Posted on by TracyC

A Year Down Yonder

YearDownYonderA Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck, 2000.

This is the sequel to A Long Way from Chicago. The story takes place shortly after the Great Depression, in 1937.

Times are still hard, and a recession has left a lot of people out of work again. Mary Alice’s father is out of work, and her brother Joey is out west working for the Civilian Conservation Corps. Because her family has to move to a smaller apartment, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice leaves Chicago to stay with her Grandma in the country for the year. Times are hard in Grandma’s small town as well, but Mary Alice’s Grandma is as wily and eccentric as ever.

Like the first book, this book is really a series of short stories about Mary Alice’s adventures with her Grandma during their year together. The stories generally have a hilarious turn as Grandma gets the better of everyone, often in the name justice or a good cause.  (Although, Grandma’s sense of justice is debatable since it involves “borrowing” pumpkins from the neighbors in the dead of night and other questionable activities.)

These stories present a detailed picture of rural life during the 1930s, from pranks played on Halloween to how Armistice Day was celebrated in the years following World War I, when people were still alive who had strong memories of that war. The stories also capture some of the personalities and politics of life in a small town, from a disreputable family of outcasts to the local elite, who have more money than the others and brag about having ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War (which may or may not be so).

Rich Chicago Girl: Mary Alice arrives in Grandma’s small town and is enrolled in the local school.  She meets the class bully, and Grandma helps her to deal with her.

Vittles and Vengeance: At Halloween, Grandma gets revenge against a group of pranksters and raids her neighbors for ingredients to make the school Halloween party better.

A Minute in the Morning: Armistice Day, November 11, has more meaning for people who have actual memories of The Great War (World War I).  Grandma makes sure that those who can afford it pay what they owe to the veterans of that war and shows Mary Alice the price that some soldiers paid for supporting their country.

Away in a Manger: Mary Alice is picked to play Mary in the school’s Christmas Nativity play.  The baby Jesus turns out to be a surprise for the whole town, and Grandma arranges a special surprise for Mary Alice.

Hearts and Flour: The head of the local branch of the DAR pushes Grandma to make cherry tarts for their annual tea in honor of George Washington’s birthday.  Since she will neither allow Grandma to join the DAR (because Grandma doesn’t have the proper lineage) nor pay Grandma for her work (she thinks Grandma should ‘volunteer’ her services as part of her patriotic duty), Grandma insists that if she bakes, she must host the tea as well . . . with a couple of special surprise guests.  Meanwhile, a handsome new boy named Royce joins Mary Alice’s class at school.

A Dangerous Man: An artist working for the WPA rents a room from Grandma, treating Mary Alice and Royce to a scandalous but hilarious sight when his subject matter gets out of hand.

Gone with the Wind: A tornado sweeps through the town, and Grandma and Mary Alice go to check on residents who live alone.  Mary Alice also prepares to return home to her parents in Chicago.

Ever After: The final story in the book is about Mary Alice’s wedding, years later, toward the end of World War II.

This book is a Newbery Award winner.  There are multiple copies currently available online through Internet Archive.

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Mandie and the Forbidden Attic

MandieForbiddenAttic#4 Mandie and the Forbidden Attic by Lois Gladys Leppard, 1985.

Mandie is unhappy because her mother and Uncle John are sending her to a boarding school in Asheville. It is the same school her mother attended years ago, and her grandmother lives in the same town. Mandie is upset about leaving all of her friends and family behind, but Uncle Ned says that he will still visit her.

By the time that Mandie arrives at her new school, everyone else already knows each other, and none of them seem interested in making friends with her. One girl in particular, April Snow, takes a dislike to Mandie, which is difficult because they have been assigned to the same room.

Things change when Celia Hamilton comes to the school. She and Mandie become best friends, and Mandie is allowed to share a room with her. Then, strange things start happening. Mandie and Celia keep hearing strange noises during the night from the attic floor above them, and some of Mandie’s clothes disappear. At first, they suspect that April Snow may be playing a mean trick on them, but it turns out that she is not actually at fault. There is someone at the school who doesn’t belong, but finding this person may get Mandie and Celia into trouble.

This adventure requires Mandie to meet with her grandmother again.  Mandie is nervous about seeing her grandmother because her grandmother helped break up her parents’ marriage and sent her away with her father when she was a baby. Surprisingly, Mandie’s grandmother seems to like her and her friend Celia. She admires their spirit and even says that Mandie reminds her a little of herself when she was young.  This meeting helps the granddaughter and grandmother to make peace with each other and the past.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Mandie and the Ghost Bandits

MandieGhostBandits#3 Mandie and the Ghost Bandits by Lois Gladys Leppard, 1984.

Mandie and her family are going to proceed with the plan to create a hospital for the Cherokees with the gold that they found in the cave. To do that, they need to take the gold to a bank in Asheville.  They decide to take the gold secretly on a train. Uncle Ned stays in the baggage car to watch the gold as they set out on their journey.

When the kids decide to leave their car to go visit him, strange things begin to happen. They see riders dressed as ghosts out the window. Then, the car with Uncle Ned and the gold inside is disconnected from the rest of the train, crashing into a ravine. The train comes to a stop, and the kids jump off to see if they can help Uncle Ned.

Before they can find him, the train starts up again, leaving them behind, and they are taken prisoner by the mysterious ghost bandits. They are after the gold in the baggage car, but how did they know it was there when Mandie’s family tried so hard to keep it a secret? Mandie and her friends must escape and find the others before it is too late!

In some respects, I would call this more of an adventure story than a mystery, although there is still the question of how the bandits knew where the gold was in order to steal it.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Mandie and the Cherokee Legend

MandieCherokeeLegend#2 Mandie and the Cherokee Legend by Lois Gladys Leppard, 1983.

Mandie is going to visit her Cherokee relatives with her mother and Uncle John. Mandie is eager to meet her relatives, and she hopes that they all like her. The Cherokees all knew her father well, and most of them are eager to meet her. All except for her cousin, Tsa’ni, that is.

Tsa’ni knows the stories of how white men have oppressed the Cherokees and forced them to move off of their land years ago, and he resents all white people because of it. The others tell him that he is wrong to hate all white people because of what some of them did in the past and that Mandie and her Uncle John are good people. However, Tsa’ni doesn’t listen to them, and he plays a mean trick on Mandie, Joe, and Uncle Ned’s granddaughter, Sallie. He offers to show them a cave, but then he abandons them inside.

The three kids have to find their own way out, but they discover a fortune in gold nuggets in the process. First, the children have to make it back to Uncle Ned’s house after a frightening night in the woods. Mandie, Joe, and Sallie accidentally stumble onto a still (machinery for making alcohol) that belongs to a white couple while they are wandering around in the woods after leaving the cave. The couple are worried that they will tell people about their illegal still, so they hold the kids prisoner.

Although the kids manage to escape, they must return to the cave to find the treasure again (while dodging Tsa’ni’s tricks to foil their efforts) and keep it safe (from the still operators and anyone else who might want to steal it) until they can decide what to do with it. As far as Uncle Ned and the other Cherokees are concerned, gold is bad luck because it was the discovery of gold which forced the Cherokees out of their old homeland. However, the origin of this gold may help to change their minds.

This book is one of the Mandie Books.  It is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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Mystery of the Roman Ransom

romanransomMystery of the Roman Ransom by Henry Winterfeld, 1971.

This is the sequel to Detectives in Togas, a mystery story about a group of boys in Ancient Rome.  Like the first book, it was originally written in German and translated into English.

On Xantippus’s birthday, his students decide that they want to give him a special present because they think he’s turning 50.  Actually, it turns out that they did their math wrong because Xantippus (whose real name is Xanthos and only known as Xantippus as a nickname among his students) was born in Athens, and the Greeks use a different dating system from the Romans.  His Roman students forgot even after he had explained that in their history lessons, which really annoys him.  He is also really annoyed that the special present they decided to give him was a slave of his very own so that he can concentrate on his studies while the slave does all of his chores.  Xantippus points out that, far from being a present, slaves are actually a burden because there are extra expenses for owning them and it would end up costing him more money than he could afford (much like the “free” cars that Oprah Winfrey gave to some of her audience members), and Xantippus wants no part of it.  He gives the boys the day off from lessons to reward them for being thoughtful (although, not quite thoughtful enough), and tells them to return the slave to the dealer who sold him and get their money back.  But, it turns out that this slave isn’t just any ordinary slave.

romanransompicWhen they return to the slave dealer’s home, he is gone, and the place is boarded up.  An elderly slave who was left behind said that all of the other slaves were sold, and then the dealer simply fled, abandoning him.  He also says that there was someone else who had come to see the dealer, demanding that he hand over the slave called Udo (the one that the boys had already bought).  This man was a former gladiator with only one eye, and he was very angry that Udo was gone.  He swore that he would he would get Udo one way or another, dead or alive.  He threatened the dealer, saying that he would return later and kill the dealer and all of his slaves if Udo was not among them then.  The slave dealer, not knowing the names of the boys who had bought Udo or where he could be found and therefore unable to get Udo back, fled in fear of the former gladiator’s threats.

During this time in Rome’s history, crime rates were high because gangs of ex-gladiators, runaway slaves, and criminals roamed the city, robbing and terrorizing the citizens.  The boys soon learn that the dealer’s fears were well-founded when the ex-gladiator finds them in the marketplace while they are trying to decide what to do with Udo.  He tries to take Udo from them by force, but they fight with him and manage to escape by dumping a pail of honey over his head.

Once the boys are safely away and in their secret hideout with Udo, he reveals his true story to them.  At first, they had believed that Udo was deaf and mute because he acted like he couldn’t speak, but he tells them that he was afraid to do so because he is a hunted man.  He was the slave of a powerful Roman army commander now stationed in Germania.  He was sent to Rome by his master in order to deliver an important letter, but upon learning that he would be killed after handing over this letter, he did not complete his mission.

The meeting was to take place in a cemetery at midnight, and when Udo arrived, he became frightened and hid.  Then, he overheard his contacts, two men who did not seem to even know each other, talking about how he would be eliminated after passing on his message.  Now, these men are looking for him for the message that he did not give to them, and Udo cannot go back to his master because his master would probably kill him for disobeying orders.

Udo discovered that the letter contained instructions for an assassin to murder an important Roman senator, and upon learning that, all of the boys are immediately worried because they are all the sons of senators.  They demand to know which senator will be murdered, but Udo cannot tell them because that information was in the letter, and he lost it after he fled from the cemetery.  He thinks that it’s in a cellar where he hid and spent the rest of the night before he was found by a group of gladiators who sold him as a slave the next day.  Now, he’s not quite sure where that cellar was.  Udo also says that his master will arrive in Rome himself in three days and will probably just pass on the name of the intended target to the assassins then when he learns that Udo didn’t.  With time running out and their fathers’ lives possibly on the line, the boys and Udo struggle to find the letter and stop the assassination plot before it’s too late!

In Ancient Rome, slaves were common among the wealthy, and owners had the power of life and death over them.  They could punish a slave severely for even a small mistake, abandon them if they were sick or elderly, and even sell them to the gladiatoral arenas, where they would have to fight for their lives or die as public entertainment.  To the boys in the story, such things are simply facts of life as they have always known it.  Rome in general was a violent place.

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

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Detectives in Togas

detectivestogasDetectives in Togas by Henry Winterfeld, 1956.

Seven Roman boys, all the sons of wealthy families, attend the school run by the Greek mathematician and scholar, Xanthos. Although the boys are proud of their school, the lessons are sometimes boring, and everyone has given Xanthos the nickname Xantippus, in reference to the wife of Socrates, who was known for her nagging.

During a rather boring lesson on Greek vocabulary, a fight breaks out between two of the students that ends up creating a strange mystery for all of them. Caius was poking Rufus with his stylus, so Rufus wrote “Caius is a dumbbell” on the wax tablet where he was supposed to write his lesson. The boys get into a fight, and when Xantippus breaks it up, he sends Rufus home with the threat that he will expel him from the school.

detectivestogaspicThe next day, when the other boys arrive at school, they discover that their teacher has been attacked and robbed during the night. Worse still, when they go to Rufus’s house to visit him, they learn that someone has written “Caius is a dumbbell” on the side of the Temple of Minerva, which has been dedicated to the emperor. Defacing a temple is a crime, and soon Rufus is arrested and sent to prison (being young and part of an important family does not guarantee him special treatment). Rufus swears that he was not the one who defaced the temple, but who else could have done it?

Rufus disappeared that night, but if he didn’t go to the temple, where was he? Does the vandalism have anything to do with the attack on their teacher?  The key to the mystery seems to be a mysterious soothsayer with ties to some of the highest officials in Rome. Something sinister is happening in Rome, and the boys are the only ones who can discover what it is!

This story was inspired by a piece of graffiti found during excavations of Pompeii in 1936. (This video doesn’t actually show the Caius inscription but similar types of graffiti, including ones done by children. I keep looking for the Caius graffiti, but I can’t find pictures of it. This video of a lecture at the Western Australian Museum about ancient graffiti in Pompeii shows the more graphic adult kind of graffiti with swear words, if you’re interested.) In ancient Pompeii, someone wrote “CAIUS ASINUS EST” on the wall of a temple, which basically means “Cauis is a dumbbell” (or similar type of insult) in Latin.

Although the book was originally from 1956, it was also originally written in German. I have a later reprinting that was translated into English.  The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.  There is a sequel called Mystery of the Roman Ransom.

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The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn

ghosttokaidoinnThe Ghost in the Tokaido Inn by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, 1999.

In feudal Japan, more specifically in 1735, the family you were born into determined what you were meant to be in life.  Samurai were born into families of samurai, and merchants were born into merchant families.

This is a terrible disappointment to Seikei, the fourteen-year-old son of a tea merchant, who would love nothing more than to be able to become a samurai.  He has studied the samurais and their ideals and greatly admires their bravery.  He even loves to write poetry, as the samurais do.

One day, Seikei accompanies his father on a business trip from their home in Osaka to Edo (the old name for Tokyo).  On their way, they stay overnight at an inn.  There, Seikei makes friends with the daughter of a paper merchant, and she entertains him with a ghost story.  During the night, Seikei sees a strange figure that attempts to enter his room, which he fears might be an evil spirit (like the one in the ghost story), but he is unable to get a good look at it before it disappears.

The next morning, Lord Hakuseki, a daimyo (lord, nobleman) also staying at the inn, says that a jewel was stolen from him during the night.  The famous Judge Ooka comes to the inn to investigate the crime.  The paper merchant and his daughter are accused of the theft because the jewel is found among their belongings.  Seikei recognizes the jewel as one that Lord Hakuseki showed to both him and the girl the night before when they each went to show him their fathers’ wares, and he also realizes that he saw the “evil spirit” holding it.

When Seikei tells Judge Ooka all of this, his father is angry, saying that Seikei must have imagined the whole thing.  However, Judge Ooka believes him.  He points out that the silent figure was no doubt the thief, who merely looked like an evil spirit to the boy who had just been startled awake, with a ghost story still on his mind.  Judge Ooka is also impressed with Seikei’s bravery when Seikei describes how he got up to try to get a better look at the figure, even though he believed that it was an evil spirit at the time.

Judge Ooka recruits Seikei to help him further investigate the crime, and they realize that the theft is only part of a much larger and more serious plot of revenge.  Judge Ooka, himself of the samurai class, also understands Seikei’s feelings better than his father does.  In the end, he offers Seikei a way of living the kind of life that he’s always dreamed.

This book is the first in a series.  Judge Ooka was a real, historical figure, although Seikei, his adopted son, is fictional.  Because the story contains violence and some religious oppression, I recommend it for middle school level readers.  The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

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Journey to America

journeytoamericaJourney to America by Sonia Levitin, 1970.

This is the first book in the Journey to America Saga.  Like her heroine, Lisa, Sonia Levitin also fled Germany with her family during World War II, and her stories are semi-autobiographical.

Twelve-year-old Lisa Platt lives with her family in Berlin in 1938.  But, with the rise of the Nazis, events have taken a frightening turn for Jewish families like theirs.  There has already been violence toward Jewish people, and travel is restricted.  Lisa’s father fears for their family, and their mother believes that war is about to break out.  Reluctantly, her parents have decided that the only thing to do is to leave Germany and try to start over somewhere else.

Because of the travel restrictions, Lisa’s father has to leave secretly, pretending that he is only going on vacation.  In reality, he and Lisa’s uncle will go to America and try to get established before sending for the rest of the family.  But, it isn’t safe for Lisa, her mother, and her two sisters to stay in Germany, waiting for word from them.  Instead, they pretend that they are joining Lisa’s father for a holiday in Switzerland.  They can only take a little luggage with them, as if they were really just going on vacation, and very little money.

journeytoamericapicBut, getting on the train out of Germany is only the first step of their long journey.  Lisa and her mother and sisters live as refugees in Switzerland, waiting for her father to help arrange for their passage to America.  Often, they have too little to eat because they don’t have much money.  There are some people who help them, and they make some new friends, but the long wait is difficult.  Meanwhile, they must face the frightening events taking shape around them, around the people they left behind, and their own uncertain future.

There is something in the stories that I’d like to describe a little more because I didn’t quite understand it when I first read this book as a kid, but I can explain it better now.  At one point in the story, Lisa’s grandmother suggests that her mother send the girls to England because other families are doing it and it would ensure that the children get safely out of the country.  Later, in Switzerland, Lisa gets a letter from her friend Rosemarie that says she and her sister are now in England without their parents because their father didn’t didn’t feel like he could leave Germany.  What they’re describing is the Kindertransport, a rescue effort started by Jewish, Quaker, and British government leaders to transport unaccompanied Jewish minors, from babies to age 17, from Germany and German-controlled countries to England for safety after the events of Kristallnacht made it clear that Jews were in serious danger in Germany.  When the children reached England, they were placed in foster homes, schools, and anywhere else willing to take them, similar to the way children evacuated from London to avoid the bombings later would be placed in foster homes or on farms.  Grandmother Platt points out that this could have been an option for her grandchildren when she discusses the possibilities with their mother, but since, neither the mother or father of the family wanted to stay in Germany, the family decided that they should all leave together.  The Kindertransport program ended when war actually broke out, but by then, about 10,000 children had been brought to England.  Although parents who sent their children to England on the Kindertransport hoped to reunite with them in England, most of the Kindertransport children who went to England never saw their parents again because their family members who stayed behind in Germany were killed in the Holocaust.  I had lessons about the Holocaust in school in Arizona, but they never mentioned the Kindertransport because it wasn’t something that really affected the area where we lived.  I did see a Holocaust survivor who came to speak at my high school in the early 2000s.  There were Holocaust survivors living in my area of Arizona then, and there still are as of this writing because I heard that they were among the first to be vaccinated during the coronavirus pandemic in early 2021.  This video from the BBC Newsnight and this video from the University and College Union explain more about it and have interviews with people who were brought to England on the Kindertransport as children.  Rosemarie and her sister would probably be very much like the people in those interviews years later.

Although there are sad parts of the book, there are lighter moments, too, and the characters are realistic and engaging.  There is only one illustration in my copy of the book, a drawing of Lisa and her sisters getting their pictures taken for their passports.  Other editions of the book have different illustrations.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, in different editions).

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Mystery on the Isle of Skye

mysteryisleskyeMystery on the Isle of Skye by Phyllis Whitney, 1960.

Cathy MacLeod has lived with her grandmother for years, ever since her parents died when she was very young.  Now, her grandmother is very ill and will probably have to live in a nursing home.  Cathy needs to find a new place to live, and her relatives are debating about who is going to take her.  So far, the only relative who has offered her a home is Aunt Bertha.  Cathy isn’t enthusiastic because Aunt Bertha only has a tiny apartment where she lives alone, and she’s only offering Cathy a home out of duty, not real affection.  Aunt Bertha hasn’t spent much time around children and doesn’t really understand them.

But, there is one other prospect.  Cathy’s other relatives, the Corbins, are taking a trip to the Isle of Skye, where Cathy’s grandmother came from originally, and her grandmother has arranged for Cathy to go with them while Aunt Bertha is on a business trip.  Uncle Jerry (Cathy’s mother’s brother) and Aunt Lila Corbin have two boys of their own, Don (who is about Cathy’s age) and Humphry, who goes by the nickname of Punch.  Cathy is happy about the chance to go with them to visit the island that her grandmother has told her so much about.

At first, Cathy feels a little awkward around the Corbins because she doesn’t really know them, and they don’t know her.  Aunt Lila is warm and welcoming to Cathy, but Uncle Jerry is a tease.  Don is a tease as well and very impatient with the whole idea of the trip.  He doesn’t care about the history or legends of Skye as much as Cathy does.  His only real interest is in photography.  Young Punch is friendlier, sharing the excitement of the trip with Cathy.

Before they left on the trip, Cathy’s grandmother gave her a mysterious box to take with her.  Cathy doesn’t quite understand it at first, but the box contains several smaller packages with instructions to open them at different times during the trip.  Some of the instructions are vague and force her to rely on other people to tell her when to open them and what to do with the contents.  The packages are part present, part “spell.”  Thanks to them, Cathy makes new friends in Skye and goes on an adventure that she will never forget.

My Reaction

There is no real magic in this story, no real magic spells, and there actually isn’t much mystery either, except for the mystery Cathy initially feels about what’s in the packages and what their real purpose is.  Cathy’s grandmother has a love of legend and mystery, and these special gifts are meant to serve special purposes: to acquaint Cathy more with her past on the Isle of Skye and share some special memories, to heal Cathy’s sadness, to help draw her closer to her other relatives, and perhaps, to help her find her way to a brighter future than the one she currently thinks is waiting for her back home.

The packages help Cathy to bond with her aunt, uncle, and cousins.  They’re meant to be a shared activity.  She has to open certain packages with certain relatives, and they have to take her to certain places to do certain things with the contents.  These shared experiences help draw them closer to each other.

Although this story doesn’t follow the traditional mystery format and it can’t even be called fantasy or pseudo-fantasy, it’s enchanting because of the subtle hints of mystery and fantasy surrounding Cathy’s surprise packages.  Readers get to wonder alongside Cathy what’s in them and where they’re going to lead her.  It’s a little slower and more subtle than most modern children’s books, but I find it refreshing and magical for those reasons.

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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.