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The Blue-Nosed Witch

BlueNosedWitchThe Blue-Nosed Witch by Margaret Embry, 1956.

Blanche is still a very young witch, but because of her magnificent blue nose (which she can make glow at will), she’s allowed to join a group of adult witches, Scurry No. 13.  Their specialty is beautiful flight formations on their broomsticks, and they’re planning a special one for midnight on Halloween.

But, Blanche has a bad habit of being late to everything.  Some of the other witches have started complaining about her, saying that she’s too young and irresponsible to be part of Scurry No. 13.  If she’s late for the flight on Halloween, they might decide to send her back to Scurry No. 2 1/2 with the other young witches, where she’d only be allowed to ride a whisk broom.

To make sure that Blanche will be on time for Halloween, her friend Josephine sets her alarm ahead a couple of hours to give her extra time to get ready.  Unfortunately, Blanche doesn’t know that Josephine did that, so she sets her alarm ahead herself.  When she wakes up on Halloween night, it’s still early evening, instead of late at night.

BlueNosedWitchPic1Blanche looks for her fellow witches but ends up joining a group of trick-or-treaters by mistake.  They love her blue nose and introduce her to the idea of trick-or-treating.  Thinking that even the grumpiest man in town would be impressed by Blanche’s amazing nose, they stop at his house, too.  The old man isn’t impressed by anything and plays a mean trick on the kids.  However, Blanche is a real witch, and she and her cat Brockett give the old man a real Halloween scare.

Blanche is having fun on Halloween, but will she keep track of time well enough to join the other witches in their flight?

Even though this wasn’t written to be an historical novel, in a way, it kind of is now.  One of the interesting things about this book is that you can tell from the way the kids are trick-or-treating that it’s the 1950s.  Kids today don’t get jelly donuts or apples while trick-or-treating, and in this day of giving out only prepackaged treats for safety reasons, the kids would probably have to throw them away if they did (sigh).  Also, there is still the implied threat of Halloween tricks when the kids go asking for treats, something less common today.  Instead of saying “Trick or treat!”, the kids say “Candy or cake or your windows we’ll break!” (although the kids later promise the adults that they’re not going to soap any windows).  My mother said that the popular saying when she was young was, “We are the beggars of the street.  Do we soap, or do we eat?”

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

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Posted on by TracyC

Terror on Cemetery Hill

cemeteryhillTerror on Cemetery Hill by Drew Stevenson, 1996.

Halloween is coming, and spooky things are happening around Wilsonburg. Randall Davis, a new boy in town, comes to the diner looking for Sarah because he’s heard that she likes to investigate mysteries. Randall’s mother has recently become the caretaker of the cemetery, and Randall enjoys astronomy, so he decided one night to take his telescope up on top of Cemetery Hill. While he was there, he saw what looked like a hideous monster. Randall asks Sarah to have a look around the cemetery and help him figure out what he saw.

After some persuading, Sarah convinces Clark and Frog to come with her. Not only do they see the creature in the cemetery, but they find Mrs. Biddle, head of the town’s group of psychic investigators, unconscious in the Wilson family mausoleum. The Wilsons are the family that the town was named after. Mrs. Biddle and her group have been told before not to hold any ceremonies or investigations in the cemetery because they disturb people.  She insists that she was investigating the creature in the cemetery and that it pushed her and knocked her out. Something strange is going on in the cemetery, but is it a creature come back from the dead, or maybe something to do with the recent bank robbery in town?

Everyone believes that the bank robbery was just one in a series of robberies staged across the country by a robber known as the Village Bandit because he tends to rob banks in small towns.  However, Sarah has a different theory.

This is part of the Sarah Capshaw Mysteries series.  It is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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Toying With Danger

toyingwithdangerToying With Danger by Drew Stevenson, 1993.

Sarah Capshaw is lamenting to her friend Clark that she hasn’t had an interesting case to solve since she and her parents moved to Wilsonburg when their friend Frog tells them that the local bully saw a monster at the old Harley farm outside of town.  Rumor has it that a mad scientist bought the place.  Naturally, Sarah wants to investigate.

It turns out that the “mad scientist,” Dr. Becker, is actually an eccentric toy inventor.  The “monster” is an electronic Frankenstein monster.  Dr. Becker is actually pretty nice and is even interested in seeing the detective board game that Frog is trying to invent.

Even though the monster wasn’t a real monster, there are still strange things happening in the woods surrounding the old farm where Dr. Becker’s workshop is.  The local bully is hanging around in the woods and trying to scare everyone away.  The kids also see a mysterious man hanging around, and Sarah wonders if he could be spying on Dr. Becker in order to steal his designs.

toyingwithdangerpic2It seems that Sarah is right that someone is trying to spy on Dr. Becker.  The kids learn more about the money involved in buying and selling toy designs when they visit the Too Wonderful toy company for a tour with Sarah’s grandfather.  Making toys is serious business, and companies guard their designs very carefully.  The Too Wonderful toy company wants to purchase some of Dr. Becker’s designs, but one of the members of the company says some strange things about Dr. Becker.  Can the kids trust him?  Can they trust the strange Dr. Becker?  Can Sarah catch the spy before it’s too late?

This is part of the Sarah Capshaw Mysteries series.

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One Ghost Too Many

oneghostOne Ghost Too Many by Drew Stevenson, 1991.

Clark Lannigan meets Sarah Capshaw by accident when she comes to spend the summer with her grandparents in Wilsonburg. Sarah’s grandfather, Conrad Capshaw, is a lawyer, and he is handling the estate of Rodney Maplewood. Rodney Maplewood used to be a museum curator and had an impressive collection of antiques which he kept in his large house, Maplewood Manor.

Maplewood Manor is the oldest and the spookiest house in town. It was once owned by the eccentric Antonia Whitemarsh, who was a spiritualist and believed that her father’s spirit still inhabited the house. Now, people in town think that Rodney Maplewood’s ghost is also haunting the house because lights have been seen in the house at night. Conrad Chapshaw also says that, although nothing is missing, some objects in the house have been moved around.

oneghostpic1Sarah persuades Clark and his friend “Frog” Fenniman to join her investigation of the house, but besides the resident ghost, they will also have to deal with a local group interested in psychic phenomena and a mysterious stranger who is paying the local bully to spy on the house.

This is the first book in the Sarah Capshaw Mysteries series.  Sarah and her parents move to Wilsonburg, and she has other adventures with Clark and Frog, all narrated by Clark.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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The Mystery on October Road

OctoberRoadThe Mystery on October Road by Alison Cragin Herzig and Jane Lawrence Mali, 1991.

A strange man has moved next door to Casey.  He always wears a bandana tied across the lower part of his face, like a bandit.  His pets are the strangest dogs Casey has ever seen, huge Irish Wolfhounds.  He’s started fixing up his new house, but for some reason, he only likes to work at night.

One day Casey and her friend Cats (really, they’re both named Catherine, but they each have nicknames) go to take the man some bread that Casey’s mother baked, and they’re frightened away by one of the dogs.  Casey goes back to get the bread they left behind, and the man tells her to go away and leave him alone.

Casey and her friends (Cats and Benny, a boy Cats likes) are curious about this strange man.  They even wonder if he could be some kind of gangster, hiding out.  At her friends’ urging, they sneak into his house one day to look around.  When the man comes back unexpectedly, her friends get away in time, but Casey falls and hurts her ankle.  The man finds her in his house, and she learns the truth about him.

The man isn’t a bad guy, and Casey even becomes a friend for him.  The story ends on Halloween, when the man creates a special Halloween display for Casey of beautifully carved pumpkins.  The part that always fascinated me was the way he carved them, by peeling the skin off the pumpkin and only leaving it in places where he wanted dark lines.

Part of the story is about how appearances can be deceptive.  The stranger is actually a good person, but he is physically disfigured, which is why he doesn’t like people to see him.  For part of the story, Cats isn’t really a very good friend for Casey, neglecting her feelings and the feelings of the mysterious stranger in order to impress Benny.  But later, when she realizes that Casey was right about the stranger and that she was really hurt in their little escapade, she shows that she can be a better friend, too.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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The Ghost on the Hill

ghosthillThe Ghost on the Hill by Grace Maccarone, 1990.

This is the last book in the Third Grade Ghosthunters series.

The kids take another field trip, this time to a state park. Native Americans used to live on that land, but most of the tribe died from disease many years ago. There are stories about spirits that live in the hills and the forest. Young boys from the tribe used to perform a ritual where they would dance with the Great Spirit in order to become men.

The third graders have been studying Native American history and customs to prepare for the field trip.  Norma wrote a report about Native American names, which tended to describe some significant characteristic of the person.  Their teacher tells the students that they should think of names for themselves which describe something significant about themselves.  Most of the kids think it sounds like a fun idea, but Joey doesn’t.  He’s just one kid in a family with a dozen other kids, and he’s never felt like there was anything particularly special about him.  That’s why he makes up tall tales about himself that all the other kids find weird and annoying.

ghosthillpicWhen they reach the state park, Dennis Ten Foot Bridge, who is the last of his tribe, tells the students about his tribe, teaches them wilderness skills, and leads them in group activities.  One evening, Joey goes out to practice some rowing on the lake by himself, and he sees what looks like a large ghost at the top of a hill  However, everyone knows that Joey lies about a lot of things, so at first, no one believes him.  At least, no one except Adam.

Adam agrees to help Joey investigate the mysterious spirit. Eventually, all of the members of the ghosthunting group decide to go up on the hill together to see the ghost for themselves.  There, Joey finds the courage to face the spirit directly, and everyone sees the truth. Together, Joey and his friends end up repeating the ancient coming-of-age ritual that the tribe that used to live there would perform.

The solution to the mystery is a little strange, but the book is great for the characters alone. This final book in the Third Grade Ghosthunters series is a coming-of-age story. The other books in the series addressed personal issues and personality quirks in the characters as side-plots, such worrying about not being as smart others, worries about making and keeping friends, and the trouble with teasing. This one focuses on Joey and his sense of identity. He’s always felt that there is nothing special about him compared to his brothers and sisters. In this story, he develops his own character more and gains new confidence. In the process, he ends up becoming more comfortable with his role as a kid in a family with many children as well as appreciating his own uniqueness.  He also finds a name for himself that expresses his new sense of identity.

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Return of the Third-Grade Ghosthunters

return3gghostThe Return of the Third-Grade Ghosthunters by Grace Maccarone, 1989.

This is part of the Third Grade Ghosthunters series.

The same kids who were assigned to figure out the mysterious happenings at their school are now going on a field trip to a farm with their class. They’ll be spending a couple of days on the farm, sleeping over.  Adam has been looking forward to the trip, and he brings his ghost hunting gear with him, just in case.  He hasn’t lost his taste for ghost stories since their last adventure.

At first, things are pretty normal.  Then, during the night, the boys hear howling and see apparitions of a ghostly wolf in their bunk house. Could the farm be haunted?  Or is this some kind of mean joke?  Perhaps it’s the work of the class bully, Jeff? The ghost hunting committee assembles again to solve the mystery.

return3gghostpic2They try to use scientific methods to study the haunting.  They measure the placement of the furniture to see if anything moves while they’re out and sprinkle flour on the floor to get footprints.  But, even though they watch carefully and don’t see anyone enter the bunk house, when they go inside, everything is a mess, and the flour doesn’t appear disturbed.  Everyone else is about ready to admit that this one is a real ghost, but Adam has another theory.

The solution has an interesting twist to it. It’s a good mystery for kids beginning chapter books who like a little creepiness in their reading.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Haunting of Grade Three

HauntingG3The Haunting of Grade Three by Grace Maccarone, 1984.

Elwood Elementary has become overcrowded, so the third-graders have been moved to an old mansion, Blackwell House, which has been empty for years. The house looks kind of spooky, and there are a lot of local ghost stories about it. Fortunately, Adam Johnson likes scary stories, so he thinks that it’s wonderful to go to school there.

Soon after the students move into the house, strange things begin happening. Objects fall off desks and shelves, and door slam for no reason.  Some of the kids discover a grave marker on the property for a boy about their age who died during the Civil War.  The kids start getting nervous, and so does their teacher, Mr. Jenkins. Then, Mr. Jenkins decides to give the kids group assignments. Each committee gets to go to a different place in town and learn about it. Adam’s committee is assigned to study Blackwell House and decide if it’s really haunted. The kids think their assignment is pretty strange, but Adam is excited.  He wants to be a ghost hunter like on Ghostbusters!

HauntingGradeThreeMost of the group members are misfits in one way or another. Norma Hamburger is a shy girl, frequently teased about her last name. Debbie Clark is a talkative girl who’s really into science. Chuck Webber, Adam’s best friend, is the class clown, always telling stupid jokes (and one of the main people who teases Norma about her name). Danny Biddicker is strong and good at sports, but he worries that he’s not as smart as the others. Joey Baker feels overshadowed by his large family, so he tells tall tales to get attention. The other kids don’t understand and get annoyed with his lies. By working together, they not only learn the secret of Blackwell House, but they learn more about each other and become a real team and friends.

In the end, there is a reasonable explanation for the haunting of Blackwell House.  The kids take a methodical approach to the mystery, gathering their facts and ruling out various possibilities along the way.  Joey gets a chance to be a real hero, Danny proves to himself and everyone else that he’s smart and has good ideas, and Adam gets a new life ambition.

HauntingG3Pic

One other thing that I thought was interesting is that Adam, the main character in the story, is African American, but it’s never mentioned in the text of the story.  You only know because it’s shown in the pictures.  It’s just a little detail and not important to the story, but I thought it was interesting in a story that encourages kids to notice details.  I also liked it that Adam isn’t defined by race or appearance as so many characters in kids’ books are.  He stands by himself as an interesting character with his own ideas, courage, and leadership abilities.

This is the first book in the Third Grade Ghosthunters series.  It is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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Wrapped in a Riddle

wrappedriddleWrapped in a Riddle by Sharon E. Heisel, 1993.

Miranda is living with her grandmother in Oregon while her scientist parents are away studying algae in Antarctica. Her grandmother owns a bed and breakfast called The Jumping Frog, which has a Mark Twain theme. At first, all Miranda is concerned about is finding some friends and fitting in at her new school, but soon strange things start to happen at the bed and breakfast.

First, someone attacks their housekeeper, hitting her over the head with a bust of Mark Twain. Then, some letters that were written to an ancestor of Miranda’s by Mark Twain himself are stolen.

Although Miranda’s grandmother likes to think the best of everyone, Miranda is convinced that the villain is someone living in the bed and breakfast. With her new friends (the main characters from A Little Magic, another book by the same author) Miranda begins her investigation, determined to find the letters for her grandmother, although it may mean solving a double mystery.  There is more that one person in the bed and breakfast with something to hide.

One of the fun things about this story is the riddles that Miranda and her grandmother like to tell each other.  Even her friends enjoy riddles, and they help provide Miranda with the inspiration to solve the mystery.

This book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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All The Children Were Sent Away

All the Children Were Sent Away by Sheila Garrigue, 1976.

It’s 1940, and Sara Warren’s parents are sending her to stay with her uncle in Canada until the war is over.  With the increasing bombings of England, her parents have decided that it’s just too dangerous for Sara to stay, and her uncle has written, asking them to send her.  Many other British families are sending their children away to escape the bombings, and Sara travels to Canada on a ship with other British child evacuees.  All of them are worried about the families they’ve left behind and what it’s going to be like, living in another country.  They also worry about whether or not they’re ever coming back.

Sara’s escort for the trip is Lady Drume.  She is a bossy, over-bearing woman with very definite ideas about how children should be raised.  She doesn’t like Sara to talk to the sailors on the ship because they can be “impertinent,” and she doesn’t want her to play with the other children because they’re “guttersnipes!”  She even refuses to attend the lifeboat meeting or let Sara go without her!  To Sara’s mind, Lady Drume is as bad as any Nazi.

Sarah still manages to make friends with some Cockney children, Ernie and Maggie, seeing them whenever she can get away from Lady Drume, and an old sailor called Sparky makes sure that she understands safety on board the ship and attends the lifeboat drills.

But, when Lady Drume forces Sara to cut her hair after she’s been waiting so long for it to grow out, Sara decides that’s the last straw!  With the help of her friends, Sara hides from Lady Drume on the ship.  In the process, she learns something about Lady Drume which changes some things for the better, although it takes an outbreak of measles for Lady Drume to really understand and appreciate Sara.

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

My Reaction

Part of trouble with Lady Drume and her behavior is that she’s actually very afraid.  She doesn’t like to talk about lifeboats or life jackets because the war and the possibility of sinking frighten her.  She deals with problems by being brusque and trying to ignore frightening things, charging on ahead with whatever seems like a practical course of action to her.  It’s not even just the war but the changing world around her that frightens Lady Drume, a woman who’s used to knowing who’s who and what’s what and getting things done the way she likes them.  But, the rigors of their journey and their mutual vulnerability when they’re sick help lower Lady Drume’s barriers.  Lady Drume isn’t a bad person, and in the end, she arranges a special surprise for Sara to make her exile from England more bearable.

The end of the story is a brief section explaining Sara’s return to England, having been away for a few years, and her feelings at seeing how England and her parents have changed during that time.

There is a sequel to this book that shows what happened during Sara’s time in Canada called The Eternal Spring of Mr. Ito.  It focuses on suspicion of Japanese people following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  There were Japanese internment camps in Canada as well as the United States during World War II.

Sheila Garrigue’s books about child evacuees from England were partly based on her own experiences as a child evacuee during World War II, as explained in her obituary after her death in 2001.