It’s summer, and Garnet is a 9-year-old girl living on a farm with her parents and brothers in a rural community in Wisconsin. The story is episodic, with each chapter describing things that happen to Garnet over the course of one magical summer when she found a silver thimble down by the river. Garnet thinks that the thimble itself is magic, but maybe the magic is just in the happy summer adventures that follow.
The book is a Newbery Medal winner. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including one in Chinese).
The chapters in the book are:
The Silver Thimble
It’s been hot and rainless, and the crops are in danger of being ruined if they don’t get some rain soon. It’s a real worry because, if the crops are bad, Garnet’s family won’t be able to pay their bills. When Garnet and her brother Jay go swimming in the nearby river, Garnet finds a silver thimble. It’s a lucky find, and Garnet becomes convinced that the thimble is magic and that something wonderful is about to happen. Jay thinks that’s silly, but that night, the rain they’ve so badly needed comes! Garnet and Jay are so overjoyed with the rain that they go out running in the rain in the middle of the night, until they are frightened by lightning striking something, and their mother calls them back.
The Coral Bracelet
Garnet’s best friend is a girl name Citronella, who lives nearby. Citronella’s great-grandmother lives with her, and she tells the girls stories about what it was like when she was young. She tells them about Indians (Native Americans) who would sneak into her family’s house in bad weather to get warm and leave them presents as thanks. (I don’t know if any Native Americans ever did this in real life, but she says it like it really happened.) Then, she tells the girls about a special coral bracelet that she wanted at the general store when she was young and some foolish risks she took to get it.
The lucky thing that happens in this chapter is that Garnet’s father gets a government loan to build a new barn.
The Lime Kiln
The family needs to make lime for building their new barn. The kiln needs to burn for three days straight, and they all need to take turns tending it, day and night. Jay and Garnet are allowed to stay up all night there with their father. Friends help them, and neighbors come to visit and talk with them. Garnet brings along a picnic with sandwiches and apple pie that they eat at midnight.
The Stranger
While they’re tending the kiln, a strange boy comes along and asks them for food. His name is Eric, and he’s a parentless boy who travels around and makes his living from odd jobs. He tells them about his life and travels, and Garnet’s father hires him to help the family build the new barn.
Locked In
Garnet likes having Eric at the farm, but she’s also a little jealous that Jay wants to spend more time with Eric now than with her. Garnet starts spending even more time with Citronella, and the two girls build a tree house together. The girls tell stories in their tree house, and because it’s going to rain again, Garnet suggests that they go to the library in town. They get so engrossed in their books that they lose track of time and get locked in the library. Garnet thinks this is a fabulous adventure until Citronella points out that it’s Saturday, and the library is closed on Sunday. If they can’t find a way out, they could be there for the rest of the weekend!
Journey
It’s harvest time, and everyone is occupied in picking crops and canning foods. Garnet helps, and she is temporarily put in charge of the threshing machine. Unfortunately, she falls asleep and lets the straw stack pile up until it falls over and makes a mess. Eric tells her not to worry about it, but Jay yells at her and tells her that she had no business helping out as a girl and that she should be at the house with the women. Garnet is so upset at the way Jay has been critical of her lately that she decides to run away and hitchhike around, like Eric used to do.
“As a Ragpicker’s Pocket”
Garnet is still running away, and she takes a bus to the next town. By the time she has explored the town and looked at all the store windows, she isn’t so upset and can see the funny side of what happened with the thresher, and she’s about ready to go home. She buys a few things for her family at the dime store and a hot dog to eat. Then, she has a horrible realization: she’s out of money. How is she going to get back home?
Fair Day
Garnet goes to the fair with her family and neighbors, and she enters her pig, Timmy, in a contest. Timmy was the runt of his litter, but Garnet has taken special care of him, and she thinks that he has a good chance of winning a prize.
Ice-Cream Cones and Blue Ribbons
Garnet and Citronella enjoy the wonders of the fair while Garnet is waiting for the pig contest. They spot the lady sword-swallower darning her socks, they ride the rides, and they have snacks. The girls get stuck on the Ferris wheel when it stops working, and Garnet worries about getting down in time for the judging of the pig contest.
The Silver Thimble
The silver thimble hasn’t been mentioned since the first chapter, but when Garnet looks back on all the good things that have happened this summer, she’s still sure that it’s magic. All the good things that have happened started right after she found it. She shows the thimble to Eric, and the kids talk about what they want to do with their futures.
My Reaction
This story is more like a collection of stories, some of which continue each other. The book is somewhat episodic, leading up to the fair at the end of the summer. The stories are pretty gentle, slice-of-life adventures. Eric has had a hard life, but he doesn’t want to dwell on it too much, and things improve for him when he decides to stay with Garnet’s family. There are hints that Eric might marry Garnet someday, and the two of them might stay on the family’s farm. Eric has had enough of traveling in his young life, and he wants to be a farmer and thinks that he would like to save up money and buy land near the family’s farm. Jay wants to be a sailor or something else that will let him travel and see the world, although he thinks that he might want to come back to the farm when he’s done traveling and farm it with his father and Eric.
The book fits with the Cottagecore genre, and it would make good bedtime reading. Foodies will enjoy the mentions of old-fashioned treats, like apple pie, griddle cakes, and vinegar candy. Garnet also imagines that each of the kitchen things have their own personalities.
I liked Garnet’s name, which is very unusual in the early 21st century. Citronella is an even more unusual name, but I prefer Garnet. I think it’s charming, and it’s one of the less-common gem names used for girls. In the story, Garnet mentions that the librarian frequently gets her name wrong because gemstone names are popular in her time and area. There are other girls in town named Ruby, Pearl, Opal, and Beryl, and the library usually calls her Ruby, the most popular of the gemstone names.
There are some stereotypical mentions of Native Americans in the story. They’re not derogatory, and they’re minor parts, but there were a couple of things that struck me as being a little stereotypical, like the kids saying that they’re Comanche Indians doing a rain dance when they’re running around in the rain. I also didn’t care for the way the characters kept pointing out which people were “fat” or “fleshy.” They’re not really shaming these characters, just sort of remarking, but I just felt like it was rude and unnecessary. You see this sometimes in older children’s books. Fortunately, none of the fat characters are considered bad characters in this story, as they sometimes are in other books. There aren’t really any bad characters in the story in general. Jay is annoying at times and says things that put down his sister and girls in general in a bratty, macho kind of way, but nobody in the story is a villain.
Two brothers and two sisters spend most of their time at boarding schools. The boys go to a school for boys, and the girls go to schools for girls, so the only times when they are together are when they are home for school holidays or visiting at the house of a kind, single lady who lives near to their schools. Although the children’s parents are grateful for their single friend for hosting the children as guests from time to time, the children find it difficult to play at her house because everything is so neat and proper, and they don’t feel quite at home. Then, during one school break, one of the sisters, the one who makes it home first, comes down with measles. With their sister sick, the other siblings can’t go home, which is a great disappointment, and their parents have to make other arrangements for them. When the children tell their parents that they don’t want to visit the single lady for the entire school holiday, the parents arrange for the boys, Gerald and James (called Jerry and Jimmy), to board at their sister Kathleen’s school. It will be fine for them to be there because Kathleen (called Cathy) is the only student remaining at the school during the holiday, and there will only be one teacher there to supervise them, the school’s French teacher.
This arrangement suits them better than going to the single lady’s house, although they think that they ought to find something special to do during the school holiday. Kathleen suggests that they write a book, but the boys aren’t thrilled by the idea. They would rather do something outdoors, like playing bandits. However, they are a little concerned about the French teacher’s supervision. Fortunately, Gerald is good at charming grownups, when he wants to. Through a combination of flattery and small, thoughtful favors to the teacher, he gets on her good side, and he manages to convince her that he and his siblings would like to have some time to themselves to play and explore outside, maybe in the woods. The French teacher understands that what they really want is some freedom from supervision, but she agrees to give them some time to themselves.
The children don’t actually know if there are any woods in the area, but they decide to do some exploring and see if they can find an adventure of some kind. They end up getting lost during their exploring, but they find it exciting. When they sit down to rest, they find a cave and decide to explore it. The cave turns out to be a tunnel that leads them to a beautiful garden with a lake with a decorative waterfall and swans. The children imagine that it’s the garden of a magical castle. Going a little further, they find a thimble with a crown on it and a thread tied to it. It looks like the kind of thimble that might belong to a princess.
Meeting the “Princess”
When they follow the thread, they find a young girl in a beautiful dress who looks like she might be a princess. She looks like she’s asleep, so she looks like an enchanted princess or Sleeping Beauty. Jimmy doesn’t really believe that she’s a princess, but the others aren’t so sure, and anyway, it makes a fun game to pretend that she is. Since Jerry is the eldest of the children, Cathy thinks that Jerry should kiss her to wake her up. Jerry refuses, so Cathy says Jimmy should do it. Although Jimmy is sure that she’s really just an ordinary girl dressed like a princess, he says he’ll kiss her to prove he’s braver than Jerry and that he should be the leader for the rest of the day.
When Jimmy kisses the girl’s cheek, she opens her eyes and says that she has been asleep for 100 years. She insists that she’s a real princess and asks them how they got past the dragons. Jimmy still doubts that, even though she shows them a mark where she pricked herself on a spindle, just like in the Sleeping Beauty story. She invites them to come back to the castle and see her beautiful things. The children say that they are hungry, so they go with her go get something to eat.
When they get to the “castle”, the princess brings them bread and cheese to eat with some water. This seem depressingly ordinary, and the princess apologizes, saying that was all she could find. However, she claims that the food in the castle is magical, so it can be whatever they want. The children imagine that it’s roast chicken and roast beef, but all they get is bread and cheese. Cathy doesn’t want to admit at first that it’s just bread and cheese because (like with the Emperor’s New Clothes), there is an implication that there is something wrong with her if the magic doesn’t work for her. Jimmy isn’t discouraged by that, so he asks the princess if it’s a game, but the princess denies it, insisting that the food is magical.
Then, the princess takes the children to a hidden door behind a tapestry. The room inside has paneled walls and blue ceiling with stars painted on it. The princess calls it her “treasure chamber”, but the room is completely empty. The princess acts surprised when the children say that they can’t see any treasure, and they refuse to believe it’s because they’re magical or invisible. The princess has the children close their eyes while she says some magic words. When they open their eyes, suddenly, there are shelves with jeweled objects on them. The children have no idea how the princess accomplished this trick, so they start to believe that maybe she can do magic.
The Invisibility Ring
The princess suggests that they all put on some of the jewels and be princes and princesses, too. It’s amusing for a while, but the boys start getting tired of dressing up, and they’re still a little skeptical about who the princess is. They suggest that they go play outside, but the princess insists that she’s actually grown up and doesn’t play children’s games, and she has the others help her put all the treasures back in their proper places. She tells the children that various pieces of jewelry have magical property. Jimmy asks her if that’s really true or if she’s kidding, but the princess insists that it’s true. Jimmy asks her to demonstrate how the magic works. The princess says that she will try on the magic ring that makes her invisible, but only if everyone closes their eyes and counts first.
When the children open their eyes, all of the shelves of jewels are gone and so is the princess. Jimmy says that it’s obvious that the princess just went out the door of the room. When they close their eyes and count again, Jimmy keeps his eyes open and sees the princess hiding behind a secret panel. When he tells the others, the princess says that he cheated. The weird thing is, even though they hear the princess say that he cheated, they still don’t see her. They tell her to stop hiding and come out, but she says that she already has. She says that if they want to pretend like they can’t see her, that’s fine, but the children seriously can’t see her. When the princess realizes that they’re serious that she’s actually invisible, the princess suddenly gets scared. She tries to shake the boys and get them to say that she’s not invisible, and Jerry catches hold of her, still unable to see her. She tells them that it’s time for them to go because she’s tired of playing with them.
Jerry makes the princess look in a mirror to prove that she’s invisible, and the princess gets very upset. Cathy sensibly tells her to just take the ring off, but the princess says it’s stuck. She admits that the whole thing, up to this point, was just a game of pretend. She says that the treasure shelves were hidden behind some paneling, and she just moved it with a hidden spring. She never expected that any of it was actually magical. The truth is that the girl’s aunt works at the house as a housekeeper and that her name is Mabel. She was just playing at being an enchanted princess because the rest of the household is away at the fair, and she happened to hear the other children coming through the hedge maze, so she roped them into her game.
Since one of the objects that Mabel claimed was magical was a buckle that would undo magical spells, Cathy suggests that she try the buckle. Mabel says that’s no good because she only made up that it was magical, but Cathy points out that she also made up the part about the ring being magical, and it turned out to be true, so she might as well try the buckle. Mabel would, but they accidentally locked the key inside the room and can’t get in now.
The children sit down to think about the situation. Since they can’t think what to do, the other children think maybe they should leave and go get their tea, but Mabel insists that they can’t just leave her invisible like this. Instead, she suggests that she go with them to tea and leave her her aunt a note. While they have tea, maybe they can think of something else to help Mabel. In her note, Mabel says that she’s been adopted by a lady in a motorcar and is going away to sea. The others say that’s lying, but Mabel says that it’s fancy instead of lying and that her aunt wouldn’t believe her if she said that she was invisible.
When they return to Kathleen’s school, they have tea and supper. They let Mabel have one of the three plates laid out for them, and Jerry and Cathy share one between them. Fortunately, the French teacher isn’t eating with them and doesn’t see an invisible person eating, but the children don’t know how they’re going to handle breakfast the next morning. They say that Mabel can stay the night with them, sharing Cathy’s bed and borrowing a nightgown. Mabel says that she can get some of her own clothes from the house tomorrow because no one will be able to see her and that she’s starting to see some possibilities for being invisible.
In the morning, the maid who comes to wake Kathleen sees Mabel’s discarded princess dress on the floor and asks Kathleen where it came from. Kathleen makes an excuse that it’s for playacting, which means that she and her brothers will have to figure out some kind of play to put on with it. Mabel thinks that acting sounds exciting, but Kathleen reminds her that she’s still invisible, so no one can see her perform anything.
The children feel bad about Mabel’s lies in the note to her aunt, and they insist that they should go and tell her the truth. Mabel doesn’t think this is a good idea because her aunt won’t believe her, but she reluctantly agrees. When they try to talk to her, the aunt doesn’t really want to listen to them, thinking that it’s just another one of Mabel’s pranks. She says that maybe Mabel was changed at birth and that her rich relatives have finally claimed her. They try to tell her that Mabel is with them, only invisible, and the aunt tells them not to lie to her. They ask about Mabel’s parents, and the aunt says that she’s an orphan. The children think that Mabel’s aunt is crazy because she doesn’t seem concerned about her and doesn’t want to hear anything they have to say, but Mabel says that she thought that her aunt might act that way because she spends so much time reading novels and can imagine anything.
In the meantime, Mabel has had some thoughts about what she can do. She says that she might be able to continue living in the house where her aunt works because the place is supposed to be haunted, so she can play ghost herself. However, the others think that she should stay with them. They just need a way to get some money to buy extra food for her.
Sine the fair is still going on, Mabel suggests that Jerry put on a magic show at the fair to get some money. The others say that Jerry doesn’t know any magic tricks, but Mable points out that it doesn’t matter when he has an invisible friend who can move things around, unseen, and make things disappear. Jerry dresses up as a conjurer from India (in a way that would be considered equal parts cheesy and offensive by modern standards because it involves black face), and he puts on the magic show with Mabel’s help. It’s incredibly successful, and toward the end of it, Mabel feels the ring coming loose. She takes it off and gives it to Jerry, who ends the act by vanishing himself.
Jerry’s and Eliza’s Invisibility
Now, Mabel is visible again, and it seems like they’ve solved their problem, but now, they have a new one. The ring is now stuck on Jerry’s finger, and he is the one who’s stuck being invisible. Although Mabel can now go home, she insists on staying with the other children and taking part in their next invisible adventure.
Jimmy says that, if he was invisible, he would turn burglar. The girls point out that would be unethical, so Jerry decides that he will be a detective. There are advantages to a detective being invisible. Then, Mabel remembers that the treasure room is still locked from the inside, and they have to do something about it. Jerry says that, as an invisible person, he can sneak in easily enough through a window. When he does this, he ends up foiling a robbery by actual burglars, although he also ends up letting them escape from the police because he knows that conditions in prisons are horrible and can’t bring himself to send anyone there.
After his adventure, the ring comes loose from his finger while he’s in bed, and the maid at the school, Eliza, finds it and decides to “borrow” it for an outing with her fiance. When her fiance can hear Eliza’s voice but not see her, he thinks that he’s taken some kind of strange turn or fit, possibly because he’s been in the sun too long. The children convince him to go home and lie down while they deal with Eliza. They take Eliza on a little adventure of her own because they’re beginning to see that the ring doesn’t come off someone’s finger until its purpose is fulfilled. Afterward, they manage to convince Eliza that it was all a strange dream that she had because she felt guilty about taking the ring without permission. The children also think that the ring’s power might be diminishing and could be completely spent because it seems like its effect has been lasting shorter and shorter amounts of time every time it’s used. However, this is really just the beginning of the ring’s magic, and it can do much more than they think it can.
The Living Dummies
At this point, they feel a little guilty that they haven’t spent much time with the French teacher, who is supposed to be looking after them, so the buy her some flowers. She is pleased with the gift, and they have a little party with Mabel as their guest. They find out that the French teacher has artistic abilities, although she rarely has time to draw these days because she’s so busy teaching. Mabel also tells them more about the man who owns the house where her aunt works. Although the house is grand, the man who owns it doesn’t really have enough money to support it and live there full time with a full staff because his uncle wrote him out of his will for falling in love with a girl he didn’t approve of. It’s sad because he also never married the girl because she was sent away to a convent, and although he did try to find her, he never did. Mabel, whose knowledge of convents comes from the scandalous gothic novels that she and her aunt read (much like the kind the main character reads in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey), speculates that the girl might be bricked up in a wall by now because that’s the kind of wicked thing that happens in books. The French teacher tells her that real convents aren’t like that and that the women who live there are good and take care of girls without parents, although they can also be strict, and the girls aren’t allowed to leave. She says it in a way that implies that she was one of those girls raised in a convent.
Since the children had claimed earlier that they were going to put on a show of some kind with the princess outfit, they decide to go ahead and perform for the French teacher and Eliza. To fill out the audience for their performance, they make a bunch of stuffed dummies, which the French teacher finds amusing. The children use the ring as a prop in their play, although none of them put it on, and Kathleen wishes that the dummies were alive so they could have better applause from the audience. To the children’s amazement and the French teacher’s and Eliza’s terror, the dummies (which the children think of as “Ugly-Wugglies”) do come to life and start clapping. In a panic, the children debate what to do. Jerry realizes that the ring is actually a wishing ring and is responding to the children’s wishes, so he wishes on the ring that the dummies were not alive, to undo Kathleen’s wish, but it doesn’t work.
To Jerry’s surprise, the dummies begin speaking to him, although their speech isn’t clear because they don’t really have proper mouths. They ask him for a recommendation to a good hotel or suitable lodgings. The dummies don’t seem to know what they are, and they are behaving like respectable, aristocratic people. Jerry tells them that he can show them to some lodgings, if they will wait for him a little. He makes some excuses to give himself time to reassure the French teacher and Eliza that the effect with the dummies was just a trick pulled by the children with string, and he recruits Mabel to help him find a place for the dummies. He does this in an insulting and condescending way, and Mabel tells him off for that, but she agrees to help him. They decide to hide the dummies somewhere on the grounds of the big house where Mabel and her aunt live, thinking that the magic will wear off eventually and that the dummies will turn into dummies again by morning. The dummies turn nasty when Jerry and Mabel try to shut them away, and they are helped by a strange man.
The strange man demands an explanation from the children about the angry people they’ve shut away, but the children don’t want to explain. The man says, if they won’t tell him what’s going on, he’ll simply have to let the people out and ask them, but the children are afraid of what the dummies will do if they’re released. The man assumes that the imprisoned people are other children and this is all some children’s game, so Jerry and Mabel decide that they have to tell him the truth, even though they know it all sounds crazy. They can tell that the man doesn’t really believe him. The man thinks maybe Jerry has a fever or something, and he says that he’ll see the children home. Jerry can tell that the man plans to open the door after the children are gone, and he warns him not to do that. He insists that the man wait until tomorrow to open that door and to wait for them to meet him to see it opened because, by then, they’re sure that the dummies will just be dummies again. The man reluctantly agrees.
When the children arrive the next day, they discover that the man didn’t wait for them to open the door, and he is now lying unconscious and injured, apparently attacked by the dummies. The dummies are gone except for the most respectable dummy, who seems concerned about the unfortunate man on the ground. Mabel runs for smelling salts to revive the unconscious man, and Jerry looks around to see where the other dummies are. They find that the other dummies have turned back into piles of old clothes, and only the one living dummy is left. He seems to be becoming far more real. The children revive the unconscious man, who turns out to be the new bailiff. The bailiff assumes that the strange visions he had were because he was injured accidentally. After the children are sure that he’s all right and send him on his way, they try to figure out what to do with the remaining living dummy.
The remaining dummy seems to have developed a life of his own and is quite a wealthy man, although the children aren’t sure that this will last because the ring’s magic never seems to last very long. Jimmy says that he wishes he was wealthy, and the other children are horrified to see him age quickly, turning into an elderly, wealthy man. Jimmy doesn’t seem to remember who they are, and he refuses to turn the ring over to them when they ask for it, trying to stop his wish. He acts like the dummy is an old acquaintance of his, and he just wants to go to the nearest railway station with his dummy acquaintance.
Jerry sends the girls home to make some excuses for his and Jimmy’s absence, and he follows the now-elderly and wealthy Jimmy on the train to London. There, he learns that Jimmy and the living dummy have somehow acquired business offices, staff, and backstories. Other people seem to have somehow known the two of them for years (a warping of reality that makes Jerry’s head swim because neither of them existed in their current state before) and say that they are business rivals. Jerry pumps a boy who works at one of the offices for information, claiming that he’s a detective and is trying to reunite the elderly Jimmy with grieving relatives. The boy’s advice is that it will be difficult to get through to elderly Jimmy but that he might use the living dummy’s rivalry with elderly Jimmy to arrange things. The living dummy (now known as U. W. Ugli) helps Jerry to get control of the ring, and he wishes himself and Jimmy back to the house where Mabel lives.
The Ring’s True Power
Jimmy is restored to his younger self, and the children debate about what to do with the ring. They can see that it has some dangers. Mabel says that she ought to put it back in the treasure room, where she found it. However, while they’re in the treasure room, they begin to wonder if any of the other pieces of jewelry are magical, since the ring became an invisibility ring after Mabel pretended it was. Mabel can’t remember exactly what she said any of the other pieces of jewelry did because, at the time, she was just playing pretend and making things up. Then, something occurs to Mabel. She realizes that the ring only became an invisibility ring because she said it was one, and it turned into a wishing ring when they started calling it that. She says that proves that the ring does whatever they tell it to do, changing its powers to match whatever they say. To prove the point, she declares that the ring will now make people tall, and when she puts it on her finger, she is suddenly unnaturally tall.
Mabel’s experiment did prove the point, but they now have to hide Mabel until the effects wear off. The children get a picnic from Mabel’s aunt and go to hide out in the woods overnight. However, Mabel complicates things when she turns the ring into a wishing ring, and then, she accidentally turns herself into a statue. The children have a nighttime adventure with some living statues, learning that all statues apparently have the ability to come to life at night. They can also swim, so they have a nice swim and a feast. The statue of Hermes tells the children that “‘The ring is the heart of the magic … Ask at the moonrise on the fourteenth day, and you shall know all.'”
Then, the children learn that Lord Yalding, the man who owns the big house, is planning to come, and that he is thinking of renting the house to a wealthy American. Mabel’s aunt is busy, getting the house ready for Lord Yalding and the American. However, it turns out that the children have already met Lord Yalding without realizing it, and with the ring and the treasures in the hidden treasure room, they have the power to secure his future and reunite him with his lost love … if only they can figure out how to manage the ring’s power without causing any more chaos.
The book is now public domain and available to borrow and read for free online through Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive (multiple copies), including an audio recording from Librivox. The story was made into a BBC television miniseries in 1979, but it’s difficult to find a copy these days. As of this writing (April 2024), the only dvd release was in Australia in 2013. Sometimes, clips of it appear on YouTube.
My Reaction and Some Spoilers
For the first part of the book, it isn’t obvious that there will be any real magic in the story. At first, the children are all just playing pretend with each other, and even when Mabel turns invisible, it’s possible to believe that the children might still be playing pretend and letting their imaginations run away with them. Because the adults don’t seem that concerned about Mabel, I thought that they might have been humoring the children in their game, but the children later realize that the ring has the effect of muting people’s concerns for the one wearing it, even if they’re doing something bizarre or dangerous. That ends when the person takes off the ring, and people become more concerned about them and where they’ve been. The magic in the story is real, and as the story continues it involves too many other people, even adults and various bystanders, for it to just be a game.
Throughout the book, various adults experience the effects of the magic ring and witness things that the children do with it. They come up with various explanations for what they’ve witnessed, so they can disregard it, but they unquestionably experience magical events along with the children and have some consequences from the children’s adventures. While Jerry retrieves Jimmy from London when he accidentally turns himself old and wealthy, they never do retrieve the living dummy, so U. W. Ugli remains doing business there until his magic finally wears off. His employees don’t seem to know what he is and have memories of having worked for him for years, so they report him missing when he finally disappears, and the notice appears in the newspaper.
There’s a lot of humor in the story as the children experiment with the magic, deal with the consequences of their adventures, and try to invent excuses to explain away the inexplicable. There are times when they do try to tell adults the truth about what they’ve been doing and what’s happening, but most of the time, the adults don’t believe them. Sometimes, they feel a little bad about lying to adults and making up stories, but they have to resort to that because nobody really believes the incredible truth.
When the children start telling Lord Yalding the stories of their magical adventures and about the treasures they’ve found in the house, they are unable to prove what they say at first. Lord Yalding gets a chance to experience the magic himself, he thinks that he’s going crazy. At the proper time, the ring’s magic reveals itself to Lord Yalding, his love, and the children so they can all see the true magic and learn the ring’s history, which is a story of magic and tragic love. Lord Yalding comes to understand that he is not crazy and that the magic is real. His lover makes one final wish that turns the wishing ring into a wedding ring. The magic ends, and the castle and grounds are changed because of it, becoming less grand and more ordinary, but Lord Yalding and his bride are able to have their happy-ever-after.
I thought it was interesting that the author provided a backstory for the magic ring, explaining where it came from and its effect on the house and its grounds. I didn’t think there were many clues to that backstory provided along the way, and some buildup to the explanation would have been nice. However, I recognize that the author didn’t have to provide any explanation for the magic at all. Many other fantasy stories don’t offer explanations for magical objects, leaving that up to readers’ imaginations, because the focus is more on the effects of the magic rather than its origins.
As far as we know, the children’s other sister, the one who was sick with measles in the beginning, never finds out what her siblings have been doing during this particular school break. The children remain close to Lord Yalding and his wife, and they host them at their house during school breaks afterward. In fact, it sounds like they spend more time with Lord and Lady Yalding than they do with their parents.
Overall, I enjoyed the story. E. Nesbit’s fantasy stories are children’s classics, and they have influenced other children’s fantasy books that came after them, especially Edward Eager’s Tales of Magic series.
Problem Points
Although the original story is now public domain, there are different versions of this book because there are simplified forms of the story for younger children, and some newer editions have removed some of the problematic parts of the story. Some of E. Nesbit’s books contain problematic racial language or stereotypes or have children doing things that would be unacceptable by modern standards. In this book, such incidents are relatively mild, and their absence wouldn’t materially change the character of the story.
For example, when Jerry dresses up an conjurer from India, he uses black face as part of his costume. In the 21st century, use of black face is considered derogatory toward people with dark skin. In a way, Jerry’s costume is played for comedy because it’s made from pieces of his school uniform, and someone points out that he’s left out spots in his skin makeup. Nobody believes that he’s a real conjurer from India, although they are impressed by his act because they can’t figure out how he accomplishes his tricks.
There is also some anti-Catholic sentiment, although the children seem to say certain things because they’ve gleaned them from sensational novels or things other people have said, and the author does correct for it. The first instance of this comes from Mabel’s concept of the dark deeds done in convents, which she has apparently learned by reading gothic novels. I’ve read some old gothic novels myself, and the idea that sinister things happen in secrecy in convents and abbeys was a popular concept from 18th and 19th century literature. It’s partly due to anti-Catholic sentiment and, probably, because the idea of a closed society that isn’t open to the general public makes for a compelling setting for dark secrets, somewhat like the way secret societies and boarding schools have become the setting for sinister happenings and dark deeds in Dark Academia literature. However, the other does have the character of the French teacher contradict this view of convents with a more benevolent and realistic one, that the people in them are caring but strict. There is one other comment that Jimmy makes in the story when he’s arguing with Mabel, when he seems to be implying something about Jesuits, a branch of Catholic priesthood:
“If you’d been a man,” said Jimmy witheringly, “you’d have been a beastly Jesuit, and hid up chimneys.”
I wasn’t entirely sure what this comment meant, although I think it might be a reference to the ways Catholics hid priests in priest holes, little hidden rooms, when they were at risk for arrest, torture, and even execution in Elizabethan England. Some of these little hiding places were in fireplaces, which I think is what the reference to hiding in chimneys means. At the time, the children were arguing about bravery, so I think Jimmy is implying that Mabel is the type to run and hide in the face of danger. (That might actually be the best option when there’s real danger. Just saying.) If I’ve understood his meaning, that makes Jimmy’s comment more of a slur against Mabel’s bravery than against Jesuits, although he does still call the Jesuits “beastly”, and he’s implying that’s a bad thing to be.
When you read public domain versions of the story online, they will have these elements in the story because they were part of the original book. However, if you find a physical copy in a library, it may or may not have these elements, depending on the printing. If it was printed during the late 20th century or any time during the 21st century, there is a good chance (although not completely guaranteed) that it’s a revised version and may have these parts written out or at least toned down.
A girl explains how her family is saving up for a new chair after a fire destroyed all the furniture in their old home. The fire happened before the story really begins, but the girl explains how she and her mother returned from a shopping trip and discovered that their home was on fire.
The girl’s grandmother and the family cat escaped from the fire, but everything they had in the house burned.
The girl, her mother, and her grandmother all moved in with the girl’s aunt and uncle until they could move into a new apartment. However, they didn’t have any furniture in the apartment. Their relatives, friends, and neighbors all helped them by giving them food and pieces of furniture they didn’t need anymore.
It was a big help, however, a year later, they still don’t have a sofa or comfortable armchairs. The girl’s mother works in a restaurant, and when she comes home, she’s very tired from being on her feet all day. She wishes that they had a comfortable armchair where she could rest after work.
The mother starts saving part of her tips from the restaurant in a coin jar to save up for a new chair. Sometimes, the restaurant owner even pays the girl to do little chores, and she saves part of her money for the chair. Whenever the girl’s grandmother saves money on food she buys, she also puts the savings into the jar. They say that when the jar is full of coins, they will buy the new chair they want.
Eventually, the jar is completely full. They count the coins, roll them in coin wrappers, and take them to the bank to change them for ten-dollar bills. Then, they go shopping for a new chair! There are many chairs to choose from, but they know exactly what kind of chair they want.
The book is a Caldecott Honor Book. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including one in Spanish).
My Reaction
I remember this book from Reading Rainbow when I was a kid! The pictures are bright and colorful, and the story offers comfort and hope.
The people in the story have been through a tragedy where they lost almost everything they had, but the book shows how they recover. Although the fire was sad, the story starts after the fire happened, and the girl talks about the help they’ve received and what they’re doing to make their new home more comfortable. They’re over the initial shock of the fire and concentrating on improving their situation from there. This book felt both comforting and very real. I liked how it showed the family recovering from their ordeal through a combination of help from relatives and friends and their own efforts. Other people help them with some basic household items as they move into a new apartment, and they also save up their money for the chair they want to make their new place feel more like home.
Linnea in Monet’s Garden by Christina Bjork, drawings by Lena Anderson, 1985, 1987.
Young Linnea loves plants and flowers. Linnea’s upstairs neighbor, Mr. Bloom, used to be a gardener before he retired. He knows all about plants, and she likes to talk to him about them. Mr. Bloom has a particular book that Linnea likes about the French artist Claude Monet and his garden. Monet was famous for his paintings of the flowers and water lilies in his garden, and the book also has photographs of him, his wife, their children, and their garden. When Linnea looks at that book, she likes to imagine that she really knows the Monet family and that she’s visiting their garden.
One day, Mr. Bloom tells her that it’s possible to really go visit the garden because it still exists. Monet’s house had become run down and the garden was overgrown, but they have since been restored and turned into a museum. They could visit the garden if they go to Paris. They live a long way from Paris, but Mr. Bloom arranges with Linnea’s family for her to go on the trip with him.
Linnea and Mr. Bloom stay at a tiny, old hotel on the River Seine in Paris that was built in 1640. They can see the Notre-Dame Cathedral from the hotel, and it reminds Linnea of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
On their first day in Paris, Linnea and Mr. Bloom go to the Marmottan Museum to see Monet’s paintings. Monet’s youngest son left his father’s paintings to the museum when he died because he had no children of his own to inherit them. Mr. Bloom explains to Linnea that Monet painted in the impressionist style, which means that he tried to capture the rough images and impressions of the moment rather than creating detailed, completely realistic paintings. (I’m nearsighted, so impressionist paintings always look to me like what I see when I’m not wearing my glasses. I see colors and rough shapes, but everything is fuzzy with no sharp lines or fine details. I can still tell what objects are without my glasses, but nothing is distinct. I have impressions of things.) Mr. Bloom says that Monet particularly liked to show how light reflects off water and other objects in his paintings.
The next day, they take a train to the town of Vernon, and from there, and from there, they take a taxi to Giverny, where the Monet house and garden are. Along the way, they also buy some food for a picnic. Then, they go to see Monet’s garden.
When Linnea sees the garden in person for the first time, it’s much bigger than she had imagined from the pictures in the book. Mr. Bloom tells Linnea all the names of the different flowers, and they take pictures of them. Then, they go inside Monet’s house. They’re not allowed to take pictures inside the house, but they get some postcards of the house’s interior.
One of the best moments for Linnea is that she is able to stand on the Japanese bridge in the garden, over the lily pond, as she always imagined she could do when she looked at the pictures in Mr. Bloom’s book! Monet painted pictures of that bridge multiple times. Each painting looks different because he painted them at different times and in different weather, so had different impressions of the bridge each time. The book shows Monet’s paintings of the bridge and how different they are from each other, and Linnea tries to capture her own impressions of the bridge.
They aren’t allowed to have their picnic lunch inside Monet’s garden, so they have lunch by the nearby river. Then, they return to Paris.
Back in Paris, they visit the Jeu de Paume museum to see more impressionist paintings. At the Orangerie, they try to see Monet’s giant water lily painting in the Water Lily Rooms. At first, they are told that the exhibit is closed for repairs, but when Mr. Bloom explains that they have come a long way to see them and Linnea starts to cry, the museum staff decide to make an exception.
For the last day of their trip, Linnea and Mr. Bloom decide that they want to return to Giverny. When they make their second visit, a man recognizes them as return visitors, and he turns out to be a member of Monet’s family, his step-great-grandson, Jean-Marie Toulgouat. He lives nearby, and he is also an artist, although his art style is very different from Monet’s. He talks to them about Monet’s life and family, and it also turns out that his wife was the author of the book about Monet that inspired Linnea and Mr. Bloom to take this journey!
When they return home, Linnea and Mr. Bloom go through all the pictures they took in France, and Linnea puts up a bulletin board with postcards and pictures from their trip. She also has a little wooden box with other souvenirs.
In the back of the book, there is a family tree for the Monet family and a timeline of events from Monet’s life. There is also a section of information about museums and sites in Paris and a list of books about Monet.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including one in Chinese). The book was originally written in Swedish and published in Sweden in 1985. The English translation was published in 1987.
My Reaction
This is a lovely book about travel, art, and the beauty of nature and plants. Initially, Linnea becomes interested in Monet because of her love of plants and flowers, and when her neighbor says it’s possible to visit the garden Monet painted, she becomes interested in Monet’s life and work. I grew up learning about art and famous artists because my mother used to teach art lessons through a special program at my school. I don’t remember seeing this book at that time, although it is old enough that I could have. I found it by accident at a thrift store, and it reminded me of the art books that my mother kept around the house when I was a kid.
I enjoyed how the book brought a historical person to life, explaining Monet’s life story as well as his art and showing child readers that it’s possible to see the setting of his paintings in person. The book shows pictures of Monet’s art and photographs of the garden and flowers he painted so children can see the connection between the artwork and the real places and objects. Although not everyone can go to France just on a whim, the book does show what such a trip would be like, and it also shows kids how they can delve deeper into subjects that interest them and even go to places connected with their passions. The journey in the book is a magical trip that even adult armchair travelers can enjoy!
Magdalena by Louisa R. Shotwell, illustrated by Lilian Obligado, 1971.
Magdalena is switching classes at school. She’s happy about it because she found her old class too chaotic. She thinks she will be happier in her new class. Her friend in her current class at school, a boy named Saul, tells her that she must be an IGC, an Intellectually Gifted Child, in order to get transferred to that class because that class only takes gifted children. However, she is told that she will also have to wait a little for them to give her a desk in the room. When months go by without her being told that there is a spot ready for her and she can make the switch, Saul thinks that they were probably lying to her about her being able to switch classes.
Finally, in January, she is able to switch to the new class, but right away, she runs into trouble with the class bullies. A boy named Andy and his friend start calling her “Miss Two-Ropes” because of her long braids, and the name sticks. Magdalena wishes that she didn’t have to wear her hair in braids, but her grandmother, Nani, insists on it. She loves Nani, who is from Puerto Rico and has looked after her for last two years, ever since her mother died when she was nine years old, but Nani has some old-fashioned ideas about how girls ought to be raised.
Magdalena’s father is a sailor, and he spends much of his time away at sea, so Magdalena and her grandmother are alone most of the time. Nani speaks Spanish to Magdalena at home because she thinks that’s proper for a Puerto Rican family like theirs, although Magdalena speaks English at school. She thinks that her grandmother probably knows more English than she pretends. Nani also keeps a portrait of Great-Grandfather Mendez, which she brought from Puerto Rico. Although he has been dead for years, the portrait always feels like a living person to Magdalena.
After some further teasing from the boys in her class, Magdalena decides to tell her grandmother that she doesn’t like her braids. Nani says that not unusual, that many children don’t like their braids, but they get over it. Magdalena doesn’t think she’s going to just get over it. Like a lot of kids, she would rather just look like everyone else so she won’t get teased, but Nani doesn’t approve of the short hairstyles that are popular among American girls at Magdalena’s school. She says that Magdalena’s braids are a mark of pride and a caring grandmother who brushes and braids her hair. She thinks the American girls wear their hair short because their mothers can’t be bothered to spend time on caring for long hair, and they don’t have grandmothers to nurture them. When Magdalena tells her that the boys at school are calling her names because of her braids, her grandmother decides that she should talk to the teacher about it. Magdalena thinks that having her grandmother talk to the teacher might be more embarrassing than having the boys call her names, so she persuades her grandmother to forget about it for now and let her handle it.
Then, Magdalena is called to the principal’s office at school. At first, Magdalena is upset because it sounds like she’s in trouble, and she can’t understand what she could have done to cause that. She is calmed a little when a black boy in the office, who is also waiting to talk to the principal, is nice to her. It turns out that Magdalena isn’t really in trouble. Instead, the principal wants to talk to her about one of her classmates, a girl named Daisy Gonzales, who is also transferring into her new class.
Madgalena is surprised because Daisy hasn’t struck her as a gifted child. Most of the other students call her “Spook” because she tends to lurk around the school and suddenly jump out at people to scare them, and she is known to frequently skip classes. The principal says that Daisy might be gifted, but it’s difficult to tell. The teachers think that she’s at least bright, but she’s an “under-achiever.” The principal explains that means that Daisy could do better at school than she does, but for some reason, she doesn’t seem motivated to do better. That’s why they’ve decided to transfer her to the class with the gifted students. They think that she isn’t being challenged enough in the class where she is. The teachers are also concerned that Daisy has no friends at school. They’ve noticed that the other girls at school seem to be afraid of Daisy, although they don’t seem to understand about Daisy’s “Spook” act. They do know that Daisy has behavioral problems and an unhappy home life. The reason why the principal is telling Magdalena about this is that she wants Magdalena to try to be Daisy’s friend when she transfers into her new class. The reason why she selected Magdalena to be Daisy’s new friend is because Daisy’s family is also Puerto Rican, like Magdalena’s family, so she thinks that the girls might understand each other better than their other classmates. The principal thinks that Daisy might settle down at school if she had a friend to help her feel more comfortable there. Magdalena isn’t comfortable with the idea of trying to be Spook’s friend because she also finds Daisy spooky, but the principal persuades her to try but not to let on that the principal asked her to do this.
Magdalena has no idea how to approach Daisy/Spook to be friends, since she’s not the easiest person to approach about anything. Then, Sue Ellen, the most popular girl in class tells Magdalena that she wants to be friends with her. She says that she’s been feeling empathy for her since the first day that she came to class and the boys started teasing her, and she felt it again when she got called to see the principal. She asks her what the principal wanted, and Magdalena explains that she asked her to do something, but it’s something really hard, and she isn’t supposed to talk about it. Sue Ellen offers to help her with whatever the principal’s task is. Magdalena thinks maybe making friends with Spook won’t be so bad if Sue Ellen helps, so she takes Sue Ellen into her confidence. Sue Ellen agrees with Magdalena that making friends with Spook would be hard because she’s so weird and spooky. Both girls admit that they’re a little afraid of her, but Sue Ellen agrees to try to be basically nice to Spook along with Magdalena and see what happens. Sue Ellen says that the principal ought to have more empathy for the students and see just how hard it would be to get along with someone like Spook.
Their first attempts at making friends with Spook are clumsy. Sue Ellen tries offering her advice, pointing out that she wore the wrong thing to the school assembly, but criticism and advice aren’t the best ice-breakers. Then, to Magdalena’s surprise, Spook approaches her in the school library, when she is trying to find a specific book for her grandmother. The school library doesn’t have the book she wants, but Spook says that she knows where to find it. However, she will only help Magdalena if she plays hooky and goes with her right now. Magdalena hesitates because she doesn’t really want to skip class and get in trouble, but Spook says that Magdalena will have to come with her because she’s “emotionally disturbed” and might do crazy things if she doesn’t get her way. Magdalena points out that school will end in only 20 minutes, and she asks Spook to wait for her. Spook makes her promise that she won’t change her mind and let her down in that time.
When Magdalena waits for Spook, she doesn’t show up at first, but Spook jumps out at her just when she’s giving up waiting. Spook says that she just wanted to see if Magdalena was serious about wanting to come with her. The place where Spook knows they can find the book turns out to be the Brooklyn Public Library. Along the way, Magdalena begins to learn more about Spook. The reason why she wasn’t dressed right this morning was that the sweater she was wearing was the only thing she had to wear that was clean. She skipped out during the school assembly to go home and see if her mother was back from the laundromat so she could put on something else. Also, Spook isn’t completely friendless. She is friends with a strange woman named Miss Lilley, who wears an unusual, large hat. When Daisy tells Miss Lilley that she got put into the class at school with the smart kids, Miss Lilley congratulates her and tells her that she knew she was smart. Daisy admits that she’s been trying not to let her teachers know that she’s smart because she knows that they will expect more of her and insist that she do all her homework. People don’t expect so much of kids who aren’t bright. There is method to Daisy’s madness. All of her weird and spooky acts are tools that she uses to get her, get out of things that she doesn’t want to do, cover up for problems that she has, and keep people she doesn’t like or doesn’t think would understand her at a distance.
Daisy introduces Magdalena as one of the smart kids from her class, but Miss Lilley thinks that Magdalena’s manners aren’t very polite because she keeps staring. Magdalena has trouble getting over the large hat, which looks like a large pumpkin. Miss Lilley begins evaluating Magdalena’s appearance, and Magdalena comments about how she hates her braids, but her grandmother makes her wear them. Miss Lilley says that she understands that her grandmother likes the quaintness of the braids, but she knows how to deal with that. She also knows where to find a good barber. The black boy who was nice to Magdalena earlier, Samson Shivers, makes money after school by shining shoes outside the library, and when Miss Lilley asks him if he would be willing to lend them money for the haircut, he joins the others at the barber shop. Miss Lilley takes the kids to the barber shop, and Magdalena gets a haircut. Magdalena feels wonderfully free after he haircut, although she saves the braids as a souvenir and worries about what her grandmother will say when she gets home.
Nani is very upset when she sees Magdalena’s short hair and worries that Magdalena is rejecting her care for her and her Puerto Rican heritage. Magdalena says that’s not the case and explains about going to the library and meeting Miss Lilley. Magdalena’s grandmother thinks that she’s bewitched and says that she knows how to deal with that. She uses herbs on Magdalena to break the bewitchment.
Getting the haircut changes things for Magdalena. The boys stop teasing her, which is a relief. However, Sue Ellen is annoyed that Magdalena didn’t tell her that she was going to get her hair cut. Magdalena explains that it was a sudden decision and a possible bewitchment by Miss Lilley. Sue Ellen thinks that Spook is probably the one who bewitched Magdalena because she’s so spooky and that maybe Magdalena would rather be best friends with her. Magdalena says that’s not the case and that she doesn’t see why she can’t be friends with both girls. Sue Ellen still expects that Spook is going to do something to ruin the class, but Magdalena notices that Spook is becoming less spooky in their class. She stops skipping classes, does more of her homework, and cuts out some of her previous spooky behavior.
Samson, often called Sam, is a practical boy, and when Magdalena tells him how her grandmother thinks Miss Lilley is a witch and bewitched her, he says that she can’t be a witch. Sam sees her often because he shines shoes by the library, and he realizes that Miss Lilley is actually just a poor, old woman. She goes to the library all the time because she can’t afford proper heating for her apartment. She often has little to eat, and she partly survives off of candy that he gives her. Like Spook, she seems spooky because she looks odd and behaves oddly, but there are explanations for what she does that show that she’s actually unfortunate.
Magdalena’s grandmother meets Spook for the first time when Spook hangs out with Magdalena at her apartment after school. Nani isn’t home at the time, but the girls talk to each other about their lives and families. Magdalena gets to know more about Spook, and Spook admires the place where Magdalena lives. Spook’s family lives in a much poorer apartment, and it’s crowded with Spook’s younger siblings. Spook admires the nice bathtub that Magdalena and her grandmother have and says that she wishes they had one at her apartment. Part of the reason why she looks so strange is that she doesn’t get the opportunity to take baths often. Magdalena tells her that if she wants a bath, she can go ahead and take one. Nani arrives home before Spook is finished with her bath, but Nani stops her when she tries to get out and get her clothes. Nani can see how badly Spook needs some care, so she insists that she finish the bath, clean the tub, and let her shampoo her hair. When she’s done, Nani has Magdalena loan her some clean clothes, and the girls are amazed at the transformation.
After the bath incident, Spook avoids Magdalena for a while, and she can’t understand why, but it’s about Spook realizing what’s been lacking in her life and envying what Magdalena has: someone who really cares for her. She was so emotional when she looked at herself in the mirror that she spit at the image and then was embarrassed that she had done that. Nani surprisingly understands Spook’s behavior. She can see that Spook lacks impulse control and the ability to understand and manage her feelings. Nani comments that she’s angry with Spook’s mother because she can tell that the girl has been badly neglected. Having been a mother and grandmother herself, she knows exactly how to deal with this.
Meanwhile, Sam is correct about Miss Lilley. Miss Lilley is poor and not in very good health, but she also knows what Magdalena and Spook/Daisy need. She is eager to help the girls, but she also needs some help and attention herself. When Miss Lilley decides that it’s time to have a word with Nani about the needs of modern girls and her fears about her granddaughter becoming too American, a number of things get better.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
The heart of this story is understanding and empathy. By the time it’s over, many of the characters come to a better understanding of each other and maybe themselves. Although Spook’s transformation is the most dramatic, the other characters are also changed after their experiences in the story.
Magdalena’s changes come with her admission to her grandmother that she really doesn’t like her braids and then with her decision to have her hair cut against her grandmothers wishes. She knew that her grandmother wouldn’t like it when she said that she didn’t want braids because her grandmother is a traditionalist, and she knew that Nani wouldn’t react well to the haircut. At first, it was easier for Magdalena to buy into the idea that Miss Lilley was a witch who bewitched her into doing it, but that’s not really the truth. It wasn’t even that Magdalena was getting her hair cut just because of the teasing. When Magdalena and Spook are talking about whether or not they truly understand the reasons why they do things, Magdalena acknowledges that she has reasons for the things she does, and the truth is that she got the haircut because she herself really hated wearing braids. If she had really loved her braids, she could have kept them in spite of the teasing, and she could have turned down the offer of a haircut, but she really wanted to change her hairstyle, and she just took advantage of the opportunity to do it.
Nani understands from the first time she meets Spook that she has not had nearly the level of care and attention that she has needed in life. Spook doesn’t even really understand all of the motivations she has for the things she does. Her behavior is odd partly because she acts on impulse, not fully thinking about the consequences or the affect her behavior has on others. She initially doesn’t have much self-awareness because she has not had caring adults in her life to teach her how to behave, how to understand her feelings, and how to control herself. Because she hasn’t really had any friends before, she hasn’t really had anyone to talk to about these things and help give her some perspective. When Spook and Magdalena talk about why she spit on the mirror, Spook says at first that she isn’t sure why she did it. As they continue to talk about reasons for doing things, though, Spook admits that she did it because, while she was stunned at how nice she looked, she quickly became upset because she didn’t think that nice look could last.
Nani is the nurturing type of person, and she quickly sees that Spook is in dire need of some nurturing and guidance. She also recognizes that Spook doesn’t have much confidence in herself. She is bright, but she has grown used to hiding it. She also thinks, because she doesn’t really understand her feelings or behavior, that is can never really control herself. She thinks that she will always be a “stinker” who does things that she shouldn’t and acts weird. Nani has a frank talk with her and tells her that she can be herself without being a “stinker”, and the first step is believing that she can. Even if she’s not in the habit of understanding and controlling herself, she can learn. People have different sides to their personalities and different ways of expressing themselves, and Spook can learn how to show the best sides of herself in the best possible ways.
Magdalena appreciates that Nani is understanding and helping Spook, but she also has a frank talk with her grandmother about why she doesn’t understand her own granddaughter as well. When Magdalena tries to tell her what she wants or doesn’t want, Nani contradicts her or ignores her feelings. Nani is understanding with Spook because she can tell that Spook is a disadvantaged child, but she doesn’t see her granddaughter the same way, so she doesn’t try to understand why Magdalena sometimes does things she doesn’t like. Nani admits that she wanted her granddaughter to be “perfect”, but maybe she doesn’t really know what “perfect” actually is. She wants the traditional ways for her granddaughter because she really thinks that’s what’s best, but even grandmother doesn’t always know what’s best.
Miss Lilley is concerned about the girls and offers them attention and support. When she goes to see Nani and open her eyes to her grandmother’s needs and the ways of modern girls, she collapses because of her bad health. Fortunately, Nani is a nurturing person, and she nurtures Miss Lilley, making sure that she gets the treatment she needs and even looking after her when she gets out of the hospital. Miss Lilley’s health improves, and the two of them become friends. Although they are both older ladies, they each admit that they have things to learn in their lives, and they can learn from each other. Nani helps her to make changes to her living arrangements so she will be healthier and more comfortable, and Miss Lilley helps her understand what modern American life has to offer for girls like Magdalena.
Samson is always a very understanding character because he is genuinely interested in people, and he meets many different types of people through his shoe-shining business. Although Sue Ellen is the first person who brings up the topic of empathy, she is really the one who understands it the least. I think her relatively narrow view of empathy is because of her relatively narrow life experiences. She feels some empathy for Magdalena because she sees Magdalena experiencing something she understands, but she doesn’t seem to know what to do when she encounters something she doesn’t understand. Admittedly, Spook’s spooky act is off-putting, partly by design and partly because Spook has issues she herself doesn’t know how to handle. However, because Sue Ellen only wants to stick to the familiar and understandable, she doesn’t notice when Spook begins to change and doesn’t see how some support from her could influence her for the better. Sue Ellen’s attempts at friendliness and helpfulness often involve offering some kind of criticism, like pointing out that Spook isn’t dressed right. Magdalena can tell that Sue Ellen is trying to be helpful, but she’s also kind of snippy and smug in the way she does it, and that gets on Magdalena’s nerves, too. Sue Ellen kind of fades out of the story toward the end, so we don’t know if she continues being friendly with Magdalena or not or if she ever recognizes Spook’s transformation.
There is also a subplot that I haven’t mentioned about the literary magazine that the girls’ class starts. Their teacher has some thought-provoking descriptions about what good writing is and does, and the girls’ choices of what to write about are based on their experiences and the changes in their lives.
The book doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of life. Magdalena’s mother is dead, and her father is away most of the time, so she is being raised by her grandmother. Her father never even makes an appearance in the story. Miss Lilley is a poor and lonely old woman who needs help and friends. It is acknowledged that Spook is a neglected child, and she even tells Magdalena that her favorite brother died at age three because he was asthmatic, and they were living in bad conditions. We don’t know exactly how her family came to be living in such bad conditions, but Spook says that, if she wrote a story about her family, the teacher would think she had a filthy mind.
Since the story is about understanding other people, one could consider whether we might view Spook’s neglectful mother more sympathetically if we knew her past and what led her to the situation they’re now in, but we do not see Spook’s mother at any point in the story. I think it’s also important to note that understanding does not equal approval. You can know a person’s history and reasons for doing things and still not agree with them. Maybe Spook’s mother is another unfortunate soul who needs some help, but if she is, she doesn’t seem to be looking for that help. Her vulnerable children are suffering for it, and one has died. Empathy doesn’t mean saying that things are okay when they really aren’t, and this mother’s neglect of her children is not okay.
When Aunt Lena Did the Rhumba by Eileen Kurtis-Kleinman, illustrated by Diane Greenseid, 1997.
Sophie’s Aunt Lena loves music, dancing, movies, and theater, and she especially loves Broadway musicals. She goes to a musical matinee every Wednesday. After seeing a musical, she comes home, singing and dancing and acting out parts from the play she’s just seen.
One particular Wednesday, when she’s acting out a particularly dramatic dance in the kitchen, she accidentally slips and sprains her ankle. She has to stay home and rest until her ankle gets better, which means that she won’t be able to go to next Wednesday’s matinee.
Aunt Lena is so sad about missing the musicals she loves that Sophie gets an idea to cheer her up. Sophie recruits other members of her family to put on their own musical to entertain Aunt Lena.
Not everyone is enthusiastic about the idea at first, but when Sophie gets her grandmother to help her put together a costume fit for a Broadway musical and choose some music, they begin drawing other family members in.
Aunt Lena loves their performance, and when she’s better, she takes Sophie to a matinee so she can see a real Broadway performance, too!
This book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It was also a Reading Rainbow book, and the episode of Reading Rainbow is also available to watch online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
I didn’t see the original episode of Reading Rainbow that included this book when I was a kid because this book was published after I was too old for that. However, I always liked Reading Rainbow when I was a kid, and later, after I started this blog, I decided to go back and check out some of the books covered by Reading Rainbow after I stopped watching it. If you’re not familiar with Reading Rainbow, it was a children’s television program on public television in the US that encouraged children to read by discussing books and showing children things that were related to the books they were reading. For example, if they were reading books related to animals in an episode, the host, Levar Burton, might take a trip to a zoo and talk to zookeepers about animals in the zoo.
The themes of this particular story and the Reading Rainbow episode are music, dancing, and theater. In the episode, they show a boys’ choir and dancing class and talk about how performing helps the boys and young men develop confidence and maturity. There’s also a comedian who specializes in physical comedy, who talks about how he does his stunts, and an actress who plays one of the cats in the famous Broadway musical Cats.
I love how the aunt in the book shares her love of dancing and theater with her niece. The two of them have similar personalities and interests, so when her aunt is injured, her niece knows how to cheer her up. The ending of the story implies that the niece will now be going to performances with her aunt, or at least, will sometimes go with her. I also liked how the rest of the family participated in the girl’s plans when they saw what she wanted to do, even if they weren’t as enthusiastic about the idea themselves at first. Enthusiasm can be contagious, and I do think that adults sharing their interests with kids can spark lifelong interests in the next generation.
I also noticed that this seems to be an unconventional family, although the family’s living arrangements aren’t the focus of the story. The girl’s parents are never mentioned. She seems to live with just her grandmother, her aunt, and a couple of uncles, and there is no explanation why because it’s not directly important to the story. In any case, it seems to be a happy, close-knit family, with family members caring for each other and supporting each other’s interests.
The pictures in the book are bright and colorful, fitting with the energy, enthusiasm, and theatricality of the story.
The Egyptian Cinderella by Shirley Climo, illustrated by Ruth Heller, 1989.
Rhodopis is a slave girl in Egypt. When she was young, she was abducted from her home in Greece by pirates, who sold her into slavery. Her blonde hair and green eyes make her look very different from the Egyptian servants, and none of them like her.
Most of Rhodopis’s friends are animals, and in the little free time she has, she likes to dance. The elderly man who owns her sees her dancing and has a special pair of rose-red gold shoes made for her so she can wear them while she dances. However, the Egyptian servants are all jealous of her for getting this special gift.
One day, the servants all leave her behind when they go to a special court held by the Pharaoh. While they are gone, a falcon snatches one of Rhodopis’s slippers and flies away. The falcon flies to the court and drops the slipper in the Pharaoh’s lap. The Pharaoh takes this as a sign from Horus that the girl who owns that shoe is destined to be his wife and immediately begins searching for her.
When he finds Rhodopis, the servant girls protest that she is not Egyptian and is only a slave, but the Pharaoh compares her green eyes to the color of the Nile, her light hair to papyrus, and her pink skin to a lotus flower. In his eyes, there could not be any other girl who could represent Egypt, and her slave status doesn’t matter.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
I remember loving this book when I was a kid! I always liked fairy tales and folktales, and I think this was one that was introduced to me by our school librarian, probably around the time it first came out in 1989. For a long time, I was unaware that the same author also wrote other books based on variations of the Cinderella story: The Korean Cinderella, The Persian Cinderella, and The Irish Cinderlad. One of the fascinating things about the story of Cinderella is that variations of the story about a girl (usually, it’s a girl, although there are some variations with a boy) who is abused by her stepmother and stepsisters but who triumphs in the end when she marries a king or a prince, who identifies her as the girl he loves by a lost shoe, have appeared in cultures around the world. The classic one that most of us know is the French version by Perrault, but there are other versions of the story that are older.
There is an author’s note in the back of the book that explains that this Egyptian version of the Cinderella story is one of the oldest known Cinderella stories. The Roman historian Strabo recorded the story in the first century BC. The story is legend, but according to the author, Rhodopis was a real slave girl who married the Pharaoh Amasis in the sixth century BC (although accounts of her vary, and it can be difficult to separate history from legend).
A Watcher in the Woods by Florence Engel Randall, 1976.
The Carstairs family is moving from Ohio to a small town in Massachusetts because Professor Carstairs will be taking a new job as head of the English department at the local college. Fifteen-year-old Jan knows that she will find the move harder than her parents or her younger sister. Her father will be busy with his work, and her mother will make friends with the wives of other faculty at the college. Jan knows that her little sister, Ellie, is still very young and in elementary school, and she won’t find changing schools as difficult as she will. Jan isn’t looking forward to trying to fit in at the local high school.
The family’s first difficulty in moving is finding a house in this new town that they like. Because it’s a small town, their options are limited, and it seems like there’s something wrong with each of the houses they see. Then, their realtor suggests that they view the old Aylwood place outside of town. Living there would mean a longer distance to drive to the college and the girls’ schools, but it’s a nice, big house with some land attached to it. The land includes woods and a pond. Elderly Mrs. Aylwood can’t afford to maintain the place anymore, but she has been reluctant to sell the house. She is very attached to it and she wants to make sure that, if she sells, that she will sell it to the right kind of people, who will take care of the land and woods.
From the first time that Jan and her family visit the house, it gives Jan a strange feeling. She has the oddest feeling that someone (or something) is watching them from the woods, and it frightens her. However, when she tries to explain her uneasy feelings to her mother, her mother thinks that it’s her imagination. Jan can’t deny that the house and wood give her the feeling of a fairy tale and that Mrs. Aylwood reminds her of a fairy tale witch.
For some reason, Mrs. Aylwood becomes more welcoming to the Carstairs family after she sees Jan, and she begins asking Jan some rather odd questions about herself. Mrs. Aylwood admits that Jan reminds her of her own daughter, Karen, who she lost 50 years ago when she was only 15 years old. Jan begins to understand that Mrs. Aylwood’s attachment to the house is because it’s a link to her daughter’s memory, but she soon begins to realize that there’s more to it than that. Mrs. Aylwood asks Jan what kind of person she is and makes a cryptic comment about how Jan is a human but there are other things besides humans.
Jan’s uneasy feeling of being watched continues, and mirrors in the house are inexplicably broken in an x-shaped pattern. When she befriends a neighbor, Mark, and talks to him and his mother about the house, she learns that Karen did not die but that she disappeared 50 years ago. She apparently went out for a walk to the pond in the woods one summer morning and simply vanished with no explanation. Searches for her never lead anywhere. Most of the local people believe that Karen ran away from home, although it would have been out of character for her to do that. Jan begins to wonder if the watcher she senses in the woods could be Karen, somehow hiding out or having returned after all these years, although Mark says that doesn’t make sense. Then, remembering Mrs. Aylwood’s comment about things that aren’t human, Jan wonders if the watcher could be Karen’s ghost. What if she died all those years ago, and her spirit haunts the woods?
It seems like someone or something is communicating with Ellie. Ellie seems to hear something speaking or humming when Jan can’t. Something even suggests to Ellie that she name her new puppy Nerak, which Jan realizes is “Karen” spelled backwards. Is Karen trying to communicate with them, or is it something else?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. This book has been made into movie versions twice, but the Disney movie from 1980 is more faithful to the original story. I’ll explain why below, but it involves spoilers.
My Reaction and Spoilers
When talking about my opinion of this book, I really need to include some spoilers. This is a very unusual book because it isn’t obvious until about halfway through what kind of story it really is. From the beginning, it’s set up like a ghost story, with Karen’s mysterious disappearance, the sense of something watching the house and family from the woods, and something trying to communicate through Ellie. It’s very suspenseful and mysterious, but this is not actually a ghost story. It’s really science fiction.
Karen isn’t dead, but she has been trapped in an alternate dimension since she disappeared 50 years ago. A being from that other dimension has also been trapped in our world since then. This other being is the mysterious watcher in the woods. Jan correctly senses that this other being is also female and a child, although beings of its kind live extraordinarily long lives because time works differently in their dimension. What has been 50 years for everyone else has only seemed like a day to her. She wants to return home, but she has had to wait for conditions to be right. She also wants to help Karen, and she has been struggling to communicate with Mrs. Aylwood and Jan and her sister so she can tell them what they need to do.
In the Disney movie, there are a couple of major changes from the original book. The first is that the location is changed from the US to England, although Jan and her family are Americans. It also features a kind of initiation ritual that Jan was undergoing just as her switch with the creature from the other dimension happened, adding an element that seems supernatural, although it is still science fiction. At the very end of the Disney movie, Jan brings Karen back from the other dimension, but in the book (Spoiler!) Mrs. Aylwood goes to join Karen in the other dimension instead.
In the book, Jan’s mother worries about what life would be like for Karen if she returns, aged 50 years in what must have seemed like only a day, having lost most of her life, or what it would be like if she has not changed at all but her mother has aged 50 years, and the world has been through so many major changes since she left. It isn’t clear whether or not Karen has aged in the other dimension, but Jan’s mother’s point is that the world she came from has definitely changed. Karen can’t go back to her old life, and there is some sadness about that and about what Mrs. Aylwood has been going through since Karen disappeared. However, Mrs. Aylwood decides to join Karen in this other world, where she’s been. We don’t really know what Karen’s condition is in the other dimension because we don’t see her. She may have aged very fast there, although I think they imply that she has not aged at all because time works differently in the other dimension. Since time works differently there, it seems like they either won’t age further there or will do so much more slowly than they would on Earth.
Between the two movie versions, the Disney movie version of this book from 1980 is more faithful to the original story because it maintains the concept that this is a science fiction story and that the watcher in the woods is a being from another dimension. The movie version from 2017 turns the story into a ghost story with no science fiction elements. In the ghost story version, Karen is also still alive and hasn’t aged after being gone for many years, but the watcher in the woods is a ghost who is holding her captive. It’s a spookier version, but I think the logic of the original book, with its science fiction theme, makes more sense.
The premise of the ghost story didn’t make as much sense to me because the ghost’s motives seem confused. First, the ghost takes Karen captive because she was staging a stunt for some friends where she appeared to be mocking the way he died. Then, he seemed to want to keep a girl for company, which is weird because it doesn’t seem like he interacts with Karen while he has her. He tries to make a bargain where he would be willing to release Karen in exchange for Ellie, but in the end, it turns out that human company isn’t really what he wants. (Spoiler!) He wants a ritual for his death that he was deprived from having when he was killed. The story just seemed to be all over the place with the ghost’s motives and desires. Is he out to punish Karen for her disrespect, lonely without human company, or just trying to get attention from the living to fulfill his final wishes? Even he doesn’t seem clear about that, which is why I prefer the sci-fi version.
I also thought that the premise of the sci-fi story was more original, and I enjoyed the twist of a story that seems like a ghost story but really isn’t. If any sufficiently advanced technology might look like magic to someone who had never seen it before, as Arthur C. Clarke said, it makes sense that any being who was sufficiently different from the human experience might appear to be some kind of supernatural creature to human beings who didn’t know what they were perceiving.
The Disney version from 1980 actually has multiple endings because the first endings they filmed didn’t quite work and didn’t get a good reaction from audiences. If you’re curious about what the three endings are like, Jess Lambert explains them in her YouTube review of the movie.
This story takes place during World War II and focuses on a child evacuee from London. The title of the book comes from a quote from Winston Churchill:
“Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror … for without victory there is no survival.”
Winston Churchill, May 13, 1940
It’s September 1939, and Liz Hawtin is an orphan living with her aunt, uncle, and cousins in London. Her mother died when she was a baby, and her father was killed when he was hit by a car a few years earlier. Liz’s overbearing aunt is making her life miserable and has been since she moved in with her relatives. It takes Liz some time to realize why her aunt doesn’t like her, but it has to do with social class, political philosophy, one-upmanship, and her aunt’s sense of fairness and entitlement – what sort of people are “deserving” and what sort of people aren’t.
The main problem is that Liz’s father was into socialism before he died. In fact, he used to give public talks about it, and Liz would watch them as a child, although she admits in hindsight that she doesn’t entirely agree with everything her father believed. One value that she and her father definitely shared was the belief that education is important. Liz’s entire family is working class, including her father, and none of them have ever had more than just very basic education. Her father was a very bright man, but like other members of their family, he had to leave school early and get a job because their family was poor. However, he urged Liz to study and get the best education she could because he realized that higher education is the way to move up in the world and get better jobs and a better position in life.
Liz’s current situation when the book begins is irritating to her aunt because Liz has both the academic potential to attend a better school than the ones her own children have attended and because Liz’s father had the foresight to take out an insurance policy on his life that has provided Liz with enough money to attend this better school and to buy good school clothes and the extra equipment and books that this better school requires. Every time Liz has needed something for school, her aunt gripes about how much it costs and what a waste of time and money it is. Liz gets her aunt’s permanent wrath by telling her straight out that the insurance money belongs to her and not her aunt and that it was meant for her education. This enrages her aunt because she had labeled her father as the foolish, idealistic socialist who was undeserving, so the idea that, because of him, Liz has both academic aptitude and the money to support her education seems supremely unfair to her. On some level, she probably realizes that Liz’s more advanced education will probably help her to be more prosperous than the rest of the family, and she hates it and is jealous. She takes every opportunity to criticize Liz and to tell her that her time spent reading and studying is wasteful. She encourages her children who, like other members of their family, all have to leave school early to get menial jobs, to give Liz a hard time. The only members of the household who like Liz are her gentle cousin Rose and her uncle, but it’s difficult for them to stand up for Liz and help her because the aunt bullies both of them as well.
At the beginning of the story, Liz is fifteen years old, and she is faced with a difficult decision. She is getting close to graduating from her grammar school. She badly wants to finish, but she knows that the insurance money is running out. Soon, she will be faced with the difficult decision of whether to leave the school without graduating and get a job, which is bound to be the menial work that her cousins are doing. Her aunt has always resented her and is eager to get rid of her, so she wants Liz to get work and start supporting herself as quickly as possible.
When World War II breaks out, Liz’s life is changed forever, and Liz realizes that, ironically, the changes are going to be for her benefit. Because Liz is still a student, she will be part of the government’s program to evacuate children from London to protect them from bombings. None of her cousins will be evacuated, even though they’re not much different in age from Liz, because they are no longer students, but Liz will be sent to the countryside with the rest of the students at her school. The government will also provide money for her support and education during the period of the evacuation, so Liz realizes that she will be able to finish her education after all. Rose and Liz’s uncle are sad at her leaving, but her aunt makes it clear that she is pleased that Liz will be leaving very soon and that she doesn’t want Liz to come back after the evacuation period is over. Once Liz is finished with her education and no longer part of the government program, Liz will be on her own in the world. It’s both a little scary but also liberating for Liz. She doesn’t know where she will be staying during the evacuation, but at this time in her life, it’s really better for her to leave her aunt’s house, finish her education, and establish an independent life.
Before she leaves, she says goodbye to her grandmother in London. She worries what will happen to her grandmother, her uncle, and Rose when she’s gone. Her grandmother isn’t worried for her own sake because she’s lived through war before, and nothing ever seems to happen to her. Besides, she knows where the shelters are for safety, and she’s sure that she can take care of herself. Liz knows that, once she is gone, her aunt won’t be able to pick on her all the time, and things are bound to get worse for her uncle and Rose, but there’s nothing she can do about that.
When she arrives at school, she and the other students are told that they are being sent to a small village called Chiddingford in Oxfordshire. It’s such a small town that it doesn’t even appear on the map in their school atlas. There, they will be staying in the homes of people living in the village. The headmistress reminds them all that this will not be an easy experience for them. Many children are being evacuated along with them, and all of them will experience homesickness and difficulties adjusting to the place where they will stay. She urges all of them to be kind to each other and considerate of their hosts in Chiddingford. The girls in Liz’s form (grade) are also going to be paired up with girls in the lowest form because these younger girls are new to the school and don’t even really know each other yet. The headmistress thinks that the experience will be easier on them if they have an older girl as a buddy, like an older sister. Liz pairs up with a shy girl named Veronica, who is wearing a school uniform that is way too big for her. Her parents were trying to save money by buying her a uniform that she could grow into. It makes Veronica a laughingstock among the other students, but Liz sympathizes with her, knowing what it’s like to worry about money and to feel different from everyone else.
The students are excited by their trip into the countryside. The village of Chiddingford is already expecting them, although they had originally been told that they would be hosting a boys’ school instead of a girls’ school. Lady Brereton’s daughter-in-law asked her to pick out a boy from the arriving students who would be a good companion for her sons. However, since there are no boys on offer after all, and she knows little about girls, having only a son and three grandsons, Lady Brereton decides that she’ll pick out a girl from the evacuees in the same way she would pick out a dog, which is something she does understand. She chooses Liz because Liz has an alert expression and stands with her head up and a look of spirit and resilience.
Liz finds the move to the countryside disorienting, although she likes the peacefulness of it. Her reception at the Brereton house is disappointing because Mrs. Brereton had her heart set on getting a boy. She has three sons and is single-mindedly devoted to them. A girl simply wouldn’t do as a companion for her boys. In fact, she thinks that having a teenage girl in their house might well lead her teenage sons astray. However, people are commanded by the government to take in evacuees, and Mrs. Brereton can’t just give Liz back or trade her for someone else just because she’d rather have a boy. It’s awkward for both of them because Liz knows that Mrs. Brereton really doesn’t want her and that she tried to get rid of her.
Mr. Brereton is an historian, and he once worked at a college near Liz’s old neighborhood. He describes the history of the area and the type of housing there to his sons. The Breretons are a genteel, highly-educated family. They’re also the sort of intellectuals Liz’s father used to disparage, the ones who came to the college in their area and observed their lower-class living like scientists watching an ant colony and would leave, thinking that they understood their lives, when they had only ever seen them from the outside.
The youngest of the Brereton boys, Miles, makes fun of Liz when he finds out that her school doesn’t teach Latin because he says that she’ll never be able to go on to university. It stings because Liz is more educated than the rest of her family and is proud of it. She angrily retorts that she doesn’t want to go on studying forever because she wants to do something that will help win the war. Unknowingly, she’s prodding a sore point in the Brereton family because the eldest boy, Simon, wants to enlist, but his family would rather that he continue his education at Cambridge and become a doctor. Simon does want to be a doctor, but he also feels called to aid the war effort. He feels torn because his family is telling him that he should let others take care of the war while he goes to school and learns something that will make a difference later, but he feels guilty for staying out of it. His grandfather, Sir Rollo, who was a brigadier general, says that 19-year-old Simon is a man now and must make up his own mind about what he wants and what he’s going to do. Liz wishes that she hadn’t said anything about helping the war effort because she didn’t know that it was a sore point for this family, and she certainly wouldn’t want to influence Simon to do something that was dangerous or wrong for him. He seems too gentle and intellectual to really be a soldier.
When her teacher, Miss Garnett, comes to check on her, and see how she’s doing in the Brereton house, Liz says that she doesn’t think she fits in with this family. Miss Garnett advises her to give it time. Liz realizes that the Breretons are a tempestuous family, and it’s not really her fault for setting them off. They get set off by other things and people, too. Liz’s family back in London wasn’t the nicest, and they had their fights and spurts of meanness, but Liz feels like the Breretons are more unpredictable. She doesn’t know their history, quarrels, and sore spots, so she has no way of knowing what will set them off next.
Liz feels a little better after talking to the other girls from her school, comparing their host families. As she describes the Breretons to her friends, their absurdities jump out at her, making the whole situation seem more humorous instead of tragic. Mrs. Brereton doesn’t want her, which is hurtful, but she’s stuck with her anyway, which is funny. Young Miles keeps teasing her about not knowing Latin by shouting random Latin words at her, which don’t even make sense when translated. Miles is learning Latin vocabulary and can conjugate verbs, but he doesn’t really speak it as a language. Mr. Brereton, the professor, reads in the bathroom, which is the girls say is pretty normal, but what he reads are heavy historical texts, and he keeps a notebook and pencil in there, too, so he can take notes. The other girls laugh at the silly habits of the Breretons and tell Liz about their own host family. Three of them are sharing a room over a local shop, and the family that keeps the shop are certainly not intellectual. They have no books at all in their house, and they seem to be slow thinkers, who have only “one thought about every two hours.” Liz, whose source of pride back in London was being more educated than the rest of her family and most of the people in her working-class neighborhood, realizes that the Breretons’ higher intellectualism has been making her feel inadequate, like just a silly school girl. However, she and her friends are really more in the middle, doing better than some people, if not as well as others, and that’s not a bad way to be. Their learning isn’t over yet, either.
There are also some consolations to life with the Breretons. The live in an old, converted mill, and Liz has her own room next to the wheel house. Mrs. Brereton thinks of it as a rough room, very simply furnished and really more suited to a boy than a girl, but Liz likes it and is grateful that she doesn’t have to share a room with anyone else. When she doesn’t want to talk to the Breretons, she can go to her room to be alone and read, burying herself in Pride and Prejudice and other books she enjoys. When Miss Garnett sees Liz’s room, she also thinks it seems fun, and the water sounds from the millstream and waterwheel remind her of being on a ship.
There is one other member of the family that Liz hasn’t met yet, the Breretons’ middle son, Ben. Ben is 17 years old, and from the way his family talks about him in his absence, he’s something of a disappointment to his parents. Although he is two years older than Liz, they are about the same level at school, which is hard for his rigorously intellectual family to accept. He also has a tendency to get into various scrapes. None of them are truly shocking, mostly ridiculous teenage escapades. Liz knows that she’s seen much worse in her old neighborhood in London, but Ben’s family disparages his foolish and embarrassing behavior.
The reason why he isn’t there when Liz first arrives is that he’s taking a bicycle tour of Wales. His family starts to worry about him because he doesn’t return when he was supposed to. Then, they get a call that explains his latest escapade. In a wave of patriotism because of the starting war, he tried to enlist in the RAF, even though he was underage. At the recruiting office, he tried to avoid telling the recruiters much about himself, so they wouldn’t know that he was really too young, but he forgot that he wrote his name and address on the outside of his kit bag. The recruiters contact his parents and send him home. It’s the sort of well-meaning but thoughtless mistake that Ben often makes. His parents again disparage his thoughtlessness, and Miles makes fun of him, but Simon angrily tells them all off. He says that he understands Ben’s feelings of wanting to make a difference. Even if what he tried to do was clumsy and not well-thought-out, it was still noble. The grandfather of the family says that he and their grandmother certainly won’t make fun of him when he returns home. Liz gets the feeling like Ben might be more her kind of person than the other Breretons.
Liz and Ben get along well with each other when they meet. Liz learns that the room where she is staying used to be Ben’s art studio. Liz feels badly that she’s taken his space, but he tells her that it can’t be helped. He tells her that he wants to be an artist, although his parents disapprove. His mother doesn’t think that it’s possible to make a living off of art, and his father doesn’t think his paintings are any good. Because his father is an historian and an intellectual, he thinks of art in terms of fine art. He had another professor he knows, an art expert, take a look at Ben’s work, and he didn’t think much of it, so Mr. Brereton concluded that his son had no art potential. Ben’s family whitewashed over all the artwork he did on the walls of his studio before Liz arrived. Liz thinks this is terribly unfair because there are many different styles and tastes in art. Just because Ben’s father and one art critic didn’t like Ben’s art doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have talent. Ben is still determined to be an artist in spite of what his parents say. He and his brother Simon are very close and understand each other because neither of them quite fit their parents’ expectations and have different priorities from their parents. Liz understands how both of them feel because her family also never understood her or supported what was important to her. She comes to view both Ben and Simon as brothers and enjoys spending time with them. Ben takes her out on the river in the family’s punt, and during the winter, he teaches her how to ice skate.
The book continues through the next year and a half, through the developments of the war and the lives and education of Liz and the Brereton boys. Although Mrs. Brereton didn’t initially want Liz, the Breretons become fond of her as she shares in their lives, and they come to understand one another. Each of them finds a way to make a difference in the middle of war, and through the hardships they face together and their shared lives, they become a family. When Liz gets a letter from her grandmother that lets her know that Rose is “in trouble” in London, she and Ben make a daring trip into the bombed city to rescue her cousin. The book ends at the beginning of 1941, just after the New Year, with the war still going on, but by that time, each of the young people in the story has found a direction in life and hope for the future.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). Because of the themes and some of the language in the story, I would recommend this book for teens and young adults. There are descriptions of bombings, war deaths, a teenage pregnancy (Rose, not Liz), and some mild swearing in several places. The violent parts aren’t as graphic as some descriptions I’ve seen in other books, but there is definite violence and death, so it’s not really a book for young children.
My Reaction and Spoilers
The Atmosphere
This story could fit well with both the Cottagecore aesethic and Light Academia. In the countryside, Liz is living in an unusual, atmospheric house, a converted mill, and the descriptions of her room sound enchanting! In some ways, the beginning of the book reminds me a little of Anne of Green Gables: an unwanted orphan who is taken in by a countryside family that originally wanted a boy, and a girl who loves books and is determined to pursue an education and make something of herself. Liz is a true book lover, and the story mentions the books that she reads and loves, like Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, and Beau Geste by P. C. Wren. Liz doesn’t just read because she is required to read for her classes but because she really enjoys books. She also comes to understand things from books she reads, like the war around her and the feelings of some of the Breretons from reading Shakespeare’s Henry V. The insights that people gain from reading are part of the reason why literature is regarded as one of the disciplines of the humanities, the areas of study that provide insight into human nature and human potential. Liz combines the insight and knowledge she gains from reading and what she perceives around her to better understand the world and other people. In some ways, she fits a little better with the intellectual Brereton family than she thinks she will at first.
Later in the book, after Liz has seen more of the war directly, she wonders if there’s really a point to continuing her education or if she should just try to get a job in a factory and do her part. Studying things like poetry and Shakespeare in class just feel pointless and irrelevant in the face of the larger, life-and-death events happening around her. She could relate to the themes in Henry V, but Romeo and Juliet begins sounding pretty silly to her. Her teacher persuades her to continue her education, telling her that the more educated she is, the better she will be as a worker and an asset to her country. At first, Liz doesn’t see how, and her teacher explains that she is learning mathematics, which are used for the construction and calibration of weapons. She is also learning biology, which would be useful if she becomes a nurse or has to care for someone who is wounded. As for things like poetry and literature, anything she studies will teach her humility and give her mental maturity and greater understanding of other people – the goals of the humanities. We don’t know about all of her long-term career goals by the end of the book, but along the way, Liz continues her education, takes on part-time jobs, and finds ways to help the war effort and the people she loves.
Evacuees, Social Class, and Socialism
The experiences of the evacuees in the story are very realistic. It’s important to note that child evacuations went in waves throughout the war, and Liz and her friends are part of the very first wave of Operation Pied Piper. When the war started, people expected that bombings would start almost immediately, which was why they tried to hurry as many children out of London as fast as they could. However, the book covers the real events and attitudes of the early war years, including the fact that the bombings didn’t begin as quickly as expected. When the bombings didn’t start right away, people started to think that the fear of bombings was an overreaction, and many families brought their children back to London from the countryside. Some called this phase of the war the “Phoney War” because people on the home front didn’t feel like there was a war really happening yet, and even on the front lines, there was relative quiet because the large scale operations hadn’t started yet. Liz feels more alone in Chiddingford when some of her friends from school return to London and leave her behind in the country. Liz knows that there’s no point in going back to London herself because her aunt won’t want her, and remaining with the evacuation program will allow her to finish her education. Of course, readers know that the Blitz is coming before the characters in the book do, and the people who returned to London will probably end up regretting it.
In real life, some of the children who returned to London prematurely were killed in the coming bombings, and others were sent away again in the next wave of evacuations. In the case of the kids in the story, Liz’s friends Annette and Naomi return to London, thinking that the risks of bombings were overrated. After the bombings start in the Battle of Britain, Liz’s grandmother writes to Liz and says that Naomi has been sent away again, this time to Wales, which was a destination for many evacuees. We never hear what happens to Annette.
The book did a good job of showing how evacuees and their host families experienced some awkwardness with each other because of their different lifestyles and social classes. Not only is Liz not from an intellectual family like the Breretons, but she also comes to realize that she lacks some of the table manners and social graces of people of their class. The book also explains how Liz and her friends speak differently from the Breretons. Liz and her friends are described as being “bilingual in two kinds of English.” When they’re with family and friends, they speak cockney English, but at school, they speak a more “posh” version of English. However, even their more “posh” English isn’t as high class as the way the Breretons speak because they are a family of people who have been to boarding schools and have higher levels of education. You can hear what a cockney accent sounds like, how it works, and the social significance it has from these videos:
1976: COCKNEY accents from the BCC Archive (about 11 min.) – The people talking would have been alive during WWII, some of them probably around Liz’s age at the time. Some of them talk about the differences between the way they talk and how younger generations speak.
The Story of COCKNEY the (London) Accent and its People (about 35 min.) – Explains more about the social history and cultural identity of Cockney people. This includes some of the historical information that Mr. Brereton, history professor, could recite, although Liz knows that doesn’t mean that he fully understands the realities of day-to-day life in the East End. Toward the end of the video, at about 27 min., there is a clip from a 1930s film as an example of how the accent used to sound because accents change over time.
The Breretons are using “received pronunciation” (RP), which is called “received” because people in England don’t tend to speak that way until they are taught to do it in the higher-class schools. It comes directly from having an education, particularly a higher education, so people who speak that way are immediately announcing their social class and education level with the way they speak. You can hear it and get an explanation of how it works from these videos:
Make Do and Mend (about 3 min.) – A 1940s educational film about making and mending clothes, to save on material for the war effort. Received pronunciation (RP) is also sometimes called “BBC pronunciation” because this is the accent that radio announcers would use. The announcers in this short film, one male and one female, are using 1940s RP.
1967: John REITH explains the “BBC ACCENT” (about 10 min.) – From the BBC Archive, about why the BBC particularly wanted its announcers to speak RP. John Reith was the Director-General of the BBC, beginning in the 1920s and ending in the late 1930s. During WWII, he became Minister of Information, and from there, moved to various other governmental roles. This interview was his very last appearance on television. It took place when he become Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The interviewer asks him about the reason why, during his BBC years, he wanted his broadcasters to speak with an RP accent. Basically, the logic behind RP was to put more emphasis on education and ability to communicate clearly rather than the speaker’s regional origin. Particularly in radio, where listeners only have the voice to rely on and no visuals to clarify anything, it was important to have an accent that would be as clear as possible to the general population, where there would be no confusing regional pronunciations and slang. In the video, John Reith specifically says that they didn’t want there to be any accents that would seem comical or irritating to the listeners by seeming overeducated, undereducated, or too regional. They also debate the social implications of this and the effect of television, which was relatively new technology to them in the 1960s. Both of the men in the video are speaking a kind of RP, although they’re not completely the same as each other. John Reith admits that his speech still has regional influences because he’s from Scotland.
The RP English Accent (about 9 min.) – About who speaks RP, how it sounds, and the social implications. It also mentions how there are people, like the presenter, who speak a kind of RP but still with regional influence, which is similar to the way Liz and her friends are learning to speak in their school. It also discusses how WWII changed the way this accent was perceived and who would speak it because of social changes.
RP (Received pronunciation) vs POSH ENGLISH (about 23 min.) – Explains the origins and evolution of RP and the differences between standard received pronunciation (RP) and the more high-class or “posh” version that the upper classes would speak and how regional accents influence even RP. It also explains that, although this accent was known for being used by radio broadcasters, during WWII, radio broadcasters started using more regional accents to make it clear that they were authentic British people because Germans broadcasting propaganda were speaking English with an RP accent. This is one of the factors influencing changes in professional and social views about different types of British accents.
Why does all of this stuff about accents matter? It comes back to social class and education, both of which influence people’s prospects in life. A person’s accent, particularly during the mid-20th century and earlier times, reveals their background and the type of level of education they have. (Less so in the 21st century, after the influences of mass media – tv and the Internet – which enable people to hear more accents than they encounter in person in daily life, changes to the education system, and changing cultural attitudes.) Schools of the time knew that and would make sure that their students could speak in a way that would make them sound as educated at possible. A person who sounded as educated as they said they were would sound more skilled and competent to potential employers, enabling them to get “white collar” jobs, involving more clerical or specialized skills rather than manual labor, and rise up in the middle class. People who only had the the minimal level of education, like Liz’s relatives, wouldn’t have this influence on their speech, and that could be a barrier to finding better jobs, keeping them at a lower, working class level.
Liz and her friends have been learning some RP in school, which is why they can speak more “posh” than the general cockney spoken around them in daily life, but the Breretons speak a higher level of RP because of their boarding school backgrounds and college educations, so even Liz’s more educated version of English isn’t up to their level of RP. Liz and her friends are learning to speak at a middle class level because they’re being prepared for possible white collar jobs and middle-class living. The students’ cockney families speak like the working classes because that’s what they are, and they’re less likely to move up in the world because listeners can tell that they don’t speak in an educated way. The Breretons speak like academics because that’s what they are, that’s what they’ve trained to be, they’ve had higher-class education, and they’re relatively upper-class or upper-middle class. Although the girls’ families think that the girls are learning to speak “posh”, and they are when compared to their relatives, the Breretons can still hear their background in their speech and know they’re not from the same class. This ability to almost diagnose someone’s background and education from a person’s accent influences the way people in the story and society of the time would think of each other right from their first meeting. Because they can tell some significant factors of a person’s background immediately, there was a tendency to jump to conclusions about a persons’ life, habits, and capabilities. Part of this story is about how they assumed too much before getting to know the details of other people’s lives and personalities, and that’s a factor that influenced social attitudes before and after the war. As the videos that I’ve referenced explain, the modern, 21st century versions of the dialects and accents in this story wouldn’t be quite the same as the ones the characters would have spoken in the 1930s/1940s because language evolves over time, but the videos will give you a sense of how the characters hear each other.
When Liz tells Lady Brereton that her father was a Communist, Lady Brereton is intrigued and fascinated but not overly shocked or disparaging. Liz is happy that Lady Brereton appreciates that he was a good and loving father and that Liz badly misses him even if his political views were unorthodox. Today, Britain is more of a democratic socialist nation than the United States, and the social programs of WWII, like the child evacuations, are part of the reason. Britain was a country that was very focused on social class, and before the war, the social classes seldom mixed. However, the war was a nationwide effort. People of all social classes were expected to do their part and work together, and programs like the child evacuations brought people of different social classes together in ways they had never been before. The result was that people of different social classes learned more about the ways other people lived, and because the evacuation system saved many lives and led to improvements in living conditions for some children from poor areas of the city, people in Britain became more interested in social programs to help the poor and create a more stable society. This isn’t the only reason for such social programs, but it was a contributing factor.
In the book, when Liz looks back on her father’s political views, she realizes that she shares some feelings with him but wouldn’t agree on everything he used to say, and that’s because of her own experiences. The social programs of the war helped her to continue her education and find a more stable life than the one she had with her aunt, but she also knows that she can’t rely on that type of support for everything and starts to look for ways that she can earn money herself and live an independent life. Her experience with and approach to social programs seems like a broader, more blended view. She has had experience with different social classes and different systems and can see the benefits and downsides of different ways of living.
For more information about the conditions and experiences of child evacuees, I recommend the following videos:
This series of interviews with former child evacuees is much longer than the other one, about 40 minutes long. Part of this one brings up the subject of racial minority children who were evacuated. Children of different racial backgrounds or ones who looked like they might be could be discriminated against by people who were reluctant to host them because of the way they looked, but there were also some nice families who were willing to host them.
An hour-long documentary about evacuees’ experiences, good and bad, with interviews with individual evacuees as older adults. It includes the experiences of evacuees who were sent overseas and not just to the countryside. It also covers the effects that the experience had on their education and how they found it difficult to relate to certain types of lessons, like poetry lessons, because the themes were so far from their wartime lives. It also explains what happened to them after the war was over and the long-term effects that their experiences had on t hem.
Explains what conditions were like for those who remained in London during the war and what the evacuees were escaping. Timeline Documentary. About 50 minutes.
For other children’s books about WWII and child evacuees, I have a list of WWII books with additional resources. For books about child evacuees, I especially recommend Carrie’s War (1973) and All The Children Were Sent Away (1976).
Education and Children
A detail that I particularly liked about this book was the explanation of the the 1940s British school system at the beginning of the book. I’ve seen other explanations of the British school system online (like this one from Anglophenia on YouTube), but the explanation in this book does help because the main character’s education and future prospects are a major part of the story.
The attitudes about class and education surprisingly still resonate today. The type of education a child receives is often determined by the economic level of their parents and the type of life that the adults expect that the child will lead. All of the parents in the story have their own notions about what the young people should be doing with their lives, but the young people know that the world is changing, especially because of the onset of war. The things they want to do and the things they will have to do no longer match their elders’ expectations.
Liz knows that getting a good education is vital to her future, where she will have to make a living by herself, even though her aunt tries to shame her for being grand about her education and tries to make her feel like she should just go out and get a job like her kids did. The Breretons are just the opposite, seeing higher education as the only path to a secure future, while their sons realize that there are more immediate problems shaping their world and posing real threats to all of their lives. Each of the young people come to realize that there are decisions that they each need to make for themselves to take charge of their lives and handle what life has given them, even if the adults don’t understand.
Overall levels of education in society have risen in the decades since World War II. Technically, where I live, children are only legally required to attend school through 8th grade, but in actual practice, almost everyone gets at least a high school education because even the lowest levels of jobs in our society expect a high school level of education or an employee who is working toward one. There is very little that anyone can do with only an 8th grade education in the 21st century, and almost everything that provides a living wage requires either a college degree or some kind of vocational training beyond high school. There are almost no jobs that will take a person with a minimal level of education and no prior experience.
In 1940s England, there were more opportunities for people with little education to get jobs, which is how Liz’s cousins get jobs even though they leave school at about age 14, but even then, there aren’t many opportunities for jobs that pay well and little opportunity for advancement. Rose later has problems when she gets pregnant as an unmarried teenager, and her cruel mother throws her out of the house, into the bombed streets of London with no way to make her living. Liz and the Breretons help her, but they worry about her future prospects. She has little education and has worked in a shoe store, but she doesn’t know much else and has no other experience. Without an education or other means of support, there isn’t much else she can do. She doesn’t even have very many domestic skills and can’t sew or knit. The end of the book implies that Rose will learn to manage because she decides that she is determined to keep her baby and find a way to support them both, learning whatever she has to learn along the way, and Liz’s teacher, Miss Garnett, will also help her.
Liz loves her cousin enough to take some risks to reach her during the bombings of London and bring her to Chiddingford, but she comes to realize that she has underrated her cousin for being less educated and a bit foolish in her life choices. On the one hand, she is irritated with Rose for her foolish love affair with a man who doesn’t really seem to care about her and marries someone else instead. She and Ben face some real dangers going to London to find her and get her out of the terrible situation she’s in, so a foolish choice on her part does create some risks and hardships for others. However, she finds out that Rose understands some things about life and human relationships that Liz is just now beginning to understand. The reason why she had that love affair was that she felt emotionally neglected by her hard-hearted mother and desperately lonely after Liz left for the countryside. Her choice of lover turned out to be a bad decision, but she was so starved for companionship and affection that she was vulnerable. Part of the reason why Rose is now determined to keep her baby and not place it out for adoption is because she saw the awful way her mother treated Liz as an orphaned child and how badly Liz was starved for affection. Rose’s mother was cruel to her as well, but much more cruel to Liz because Liz wasn’t her own child. Rose wants her own child to know what it is to be genuinely loved and wanted, in spite of the hardships and stigma of being a single, unmarried parent in the 1940s. Liz is touched that Rose truly understands that important emotional need just to feel loved and wanted by someone, something Rose’s mother never seemed to understand or care about. Rose might turn out to be a better parent than her own mother.
The feeling of not being wanted and only reluctantly accepted was one that real-life evacuees experienced, and I thought that was well-represented in the book. When Liz first meets Mrs. Brereton, she reminds her of her aunt. She puts her own children first and is so absorbed with what she thinks are in her family’s best interests that she sees Liz as an inconvenience and possible threat instead of the vulnerable girl she really is. However, where Liz’s aunt never warmed up to her after they lived together for years, Mrs. Brereton does become fond of Liz and starts to think of her as part of the family. With her elder sons going off to war, she admits that it’s a comfort to her to have Liz there. Liz shares in the family’s ups and downs through the war and really becomes one of them. Her attitude contrasts with Liz’s aunt, who is self-absorbed and ready to abandon any of the children in the family, including her own, when they become too much of an inconvenience to her. Mrs. Brereton is different. There are times when she is disappointed or worried by decisions her sons make, but they’re still her sons. Once she starts thinking of Liz as one of the family, she extends the same loyal affection to her. She worries about Liz when she disappears for a time instead of being relieved that she’s gone, and she even takes in her cousin when Liz brings her from London.
It’s hard to say how much of the differences because Liz’s aunt and Mrs. Brereton are due to their relative social positions and how much are because they have different personalities. I’m inclined to think that it’s a combination of both. I can see that Liz’s aunt may feel more precarious in life because she’s a poor, working class woman and feels less able to provide for an extra person or someone in a situation that might require some sacrifices, like her orphaned niece or pregnant daughter. However, Liz’s gran, who is part of the same social class, thinks that Rose’s mother has behaved horribly, both for mistreating Liz for years and for sending her pregnant and penniless young daughter out into the streets while the city is being actively bombed, so it seems that not everyone in that social group would have the same reactions to these situations, and some might be willing to make more sacrifices to help someone in desperate circumstances.
There are themes all through the story about the human need for affection and relationships with other people. Partly, the ability to build relationships with others is recognizing the need for them and being open to building relationships. Mrs. Brereton isn’t really open to building a relationship with Liz at first, and Liz and the Breretons don’t really understand one another, but relationships are also built through shared experiences. Not all of the experiences that the characters in the story share are positive ones, but facing difficult situations together can also be a bonding experience. Mrs. Brereton bonds with Liz and Rose because, even though it’s difficult for her at first, she comes to recognize how Liz supports her family in difficult circumstances, and she’s willing and able to help them through difficult circumstances in return, as a family. Liz’s aunt loses her relationship with both girls because she never develops that appreciation for them or willingness to share in their lives and troubles.
War
The war is always around the characters, and the story is shaped by it. I thought the author did a good job of representing the early events of WWII and how characters would have reacted to them as they actually happened. Each of the young people in particular wants to actively participate in the events that are shaping their world, even though Mr. and Mrs. Brereton would prefer to keep their sons out of it.
The grandfather of the Brereton family understands how the young people feel, having once been a soldier himself. Ben and his grandfather are very much alike, noble-minded and eager to participate. Liz joins Ben and Sir Rollo when they take Sir Rollo’s boat to participate in the Dunkirk Evacuation as one of the “Little Ships.” They know that British soldiers need help returning to England, and they hope to rescue Simon, who has joined the army, and others like him. They end up leaving Liz behind at Ramsgate because they decide that it would be too dangerous to take her the rest of the way with them. Sir Rollo is in bad health and probably shouldn’t be undertaking such a long-shot mission, but family love and his desire to once again be in the thick of things, making a difference, override any thoughts for safety. In the end, he helps save many people, and because of his prior experience in war, he is able to teach Ben how to avoid the floating mines and sandbars in their way.
However, he doesn’t survive the mission himself. He is killed by enemy fire, but Lady Brereton reveals that he knew he was ill and dying anyway. One of the pen-and-ink pictures in the book is actually of Sir Rollo after he got shot, and I was a little surprised that the book would show a blood-stained dead body in that way. It’s not overly graphic, even in the illustration, and because it’s a black-and-white drawing, it’s a less alarming than seeing someone with a red blood stain. Still, I think sensitive readers should be aware that it’s there. The book doesn’t sugarcoat the nature of war at all.
Lady Brereton knew her husband very well and loved his noble qualities. Although he didn’t tell her ahead of time what he and Ben were planning to do, she suspected that he was going to attempt something of that sort. He was a veteran of the First World War, and he wanted his last act to be something heroic, to feel like he made a difference again before he died. Ben is injured during the mission, but he and his grandfather still manage to save many soldiers. It’s Ben’s first view of war directly, and although it was a terrifying experience, it doesn’t change his mind about wanting to join the RAF. His parents finally agree to let him enlist after he finishes his school exams that summer.
At the time the book ends, none of the young people are killed in the war. We don’t know what’s going to happen to all of them by the time the war is over because the story ends in early 1941, but their experiences have made them all realize what’s important to them and given them the determination to do their part in the war effort. The overall situation by the time the book ends is that Britain is feeling like it’s largely fighting the war alone because France has fallen to Germany and is now occupied, and while Britain is getting some supplies from the US, the US would not fully enter the war until the attack of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. For a more detailed explanation of the war situation in Britain in 1940, I recommend the Timeline documentary 1940: When Britain Stood Alone In WW2 on YouTube. Understanding the general course of events in context adds depth to the story.
Toward the end of the book, there seems to be a romance developing between Liz and Ben. Personally, I like to imagine that Liz and Ben might marry after the war. I’d like to imagine, too, that Rose might end up marrying Simon and have a comfortable life as a doctor’s wife after the war. That’s left to the imagination, though.
A farm family in 1881 lives in their barn because they haven’t built a separate house yet. Outside the barn, there is an old apple tree that the family loves.
They like to pick the apples from the tree, and use them for cider and applesauce. The two girls in the family like to climb the tree. Josie, the younger girl, likes to swing on the vines that hang from the tree’s branches. Katrina, the older girl, likes to draw in the tree with her paper resting against a crooked branch. She thinks of that special limb as her “studio.”
Then, a terrible winter storm ruins the apple tree before Christmas. The whole family is sad at the loss of the tree, but Katrina is particularly devastated at the loss of her studio. Will she even be able to draw again if she can’t craw in her special place?
The family uses most of the ruined tree as firewood, and they use apples they’ve saved from the tree as decorations on their Christmas tree. However, because of the loss of the apple tree, it doesn’t really feel like Christmas to Katrina. Then, their father shows them that he has saved their favorite parts of the tree and turned them into special Christmas presents.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
I thought this was a charming Christmas story! When I first saw the title, I guessed that the family would use an apple tree as a Christmas tree, but that’s not it at all. It’s just about the family feeling sad about the loss of their apple tree and how the remains of the tree made it a memorable Christmas. Because the father of the family saved their favorite parts of the tree when he was cutting up the rest for firewood, they will still be able to enjoy the things they loved about the tree, particularly Katrina, who receives a special drawing table made out her favorite branch of the tree.
The author dedicated the book to her own father because he made a special drawing board for her. On the inside dust jacket of the book, the explains that the inspiration for the apple tree and vine swing came from her own childhood in rural Michigan.
I love the artwork in this book! The pictures are realistic and detailed, and they have an old-fashioned charm that fits well with the modern Cottagecore aesthetic. I love the family’s home in the barn, with the girls sleeping in the loft and being wrapped in colorful patchwork quilts! The first book that I read by this author was The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash, but she wasn’t the illustrator for that book. I didn’t know the she did illustrations, but seeing the illustrations in this book makes me want to see more by her!
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 