Posted on by TracyC

The Magic Nation Thing

The Magic Nation Thing by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, 2005.

Abigail O’Malley’s life was turned upside down when her parents divorced when she was in kindergarten. They sold the family home, and her father went to live in Los Angeles and pursue his law career while her mother opened a detective agency. Abby isn’t fond of her mother’s detective agency and has no such ambitions herself. In fact, she would be satisfied if she just has a nice, normal family someday. She misses the nice house where her family used to live and doesn’t like the shabby Victorian house where she and her mother now live and use as the office of the detective agency. Abby envies her friend, Paige Borden, whose family has plenty of money and who life a much more “normal” life. Abby’s mother, Dorcas, isn’t too enamored of the Bordens, thinking that the family is boring. She wishes that Abby would become interested in joining her detective agency someday because the truth is that Abby isn’t quite normal herself, although she doesn’t like to think about it much.

Abby’s mother, Dorcas, says that Abby has an ability to notice information that other people miss, but that’s not quite it. Dorcas says that people in her family have had a “gift” for doing unusual things, like reading people’s minds or finding missing objects. Dorcas is convinced that Abby has inherited this “gift.” However, Abby denies having any such “gift.” As far as she’s concerned, she just occasionally gets hunches about things, and once or twice, they’ve turned out to be right. Abby resents the idea of a special gift partly because she thinks that her mother’s crazy desire to be a detective has something to do with her belief that she also has this special gift, and Abby doesn’t think she does. Abby doesn’t like to think about any of her relatives having been that strange. She just wants a normal family, like Paige’s.

However, Abby’s gift is re-awoken when her mother accepts a case involving a missing girl, who is believed to have been kidnapped by her own father because her parents are divorced. When Abby holds a locket belonging to the little girl, she begins to have visions, not unlike visions that she’s had at other times in the past. Mrs. Watson, who owned the day care that Abby used to attend said these vision episodes were just her imagination, which Abby used to think of as her “Magic Nation.” Abby has spent years trying to ignore it, but this is one of those times when it’s impossible to ignore. Abby has a vision of the little girl at Disneyland with her father. At first, Abby doesn’t want to admit the existence of this vision, but thinking about how worried the girl’s mother is, Abby casually suggests to her mother that, if the girl was taken in a custody dispute, her father might have decided to take her somewhere fun, like Disneyland, to try to win the girl’s favor so she’d want to stay with him. Her mother follows up on the hint, and with the help of the police, the girl is found and reunited with her mother.

That’s the end of the kidnapping case, but it’s only the beginning of Abby’s acknowledgement of her “gift.” Dorcas’s success in the kidnapping case brings more business to her detective agency. As Dorcas gets busier, Abby feels neglected, but Paige’s mother offers to look after her after school to help out, helping Dorcas to feel better about Abby’s friendship with the Bordens. Abby enjoys spending more time with Paige after school, and the girls even start getting along better with Paige’s annoying younger brothers, Sky and Woody. The youngest boy, Sky, particularly comes to like Abby when Abby intervenes after he makes the family’s intimidating cook angry by spilling juice in the kitchen. Abby sensed the boy’s fear and went to the kitchen to find out what happened. Although Abby still wonders how much of her “hunches” are really due to some kind of “gift” because they don’t work all the time, she increasingly realizes that what she still thinks of as her “Magic Nation thing” is not something that she can simply ignore.

Paige is fascinated by Abby’s mother’s work, and she particularly idolizes her pretty assistant, nicknamed Tree. When Abby tells her that her mother and Tree are investigating a case of arson, Paige talks her into coming with her on a little stakeout of their own, which messes up Tree’s actual stakeout and Dorcas’s plans. Dorcas is angry with the girls, and Abby finds herself using her “Magic Nation thing” to try to learn something about the arsonist and make up for ruining the stakeout. Abby does discover who the arsonist is, although she still doubts the reality of her “hunches.” When she shares that information with Tree, Tree also becomes aware of what Abby can do. Tree has known that Abby sometimes gets “hunches” about things, and although Abby still isn’t sure what to think about them, Tree says she’s noticed that Abby’s hunches pay off more than her mother’s do. Then, after the arsonist is caught and Paige goes overboard in her idolizing of Tree for catching the arsonist, Abby lets it slip that she was the one who figured out who the arsonist was.

Abby had been trying to keep this weird and questionable “gift” a secret, but once she tells Paige that she was the one who found the arsonist, she has to explain how she did it. To Abby’s surprise, Paige believes her about the “Magic Nation thing” and thinks it’s really cool. She’s noticed before that there are times when Abby seems to know things that other people don’t or learns things more quickly that most, and Paige thinks that’s a product of her “Magic Nation.” Paige is so enthusiastic about Abby’s “gift” that she thinks the two of them should start their own detective agency, and she starts trying to find cases for them to solve. Paige’s efforts to find an exciting mystery for Abby to solve don’t lead to much, and Abby finds herself doubting her “gift” and its usefulness again.

Then, Abby goes on a ski trip with Paige and her family, and young Sky disappears. Abby realizes that, whether or not her “gift” is real or reliable, she has to try again for Sky’s sake.

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

My Reaction

I like Zilpha Keatley Snyder books. She’s also the author of The Headless Cupid. This story is well-written and fun to read, and I enjoyed seeing how Abby comes to understand and accept her “gift” and make it work for her. I particularly liked the way that Abby comes to understand her “gift” and accept its limitations. There are points when Paige is disappointed or angry that Abby can’t use it to come up with all of the answers that she wants on demand, but Abby can’t make the “gift” do what her friend wants, and she makes it clear that Paige is going to have to accept that. Sometimes, Abby isn’t even interested in trying to use her gift in the way Paige wants, just like she isn’t really interested in using her gift to follow her mother’s profession. Abby comes to realize that an important part of learning to live with her gift is making it clear that this “Magic Nation thing” belongs to her – it’s her gift, to use or not use, as well as she can, in whatever way she sees fit. It’s her right to create her own boundaries, even refusing to talk about her “gift” when she doesn’t want to. The “Magic Nation thing” can’t be forced, and Abby herself won’t be pushed or bullied, either. This personal development is actually a bigger part of the plot than any of the mysteries that Abby solves or attempts to solve.

We don’t know what will happen with Abby and her “gift” after the story ends. There are hints that Abby might be willing to use her powers again, if the situation is important enough and she’s still able to do it. It seems that her mother no longer gets the visions that she used to get when she was Abby’s age, which is why her “hunches” don’t work out as well as Abby’s do now. Dorcas isn’t going to be able to rely on her “powers” to make her a great detective, but Abby comes to appreciate that her mother still enjoys her work and is pretty good at it, not because she’s relying on psychic powers, but because she works hard and is attentive to details. It’s possible that Abby’s powers will also fade as she grows up, but even if they do, it will be okay because Abby can also have a fulfilling life doing the things she loves and is good at. Dorcas is still more enamored of the idea of their shared “gift” than Abby is, but the reality is that neither of them really needs to rely on it. It might be there in the future, if they need it, but it’s not their only strength.

There are some contemporary cultural references in this story that help set the time of the story. Paige is a Harry Potter fan, Abby says that she has some Lemony Snicket books, and they refer to Jennifer Lopez, the Olsen Twins, Leonardo di Caprio, and Britney Spears.

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Happy Birthday, Little Witch

Happy Birthday, Little Witch by Deborah Hautzig, illustrated by Marc Brown, 1985.

This was one of my favorite Halloween books when I was a child, and so is the first book in the series, Little Witch’s Big Night. The first time I read these books, I read them out of order, but you really have to read the first book in order to understand Happy Birthday, Little Witch because it turns out that Little Witch still doesn’t understand the idea of trick-or-treating or that human children wear costumes on Halloween after meeting some children trick-or-treating on the previous Halloween. She really thinks that she met a small astronaut, pirate, and devil on Halloween, and that makes it difficult for her to find them when she wants to invite them to her birthday party.

The witches in Little Witch’s family are decorating and preparing for Little Witch’s birthday party, but Little Witch is sad. Witches are generally bad and nasty, and Little Witch knows all the tricks her family will pull at her birthday party. Little Witch is nicer than the other witches, and she wishes that her party could be nicer, too. Then, she gets the idea of inviting the new friends she met on Halloween, who she only knows as Pirate, Astronaut, and Devil.

She doesn’t know her friends’ real names, so she tries to search for them in place where she thinks that a pirate, an astronaut, and a devil might hang out, taking her cat Bow-Wow and her pet bat Scrubby with her. She hitches a ride on a rocket ship, but her astronaut friend isn’t inside.

She checks out a pirate ship, but her pirate friend isn’t there, and the captain makes her walk the plank.

As for the devil, she thinks that she should try someplace that’s red and hot and ends up in a tomato soup factory (which I think is the funniest part if you’re reading this as an adult and you realize what kind of red, hot place she was really thinking of going to look for a devil).

However, the cook in the factory suggests to her that if she’s looking for her friends, they’re probably in school. At the school, Bow-Wow the cat gets frightened and runs away.

When Little Witch gets home, she finds out that her friends are ordinary children. They found her pet cat and brought it to her house, so her mother invited them to join the party. Her friends introduce themselves by name for the first time.

Little Witch’s party is nicer than it usually is, and she gets to play different games with her new friends. Little Witch’s mother says that she loves her, even though she is more good that most little witches.

Something that I didn’t mention in the review of the previous book is that both of these books were illustrated by Marc Brown, who created Arthur. The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.

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Little Witch's Big Night

Little Witch’s Big Night by Deborah Hautzig, illustrated by Marc Brown, 1984.

On Halloween night, all the witches in Little Witch’s family are busy getting ready for their big broomstick ride. However, when Mother Witch sees that Little Witch has cleaned her room and made her bed, something too nice for a witch to do, she punishes her by telling her that she will have to stay home.

Because Little Witch is left at home, she is there to answer the door for three trick-or-treaters dressed as an astronaut, a devil, and a pirate. Since she doesn’t have any treats to offer them, she offers to give them rides on her broomstick.

The trick-or-treaters have a great time as Little Witch has her broom do tricks and she shows the pirate a real pirate ship.

The trick-or-treaters have so much fun that they promise to come back next year. Little Witch resolves to be good all year so that her mother will punish her again and make her stay home from the Halloween flight, so she will be there to meet her new friends when they come back.

However, when the other witches come back, Mother Witch says that she missed Little Witch on the flight and that she will get to come on the flight next year. Little Witch asks if she can bring some friends with her, and Mother Witch says that will be fine, as long as Little Witch isn’t too good.

This was one of my favorite Halloween books when I was a child, and so is one of the other books in the series, Happy Birthday, Little Witch. The first time I read these books, I read them out of order, but you really have to read the books in order to understand Happy Birthday, Little Witch because it turns out that Little Witch still doesn’t understand the idea of trick-or-treating or that human children wear costumes on Halloween. She really thinks that she met a small astronaut, pirate, and devil on Halloween, and that makes it difficult for her to find them when she wants to invite them to her birthday party. The Little Witch in this series isn’t the same as the Little Witch in the Little Witch Craft Books.

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

Posted on by TracyC

TACK into Danger

TACK into Danger by Marvin Miller and Nancy K. Robinson, 1983.

This book is part of the TACK mystery series, which is very much like the Encyclopedia Brown series, although it’s not as well known and doesn’t have as many books. In fact, my copy references Encyclopedia Brown on the back: “Move over Encyclopedia Brown … make way for the TACK Team!”

The books in the series are collections of short mysteries that readers are invited to solve along with the characters before looking at the answers. TACK is an acronym for the names of the main characters. They’re kind of a mystery-solving club of neighborhood kids, although they say that they don’t really have a clubhouse or regular meetings. They just help out members of their community by solving problems whenever they can.

T = Toria – Her full name is Victoria Gardner, but she doesn’t like being called Vicky. She is the one who narrates the stories. She wants to be a newspaper reporter when she grows up, and she considers the journals she keeps of the group’s cases to be good writing practice.

A = Abby – Her full name is Abby Pinkwater. Abby and Toria were best friends before she moved away. Now, Abby is considered their “Agent-on-Remote” because the others still consider her part of the group, and she still comes back to visit and becomes involved with their mysteries, even though she no longer lives close.

C = Chuck – Chuck is the best speller at school, and his participation in a spelling bee is part of one of the stories.

K = Will – His full name is Will Roberts, and he’s the leader of the group, although he leads in a very informal way. Will’s initial is the odd one out. They use ‘K’ in place of his initial both because it makes their acronym easier to pronounce and because ‘K’ stands for “SWITCH” in telegraph language, and they think that’s an appropriate code name for him “because of the way his mind can switch all over the place.”

Overall, I like the characters in the stories, and I think they’re well-written. They would be of interest to people who like Encyclopedia Brown and similar types of Solve-It-Yourself style mysteries.

Stories in the Book:

The Comic Book Caper

Toria and Will are on their way to Will’s father’s hardware story, where they’re supposed to be helping out, when Toria’s sister Holly says that she wants a comic book. Toria takes Holly to buy one so she’ll be entertained while the older kids are helping at the store. While Holly is looking for a comic to buy, Toria overhears a couple of rough sailors talking about someone they’re waiting to meet. They don’t know what the man they’re waiting for looks like, but there’s a code word that he’s supposed to use. Unfortunately, the code word turns out to be the name of the comic Holly wants to buy, and the men start following Holly, thinking that she might be some kind of courier. Toria is afraid of what the men might do to Holly because her comic contains a secret message relating to a boat that’s recently been stolen.

Spelldown!

Chuck is taking part in the county spelling bee, but the bad news is that so is a kid from Monrose, and the Monrose kids are known to be cheaters. The meanest kid at Monrose (and that’s saying something) is Red Jamieson, and he’s made it known that he’s going to do something terrible to Chuck if he doesn’t let the Monrose student win the spelling bee. Will tells Chuck not to worry about that because he’ll come up with a plan to distract Red so he won’t have time to come after him. One thing that Red can never refuse is a chance to bet on something. After the spelling bee, Will offers Red the chance to hit him while the two of them are standing very close together, but only on the condition that he pick the spot where they’ll stand.

The Great Blueberry Pie Robbery

Will and Cyrus are spending the day with Toria’s family. They were going to have a cookout, but they have to change their plans because it rains. Instead, they decide to spend their time inside, reading. However, Cyrus brings Toria’s mother some blueberries, which she makes into a pie. Everyone is looking forward to having the pie after dinner, but when dinner ends, they discover that someone has eaten all of the filling out of the pie. Toria’s mother demands to know who the guilty party is, and this time, Toria is the one who comes up with the solution.

TACK into Danger

Abby comes to visit her friends for the summer, and they tell her about the cases they’ve recently solved, especially the one about the boat theft. As their reward for catching the thieves, they’ve been getting free sailing lessons from the boat owner, Johnny, and Abby gets to join them. However, while they’re out sailing, someone else driving their motorboat recklessly breaks a sign and rocks their boat. The boom swings over and hits Johnny in the face, breaking his nose. The kids need to get Johnny to the Coast Guard station, but how will they figure out which way to go with the sign broken?

Zoo TACT-tics

Will’s aunt takes the kids to the zoo along with her young son, Nicholas. While they’re at the zoo, they spot a dog who has somehow found his way into the polar bear enclosure. Fortunately, the polar bear is asleep, but can they get the dog out without waking the bear?

E-Z Parties, Inc.

Holly’s birthday is coming up, and Toria’s mother is overwhelmed with playing for it. Every year, it seems like Holly’s birthday part is difficult: kids fighting and crying, Holly not wanting to invite certain girls to the party, Holly wanting to buy a wedding cake she saw in a store window, etc. Toria’s mother wishes someone else could handle all the fuss, so she hires Toria and Will to do it. They manage to pull off the party without the kids getting into any fights, although it gets tricky when trying to divide a piece of cake between a set of twins in a way that satisfies each of them.

Halloween Shadows

Toria isn’t happy that her mother made her a haystack costume for Halloween because it feels clumsy and it’s difficult to see out of. As soon as she and Will are finished taking their younger siblings trick-or-treating, she makes herself a ghost costume for when she and Will are going to meet Chuck for more trick-or-treating by themselves. However, while she’s waiting for the boys, she sees someone in a skeleton costume like Will’s with someone dressed like a ghost and follows them into the graveyard, where they climb a tree and just look down at her creepily. At first, Toria thinks the boys are playing a trick on her, but then Will shows up, proving that the kid in the tree wearing a skeleton costume isn’t him. It’s just a coincidence that there are two sets of kids wearing similar costumes. However, some angry adults come along because a kid in a skeleton costume and a kid in a ghost costume just played some nasty tricks at their houses. When the adults see that there are two sets of kids who look alike, can Toria and Will prove to them that the pranksters are the other kids?

Posted on by TracyC

TACK Secret Service

TACK Secret Service by Marvin Miller and Nancy K. Robinson, 1982.

This book is part of the TACK mystery series, which is very much like the Encyclopedia Brown series, although it’s not as well known and doesn’t have as many books. In fact, my copy references Encyclopedia Brown on the back: “Move over Encyclopedia Brown … make way for the TACK Team!”

The books in the series are collections of short mysteries that readers are invited to solve along with the characters before looking at the answers. TACK is an acronym for the names of the main characters. They’re kind of a mystery-solving club of neighborhood kids, although they say that they don’t really have a clubhouse or regular meetings. They just help out members of their community by solving problems whenever they can.

T = Toria – Her full name is Victoria Gardner, but she doesn’t like being called Vicky. She is the one who narrates the stories. She wants to be a newspaper reporter when she grows up, and she considers the journals she keeps of the group’s cases to be good writing practice.

A = Abby – Her full name is Abby Pinkwater. Abby and Toria were best friends before she moved away. Now, Abby is considered their “Agent-on-Remote” because the others still consider her part of the group, and she still becomes involved with their mysteries, even though she no longer lives close.

C = Chuck – The stories in this book don’t explain very much about Chuck and his background compared to the other characters, although he has a dog named Duchess who is the subject of one of the stories.

K = Will – His full name is Will Roberts, and he’s the leader of the group, although he leads in a very informal way. Will’s initial is the odd one out. They use ‘K’ in place of his initial both because it makes their acronym easier to pronounce and because ‘K’ stands for “SWITCH” in telegraph language, and they think that’s an appropriate code name for him “because of the way his mind can switch all over the place.”

Overall, I like the characters in the stories, and I think they’re well-written. They would be of interest to people who like Encyclopedia Brown and similar types of Solve-It-Yourself style mysteries.

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

Stories in the Book:

TACK Secret Service: Operation Goldfish

The kids are getting ready for the science fair at school. They are not looking forward to the arrival of kids from a rival school because they don’t play fair, and a boy called Red Jamieson sometimes deliberately wrecks other kids’ projects. Will is helping a boy named Hugo to protect his project because someone stole the plans for the project the day before. The kids suspect Red and his friend, Lester. As the kids try to maintain surveillance on the exhibits, someone steals one of their walkie talkies and threatens to ruin it if they don’t turn over Hugo’s invention for remotely feeding goldfish.

The Locked House Mystery

Will and his brother Cyrus are staying with Toria’s family for a few days while their parents are on a skiing trip. The only problem is that Toria’s family has a cat, and Cyrus is allergic to cats. At first, they think it will be okay because Cyrus has his allergy pills, but it turns out that he forgot them at home, and he also forgot the house key. How can they get his allergy medicine from a locked house when they can’t reach the spare key?

The Pirates of Sandy Harbor

Toria is writing a report about the founder of their town, Simon Hawk, but she needs more information. She goes to the local historical society, but there, she discovers that an old note has been found that indicates that Simon Hawk may not have been the hero that everyone believes he is. Rather than chasing off the pirates that plagued the area, he may have been in league with them! Toria can’t finish her report until she knows the truth, but fortunately, Will spots something about the message that clarifies everything.

The Dance of the Trees

Toria’s sister, Holly, is in a dance recital with her ballet class where the best dancer in class gets to be a fairy, and the other girls get to be living trees. (Holly isn’t thrilled about that until she see the tree costumes, which are pretty cool.) Unfortunately, the girl playing the part of the fairy gets sick, and there isn’t enough time for someone else to learn her part. What can they do?

A Slipper for Ripper

Chuck worries that his mother will give away his dog, Duchess, if she doesn’t stop chewing things. They’ve tried giving her all kinds of chew toys, but she doesn’t like any of them. She just wants to chew things that belong to people. Will’s younger brother, Cyrus, thinks he’s found a solution, figuring out how to make what he calls “dognip.” However, when they arrive at Chuck’s house, Duchess has a slipper belonging to Chuck’s mother. Cyrus hurriedly gets the slipper away from Duchess and throws it into the next yard, but that’s where the violent dog Ripper lives. At first, the kids’ attempts to distract the dog and get the slipper only make the situation worse, but Will figures out how they can retrieve everything from Ripper’s yard safely.

The Case of the Haunted Dollhouse

Toria’s best friend, Abby, who moved away before the beginning of the book, calls Toria to tell her that her family is coming back to town to visit her grandmother, and she can see Toria when they come. However, this isn’t just an ordinary visit. Abby’s family is concerned because her grandmother is acting strangely, and her parents are worried that she might be getting senile. She’s talking about selling the fantastic dollhouse that she’s had since she was little, which is now a family heirloom. She’s become afraid of it because she thinks it might be haunted.

The Haunted Dollhouse – Part II

The kids figure out what’s created the haunting phenomena in the doll house, but when they go to tell Abby’s grandmother about it, they learn that she’s moved out of the old family home where she also runs her antique shop because other strange things have been happening. The temperature in the house inexplicably drops, and she’s been hearing music that seems to come from the dollhouse with no apparent cause. The adults are still concerned about her mental state, but the kids realize that there’s someone who’s behind all the strange things that have been happening. Who is playing ghost?

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TACK to the Rescue

TACK to the Rescue by Marvin Miller and Nancy K. Robinson, 1982.

This is the first book in the TACK mystery series, which is very much like the Encyclopedia Brown series, although it’s not as well known and doesn’t have as many books.

The books in the series are collections of short mysteries that readers are invited to solve along with the characters before looking at the answers. TACK is an acronym for the names of the main characters. They’re kind of a mystery-solving club of neighborhood kids, although they say that they don’t really have a clubhouse or regular meetings. They just help out members of their community by solving problems whenever they can.

T = Toria – Her full name is Victoria Gardner, but she doesn’t like being called Vicky. She is the one who narrates the stories. She wants to be a newspaper reporter when she grows up, and she considers the journals she keeps of the group’s cases to be good writing practice.

A = Abby – Her full name is Abby Pinkwater. Abby and Toria were best friends before she moved away, which happened before the series even begins. Now, Abby is considered their “Agent-on-Remote” because the others still consider her part of the group, and she still becomes involved with their mysteries, even though she no longer lives close. She sometimes comes to visit or writes letters to the others about problems at her new school.

C = Chuck – His older sister Kate gets married in the first story in this this book, and during the field day story, the other kids say that he’s the best cyclist at school. Toward the end of this book, they mention that Chuck has just gotten a puppy named Duchess, which would actually make this book the first book in the series, before the one that’s often listed first.

K = Will – His full name is Will Roberts, and he’s the leader of the group, although he leads in a very informal way. Will’s initial is the odd one out. They use ‘K’ in place of his initial both because it makes their acronym easier to pronounce and because ‘K’ stands for “SWITCH” in telegraph language, and they think that’s an appropriate code name for him “because of the way his mind can switch all over the place.”

Overall, I like the characters in the stories, and I think they’re well-written. They would be of interest to people who like Encyclopedia Brown and similar types of Solve-It-Yourself style mysteries. Many of the problems and solutions to the mysteries in this book are popular logic puzzle concepts.

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

Stories in the Book:

The Case of the Invisible Skunk

Chuck’s older sister, Kate, is getting married. There’s a big tent in the backyard, and his mother is busy making arrangements for the wedding. Then, something unexpected happens that his mother is afraid will ruin everything: a skunk has somehow found its way into their garage. Chuck’s mom doesn’t know how to get the skunk out of the garage without frightening it, and if it gets scared, it will spray and make the whole yard smell terrible. However, Will has another suggestion for solving the problem.

TACK to the Rescue

Will calls Toria and tells her that the light at the Corkhill lighthouse is out. It’s important because the lighthouse helps boats navigate around a dangerous area, and if the light is out, boats might crash on the rocks. Ordinarily, they could just take the ferry out to the light and fix it, but the ferry is also broken down. The man who normally runs the ferry is trying to repair it. The local fishing boats are also out, so they can’t even borrow a boat. The only boat the repairmen have is a little dinghy that will only hold one adult, but both of them are needed to repair the light. How can they use the dinghy to get both men out to the lighthouse before dark?

The Jungle Adventure Adventure

The kids’ class at school is going on a field trip to an amusement park called Jungle Adventure. However, they run into trouble when they encounter a tunnel that the bus is just slightly too high to go through. What are they going to do?

The Disappearing Penny

The town of Sandy Harbor is raising money for a new library. Various people are giving shows and holding sales to raise the funds. The kids are helping with a bake sale when Will’s little brother realizes that he accidentally charged three boys the wrong price for a brownie. He goes after them to give them the correct change, but he runs into a problem. He’s supposed to give them five cents, but since there are boys and the money can’t be divided evenly, he gives them three cents and spends the other two on bubble gum. However, he feels guilty about it and can’t figure out how to make the math of the situation come out right. Toria gives him a suggestion to straight it all out.

TACK Tactics

The fund raising for the new library was a success, so everyone is celebrating. However, they quickly realize that there’s a new problem: they forgot about the cost of moving the books from the old library to the new one. They don’t have enough money to cover the costs and buy the new furniture for the children’s room. Fortunately, Will comes up with a straightforward suggestion to solve the problem.

Holly and Her Pet Pingo

Abby returns to town for a visit, and they all take a trip to the nearby state park. Toria’s little sister Holly insists on bringing her pet ping-pong ball Pingo with her. When Pingo gets trapped in a hole, the kids have to figure out how to get it back.

The Day of the Monsters

The Sandy Harbor kids aren’t enthusiastic about the Fall Field Day because they’re competing against kids from a rival school called Monrose. The Monrose Monsters are known for cheating, so the Sandy Harbor kids know that the contests won’t be fair and that they’re going to lose. Will temporary distracts Red Jamieson, the meanest kid at Monrose, with a bet that he can kick a soccer ball so that it will move away from him and then come back to him on its own.

The Day of the Monsters – Part II

As the Fall Field Day continues, the Monrose Monsters are up to their usual tricks. The Monrose players kick the Sandy Harbor players during the soccer game, and Red Jamieson uses a mirror to blind the Sandy Harbor goalie so Monrose can score more goals. When the kids try to tell their gym teacher about it, she doesn’t really listen to them and tells them not to be sore losers. The kids realize that they’re on their own to deal with Monrose. The last race of the day is a bike race, and Chuck has to compete against Monrose mean girl Gretchen. However, there’s a twist to this contest: the gym teacher says that the winner of the contest is the one whose bicycle finishes last. How is that going to work?

The Case of the Telltale Tattletale

At the end of the tortuous field day, Red Jamieson jumped off the bleachers on top of Will, who was sitting nearby, breaking Will’s leg. The adults are convinced that Red must have fallen, but the kids who witnessed the incident know better. Will has to stay home and rest while his leg heals. His friends bring him his schoolwork and letters from the other kids at school. Soon, Will is bored and restless. He’s tired of the puzzle books his friends have given him because he wants a real puzzle to work on. Fortunately, a letter from Abby brings him the mystery he’s looking for. Someone at her new school is writing nasty notes to her teacher about all the bad things people say about her behind her back. Some of the criticism of their teacher is true, but the other kids in class never meant to make her feel bad because they don’t like her jokes or think she looks funny. They’re also offended that one of the other students is spying on them and revealing things that they said in confidence. Some of the students are being punished by their parents for rude things they’ve said about the teacher, so they have reason to resent the class tattletale. All of the notes are signed with an odd ink blot. Can Will figure out who the poison pen tattletale is from his bed, 300 miles away?

Posted on by TracyC

The Haunted Swamp

Our Secret Gang

The Haunted Swamp by Shannon Gilligan, 1991.

This is the second book in the Our Secret Gang series. Members of the detective gang in the story take turns narrating different books, and this one is narrated by Nancy. After having solved their first mystery in the previous book, the kids are organizing their detective club and discussing how to advertise their services. Then, Jason’s younger brothers and their friend, Kenny, bring them their next case.

Kenny tells them that he saw a ghost near the old, abandoned train yard. He says that he saw something white dart into the swamp near the train yard. He was riding the school bus at the time, and other kids on the bus saw it, too. Jason thinks that the kids probably just saw some swamp gas, but the rest of the gang decides to check it out anyway.

When they explore the area around the train yard, Nancy and Jason find someone’s camp site. Their first thought is that the “ghost” is just someone who’s been camping out in the area. However, when they bring their friends back to the camp site the next day, there is weirdly no sign of the camp fire they saw and no sign that anyone has been camping there recently. It seems weird that an entire camp site could vanish so completely in just a day. However, there is definitely someone hanging around the old train yard because someone lets the air out of the kids’ bike tires, and Nancy later realizes that the shades in the old station house where down, when they weren’t before.

Then, there an announcement at school that an elderly local man suffering from Alzheimer’s has disappeared, apparently wandered off. The fifth and sixth graders are recruited to help with the search for him. He is eventually found near the train yard, leading the kids to think that maybe the “ghost” was the old man, wandering around.

They soon realize that it wasn’t the old man when some of the kids see the ghost again after the old man is found and returned home. Is there someone else hiding out around the old train yard, or could it really be a ghost?

Meanwhile, Nancy has noticed that her parents are behaving oddly. They invite a woman Nancy has never met before to dinner, and they seem to be keeping secrets. Secrets are no stranger to Our Secret Gang because everyone in the club has a secret. Nancy’s is that she was adopted and very few people know. Could this mysterious stranger and her parents’ secrets have something to do with her adoption?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. In the back of the book, there are instructions for making plaster casts of footprints and how to analyze footprints, which the characters didn’t do themselves in the book. It’s more that books in this series include instructions for detective skill activities.

My Reaction

This mystery is the kind that I like to call Pseudo-Ghost Stories, mysteries of the Scooby-Doo variety, where there seem to be ghosts, but there are actually logical explanations for everything.

I first read this book when I was a kid, and I remember being intrigued by the secrets of the club members and Nancy’s sudden discovery that she was adopted. I think it’s common for kids to imagine what would happen if they suddenly made a discovery like that. Nancy’s discovery of her adoption happened when she and her parents first moved to the town of Millerton from Boston, so she’s know about it for a little while but not very long. When Nancy’s parents begin acting oddly and have a guest to their house who identifies herself as a nun and also seems to be a social worker, Nancy worries about what they’re keeping from her. I thought the answer was pretty obvious, and I don’t think that it stumped me for very long when I was kid, either, because Nancy even says at the beginning of the story that she’s always wanted a younger sibling.

I don’t think that her parents should have been so mysterious with her because their secret-keeping before about her adoption caused her some hard feelings, and I don’t think that there’s a good reason to keep her in the dark when they’re thinking of making a major change in their family. They say that it’s because they didn’t want her to get her hopes up because adoptions take a long time to arrange. It sounds like a realistic explanation; I just don’t think it’s the best idea. Nancy’s parents could have used the long process of the adoption of a younger sibling for Nancy to show Nancy what they went through when they adopted her and how much they wanted her because they were willing to go through the long process to get her, which could help her better understand her own past and what she means to her parents. In the end, Nancy does come to those realizations, and she also realizes that is a large part of the reason that her parents have been overprotective of her. She also realizes that the adoption of a new child will mean that her secret about her adoption will probably be revealed, but she decides that it’s okay. Her mother admits that her reluctance to reveal Nancy’s adoption had to do with her own unresolved feelings about her own adoption as a child, but she has been working through them.

As another small point that I found interesting in the story, when Nancy makes the flyers for their detective club, she uses press-type letters. I used to have some myself that I used for labeling things with my name. They’re also called dry transfers or rub-ons. They’re decals with pressure-sensitive adhesive on a piece of backing material. To apply them, you lay them face down on the object where you want them to be and rub the backing with something. The pressure activates the adhesive, and they stick.

Posted on by TracyC

Grover Goes to School

Grover Goes to School by Dan Elliott, illustrated by Normand Chartier, 1982.

This nostalgic picture book about a child’s first day of school features Grover, one of the characters from the Sesame Street tv show.

Grover is very exited about his first day at school. He’s ready and has everything he needs, but then, he starts to worry about whether the other kids at school will like him or not. His mother tells him that all he needs to do is be himself, but Grover decides he’s going to try hard to get everyone to like him.

Grover’s attempts to get the other kids to like him cause him to agree to do things that he doesn’t really want to do. When a boy named Truman likes Grover’s nice, new crayons and offers to trade him his old toy truck for the crayons, Grover doesn’t really want to make the trade, but he agrees because he wants Truman to like him.

Then, Grover offers to clean up while the other kids have snack time. Grover does a good job cleaning, but the others forget to save a cookie for him.

The day gets worse with Grover helping the others play jump rope when he doesn’t want to and feeling obligated to trade his lunch for food that he doesn’t want. Finally, Grover bursts into tears

Seeing Grover sad and upset, a girl named Molly asks him what’s wrong. Grover explains everything that’s been happening to her, and she says that she’ll play with him and cheer him up. Molly doesn’t know how to play jacks, which is Grover’s favorite game, but she says that she’d like to learn, and Grover enjoys teaching her.

When a boy named Bill offers to trade his old pencil box for Grover’s nice, new one, Grover decides to say no and keep the pencil box he loves. Grover worries that Bill might be mad at him, but he’s not. Instead, it turns out that Bill also likes jacks.

Making friends with Molly and Bill turns Grover’s day around, and by the time he comes home, he’s feeling much better about school.

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

My Reaction

I loved this picture book when I was a kid! I used to watch Sesame Street as a young child, and I liked Grover, who is a shy monster kid who just wants to be friends with other people. In this book, he not only shows little kids how to get used to school on their first day but also teaches a lesson about trying too hard to get people to like you and what it means to be a real friend with someone. Grover realizes that he doesn’t have to do things he doesn’t want to do or give people things to buy their friendship. People still like him even if he sometimes tells them “no.” Like his mother says, he just needs to be himself, and he learns to make friends in ways that are comfortable to him, finding kids who genuinely care about others’ feelings and share common interests.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat

Five Find-Outers

The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat by Enid Blyton, 1944, 1966.

Bets is happy that her brother, Pip, is coming home from boarding school, and he’s bringing his friends to visit. Now that the children are reunited, Bets and the others hope that they will find another mystery to solve! The others ask Bets if anything interesting has happened since they were home last, and she says not very much, although someone has moved into the empty house next door. The new neighbor is Lady Candling, who keeps Siamese cats.

The boy who helps the gardener, Luke, is nice and allows the children to visit and see the cats. Lady Candling says that the Siamese cats are valuable prize-winning cats. She keeps them in a large cage most of the time for safety, but Miss Harmer, the housekeeper, takes one out to show the children. Unfortunately, one boy, Fatty, owns a Scottie dog named Buster, and Buster comes into the garden looking for him. Buster frightens the cat and chases her! The cat claws Buster after he chases her into the bushes, and they manage to get Buster under control, but they have trouble finding the cat. Miss Harmer is upset that her cat is lost, and Bets goes to search for the cat.

While Bets is looking for the cat, the gardener, Mr. Tupping comes to find out what the fuss is about. Mr. Tupping is a violent and short-tempered man. (They also emphasize that he has a hooked nose, which I think is probably a stereotype. Enid Blyton’s books often contain derogatory racial stereotypes, although later printings have been revised to remove them.) Mr. Tupping hates children and animals, and he grabs Buster and locks him up, threatening to beat him later. The children try to help Buster, but he chases them out of the garden. Bets is left behind, but she locates the missing cat, and Luke helps to free Buster and get Bets out of the garden without Mr. Tupping seeing her. However, Mr. Tupping threatens Luke with dire consequences if he ever lets the children into the garden again.

This is just the beginning of their troubles with Mr. Tupping. When Mr. Tupping finds out that Bets has visited Luke again, he storms into Bets’s own little garden, rips her strawberry plants out of the ground, burns them, and yells at her. Bets is afraid to report him to the adults because she’s afraid that Luke will get in more trouble with Mr. Tupping. Luke is a poor orphan who lives with his stepfather, and he desperately needs the job, which is the only reason why he continues to work with the nasty Mr. Tupping. Mr. Tupping is also friends with the local policeman, and the children know that the local policeman resents them for solving a mystery before he did, so they’re sure that he will side with Mr. Tupping, no matter what they say about him.

Then, Lady Candling’s prize cat, Dark Queen, disappears, and Luke is blamed for stealing her! The children are sure that Luke is being framed for the cat-napping, but the evidence is against him. Pip and Bets’s own mother saw the cat in its cage when she went to tea with Lady Candling, and Luke was working in a garden bed nearby. Even Luke says that no one else went near the cage between then and the time when the cat disappeared. When a wooden whistle Luke made is found in the cats’ cage, the children are sure that it was planted to frame Luke, but how can they prove it? Then, the cat reappears, and later disappears again! What is going on?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

I found this story frustrating because all of the adults in the story are so oblivious to Mr. Tupping’s violence and aggression. He is actively abusive to the children and animals, but nobody seems to notice or even inquire about signs of trouble. Bets’s mother never seems to notice that all of her daughter’s strawberry plants have suddenly disappeared from her garden and never asks her daughter what happened. Mr. Tupping is able to just march onto the family’s property and abuse an 8-year-old girl with complete impunity, and her mother never notices a thing. (Of course, if I were the girl in question, I would have done what I used to do when I was picked on as a kid – take a deep breath, throw back my head, and scream continuously until help arrives. I figured out at a young age that if you scream from your diaphragm, you can get extra volume and keep the scream going for longer without straining your throat, and it’s difficult for the adults to ignore. You can’t scream like that at every inconvenience or people will start to ignore it, but it’s definitely an attention-getter if you use it when it really counts! Just let Mr. Tupping explain his presence and actions when the adults come to find out why their daughter is screaming like she’s being murdered!)

Mr. Tupping is a very obvious villain. He’s also the first person on the scene each time the cat disappears, the one who strategically assigns Luke to work near the cats’ cages just before the prize cat disappears each time, and the keeper of the key to the cats’ cages when Miss Harmer is away, which she is each time the prize cat disappears. Yet, even though he has means (the key), motive (he hates the kids and animals and wants to get rid of Luke), and opportunity (always the first person in the cats’ cages whenever the cat disappears and the one person who controls where Luke is working), all of the adults immediately look at Luke as the thief, never even questioning Mr. Tupping. An adult would be more likely than a kid to know where to sell a prize-winning cat (heck, as a an adult, I wouldn’t even know where to deal in black market animals), but nope, all of the adults first think a kid did it, like kids have those kinds of criminal connections to the prize cat black market. It drove me completely crazy!

It’s worse because Mr. Tupping is friends with the local policeman and gets favoritism because of it. When the kids consult their friend who is a police inspector, he finds out that Mr. Tupping has a police record for being involved in a dog-napping case (surprise, surprise), which establishes his criminal history and connections to people who deal in stolen animals. I was disgusted that the local policeman never looked into his background himself, but I felt a little better when the inspector reprimands him for making friends with a criminal and overlooking evidence that implicated him and trying to prevent the children from bringing evidence and concerns to light. The local policeman is embarrassed, but at that point, I felt like he deserved to be.

The villain was obvious, but what saved this mystery was that he actually used a clever trick to confuse the time when he actually took the cat. I knew from the beginning who the cat thief was, so the real mystery for me was how he got the cat out of its cage without people seeing him. It turns out that Mr. Tupping takes the cat earlier in the day than everyone thought the cat was stolen. The Siamese cats look very much alike, but the one that was stolen had a marking that was different from the others. With a bit of paint, Mr. Tupping makes a different cat look like the missing one for most of the afternoon, quickly using a bit of turpentine to remove the paint at a strategic moment to make it seem like the cat disappeared at a time when Luke was near the cats’ cages.

Posted on by TracyC

The Castle of Adventure

Enid Blyton’s Adventure Series

The Castle of Adventure by Enid Blyton, 1946.

Since the children’s last adventures, Philip and Dinah’s mother has used the children’s reward money to buy a home for them, so the children won’t have to continue staying with their aunt and uncle on school holidays.  They’ve also invited their friends, Jack and Lucy-Ann, to live with them, so they don’t have to return to their uncle’s house.  Now, the girls go to the same boarding school, and the boys go to their boarding school, and they’re all together on holidays.

When the children are out of school for the summer again, they and their mother go to stay in a cottage near an old castle on a hill.  The children are fascinated by the castle, but their mother doesn’t want them going near it because local people tell sinister stories about it.  She doesn’t explain about their stories, but she seems to think that it might be dangerous.  However, she does agree that the children can go have a look at an eagle’s nest near the castle, knowing how Jack feels about birds.  The children realize that they can use that to get a look at the castle anyway.

They make friends with a local girl named Tassie.  They call Tassie a “wild girl” because she’s a gypsy, has a pet fox, and runs around in old, dirty clothes and without shoes (she carries shoes with her but doesn’t wear them) and seems uneducated.  She doesn’t seem to know what an eagle is or what a bath is (although the children’s mother insists that she get one).  (No, I don’t believe that she’s ignorant for being a gypsy. I think it’s both a stereotype and a plot device.)  However, Tassie knows the area very well and helps the children find their way around.  Tassie is also afraid of the castle.  When the children ask her what stories people tell about the castle, she says that an evil man used to live there, and people would come to see him and never be seen again.  Still, the children want to explore the castle.

When they explore the castle, they find a water pump with a puddle beneath it, indicating that someone has been there recently to prime and use the pump.  Jack also realizes that the eagles in the next have a young eaglet who looks like it’s about ready to fly.  He persuades the children’s mother to let him build a hide (camouflaged shelter) so he can camp out and watch the birds.

While camping out, he realizes that there’s someone else in the castle besides himself.  At night, he hears someone moving around and using the pump, and he thinks he sees a flashing light, like someone signaling to someone else.  In the morning, he thinks maybe he dreamed it, but Lucy-Ann mentions seeing the flashing light.  Lucy-Ann thought that Jack was signaling to her, but Jack realizes that it was someone else and that he wasn’t dreaming.

Exploring the castle further, he finds a hidden room with old furniture and armor and realizes that someone has been hiding there.  Later, he sees some strange men in the castle and hears them speaking a language that he doesn’t recognize.  Who are they and what are they doing there?  Could they have something to do with the assignment that their friend Bill, an undercover investigator, is doing in a town nearby?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It was also made into a tv movie serial. You can see it on YouTube.

My Reaction

Like other Enid Blyton books, there are racial issues in this book that were changed in reprintings. Enid Blyton books often feature stereotypical gypsies (more politely called Romany or Travelers these days) as characters and plot devices. Tassie is a pleasant and helpful character but still stereotypical.

I like the setting for the story. A supposedly abandoned castle makes an exciting place for our young heroes to explore. Even with the references to spooky stories about the place, the kids never really believe that the castle might be haunted. They very quickly realize that there are living people who have been hanging around the place. The sort of sinister characters using the place as a hideout are the same sort of villain characters as in the first book, which brings the kids’ friend Bill back into the story.

I enjoyed the movie serialization of the book, and I thought that it followed the story of the book well.