Posted on by TracyC

The Rag Coat

The Rag Coat by Lauren Mills, 1991.

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Reaction

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Quilt Story

The Quilt Story by Tony Johnston and Tomie dePaola, 1985.

A woman (at some point in the 1800s, from the pictures) makes a special quilt for her young daughter, Abigail.  It has Abigail’s name on it and a pattern of falling stars.  Abigail loves it!

Abigail uses the quilt all the time, not just in bed.  She has tea parties with her dolls on the quilt, hides under it when playing hide-and-seek, generally taking it everywhere and playing all kinds of games with it.  The quilt gets worn and torn in the playing, but her mother mends it when necessary.

Eventually, Abigail and her family move to a new home, traveling in a covered wagon.  Everything in their new home seems strange to Abigail, but her old quilt comforts her.

Eventually, when Abigail is older, she puts the quilt away in the attic, and people forget about it.  Still, animals use the quilt.  A mouse makes a nest it in.  A raccoon hides food in it, and a cat naps on it. Then, one day, another girl finds the quilt in the attic.  She loves it and brings it to her mother to be repaired. 

Like Abigail, though, the modern girl’s family soon moves to a new home, where everything seems new and strange.  However, the old, familiar quilt comforts the girl once again.

This is a gentle, comforting story that would make nice bedtime reading or a story that could be read to a young child who is moving or has recently moved, reminding them that, even in a new place, you can bring a sense of home and the familiar with you.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Linda Craig and the Clue on the Desert Trail

Linda Craig

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Crimson Ghost

The Mystery of the Crimson Ghost by Phyllis Whitney, 1969.

Janey Oakes loves horses and wishes that she had one of her own.  Her family lives on Staten Island in New York, so they don’t have room to keep a horse.  The only horses that she has ridden are rented ones.  However, her parents are now considering moving to the countryside in northern New Jersey, where Janey’s Aunt Viv lives.  If they do, there will be room for Janey to keep a horse, so she is hopeful.

Janey’s parents take her to visit Aunt Viv during the summer, while they decide if they want to move.  Along the way, they stop to ask directions at a half-ruined house.  The people there, Mrs. Burley and her grandson Roger, aren’t too friendly, and when Janey thinks that she hears a horse there, they seem oddly resentful and say that she should ask her aunt about it.

Aunt Viv seems oddly evasive on the subject of horses when Janey asks, saying that she doesn’t ride anymore.  She does tell Janey more about the strange, half-ruined house.  It was once a hotel for people who came to take the spring waters.  However, it eventually lost its popularity and was partly destroyed in a fire.  Mrs. Burley’s husband died in the fire, but she has remained living in the part of the house that is still standing, raising a couple of grandsons there after the death of her younger son.  Her older son is a doctor in New York City.  Aunt Viv says that she used to be friends with the younger of the two grandsons, Denis, but that ended when she did something wrong and something bad happened which she doesn’t want to talk about.

Aunt Viv introduces Janey to a girl who lives nearby named Coral, in the hopes that they will be friends.  Coral isn’t interested in horses, but when Janey questions her about the Burleys, she confirms that they do have a horse called the Star of Sussex.  She takes Janey up to the Burleys’ house again (partly in the hopes of seeing the older Burley boy, Roger, who she has a crush on).  There, Denis and Roger each explain to Janey that their grandmother had hoped to train Star as a racing horse.  Star is an excellent horse and had a lot of potential for racing, but Denis allowed Aunt Viv to ride her one day, and the horse stepped in a woodchuck hole and injured her leg.  The leg has healed, and the horse is able to gallop, but she still limps and can’t run at the same speeds she used to, ending Mrs. Burley’s racing hopes.  Since then, Mrs. Burley has been very bitter, especially toward Aunt Viv.  She behaves strangely, driving people away, and is also angry toward Denis for allowing Aunt Viv to ride the horse in the first place.  It was just an accident, but she blames them both.  Roger realistically thinks that they should sell Star for breeding because she has a good bloodline, and Denis’s real interest lies with airplanes, which fascinate him in the same way that horses fascinate Janey.  Their differing interests seem to support what Aunt Viv says about how the family should move and that the boys would probably have a better life away from the old, ruined hotel and Mrs. Burley’s obsession with the past.

Coral also tells Janey about a ghost dog that supposedly appears on nights when a strange red light appears on the Burleys’ property.  Later, Janey hears the howling at night. Aunt Viv doesn’t think it’s a ghost.  She says that people have tried to talk to Mrs. Burley about her dog, but she denies having one and gets really angry with people for accusing her of having one.  Yet, the howling does seem to come from the Burleys’ property, and Denis even says that he’s seen the ghost dog, that it seems to be covered in flames.  He claims that it’s the ghost of his grandfather’s dog, who died in the fire years ago.  Aunt Viv thinks that Denis is just saying that to try to protect his grandmother and because he can’t handle what other people have come to believe about her: that she’s losing her mind.  Mrs. Burley’s behavior is undeniably odd, and she’s prone to sudden mood swings.  People are worried that she’ll drive newcomers away from the area and drive down property values, and they think that she might need professional help.

Janey doesn’t think that Mrs. Burley’s mind is gone as much as people believe.  When she sneaks over one day to visit Star, Mrs. Burley is angry but notes that she has a good manner with horses.  To Janey’s surprise, Mrs. Burley agrees to let Janey ride Star.  Denis almost ruins things by making Janey believe that Mrs. Burley has changed her mind about the invitation and also by not telling his grandmother that Janey asked to meet at a later time.  Janey isn’t sure why Denis seems to have a grudge against her, although it might have to do with his own guilt for allowing the horse to be ridden and injured in the first place; his own grandmother still seems to have a grudge against him for that.  Neither one of them tells Janey that Star has a particular trick for throwing riders, even though she had specifically asked if there was anything that she should know about the horse or if it had any tricks.  After she’s thrown by the horse, however, Janey gets back on and proves to both the Burleys and to Star that she’s not intimidated and not going to fall for the trick again.  (The Burleys have deep, personal hurts, but I wouldn’t call them nice people.  There are people who would probably view this is a test of Janey’s skills and her ability to stick with a challenge, but I think that their lies and deliberate deception when Janey was asking the right questions show only their immaturity.  It may not bother some readers as much as it did me, but I have a very low threshold of patience for such things, and the characters lost a lot of my sympathy right there.)

Mrs. Burley warms up to Janey after that and confides in her some of the reasons why she has been so unfriendly, trying to drive people away, and why the horse meant so much to her.  Years ago, she and her husband made quite a lot of money, raising racing horses.  Star is from the same bloodline as their original horses.  Mr. Burley lost quite a lot of their money on various business ventures that didn’t work out, even before the hotel fire that killed him, but for a long time, Mrs. Burley was always able to keep one horse from that bloodline, hoping to get at least one last racing horse.  Star is an excellent horse who really would have made a good racing horse, but Mrs. Burley’s hopes were destroyed when Star was injured.  Mrs. Burley thinks that she’s too old now to raise another, that she wouldn’t live to see any of Star’s offspring become racers.  Janey still thinks that Star has the potential to be a racer, but Mrs. Burley says that the effects of her injury won’t let her get the speed she once had.  Mrs. Burley resents outsiders hanging around because she fears their “interference” in her life, and the injury of Star while Aunt Viv was riding her seems to prove that her fears are justified.

Janey tries to talk to Mrs. Burley about the ghost dog, but she gets angry with Janey for believing the things that people have been saying about her.  Worse still, Roger tells her that Mrs. Burley will probably sell Star soon.  She needs money badly and has been refusing to let anybody help her, even her son in New York.  Her pride at her independence may be her undoing.  Now that Janey has ridden Star successfully, she can’t bear the thought that the horse might be sold and sent away.  If only she could unravel the mysteries surrounding the Burley family, the strange red light, and the ghost dog!

My Reaction and Spoiler

Toward the end of the story, one of the characters talks to Janey about Mrs. Burley’s attitude, saying that “it’s important in life to have something to fight for.  Something we care about and want.  I don’t mean fight for with our fists, but something to try for, struggle for.  Something we can do that uses whatever we are to win the fight.”  He means that people need a purpose in life, something like a cause to believe in or a way of life to pursue that is suited to their talents. Janey says that she doesn’t like struggles, but the person points out to her that everything in life that you want involves a struggle, including the horses Janey loves. Janey has focused mostly on the struggle of getting her parents to agree to let her have a horse and Mrs. Burley to agree to let her ride Star, but even if she ended up owning a horse, including Star, there would still be the struggle of caring for the horse, devoting time to keeping the horse happy and healthy. Janey might enjoy that kind of struggle because it appeals to her talents and interests, but it would still require time and sacrifice on her part. Mrs. Burley loves horses as much as Janey does, and she loves the area where she lives to the point where she can’t image living anywhere else. All of her efforts focus on allowing her to continue living in the place she loves, although she feels like her horse dreams are lost.

Much of the emphasis of the book is placed on Mrs. Burley’s determination to maintain her independence as part of the lifestyle she loves, but I wish that there was a little more emphasis on the methods that people use to get what they want in life because that is central to the secret of the “ghost.”  That the “ghost” isn’t really a ghost isn’t too much of a spoiler, but while people in the area think that Mrs. Burley is faking the ghost because she’s mentally unbalanced, the real culprit is someone who wants Mrs. Burley to leave because there’s something that he wants very badly and doesn’t think that he’ll get it otherwise.  Once his scheme is exposed, the others make sure that he doesn’t get what he wants because, after what he has done, he doesn’t deserve a reward.  However, I wish that they had explained a little more plainly that there were other ways of getting what he wanted besides the scheme he planned.  The culprit thinks that no one was listening to him and what he wanted, but from my perspective, what he wanted was simply a matter of time, and he wasn’t willing to wait.  His scheme would have ended with Mrs. Burley being declared mentally incompetent and being put away in a home, which is a cruel thing to do to someone.  The other characters tell him that, but I wanted someone to explain to him that harming others for his own benefit would make him no better than someone who robs a bank because they want money.  That is, crime and fraud are still wrong even if they succeed because the ends don’t justify the means.  In some ways, I think that Mrs. Burley was selfish, but she still didn’t deserve to be labeled as crazy, and even if people weren’t listening to the culprit and taking him seriously as much as they should, the scheme still wasn’t his only option. 

To say more would be to tell you who the culprit is, and it’s not as obvious as it might seem. It was one of my favorite suspects, but I changed my mind a few times, going back and forth between suspects up until the end. In the end, Mrs. Burley is prepared to forgive the culprit and start over again, and there are hints that he may get what he wants in the future if he behaves better.  Personally, I think he probably would have gotten it eventually, anyway, so his situation is relatively unchanged, although he is now under pressure to prove his behavior to everyone. 

As for Star, she does become Janey’s horse as a gift from the one person who is in a position to give the horse to her while making sure that Mrs. Burley gets the money she needs.  Because of Janey’s help in revealing the culprit to Mrs. Burley and because of her devotion to the horse, Mrs. Burley is fine with the arrangement.

Posted on by TracyC

The Secret of Stonehouse

Stonehouse

The Secret of Stonehouse by Lynn Hall, 1968.

Heather has lived her entire life (as far as she can remember) in Scotland with her grandmother and her uncle, Donald.  Donald has raised her since she was small.  He’s been like a father to her, and she loves him like a daughter.  However, he recently decided to move the two of them to the United States, taking them to a small town in Wisconsin.  Heather can’t understand the reason for the move, and for the first time in her life, it seems like Donald is keeping secrets from her.

Donald seems oddly concerned that Heather shouldn’t tell people that she is adopted, something that he’s never seemed concerned about before.  Heather has asked him about her parents before, but all he can tell her is that his wayward brother Ewen brought her to the family farm in Scotland, saying that she was his daughter and that her mother was dead.  Ewen simply left her with Donald, never trying to see her or talk to her again and never sending her any money. Heather also knows that, although says that he’s going out to search for a new job, he’s been hanging out in other places, spending time with the mysterious Mr. Worley.

Heather makes friends with a boy named Gus who lives nearby.  Gus lets her ride one of the horses that his family owns, Cloud, and invites her to go riding with him sometimes and participate in local riding events called “shodeos.”  Heather loves horses and enjoys their rides together.

On one of these rides, the two of them go near a large, old, stone mansion that gives Heather a strange feeling.  Gus’s family tells her the tragic story of the family who used to live there, the Selkirks.  They were wealthy, but young John Selkirk was killed in an accident the day that his beautiful young wife, Molly, gave birth to their only child, a little girl named Hebron.  John’s parents never recovered from the loss of their son and passed away soon after, leaving just Molly and the baby.  However, when Hebron was only three years old, she was apparently abducted for ransom and later murdered, and her mother died soon after.  The story makes Heather uneasy, and the house gives her a strange feeling, like she’s drawn to it.

However, other sinister things start happening.  Someone in a car that looks disturbingly like Donald’s tries to run her and Cloud off a bridge.  When Donald spends the night away from home “on business”, someone sneaks into the house.  Heather begins to realize that someone is out to get her, some mysterious person means her harm.  Memories, dangerous ones, are beginning to surface in Heather’s mind, and someone is determined to try to keep her from remembering.

Part of the mystery is pretty obvious (at least, I thought it was, and you might guess it from my plot description), but the part that I didn’t guess was who was behind it all.

Posted on by TracyC · 4 Comments

The Bear That Was Chicken

The Land of Pleasant Dreams

The Bear That Was Chicken by Ane Weber, Ron Krueger, Tony Salerno, 1986.

In her dream, Mary meets Threads the Bear.  When she meets him, he’s trying to sleep under a tree.  He’s sad and tells Mary that he thinks he’s a chicken and that all of his friends say so.  (It’s not a nice thing for friends to say, and I wish the story had said so.  There’s a song about it on the tape that accompanies the book with the words given in the book, but it bothers me because calling people “chicken” is something that I associate with people who are trying to goad people into doing things that they really shouldn’t do. I don’t think that it’s good to teach children to react to being called “chicken” or any other insulting names.)

Mary thinks that Threads’ imagination is getting the better of him and that’s why he’s so afraid of so many things.  However, Threads tells Mary something that isn’t imaginary: there are some strange eggs in his cave that appeared there suddenly and mysteriously.  That’s why he’s sleeping in the forest, because he doesn’t know where the eggs came from or what they are.  Mary bravely offers to go with him to have a look at the eggs.

When they go to look at the eggs, Mary thinks that they look pretty harmless.  They’re kind of cute and colored like Easter eggs.  Threads is still worried about them and what they might hatch into.  Mary says again that Threads is imagining the worst and volunteers to sit with Threads while he takes his nap and keep an eye on the eggs to see what happens.

The eggs do hatch, and it turns out that they contain tiny teddy bears, very much like Threads.  When Threads sees the little bears, he loves them and thinks that they’re adorable.  The little bears seem worried when Threads wants to take them outside to play, but Threads encourages them, telling them that there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Moral: Your Greatest Fears Are Often Those You Imagine.

The main message of the story is that it’s better to face your fears than imagine the worst. However, I found some of this story a little confusing as a kid, and some of the implications are a little alarming when you begin to analyze it.  Where did those little bear eggs come from?  Did Threads lay them himself in his sleep? Are those little bears his children?  Did Threads lay eggs because he was a “chicken”?  But, Threads is a boy bear!  Then again, this is supposed to be a dream, so I guess it doesn’t really have to make sense.

I still don’t like that the story uses “chicken” as an insult and in a way that implies that people who are called “chicken” should try to prove that they’re not. This just seems like a recipe for disaster, encouraging children to accept dares.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. This book is currently available online through Internet Archive. It was made into an episode for the tv show version of this series with puppets.

Posted on by TracyC

Miss Bianca

Miss Bianca by Margery Sharp, 1962.

Miss Bianca is still a hero to the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society after the rescue of the Norwegian poet in the last book.  Bernard is a lesser hero, even though he was part of the mission, but such is the lot the organization’s Secretary.  Since the success of the rescue mission, the society is keen to perform another rescue, a deviation from the society’s usual role of merely providing comfort to prisoners.  The rescue mission that they have in mind this time is that of a little girl.  (The first Disney The Rescuers movie also featured the rescue of a little girl, but the circumstances in the book are very different.)

Patience is an eight-year-old orphan who has been abducted and enslaved by the Grand Duchess and is being held in her Diamond Palace.  The Grand Duchess is cruel, and some people think that she’s a witch.  Miss Bianca appeals to the Ladies’ Guild of the society to help free Patience.  The Ladies’ Guild doesn’t usually take part in the more exciting missions of the society.  The mice are somewhat concerned about what they will do with the child once they have rescued her because other prisoners they’ve helped have had homes to return to, but Miss Bianca assures them that they have a home in mind for the girl, a farm family in Happy Valley who have lost a daughter and would be likely to take in another girl.  The Ladies’ Guild agrees to undertake the mission.  Bernard wanted to come, too, but Miss Bianca insisted that they didn’t need his help.

The Diamond Palace is a strange place, in many different ways.  People often come to see it because it looks like it’s made out of diamonds, although it’s actually rock crystal.  It’s cold all the time, but even weirder than that, there seem to be less servants in the Palace than Miss Bianca would expect, given that the Duchess is always surrounded by ladies-in-waiting, who would be expected to have maids of their own.  It turns out that the “ladies-in-waiting” aren’t real people – they’re clockwork automatons! 

Rather than being a witch, the Duchess is simply an odious person who has so much money that she can give full reign to a nasty personality without anyone stopping her.  She’s so nasty and spoiled and used to forcing people to do what she wants that all of her previous, human ladies-in-waiting found that they just couldn’t handle her increasingly unreasonable demands, like insisting that they all stand perfectly still all day long while she sits on her throne, not even the slightest movement allowed.  No human being could possibly manage that.  When the human ladies-in-waiting all fainted after trying to keep perfectly still for forty-eight hours straight, the Duchess screamed that they all must have done it on purpose and dismissed them, replacing them with automatons.  The mechanical people are almost perfect because they always stand perfectly still until they’re needed and never complain or have human needs, but the Duchess discovers that they’re not quite perfect because there are some chores that they can’t do and she also misses seeing people react fearfully or start crying when she bullies them.  Keeping Patience as her slave gives the Duchess someone to do those chores and also someone to abuse.  The Duchess has had other child slaves before, but the others have died from the abuse, ill-nourishment, and general bad treatment.  (This is a darker story in a lot of ways from the Disney one.)

When Miss Bianca and the other mice meet Patience, she is also under-nourished and desperately lonely.  Miss Bianca sends the others back to the society to report about the automatons and stays with Patience to keep her company, trying to decide how to deal with the strange, mechanical people.  Bernard worries anxiously about Miss Bianca when the others come back without her and decides to go after her.

The Duchess’s other human servant, Mandrake, her Major-domo, is also little more than a slave.  The Duchess has evidence of a crime that he once committed and uses it to keep his loyalty.  Usually, he’s the only one who gets to go out the back door because he doesn’t trust Patience to take out the garbage without running away.  However, Patience tells Miss Bianca that the clockmaker sometimes comes in that way when he comes to wind up the mechanical ladies-in-waiting.  Miss Bianca hatches a plan that involves making the ladies-in-waiting break down.

However, to Miss Bianca’s surprise, the Duchess commands Mandrake and Patience to come with her to her hunting lodge when the ladies-in-waiting break down.  There is no opportunity for escape.  However, it turns out that the hunting lodge is actually above Happy Valley, and Bernard knows where it is.

Of course, they do get Patience safely to her new foster family.  Miss Bianca actually talks to the girl’s foster mother and tells her that Patience will probably forget about her eventually, when she grows up, but the foster mother likes the lullaby that Miss Bianca sings for Patience and promises to keep it as a family tradition.

The darker aspects of the story really bothered me, and I have to admit that I didn’t like it as well as the Disney version.  Mandrake actually reappears in another book in the series.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

I Like Things

I Like Things by Margaret Hillert, illustrated by Lois Axeman, 1982.

This is a cute little picture book about the fun of collecting things.  A young girl talks about the things that she collects and why she likes them.

She enjoys collecting all kinds of things with different shapes, sizes, and colors.  Sometimes, she likes to sort the things in her collections, like buttons, by color or size.

Sometimes, her father helps her with her stamp collection.  She also likes to find seashells and rocks at the beach.  Sometimes, she and her friend trade sports cards from their collections.

At the end of the story, the girl asks readers what kinds of things they like, so adults can use the story to get kids to talk about what they like to collect.

I thought it was interesting how the girl put one of the bigger rocks in her collection into a jar that was partly full of water so that the water would act as a magnifier, making the rock look bigger.

One thing I noticed is that the girl never refers to the objects in her collections by name.  Mostly, she just talks about what she does with them using very simple words.  I think that’s to make the book easier for younger children.  There is a word list in the back of the book of all of the words used in the story, and there are only 64 different words.

Posted on by TracyC

The Gullywasher

The Gullywasher written and illustrated by Joyce Rossi, 1995.

This is a tall-tale story, told by a grandfather to his young granddaughter about how he came to be an old man.  The grandfather was a vaquero (Spanish for cowboy, the origin of the work “buckaroo”) in his younger days.  The book is written in both English and Spanish.

When the story begins, Leticia and her grandfather are watching a passing storm.  The grandfather calls it a “gullywasher” and says that they should wait before going on a walk.

Leticia asks her grandfather to tell her about when he used to be a vaquero.  After some coaxing, he begins to tell her about a big gullywasher that he was caught in when he was younger.

By the time the storm was over, the water had wrinkled his skin.  Then, when he was napping under a palo verde tree, a hummingbird took some of the hairs on his head to make a nest.  It took all of the dark ones, leaving only the white ones.

After that, he came to a village, where he looked for food.  An old woman gave him some corn kernels, but he made the mistake of eating some chili peppers immediately afterward, so the corn popped in his stomach, giving him the pot belly he has today.  Also, his horse was so tired that he had to carry the horse all the way home on his back, making him bent over.  That is how he got to be the old man that he is.

When the tall tale is over, Leticia asks her grandfather if it makes him sad to be bent over.  Her grandfather tells her that it doesn’t because he’s closer to her this way.

The note from the author in the beginning explains a little about the tall tales that cowboys liked to tell.  One of the keys to telling a story like this is to try to keep a straight face during the telling.  Keeping a straight face can make the outrageous story seem more convincing, but it can also make it seem funnier.  There is also a glossary in the back of the book with the definitions of some of the key Spanish words.  It also reminds readers that Leticia’s name is pronounced differently by Spanish speakers than English speakers (“leh-TEE-seeya”).

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The White Marble

WhiteMarble

The White Marble by Charlotte Zolotow, 1963.

WhiteMarbleGoingToPark

It’s a hot night in the city, and John Henry’s parents decide that they should go to the park to cool off.  John Henry is a little thrilled to be out with his parents at night, stopping to pick up a beautiful white marble he finds as they enter the park, but disappointed when he realizes that he is the only child there.

Then, a little girl he knows from school, Pamela, comes to the park with her mother.  John Henry is pleased to see her because only another child could understand how magical this night in the park really is.  He calls to her to come run with him, and the two children run off to play in the park together.

WhiteMarbleTwoKids

The children kick off their shoes and run barefoot in the cool grass.  They lie in the grass for awhile, drink water from a fountain, and have ice sticks (we always called them popsicles when we were kids) from the ice cream man.

John Henry shows Pamela the little white marble he found.  Pamela thinks it’s as beautiful as he does, and John Henry realizes that no adult could understand how beautiful a small, simple thing like that could be, only another child.  That’s what binds John Henry and Pamela together.  As children, they can still appreciate the simple pleasures of life and the beauty and magic of small, ordinary things that adults take for granted, like a small white marble someone forgot in a park or how nice an evening can feel as rain moves in after a hot day.

WhiteMarbleGoodNight

When it’s time to go home, John Henry gives Pamela the white marble, a memento of this special night.

The pictures in this edition of the book are different from the ones that I remembered from the first time that I read it as a child.  This edition of the book, available through Internet Archive, shows the pictures that I remember.  The pictures in the later edition of the book are black and white, but the ones in the original edition are done in three colors: black, white, and blue.  Of the two, I really prefer the original drawings.  They capture the magic of a lovely night shared with a friend.