Posted on by TracyC

River Quest

Dinotopia

#2 River Quest by John Vornholt, 1995.

Thirteen-year-old Magnolia and Paddlefoot, a Lambeosaurus, are apprenticed to the Habit Partners of Freshwater. Habitat Partners keep an eye on different aspects of the environment on Dinotopia and make sure that the environment is maintained and cared for. The Habitat Partners of Freshwater are specifically concerned with the bodies and sources of freshwater all over Dinotopia.

When Magnolia’s master, Edwick, is injured badly during the eruption of a geyser, he and his partner, a Saltasaurus named Calico, retire and leave the post to Magnolia and Paddlefoot. Magnolia thinks that she is still too young for the position, and she and Paddlefoot worry about whether they are ready to handle the job. However, they have no choice because a crisis has arisen, and Edwick is in no shape to handle it.

The Polongo River, which supplies the water for the waterfalls that power virtually everything in Waterfall City, is drying up. Magnolia and Paddlefoot must journey up the river to find out what is happening and restore the river to its proper course.  Along the way, they find friends who can help them, but completing their mission means coming perilously close to the Rainy Basin where the meat-eating dinosaurs live.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Windchaser

Dinotopia

#1 Windchaser by Scott Cienein,1995 .

Raymond Wilks is the son of a ship’s doctor. They are sailing on a ship taking convicts to the British colonies in Australia when the prisoners revolt and take over the ship during the middle of a terrible storm. Raymond’s father is killed, and the ship is wrecked, but Raymond escapes with a young thief named Hugh O’Donovan. The two of them are taken to shore by friendly dolphins, and they meet up with some of the inhabitants of Dinotopia.

At first, they are frightened of the dinosaurs, but everyone is kind to them. They are taken to Waterfall City, one of the most beautiful places in Dinotopia, and they begin learning about the history and ways of the land. People in Dinotopia don’t use money, and everyone shares with each other, trading goods and services for everything they need. There is no crime in Dinotopia because everyone has all that they need and everyone looks after each other.

Raymond, although still mourning his father’s death, thinks that Dinotopia is a wonderful place, and he admires the attitude of the people there. Hugh, who was orphaned at a young age and forced to steal to survive, has difficulty believing that the people are all as nice as they seem or the society as perfect as they say. His harsh childhood has taught him not to trust others too much. Little by little, the people of Dinotopia win Hugh over, and he desperately wants to become worthy of the kindness that people show him, although he doubts whether he ever can.

As Hugh and Raymond struggle to come to terms with their new life in Dinotopia, they encounter a flying dinosaur called a Skybax who is suffering from an old injury. The Skybax, called Windchaser, shows up from time to time and causes trouble. He is the only unhappy creature they have seen since arriving in Dinotopia, and Raymond develops a strong desire to learn what is wrong with him and help him. Raymond’s struggles to help the unhappy dinosaur lead him into danger, and Hugh fears that he may lose the best friend he’s ever had.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The Rag Coat

The Rag Coat by Lauren Mills, 1991.

Minna is a poor girl, the daughter of a coal miner.  Her father has been ill with the miner’s cough, so Minna has to help her mother to make quilts that the family can sell for money.  She wants to attend school, but she can’t because she is needed at home and her family can’t afford a warm coat for her when winter starts.  It’s too bad because Minna really wants to make some friends her own age, and she would meet other children at school.  Her father says that he will find a solution to the problem, but he dies before he can.

After Minna’s father’s death, some of the other women in the community come to the house to work on making quilts with Minna’s mother.  When the women say that the quilt pattern they are using is named after Joseph’s Coat of Many Colors, Minna wishes again for a coat.  When the other women, who are mothers themselves, realize that Minna cannot go to school until she has a coat, they decide to make one for her.  They don’t have much money, but they do have plenty of quilting scraps.  They decide to make a new, quilted coat for Minna out of their old scraps.

Minna starts going to school and does well, although she gets some teasing because, as a new student who has never been to school before, she has to sit with the youngest children, and Shane pulls her braid.  Something that Minna particularly likes at school is Sharing Day (what my school always called “Show and Tell”), where students are given the chance to show special things to the class and talk about them.  Minna decides that when her coat is ready, she will show it to the class during Sharing Day.

As the coat is being made, Minna admires all of the beautiful colors of the cloth scraps in the coat and adds a piece of her father’s old jacket as well.  Each of the other scraps in the coat also has a story that goes with it.  The cloth pieces come from old clothes and blankets that people in the families of the quilting mothers have used, and they memories attached to them.  The mothers tell Minna all of the stories as they work on the coat, and Minna loves it.

However, when Minna wears the coat to school for the first time, the other kids make fun of her for wearing rags.  Minna is really upset and runs away into the woods.  After thinking about it, Minna remembers what her father said about how people really need other people, and she decides to go back to school.  There, she tells the other students that the rags in her coat are actually their rags, and she begins reciting the stories that go with them.

One of the scraps is from Shane’s old blanket from when he was a baby.  He was born so small that everyone was afraid that he’d die, but the blanket kept him warm, and he later carried it around with him until it fell apart.  Shane is happy, seeing the scrap of his favorite blanket again in Minna’s coat.  Everyone else gathers around Minna, looking for their scraps in the coat and listening to the stories behind them.  Each of the scraps in Minna’s coat is like an old friend that none of them ever thought they’d see again.  The other children apologize to Minna for their teasing and Minna says that friends share and that it took all of them to make her coat warm.

My Reaction

The book doesn’t say when this story is supposed to take place, but based on the children’s clothing, I think it’s about 100 years ago or more. It doesn’t say exactly where this story takes place, either, but a note on the dust jacket says that it takes place in Appalachia. The author said that she was inspired by Appalachian crafts that she learned from the women in her family and a patchwork coat that she wore as a child. However, years later, the author revisited this story and rewrote it in a longer version, and some of the explanations that accompany the new version of the story elaborate more on the background.

The author rewrote this story in a longer, novel form called Minna’s Patchwork Coat (2015). In the back of that book, the explanation behind the story mentions that the year of the story is 1908. It also discusses some cultural references and songs included in the expanded version of the story that were not part of the original. It states that the inspiration for this story came not only from the author’s experiences but from a song written by Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors, which was made into a picture book itself after the publication of this book.

There is also an expanded retelling of the story called Minna’s Patchwork Coat, and I’d like to talk about some of the differences. For example, the ending message of the story is slightly changed in the longer version, or at least the emphasis of the moral is different. The original book emphasized how much “people need people” and how the goodwill of many people (in the form of the quilting mothers and their hard work and scraps, cast-off from all of their children) changed Minna’s life. They emphasize it at the end, talking about how Minna’s coat is the warmest of all of them and that it took a lot of people to make it that way. However, in the expanded version, Minna also explains that when she started school, she liked her classmates better than they liked her because, thanks to their mothers’ stories as they made her coat, she already knew who the other children were, but none of them really knew anything about her. The message of the expanded version is that it is important to learn others’ stories to learn who they really are and to become friends with them.

Actually, I don’t like the second version of the story as well as the original. I thought that the moral and the story were stronger when the focus was on how people benefit from having relationships with other people because people can do great things when a lot of people contribute a little. Remember, it took a lot of people to make Minna’s coat warm because each of them contributed at least one scrap to it and others took the time to put them all together. It was their stories that made the coat special, more than just an ordinary coat. The expanded story has that element, too, but more emphasis is placed on Minna needing to share her story with the other children to win their respect and approval. I didn’t like the notion that Minna needed to win their approval by telling her story. Also, this story takes place in a small mining community. I find it difficult to believe that the other kids wouldn’t basically know her story already. Her mother knows their mothers. Their families see each other at church before Minna goes to school. The disease that took her father’s life isn’t terribly unusual for coal miners, and probably, a number of the other children are the children of coal miners as well. It seems to be the major industry in the area. Minna’s family might be more poor than the others’ since her father’s illness and death, but I don’t see why their circumstances would be so different and incomprehensible to people who must have seen her and her family around and who knew them from church or through their parents’ associations. One thing that small towns and communities are known for is everyone knowing everyone else and their business, so why didn’t they all know Minna’s story already? Even if the quilting mothers didn’t talk about helping to make the coat for Minna, the other kids should have known about the family’s money circumstances and the tragic death of Minna’s father. I don’t see why the other kids would have known so little about her or thought that she was so unusual.

The expanded version of the story also features a Cherokee midwife and a biracial friend for Minna who did not appear in the original story. This friend, Lester, is also something of an outcast among the other children, and Minna and the stories from her coat help the other children to be more accepting of him as well. It’s a nice thing, I guess, but it felt a little artificial to me because I knew that it wasn’t part of the original story. I hesitate to criticize it too much because the basic message of the story isn’t bad, but I guess that the way the second version came out just doesn’t have the same feel to me. The author put things into it that weren’t in the original, and with that change in emphasis on the ending, it makes the story and characters feel a little less natural to me now. I often feel the same way when I see a movie version of a story that adds things that weren’t in the original book.

Posted on by TracyC

Linda Craig and the Clue on the Desert Trail

Linda Craig

Linda Craig and the Clue on the Desert Trail by Ann Sheldon, 1962.

Linda and her friend, Kathy, are exploring Olvera Street in Los Angeles before a horse show when Kathy notices a strange man watching them.  While the girls were shopping, Linda bought a small horse statue that reminded her of her own horse.  As the girls finish lunch, Linda notices an odd symbol on the statue that looks like an arrowhead, but before she can study it more, the man grabs the horse and runs off.  Linda tries to chase him down to get the horse back, but the man drops it and breaks it.  Linda picks up the horse’s head and decides to go back to the shop where she bought it to see if she can get another one.

The shop doesn’t have another horse like the one Linda bought.  It was unglazed, and the others are glazed.  Disappointed, Linda goes on to the horse show, where she is taking part, along with her brother Bob and his friend Larry.  At the show, they see the mysterious man again, and he apparently steals the broken head of the horse statue that Linda had kept.  Bob thinks that maybe the man is some kind of smuggler and that there was something hidden in the head that Linda hadn’t noticed.

Linda goes back to the shop to talk to the owner again, and he tells her that the horse was a special order from Mexico for a man named Rico.  Rico said that he was a traveling salesman and that he would collect the horse at the shop, but when he didn’t turn up to get it, the shop owner decided to sell it. Linda asks the shop owner to send her another horse statue like the broken one if one comes into his shop and reports all of this information to the police.  Then, when she returns to the horse show, she finds a threatening message, warning her to “Beware. Stay away from C. Sello.”  The note is signed with the symbol of an arrowhead, similar to the one on the horse statue.  Linda also reports this note to the police, but she can’t resist trying to figure out who C. Sello is and how this person fits into the mystery of the possible smugglers.

Soon after, the shop owner calls Linda to say that another horse statue did come into the shop and that he has sent it to her but now someone has broken into his shop and smashed every horse statue he has. Realizing that what they wanted was not in the shop, the bad guys are soon on Linda’s trail, even kidnapping one of her friends by mistake, thinking that it’s her. They even try to poison Linda’s horse!

At the end of a desert trail, the Mojave Trail, there is a ghost town with sinister characters and old cliff dwellings with Native American petroglyphs that may hold part of the secret to the mystery.

The story contains some anecdotes about California history, which is interesting. I have to admit, though, that I thought that the warning note for Linda was pretty silly. C. Sello turns out to not be a person but a clue about what the smugglers are smuggling, and they didn’t have to tell Linda what it was because she hadn’t heard about it at that point and wouldn’t have any reason to know what they were talking about. If they really wanted to get her to leave them alone, they could have left a more vague warning that didn’t include any clues like “Go home!” or “Go away!”

Posted on by TracyC

Kate’s Camp-Out

Sleepover Friends

#6 Kate’s Camp-Out by Susan Saunders, 1988.

Kate’s family is spending the weekend at a cabin at Spirit Lake, and Kate is allowed to bring her Sleepover Friends with her.  However, what promised to be a fun and exciting weekend soon comes with complications.  First, Kate discovers that the Norwood family will be in a cabin nearby.  Dr. Norwood is a colleague of her father’s, but his two sons, Sam and Dave, are pests who like to play practical jokes.  When they arrive at the cabin, there is also no electricity (a problem that they fix the next day), and they learn that the reason the lake is called Spirit Lake is because there are some scary stories about the place.  Kate’s father tells the girls a story before bed about an old fur trapper who murdered another fur trapper for his money.  The ghost story is interrupted by Dr. Norwood, who comes over to see if everything is all right because there have been some break-ins in the area recently.

The girls are spooked by the ghost story, but the next day, they also encounter the Norwood boys and realize that they’re every bit as awful as Kate remembers them.  First, Sam and Dave trick a couple of the girls into wading out into a deeper area of the lake so that they’ll fall in and get wet.  Then, when the families meet for a barbecue, the boys give a couple of the girls worms in a bun instead of sausages.

Because of their bad experiences with the boys, the girls are allowed to go back to their cabin while the others finish the barbecue.  While the girls are at the cabin, they accidentally find a secret hiding place in the fireplace with a pouch of old coins inside!  The girls wonder if that could be the stolen money from the ghost story, but Stephanie, who has been reading a book about ghost stories from the area, says that the dates on the old coins are later than the story took place.  According to the book, a ghost child was once seen around their cabin, but the girls can’t figure out why a child would have hidden so much money.

While the girls wait for the adults to return from the barbecue, they fix dinner for themselves and decide to hold a séance to contact the spirits.  They don’t really believe that the séance will work when they try it, but without any tv or radio, they don’t have anything else to do, and they can’t get their minds off the ghost stories. 

To the girls’ surprise, they actually hear strange knocks in reply to the questions that they ask the spirits.  Then, a child’s giggle convinces them that it’s just the Norwood boys, spying on them and trying to scare them again.  It’s the last straw, and the girl plot how to get even with the Norwood boys!

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

This is one of those stories that has a somewhat ambiguous ending. When the girls try to catch the Norwood boys playing ghost, they instead discover the identities of the people behind the recent break-ins at the cabins. Later, they learn that Sam and Dave actually have alibis for the time that they heard the ghost noises, leaving them wondering if the knocking and giggling could have actually been a ghost. The girls do manage to play a prank on the boys before the end of the story, but they never learn the story behind the old coins.

I liked the part where they never firmly establish whether or not there was a ghost because it’s fun to leave people wondering. People who like ghost stories can imagine that the girls did hear a ghost, but if you don’t like the scary explanation, you can imagine that there’s another explanation for the noises. However, I found the lack of resolution behind the presence of the coins a little disappointing. The owner of the cabin they were using lets each of the girls keep a single coin as a souvenir (and the coins really are valuable collectors’ items) and gives the others to a local museum. I think I would have liked the story better if the girls found an explanation for the presence of the coins at the museum, so at least part of the story would be resolved.

There are two main theories that I have behind the events in the story. One is that the thieves in the area hid some stolen coins in the cabin for some reason and they were the ones trying to scare the girls during their seance. The other is that the mystery of the coins ties in with the child ghost in some way, hinting at dark unknown deeds from the past. Alas, there is no confirmation about which of these theories, if any, is true.

Posted on by TracyC

Is It Soup Yet?

The Land of Pleasant Dreams

Is It Soup Yet? By Ane Weber, Ron Krueger, and Tony Salerno, 1986.

When Benny enters the Land of Pleasant Dreams, he meets Ricrac Rabbit.  Ricrac is trying to cook something for his friends, but he’s worried because the only thing he knows how to make is broccoli soup, and he doesn’t know if his friends will like it because they all have different tastes.

Because Benny’s father is a chef, he suggests that Ricrac try his recipe for black bean broth because everyone loves that when his father makes it.  Ricrac decides to give it a try, adding the black beans to his broccoli soup. 

However, as each of Ricrac’s friends arrive, they also decide to bring their favorite ingredients with them.  Bobbin the Horse brings barley, and Threads the Bear brings blueberries.  Then, Snips the Dog brings a bone, and Lacey the Lamb brings buttercups.  In an effort to please everyone, Ricrac adds each ingredient to the soup.

When they finally try it, the soup is horrible.  At first, everyone argues about which ingredient ruined the soup, but Benny realizes that their real mistake wasn’t trying the soup according to Ricrac’s original recipe.  When they try the broccoli soup as it was supposed to be made, without the extra ingredients, it’s really good.

Moral: Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth.

The point of the story is that trying to please everyone often means pleasing no one.  When planning a project, if you try to stretch it in too many different directions, it’s difficult to accomplish anything because you’re not focusing on anything in particular. In the end, you have to pick one way and stick with it, focusing on what you can do best.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. This book was made into an episode for the tv series with puppets. Sometimes, you can find it or clips of it on YouTube.

Posted on by TracyC

Max, the Bad-Talking Parrot

Max, the Bad-Talking Parrot by Patricia Brennan Demuth, illustrated by Bo Zaunders, 1986.

Don’t worry, Max’s “bad” talk isn’t really that bad.

Max is a parrot who belongs to a woman named Tillie.  They live in a house that has been made into two apartments.  The woman who lives in the apartment above them is Mrs. Goosebump.  Mrs. Goosebump is Tillie’s friend, and Max likes her, too.

Because Mrs. Goosebump works the night shift in a toll booth, she always comes to see Tillie and Max in the morning, when her shift is over.  Max always greets her with one of his rhymes.  Everything Max says is a rhyme.

However, one day, as Max is dozing on Mrs. Goosebump’s shoulder during one of her visits, he thinks that he hears her calling him an ugly bird.  Max gets upset and returns to his cage, not ever saying goodbye to Mrs. Goosebump when she leaves.  He feels badly about the insult, and when Mrs. Goosebump visits later, he only gives her insulting rhymes, like, “Cupcake, bagel, cinnamon roll, Your brain’s as full as a donut hole!”

Mrs. Goosebump and Tillie have no idea why he’s so angry. The only thing that they can think to do is ignore him.

Later that night, a burglar breaks into Tillie’s apartment and starts stealing some of her things, including Max!  Max is scared, but by coincidence, the burglar stops to pay at Mrs. Goosebump’s tollbooth.  When Max recites some of his rhymes for her, she recognizes one of his usual rhymes and calls the police.

After Max is rescued, he finally tells Mrs. Goosebump why he was so angry, and Mrs. Goosebump explains that she actually said that he was “snugly”, not ugly.  With the misunderstanding cleared up, the two of them become friends again.  Max is also considered a hero for alerting Mrs. Goosebump about the robber.

When I was a kid, I thought that Max’s rhymes were funny, and the scene with the robber at the tollbooth is funny because Max tricks Mrs. Goosebump into believing that the burglar is insulting her before he says the rhyme that Mrs. Goosebump recognizes.  The book is also a good lesson about the importance of talking to people about what you’re feeling in order to clear up misunderstandings.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew

FiveLittlePeppers

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney, 1881.

Mrs. Pepper is a widow who lives with her five children in a little brown house.  Since her husband died when their youngest was a baby, she has supported the family by sewing.  The children try to help, but they are still very young.  The oldest, Ben, is eleven years old, and Polly, the next oldest is ten.  Their mother worries about providing them with an education, but they are barely scraping by as it is.

The family manages to get by, helping each other through crises, such as the time when everyone was catching measles.  Sometimes, they also get help from friends.

One day, when Phronsie (short for Sophronia), the youngest Pepper, about four years old, wanders off by herself, she is found by a boy named Jasper King and his dog, Prince.  They look after her until her brother, Ben, comes to take her home.  Jasper enjoys meeting the Pepper family.  He doesn’t have any siblings himself, and he thinks that it must be fun to live in a family of five.  Jasper and his father are spending the summer at a hotel in nearby Hingham, and Jasper thinks that it’s dull.  The Pepper children invite him to come visit again, saying that they will teach him how to bake like Polly does.

Jasper isn’t able to return to their house right away because he gets a cold, and Jasper’s father has been ill.  Phronsie thinks that it would be nice to make him a gingerbread man.  Together, the children make up a little basket of goodies for Jasper and his father.  The Kings are charmed by the gift, and Mr. King decides that he would also like to visit the Pepper family.  Unfortunately, due to Mr. King’s poor health and some business he has in “the city”, their visit to the area is cut short.  The Pepper children are sad that Jasper will be leaving so soon, but they invite him to return next summer.

Jasper continues to write letters to the family while he’s in the city, studying with the private tutor he shares with his cousins.  He remembers the Pepper children telling him that they don’t really celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas because they never have enough money to buy a feast or Christmas presents.  However, he urges them to try to celebrate Christmas this year, even if it’s only in a small way.  The Pepper children make small presents for each other, like paper dolls, doll clothes, toy windmills, and whistles, and put some greenery around for decoration.  Jasper also sends the family some surprise presents.

However, Jasper’s father says that he doesn’t want to visit Hingham again because he doesn’t think that the climate there is good for him.  Instead, Jasper persuades his family to let him invite Polly for a visit.  It takes some persuasion for the Peppers to agree because Mrs. Pepper is hesitant to accept favors and Polly worries about homesickness, but they are persuaded when Jasper says that he has been unwell and that Polly’s visit would cheer him up.  In the city, Polly gets her first taste of formal education, even having a music teacher.  However, she does get homesick, so the King family sends for little Phronsie to cheer her up.  The King family is charmed by both of the girls, and Mr. King gives Phronsie many dolls to play with.

One day, when Polly realizes that she has forgotten to write a letter to their mother because she was so busy with her lessons, Phronsie decides that she will write one herself and mail it.  She doesn’t really know how to write, but she scribbles something as best she can and slips out of the house to find the post office.  She is almost run over in the street, but fortunately, Mr. King finds her and brings her home.  She isn’t hurt, but the incident worries Mr. King.

After some thought, Mr. King decides to invite the rest of the Pepper family for a visit.  The day that the rest of the Peppers arrive, Phronsie surprises a pair of thieves in the house.  The thieves get away, and the excitement from the incident makes the Peppers’ arrival less exciting than it should have been.

The Peppers fit so well into the household that Mr. King invites the family to live with them permanently.  He offers Mrs. Pepper a job as housekeeper and says that he will help the children with their education.  Mrs. Pepper accepts, and it leads to the surprising revelation that Mrs. Pepper and John Mason Whitney, the father of Jasper’s cousins, are actually cousins, making them all cousins of the King family as well.

This book is mentioned in the book Cheaper By the Dozen as a book that Mrs. Gilbreth liked to read to her children.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive. It is part of a series.

Posted on by TracyC

Annie’s Promise

AnniesPromise

Annie’s Promise by Sonia Levitin, 1993.

This is the final book in the Journey to America Saga.  Annie, the youngest of the Platt girls, is more of a tomboy than her older sisters.  Her father thinks that she’s been growing up too wild in America, running around and climbing like a boy.  This summer, in 1945, while her best friend goes to visit their family’s farm in Wisconsin, Annie’s father wants her to stay home and help him with sewing for his coat business, and Annie’s mother has a list of chores for her to do.  It all sounds so boring and dreary.  Twelve-year-old Annie longs for excitement, but because of her recent appendix operation and her migraine headaches, her parents worry about her health.

Then, Annie gets the opportunity to attend summer camp.  She wants to go and do all the fun summer camp activities that other girls do, but her parents worry at first.  They worry about Annie’s health, and they don’t know who is running the camp or what they do there.  Annie’s older sisters, Ruth and Lisa, tell their parents that it’s normal for girls in America to go to summer camp and that the experience might do Annie some good.  When the family doctor says that Annie is healthy enough to go, her parents finally agree.

At first, camp is hard.  Annie faints soon after her arrival, and she worries that maybe her parents were right about her being delicate.  However, one of the counselors tells her that these things happen and that she was probably just overtired, overheated, and still suffering from the rough bus ride to the camp and that she will be fine after she rests.  Annie is physically fine, although one of the other campers, Nancy Rae, makes a big deal about the incident, calling Annie a “sickie” and other names.  Nancy Rae is a terrible bully, and Annie nearly drowns in the lake after accepting a dare from Nancy Rae to swim across it, in spite of not being a good swimmer.  Annie overhears the counselors saying that Nancy Rae should probably be sent home for goading Annie into a dangerous stunt, but they know that Nancy Rae comes from a bad home and that her father abuses her.  For her own sake, they decide to give her another chance.

However, even knowing Nancy Rae’s troubled history doesn’t help Annie when Nancy Rae keeps picking on her and a black girl named Tallahassee (Tally, for short).  Nancy Rae calls Tally and her younger brother (who is also at the camp) “nigger” and says that Annie is a “nigger-lover” when she tries to protect the younger brother from one of Nancy Rae’s tricks that could have really hurt him.  (Note: I’m not using the n-word here because I like it. I’m just quoting because I want you to see exactly how bad this gets.  Nancy Rae uses this word multiple times, and so do others when quoting her. This book is not for young children.  Readers should be old enough to understand this word and beyond the “monkey see, monkey do” kind of imitation some kids do when they learn about bad words.  The management assumes no responsibility if they aren’t.)  Nancy Rae is a thrill-seeker, who frequently does wild stunts to get attention and tries to make other girls hate Annie as much as she does.  At one point, she snoops through Annie’s things and tries to take her diary.  Eventually, she figures out that Annie is Jewish and makes fun of her for that, painfully reminding Annie of what it was like living in Nazi Germany and of her relatives, who died in the concentration camps.

Finally, Annie reaches the breaking point with Nancy Rae.  At a camp talent show, she arranges with other kids to dump horse manure on Nancy Rae’s head after she finishes singing a song.  Nancy Rae is so humiliated by the experience that she ends up leaving camp.  Annie is relieved that she is gone, but one of the camp counselors, Mary, makes her feel guilty about her revenge because she sees Annie as being stronger and more talented than Nancy Rae and wishes that she could have made Nancy Rae her friend instead, giving the bully a chance to improve herself.  (I disagree with what the counselor says, but I’ll explain more later why.)  Annie feels badly about how things turned out, but the incident blows over, and the rest of camp is a great adventure for her.

At camp, Annie mixes with different kinds of children from the ones she usually sees in her neighborhood and at school, and everything is a learning experience.  She becomes friends with Tally and gets a crush on a boy named John.  There is an ugly incident in which an assistant in the camp kitchen tries to molest Annie when he finds her alone (this really isn’t a book for kids), but the camp counselors dismiss him for what he did.  Annie and Tally talk about many things together, and Tally is very understanding.  The incidents with Nancy Rae and the kitchen assistant bring up the subjects of people who try to victimize others and how to deal with them.  Annie resents that people like that force others to be on their guard, limiting them in ways that they can behave in order to avoid being victimized, but Tally says that there’s no help for that.  As long as people like that exist, she says, protecting yourself is a necessity.  They also compare the way Annie feels when John gives her a little kiss to the repulsed and frightened way that she felt when the kitchen assistant tried to force himself on her.  Both incidents involved a kiss, but the way it was delivered and the person delivering it made each experience feel very different.  In the end, Annie’s crush on John turns into friendship rather than love as she realizes that the kiss was just a friendly gesture.  It is a little disappointing to her at first, but it is still a learning experience for her.

Annie learns that everyone at this camp has been through something bad in their lives.  Annie’s family are war refugees, but Tally’s father has been married three times, and she’s often the one to take care of the house and her younger brother, while her current stepmother cleans other people’s houses for money.  Other kids are poor or orphans or have fathers in jail.  The camp gives them a chance to get away from their problems for awhile, to make new friends, and to develop talents that they can be proud of.  Annie really blossoms at camp, learning to ride horses and work on the camp newspaper.  As Annie’s session at camp comes to an end, Mary offers Annie a position as a junior counselor for the final session of camp, helping the young children.  Annie is enthusiastic about the prospect, but family dramas at home threaten to derail her plans.  Ruth’s fiancé is shell-shocked from the war and has broken off their engagement.  Lisa is tired of arguing with their parents about every small piece of independence in her own life and has decided to move to a place of her own.  With all of this going on, and their parents upset about everything, what chance is there that they will sign the permission slip that Annie needs to become a junior counselor?

This book shows how much the lives of the girls in the Platt family have changed since they first left Germany for America.  It’s partly because they are living in a different country, partly because times and habits are changing everywhere, and partly because all of the girls are growing up and making decisions about what they really want to do with their lives.  The older girls in the family, Ruth and Lisa, are women now and thinking about careers and marriage.  As the girls suffer disappointments and changes of heart, their parents suffer along with them, and Annie realizes that she has to make up her own mind about what she really wants.  As Annie tries to decide what she really does want, her parents struggle to cope with all of the changes in their daughters’ lives and in the changing world around them.  They fight against it in a number of ways, and when things go wrong, whether it’s Annie’s illnesses or the older girls’ romantic problems, they tend to get angry or panic.  As the book goes on, it becomes more clear that what the parents really feel is helplessness.  More than anything, they’ve wanted life to be better for their daughters in their new country, and it upsets them when things don’t work out.  They want to help guide their daughters and make their futures work out for the best, but in the process, they often come across as too controlling or making the wrong decisions because they don’t fully understand the girls’ feelings or situations.

Ruth and Lisa each suffer romantic disappointment before they settle down.  Ruth had a fiancé, Peter, who went away to fight in World War II, but having seen the prisoners in the concentration camps, he has returned disillusioned and dispirited.  He was Jewish, but now comes to associate his religion and heritage with pain and suffering and wants to give it up, breaking off his engagement to Ruth in the process.  At first, Ruth is angry with him, saving that it’s like he wants to give up on his whole life, on the whole world.  The girls’ father says that he wants to kill Peter for leading his daughter on, but part of his feelings turn out to be his own feelings for somehow failing his daughter, that he is somehow to blame for allowing this disappointment.  When Lisa is upset because the young man that she’s been seeing says that he doesn’t want to get married, she argues with her parents about the course of her life and leaves home to live on her own.  Her parents see that as turning her back on their love and protection, but Lisa says that she just wants the independence that other girls have.  Even Annie feels abandoned by Lisa because Lisa was always there to comfort her as a sister and help her persuade their parents to listen to her, but Lisa says that she has to deal with problems on her own and that Annie will understand someday, when she’s in the same position.  Annie realizes that, in a way, she already is in the same position.

The one time that Tally comes to visit Annie at her house and the girls go to the beach together, Annie’s parents make a scene when she gets home because she’s left sewing all over the house and eaten more food than she should have.  Tally was going to apply for a sewing job with Annie’s father, which would have helped both of them, but Annie’s parents send her away, thinking that she’s a bad influence who encouraged Annie to goof off.  Then, Annie hears her own parents use the n-word.  It’s the final straw for Annie, and she runs away to camp.

The people at camp are glad to have her because they need her help, but being there, helping them, and thinking about her own life and future help Annie to realize what’s really important to her.  She’s been feeling bad about the hate she got from Nancy Rae and the hate that she felt from her parents with their insults to her friend.  However, her parents don’t really hate her, and in spite of what they’ve done, she doesn’t really hate them.  She realizes that, before she does anything more with the camp, she needs to go back and see them.

Annie rethinks what Nancy Rae was really about, how she was filled with hate for everyone, dealing out hatred because of all that she’d received from everyone else.  The counselors realized that she needed love more than anything, but Nancy Rae’s own hateful behavior pushed away the people who would have given her more positive attention and Annie’s revenge (although provoked) ended her camp experience.  Annie realizes that she doesn’t want to go down the same path and that she must mend her relationship with her family.

I said before that I disagreed with the counselor’s approach to the problem of Nancy Rae and what she said to Annie about her revenge.  I see what they were trying to do with giving Nancy Rae another chance, but what bothers me about it is that they act like Annie was in a much less vulnerable position to Nancy Rae and that she should have been strong enough to take what Nancy Rae dished out without hitting back, and I don’t think that’s true.  All of the kids at the camp were there because they had something troubling in their lives, some vulnerability, including Annie.  To say that Annie was more fortunate and more talented and that it should have been enough was to discount the harm that Nancy Rae was doing.  I know that the counselors were trying to make the camp experience positive for Nancy Rae, but she was making the camp experience more negative for everyone else around her and needed to be stopped.  Everyone suffers from something in life (as this book also demonstrates), but not everyone chooses to become a bully because of it.  Nancy Rae made that decision herself, within herself, and for herself alone.

Part of the problem, I think, was that there were no obvious consequences for Nancy Rae’s bad behavior, and therefore, she had no reason to stop doing what she was doing.  The lack of punishment and the inequity of the situation was what finally sent Annie over the edge with her.  Since the counselors didn’t make it obvious that Nancy Rae was in the wrong, Annie felt that she had to, and that says to me that there was a lack of responsibility and accountability.  I think that life is a balance and that both positive reinforcement (giving rewards to people who do good) and negative reinforcement (punishment for bad behavior) are necessary.  I believe in plain speaking, and if I were in the counselors’ position, I would make it plainly and specifically clear that no campers were to use the n-word, to mess with others’ belongings, or to do the other things that Nancy Rae was doing and that there would be consequences for doing so, telling them exactly what those consequences were so that no one could say that they were surprised.  I would also make it clear to Nancy Rae that I knew exactly what she was doing and why she was doing it and that it was unacceptable.  When we choose what we do and say in life, we all consider (or should consider) what we want to happen in life, and I would put it plainly to Nancy Rae how she really expects others to react to her and how their reactions would change if she did things differently.  Clearly, no one has ever told her that in her life before, and it was about time that she heard it from someone.  I suppose we could guess that the counselors may have said something of the sort to her out of hearing of the others, but I would also say the same thing to Nancy Rae’s victims.  Letting them know that I’d dealt with her adequately might head off their attempts to deal with her themselves and talking about what our behavior might lead others to do might also discourage revenge.

Also, the counselors were counting too much on the idea of friendship with Annie to get Nancy Rae to stop treating her badly, but that’s not at all the way that bullies work.  One of the primary reasons why people bully is that they know that there are a lot of people who like mean humor, and they use their bullying to bond with those people, not their victims.  Their friendships are formed on mutual contempt for the victim and the fun of humiliating that person.  They’re getting everything they want through their bullying, so there’s no reason for them to stop until someone else gives them consequences and puts an end to their bully support network.  I think that the counselors should have also talked to the people Nancy Rae was trying to bond with, explaining that they know what Nancy Rae is attempting to do and telling them that they would also be punished if they tried to help her, further cutting off one of Nancy Rae’s incentives to keep doing what she’s doing.

I’m not saying that it’s a perfect solution or that it would be guaranteed to work, just that I believe in being direct rather than letting things slide and just hoping that people will someday see the light.  Sometimes, people just need to have things spelled out for them in no uncertain terms.  If they chose to ignore what you say, then it’s on their own head, and they can’t say otherwise because you were clear and backed up your words exactly how you said you would.  I do think that the counselors were right that, in the long term, revenge never turns out well.  It often turns into a vicious cycle, as Annie later considers.  However, in this case, some proper handling in the first place, with consequences as well as words, might have headed off the situation before it got that far.

We don’t know what eventually happened to Nancy Rae by the end of the story, but I’m not sure that Annie is right to think that she wronged her.  In fact, she might have actually done her some good.  Sometimes, seeing others react badly to bad treatment can make a difference to someone’s future.  In my experience, people sometimes don’t realize that they’ve pushed another person too far until that other person finally reacts and says or does something.  Realizing that they’ve pushed someone too far can give them a reason to change because they realize that people won’t put up with their behavior forever.  Part of me thinks that maybe, at some point in the future, Nancy Rae might look back on this experience and quietly admit to herself that she had provoked it, being more careful the next time not to pick fights because she can be humiliated or excluded when people get fed up.  It might even help Nancy Rae to realize that she doesn’t have to put up with her father’s ill treatment forever because she also has the right to lose patience with bad treatment, too.  At least, I hope that this was a learning experience for her.

Annie realizes that both her parents and Nancy Rae are angry and hateful because of what they’ve suffered in their lives, but the problem is that both of them are taking it out on the wrong people.  Annie’s parents, at least, seem to realize that what they did was going too far and taking out their feelings on someone who didn’t deserve it.  By the time that Annie arrives home, they are also ready to make their peace with her and even support her return to the camp as a junior counselor, if that’s what she really wants to do.

The final days of World War II frame this story, beginning with the reports of Hitler’s death in the late spring of 1945 and ending with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese surrender in August.  With the end of the war comes a new chapter in the lives of the Platt family.  They’ve been through a lot together, but in spite of the girls growing up, moving out, and arguing with their parents, they still are a family.  There are no more books in the series, but Annie explains that Lisa gives up the dream she once had of being a dancer because she doesn’t think that she’s star material and because she decides that what she really wants is to get married and have children of her own.  In the end, she and her boyfriend get married, and she is happy with her life.  Similarly, Ruth, who is now a nurse, meets a new love when she visits Annie at camp and later marries him.  Annie realizes that she has found what she loves most in teaching young children, taking care of animals, and writing, and these things will form the basis of what she does with her future life.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Make a Wish, Molly

Make a Wish, Molly by Barbara Cohen, 1994.

This book is the sequel to Molly’s Pilgrim.

Things have improved for Molly in Winter Hill since she and Emma became friends.  Now, Molly doesn’t feel quite so alone as she once did.  However, Emma is still friends with the nasty Elizabeth (resident mean girl from the first book).  Molly has learned that a major part of Elizabeth’s resentment toward her is that Elizabeth is used to being the teacher’s pet and the center of attention at school.  In both first and second grade, she always seemed to be the favorite student.  Now, in the third grade, Elizabeth thinks that their teacher prefers Molly, and she can’t stand it.  So, she tries to make trouble for Molly whenever she can and make others not like her, too.

Emma tries to ignore Elizabeth’s nastiness and invites both girls to her birthday party.  Molly is excited because she’s never been to a birthday party in America before, and birthdays are celebrated very differently in America from the way they were in Russia.  Emma and Elizabeth (in her condescending way) explain how birthday parties are, that the birthday girl receives presents from her friends and gives them small party favors in return, and that there is cake and ice cream for everyone.  Molly has never had a cake like the ones that the girls look at in the bakery window and is eager to try it.  But, there’s a problem.

Molly’s mother says that it’s fine for her to go to the party and is willing to make some doll clothes for Emma’s birthday present, but she says that Molly cannot try the cake because the party will take place during Passover, and Jewish families like theirs cannot eat leavened foods during that time. Leavened foods are those that include rising agents, like yeast, baking powder, and baking soda, which includes cakes and breads. For Passover, Molly and her family are limited to things which don’t have these ingredients.

Instead, Molly’s mother packs a snack for Molly to take and eat while the others have the cake.  At first, Molly thinks maybe she could disobey her mother just this once and try the cake anyway without her noticing and without feeling different among the other girls, but when a piece of cake is placed in front of her at the party, she can’t bring herself to eat it.

Of course, Elizabeth takes advantage of Molly’s inability to eat the cake to make her feel bad and look bad in front of the others.  Elizabeth says that Jewish people don’t like to eat in Christian homes.  Molly tries to explain that isn’t the problem and to tell them about Passover, but Elizabeth ignores her explanation and just says that Molly’s reluctance to eat proves that what her mother told her about Jews was true.  (Let me just say that when a kid is as awful as Elizabeth is routinely, I always assume that the parents are exactly the same way.  I decided that Elizabeth’s mother was probably a bully and a snob back in the first book, so hearing that she’s been spewing anti-Semitic comments is no more than what I would have expected.  I view this type of behavior as an off-shoot of a bullying mindset, so I would completely expect that a person who is prone to one type of bullying would also engage in another. The apples never fall far from the tree.)  Molly knows that she can’t make the other kids understand the situation, so she just leaves in embarrassment.

When she gets home, Molly tells her mother about what happened.  Her mother says that everyone is a little different from other people, and there’s no use in pretending that they don’t live different types of lives from some of their neighbors.  However, Molly also has a birthday coming soon, and Molly’s mother thinks that if they invite some of the girls from Emma’s party to their house for a celebration, they will see that Molly’s family isn’t quite as different as they might think.

At first, Molly isn’t sure that it will be such a good idea, but it turns out better than she expects.  Her birthday is full of wonderful surprises.  There’s no cake, but Molly’s mother bakes other wonderful goodies, like rugelach (pastries with apples, raisins, and nuts).  Emma and another girl, Fay, try them and like them, but Elizabeth still refuses.  She also just looks defiant when Molly’s mother proves to her that Jews will wash and reuse plates that Christians have eaten from, not throw them away, like Elizabeth’s mother said before.  Once again, the issue with Elizabeth isn’t how correct or incorrect she (or her mother) was in whatever she said but whether or not she happens to look better than someone else at the current moment.  All Molly’s mother’s demonstration means to her is that she just lost another opportunity to look better than someone, and that annoys her.  But, Molly doesn’t care so much about Elizabeth’s lingering nastiness at that point because she knows that Emma is still her friend and Fay has just become a new friend.

There is also a movie version of this book, although the story was altered slightly so that the girl who insults Molly at the party says that it was her aunt who told her all the bad stuff about Jews, not her mother.  Also, the movie takes place in a time contemporary with when it was made.  The original book takes place in the past, judging by why the reasons why Molly’s family had to leave Russia and the clothes that the girls wear in the pictures.