Posted on by TracyC

Rosy Noses, Freezing Toes

Pee Wee Scouts

#13 Rosy Noses, Freezing Toes by Judy Delton, 1990.

At one of the scout meetings, Mrs. Peters, the troop leader, says that her antique vase is missing. It’s a family heirloom, and Mrs. Peters wants to ask the scouts if they know anything about its disappearance or if they have any idea of what could have happened to it. None of them knows, but they’re fascinated by the mystery. After they search the house and can’t find it, Mrs. Peters says that she’ll just have to report its disappearance to the insurance company. Mrs. Peters is willing to let the matter go at that, but the scouts keep wondering what happened to the vase and if one of them could have taken it.

Mrs. Peters tells the scouts that the next badge they will earn will be their music badge. To earn the badge, the children will have to sing or play an instrument or tell the group about the life of a composer. Some of the children already play instruments and know what they’re going to do, but others aren’t sure. Since it’s December, Mrs. Peters suggests that some of them could sing popular Christmas songs or a Hanukkah song.

Sonny Betz declares that he doesn’t want to participate because he can’t play an instrument and over the next few days, he seems upset and nasty with people. Molly asks him what the matter is, and Sonny tells her that his mother is forcing him to take violin lessons. Mrs. Betz has always wanted Sonny to learn to play the violin, and his new violin teacher has assured her that Sonny will be able to learn the first line of Jingle Bells in time for the scouts’ music show, even though it’s coming up fast. Sonny isn’t happy about it, and to make him feel better, Molly tells him that he’s lucky because nobody else will be playing the violin and it will make him different. Unfortunately, the other kids tease him and call him “Maestro,” so he starts feeling bad.

Molly doesn’t like the way the others keep teasing Sonny, and when Tracy says that Sonny is a baby, Molly tells her that it’s not his fault because his mother is the one who makes him take violin lessons and keep the training wheels on his bike even though he’s in the second grade and all the other things that people tease him about. Mrs. Betz doesn’t realize how much Sonny hates some of the things that she makes him do and how much the other kids tease Sonny about these things. Molly overhears her mother saying that Sonny will “be a handful by the time he gets to high school,” probably because she’s imagining that Sonny will rebel against all things his mother has been making him do once he’s a teenager. Actually, it’s not going to take that long.

Mrs. Peters uses the insurance money from her vase to buy a piano. The scouts’ music show goes okay at first, although none of the kids are spectacular at music. Molly, Mary Beth, and Lisa paint their noses red and sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Kevin whistles. Roger plays White Christmas on the drums with no other accompaniment, confusing everyone about what song he’s actually playing. Poor Sonny has to go last, when everyone is starting to get tired of the entertainment, but he doesn’t play well. The other scouts cover their ears, and the screeching of the violin makes the dog bark and Mrs. Peters’s baby cry. Sonny is so upset that he runs away from the show and has a fit.

The next day, Molly learns that Sonny has run away from home completely, leaving behind a note that he’s heading to Alaska. Everyone is searching for Sonny and getting worried about him being outside alone in the snow. However, Molly soon discovers that Sonny hasn’t gone as far as everyone fears and he’s certainly not on his way to Alaska. She discovers Sonny hiding in her family’s bathtub. Sonny explains to her that he didn’t have the money to go to Alaska, but he couldn’t bring himself to go home, and he picked Molly’s house to hide in because Molly is the only one who didn’t tease at him. Molly promises not to turn him in, but she says that he won’t be able to stay in her bathtub forever. His mother has called the police to report his disappearance, and Molly’s parents are bound to find him eventually. Sonny swears that he can’t go home because he hates playing the violin so much. What can Molly do to help him change his mind?

I didn’t like the way the other scouts were so mean to Sonny in the book. Sonny does do childish things, like being mean to the younger kids on the playground when he’s upset and throwing fits when things go wrong. However, Molly tries to be understanding with Sonny, even when he’s being fussy and whining, and she recognizes that Sonny is in a difficult position. His mother has certain expectations of him, and Sonny doesn’t think that anything will change her mind. The way things work out, though, makes it seem like Sonny never really explained to his mother how upset he was about the violin lessons and maybe not even how upset he’s been about some other things. Part of Sonny’s difficulty and the reason why he seems babyish to the other kids is that he seems to have trouble managing and articulating his emotions, including standing up for himself and what he really wants. Some of the other scouts help Molly to convince Sonny that running away isn’t the solution, and Molly calls Mrs. Betz to tell her that Sonny is okay but won’t come home until she promises that he can stop playing the violin. Sonny declares that he wants to see that in writing, and his mother gladly writes him a note that says that he doesn’t have to play the violin again.

So, what about the antique vase mystery from the beginning of the story? Before the end of the book, they do locate the missing vase (not really stolen, more misplaced and forgotten), but Molly accidentally breaks it. Mrs. Peters says that it’s okay because, with the vase broken, she doesn’t have to give the money back to the insurance company, and she gets to keep her new piano. She’s been wanting a piano, and the truth is that she never really liked the vase, even though it was a family heirloom. Yay? Merry Christmas!

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

Posted on by TracyC

Mystery in the Old Cave

Mystery in the Old Cave cover

Mystery in the Old Cave by Helen Fuller Orton, 1950.

Mystery in the Old Cave nut gathering

Andy and Joan Draper are excited about spending the fall and winter in the country. Usually, they live in an apartment in New York City and only go to their family’s vacation home in Vermont during the summer. However, this year, some friends of their father will be moving to New York, and they’ll need a place to stay because they are having trouble finding an apartment of their own. The children’s father has decided to rent their apartment to his friends while his family stays in Vermont. That means that the children will have to go to school in Vermont, but the children like the idea because they will be able to do things that they normally can’t do when the seasons change, like gathering nuts. When the first frosts come, the hickory nuts on the trees fall to the ground, making it easy to collect them.

After Andy and Joan collect nuts for the first time, they decide to store them in the old sugarhouse on the property. Normally, the family doesn’t use the sugarhouse for anything, but it used to be used during the times when their vacation house was a working farm and people tapped the maple trees for their sap to make maple syrup. They would process the sap in the sugarhouse. Sometimes, farm hands also used to sleep there during the harvest.

Soon, the children begin to suspect that there’s a stranger hanging around the property. Their dog, Ponto, barks at someone the children don’t see and comes running back to them, acting like someone kicked him. Later, a strange man approaches them and asks them if they know anything about a cave in the area. Andy and Joan don’t know anything about a cave. The man tells them that it’s supposed to be near the old sugarhouse, but if the children haven’t seen it, it might have caved in or something. He seems very secretive and doesn’t want the children to tell anyone that he’s been asking questions, and the children wonder if he could be the one who kicked their dog earlier. Later, someone (perhaps this strange man) steals many of the nuts that the children gathered and even some cookies. The children change their minds about storing things in the sugarhouse and decide to keep their gathered nuts in an unused room in the main house. The only clue to the identity of who’s been sneaking around is a red pencil that the person dropped.

Mystery in the Old Cave store

The children make friends with a boy named Phil who lives nearby. Phil is an orphan who lives with his Cousin John (who he sometimes calls Uncle John because he is so much older), a mean and stingy old man who doesn’t treat him very well and makes him work hard around the house instead of going to play after school with the other kids. He doesn’t even replace Phil’s clothes when they get old and torn. Phil gets a job at the local store to earn some money for a new sweater, but Cousin John even confiscates Phil’s earnings.

Mr. Lane, who owns the local store, is nice, and he tells Andy and Phil about how maple syrup and maple sugar are made, something that everyone in town used to participate in so that it was like a community party. The boys think it sounds like a lot of fun, and while they are talking about the old sugarhouse, Mr. Lane mentions that, once, some thieves joined in when they were making making syrup. Nobody knew they were thieves at first; they were just a couple of strangers who came along with everyone else and started helping out. Later, there were some robberies in the area, and the thieves were found hiding in a cave near the sugarhouse. Mr. Lane says that he and his friends used to play in that cave when they were young, and Andy and Phil decide that they want to find it.

Mystery in the Old Cave bones

The boys take some tools with them while they’re looking for the cave, in case the entrance has been covered over, which turns out to be the case. Once they dig through the entrance, the rest of the cave appears intact. They find some old bones inside that probably belonged to a bear. They can’t look around much more because the cave is too dark, so they decide that they’ll return later with some lanterns. Mr. Lane tells the boys that there still might be stolen loot around because they never did find everything that the thieves took, including a pearl necklace that belonged to Andy’s grandmother, who was living there back then. Could these things be what the mysterious stranger is looking for?

Mystery in the Old Cave stove in store

During the course of the book, Mr. Lane begins to notice that Phil’s cousin isn’t giving him enough food. Cousin John denies Phil food when he refuses to turn over the extra money that he’s been earning to him. Mr. Lane gives Phil food from the store to eat. While Phil is at the store, he overhears the stranger, who calls himself Joe Williams, talking to Mr. Lane. Joe Williams admits that he’s looking for treasure in the area. Mr. Lane says that he doesn’t have high hopes that Joe Williams will find anything around the cave because the whole area was searched thoroughly years ago.

Phil tells Mr. Lane that he can’t stand living with his cousin anymore and wants to run away. Mr. Lane tries to persuade him not to go, saying that he can deal with Phil’s cousin, but Phil has had enough and worries that his cousin will make life hard for anyone who tries to help him. When Phil hides out in the old sugarhouse, he meets up with Joe Williams, who explains to him more about how he knows about the treasure that may be hidden in or around the cave. He’s about ready to give up the search, but Phil finds something that everyone else has overlooked.

In the end, Andy and Joan’s parents decide to take Phil in. Phil’s cousin agrees to sign over custody to the Drapers, provided that he gets to keep the money from Phil’s job that he took and the money that Phil’s mother left for Phil’s upkeep. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal and that the courts and social workers would have something to say about that if this story happened in real life in the 21st century, but in the story, Mr. Draper accepts the deal and basically uses the money that was meant for Phil to pay off his cousin to surrender custody of the boy. The story ends at Thanksgiving, with Phil sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with his new family, who will really love him and treat him much better than his cousin did.

Mystery in the Old Cave hiding

This is one of those older mystery stories that’s really more adventure than mystery. There’s really only one suspect for the odd person sneaking around, and his reasons for sneaking around turn out to be exactly what he said they were. There is no other hidden purpose or secret past behind that man other than what he said, and in the end, he just kind of leaves the story. The kids don’t have many clues to the location of the stolen items, and in the end, Phil finds them more by accident than anything else.

Sometimes, when I’m unsatisfied by the ending of a story, I like to make up an alternate one of my own. If I were writing this, I’d have had Phil’s nasty cousin be involved in the robbery and the hunt for the hidden loot. For example, maybe he was actually one of the original thieves and had a falling out with his partners, and he’s secretly searching for the rest of the loot they hid for years. Maybe he’s had to redouble his efforts recently because they’re getting out of prison soon, and he wants to get to the hidden loot before they do. Cousin John is money-hungry enough that it could be plausible, and that would allow the story to end with him being sent to prison, which seems fitting.

This isn’t important to the story at all, but I just wanted to say that the copy I have of this book is damaged in a very odd way. On some of the beginning pages, someone has cut out a few of the words, ransom-note style. I don’t know why that happened. There aren’t enough missing for a real ransom note, and some of the cut-out words are still stuck in the pages, but since this is a mystery book, I kind of like the image of someone using it to write some kind of mysterious secret message.

I haven’t been able to find an online copy of this book yet, but Internet Archive has others by the same author.

Posted on by TracyC

The Secret of Terror Castle

The Three Investigators

TITerrorCastle#1 The Secret of Terror Castle by Robert Arthur, 1964, 1992.

In the first book in the series, Jupiter, Pete, and Bob form the Three Investigators, an organization dedicated to solving all kinds of mysteries.  It was particularly Jupiter’s idea. They have been friends for a long time, and they used to have a club dedicated to solving puzzles. Now, they’ve decided that they want to solve more complicated problems and mysteries. Jupiter has won the use of a Rolls Royce and chauffeur for a month by entering a contest at an auto rental agency, so he thinks that it would be a good time to get started because they will have transportation to anywhere in the city.

Jupiter also has an idea for their first case, something that will help them get publicity for their new investigative organization. There is a rumor that a director, Reginald Clarke, is looking for a genuine haunted house to be the setting of his next movie. Jupiter manages, through some clever trickery, to get an interview with Reginald Clarke and persuades him to introduce this account of their first case if he and the other investigators can find a genuine haunted house right in town. Clarke takes them up on it, not because he thinks they will succeed, but because he sees it as the only way to get Jupiter to stop doing an unflattering impersonation of him.

Jupiter, however, is confident that they will be successful because he already knows the perfect place to investigate. Terror Castle is a large mansion that was built years ago by an old actor who was in silent films. All of his movies were scary ones, and since his death under mysterious circumstances, no one has succeeded in staying in the castle very long. Strange apparitions have been seen there, and anyone who tries to spend the night there is overcome by inexplicable terror. As far as Jupiter is concerned, all they have to do is prove that the castle is really haunted, and that means that the Three Investigators must visit it themselves.

In the original books, the director that Jupiter tries to find a real haunted location for was Alfred Hitchcock.  Alfred Hitchcock introduced the early books in the series and played minor roles in some of them, and The Three Investigators capitalized on his reputation.  When the series was re-released, however, Alfred Hitchcock was replaced by a fictional director, and his role in later books was taken by a fictional mystery author named Hector Sebastian.  In the re-released version of the first book, Reginald Clarke refers the boys to Hector Sebastian at the end of the story so they can help a friend of his to find his missing parrot, which leads directly into the subject of the next book.

The haunting in this story (as with others in the series) has a reasonable explanation, not a supernatural one.  In fact, one of the things that I always found memorable about this book was the explanation of how the inexplicable feelings of terror people experienced were created using sound waves which could be felt but which were beyond the normal range of human hearing.  I’m not sure whether the book was completely correct about the science behind this technique, but I have heard about sounds being used to create odd or even harmful effects on human beings in real life.  As for the reasons behind the haunting, they concern the original owner of the castle and the life he lived.

This is one of the books in the series which was made into a movie, The Three Investigators and the Secret of Terror Castle, but the movie was very different from the original book.  In the movie, the owner of the castle was an inventor, not an actor.  Part of the plot also concerned Jupiter’s deceased parents and a mystery that they had been investigating.  Jupiter’s parents were not part of the original book at all.  A villain who appears in some of the other books in the series also makes an appearance in the movie, although he had nothing to do with this particular story in the original series.  Overall, I don’t recommend the movie for fans of the original series.  The changes don’t seem to be for the better, and I think people who remember how the original story was and liked it would be disappointed in the movie.

There are multiple copies of this book available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive, both the original version with Alfred Hitchcock and the updated one.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Aunt Morbelia and the Screaming Skulls

Aunt Morbelia and the Screaming Skulls by Joan Carris, 1990.

Todd Fearing is worried because his Great-Aunt Morbelia is coming to live with his family.  He has never met her before, but he has heard that she is rather strange, and he knows that his life will never be the same again.  Aunt Morbelia is very superstitious, and she sees bad omens everywhere.  When she first arrives at Todd’s house and sees that the family owns both a black dog and a black cat, she takes it as a sign that she should leave right away.  It takes a lot persuading to get her to stay on a trial basis.  By Joan Carris.

Having Aunt Morbelia at his house is sort of a mixed blessing.  On one hand, Aunt Morbelia likes baking good things for him to eat and helps him with his homework.  Todd is dyslexic and has extra assignments to help him improve his reading.  Aunt Morbelia used to be a teacher, and Todd really appreciates the help she gives him. On the other hand, Todd doesn’t like scary stories, and Aunt Morbelia’s talk of ghosts and bad omens gives him nightmares.  His friends like to hear her stories, particularly Rocky, a girl who typically doesn’t like feminine things.  Rocky, whose real name is RosaLynn, constantly pesters him about when Aunt Morbelia will tell more stories. 

Eventually, Todd gets tired of Rocky’s obsession with ghost stories and the way she encourages Aunt Morbelia to keep telling them, and he and his best friend, Jeff, decide to play a trick on her to cure her appetite for scary stuff.  However, their trick backfires, and in their attempt to make it up to everyone, especially Aunt Morbelia, they end up making things worse. 

Todd and Jeff succeed in scaring Rocky by dressing up as ghosts and showing up at her house in the middle of the night. They have so much fun with their trick that they decide to go to their friend Alan’s house to try it on him. Alan lives in the house right behind Todd’s, and that’s where they run into trouble. When they start their ghost act, they can’t get Alan to wake up and come to the window to see them. Jeff decides to throw a rock at Alan’s window to wake him up, but the rock breaks the window. To make matters worse, they startle Todd’s black cat, causing the cat to yowl. The boys run back to Jeff’s house, but Jeff’s father catches them. Todd has to go home and apologize to Aunt Morbelia, who was frightened very badly when the cat started howling.

The boys decide to take Aunt Morbelia on a tour of the historic places in town to make up for scaring her. Unfortunately, Jeff includes the funeral home that his father runs on the tour because it is in one of the oldest buildings in town. Although Todd tells her that she doesn’t have to go in if she doesn’t want to, Aunt Morbelia thinks that it would be rude to refuse. Unfortunately, Jeff’s father arrives with a dead body before their tour ends, and Aunt Morbelia faints when she sees it. Aunt Morbelia tells the boys that it isn’t their fault, but she says that she’s not sure she really belongs in their town. Even with all of Aunt Morbelia’s superstition craziness and spooky stories, Todd still doesn’t want her to leave.  Is there still something he can do to convince her to stay?

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive. There is also a sequel to this book, Beware the Ravens, Aunt Morbelia!

My Reaction and Spoilers

When I first read this book, I was expecting a spooky mystery, but it’s really more about a boy adjusting to a relative coming to live with his family and dealing with his dyslexia. Although Todd initially has some reservations about Aunt Morbelia living with him and his parents and her spooky stories scare him, Todd and Aunt Morbelia gradually come to understand each other better, and Todd genuinely wants her to stay. To help Aunt Morbelia change her mind about leaving, Todd has all the people who have met Aunt Morbelia since she arrived come by the house and tell her how much they all want her to stay.  After everyone has visited her, Todd himself tells her that he doesn’t want her to go.  They talk about the scary stories and how Todd feels about them, and Aunt Morbelia tells Todd that if he doesn’t want to hear a scary story, he can be honest with her and tell her so.  Now that the two of them understand each other better, Aunt Morbelia agrees to stay, and she accepts the invitation that one of Todd’s teachers makes to help tutor children at the learning center.

I didn’t like the part where the boys played the trick on Rocky and how awkward things were with her afterward. Jeff’s father says that part of that, with Rocky drifting away from her friendship with the boys, is because the kids are growing up. He says that, as they grow up, girls start changing before boys do and have different interests from boys and different ways of looking at things, including more tomboy girls, like Rocky. Toward the end of the story, Rocky does appear to need more friendships with other girls, and Todd decides that Jeff’s dad is probably right, that Rocky thinks and acts differently from his guy friends because she’s a girl, even if she’s usually not a particularly “girly” girl. Part of that may be true, but the boys’ trick was pretty mean. I think that the real issue is that real friends shouldn’t do that to each other, and Rocky might really be questioning what she’s looking for in a real friend. Although, to hear some of my male friends talk about their youths, boys (at least certain ones) might be more accepting and forgiving of that kind of rough humor from friends than girls would be, so perhaps boys vs. girls issues are partly at the heart of it.

I thought that the parts where Aunt Morbelia was helping Todd with his dyslexia were interesting. I don’t really have any experience with the condition myself, and I’m not quite sure what techniques teachers really use to help dyslexics. One of the tricks that Aunt Morbelia uses is to break down tasks into smaller pieces to make them more manageable. For example, Todd feels badly that he can’t keep the orders of months straight. When he tries to recite the months of the year in order, he mixes them up, which makes him feel bad because most kids his age should be able to do this easily. When I first read this, I wasn’t sure if this is a common issue among dyslexics, although I thought that I remembered reading something about dyslexics having trouble remembering the orders of certain things, like lists of instructions. I looked it up, and apparently, it is a common issue, along with memorizing things like days of the week. There are different techniques for handling it, some of which involve associating the things to be remembered with something else that sticks in the mind more easily, such as a rhyme or song. Aunt Morbelia does some association with Todd but she also breaks the months down into groups of three, representing the four seasons of the year, and giving him small bits of information to memorize. She calls the spring months, “the flower months” and the fall months “the leaf months” and so on. Todd finds that technique helpful, and Aunt Morbelia says that once Todd has mastered the seasons of the year, they will put the season of the year together so that he can recite the entire year. Todd also describes other ways that he is affected by his dyslexia and techniques that his teacher uses to help him.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

The School at the Chalet

The School at the Chalet by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, 1925.

This is the first book in the Chalet School Series.  This series is uncommon in the United States.  People from Britain or countries with heavy British influence would be more familiar with this series.  It’s considered classic!

When the story begins, Madge and Dick Bettany, who are brother and sister, a set of twins, are discussing their family’s situation.  Their parents are dead, and they have very little money and no family members they can rely on.  Madge and Dick are grown and are ready to begin making their own way in the world, but their younger sister, called Joey, is still a child, and her heath has been poor.  Dick has a job, but he really can’t afford to support his sisters.  However, Madge has had an idea: she wants to start a school.  Dick worries that they don’t have the capital necessary to start a school, but Madge says that she could start one in continental Europe instead of England, where they are from, because the costs would be lower.  She even has a specific place in mind, a chalet near a lake, close to a town called Innsbruck in the Tiernsee (Austria).  Joey could live with her at the school and continue her education in the company of the other students, and Madge thinks that the climate there might even be better for her than England.  She has already written a letter to find out if the chalet is available, and it is.  If they sell most of what they own in England, Madge thinks that they’ll have enough to buy what they need in Europe.  Madge says that she thinks she could handle about a dozen girls, between the ages of twelve and fourteen or fifteen.  She knows someone who could help her teach, Mademoiselle Lepattre, and between them, they are qualified to teach French, German, sewing, and music.  Dick is still a little concerned about whether or not Madge can pull off the school, but he agrees that she should go ahead with her plans (since she likely will anyway) and says that if she runs into trouble, she should contact him for help.

Madge even knows who her first pupil at the boarding school will be: Grizel Cochrane.  Madge has already had her as a student, and she is friends with her family.  She knows that Grizel has been unhappy at home since her father remarried because she and her stepmother do not get along.  Grizel’s stepmother has already been pressuring her father to send her away to boarding school, but he loves her and has been reluctant to part with her.  However, Grizel has been miserable, and her father decides would be more willing to send her away with someone he already knows.  Grizel is pleased at the idea of joining Madge and Joey at a school in Europe, and the Madge gains her first student.

Dick and Mademoiselle Lepattre go to the chalet first to take the larger trunks and belongings and begin getting settled, while Madge, Joey, and Grizel follow them.  Along the way, they see some of the sights of Paris.  By the time they arrive at the chalet, Mademoiselle Lepattre’s young cousin, Simone Lecoutier, has arrived at the school to be a pupil, and Madge has arranged to accept an American girl named Evadne Lannis, who will arrive later.  These four girls, Joey, Grizel, Simone, and Evadne, are the school’s first boarders.  The school soon acquires a few day pupils who live nearby: Gisela and Maria Marani (a pair of sisters), Gertrud Steinbrucke, Bette Rincini, Bernhilda and Frieda Mensch (also sisters).  Maria is much younger than the other girls, only nine, but her mother asked that she be admitted along with her older sister. There are public schools for children in Innsbruck, but the father of one of the new local pupils thinks that the Chalet School might be healthier for his daughter because, while he doesn’t think much of English educational standards (Grizel takes exception to that comment), they shorten the school day (compared to the average school day of Austria or Germany of the time) and encourage participation in sports and games. The local girls are curious to see what things are going to be like at an English style school, and if it will be like other English schools they’ve heard about.  The school also soon gains more students and boarders:

  • Margia and Amy Stevens – ages 8 and 11, their father is a foreign correspondent from London who needs to travel for his work, and the girls’ parents wanted to find a stable place for the girls to stay.
  • Bette Rincini’s cousins, who have come to stay with her family
  • A pair of sisters from another town across the lake
  • Two more children from a nearby hotel
  • Friends of Gisela from Vienna
  • Rosalie and Mary, two girls Joey and Grizel know from England

As the school grows and the girls settle into life at the school, they make friends with each other, although it’s awkward in some cases.  Madge notices that Simone is often by herself and she asks Joey if she and the other girls are being nice to her.  Joey says that they try, but Simone often sneaks off alone, and she doesn’t know where Simone goes.  Joey tries to ask Simone if she’s unhappy, and Simone tries to deny it.  The truth is that Simone is really homesick.  Joey finds her crying by herself later and comforts her, and Simone finally admits how much she misses her mother.  Simone also says that she feels left out because everyone else at the school has someone to be close to.  Other girls at the school share nationalities with at least some of the other students.  Simone is the only French girl at the school.  The Austrian girls are close to home, and Joey and Grizel already knew each other before they left England.  Seeing the other girls being such close friends makes her feel more left out.  Joey apologizes for making Simone feel left out and assures her that she will be her friend.  Simone asks her to be her best friend because she really needs someone to confide in, and Joey agrees, although she finds Simone rather needy and clingy. 

It turns out to be a difficult promise because Simone gets very jealous when Joey makes friends with other girls, and she tries to convince Joey to only be friends with her.  Simone is very dramatic, and she even ends up cutting off her long braid in an effort to impress Joey and get her attention when she learns about the other girls who will be coming from England.  Simone is so desperately lonely and finds it so difficult to make new friends that she is terrified that Joey will abandon her completely when she has other friends.  Joey gets fed up with her behavior and tells her that she’s being selfish. Joey knows that Simone would find it easier to make more friends herself if she would stop moping and being sad and gloomy.

After Juliet Carrick, another English girl, joins the school, Gisela is made head girl, and other girls are made prefects.  Bette is a sub-prefect, and one day, when she tells Grizel to put her shoes away, Grizel is rude to her, and Juliet laughs.  Gisela and the prefects discuss the situation and agree that Grizel, who wasn’t causing problems before, is now acting up because Juliet thinks that it’s funny.  When Gisela sends someone to bring Grizel to the prefects’ room to talk about it, Grizel refuses to come and see them, and she realizes that something needs to be done.  If the head girl and prefects let a girl get away with disrespecting them or not following the rules, the prefect system and student government would fall apart.  Grizel feels a kinship for Juliet because neither of them has a happy home life. Juliet has been raised to believe that the English are superior to everyone else, and she has no shame in showing it.  Juliet encourages Grizel to adopt her prejudices, but at a school in Austria with students of varying nationalities, that can’t be allowed.  Madge supports the prefects, and Grizel is punished for her behavior.

Juliet is still a bad influence, sometimes encouraging other girls to act up with her. When Madge refuses to allow the girls to pose by the lake for some film makers, Juliet convinces some of other girls to sneak away with her and volunteer to be filmed without Madge’s knowledge.  However, the father of one of the local girls catches them. He explains to the film makers that it would be inappropriate to film the girls because they don’t have permission from either the girls’ parents or teachers, and he takes the girls back to the school.  Grizel’s temper and excessive patriotism also get the girls into trouble when they encounter a German tourist who makes it plain that she is disgusted at the presence of the English girls. (This is after The Great War, World War I, so that may be the reason.)  While the German woman was being deliberately rude and insulting to the girls, Joey points out that Grizel’s hot-headed reply to her has now caused them more trouble.  Grizel does apologize for not using more restraint.

Juliet’s home life turns out to be even worse than the other girls know, but they learn the truth when Juliet’s father sends a letter to Madge saying that he and his wife relinquish their custody of Juliet to the school.  The letter says that Madge can do whatever she likes with Juliet.  If she wants to keep Juliet at the school and have her work for her future tuition, that will be fine, and she is also free to send Juliet to an orphanage.  The point is that her parents have left the country, they consider Juliet a burden that they would rather not bring with them, and while they might one day feel able to reclaim her, chances of that are not looking good.  When Juliet learns about the letter, she cries and says that she had been afraid that they would do something like this.  Her parents tried to abandon her at a different school once before, but the school had insisted that they take her back.  Madge now has no idea where Juliet’s parents are.  However, she can’t bear to turn Juliet over to an orphanage, so she promises Juliet that she will keep her and that she can help to pay for her tuition by working with the younger children at the school.  Although Juliet’s behavior hasn’t been very good up to this point, Juliet is grateful to Madge and does earnestly try to please her and to maintain her place at the school. Before the end of the book, Juliet’s parents die in an automobile accident, giving Madge and the school permanent custody of her. Most of the other students (except for Joey) do not know that Juliet’s parents tried to abandon her before they died.

Through the rest of the book, the girls have adventures together and forge the new traditions of their school.  They celebrate Madge’s birthday, get stranded in a storm and have to spend the night in a cowshed, start a magazine for the school, and play pranks on each other. When Grizel’s pranks and disobedience go too far and she is punished harshly for it, she gets angry and runs away from the school, becoming stranded on a nearby mountain. Joey goes after her to save her, and both girls are ill after their experience.

The book ends with Madge and a few of the girls caught in a train accident. Fortunately, they escape the accident without serious injury, and they also manage to help the German woman who had insulted the girls earlier. A man named James Russell helps them. The book ends at this point, and the story continues in the next book in the series. James Russell is a significant continuing character.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Sixteen and Away from Home

Sixteen and Away from Home by Arleta Richardson, 1985.

The year is 1889. Mabel O’Dell turns 16 years old at the beginning of the book, and her mother gives her a journal as a present. Soon, she and her best friend, Sarah Jane Clark, will be starting the final years of their education at the academy in town. Mabel worries about going to the academy, first whether they’ll pass the entrance exams, and then whether they’ll be homesick because they will have to board in town. Sarah Jane assures her that it will be okay because they’ll be going together, and they’ll probably be too busy at school to think about homesickness much. Mabel’s mother is a little worried about the foolishness that young women can get into when they’re on their own. However, the girls do pass their exams and are admitted to the academy, and their parents agree to let them go.

In town, the girls will be staying with Sarah Jane’s Aunt Rhoda. Aunt Rhoda’s housekeeper, Lettie, seems to resent the girls being there for reasons they don’t understand. When school begins, the girls are shocked to learn that they’ll have to wear bloomers for “physical culture” classes. The teacher gives them a sewing pattern so they can make the uniform themselves. The girls imagine that their parents would be shocked to see them running around without skirts on. Fortunately, Mabel and Sarah Jane will have all the same classes, along with all of the other first year students. They have to take Grammar and Rhetoric, Biology, Latin, History, Calculus, and Physical Culture (physical education or PE).

They also quickly realize that the class troublemaker is going to be Clarice Owens, who unfortunately sits near Mabel because they all sit in alphabetical order by last name. Clarice deliberately picks on Mabel and Sarah Jane for coming from the countryside, calling them “hayseeds.” Mabel is disgusted because she can never think of a good comeback until after Clarice walks away. (Yeah, I’ve been there before.) Sarah Jane thinks she’s jealous of Mabel for being prettier. Mabel doesn’t really believe that, but she appreciates the thought. Molly, one of the other town girls, is friendlier. She says that she knows Clarice has always thought she was better than everyone, but she’s not usually this deliberately mean. Mabel says that maybe it would help if they knew the reason.

Through the rest of the school year, Clarice tries one scheme after another to cause trouble for the girls, especially Mabel. Mabel tries to be as patient as she can with Clarice, trying to let her know that she’d rather be a friend than an enemy, but Clarice gets angry and upset when Mabel tells her that she forgives her for all the awful stuff she does. Mabel thinks that there’s something hurting Clarice and affecting her behavior, although Molly tells her that she shouldn’t waste her sympathy on Clarice because “she gets what she wants.” Molly thinks that they should just be grateful for those times when Clarice isn’t immediately stepping on them to get what she wants because that happens, too.

When Mabel is injured in a sledding accident and has to stay in bed for awhile, she worries about falling behind in her classes. Lettie talks to her and brings into question the reason why she’s so concerned about her standing in class. Is it really because she loves learning, or is it because she’s trying to compete with the other students? Mabel starts to consider how too much competitiveness can spoil a person’s attitude and take the enjoyment out of things. Competition has much to do with Clarice and her attitude.

Things get worse when Clarice’s grandmother becomes ill and her parents arrange for her to stay in the house with Mabel and Sarah Jane while they go to see her grandmother. Clarice is rude to the servants in Aunt Rhoda’s house and sneaks out of the house during the night. Lettie tells the girls that Clarice’s mother was strong-willed as a girl, and she’s given a lot of her attitude to Clarice. There was a boy that Clarice’s mother had always wanted for herself, but he married someone else. Although Clarice’s mother also married and had a child, she never completely got over losing her first choice to someone else. Since the man she originally loved has a son the age of her daughter, Russell Bradley, she might be hoping that Clarice will marry him. Clarice certainly is interested is Russ … who is apparently more interested in Mabel.

Mabel considers that allowing Clarice to be with Russ and not trying to compete with her would help settle things between them, but as Sarah Jane says, Russ’s feelings on the issue matter. To get the most out of her education, Mabel needs to focus on her love of learning instead of comparing herself to her classmates, and to get the most out of their relationships with other people, all of the girls need to focus on caring about other people and their feelings.

The book is part of the Grandma’s Attic series. It is available to borrow and fread for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

The problem with Clarice and her mother and their attitudes and expectations is that they do not take anyone else’s feelings into account other than their own and don’t even inform people of what they really want, yet they expect everyone else to somehow accommodate their wishes and feel toward them exactly how they want them to feel. These are not reasonable expectations at all. For most of the book, Mabel is completely unaware that Clarice’s meanness comes from the fact that she sees her as competition, and even then, it’s not really clear at first what Clarice is trying to compete for. Mabel didn’t ask or agree to be Clarice’s competitor in anything, and she’s not even trying to be. In fact, she’s been trying everything that she can to avoid it. Russ also apparently has no idea what Clarice is really after because he doesn’t have the same feelings about Clarice that she has about him. He’s just trying to live his life and focus on his own feelings and interests, and as far as he’s concerned, Clarice doesn’t really enter into it. Russ has no obligations to Clarice and her mother, and even Mabel doesn’t have the right to tell him how to feel or what to do to get rid of Clarice’s ire.

When Clarice pulls one last trick on Mabel, and she still forgives her, Clarice finally tells her that she gives up because, “You can’t go on disliking someone who refuses to be disliked.” I have to admit that I found the end to be a bit unbelievable. I’ve never encountered anybody who was that much of a pain and who ever let someone else’s kind behavior stand in the way being a pain. The response that I’ve usually seen is that they congratulate themselves on finding someone who’s never going to fight back and use that opportunity to run roughshod over them. They usually blame the kind person for making it easy to take advantage of them. As even the book says, people cannot decide how anyone else should feel or force them to feel anything in particular. It just doesn’t work. Mabel cannot “refuse to be disliked” because what Clarice likes or dislikes is all in her own mind. All that Mabel can decide is how she feels and what she’s going to do about it.

What Mabel really does decide is that, whether she likes or dislikes Clarice, she’s not going to compete with her and try to fight or match her meanness. It isn’t so much a matter of likes and dislikes in the end as Clarice discovering that she’s running a race with no other runners. If there’s no one to race against, there isn’t really a race at all, and no one cares if you walk off with the trophy or not. Maybe there was never even a trophy there to begin with.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times, I don’t like bullying or one-upmanship, and I have no interest in sympathizing with anyone who does those things. Part of the trouble I have with overly-competitive personality traits is the same trouble that actors sometimes suffer when they’re out in public: they don’t always know when to stop acting, stop posing, or stop performing. Overly-competitive people don’t know went to stop competing. Where does the one-upmanship end and the human person actually begin? Or is that their personality all by itself? Do they have any interests outside of being competitive, or are they only about competition just for the sake of competition? Do they wan to be good at something for a purpose or because they just love it, like the love of learning, or is everything they do just about trying to look better than someone? I was reading this article recently, about how trying to keep up an image all the time too often leads to a person having no real substance or sense of self.

By herself, Clarice doesn’t present much to connect with or sympathize with. Clarice doesn’t really seem like a real person to me. She’s rather a one-dimensional character. This is a problem with a lot of bullies in children’s books. She apparently has very generic family issues that are supposed to explain her behavior with little insight into how she really feels about anything. At least, that was how she seemed to me. The explanation behind these family issues comes from a youthful romantic trauma of her mother’s, but what does that really mean to Clarice herself? She seems to have some kind of fear of being second-best, possibly because her mother has pushed her in that direction, but again, we return to the question of second-best at what? Is it that she fears being rejected by classmates or potential boyfriends, or does she fear not living up to her mother’s expectations? If her mother is still pining for her first boyfriend, what does that say about her parents’ relationship with each other? Does her mother view her own husband as second-best, the consolation prize in the contest of life, and what does that mean for Clarice’s relationship with her father? What does Clarice really want out of life and what, specifically does she want to be the best at doing? The idea of romance with Russell may be wish-fulfillment for her mother, but what do she and Russell really have in common? What does she have in common with anybody, when we mainly see her in competition with everyone?

I wouldn’t have nearly as much patience with her as Mabel because, when it comes right down to it, I wouldn’t see Clarice’s friendship as a prize worth winning. Mabel went through quite a lot to get through to Clarice, but her efforts only pay off right before the end of the book, so we don’t really see much of what Clarice is like after she says that she’s giving up the competitive mean girl act. Apparently, Mabel will get the benefit of not having to put up with Clarice’s mean tricks from now on, which is something, but if Clarice isn’t being mean and sneaky, what is she? Who is she, really?

In real life, people have hobbies, interests, and life goals, but Clarice doesn’t seem to have much that really interests her. Are Clarice’s goals really hers or her mother’s, as they hint? What does Clarice want, or has she even thought about what she wants? In modern times, a sixteen-year-old still has years of education ahead of her because more people attend college these days, but once Clarice finishes at the academy in town, her education is likely over. She only has a couple of years left to think about a direction for her life before she has to get on and live it as a full adult. Even if her destiny seems to be someone’s wife and mother, connecting with someone emotionally to the point where they would want to be married and sharing a life with her would be difficult for someone who has no real interests to connect to or a sense of how to build a shared life with someone else. For a while, she seemed to do well at memorizing the reading from Alice in Wonderland that she was going to perform with Mabel at the end of the school year, but that was just another part of her tricks so that she could back out at the last minute and let Mabel down. It was all part of an act by itself. Does Clarice really like acting? Does she like books? Does she like anything?

Clarice doesn’t even seem to have any close friends of her own, which is very unlike the real-life bullies I’ve known. Most of them do have friends and hangers-on who enjoy their mean humor (the thing that often binds them together and bolsters their bad behavior) or who put up with it because of some other benefit they get from that friendship, but Clarice doesn’t seem to have anybody and isn’t really offering anything. It just doesn’t seem realistic and makes me feel like Clarice is there mostly to be the cardboard cut-out of a nemesis. That may be why she gives up so easily in the end.

I would have found her change more believable if Russ had straight-up told her that her mean tricks and selfish attitude are the reasons why he doesn’t like her and isn’t interested in her. That would have been motivation for Clarice to change because it would give her both something to lose by not changing (Russ and others getting angry and saying they’ve had enough of her attitude) and something to gain by taking on different habits (like the possibility that Russ might change his mind if she can demonstrate that she can do as many unselfish deeds as Mabel, something that might actually appeal to Clarice’s competitive personality). I would also have found it believable if Clarice changed her mind about Russ because she ultimately realized that Russ is what her mother wants for her, not what she wants for herself, and that there are other possibilities that she likes better. I would also have liked it if Clarice had been planning to back out on the reading of Alice in Wonderland in order to ruin the presentation for Mabel but changed her mind at the last minute because she realized that she loves the story or performing so much that she just can’t bring herself to miss the event, that she has found something that she loves doing more than causing problems for someone else. Reassessing the consequences of behavior or finding different goals are the kinds of self-motivation that provoke real people to change.

On the other hand, maybe the real issue is Clarice has sensed that she’s fighting a losing battle for Russ, and as Sarah Jane noted, you can’t control the way other people feel. If Russ doesn’t love Clarice, he’s just not going to love her. Perhaps she can tell, even when he’s with her, that he’s not thinking of her and just isn’t going to be interested in her the way she is with him. There’s only so much effort that a person can pour into getting someone’s attention before it starts to get really awkward when they don’t get the attention they’re looking for. Even if Russ doesn’t spell it out for her, she can probably tell that she doesn’t want to be with someone who clearly doesn’t want to be with her. Clarice still might not know quite what she really wants yet, but she might have figured out that’s one thing she doesn’t want, to be with someone who doesn’t think of her as his first choice or even much of a choice at all. All along, she’s been trying to compete with someone who doesn’t even want to compete for a prize that doesn’t want to be won by her because he’s already picking another winner. It brings us back to the idea of one person attempting to run a race all alone. It’s not really a race, it’s just one person running down the street, getting sweaty and tired, with no real prize to win, and who is there to care when they start or stop? That might actually be the most believable explanation of them all.

The books in this series have Christian themes, including this one. As the characters discuss the problem of Clarice and other situations, they often turn to the Bible for inspiration, sometimes discussing specific quotes that relate to the concepts they consider, like forgiveness and revenge.

On a fun note, I liked the description of the Halloween party activities. I was born around Halloween, and I often have a Halloween-themed birthday party. I’m sometimes fascinated by the traditions of Halloweens past. In the book, they call it a Halloween party, but the activities are more harvest-themed than spooky. They bob for apples and run races with apples balanced on their heads, and they also play tug-of-war and Skip to My Lou.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Meet Samantha

American Girls

Meet Samantha by Susan S. Adler, 1986.

This is the first book in the Samantha, An American Girl series.

Samantha Parkington is a nine-year-old orphan. She belongs to a wealthy family and lives with her grandmother, called Grandmary, in the Hudson Valley in New York. Grandmary is often strict with Samantha, trying to teach her to be a proper young lady, but Samantha finds it difficult. Samantha’s grandmother loves her, but she has very old-fashioned ideas about how girls should behave. When Samantha wants to try making and selling boomerangs in order to earn money to buy a doll, using instructions from The Boys’ Handy Book, her grandmother stops her, saying that young ladies do not earn money. She would rather that Samantha earn the doll as a reward for doing what she is told and practicing her piano lessons. Samantha also has an uncle, Uncle Gard, who has a girlfriend named Cornelia. Cornelia is a more modern woman, who would see nothing wrong with Samantha wanting to earn some money.

One of her grandmother’s servants, a black woman named Jessie, is kind and motherly to Samantha. Jessie often patches Samantha up after her various escapades and mishaps. Jessie’s husband, Lincoln, is a train porter, and Jessie tells Samantha exciting stories about the places that Lincoln has seen in his work, like New Orleans. Sometimes, Lincoln brings Samantha post cards from these places.

Samantha soon learns that a new girl her age is coming to a neighbor’s house. She has been wanting a playmate, so she goes over to the neighbor’s house to introduce herself. The new girl’s name is Nellie, but she has come to be a servant for the neighbors, the Rylands. Nellie’s family is poor, so Nellie needs to work as a maid help her parents earn money and support her younger sisters. Samantha is surprised when Nellie describes her family’s circumstances in New York City. Samantha has never been poor, and she doesn’t know what it’s like to be cold and hungry. Nellie says that the air in the countryside is better for her, and she gets better food working for the Rylands. Nellie tells Samantha that she has never been to school, and Samantha offers to teach her.

Then, Jessie suddenly announces that she is leaving her job at Grandmary’s house. Grandmary doesn’t seem surprised, but Samantha is. Jessie offers no explanation for leaving, and when Samantha tries to ask, Grandmary and the other servants do not want to talk about it. Samantha tells Nellie about Jessie leaving, coming up with fanciful reasons why she might leave her job, but Nellie offers the practical explanation that Jessie might be having a baby. Nellie knows more about it than Samantha because she has younger sisters, but she acknowledges that adults of this time period do not like to talk about people having babies, particularly in front of children. Neither Nellie nor Samantha entirely knows why.

However, Samantha is still concerned about Jessie. Samantha doesn’t know where Jessie lives, but Nellie does. The two girls sneak out one evening to visit Jessie and learn for themselves what the matter is. This is the first time that Samantha has been to the part of her town where black people live, further opening her eyes to the lives of people from lower classes of society. Nellie is a little surprised at how Samantha, who is more educated, sometimes knows so little about the ways that other people live.

It turns out that Jessie does have a new baby. Jessie reassures Samantha that she and the baby are fine, but since her husband needs to travel because of his job as a train porter, she needs to stay at home with her baby now. Samantha thinks of a way to help Jessie keep her job and care for her baby at the same time, persuading her grandmother to let Jessie come back. Unfortunately, Nellie soon has to leave because Mrs. Ryland doesn’t think that she’s strong enough to work as a maid and decides to send her back to her family in New York City. Samantha gives Nellie her new doll as a going-away present, and she is very concerned about how Nellie and her family will manage.

In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about how wealthy people and their servants lived during the early 1900s.

Something that occurred to me later is that Jessie is about the right age to be Addy‘s daughter, from another American Girls series. I don’t think that there’s a real connection between Jessie and Addy because the Samantha books were written before the Addy series. However, when I stopped to think about their relative ages (Addy would be about 49 years old in 1904, and Jessie is probably in her 20s), it occurred to me that if Addy had a daughter, she would probably be an adult at this time, and she might be doing something very similar to what Jessie is doing, working as a seamstress.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Wizard’s Hall

Wizard’s Hall by Jane Yolen, 1991.

Henry hadn’t seriously considered becoming a wizard.  It was just one of a number of things he considered being when he was young.  However, when he suggests the possibility when he is eleven years old, his mother unexpectedly jumps on the idea and immediately packs him off to Wizard’s Hall, the school for young wizards.  Although Henry expresses doubts, his mother tells him that it’s only that he try that counts.  Being a dutiful son, he immediately sets out for Wizard’s Hall to enroll.  He has a moment when he gets worried and tries to turn back, but he discovers that he can’t because his destiny is at Wizard’s Hall, the road there won’t let him turn back.

At Wizard’s Hall, the Registrar (after consulting with a strange bird or animal in a cage called called Dr. Mo) changes Henry’s name to Thornmallow, saying that he’s prickly on the outside but squishy on the inside.  Henry isn’t happy about being given a new name, but he accepts it as part of what he has to try at the school.  The Registrar and the teachers also refer to Thornmallow oddly as what they “desperately need.”  Something is deeply wrong at Wizard’s Hall, and the teachers are hopeful that Thornmallow will be the one to save them, although he doesn’t appear to have much aptitude for wizardry.

On his first day, his teachers discover that he is tone-deaf, which is unheard of for wizards.  Wizards have to recite their spells in the proper tones, and Thornmallow can’t do it.  When one of his teachers tries to help him by covering his years while he attempts to recite, Thornmallow accidentally recites a spell that produces an avalanche of snow and roses.  It’s more powerful than anyone expects of a beginning student, especially one like Thornmallow, who has no prior knowledge of spells and doesn’t show much aptitude in other ways.  Thornmallow wonders briefly if he might have some special, hidden talent for wizardry, but he is unable to produce the same results when he is alone.

Although Thornmallow feels lonely and out-of-place at his new school, he persists because he promised his mother that he would try, and the teachers at the school also say that trying is important.  He also makes his first real friends his own age at the school.  A couple of other first-year students, Tansy and Willoweed (called Will for short) are assigned to be his Guardians, helping him to become acquainted with the school and its rules, and another girl, Gorse, also becomes his friend.  Thornmallow realizes that he would miss his new friends if he were to leave, although he briefly considers it, having the feeling that his first spell was just a fluke and that he doesn’t have any real talent for magic.

However, just when Thornmallow goes to tell his teachers that he thinks that his admittance to the school was a mistake, he overhears them talking about the serious threat to the school: the school is in danger from an evil sorcerer and his Quilted Beast (a “quilted beast” doesn’t sound particularly threatening because quilts are soft and comfy, but it’s way worse than that).  The teachers don’t know how to defeat the Master and his Beast, but they know that it’s vitally important for the school to have its full quantity of students, 113.  They were almost full when they sent out a call for the final student and got Henry/Thornmallow.  Although they aren’t sure why Thornmallow is the proper final student, it seems that he has some important role to play in the situation. When he learns the danger that they’re in, Thornmallow realizes that he has to stay and try to help them as best he can.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers:

Master Hickory, one of the teachers, explains to Thornmallow and his friends that the Master was one of the original founders of the school years ago.  The main founder had been Doctor Morning Glory, and she sent out a call for others to help her, bringing 13 sorcerers to found the school.  However, one of the others, Nettle, was prickly in every sense of the word.  He enjoyed using his words (and words are very important in magic and in the story) to sting and hurt others.  Eventually, the other 13 founders pushed him out of the school, and he turned to dark magic to get revenge. 

The Quilted Beast is made out of the dark pieces of the souls of each of the other founders, all “quilted” together.  Master Hickory explains that everyone has a little darkness in them in the form of very deep emotions, the kind that can tempt people to do bad things, if they let them get out of control.  I particularly liked the explanations of how people have their dark sides and how mature people deal with them.  At first, Thornmallow struggles to understand why the teachers are so upset that their dark sides have been removed because he thinks that would make them better.  However, Master Hickory explains that by “dark side,” he doesn’t mean the parts that are necessarily evil; he means the parts that could become evil, some of which are actually good.  Master Hickory says that some of the strongest human emotions can turn to evil if they aren’t kept under control.  For example, ambition out of control can become greed, or admiration out of control can become envy.  Having these feelings isn’t evil by itself; it’s the way people respond to their feelings that determines that.  Even love, which is considered good, is a deep emotion that can turn to something evil if used improperly, and so can count as part of a person’s dark side.  Mature people learn to deal with their feelings and control them, using them in the best ways.  People who aren’t mature, don’t.  Thornmallow, who often quotes his mother’s words of wisdom throughout the story, says, “Good folk think bad thoughts; bad folk act on ‘em.” 

I find those words of wisdom familiar because that’s something that my own parents impressed on me, “You can feel anything, but you don’t have to act on it.  You never have to act on it.” It was okay to have feelings and to say how we felt, but just “feeling like it” wasn’t an excuse for misbehavior. Everything has limits. You can’t hit your sibling just because you feel like it, and you can’t call people names just because you’re mad.  You can feel any way you want, but no matter what you’re feeling, you still have to behave, within the rules. If you don’t, there will be problems, and those problems won’t go away because of how you “feel.”  This probably explains a lot of my impatience toward people who don’t control themselves and don’t have limits for their behavior.  It’s not that I think it’s always easy or that people are always completely successful; it’s more that I have no respect for those who think it’s impossible and don’t even want to try, which brings us back to the story …

Master Hickory says that the teachers who had the smallest dark sides have still been basically functional since having them taken away, but those of particularly strong feelings have been damaged by the attack, including Morning Glory, who was both the most loving and the most ambitious of all the teachers.  What happened to Morning Glory isn’t fully explained until almost the end of the story, but the loss of her has been devastating to the school. When Thornmallow tells his friends about the problem, the kids are scared, but if there’s one thing that Thornmallow believes in, it’s trying. He and his friends are determined to try and save the school from the Master and the Quilted Beast, but time is running out.

The importance of trying is the theme of the story. Thornmallow/Henry doesn’t know his real talents or abilities, but just by showing up and trying to help, he learns that he possesses a special ability that makes him the right person to stop the evil wizard. Although he is not good at magic, not an enchanter, he has the ability to act as an enhancer for the abilities of others. The times when Thornmallow succeeds in his spells are when he’s working with, especially touching, one of the other wizards. He is able to use the talents of others and magnify them to be greater than anything either of them would do by themselves. By himself, Henry isn’t particularly special, but he can unite his friends and combine the talents of others, just by trying.

Another interesting aspect of the story is that the magic at Wizard’s Hall is largely based on word play. The characters play off words, using special names to point to the true natures of people and to change situations to be what they need them to be, which turns out to be part of the solution to their problem. Words spoken aloud at Wizard’s Hall have power and can change reality. For example, the names that everyone is given when they arrive at Wizard’s Hall are clues to the kind of people they are and what their abilities are. Thornmallow’s name is already explained, and at first, he puzzles a little over Tansy’s name when he meets her. Tansy is a black girl, and Thornmallow knows that tansy is a bright yellow flower. Gorse later explains to him that Tansy got her name because of her sunny personality. It’s not about what she looks like but what she is. Gorse describes herself as being small and prickly, and she seems proud of it because she’s comfortable with herself as she is. Before they can defeat the Master, who is really Nettle, they realize that they need to learn more about what Nettles are, which gives Thornmallow a clue as to what he needs to do and the words he needs to use.

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The Whipping Boy

The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman, 1986.

Jemmy is an orphan who lives in the royal castle as the prince’s new whipping boy.  Prince Horace, or Prince Brat, as the prince is commonly called, is known for constantly misbehaving, playing mean pranks, and refusing to do his lessons (he tells his tutor that he doesn’t need to learn how to read because he could always get someone else to do his reading for him).  However, in their land, it is illegal for anyone to use any kind of physical force or punishment on a prince.  Instead, the royal family employs a whipping boy to take the prince’s punishments for him.  As you can imagine, seeing someone else whipped in his place does little to correct the prince’s bad behavior.  In fact, the prince usually likes the spectacle of the whipping boy yelling.  He doesn’t like it that, unlike the others, Jemmy never yells when he’s whipped.

Jemmy was recruited for the role of whipping boy off the streets, where he survived by being a mudlark and rat catcher.  There are benefits to living in the palace, even if his purpose in being there is to take the prince’s punishments.  Jemmy gets food to eat and nice clothes to wear and attends the prince’s lessons with him, where he pays attention when the prince does not.  Jemmy actually loves the books and learning he receives.

After about a year, though, the prince suddenly comes to Jemmy in the middle of the night and tells him that he’s running away from home and wants Jemmy to come with him as a manservant.  When Jemmy asks him why he wants to leave, the prince says that he’s bored.  Jemmy wonders why Prince Brat wants him to come along instead of a friend, but then he realizes that, as nasty as he is, Prince Brat doesn’t have any real friends.

When the two of them are outside of the palace, Jemmy is tempted to run off and leave Prince Brat to fend for himself, but before he can make up his mind about it, the two boys are taken prisoner by bandits, Cutwater and Hold-Your-Nose Billy (named for all the garlic he eats).

Prince Horace tries to pull rank on the bandits, telling them who he is and ordering them to go away.  It’s a mistake.  When the bandits see the royal crest on the saddle of the horse that the boys are riding, they decide that they can probably get a good ransom for the prince.  Since neither of the bandits can write, they try to make the prince write his own ransom note, but of course, Prince Brat can’t write because he’s refused to learn. 

Jemmy, seeing an opportunity to turn the situation around, offers to write the note instead.  As Jemmy suspected, when the bandits realize that he can write and Horace can’t, they start assuming that he’s actually the prince and that the two boys have switched places.  After writing the note, Jemmy suggests that they let the “whipping boy” (Horace) take it to the castle, thinking that not only will Horace get safely away but that he’ll be rid of Horace after that.

To Jemmy’s surprise, Prince Horace ruins the whole scheme by refusing to return to the castle.  Jemmy tries to reason with him, but Horace says that he won’t go home until he’s ready.  The boys to manage to slip away on the bandits, and Horace insists on following Jemmy even though Jemmy wants to be rid of him.

Although Jemmy can’t understand why, Horace says that he’s having the time of his life.  For once in his life, he doesn’t have people fussing over him and telling him to keep his clothes clean.  Horace has found palace life stifling and boring, and he feels like his father hardly notices him or cares.  Part of the reason why Horace acts up is to get his father’s attention.  Jemmy is surprised by these insights into the prince’s life and character, and he is also surprised that, when he finally gets the chance to slip away and leave Horace behind, he can’t do it.  He knows that Horace isn’t used to life outside the palace, and Jemmy worries about what might happen to him if he’s left alone, although he tells himself that Horace could always return to the castle.

Before their adventures are over, Horace gets to experience what it’s like to do chores for himself and even to be whipped by the bandits, when they think he’s the whipping boy.  Being whipped himself shows Horace what he has subjected others to on his account.  Jemmy is surprised that Horace bears the punishment without crying or complaining, something which Horace says that he learned from watching Jemmy, who made it a point to take whippings with quiet dignity.  Horace also learns what other people really think of him when a woman at a fair comments on the prince’s disappearance, using the “Prince Brat” nickname and saying that the young prince is a “terror” and bound to be a terrible king when he’s older.  Usually, people are careful about what they say in front of the prince, and Horace is shocked to find out how disliked he is because of his bad behavior.  However, Horace’s new experiences and realizations bring a change in his outlook and personality that make him more sympathetic and likeable.  There is also the realization that what Horace really needs in his life isn’t a whipping boy to take his punishments for him but someone who can be a real, honest friend with him, like Jemmy.

In the end, Jemmy becomes the prince’s companion, not his whipping boy, so that the prince will be less lonely and stop acting out to get attention.  The king promises that Horace can keep Jemmy as his companion and his responsibility as long as Horace himself can behave responsibly and do his lessons as he should.

Although the country and characters in the story are fictional, the practice of keeping a whipping boy so that princes wouldn’t have direct physical punishment was a real practice.  Even today, the term “whipping boy” can stand for a person who takes blame or punishment in the place of someone with higher rank or authority, even when the person of higher rank is the one at fault.  For example, if a business manager or CEO makes a bad decision and orders one of his employees to do something they shouldn’t and the employee gets the blame for it as if what they did was their idea and not the boss’s, that employee can be considered the “whipping boy.” Another example would be if a stepchild in a family was given blame or punishment in place of a biological child because of favoritism on the part of the punishing parent (similar to the crude saying “beaten like a red-headed stepchild“). In fact, depending on the circumstances, a “whipping boy” might not even be a person, but a thing or a concept that is blamed instead of the person or thing that is the true cause of a problem, such as blaming “modern society” or “kids these days” for an individual’s bad habits or behavior, “the government” or “the system” for a business’s bad decisions or policies, or “millenials” for practically everything they’ve been blamed for by older people. It is similar to the concept of the “scapegoat” or “fall guy” but with the connotation that the person who is really at fault, the one who is trying to avoid blame or punishment, succeeds because of higher rank, authority, seniority, or some other form of favoritism among those who will assign blame or punishment.

This book is a Newbery Medal Winner and is available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

There is also a movie version of the book, sometimes called Prince Brat and the Whipping Boy.  The movie follows the concept of the original story pretty well, but it elaborates more on Jemmy’s life before he became the whipping boy and on how Horace feels neglected by his father.  In the movie, Jemmy is pressed into service as whipping boy by the king’s soldiers, who don’t bother to find out if he has any other family.  Although Jemmy is an orphan in both the book and movie, in the movie, he also has a younger sister he looks after, and part of what he wants to do when he leaves the palace is to find her.  The boys together learn that the younger sister was arrested for attempting to steal a handkerchief in Jemmy’s absence, and they have to rescue her from prison, a side adventure that didn’t occur in the book.  In the movie, Horace also explains to Jemmy that his mother died in a riding accident when he was young and that his father pays more attention to affairs of state than he does to him.  Horace is shown multiple times trying to get his father’s attention, only to be brushed off because his father is too busy.  In the movie, the king almost declares war on another country, thinking that Horace was kidnapped over a border dispute, something that didn’t happen in the book.  In both the book and the movie, Jemmy’s new friendship with Horace brings about a change in the prince.  At the end of the movie, both Jemmy and his sister are taken in to the palace as companions for Horace. Sometimes you can find this movie or clips of it on YouTube. Although it was originally released on VHS, it is currently available on DVD.

Posted on by TracyC

The Ravenmaster’s Secret

The Ravenmaster’s Secret by Elvira Woodruff, 2003.

Forrest Harper is the son of the Ravenmaster of the Tower of London in 1735.  The story begins by explaining the tradition of keeping ravens at the Tower of London because of the superstition that the Tower would be conquered by its enemies if the ravens ever abandoned it.  This superstition led to the creation of the job of Ravenmaster, who looks after a flock of ravens that live at the Tower with wings clipped so that they can’t fly away.

Forrest Harper lives at the Tower with his parents and sisters, training to become a Ravenmaster, like his father.  He likes the ravens, and they like him.  He is pretty good at caring for ravens, but there is something that bothers him: he thinks that he isn’t brave enough and that others think that he is a coward, too.  He is smaller than the other boys and is often teased.  He has trouble cutting up the squirrels that the rat catcher’s boy (his only real friend, although his mother doesn’t approve of him) brings to him to feed to the ravens.  Even though it’s necessary, Forrest doesn’t like the sight of blood and feels kind of sorry for the squirrels.  Worse still, when Forrest’s family attends the public hangings (which were treated as a kind of festival day with music and entertainment in Forrest’s time), Forrest is unable to look at the criminals who are being hanged.  The one time he does try it, he throws up, and again, the other boys tease him mercilessly for it.  Forrest’s problem, as readers will see, isn’t so much that he’s a coward as he has more empathy than the other boys, both for animals and people, and that isn’t really as much of a problem as he believes.  His father tells him to ignore the bullies because they are foolish, and their foolishness will show in time.

Forrest sometimes dreams of going out into the wider world, beyond the Tower, where he could do something brave that would impress everyone.  The rat catcher’s boy, whose real name is Ned although most people just call him Rat, also dreams of running away because he is an orphan, treated harshly by his master and always in danger of being turned over to the chimney sweep to be used as a climbing boy.  He doesn’t think that Forrest has a real problem because his life at the Tower is pretty good, living comfortably at the Tower with his parents, whatever the local bullies say.  Still, the two boys often imagine what it would be like to go to sea together and have adventures.  When there is an announcement that a new prisoner will be arriving at the Tower, a Scottish Jacobite rebel, Forrest thinks that helping to guard a dangerous rebel will make the Tower bullies respect him.

To Forrest’s surprise and embarrassment, this rebel actually turns out to be a girl.  She is the daughter of the rebel Owen Stewart, who is being held in a different tower at the Tower of London (the Tower of London is actually a fortress with multiple towers – she is imprisoned in Bloody Tower and her father is in Bell Tower).  She has been charged with treason, along with her father and uncle.  Forrest isn’t happy about being given the task of taking food to a girl prisoner. 

However, Madeline McKay Stewart, the girl prisoner, is pretty tough in her own right.  Although Maddy’s been separated from her father and uncle and all three of them are likely to be executed, she is being pretty brave about it.  She talks to Rat and Forrest.  She is interested in Forrest’s pet raven, Tuck, and tells him about how she used to feed baby owls back home.  She talks about her life and family in Scotland, and Forrest realizes that he’s starting to think of her as a friend instead of an enemy to be guarded.

While Forrest is used to hearing English people criticize the Scots for being “savage,” he is astonished and a bit offended when Maddy talks about English people being “evil.”  For the first time, it makes him think of the situation from the other side.  He knows that not all English people are evil and realizes, having seen that Maddy actually has refined manners, that Scottish people aren’t “savage.”  One day, at Maddy’s request, he takes a message to her father in exchange for her ring, which he plans to sell in order to buy Ned back from the chimney sweep after the rat catcher loses his term of indenture to the chimney sweep in a game of cards, sparing him from the horrible life and health problems that the young climbing boys suffer.  Then, Owen Stewart gives Forrest a message to take back to Maddy.  Without really meaning to, Forrest realizes that he has suddenly become a go-between for the rebels and could be considered a conspirator under English law.

As Forrest considers the fate that lies ahead for Maddy and the nature of war between England and the Scottish rebels, it occurs to him that the adults in his life have often done the opposite of the things that they have always taught him were important.  His father always emphasized fairness, yet the war and Maddy’s possible execution are unfair.  Maddy shares Forrest’s feeling that the world might be a better place if people didn’t become adults and abandon their values.

Then, Maddy’s father and uncle are shot while attempting to escape, and Maddy is left completely alone.  Forrest feels badly for Maddy.  Soon after, he is unexpectedly approached by a carpenter who seems to know that he has become friends with Maddy.  The carpenter, who is a stranger to Forrest, tells him that Maddy will soon be executed by beheading but that he has a way to save her life.  Forrest has to decide if he is willing to trust the stranger and save Maddy, knowing that doing so would make him a traitor himself.

One of the parts of this story that interested me was how Forrest noted the hypocrisy in the adults around him as he was trying to decide what he should do.  Qualities that adults often praise and try to instill in their children are often ignored in the way that the adults live and even in how they treat other children, like Ned and Maddy.  Abandoning values, even the ones that they really want their children to have, isn’t something that adults have to do as they grow older, but it is something that some adults do if they think they must in order to live as they want to live or accomplish something that they want to accomplish.  The adults who think that Maddy should be beheaded would probably say that they were doing it for the greater good in promoting their cause against the rebels.  However, treating Ned as a piece of disposable property is something that they mostly do because they can and because they know that there is nothing that Ned can do to stop them.  Ned actually tries to repay his indenture legally with money that Forrest gives him, but although the sweep accepts the money, he refuses to let him go, saying that no one will take Ned’s word over his and that he could always use the money to make sure that Ned is hung as a thief if he tries to make trouble.  It is this type of attitude and situation that make the children realize that they are on their own to solve their problems and that working within the law is not going to be an option for them because the law is not just and it is not on their side.  It’s a frustrating situation, and I often feel frustrated when I encounter this type of thing in books, but fortunately, things do turn out well in the end.

This is one of those coming-of-age stories where a boy must decide what he stands for and where he really belongs.  Through Maddy and the inscription on her ring, which means “Face Your Destiny,” Forrest comes to understand the destiny that is right for him as he helps both Maddy and Ned escape to a better life elsewhere. 

The book also includes some interesting historical information. There’s a map of the Tower of London in the front of the book, and in the back, a short history of the Tower with information about famous prisoners and escapes. There is also a glossary of English and Scottish words that modern children (especially American children) might not know, such as breeches, wench, loch, and tattie-bogle (scarecrow).


The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.  (To borrow a book through Internet Archive, you have to sign up for an account, but it’s free, and then you read the book in your browser window.)

Spoiler: In the last chapter of the book, it explains what happened to the characters after the story ends.  Forrest does become the Ravenmaster after his father, realizing that it is the right kind of life for him and that he no longer desires to have adventures outside the Tower.  He has a wife and daughter, and years later, he receives a message from Ned, who says that he has become a captain in the Royal Navy and that Maddy has gone to live in the colonies with other Stewarts (something that my own Jacobite ancestors did, which is how I got to where I am now).