family to the Mississippi River as a guide. The family needs help because they can’t speak English yet.

When they go to buy food in New York, Kirsten is accidentally separated from her father and gets lost. Because she can’t speak English, nobody understands what she’s saying, so Kirsten can’t ask for directions. Kirsten is frightened, but a kind lady sees her distress and tries to ask her what’s wrong. Kirsten can’t tell her, but then, she realizes that she can draw a picture, so she draws a picture of a ship. The lady leads Kirsten back to the dock, and she manages to find the rest of her family in the nearby Battery Park.

The next day, Kirsten says goodbye to Marta because the Larsons are leaving the city before Marta’s family. Because Marta’s family is also going to Minnesota, they hope that they will meet again there or somewhere on the way.

Kirsten has never seen a train before, and her first ride on one is frightening at first. The trip lasts for days, but finally, they arrive in Chicago. There, they will meet up with other pioneers heading to the Mississippi River. At the boarding house in Chicago, Kirsten reunites with Marta, whose family will also be traveling with them!

The pioneer families take wagons to the Mississippi River, and then, they board a riverboat. Kirsten’s mother worries because, when they boarded the riverboat, she was sailors burying a passenger who died of cholera. (A disease caused by ingesting contaminated food and water.) Cholera is a serious risk, and her worries are justified. On their third day on the boat, Marta becomes ill with cholera and dies from it.

Kirsten is distressed at Marta’s sudden death, but fortunately, the Larsons all make it to Minnesota. All along, Kirsten has been struggling with homesickness and is still grieving the loss of the only friend she had in America, but she is cheered when she is greeted by her new cousins, Anna and Lisbeth. With her cousins as her new friends, Kirsten thinks that Minnesota might come to feel like home after all.

The book ends with a section of historical information about immigrant families, like Kirsten’s.

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

My Reaction

Although I liked the American Girl books when I was a kid, I didn’t like the Kirsten books, partly because of Marta’s death. I don’t think any of the other American Girl books has a child death in the first book. In fact, I don’t even remember any other children dying in any of the series, unless it happens in one of the newer books I haven’t read yet. It is realistic for a child to die while traveling west. Diseases like cholera were a real-like risk to pioneers. I’ve visited places along the old Oregon Trail, and I’ve seen the graves of real pioneer children who died of disease. There’s also a doll at one of the local historical museums in my area that once belonged to a little girl who died on the trip west. I know that children died on the journey west in real life, but it’s still depressing to read about, which is what bothered me about the Kirsten books. For this reason, I don’t think I read all of the Kirsten books when I was a kid, or at least, I don’t remember much about most them.

Reading this book again as an adult, I found it easier to deal with Marta’s death. I knew it was coming, so there was no shock to me. Marta’s illness is only a small portion of the book, and Kirsten doesn’t see Marta dead. We do get a picture in the book of the riverboat sailors carrying Marta’s coffin away for burial.

I always appreciate the sections of historical information in the back of American Girl books. This one discusses immigrants, the reasons why they wanted to move to a new country, and the conditions they encountered during their journey.

Earlier, when I covered Rasmus and the Vagabond, I mentioned that the characters hide in an abandoned village, and Oscar tells Rasmus that the reason that the village is abandoned is because, years before, the people in the village all decided to emigrate to America together, specifically Minnesota (a popular destination for Scandinavian immigrants).  The Library of Congress has more information about Swedish immigrants and the major periods of immigration.  Around the time that Kirsten’s family emigrated to the United States, Sweden was suffering problems from overpopulation, lack of adequate tillable farm land, and famine. We don’t hear the Larsons describe any particular problems they had in Sweden or suffering. We are told that they had a farm in Sweden with a house with a maple tree near the door and a barn, but we don’t know if the family was suffering in spite of owning the farm. The important point is more that conditions in general were bad in Sweden, so the promise of rich farm land in Minnesota was attractive to them. The historical information included in the back of Meet Kirsten doesn’t cover this information about conditions in Sweden. Instead it focuses on what immigrant families might pack to bring with them on such a journey and what the traveling conditions would have been like.

Posted on by TracyC

Lady Margaret’s Ghost

Felicity, An American Girl

Lady Margaret’s Ghost by Elizabeth McDavid Jones, 2009.

This book is one of the mystery stories published to accompany the American Girl series of historical books. The main character of this book, Felicity Merriman, lives in Colonial era Williamsburg, Virginia, around the beginning of the American Revolution.

Felicity’s mother is going on a trip to visit a relative, along with Felicity’s younger siblings. As the oldest girl in the family, Felicity will be in charge of the household while her mother is gone and her father and his apprentice, Ben, are working in the store her father owns. It’s a big responsibility and an honor that Felicity’s mother considers her capable of managing the household, but because Felicity is still young and some household tasks involve heavy work that is difficult for her to do alone, her mother has hired a temporary cook, Mrs. Hewitt, to help her. Because Felicity is known as a daydreamer who doesn’t always pay attention to what she should be doing, her mother reminds her to focus on the task at hand while she’s minding the house, although she has faith in Felicity and is sure that she will do a good job.

Soon after her mother leaves, a crate arrives at the house for Felicity’s father, along with a letter. The letter explains that a cousin of Felicity’s father has died and that the crate contains some family heirlooms that his cousin left to him. These heirlooms once belonged to a common ancestor of theirs, Sir Edward Merriman, a wealthy nobleman and the first member of their family to live in the colonies, more than 100 years earlier. Felicity’s father didn’t know his cousin well because they never lived very close, and his cousin was much older, but he does know the history of the heirlooms. The heirlooms include a lady’s silver vanity set and a silver cup and rattle for baby. The story is that Sir Edward’s wife, Lady Margaret, owned the vanity set, and the rattle and cup were for their infant son. Unfortunately, the baby was stillborn, and Lady Margaret died shortly after the birth. After her death, her husband and the household servants believed that she still haunted the house. The haunting may have been part of the reason why Sir Edward decided to leave his home in England and go to America, but even though he later remarried and had other children, he could never bring himself to part from the things that belonged to his first wife and child. Even before Felicity’s father tells her about the ghost story, Felicity gets a strange feeling from the vanity set, and she wonders if the objects could be haunted.

However, Felicity soon has to turn her attention to household issues. Mrs. Hewitt, the temporary cook arrives, and she is a brusque and unpleasant woman. She is rude and condescending to Felicity when they are working in the kitchen together. Because Mrs. Hewitt is so rude, Felicity is nervous and makes mistakes, making her look like more of a fool to Mrs. Hewitt. They can’t easily replace her because cooks are in demand right now because this is Publick Times in Williamsburg, and there are many visitors to the city. Everyone is busy tending to them. Mrs. Hewitt was the best they could find available. Felicity’s father does speak to her about her rudeness to Felicity. After that, Mrs. Hewitt is sullen and resentful, and she is even more pleased whenever she sees Felicity doing something wrong.

There is also an exciting event taking place. Felicity has entered her horse, Penny, in a horse race at the fair in town! Ben, her father’s apprentice, will ride her. The day of the race, Penny seems to be doing well, but then, she suddenly develops a problem during the race. When Felicity and Ben check her out to see what was wrong, they discover that someone put burrs under Penny’s saddle! Worse still, the wounds caused by the burrs become infected. Felicity is very upset and worried about Penny, and she wonders who would have hurt her horse. There were a couple of men looking at her before the race. There was also a boy named Dawson and a girl called Anne.

Dawson turns out to be a runaway, but he also has some knowledge of horses. Although Felicity is a little suspicious of him at first, Dawson helps to heal Penny’s wounds. He also says that he saw Anne gathering burrs, but it was probably on behalf of someone else.

When Felicity realizes that her treasured coral necklace, which her mother also wore as a girl, has disappeared, Felicity questions whether she carelessly lost it or if someone has stolen it. Felicity has been doubting herself and her ability to manage the household because of all the mistakes she has made since her mother left, and the clasp of the necklace was a little loose. This could just be another disastrous mistake, but it is suspicious that Anne seemed so friendly to her at the race and then ran away from her later. Anne also literally bumped into Felicity at the race. Could she have taken the necklace? Dawson seems to think so, but then again, can Felicity really trust everything he says?

Felicity still gets an odd feeling from Lady Margaret’s heirlooms, and she thinks that she sees something white moving around at night. At first, she thinks that it could be Lady Margaret’s ghost, but then, strange things begin happening around the house. Things disappear, and Felicity worries that maybe she carelessly mislaid them. Then, her necklace unexpectedly turns up, and Lady Margaret’s vanity set vanishes! Are these strange things part of the haunting of Lady Margaret or the work of a thief? If it’s a human thief, is it the work of the runaway Dawson, mysterious Anne, unpleasant Mrs. Hewitt, or the mysterious person who arranged for Penny to be hurt?

The book ends with a section of historical information about Colonial era Williamsburg. The story is set during Publick Times, which was when court was in session in Williamsburg. People would gather in Williamsburg during Publick Times to see the trials in court and attend a public fair in Market Square. The fair offered various kinds of entertainment, games, and races, like the horse race in the story.

My Reaction

The story leaves it a little ambiguous at the end about whether Lady Margaret’s ghost exists, but if she does, she is not harmful and has nothing to do with the thefts in the story or what happened to Penny at the horse race. As the section of historical information explains, there are many new visitors in Williamsburg during Publick Times. This was a good setting for the story because there are many strangers to the city with unknown pasts and motives, and crowds at the fair might harbor thieves.

Part of the story and part of the section of historical information in the back focuses on the subject of orphans. Both Dawson and Anne are orphans, and neither of them is really being cared for. Dawson admits that he used to steal to support himself after his father died, but he is seriously looking for work. Anne technically has a guardian, but her guardian is abusive and uses her as a servant rather than taking care of her.

When the thefts occur and mysterious things start happening around the Merriman house, both Dawson and Anne look like the best suspects, but there are also possible adult suspects. Even after Felicity realizes Anne’s situation, she isn’t entirely sure which of the men at the fair that day is Anne’s guardian. Mrs. Hewitt also looks suspicious because she is so unpleasant and seems to be trying to make trouble for Felicity. I though the book did a good job of supplying an array of suspects to consider. The solution to the mystery was one of the possibilities I thought was most likely, but there were enough other possibilities to make the story interesting.

Posted on by TracyC

Thimble Summer

Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright, 1938, 1966.

It’s summer, and Garnet is a 9-year-old girl living on a farm with her parents and brothers in a rural community in Wisconsin. The story is episodic, with each chapter describing things that happen to Garnet over the course of one magical summer when she found a silver thimble down by the river. Garnet thinks that the thimble itself is magic, but maybe the magic is just in the happy summer adventures that follow.

The book is a Newbery Medal winner. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including one in Chinese).

The chapters in the book are:

The Silver Thimble

It’s been hot and rainless, and the crops are in danger of being ruined if they don’t get some rain soon. It’s a real worry because, if the crops are bad, Garnet’s family won’t be able to pay their bills. When Garnet and her brother Jay go swimming in the nearby river, Garnet finds a silver thimble. It’s a lucky find, and Garnet becomes convinced that the thimble is magic and that something wonderful is about to happen. Jay thinks that’s silly, but that night, the rain they’ve so badly needed comes! Garnet and Jay are so overjoyed with the rain that they go out running in the rain in the middle of the night, until they are frightened by lightning striking something, and their mother calls them back.

The Coral Bracelet

Garnet’s best friend is a girl name Citronella, who lives nearby. Citronella’s great-grandmother lives with her, and she tells the girls stories about what it was like when she was young. She tells them about Indians (Native Americans) who would sneak into her family’s house in bad weather to get warm and leave them presents as thanks. (I don’t know if any Native Americans ever did this in real life, but she says it like it really happened.) Then, she tells the girls about a special coral bracelet that she wanted at the general store when she was young and some foolish risks she took to get it.

The lucky thing that happens in this chapter is that Garnet’s father gets a government loan to build a new barn.

The Lime Kiln

The family needs to make lime for building their new barn. The kiln needs to burn for three days straight, and they all need to take turns tending it, day and night. Jay and Garnet are allowed to stay up all night there with their father. Friends help them, and neighbors come to visit and talk with them. Garnet brings along a picnic with sandwiches and apple pie that they eat at midnight.

The Stranger

While they’re tending the kiln, a strange boy comes along and asks them for food. His name is Eric, and he’s a parentless boy who travels around and makes his living from odd jobs. He tells them about his life and travels, and Garnet’s father hires him to help the family build the new barn.

Locked In

Garnet likes having Eric at the farm, but she’s also a little jealous that Jay wants to spend more time with Eric now than with her. Garnet starts spending even more time with Citronella, and the two girls build a tree house together. The girls tell stories in their tree house, and because it’s going to rain again, Garnet suggests that they go to the library in town. They get so engrossed in their books that they lose track of time and get locked in the library. Garnet thinks this is a fabulous adventure until Citronella points out that it’s Saturday, and the library is closed on Sunday. If they can’t find a way out, they could be there for the rest of the weekend!

Journey

It’s harvest time, and everyone is occupied in picking crops and canning foods. Garnet helps, and she is temporarily put in charge of the threshing machine. Unfortunately, she falls asleep and lets the straw stack pile up until it falls over and makes a mess. Eric tells her not to worry about it, but Jay yells at her and tells her that she had no business helping out as a girl and that she should be at the house with the women. Garnet is so upset at the way Jay has been critical of her lately that she decides to run away and hitchhike around, like Eric used to do.

“As a Ragpicker’s Pocket”

Garnet is still running away, and she takes a bus to the next town. By the time she has explored the town and looked at all the store windows, she isn’t so upset and can see the funny side of what happened with the thresher, and she’s about ready to go home. She buys a few things for her family at the dime store and a hot dog to eat. Then, she has a horrible realization: she’s out of money. How is she going to get back home?

Fair Day

Garnet goes to the fair with her family and neighbors, and she enters her pig, Timmy, in a contest. Timmy was the runt of his litter, but Garnet has taken special care of him, and she thinks that he has a good chance of winning a prize.

Ice-Cream Cones and Blue Ribbons

Garnet and Citronella enjoy the wonders of the fair while Garnet is waiting for the pig contest. They spot the lady sword-swallower darning her socks, they ride the rides, and they have snacks. The girls get stuck on the Ferris wheel when it stops working, and Garnet worries about getting down in time for the judging of the pig contest.

The Silver Thimble

The silver thimble hasn’t been mentioned since the first chapter, but when Garnet looks back on all the good things that have happened this summer, she’s still sure that it’s magic. All the good things that have happened started right after she found it. She shows the thimble to Eric, and the kids talk about what they want to do with their futures.

My Reaction

This story is more like a collection of stories, some of which continue each other. The book is somewhat episodic, leading up to the fair at the end of the summer. The stories are pretty gentle, slice-of-life adventures. Eric has had a hard life, but he doesn’t want to dwell on it too much, and things improve for him when he decides to stay with Garnet’s family. There are hints that Eric might marry Garnet someday, and the two of them might stay on the family’s farm. Eric has had enough of traveling in his young life, and he wants to be a farmer and thinks that he would like to save up money and buy land near the family’s farm. Jay wants to be a sailor or something else that will let him travel and see the world, although he thinks that he might want to come back to the farm when he’s done traveling and farm it with his father and Eric.

The book fits with the Cottagecore genre, and it would make good bedtime reading. Foodies will enjoy the mentions of old-fashioned treats, like apple pie, griddle cakes, and vinegar candy. Garnet also imagines that each of the kitchen things have their own personalities.

I liked Garnet’s name, which is very unusual in the early 21st century. Citronella is an even more unusual name, but I prefer Garnet. I think it’s charming, and it’s one of the less-common gem names used for girls. In the story, Garnet mentions that the librarian frequently gets her name wrong because gemstone names are popular in her time and area. There are other girls in town named Ruby, Pearl, Opal, and Beryl, and the library usually calls her Ruby, the most popular of the gemstone names.

There are some stereotypical mentions of Native Americans in the story. They’re not derogatory, and they’re minor parts, but there were a couple of things that struck me as being a little stereotypical, like the kids saying that they’re Comanche Indians doing a rain dance when they’re running around in the rain. I also didn’t care for the way the characters kept pointing out which people were “fat” or “fleshy.” They’re not really shaming these characters, just sort of remarking, but I just felt like it was rude and unnecessary. You see this sometimes in older children’s books. Fortunately, none of the fat characters are considered bad characters in this story, as they sometimes are in other books. There aren’t really any bad characters in the story in general. Jay is annoying at times and says things that put down his sister and girls in general in a bratty, macho kind of way, but nobody in the story is a villain.

Posted on by TracyC

Return to Gone-Away

Return to Gone-Away by Elizabeth Enright, 1961.

This story picks up the spring after the previous book, Gone-Away Lake, with Portia Blake’s parents purchasing one of the old houses in the abandoned resort community now known as Gone-Away Lake. They’ve bought the large house that’s in the best condition, the one formerly known as the Villa Caprice. The wealthy woman who had once owned it had died many years before in the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, leaving no heirs. Few other people would be interested in owning it since the lake has become a swamp, so the Blake family got a really good deal on it. The Blake family think the place is wonderful, filled with some amazing old things, and they’re looking forward to fixing it up and restoring the old garden. They plan to use the house as a summer home, and they will still live in their apartment in New York, where the kids go to school, for the rest of the year.

Portia’s aunt and uncle live nearby with her cousin Julian, and the two remaining residents of the old resort community, affectionately known as Aunt Minnehaha and Uncle Pin, still live there. Portia and Julian are part of a club they call the Philosopher’s Club, after Uncle Pin’s old group of friends, which includes Portia’s younger brother Foster and a couple of other kids who live in the area. They have a meeting space in another of the old, abandoned houses.

When the Blakes see the Villa Caprice again, the parents feel less optimistic about their purchase of the house because it looks shabbier than they remembered, and there is so much to fix. The adults know that it will take a lot of money and hard work to restore the house. However, the children are still enthusiastic because they know the old house is full of some fascinating things. One of the first things they run into is a dummy set up by the former owner to frighten and discourage trespassers. They nickname him Baron Bloodshed. When the adults realize that the old chandelier in the house is a Waterford chandelier, they begin to see that there may be some worthwhile treasures in the house after all.

The Blake family takes the children’s spring vacation to start cleaning the house and sorting through the things inside. They find some other valuable, collectible items, like a set of Lowestoft china and antique Chippendale furniture. The adults realize that, if they sell some of these valuable antiques, they can use the money to pay for the renovation of the house. The children have little interest in such things, but they are amazed by some of the old-fashioned features of the house, like the old dumb waiter. Foster climbs inside the old dumb waiter, gets stuck, and has to be rescued. His parents tell him off because it was a dangerous thing to do and the old rope holding it might have been rotten.

The children look forward to spending the whole summer exploring the house and seeing what other treasures it has to offer. Aunt Minnehaha tells them more about the wealthy woman who used to own the house, Mrs. Brace-Gideon, who was a very determined woman who was accustomed to telling everyone what to do and getting her way because of her money. She was self-centered and callous in some ways, but she was also a brave and just woman in others. When Aunt Minnehaha tells them a story about how Mrs. Brace-Gideon dealt with a burglar who was trying to rob her wall safe, Julian begins asking more questions about the safe because they haven’t seen any sign of it. Aunt Minnehaha says that Mrs. Brace-Gideon wasn’t a very trusting woman, so she probably either told everyone the wrong room it was in on purpose to keep its location a secret or maybe had it moved after that incident or removed the safe entirely when she decided that she wanted to move to California. Even if the safe still exists, concealed somewhere in the house, it’s not likely that it would contain anything really valuable because Mrs. Brace-Gideon might have taken her valuables to California with her. All the same, the kids think that it would be exciting to try to hunt for the safe, in case it’s still hidden somewhere.

The kids begin another fun summer, improving their club’s meeting place with discards from their new house, enjoying outdoor fun with their friends, hearing stories about the past escapades of the people of Gone-Away, and spending the night camping out in a spooky old house during a thunder storm. They enjoy finding new treasures among the abandoned belongings of Gone-Away, and before the summer is over, they find the greatest treasure of all!

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

My Reaction

This is a fun sequel to the original book! I loved hearing about the things the family discovered in their old house and how the adults let the kids have some neat old things for their club. The small details in the book are magical, like the addition of the dummy they call Baron Bloodshed and the way he keeps scaring them because they keep forgetting that he’s there until they stumble on him again.

It’s the sort of idyllic summer in a unique location that kids dream of having! I liked the treasure hunt for the lost safe, and there are many small adventures and escapades along the way. The stories that the older couple tell the children about wonderful past summers both offer the kids inspiration for their summer and are like little mini-stories within the bigger one.

Even though this old, abandoned community and the house the family is fixing up are charming, there is also some acknowledgement in this book that there are dangers in exploring and playing in the abandoned houses. The incident with the dumb waiter could have been dangerous, and there is also a collapsed stairway in the story. While these houses full of valuable antiques and hidden treasures are wonderful, the inclusion of some of the dangers of abandoned places, no matter how exciting they are to explore, add an element of reality to the story.

Posted on by TracyC

The Silver Nutmeg

The Silver Nutmeg by Palmer Brown, 1956.

It’s late summer, and it’s very hot. The well is dry, so Anna Lavinia has to go to the spring whenever they need water, and the paw-paws are falling off the trees even though they’re not ripe yet. Anna Lavinia is spending most of her time outside, singing songs from her favorite book Songs from Nowhere, because her mother is making the green paw-paws into preserves, and it’s a smelly process. Nothing seems like it’s going right, and even Anna Lavinia’s animal friends are grumpy because of the heat.

Anna Lavinia looks at Dew Pond Hill through the hole that her father recently made in the garden wall. He made it because he’s been thinking that Anna Lavinia has been too cooped up, and he wants to “broaden the horizon for her” and give her a new “point of view” in a very literal sense. Anna Lavinia thinks that she already has many points of views on many issues, but she does like the new vista that her father has opened up for her.

Things seem to improve on this very hot day when Uncle Jeffrey comes to visit. Uncle Jeffrey deals in spices, and he brings herbs and spices with him to replenish the family’s supply. Uncle Jeffrey also likes to collect samples of flowers and leaves, which he keeps pressed in a book with labels of their names (if he knows them) and the places where he found them. This time, Anna Lavinia notices a special purple flower in his book that she has never noticed before. There are no notes about it in the book, but she is sure that it is something special.

Then, she notices three men digging for something by the dew pond on the hill and decides to go see what they’re doing. Uncle Jeffrey warns her against going to the dew pond because he says that dew ponds are always bewitched. However, her mother thinks that’s nonsense and sees nothing wrong with Anna Lavinia going to look at the dew pond. When Anna Lavinia talks to the diggers, they joke with her at first that they’re digging a hole to go to exotic places on the other side of the world, but then, they admit that it’s just a ditch for water. They want to drain the dew pond! Anna Lavinia is upset about that, and they explain that they need the water to grow their parsnips. They say that this won’t be the end of the dew pond because they plan to fill in the ditch, and the pond will eventually fill up again. However, they really need the water now.

Anna Lavinia goes to look at the dew pond and enjoy it while she can, thinking how awful it is that it’s going to be drained just when her father created a new view of it for her. While she thinks about it, she tosses a few acorns in the water. Then, suddenly, one of them jumps back out of the water at her! Strangely, the acorn also seems completely dry. Curious, Anna Lavinia tosses in another acorn. This time, when it flies back at her, it has a note pinned to it that says, “Please don’t throw acorns at me.” When Anna Lavinia looks into the water, she doesn’t see her own face reflected back at her. Instead, she sees a blond boy in a green sweater. She looks around, but she doesn’t see anyone else by the dew pond but herself. When she calls out to the boy to ask where he is, he says that he’s on the other side of the pond – the underside!

The boy says his name is Tobias, and he’s playing with a boat on the pond. Anna Lavinia asks if he can come up to her through the pond, and he says he could but he promised his mother that he wouldn’t. However, she can come through the pond to him, if she likes. He says that, for her to get through, the water must be completely still, no ripples, and that she must jump in as hard as she can. Anna Lavinia asks what will happen if she doesn’t do it right, and Toby tells her that she’d probably just get all wet and get a scolding from her mother. Anna Lavinia debates about it because Toby is upside down compared to her, and she’s not sure how gravity will work on the underside of the pond. Toby says that the right side up depends on your point of view and there is no gravity where he is. He shows her a net in a tree where she can jump and teases her about being afraid. Deciding that it’s a small risk, Anna Lavinia jumps in along with her pet lizard, which she calls a thobby.

It works just like Toby said it would, and Anna Lavinia lands safely in the net. Once in Toby’s land, she experiences a strange sensation that they call “the tingle.” (It’s not a dirty thing, although I did raise an eyebrow at first.) This sensation is a kind of force that Toby says flows through the ground in his land, and it’s what keeps objects from just floating around all the time in the absence of gravity. If you lift an object off the ground, it will float around in the air because there is no gravity, but once it’s in contact with the ground or in contact with another object that’s in contact with the ground, it will stay where it is, held in place by this force, until someone or something else causes it to move. Toby describes it as being like a kind of magnetism.

With Toby’s help, Anna Lavinia experiments with this lack of gravity. Toby explains that people can’t fly in his land, although birds can fly through the air with their wings. People do lose contact with the ground if they skip or jump, but it’s usually not a big deal because they can sort of maneuver themselves in the air until they can get back down to the ground or grab hold of something that’s grounded. It’s impossible to fall.

All of Toby’s world is the underside of our world, and the ground they’re walking on is the inside of the ball that is the Earth. Because it’s the inside of the Earth, it’s dimmer than the outside world. The light that comes through comes through bodies of quiet water, like the dew pond. Toby says that, while people from this inside world can go to the surface area through any still pond, they typically don’t. For one thing, they find it difficult to deal with the gravity of the outside world, and it will turn them bandy-legged if they stay too long. For another, people who left used to be banished by their own people if they returned, so those who have gone to the outside world have often stayed. Toby’s Aunt Cornelia still misses the man she had planned to marry. After the two of them quarreled about his desire to see the world, he vanished, and Aunt Cornelia thinks that he probably went to the outside world, never to return. Things have changed now so that people who left are now allowed to return, so Aunt Cornelia hopes maybe her sweetheart will come back, but Toby doesn’t think there’s much hope of that.

When the children hear a baby crying, Anna Lavinia insists on finding the baby and seeing why nobody seems to be tending to him. It turns out that the donkey pulling a gypsy wagon has pulled the wagon over a cliff, which isn’t as dire as it sounds, since nothing in this land can fall. However, the wagon is now stuck sideways on the side of a cliff, and things from the wagon have been tossed around and are hanging in mid-air, including the baby in his basket. Toby and Anna Lavinia rescue the baby, and his grateful mother offers them a reward for their help. She gives Toby a tambourine, and she tells Anna Lavinia’s fortune. The fortune comes out strangely backward because Anna Lavinia is from the outside world, but from what they gypsy sees, it looks like Anna Lavinia is going to do something to make an old man happy.

Anna Lavinia has a lovely visit with Toby and Aunt Cornelia, but then, she suddenly remembers that the men are going to drain the dew pond today! By the time she and Toby return to the dew pond, it’s dry! With the pond dry on her side, Anna Lavinia can’t get home … unless still waters run deep.

This book is the sequel to an earlier book called Beyond the Pawpaw Trees, which first introduced the character of Anna Lavinia.

My Reaction

The book is sweet and would probably appeal to fans of Cottagecore. The characters sing songs and recite rhymes throughout the story, which might appeal to young children. I was a little divided over whether I liked having the story interrupted by the songs and rhymes, but the songs and rhymes really are a part of the story and add to its charm. It’s a little like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, where a girl goes to a magical land, where things don’t work as they do in the ordinary world.

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, there’s a lot of random nonsense, and that’s fun, but I liked that this particular story uses a kind of pseudo-scientific focus on magnetism and gravity. Neither the magnetism nor gravity works the way it does in the real world, and it adds a kind of science-fiction twist to the fantasy world in the story. Even with this almost science-fiction twist, we still have that old-fashioned, cottagecore style fantasy atmosphere that’s charming and whimsical rather than technical. I haven’t read the first book in this series, but I understand that it uses similar concepts. Nothing really stressful happens in the story, and it would make a nice bedtime story.

My one complaint is that there are some stereotypical gypsies and comments about gypsies in the book. They are always referred to as “gypsies” and not Romany or any other name, and for some reason, they make a point at the beginning of the story that gypsies always go barefoot. I’m not sure what the point to that was except to establish that gypsies have eccentric habits. It’s not unusual for children’s books from the mid-20th century to have stereotypical gypsies as characters, although it might rub people from the 21st century the wrong way.