Posted on by TracyC

Miss Nelson is Back

NelsonBack

Miss Nelson is Back by Harry Allard and James Marshall, 1982.

Miss Nelson, a teacher, tells her class that she will have to be away for awhile, having her tonsils removed, so someone else will be teaching their class.  At first, the kids think that they’ll be able to get away with a lot while Miss Nelson is away, but an older kid warns them that their substitute will probably turn out to be Viola Swamp, the meanest substitute ever.

NelsonBackWarning

The kids are nervous until they find out that Mr. Blandsworth, the school principal, will be their substitute himself.  The worst thing about Mr. Blandsworth is that he’s boring, and he tends to treat them like they’re little kids.  They put up with it for awhile, but then, they realize that they can get rid of Mr. Blandsworth by convincing him that Miss Nelson has come back to school.

NelsonBackPrincipal

They put together their own Miss Nelson costume, with some of the kids sitting on each other’s shoulder’s to appear taller in the outfit.  It’s cheesy, but it convinces the principal.  But, the kids take it even farther than that.  Now that there’s no substitute teacher, they can do whatever they want!  Their “Miss Nelson” takes the class on an impromptu field trip to the movies and the ice cream parlor, and no one stops them because they’re with their “teacher.”

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Unfortunately, they make the mistake of walking past Miss Nelson’s house, and she discovers what they’ve been doing.

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Miss Nelson arranges for Miss Viola Swamp to come and teach the class a real lesson.

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The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

I actually like this book even better than the first book in the series because I think that the kids’ Miss Nelson costume is hilarious! Mr. Blandsworth is completely clueless about the kids’ deception, just as he never figures out what the real truth is about “Viola Swamp.”

As usual for the series, the story never explicitly states that Miss Nelson and Viola Swamp are the same person, but it’s heavily implied in the text (such as Viola Swamp’s scratchy voice from Miss Nelson having her tonsils out) and shown in clues in the pictures. Miss Nelson uses “Viola Swamp” as her alter ego whenever she needs to give her students some tough love, but that’s just a joke that Miss Nelson shares with the readers.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Miss Nelson is Missing

NelsonMissing

Miss Nelson is Missing! By Harry Allard and James Marshall, 1977.

The kids in Miss Nelson’s class at school are terrible! No matter how nice she is to them, they always act up and refuse to do their work. Miss Nelson knows that this can’t continue.

NelsonMissingClass

Then, one day, Miss Nelson doesn’t show up for class. The kids have a substitute teacher, the terrible Miss Viola Swamp. Miss Swamp is super strict. She makes the kids work harder than they’ve ever worked in their lives, and she doesn’t put up with any nonsense.

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Miss Swamp is so mean that the kids really start to miss nice Miss Nelson. What happened to her? The kids try to find their nice teacher so they can get rid of the mean substitute. They try to go to the police to report her as a missing person and go to her house to see if she’s there, but the only person they can find is Miss Swamp. They imagine all sorts of terrible things that could have happened to Miss Nelson.

Then, just as they’re sure that they’ll never see Miss Nelson again, suddenly she’s back. Miss Nelson never says exactly where she’s been, but the kids are so glad to see her that they behave much better.

NelsonMissingReturn

This is the first book in a series.  It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

The big joke of the book, and all the others in this series, is that Miss Nelson and Miss Swamp are the same person. It’s not much of a spoiler to say that because, even though the story never explicitly says that they are the same person, it’s heavily implied, especially at the end of the book. The fun is that the kids in Miss Nelson’s class never guess, leaving readers to enjoy the joke along with Miss Nelson.

NelsonMissingSecret

Some people like to take advantage of people who are “too nice”, but just because a person prefers to be nice doesn’t mean that they’re weak, stupid, or incapable of being tough when they need to be. Miss Nelson just found a creative way to be as tough and mean as she needed to be to get the kids in her class to behave without ruining her own reputation as a nice person.  “Viola Swamp” will always be there whenever Miss Nelson needs her again … and that leads into the rest of the books in the series.

Posted on by TracyC

The Bassumtyte Treasure

BassumtyteTreasureThe Bassumtyte Treasure by Jane Louise Curry, 1978.

When young Tommy Bassumtyte’s parents died, he went to live with his grandfather. However, his grandfather is now dead, and he is living with his 92-year-old great-aunt, who is in a wheelchair, and her 72-year-old daughter, who has recently had her driver’s license revoked due to her poor eyesight. Although the pair of them have taken good care of Tommy, neighbors have become concerned that they will not be able to do so for much longer because of their age and failing health. Rather than see Tommy sent to a foster home, they decide that he must go to the man who Tommy learns should really be his legal guardian, a distant cousin also named Thomas who lives in the family’s ancestral home, Boxleton House, in England.

The elder Thomas Bassumtyte, who should have taken Tommy when his grandfather passed away, has also since died, but his son, also named Thomas, agrees to take him. Tommy is quickly shipped off to England before there can be a custody hearing in the United States about him because the relatives fear that some official might try to prevent Tommy from being sent out of the country. Tommy is eager to go because he remembers fantastic stories that his grandfather told him about Boxleton House. The current Thomas Bassumtyte also lives there, although the place has become rather run-down, and he fears that he will not be able to keep the place much longer. Thomas was a mountain climber, but he was injured in a fall and hasn’t been able to work much since. He tells Tommy that the two of them might have to move when he is fully recovered and can do more work for the Foreign Office, but Tommy loves Boxleton House from the first moment he sees it and wants to stay.

According to the lore of Boxleton House, a distant ancestor of theirs hid a treasure there, but no one has been able to find it. If young Tommy and Thomas can find it, it would solve many of their problems, and they would be able to keep the house and restore it. All young Tommy has is the mysterious rhyme that his grandfather told him and the strange medallion that his great-grandfather brought with him when he went to the United States in the late 1800s. Thomas tells him that the treasure was supposedly hidden by a distant ancestor of theirs who was fond of riddles, called Old Thomas.

The Bassumtytes were secretly Catholic during the reign of Elizabeth I. Old Thomas was alive then and had a son called Tall Thomas. Tall Thomas traveled frequently and was mysterious about the places he went. One night, he returned to Boxleton House with a young baby, who he said was his son. He had married in secret, and his young wife had died shortly after giving birth. Tall Thomas also brought her body back to Boxleton for burial. However, that wasn’t Tall Thomas’s only secret. Although he remarried, giving his son a stepmother, and lived on for a number of years, he was eventually executed for smuggling messages for the captive Catholic queen, Mary, Queen of Scots. The family was stripped of its noble title and only barely managed to hang onto their house and land. If there was a treasure hidden during this time, it was probably something that the Bassumtytes were afraid would be confiscated by the queen’s soldiers as punishment for the family’s disloyalty or something that Mary had given to Tall Thomas to hide for her.

As Thomas tells Tommy more about the house and the family’s history, he points out Tommy’s uncanny resemblance to Small Thomas, Tall Thomas’s son, as shown in an old painting. Tommy feels a strange connection to Small Thomas, and begins seeing and hearing strange things. An older woman comforts him in the middle of the night, having him recite the same rhyme that his grandfather taught him. A small painting later reveals that this woman was Small Thomas’s grandmother. She appears to Tommy other times, giving him a glimpse back in time and clues to solve the puzzles of Boxleton House.

It is only when Thomas accepts the advice of a family friend who works for a museum that they come to understand the full significance of their family’s heirlooms and the hidden treasure. The treasure may not be quite what the Bassumtytes have always believed it was, but then, the Bassumtytes themselves aren’t quite who they always thought they were, either.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Ghosts in the Gallery

ghostsgalleryGhosts in the Gallery by Barbara Brooks Wallace, 2000.

Eleven-year-old Jenny was raised in China by her mother and stepfather, who ran a dance studio. She has no memory of her real father, who died when she was a baby. When her stepfather dies and her mother becomes deathly ill, her mother writes a letter to her real father’s father, a grandfather that Jenny never even knew existed before. In the letter, her mother explains that she is dying and that she will be sending Jenny to live with her grandfather. Then, Jenny starts the long journey from China to the East coast of the United States alone.

Leaving her dying mother to head to a strange country to live with her previously unknown relations is frightening enough, but there is still worse to come. When Jenny arrives at her wealthy grandfather’s home, no one is expecting her or knows who she is. Her uncle, Winston Graymark, insists that her mother’s letter never arrived. Worse still, he believes that Jenny is an imposter, and that her mother merely made up the story about his long-lost brother being her father.

At first, he angrily threatens to send Jenny back to China, but Madame Dupray, a servant who cares for Jenny’s ill grandfather, suggests that she be taken on as a household servant. Jenny is given a dreary little room in the cellar and embarks on the drudgery of household chores. Could the Graymarks really be her relatives? If so, what happened to the letter that Jenny’s mother sent? Something sinister is happening in Graymark House, and Jenny will have to face suspicious servants and attempted murder before she finds the truth.

The “ghosts” in the title are the portraits of Jenny’s ancestors, which hang in the gallery. They appear grim and frightening at first, but when Jenny begins to recognize them as her relatives, they no longer frighten her.  Like many of Wallace’s books, this book contains sinister characters with hidden motives, but ends happily.  The story takes place at some point during the Victorian era.

Posted on by TracyC

The Great and Terrible Quest

greatterriblequestThe Great and Terrible Quest by Margaret Lovett, 1970.

This story takes place in a fictional kingdom during the Middle Ages. Trad is a ten-year-old boy who has lived most of his life with his abusive grandfather. He barely remembers his parents, who died in a plague when he was only four. This grandfather consorts with robbers and evil men. Trad often pretends to be stupid to avoid their notice and warns travelers away from their territory.

One day, he rescues a man who has been badly wounded and cares for him in a secret cave. This man, whose white hair makes him seem elderly, insists that he is on a mission, a great and terrible quest . . . but because of a head wound, he can’t remember what his quest is. All that he knows is that time is short, and he does not have long to complete his quest to find something very important.

Trad soon learns that his grandfather’s wicked friends are the ones who attacked this mysterious stranger. Taking Trad’s father’s old lute, a couple of coins, and a mysterious ring dropped by one of the robbers which seems to have once belonged to the stranger, Trad and the stranger embark on a journey across the land, making friends and pursued by enemies as they go. While the stranger struggles to remember his identity and the nature of his mission, Trad begins to learn a few things about his own forgotten past and the nature of his family. Nothing is what it seems. Their country is in trouble because of the evil men who have been controlling it. Everything depends on the success of the stranger’s mission, and Trad has a much larger role to play than he had ever dreamed.

It’s a beautiful and fascinating story about good and evil, loyalty, friendship, and determination to do the right thing, even against the odds. There are parts that might frighten younger readers. The fights are violent and bloody, and there are a couple instances of cruelty to animals (partly, it seems, to show how truly evil Trad’s enemies are). Still, it’s a great story for tweens and teens, and readers will want to cheer Trad on as he struggles to help those around him and find his own destiny.

Although the kingdom is fictional and the themes are similar to fantasy stories, there is no actual magic in the story.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.