Posted on by TracyC

The Little Leftover Witch

The Little Leftover Witch by Florence Laughlin, 1960.

Young Lucinda Doon has a great time on Halloween, running around the neighborhood in her ghost costume. During the night, though, she wakes up to hear someone crying or trying not to cry. When she looks out the window, she sees a young witch. The little witch says that her broom broke, and without her broom, she won’t be able to fly. If she doesn’t get back with the other witches by sunrise, she’ll have to stay on the ground and live among normal humans for an entire year.

Lucinda feels sorry for the little witch and tries to help her. She offers the little witch her mother’s broom, but it doesn’t fly because it isn’t magic. They also try Mrs. Doon’s mops and vaccuum, but they don’t work, either. The little witch doesn’t know what to do. Lucinda offers to let the little witch sleep in her bed for the rest of the night, saying that they can talk to Lucinda’s father in the morning. The little witch insists on sleeping in the closet, though, because she likes the dark.

In the morning, the little witch tells Lucinda that her name is Felina. Lucinda introduces Felina to her parents and explains Felina’s situation. They consider whether a helicopter could help Felina, but Felina says that the only thing that can help her is a magic broom, and even then, witches can only fly on Halloween. Felina says that she’s stuck among humans for the year.

Lucinda is eager to have Felina say with them, and Mr. and Mrs. Doon discuss the situation quietly. Felina has a grouchy disposition, but the Doons can see that she’s lost and in need of help. They don’t seem to think that Felina is really a little witch, although they call her one. They say that they had better report finding Felina to the police, in case someone is looking for her. The police take pictures of Felina and take her fingerprints, and Mr. Doon, who works for the newspaper, makes sure that a report about a lost little witch appears in the newspaper. There are a lot of rumors around town that Felina could have been left behind by traveling gypsies or that her family could have been killed in an accident outside of town. However, none of the rumors come to anything, and nobody comes to claim Felina. Because no one claims her, the Doons take Felina to the court house and get a permit to keep her for a year.

The Doons insist that Felina follow their rules while she’s living in their house. They clean her up by brushing her hair and giving her a bath, although she doesn’t want one. They cannot accommodate Felina’s taste for bat wing soup, so she has to eat what they serve. They also insist that she wear pajamas at night and sleep in bed instead of the closet. When Felina acts up, Mr. and Mrs. Doon sometimes threaten to spank her, but they never do. Instead, they explain to her that, sometimes adults know what’s better for a child than the child does. There are some things that they will let her decide for herself, but when they tell her that something is an “order”, she will have to do it for her own good. Reluctantly, Felina agrees.

During her year with the Doons, Felina has many new experiences, doing things that witches never do. She has to go to school, and she learns to read. She attends a birthday party. Felina plays some mean tricks at the party because she is upset that the other children have birthdays, and she doesn’t. Lucinda’s grandfather, who has accepted Felina as another grandchild, says that problem is easy to solve because Felina can have his birthday, which happens to be October 31. Felina thanks him, the first time she’s ever thanked anybody, and she also apologizes to the birthday girl for spoiling the party, the first time that she’s ever apologized to anybody.

Felina spends Thanksgiving and Christmas with the Doons. Before Christmas, Felina gets upset because a mean boy in the neighborhood tells her that she won’t get anything for Christmas because she’s just a bad little witch and that she’ll get whips and stones instead. Since Felina is sure that she won’t get presents for Christmas anyway, she acts out more. However, Felina does get presents for Christmas, and the Doons assure her that she’s not a bad child but a “dear little witch” and that they love her.

When Felina finally takes off her witch’s hat and lets the other children use it for a making a “snow witch”, she finally loses her witchiness and seems more like a regular little human girl. She doesn’t seem to mind this, discovering that she has other interests besides being a witch and that she likes living with a family that really cares about her. When Halloween comes again and Felina has the chance to return to the other witches, she decides to stay with the family she has grown to love and that really loves her.

My Reaction

I remember reading this book when I was a kid! It’s a good Halloween story, although much of it is set in November through New Year’s. The story speeds through much of Felina’s year with the Doons after January. Felina’s difficulties in learning to cope with family life as a little witch who has never experienced it before mostly take place over a few months, through the fall and winter.

In the end, the judge who grants the Doons the right to keep Felina permanently marvels over her transformation since he saw her the year before, thinking that it’s like magic. Felina being a witch adds a little magic to what is essentially the story of a foster child who hasn’t experienced love or a caring home before and acts out until she realizes that she is safe and loved, which is ultimately the “magic” that leads to her transformation. Felina doesn’t seem sad in the end to not return to the witches or even experiencing inner conflict in choosing between her old life and her new one. Being a witch was magical, but being among people has given her many new experiences, especially the experience of love and caring, which she never seemed to have among the witches. Nobody among the witches seemed to worry about whether or not she was healthy, celebrated her birthday as a special day, cared about her feelings, or encouraged her to consider the feelings of others.

Because, in the context of the story, Felina does turn out to be an actual young witch with real magic rather than merely a lost little girl pretending to be a witch, I remember being a little sad that she essentially gives up her magic and her original witchy personality when she becomes an ordinary little girl. She barely seems to remember that she ever was a witch. In the end, she even gives up her name to name herself after the members of the Doon family at her formal adoption, taking the name Mary Lucinda George. I thought that was a bit much. It made me feel almost like the Doons completely took over her personality in the end and that she became a little too much like another Lucinda rather than a more human version of herself. I would rather have seen her remain Felina but to keep the part about discovering that she has greater interests in life beyond being a witch and that her accomplishments as a human girl have a kind of magic to them.

Still, it is a nice story for Halloween about the magic of family love, and it does carry a sense of nostalgia. It isn’t a very long book or a difficult read, and it’s a charming story that’s great for any time.

Posted on by TracyC

The Trouble with Miss Switch

The Trouble with Miss Switch by Barbara Brooks Wallace, 1971.

Rupert is a budding young scientist, just entering the fifth grade, and his new teacher is an unusual woman called Miss Switch. A lot of teachers say they’ve got eyes in the back of their head, but it seems like Miss Switch really does. Right from the first, she seems to know what kids in class are doing when she’s definitely not looking. She even seems able to read minds at times, and when kids act up in class strange things happen. A spit ball thrown by a student ends up coming back and hitting him, and a class bully seems to get stuck while getting a drink from the drinking fountain.

In spite of the strange things that happen around Miss Switch, the kids in class like her, though. She makes their lessons interesting, and their grades improve. She’s also much more fair than most of their other teachers. Other teachers play favorites in class, having “teacher’s pets” or treating the girls much better than the boys, but Miss Switch treats everyone the same. That means, when she’s in a bad mood, everyone suffers, but when she’s happy, everyone benefits. The students appreciate the equality, but Rupert can’t help but wonder how Miss Switch is able to do some of the odd things she does.

Rupert tries to put his scientist’s mind to the question to figure out what’s going on with Miss Switch, and he comes to a startling conclusion: Miss Switch is a witch! Before telling anybody what he suspects, he decides that he has to satisfy himself that this is the case and then discuss it with Miss Switch herself. That would only be fair, and since Miss Switch has been fair with her students, Rupert thinks he should be fair with her. He does some research at the library about witches and plans a midnight excursion to the school to have a look around his classroom for clues. However, when Rupert sneaks into the classroom at night, he is started to find Miss Switch waiting for him.

Miss Switch isn’t angry that Rupert is in the classroom at night. In fact, she was hoping that he would do just that because she needs to talk to him. Miss Switch admits that she is a real witch, but she also tells Rupert that she’s in trouble. The whole world has become more modern, and computer-oriented, and the witches are no exception. They’ve recently started using a special computer to evaluate their performance as witches, and the trouble is that the computer gave Miss Switch a bad grade. It says that she isn’t “original” enough with her magic. The computer assigned her to teach Rupert’s class at school while she’s coming up with ways to make her magic more “original”, but if she can’t find a way to do it, she’ll have to spend the next 150 years sweeping the witches’ mountain with her broom. Miss Switch knows that Rupert has a creative and scientific mind, and she’s hoping that he can help her come up with some ideas.

Rupert’s first idea is for Miss Switch to improve the school’s next football game. The school’s team always loses to their rivals, and the school band is terrible. If Miss Switch can improve the band and make the team win for a change, that would be original. Unfortunately, Miss Switch’s attempt is only half successful. She definitely improves the band, but because she enchanted the number of the school’s quarterback instead of the quarterback himself, the other team also benefits because they have another player with the same number. Miss Switch gets a good rating but an F for successful completion. (Personally, I didn’t think that was fair because she was half successful. I think that should actually give her a C average.)

Meanwhile, Amelia, an old friend and fellow classmate of Rupert, has also figured out that Miss Switch is a witch and confronts Rupert about what he knows. Rupert brings Amelia along to his next meeting with Miss Switch, and she asks them for another idea for original magic. While they’re thinking it over, Rupert suddenly realizes that Miss Switch has already been using her magic in successful and original ways in her role as their teacher. To prove it to the other witches and their computer, Rupert persuades Miss Switch to take him and Amelia to the witches’ mountain on Halloween so he can make his case to the computer itself.

This is the first book in a series about Miss Switch, and it’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). There’s also a cartoon movie based on the book that you can see sometimes on YouTube.

My Reaction

I remember both the book and the cartoon movie from when I was a kid! The copy of the book that I have uses a picture from the cartoon on the cover. The cartoon movie is a shorter version of the book, and there were parts of that I remembered better than the book.

I completely forgot the part in the book about Rupert doing experiments on his pets, overfeeding one and underfeeding the other. That sounds cruel, and I’m surprised that his parents knowingly allowed him to do that. Fortunately, when Miss Switch’s magic causes his pets to talk, they tell him how they really feel about his experiments and that he’ll probably kill them if he continues. When Rupert realizes that he’s harming them, he listens to them and stops the experiments.

One of the parts of the book that I remembered the best was the punch cards that they use for the computer. Most kids in the 21st century probably aren’t familiar with punch cards. They were still around when I was a young child in the 1980s, but they were on the way out. My father was a computer programmer, and he told us that punch cards were what he used when he first learned programming. When I was in first grade, we also used some as bookmarks and reading guides (holding them horizontally across the page, just under the line we were currently reading). I have no idea what the punch cards we used as reading guides were originally for. They were just left over from some old project. Even though I never actually used punch cards for their original purpose, I’m still a little nostalgic about them just because they were around when I was young.

I like the part at the end about how Rupert manages to convince both the computer and the other witches of Miss Switch’s original use of magic by simply describing what Miss Switch has done with her magic at school. The idea of a supernatural or magical teacher who uses their abilities to keep order in the class and/or make learning more fun is a great topic for a children’s book, and it’s also explored in other children’s books, such as Vampires Don’t Wear Polka Dots. Kids like stories that combine familiar, ordinary school life with something fantastic.

However, there are parts that I think adults can also appreciate, both because of the nostalgic pieces of the story (like the computer punch cards) and because the computer that the witches use to evaluate their performance seems like the type of performance evaluation that adults encounter in their own jobs. Like some forms of work performance evaluation that are initially touted as “innovative”, this one also proves faulty and unpopular, even among the witches who have been receiving passing grades up to this point. When Rupert accidentally gives the computer a nervous breakdown, many of the witches are actually relieved to be done with it!

Posted on by TracyC

The Worst Witch

The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy, 1974.

Mildred Hubble is a girl at Miss Cackle’s Academy for young witches, but she can’t seem to do anything right! It’s only about halfway through her first term, and it seems like she’s always getting confused and making the wrong potion in her potions class. Then, when she gets into a fight with a snobby girl named Ethel, she accidentally turns Ethel into a pig instead of a frog. When the girls at school receive their black cats, they run out of black ones, so Mildred gets a tabby cat, who seems to have even more trouble learning to ride on broom than Mildred did, and that’s saying a lot! Miss Cackle, the headmistress, is kind and tries to be understanding with clumsy Mildred, but Miss Hardbroom, the potions teacher, seems to think she’s a lost cause.

On Halloween, Mildred’s class at school is selected to make a special display. Miss Hardbroom decides that they will do a broom formation. Mildred is nervous about how she will do on her broom, and the mean Ethel sees an opportunity to get revenge on her for the pig incident. Because Mildred accidentally damaged her own broom, Miss Hardbroom orders Ethel to lend Mildred her spare broom for Halloween. Ethel puts a spell on the broom that causes it to act up in the middle of the formation, ruining the whole thing.

Everyone is mad at Mildred, thinking the incident was just more of her clumsiness and inattention. She knows that she will be called to a conference with Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom the next day. Unable to face them, Mildred decides to run away. However, outside the castle, she comes across a group of strange witches, talking about an evil plot to take over the school. Mildred is the only one who knows that the school is danger. Can the worst witch at the school manage to save it?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). This is the first book in a series. There was also a movie from 1986 (also on Internet Archive) and a tv show based on the series. (You can sometimes find the movie or some of the tv episodes on YouTube.)

The 1986 movie is fun and and contains a very trippy scene where Tim Curry, as a wizard, sings a song about Halloween. In the movie, Mildred is played by Fairuza Balk, who later played in the more serious witch movie The Craft in 1996.

My Reaction

When I was in high school, and the Harry Potter books were popular, a friend of mine pointed out that The Worst Witch was basically Harry Potter before Harry Potter existed. It’s true, too. I wouldn’t say that Harry Potter is a rip-off of The Worst Witch because there are many differences between the two series. Harry Potter has much more serious themes about death, prejudice, and oppression that you won’t see in The Worst Witch. The Worst Witch is definitely much lighter in tone. However, it is fun to notice some of the parallels. Both series are about a kid attending a magical school, and there’s a nasty potions teacher, a more privileged student who’s a snob and bully, and a villain who plots to take over the school. (Could the fact that the nasty teacher is always the one teaching the potions class possibly be an indication that many of us still carry traumatic memories from our chemistry teachers?)

I enjoyed The Worst Witch, although the stakes are much less serious than in Harry Potter. It’s a good series for younger children, combining boarding school style antics with magic and villains that aren’t overly scary but still threatening enough for Mildred to be a hero in defeating them. Mildred is a lovable misfit who constantly messes up (sometimes through her own fault and sometimes through someone else’s) but who always manages to come out on top!

Posted on by TracyC

The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle

The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle by Janet Fox, 2016.

In 1940, in London, the coming of the Blitz during World War II means that children must be sent away to escape the bombings. Kat Bateson and her siblings are told that they will be sent to Rookskill Castle.

Rob is excited about going to a castle because it might be haunted and they might learn all kinds of Medieval fighting skills, like fencing and archery. Kat says that the castle is now called Rookskill Castle Children’s Academy, so they’ll probably just be having standard lessons. Rob thinks that she’s being stodgy and boring. Their little sister, Amelie, thinks that ghosts sound exciting, but 12-year-old Kat is sure that there won’t be ghosts. The castle is owned by the children’s distant relatives, and Kat is more worried about practical things, like their father’s war work with MI-6 (he is a spy, although they are not supposed to talk about it), how she will fit in with other children at school, and packing warm clothes for Scotland.

Before the children leave for Scotland, Great Aunt Margaret gives her something for protection – her chatelaine. The chatelaine is a family heirloom that holds a pen, scissors, and thimble attached by chains to a ring. Great Aunt Margaret says that it’s magical, and she warns Kat to be careful with magic because magic always comes at a price. Kat doesn’t really believe in magic, like her younger siblings do. She is practical and enjoys numbers, puzzles, and the clockwork skills that her father has been teaching her. Still, she accepts the chatelaine from her aunt. Her aunt tells her that the pen will write by itself, the scissors will cut anything, and the thimble has the power to capture souls.

Kat and her siblings make the trip to Scotland along with Peter, the American son of people their mother works with. The Bateson children like Peter, and they become friends. However, when they reach Scotland, the station master warns them away from Rookskill Castle, talking about strange stories about the place and other children who have gone there and haven’t been seen since. The children are spooked by what he says, but they have no choice but to go with the man from the castle who comes to pick them up.

When they arrive at Rookskill Castle, they all find the place creepy. The boys find the lady who runs the castle school, Eleanor, to be pretty and charming, but the girls find her creepy. Kat thinks that there is something wrong with her, although she’s not sure what. Eleanor also wears a chatelaine, although Kat doesn’t think hers is as good as the one Aunt Margaret gave her. Aunt Margaret’s chatelaine holds practical items, but Eleanor’s chatelaine holds strange-looking charms with no practical use. Kat doesn’t know what the point of them is, but she prefers Aunt Margaret’s chatelaine.

The children are told that they will share rooms – Peter and Robby together and Kat and Amelie together – and that they must wear school uniforms, which is typical of a boarding school. However, they are also told that they will be locked in their rooms at night, which sounds alarming, and that if they hear any strange noises, they should ignore them because old castles make odd sounds. They are not allowed to wander the grounds and explore.

The children and the other students at the school soon begin to see and hear strange things around the castle. They see other, mysterious children, who are not students but who may be ghosts. The boys hear strange noises coming from a secret room that Kat thinks sound like a radio. Kat thinks that the radio sounds might indicate that there is a German spy at the school, someone who is communicating with someone outside in secret. That would make sense for wartime Britain, but it can’t explain the other, frightening things that are happening at the castle.

There is something wrong with the teachers and the cook at the school. Their memories are sometimes muddled, and they seem to be easily confused about certain things. One of their teachers keeps talking about special artifacts with magical powers that could decide the course of the war, including a magical chatelaine once owned by Vlad the Impaler.

The longer they’re at the school, the more everyone seems to be affected by the place. Kat becomes certain that the students’ cocoa is drugged every night, and Lady Eleanor isn’t what she appears to be. Really none of the adults in the castle is quite what they appear to be, but Lady Eleanor is particularly sinister. In a series of flashbacks, it is revealed that she has led an unnaturally long life because of a magical pact she made centuries ago. In order to gain the power she craves, she needs the souls of children. Logical Kat needs to grasp the idea that there is magic and take possession of her own magical potential to save herself and the others in a terrifying showdown on Halloween night.

My Reaction

I really enjoyed the combination of magic and historical fiction in this story! I’ve read other books that combine the real-life experiences of WWII child evacuees with magic and fantasy. Many people would remember that the children in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe were child evacuees, but there are other books with similar themes, like Stonestruck by Helen Cresswell. There are several things that make this book different from others of its type, and I love that this book fits well with the Dark Academia aesthetic that’s been popular during the last few years.

One thing that appears in this story that I haven’t seen in similar ones is the use of mathematics and engineering skills alongside magic. Kat’s talent for mathematics and puzzles have practical uses during their adventure, and so does her budding talent for clockwork and machinery. There is both real machinery in the form of code machines and magical machinery in the story, and Amelie comments on the similarity between magic and the incredible results produced by Kat’s mathematics and by machines. I like the juxtaposition of real skills needed for invention and creation alongside the magic.

There is also a double threat in the book – the magical one and the more standard wartime threat of spies. The book’s premise of Nazis being interested in supernatural artifacts also has some basis in history. Movies like Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark are actually correct that there was an element of superstition in Nazism, and Nazis did attempt to use folklore and antiquities to create or build a connection to the past and to powerful figures. (There are many videos and documentaries on YouTube that offer more details about this. I recommend the ones from National Geographic, the Smithsonian Channel, and various universities as being the most authoritative and reliable.) The Nazi concept of history was really more of a fan fiction about their imagined past glories rather than sound and real history, and it was meant to serve as an inspiration for the empire they wanted to create. The book was correct that the darkness of war brings out magic, after a fashion. Even Allied countries, like Britain, saw a rise in spiritualism because of the war as people tried to connect to the spirits of lost loved ones, and this was also the time when Wicca began evolving into a religious movement. In fact, the founders of Wicca in Britain attempted their own magical ritual in the New Forest to ward off the Nazis. (The incident is recounted in this documentary about the life of the founder of Wicca by Professor Ronald Hutton of the University of Bristol.) In times of chaos, people are prepared to try anything and everything they can to protect what’s important, and that can include magic. The real life Wiccan rituals were not like the magic in this book, but I found it interesting that the fantasy of this story built on some real-life wartime attitudes about the supernatural.

I like books that include interesting and unusual historical details. Although this is a fantasy story, the experiences of the child evacuees do resemble the experiences of real-life evacuees. I enjoyed reading about their train journey from London to Scotland and the black-out curtains that even the trains have. Many books about child evacuees have them sent to live in private homes with people they don’t know, but in real life, there were some evacuees who were sent to boarding schools instead.

The use of a magical chatelaine is a charming touch that also shapes the nature of the story. A chaletaine is an unusual piece of jewelry that isn’t commonly worn anymore, which makes it different from stories that make use of charmed necklaces and rings. A chatelaine is a belt hook with items joined to it by chains. The items can be practical items, like the ones on Kat’s chatelaine, or charms, like the ones on Eleanor’s. Each of the items on the chatelaines in the story has a purpose.

There are also themes about power in the story. Eleanor craves power. When she was younger, before she began living this unnatural life, she craved love, but she was abused and neglected. She was powerless and fearful of the people who abused her, and her quest for power is to make herself invulnerable to that type of abuse again. However, in the process, she has sacrificed her humanity and placed herself in the position of being used by someone much more powerful. Readers and the characters can feel sorry for her because of her past life experiences, but she is beyond the point where they could save her from herself, the choices she’s made, the things she’s done to other people, and the evil force that has used her. The book is a little open-ended, with the villain behind the villain still lurking around at the end with a mission of his own to accomplish, and this story has a sequel, The Artifact Hunters.

Posted on by TracyC

Arthur’s Halloween

Arthur Adventure

Arthur’s Halloween by Marc Brown, 1982.

It’s Halloween, and Arthur’s already getting spooked! His family is putting up Halloween decorations, and his sister, D.W., scares him with her costume when he wakes up on Halloween morning. Arthur is supposed to take D.W. trick-or-treating, although he doesn’t really want his little sister tagging along.

At school, Arthur has trouble recognizing everyone in their costumes. There are Halloween treats and games, though.

That evening, Arthur and D.W. go trick-or-treating with Arthur’s friends. Arthur’s friend, Buster, warns them not to go to a big, old house because a witch lives there, and the last person who went in on Halloween never came out again.

Arthur and D.W. lag behind the other trick-or-treaters, and when Arthur turns around, he sees D.W. going into the witch’s house! What choice does Arthur have but to go in after his sister to save her?

My Reaction

This book reminded me of the Berenstain Bears Halloween book The Berenstain Bears Trick or Treat. It’s another instance of an elderly woman who seems witch-like and scary, but the children enter her house on Halloween, discover that she’s really nice, and get some special treats. Entering a stranger’s house is never a good idea because, in real life, that could be very dangerous. I get the theme that appearances can be deceptive and things that seem scary aren’t so scary when you understand them, but I do quibble that this might not be the best way to demonstrate that to young children. All the same, I do have nostalgia for both the Berenstain Bears and the Arthur books.

I remember reading the Berenstain Bears Halloween book as a kid, but I don’t remember reading Arthur’s Halloween until I was an adult. Because of the similarity in the themes of the stories, I checked the copyright dates. They’re both from the 1980s, but Arthur’s Halloween is the older of the two books. I don’t know if the Berenstain Bears took inspiration from the Arthur story or if they were both inspired by something older or if the similar theme is just a coincidence.

One other odd thing about this story is that old Mrs. Tibble is human. Everyone in the Arthur books is some kind of animal, but not Mrs. Tibble. There is no explanation for this. In the cartoon version of Arthur, Mrs. Tibble is an animal, just like everyone else.

Posted on by TracyC

Happy Haunting, Amelia Bedelia

Amelia Bedelia

Happy Haunting, Amelia Bedelia by Herman Parish, pictures by Lynn Sweat, 2004.

When Amelia Bedelia arrives at the Rogers’s house just before Halloween, she is appalled by all the cobwebs. The house looks like a run-down haunted house, and Amelia Bedelia thinks someone wrecked it. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers reassure her that the house is just decorated for the Halloween party they are having that night. Amelia Bedelia almost forgot what day it was because she’s been busy, helping the local children make their costumes.

When Amelia Bedelia tries to help the Rogers get ready for the party, she demonstrates that she still takes everything way too literally. When Mr. Rogers asks her to both get the hammer and to crack a window, Amelia Bedelia assumes that he means her to use the hammer on the window and actually breaks it. When they ask Amelia to add an extra leaf to the table for the guests, she assumes they mean a tree leaf, and when Mr. Rogers asks her to hand him a witch, she asks him “Which what?”

Amelia Bedelia is enough to drive anyone batty, but she really does her best work in the kitchen. She is a good cook, and she and Mrs. Rogers have fun making a bunch of traditional Halloween goodies. Then Cousin Alcolu arrives with a bunch of pumpkins and a scarecrow for the party. They ask Amelia Bedelia what costume she will wear for the party that night, but she doesn’t have one. Mrs. Rogers says that she has an idea for her and for Cousin Alcolu.

The Rogers’s party that night is a success, and Amelia’s influence is obvious in the literal nature of some of the treats and the costumes she helped the children make. However, nobody can figure out where Amelia Bedelia is. At first, Mr. Rogers thinks that maybe Amelia is offended because he mistakenly called her normal outfit a costume, but then, he is sure that he recognizes Amelia Bedelia in her Halloween costume. Is he right? It certain seems something strange is going on! But, then again, Amelia Bedelia is there.

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

My Reaction

This is one of the newer Amelia Bedelia books, written after the death of the original author. Parts seemed a little cheesy to me, like Amelia Bedelia seeming confused about the Halloween decorations after helping the children make Halloween costumes. Amelia Bedelia is often a little mixed-up, but getting confused about the nature of the holiday just seemed to be overdoing it. Then again, even in the original books, she was confused about ordinary things associated with holidays, like what kind of “star” goes on top of a Christmas tree. It might be more in character than I thought at first, and it just seemed like overdoing it in this book because I read the original books when I was a kid wasn’t thinking that deeply about it back then.

I did like it that Amelia Bedelia’s tendency to be overly literal is going strong in this book. Besides the mistakes she makes while helping Mr. and Mrs. Rogers get ready for their party, I enjoyed seeing the costumes that Amelia helped the children make. They’re all puns and literal interpretations of common expressions. Amelia Bedelia’s own costume is a fun twist!

Posted on by TracyC

The Vanishing Pumpkin

The Vanishing Pumpkin by Tony Johnston, pictures by Tomie dePaola, 1983.

An 800-year-old man and a 700-year-old woman live together in a little house. One day, they realize that it’s Halloween, and that means that it’s time to make pumpkin pie. However, when they go to get the pumpkin from their garden, it’s gone! Who could have taken it?

They set out in search of the pumpkin thief. The first person they meet is a ghoul, and they assume he’s the pumpkin thief. They demand to know where the pumpkin is. The ghoul looks all over the place, but doesn’t see any pumpkin. The old man threatens to do him a trick, and the ghoul says he wants to see him do one. The old man turns the ghoul so thin that he can look right though him, but the ghoul doesn’t have the pumpkin.

The old man and old woman set off again to look for the pumpkin thief, and the ghoul comes along to see more tricks. The next person they encounter is a rapscallion. When they ask him where the pumpkin is, the rapscallion looks around and can’t find any pumpkin, so he offers them a mushroom. The old man does another trick, turning the rapscallion upside down, but no pumpkin falls out.

The group, including the rapscallion, sets off in search of the pumpkin thief again. The next time, they encounter a varmint, and the old man turns him into a black cat with fleas. Yet again, the varmint doesn’t have the pumpkin, so they all set off again.

The pumpkin pursuit finally ends with the person who actually has the pumpkin. The wizard has turned the pumpkin into both a jack-o’-lantern and a pumpkin pie!

My Reaction

I remember someone reading this book to me when I was a little kid. I think it might have been the school librarian, but I’m not completely sure now. We don’t really know the story behind the 800-year-old man and 700-year-old woman, who is presumably his wife. They seem to be magical because of their ancient age and the fact that the old man seems capable of magic, but they aren’t described as being a witch and wizard or anything specific. It’s just left to readers’ imaginations. I think, when I was little kid, I assumed that they were witches or something similar.

The story is just for fun. It’s one of those repetition stories, where the characters encounter more people/creatures, similar things happen each time, and each new person/creature joins the group, until they finally figure out who has the pumpkin. Part of the fun of the story is the unusual people and creatures the meet. Most of them are not typical Halloween creatures, like a witch, a ghost, and a monster, although they are Halloween-ish. The words that describe them are real words – ghoul (which is a mythological creature), rapscallion, and varmint – but at the same time, it’s not entirely clear what type of creatures they are, and the book doesn’t explain. We can only go by what they look like in the pictures. The “varmint” looks like a large rat, the “ghoul” is a little green guy in a top hat, and the “rapscallion” is a little guy in a dark robe and hood.

Posted on by TracyC

Meg Mackintosh and The Stage Fright Secret

Meg Mackintosh Mysteries

Meg Mackintosh and The Stage Fright Secret by Lucinda Landon, 2004.

The mystery club at Meg’s school is putting on a play, and Meg’s friend, Liddy, says that they should try out for parts. The play is a Halloween mystery called The Trick or Treat Mystery with a detective called Sureluck House. Meg is nervous during the try-outs and rushes through her lines, so she doesn’t get the part of the detective. However, the club’s advisor, Ms. Morse, gives her the role of announcer. The announcer is like a narrator, introducing scenes of the play. Meg still wishes that she had a regular part in the play, but being the announcer gives her a chance to be involved.

The kids begin assembling costumes and props. Meg creates signs for each scene, including signs to invite the audience to figure out clues during the performance. Once the play gets started, the story takes the form of the play itself. All of the dialogue is presented as part of the play and other information as stage directions, and Meg’s signs invite readers to figure out clues to the mystery.

In the play, Sureluck House gets a letter from Old Jane, a woman who lives in a spooky cottage near a cemetery, asking him to find who stole her stuffed raven. The raven has glowing red eyes, and Old Jane likes to put him on her porch on Halloween to scare away trick-or-treaters.

Sureluck and his friend Witson visit Old Jane, who tells them that three trick-or-treaters have visited her: a witch, a mummy, and a pirate. Then, Old Jane got distracted, chasing one of her kittens, and when she returned to her porch, the raven was gone. She thinks one of the trick-or-treaters stole it. Sureluck and Witson interview the three trick-or-treaters and point out evidence that each of them left at the scene, but they all deny taking the raven.

Then, there is a spooky part of the play where the actors are scared by lightning and thunder, and the lights go out. Readers and the audience can tell that the actors are also confused at this part of the play, and the Ms. Morse sticks her head out from behind the curtain to say that they’re experiencing technical difficulties.

When the lights come back on and the curtain opens again, Sureluck is lying on the ground, having apparently fainted from fright, and only Witson and Old Jane are on the scene. Witson says he thinks he can solve the mystery and invites the audience to guess which suspect stole the raven and where it is. When the audience says where they think the raven is. They guess the correct suspect, but the raven isn’t where it’s supposed to be. Also, Meg has suddenly disappeared, leaving her sign behind. Now, everybody, audience, actors, and Ms. Morse seem really confused.

Has an actual raven theft occurred in the middle of the play? Is Meg the culprit? Where is she?

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

My Reaction

I liked the unusual format to this book, having most of the mystery be in the form of a play within the story. Like other books in this series, readers are given the opportunity to spot the clues and solve the puzzle along with Meg. Because of the play format, we are also like part of the audience, watching the play and trying to figure out where the mystery in the play leaves off and where the mystery that Meg needs to solve begins. The ending is a little unusual because Meg seems to disappear briefly. I didn’t think it was too hard to figure out where Meg went, but I still enjoyed the story, and I though a spooky mystery play was a nice idea for a Halloween story!

Posted on by TracyC

The Pumpkin Head Mystery

The Boxcar Children

#124 The Pumpkin Head Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 2010.

The Aldens are getting ready for Halloween, and they go to the Beckett farm to get some pumpkins. Mr. Beckett has been having trouble this year because he broke his leg. He’s been letting a hired assistant, Bessie, handle the pumpkin patch, but she is short-tempered and not very good with customers. Mr. Beckett fired her once before, but he had to take her back this year because he was desperate for help.

Mr. and Mrs. Beckett’s daughter, Sally, has been trying to persuade them to sell their farm and come live near her and her children in Florida. She thinks they’re getting too old to manage the farm by themselves and that this recent injury of Mr. Beckett’s proves it. The Becketts say that they don’t want to give up their farm and that they’re not ready to retire. Then, one of the farm hands, Jason, says that Mr. Beckett broke his leg while chasing a pumpkin-headed ghost, but Mr. Beckett denies that it exists.

Later, someone trashes the pumpkin patch and smashes a lot of pumpkins, and for some reason, Bessie faints. The real estate developer who is pressuring the Becketts to sell their farm, Dave Bolger, shows up again and tries to persuade the Becketts to sell. Sally thinks her parents should take the offer, but they still refuse. The Aldens help clean up the pumpkin patch in time for the next hayride, so the Becketts won’t have to cancel it, and Sally tells them that the farm is haunted and that the stories Jason has been telling about the pumpkin-headed ghost are true.

A glowing pumpkin has been seen floating through the fields at night, seemingly with no body underneath it. When it appears, they hear scary voices, telling them to leave the farm and leave the spirits in peace. Mr. Beckett did injure his leg while trying to chase after it on his horse. The Aldens think this sounds scary, and they ask Sally if the farm was always haunted. Sally admits it wasn’t, but she is serious that she thinks her parents should sell the place and move closer to her and her family.

The Aldens want to help the Becketts, and they start doing some seasonal work at the farm, making flyers for their hayrides and dressing up in costumes as part of the spooky attractions. Then, someone steals the scarecrow that Benny made from the Aldens’ house, and a new pumpkin-headed ghost appears on the farm!

Are there actually any ghosts, or is someone pulling a trick on the Becketts? Is it one of the people trying to pressure the Becketts to sell the farm or someone else, for a different reason?

My Reaction

I enjoyed this spooky mystery! The author did a good job of making multiple characters look like good suspects for playing ghost on the farm. Mr. Bolger and Sally both want the Becketts to sell the farm, and scaring farm workers and visitors away from the farm would add pressure to the Becketts. Bessie isn’t very good at her job, but the Aldens discover that she needs money because her husband is sick. Could she have been paid to commit some sabotage on the farm or could she be trying to get back at the Becketts for firing her last season? Jason has worked on the Becketts’ farm for years and seems to love the place, but he’s been arguing with Mr. Beckett about the way he runs the farm. Maybe Jason wants the farm for himself! There are some good possibilities for suspects.

There were some clues that I thought were obvious, like the connection between the disappearance of Benny’s pumpkin-headed scarecrow and the sudden appearance of a new pumpkin-headed ghost on the farm, but child readers may find the mystery more challenging. Even though I thought some parts were obvious, because there were several suspects, each of which seems to be doing something sneaky that they want to cover up, I wasn’t sure whether some of them might be working together or not.

The book has the right amount of spookiness for a Halloween story without being too scary for kids. In some ways, like with all Scooby-Doo style pseudo-ghost stories, I thought that it was a little silly for the plot to frighten people away from the farm to succeed. My reasoning is that, since this story is set in the Halloween season and some parts of the farm are deliberately set up as haunted attractions with people running around in costumes, I would think most farm workers and visitors would just attribute the pumpkin-headed ghost to either a Halloween prank or just part of the act at a spooky attraction.

One of the possible motives that they never discuss in the story is that the ghost act could be a publicity stunt to draw more visitors to the park. While the premise of the story is that people are being scared away, in reality, there are a lot of curiosity-seekers who would want to go to a supposedly haunted attraction to see what all the fuss is about. Publicity isn’t the real motive of the fake ghost, but I’m just saying that it could have been a real possibility that was overlooked. There are a lot of places, like hotels and restaurants in historic buildings, that capitalize on any potential ghost stories to attract curious thrill-seekers.

Something I appreciated is that the real estate developer is Dave Bolger, which is a homage to Ray Bolger, who played the role of The Scarecrow in the 1939 movie of The Wizard of Oz. Is that a hint? I’ve decided not to spoil the solution of the mystery!

Posted on by TracyC

The Zombie Project

Boxcar Children

#128 The Zombie Project by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 2011.

The Alden children are staying in a cabin at Winding River Lodge because their grandfather is friends with Maude Hansen, who owns the lodge. They’re enjoying the fall weather in the woods, and Violet is taking pictures and videos of their trip with their new camera.

There are other people staying at the lodge, too. A newspaper reporter named Madison can’t help but stay on top of the news while she’s there. She tells everyone about a wealthy businessman, Matthew Donovan, who vanished after apparently stealing millions of dollars from his company’s investors. Surprisingly, the charity golf tournament he sponsors is still taking place in his absence. Madison also has a blog about haunted places, and she tells Maude that she’d like to include the Winding River Zombie on her blog. Maud says that the zombie is only a story that her great grandfather made up and that it doesn’t really exist. Benny asks what a zombie is, and his older siblings reluctantly tell him that it’s an undead monster from the movies that eats people. They hope that the idea of the zombie won’t give Benny nightmares.

That evening, when people are telling stories around the campfire, Maude’s teenage grandson, Jake, tells everyone the zombie story. He says that there used to be an old hermit who lived in the woods, and one day, his great grandfather found the old hermit dead. He reported the death to the local sheriff, and they tried to locate the hermit’s family, but they never found out who he really was or where he came from. With no one else to make funeral arrangements, the Hansens arranged for the old hermit to be buried in a nearby cemetery. Then, not long after, a camper had a frightening encounter with a strange man who tried to grab him and bite his arm with bloody teeth! The Hansens found out that someone had dug up the old hermit’s grave and that the body was gone. People believed that the old hermit had turned into a zombie and still lurked in the woods. Jake’s teenage friends love the zombie story, and Jake claims that he’s seen the zombie before.

When Benny thinks he sees a zombie in the woods and lights in the woods at night, the Aldens wonder if the zombie story could be true or if something else is going on. Do the Hansens fake the appearance of the story to keep the legend alive? Could Madison be faking the zombie or getting someone to play zombie so she’ll have a more exciting story for her blog? Or is there something or someone scarier lurking in the woods?

My Reaction

I was a little surprised at the zombie theme of the story because, although The Boxcar Children series has other spooky stories, the lumbering, cannibalistic undead seems more gruesome than this series normally gets. The unusual darkness of the subject shows in Benny’s siblings’ initial reluctance to explain to Benny what zombies are, for fear that he’ll have nightmares. However, the story doesn’t get overly scary, considering the theme. They don’t explain, for example, that zombies in movies typically want to eat human “braaaaiiiiiiinnnnns!” It’s scary enough that they might just generally want to eat people. Maude is also careful to say from the very beginning that there was never any truth to the story. It was always just something her family made up for the benefit of the tourists.

As some readers might guess, the missing businessman has something to do with the appearance of the “zombie”, but that’s not the entire explanation. There are multiple people involved in the so-called zombie sightings, which confuses the issue for the Aldens. I thought the other people involved were obvious because of some of the things the characters said, but younger readers will probably still find the story thrilling. It’s very much a Scooby-Doo style pseudo-ghost story mystery, not too gory or gruesome, but exciting for kids who like things a little spooky.