Posted on by TracyC

Of Two Minds

Of Two Minds by Carol Matas and Perry Nodelman, 1995.

Princess Lenora lives in a world where people can make things from their imaginations real just by thinking about them. This is a common “gift” that everyone in her country has, but the thing that really upsets Lenora is that people aren’t allowed to use their “gift” whenever they want to. Lenora’s parents are frequently upset with her for disrupting their calm, orderly world with her wild fantasies. They remind her that the reason why they have these rules was that their world was in chaos before people learned how to use their “gift”, and the chaos was only resolved when everyone agreed to maintain the same reality so they could all live in a safe, stable world that makes sense. They call this maintaining “the balance.” However, Lenora thinks that this stable world is boring and laments that there are never any technological developments or anything really interesting or exciting, like in the fantasy books she reads.

At this point, I pause to reflect that, in real life, we don’t have a world where people can change the nature of reality just by picturing something, and in spite of living every day in a common reality, our world still doesn’t completely make sense, people can have very different interpretations of things that are happening as if they lived in completely different realities of their own making, the idea that everyone could agree on one shared reality to create for any length of time sounds unbelievable, and when “exciting” things happen in world events, they are often not “interesting” or pleasant. Lenora is a teenage girl who doesn’t have a lot of experience yet in worlds that her people maintain in order to stay safe and sane or that she has not created herself and had control over. That’s about to change.

While everyone in Princess Lenora’s world has mental “gifts” that allow them to make imaginary things real, Lenora’s abilities are stronger than most, and her parents worry that her powers are getting much stronger. Lenora has trouble resisting the urge to imagine things and make them real, and although she loves doing it for the excitement and sense of power it gives her, it’s starting to scare her because it feels like her fantasies are starting to control her instead of her controlling them. Her fantasies have started to take darker turns, and frightening things are starting to become real, and she’s not even sure if they’re really coming from her mind or not. Because Lenora is turning seventeen years old, her parents are in the process of arranging a marriage for her to a prince from a neighboring kingdom, and they hope that marriage will help settle her down. However, Lenora isn’t so sure about the marriage or her increasingly difficult to control powers. When she talks to the healer, Lufa, about it, Lufa says that it’s not unusual for young people to experiment with their mental powers and that Lenora’s disturbing fantasies are coming from a dark part of her own mind that she will have to learn to control. She offers to spend some time working with Lenora and helping to develop her control.

Meanwhile, Prince Coren, Lenora’s betrothed, is having his own doubts about the impending wedding. In the first place, he thinks that he isn’t very handsome and isn’t sure that Lenora is going to like him. In the second place, he doesn’t really like change. Change makes him very nervous, although he doesn’t like the way things are in his kingdom and has felt for some time that things really need to change. People in his kingdom, like in Lenora’s, have special mental gifts, but they work in somewhat different ways. The people in Lenora’s kingdom, Gepeth, have the ability to change the nature of reality with their imaginations but often restrain their abilities in order to live in a common reality. In Coren’s kingdom, people have the ability to make things they imagine look and seem real, but they cannot actually change the nature of reality itself. They don’t bother to restrain their abilities at all, preferring to live in their imaginations. They don’t bother to keep their homes and buildings in good repair, just imagining that they live in opulent mansions and sleep in soft beds when their buildings are actually crumbling and they sleep on the ground. More than anything, Coren wants to build and enjoy something real instead of living in this imaginary world that he knows is not real at all. Also, Coren’s people have the ability to read each other’s minds, and they do it all time. The mostly talk to each other directly in their minds, not out loud or face to face, and they’re also in the habit of snooping and eavesdropping on each other’s thoughts. Coren tries not to be so obtrusive, and while his parents have some concerns about him marrying a girl who can’t speak mentally, Coren finds the idea a relief. Still, he’s not quite sure what to expect of Lenora or sure that she’s going to approve of him.

As Coren and his family approach Lenora’s kingdom, and he thinks and worries about meeting Lenora, he begins accidentally joining Lenora’s thoughts and fantasies. He begins getting a taste of what goes on in Lenora’s thoughts and imagination, and for a person who craves stability as much as he does, it’s unsettling.

It turns out that, although Lenora’s parents have mentioned marriage to her before, she has not been informed that her intended husband is on his way until he actually arrives. She is shocked and angry when her father suddenly springs Coren on her without warning, and Coren’s parents are dubious about this marriage when they discover that Lenora was not even informed that it was going to take place. They read the Lenora’s father’s mind and learn about Lenora’s previous antics with her powers. Coren begins having serious doubts about this marriage, and so do his parents, although they kind of admire Lenora’s imagination since they live in their imaginations much of the time.

Lenora, in a desperate panic to escape this unwanted marriage, tries to figure out what to do. She thinks about imagining a change in the world so that she won’t have to get married, but she knows that her father is still powerful enough to stop her. Then, she thinks about creating a world of her own with her imagination that she can jump into, but strangely, Coren ends up playing a role in everything she imagines. Even though she doesn’t want to like Coren, she feels strangely drawn to him. Since she can’t seem to escape thinking about Coren, she decides to physically run away and visit other countries, but she’s caught before she gets out of the palace.

Lenora’s father informs her that, because of her reckless behavior and increasing powers, they’ve arranged for her to marry Coren the very next day, and after their marriage, they will go to live on an island their kingdom controls with guards to prevent her from leaving or using her powers to escape. Lenora and Coren are to live on the island until after the birth of their second child, in the hopes that Lenora will settled down and get control of herself through her family responsibilities.

It seems like Lenora is trapped, but during the wedding ceremony, a portal to another world opens up. Lenora feels like someone, although she doesn’t know who, is offering her a chance at escape and decides to take it. However, as she goes through his portal, Coren tries to stop her, sensing that it’s dangerous, and he’s pulled in with her. The two of them find themselves in a world with an unknown creator, and for the first time in her life, Lenora’s powers don’t seem to work, so she can’t get them home. At first, Lenora is charmed by this seemingly perfect world full of interesting people and with the promise of newfound freedom. However, Coren is dubious and, although his powers are also gone, has the troubling feeling that they are in danger. What is this world, and who wants them there? If they’re ever going to return to their own world, they will have to face a dangerous enemy … and the darkest corners of Lenora’s own mind.

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

My Reaction

I first read this book when I was in my early teens, back in middle school, and I think that’s the right age group for this book. Princess Lenora is a daydreamer, like many teenage girls, but unlike most teenage girls, she has the ability to make the things she daydreams about become reality with just a thought. It’s pretty normal for people to imagine all kinds of things, just as passing thoughts, even dark things. If Lenora lived in our world with fanfiction.net, FictionPress, and Wattpad and similar sites for amateur writers, my guess is that she’d be spending much of her time writing stories to post online, like fan fiction and creepypasta, and few people would think anything of it because she would have friends doing the same thing. In a few years, they would probably either graduate to newer sites, like Inkitt, start their own blogs, work on getting books published, or just get busy with their lives, college, and career and let the hobby go for awhile. Instead, because Lenora lives in a world where people’s imaginations change the shape of reality itself, Lenora’s unchecked imagination poses a real threat to people around her and the fabric of reality itself.

Lenora’s parents try to rush her into marriage and family life in the hope that it will curb her dangerous tendencies and teach her some self-control (like people getting married too young never backfires horribly) and get her over this self-insertion fantasy stage she’s in, but in a way, that’s exactly the problem. Many of Lenora’s fantasies, especially the dark ones are about control. I didn’t think of that much when I first read the book as a young teenager. Mostly, I just liked the concept of a world where people could change reality just by thinking about things and the exploring the concept of what that ability could lead to. Much of the story is about that, but also, many of Lenora’s darkest fantasies are about power and control, things that she both resists in her daily life and craves for herself. A lot of teenage rebellion is about control – who has power over whom and where the boundaries lie.

Teenagers are at that phase of life where they’re almost legal adults. Physically, they can do most of the things that full adults can do, like drive cars and get themselves around town to go places they want to go, but yet, they can’t legally consent to certain things, and they’re still required to ask their parents’ permission before making even basic decisions about their weekend plans, and their parents are often telling them what they think they should do for their futures in the way of jobs and education. It can be a frustrating experience, knowing that you have the ability to go out, have adventures, and explore what life has to offer but yet not really being allowed to get out there and do things. There are practical reasons why teenagers can’t act on every whim that enters their heads. For one thing, life requires money. There are few things that don’t cost anything, and you need some time to build resources. For another, people won’t hire you for just any job because you showed up and said you wanted to try it. Most jobs require a certain level of education and/or experience, and teenagers just haven’t had time to acquire it yet. They have to find lesser jobs first and continue their education or get some professional training. Also, when it comes to marriage and other deeply personal decisions, there are serious life consequences to the choices you make. Adults hope by making young people wait for things and build their lives gradually, they’ll get a better sense of who they are, the lives they want to lead, and the consequences of the decisions they’ll make. It doesn’t always work because I’ve seen even older adults make some pretty weird decisions, but that’s largely the goal.

People have a tendency to try to control those who don’t seem to have the ability or desire to control themselves, and that’s really the phase that Lenora is in. Lenora’s young powers are growing, and she wants to test them and see what she can do with them, to explore her deepest thoughts and express herself and make her mark on the world, but her parents and the society she lives in actually can’t let her do that as much as she wants because of what it would do to everyone around her and the very world they live in. Most people, teenagers or not, have some private thoughts or fantasies that they would never want to share with the world, but Leonora’s fantasies become the world around her. They don’t stay private because they don’t stay only in her mind. When Lenora’s fantasies come to life, she pulls real people into them, giving them a genuine stake in having some say over them and trying to limit or stop them. It’s not just that she disrupts people’s lives and inconveniences them, but she can put them in very real danger and actually poses a threat to their very existence. Lenora doesn’t fully consider what her flights of fantasy do to other people, such as when she temporarily sends her mother into a gray void at the beginning of the book so she can pretend that she has the family’s castle to herself or when she briefly considers a fantasy where her parents would be living in poverty at her mercy and charity so she could control them instead of the other way around, until she finds herself at the mercy of someone she can’t control. Sometimes, people don’t understand what they put others through until they have to live it themselves. You’d think, with as much of an imagination as Lenora has, she could put herself in someone else’s place, but she doesn’t develop that kind of empathy until she sees what it’s like to deal with a person who completely lacks it.

If Lenora could have a creative outlet for her energies, getting her ideas out on paper, writing stories to share, or exploring her visions through art, her life would be different, and she probably would feel less frustration. The purpose of imagination and daydreaming are to let people explore concepts and consider different things that might happen, both good and bad, without acting anything out in the real world. It gives people a chance to think things through and consider what could happen without risking bad consequences from actually doing anything. I’m not a very adventurous person in real life. I don’t like camping or hiking, I’m afraid of heights, and there are things that I actually can’t do physically. But, I don’t mind vicariously experiencing things through stories, where I can have a safe kind of adventure. However, Lenora has that problem where, if she imagines things too hard, they become real. Her people call it a “gift”, and she doesn’t always see it as a problem, but it really is because it removes that important safety net between thinking and acting, and when Lenora’s darker thoughts take over, it poses a danger to everyone. Since Lenora has fantasy books that she likes to read, it does seem like her people have a sense of creative writing and the arts, and there are times when Lenora considers things that she could make real but doesn’t, so her people can apparently control their thoughts enough to pick and choose what to make real and what to leave as fiction. It seems that Lenora does have the option of writing stories as a creative outlet, but this craving for a sense of power and control and the ability to make some real change in the world are what keep Lenora from just writing fan fiction and tempt her to play with the nature of reality itself.

Spoiler:

The spoiler for this story is that Lenora’s greatest enemy is another version of herself, the dark version from the back of her mind who can’t be controlled, who doesn’t care about other people, and insists on getting everything his way. (Lenora’s dark version is a man, the idea being that this Lenora turned herself into something completely opposite to what she used to be in order to have a more powerful image.) What Lenora and Coren both need to find is the Balance that Lenora’s society tries so hard to maintain. She comes to have more respect for the people and worlds that she has created, seeing them as real beings with feelings instead of playthings to be cast aside when she becomes bored of them.

Coren also turns out to be a nice counterpart to Lenora. In the beginning, all he wants is a safe, stable, comfortable life in the real world instead of the world of imagination, where his parents live. In the end, he realizes that he needs to find a balance between the two himself. Although Lenora’s imagination is what gets them into trouble, he comes to realize that not all of what she created is bad. Lenora (and even her dark side) comes up with genuinely good ideas. Coren’s praticality and Lenora’s flair for adding a dash of excitement and color to life complement each other well, and in the end, they decide that they love each other. They would make good life partners because of their ability to bring out positive traits in each other and provide some balance to each other’s lives, but the book ends with them deciding that they want to get to know each other better before actually getting married, which is a practical thought.

Posted on by TracyC

The Ankle Grabber

The Ankle Grabber by Rose Impey, 1989.

This book is part of the Creepies series, where children have fun imagining monsters. The stories are about the power of imagination and the fun of being a little scared. Sometimes, even though the children know that they made up the monsters themselves, they also get scared of their creations. Books in this series can be good for talking to children about how their imaginations can run away with them and scare them, but I’d use caution when introducing them to very young children because they can make nervous children more nervous by feeding their imaginations. These books would probably be best for ages seven and up. Fortunately, even when the kids’ imaginations run away with them, the stories always end in reality, and the hero of this story is … Dad!

Every night, a little girl has her mother check her room for monsters, but no matter how well her mother searches for them, the girl is still terrified of the monster who lives in an invisible swamp under her bed. She calls this monster the Ankle Grabber because she believes that if she isn’t careful, the monster will reach out from under the bed and pull her down into the swamp by her ankles.

But, as is inevitable when you’ve got a monster under your bed, the girl realizes that she has to go to the bathroom. Getting in and out of bed without being caught by the Ankle Grabber is a tricky proposition. The girl tries to get into and out of bed by jumping so that she can avoid the monster.

When she misses her jump back into bed and lands on the floor, her father comes in to see what’s wrong. Her father has scared off monsters for the little girl before, so he sticks his head under the bed to scare off the Ankle Grabber, too.

Nothing is so scary that Dad can’t make it better!

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

Posted on by TracyC

My Sister the Witch

My Sister the Witch by Ellen Conford, 1995.

Norman Newman is convinced that his sister, Elaine, is a witch. When he goes to her room one evening to call her to dinner, he catches her all dressed in black and chanting strange words.

Norman likes to read horror and mystery books, and he uses some of the techniques that he has learned from reading his favorite mystery stories to investigate his sister. Some of these techniques don’t work as well for Norman as they do for the characters in his books, partly because he doesn’t really know how they work (like which end of a glass you’re supposed to put against a door when you’re trying to listen in on someone) and partly because the characters and situations in books are fictional and some of the things they do don’t work that well in real life.

Early in the story, Norman uses one of his scary stories for a book report for school, and his teacher tells him that she wants him to start to read other types of books. She makes him write an extra book report, telling him that he has a week to read something outside of his usual genre and report on it. That incident and some other pieces of bad luck cause Norman to think that maybe Elaine really is a witch and that she put a curse on him, just like a witch in the book he just read.

Norman’s friend, Milo, thinks that Norman’s imagination is just running away with him. It’s happened before because of the scary stories he reads. Once, he thought that their teacher might be an alien.

When Norman has a brief streak of good luck, he starts to think that whatever curse Elaine put on him may be over, but then, he gets sick to his stomach. He goes to the library to get a book for his new book report, and he also gets a non-fiction book about witches. Then, he overhears Elaine talking to her friend, Deirdre, about something being powerful and scaring Deirdre’s sister. The two of them begin chanting together. Norman decides that he was right about Elaine being a witch and that Deirdre must be a witch, too.

After some research, Norman and Milo learn that, to get rid of the effects of a magic spell, they need to learn the words to the spell and say it backwards. Norman doesn’t remember the whole spell from when he heard Elaine say it, so Milo says that he’ll just have to look for a copy of the spell in her room. The book they consult also says that a spell can be neutralized if the person it was cast on duplicates it, which means gathering all the materials used in the spell, but Norman doesn’t know where he would find things like newts’ eyes and frogs’ toes. Either way, it looks like Norman’s going to need a copy of Elaine’s spell. However, even when he gets it and tries to break the curse, things still go wrong. What can Norman do to get rid of this bad luck spell?

I particularly liked the character of Milo in the story. Milo uses a wheelchair because he was hit by a car when he was young and can’t walk. Norman notes that, although Milo can’t use his legs, he gets around very well in his wheelchair and that he has very strong arms. Milo is also more level-headed than Norman, pointing out to him how he has allowed his imagination to run away with him in the past.

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

Spoilers and Other Thoughts

I thought that the secret behind Elaine’s spell was pretty obvious from the beginning because the book repeatedly says that Elaine wants to be an actress. It reminded me of other stories I’ve seen where someone’s playacting was mistaken for some real life danger. Overall, I enjoyed the book, even though I figured out what was going on pretty quickly. Kids might be in suspense for longer.

By the end, Norman still hasn’t learned his lesson because the next scary story he reads leaves him looking at his dog suspiciously. There is at least one sequel to this story called Norman Newman and the Werewolf of Walnut Street.

Posted on by TracyC

The Vanishing Scarecrow

The Vanishing Scarecrow by Phyllis A. Whitney, 1971.

Joan Lang and her mother are moving from their town in Connecticut to Rainbow Island, where Joan’s Great Uncle Agate Benson owned his own amusement park. However, the move is sad because Great Uncle Agate’s death in a skiing accident has so closely followed Joan’s father’s death from a long illness. Joan and her mother knew that they were going to have to move to a smaller house because they could no longer afford their bigger one, and Uncle Agate’s sudden death means that they will inherit his house on Rainbow Island and the amusement park that goes with it. Joan and Uncle Agate had been writing letters to each other since her father’s death, and he made her feel less lonely, so Joan knows that she will miss him, but she is looking forward to seeing the amusement park that he had described to her.

However, the terms of Uncle Agate’s will are unusual, and his lawyer is vague on some aspects of them. What they know is that they must live at Rainbow Island and manage the amusement park for three years in order to gain full ownership. If they decide to leave before that time, Uncle Agate has another plan for the amusement park, but the lawyer refuses to tell them what it is immediately.

When they arrive at Rainbow Island, they meet Mrs. Fuller, who works at the amusement park’s gift shop and lives there with her two sons, Peter and Kent. Mrs. Fuller hopes that Kent and Joan will be friends because they’re close in age. Kent doesn’t seem particularly friendly at first, and when Joan confronts him about that, he says that he’s just trying to figure out what she and her mother are going to be like. Kent, like other people who live and work at Rainbow Island, was very attached to Uncle Agate. He appreciated his vision and imagination, and he misses him now that he’s gone. He has trouble believing that things will ever be like they were with Uncle Agate.

Mrs. Fuller and Kent both mention strange things that have been happening at the amusement park recently, including a scarecrow that frightened Mrs. Riddell, the wife of Wilson Riddell, who manages the park, but she says that she’d better let Mr. Riddell explain the situation. When Joan and her mother go to Uncle Agate’s old house to begin unpacking their things, Mr. Riddell comes to talk to them. He doesn’t seem particularly welcoming, either. Joan’s mother tries to ask him about the scarecrow incident, and he explains that someone, possibly a teenage prankster, has been pulling tricks around the park lately. Earlier that day, someone ran right through the Riddell house, terrifying Mrs. Riddell. Mrs. Riddell is described as being a very nervous person who is somewhat unwell, so Mr. Riddell seems uncertain whether his wife actually saw a person dressed as a scarecrow, as she described, or if that was her imagination. Earlier, she also claimed to see a witch. The idea of someone in a scarecrow costume is plausible because the amusement park includes a field of scarecrows, and they do have a spare scarecrow costume that they’ve used in the past to make it look like one of the scarecrows has come to life, to give guests a bit of a thrill. However, the employee who normally wears the costume hasn’t worn it for some time, and it seems like the recent scarecrow sightings are the work of a prankster.

As Kent shows Joan around the amusement park, they meet up with Peter in the Wizard’s Fortress, where he points out that someone has been messing around with the dioramas of historical scenes, moving some of the little figures around to scenes where they don’t belong. In the dungeon of the fortress, Joan meets up with Mr. Riddell’s daughter, Sheri, who is also about her age. Sheri has found the costume the scarecrow was wearing under some straw. Joan isn’t sure that she trusts Sheri because of the strange way she acts and how she seems to be sneaking around, keeping secrets, and playing weird pranks and tricks.

Could Sheri have something to do with the mysterious scarecrow, or could it be Emery Holt, the man who did odd jobs for Uncle Agate and sometimes wore the scarecrow costume as an act in the park? Another suspect could be Jud Millikin, an escaped convict who used to live in the area and who still has family living nearby. Joan and her mother hear people whispering about him, wondering if he might have come back to see his sick daughter, although people say it isn’t likely that he’d show his face in town since the police are looking for him. But why would he want to sabotage the Rainbow Island amusement park? Joan considers that there might be an answer closer to home when she learns that the Riddells and the Fullers don’t really get along, and there seems to be a silent power struggle between them for control of the park. Either of the families might want the other to leave, plus Joan and her mother, so they can be in charge.

Joan finds a message and an audio recording left behind by Uncle Agate for her, in which he seems to have had a premonition of his impending death and saying that the reason why he wants Joan and her mother to manage the park with Mr. Riddell is that the park needs someone with a fresh imagination to keep creating new exhibits and keep the park interesting for new generations of children. Joan wants to find out who is sabotaging the park and to keep Uncle Agate’s vision for the park alive, but her mother isn’t so sure that the situation is going to work for them.

Joan does have a fantastic imagination. She loves writing and making up stories, and she finds the atmosphere of the amusement park inspiring. However, Joan’s mother worries sometimes that Joan lives too much in her stories and doesn’t face up to reality enough. When Joan accuses her of not liking her stories, her mother says it’s not that, it’s just that writers also need a grounding in real life and the real world, and that it’s not good to use fantasies as a way of ignoring real life. She says that Uncle Agate was like that. Uncle Agate and his sister were orphaned from a young age, and while his sister was adopted by a family, Uncle Agate remained in the orphanage for the rest of his youth. When he grew up, he became successful in the toy industry, which was how he gained enough money and expertise to start his amusement park. However, Joan’s mother believes that much of what he did with the park was trying to live out childhood fantasies from his deprived youth and forget the hard realities of it. Joan’s mother says that she finds the real world outside of the amusement park more compelling, and she doesn’t want Joan to live too much in fantasy.

Joan is attracted to fantasy, but she’s realistic enough to know that there won’t be any hope for the park until she learns the true identity of the mysterious scarecrow that is trying to sabotage it. In the recorded message he left for Joan, Uncle Agate refers to a “right place” where Joan will find instructions that will tell her what to do. As Joan explores the the amusement park, familiarizing herself with the attractions and exhibits, she searches for the place that Uncle Agate referred to. Along the way, she has frightening encounters with someone dressed as a witch and the dangerous scarecrow among the regular figures in the exhibits.

My Reaction and Spoilers

The atmosphere of the story is great, and the author does a good job of making everyone Joan meets look like a potential villain or accomplice. All through the book, I kept changing my mind about who the real scarecrow was, and there are red herrings in the form of other people dressing up in costumes. Joan is never sure who to trust. There is a major twist toward the end of the book that turns the entire situation on its head. The rest of the ending after the scarecrow’s identity was revealed seemed a little abrupt to me, but the story has a good overall message.

At the beginning of the story, Joan does actually look at the amusement park on Rainbow Island as a kind of fantastic sanctuary from her problems, where she can escape from the sad loss of her father and uncle and the problems she’s been having at school. However, she learns that the amusement park isn’t really a sanctuary because it has problems of its own and the people associated with it also have their problems. However, these are problems that Joan is more motivated to solve because they are more exciting than her problems back home, and the stakes are high.

Joan and her mother have a frank discussion about facing up to life’s problems, and Joan points out that her mother’s impulse to run away from the park isn’t that different from her reluctance to face up to her problems with her schoolwork. Joan’s mother doesn’t find the park as interesting as Joan does, so she’s not as interested in trying to save it as Joan is. It’s similar to the way that Joan was unmotivated to work harder at school because it bored her, it was less imaginative than the creative writing she likes to do, and she was preoccupied with other major changes in her life. Joan’s mother acknowledges the truth of that, that it’s easier to try to solve a problem when you’re more motivated to work on it, and the two of them agree that, whatever else they do with their lives, they can’t just abandon the park without trying to catch the saboteur.

All of the characters in the story get new perspectives on their lives from this adventure, seeing how the park and their problems fit into a much bigger picture of life. Joan comes to understand that there are some problems that she’ll still have to face up to, like her school problems, no matter what else happens, and she sees that understanding the real problems that real people have is what will give her characters and stories greater depth.

Posted on by TracyC

The Most Wonderful Doll in the World

The Most Wonderful Doll in the World by Phyllis McGinley, 1950.

Dulcy is a little girl who is rarely satisfied by anything. She has a big imagination, and is always wishing for something better than what she has. Dulcy has an impressive collection of dolls, but even though she loves all of her dolls, she can’t help but think sometimes that some of them would look better with a different hair color or with different clothes or with some other small detail changed. No matter how good something is, it’s never completely perfect.

Then, one day, an elderly friend, Mrs. Primrose, gives Dulcy a doll named Angela. Dulcy likes Angela, although her immediate thought is that Angela would be even better if she had dark hair instead of blonde, finding a tiny fault as she always does. But, by accident, Dulcy loses Angela on the way home. She sets Angela’s box down when goes to help rake leaves into a bonfire, and when she goes to retrieve her, she can’t find her.

Once Angela is gone, Dulcy’s attitude changes. Dulcy is upset about the loss of Angela, realizing that Angela really was a precious and special doll. Her mother offers to get a replacement doll that looks like Angela, but Dulcy can’t imagine that any doll would be as special as Angela. As Dulcy describes the doll to her mother, she says that Angela was blonde with a blue dress and pinafore and eyes that could open and close. Those aren’t terribly unusual qualities for a doll, but Dulcy also adds that Angela had shoes with heels and could say “Mama” and “Papa” and sing Rockabye Baby. Those are more unusual, and Dulcy’s mother agrees that she probably won’t be able to find a doll that does all that.

However, readers soon begin to notice that Angela becomes increasingly wonderful each time that Dulcy describes her. When her father offers to buy her another doll, Dulcy adds that Angela could also walk and wave her hand. Dulcy tells her teacher about Angela’s little purse and gloves. She tells her friend Margery about Angela’s raincoat and umbrella.

The more Dulcy thinks about and talks about her wonderful doll, the less satisfied she is with her other dolls. None of them can compare to the amazing Angela! When her Aunt Tabitha gives her a skating doll, suddenly the missing Angela acquires the ability to skate as well. No doll that Dulcy has or ever could have could compare to the missing Angela!

Other children at school are fascinated by Dulcy’s descriptions of Angela and all of the marvelous things Angela had and Angela could do, which get more and more wonderful every time Dulcy tells the story. Then, people start getting tired of hearing about Angela. Dulcy’s friends don’t like hearing that their dolls aren’t as good as Angela, and people stop giving Dulcy dolls as presents because she always says that they’re not as good as Angela.

Then, one day, when Dulcy is playing with a new girl in the neighborhood, they find the box with the missing Angela. When Dulcy sees how the real Angela compares to the one that she dreamed about and imagined when she was lost, Dulcy comes to a greater understanding of the power of her imagination and the need to appreciate things being just the way they are.

Dulcy doesn’t completely give up imagining things and dreaming of perfection, but she does learn that part of growing up is remembering the difference between what she imagines and what is real. She realizes that when she was moping about the doll she didn’t have, she kept herself from having fun with the dolls she did have and discouraged people from giving her other nice dolls. Dulcy saves all the of the amazing qualities that she dreamed of for Angela and gives them to an imaginary doll called Veronica. Dulcy keeps Veronica as her perfect doll in her imagination, and she knows that Veronica is imaginary. As long as she can have her imaginary doll to be as amazing and perfect as she wants, she can be happy with her other dolls being just the way they are, and they make her happy, too.

The book is a Caldecott Medal winner. It is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Harold and the Purple Crayon

Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson, 1955.

Harold loves drawing things with his purple crayon. In fact, everything in the story is a creation of Harold’s, drawn with his purple crayon.

First, Harold decides that he wants to go for a walk in the moonlight. He draws a moon and a path that he can follow.

Along the way, he decides to draw a forest with an apple tree. However, he makes the mistake of drawing a dragon to guard the tree, and it frightens him.

Harold’s hand shakes, and he accidentally draws water and falls in. Fortunately, he also draws a boat and sails to a beach where he can have a picnic lunch.

After a series of adventures, Harold decides that he wants to go home, but he has trouble finding his home. He looks for his bedroom window, and then realizes that his window should look out on the moon, which is still in the sky.

After drawing his window and bed, Harold goes to sleep.

The story is rather surreal. We never see Harold’s real home or any other people who are not drawn by Harold. All we see in the story is Harold and the things he draws with his purple crayon. This is a story about the power of imagination, and at the end, we can only imagine Harold’s real life because we never see him return to it.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 4 Comments

Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, 1963.

One evening, Max puts on his wolf costume and starts causing trouble all over the house. His mother calls him a “wild thing” and sends him to bed early without supper.

As Max mopes in his room, a forest grows around him, and Max climbs into a boat and sails away.

Max eventually arrives at “the place where the wild things are.” There are all kinds of wild beasts and monsters there, and they make Max their king because he’s the wildest of them all.

After they all go parading about and swinging from trees, Max sends all the wild things to bed and is lonely because he wants to be with someone who loves him.

So, Max sails home again to have his supper, which is waiting for him, still hot.

Max’s magical journey is in his own head. Angry and hurt at being told off for his behavior, he imagined himself far away from where he was being punished, in a place where he could act any way he wanted and tell other people what to do. But, that wasn’t satisfying because what he really wants is to be loved and cared for. Wild monsters don’t get the kind of nurturing that small human boys get from their mothers, so there are benefits to being a civilized human. This is a classic children’s book about the power of a child’s imagination and how love and human feeling wins out over anger.

The book is a Caldecott Medal Winner. It’s available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Things to Do During Coronavirus

People are cooped up in their homes as communities around the world quarantine in an effort to slow the progress of the virus, both to prevent hospitals from becoming overrun with too many victims at once (although that’s happening already in some places) and in the hopes of a vaccine to prevent further illnesses (vaccines are being developed and tested in multiple locations, but from what I’ve heard, they aren’t likely to be widely available until sometime next year).

Personally, I’m been in something of an odd situation from the very beginning. Not odd in the sense that my life has changed weirdly. I mean odd in the sense that it hasn’t changed much at all. I take online classes, I work on personal websites and blogs, I volunteer for a local organization that helps teachers, but all of those activities involve my computer. Even my volunteer work is often done remotely. Basically, I’m accustomed to spending a lot of time in front of my computer or reading books. Now, I’m still sitting in front of my computer and reading books. Although my direct contact with the outside world (beyond the internet and my communications with friends in other places) is minimal, basically only what I need to do in order to get supplies and walk my dog, I still worry that I could end up getting the virus in spite of my precautions, but that’s the risk we all take, and others are in far more danger than I am right now. I learned a long time ago that it just isn’t possible to control everything that happens in your life, and I’ve arranged everything I can control as best I can, which is about as much as anybody can do right now.

I like to consider wider events in terms of terms of the books I’ve been reading. I talked about the coronavirus a bit in my reviews of Charlotte Sometimes (which takes place partly during the 1918 influenza pandemic, and I did that review before I knew that we were headed into a new pandemic) and Will It Be Okay? (which I couldn’t get pictures for because the local libraries are closed, but you can still read it online). So, I’ll be starting to cover some children’s activity books and adding some resources for helping people to carrying out the activities in the books. However, after some thought, I’ve decided to go further and create a list of resources, including websites and videos, not just books and sources of reading material, to help people keep busy while they’re sheltering at home during the pandemic.

I don’t really mind spending extended periods of time at home because I actually have many interests and hobbies, not to mention all the books I still want to read, and I never get enough time to do everything I want to do. I’m also a definite introvert, so a lot of what’s important to me happens in my head, and I appreciate relatively uninterrupted periods when I can develop ideas that I’ve been toying with in odd moments. Of course, this also often leads to more projects and hobby concepts than I will ever actually do. The more I read and think about stuff, the more things I think of that I want to try. It’s a vicious cycle. I don’t get bored very often; I get boggled, trying to decide what to work on next. So, for the benefit of those who don’t go through this process, I’m going to present a bunch of random ideas for things you can do at home that don’t require any usual materials or any particular skill. In fact, I’ve decided to start a new blog with some of my ideas.

In the meantime, here are a few things to help you stave off the boredom. I’ve grouped them by subject, and I’ve made notes about books that relate to some of them. Most of these activities are child-friendly, but not exclusively so. These are things that adults can do as well.

Places to Read Books for Free Online

All or most public libraries offer books online these days (provided that you have a card for that library), and Amazon offers some free public domain books for Kindle. However, there are other places where you can find books that you can simply read in your browser, some of which also have audio. I have a list of places where you can read books for free online on my Resources page. I’ll reprint the list here for easy reference:

Internet Archive

“A non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.”  It’s free to use, but it requires you to sign up for an account.  It has more than just public domain books.  Various organizations, such as libraries and book-selling companies, have donated scanned copies of many books and also various audio recordings, some software (such as old computer games), and other materials.  There is even help for users with print disabilities.  Patrons may borrow up to 5 items at a time, and books can be borrowed for up to 14 days, with the option to renew. When your time is up, the book simply disappears from your list of loans, so there are no late fees. You can also turn in books early if you’re done with them and want to get something else.  Patrons can also place holds on books which are currently being loaned.

Project Gutenberg

Provides free e-books of books that are in the public domain.  Some of the older vintage series described on my site are here. There is no need to sign up for an account. E-books are available in multiple formats.

Internet Sacred Text Archive

This is a collection of public domain works, especially those about religion and folklore. Most of it isn’t for children, but some of the folktales and fairy tales overlap with children’s literature. For example, they have a complete collection of the Lang Fairy Books (also known as the Color Fairy Books because of the titles). There is no need to sign up for an account, you can simply read the texts in the page.

Lit2Go

An online collection of public domain works by the University of South Florida. The description on the main page states:

“Lit2Go is a free online collection of stories and poems in Mp3 (audiobook) format. An abstract, citation, playing time, and word count are given for each of the passages. Many of the passages also have a related reading strategy identified. Each reading passage can also be downloaded as a PDF and printed for use as a read-along or as supplemental reading material for your classroom. “

The collection contains more than children’s literature and is free for the public to use. You can listen to the audio version of a book while reading the text version of a book in your browser at the same time. You can search for books by author, title, genre (broad categories such as mystery, adventure, fantasy, and horror), collection (shows specific topics such as African-American Literature, The Princess Collection for stories about princesses, or specific series such as the Oz books or the Lang Fairy Books), or reading difficulty according to the Flesch-Kincaid grade level system.

Writing for Fun

Writing can be a lot of fun, and writing really well requires practice and skill. However, you don’t have to be Shakespeare or Dickens to have fun with writing. Don’t worry about being a great writer, especially if you’re new to it. If you write at all, you’re a writer. The best way to learn is just to keep doing it and see what works and what doesn’t. Think of your craziest ideas and just get them out there! Put them on paper or on your computer

When you’ve written something that you want to share with other people, you could get a free online blog, possibly through WordPress (like my blog) or Blogger (through Gmail). There are also special sites to submit your writing online where it can be read by the public, reviewed, or sometimes, entered in contests.

Fanfiction.net – Exclusively for fan fiction. This means that people write their own stories based on characters and worlds that already exist in books, movies, tv series, and video games. Free to use, but requires you to set up an account.

Fictionpress.net – This is for original fiction, using original characters. Free to use, but requires you to set up an account.

Inkitt – Accepts a wide range of fiction, holds contests, and offers publishing deals for stories that get a lot of positive attention.

Writing When You Don’t Know What to Write About

Don’t worry about coming with a great idea, just start writing about something, anything, and see where it takes you. Good writing is creative and shows a strong voice, so you can start with a very basic topic and just allow your personality or your characters’ personalities to carry it from there.

Fan Fiction

If you don’t want to take the time to build characters or worlds for them right now, you could start by writing some fan fiction, which involves taking characters and situations from already-existing fiction and putting your own twists on them. For example, you could make up a new situation to happen on the Enterprise from Star Trek or a fictional planet for characters from Star Wars to visit. You could write a story that could happen to the characters from Harry Potter that occurs between their established adventures in the books, or you could play “what if” and write about how things could have gone differently if something from the original stories changed. For example, suppose that Harry’s father survived, even though his mother died protecting him? Or vice versa?

Imaginary Vacation

Travel for fun isn’t a particularly good idea right now because of the coronavirus, but I remember reading an article a long time ago about how planning a vacation can be very stress relieving, even if you don’t actually go. (I’d put the link there, but it was so long ago that I can’t remember where it was.) It’s a kind of mental vacation. In a way, I think mental vacations can be even better than actual vacations because you don’t have to worry about staying within your own personal budget, making your travel connections on time, or the availability of tickets and hotel reservation.

Just pick a destination and look up local sites and hotels. Plan an itinerary for yourself, and look up YouTube videos of sites in the area to get an idea of what they actually look like in person. Look up the history of the area for local flavor. You can even plan meals at the best restaurants in the area, whether you could normally afford to eat there or not.

You can expand on your dream vacation by turning it into a story, writing in romance or intrigue, or just file it all away as a vacation you’ll take some day, when you can.

Writing When You’re Just Really Bad at Writing

Don’t let that stop you. When you can’t write well, writing badly, and have fun doing it! As I said, you don’t have to be a great writer, you just need to keep on doing it, and that’s how you get better. Besides, if you think you’re just really awful at writing, have I got a writing contest for you! I just have one question: Can you be really bad at writing on purpose?

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest appeals to me not just because I like writing but because the aim of this contest is to write badly.  Specifically, you have to pretend that you are writing the first sentence to a very badly-written book, and the winner is the worst one.  There are quite a lot of contenders, which is how they have been able to publish books full of past entries. I covered one of these books on my other book blog.  The namesake of the contest is Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who has sometimes been credited with originating the hackneyed opening line “It was a dark and stormy night …” (although that expression had actually been around before Bulwer-Lytton used it).  This line was the inspiration for the contest and is part of the title of each compilation of past entries. Anybody can enter the contest, and you can submit as many horrible opening lines as you want. The only requirement is that your entries have to be one single sentence, but it can be a very long run-on sentence. I entered this contest myself about six times last year but didn’t win, which means that I’m either not bad enough at writing to win or not good enough to make myself sound really horrible on purpose. It’s a toss-up.

For inspiration, you can read past winning entries online. They’re pretty entertaining, and it’s fun to imagine what the rest of those stories would be like.

If All Else Fails

Write about your experiences during the coronavirus, even if it’s just a rant about your worries and the inconveniences of getting groceries and household supplies or staying at home with family members who drive you crazy. You’re living through a major historical event that is affecting the entire world right now. What you have to say about it will be of interest to people later, and if nothing else, getting your thoughts out will do you some good. If you need someone to rant to, go ahead and comment below. I rant regularly when I feel the need, and I don’t mind airing a few rants from others.

Posted on by TracyC

I Can Fly

I Can Fly by Ruth Krauss, 1950.

This is a cute Little Golden Book about a little girl playing.

As she plays, she compares herself to various animals. When she’s on her swing, she feels like she’s flying like a bird, and when she swims, she feels like a fish.

The story is told in rhyme, and in the back of the book, there is actually music so you can sing the rhyme as a song.

There are different printings of this book, some with different illustrations. The different versions also have different words, and it looks like the newer one includes both a boy and a girl and doesn’t have the music for the song. One of the newer versions is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Mystery in the Apple Orchard

Mystery in the Apple Orchard cover

Mystery in the Apple Orchard by Helen Fuller Orton, 1954.

Mystery in the Apple Orchard swing

Dee Waters (age nine), her brother Ronnie (age eleven), and the other neighborhood children enjoy playing in the nearby apple orchard. The orchard was planted by Dee and Ronnie’s grandfather, and the trees are all different types of apple. Sometimes, the children take a lunch with them and spend hours climbing trees and playing. They like to watch the animals there, like the squirrels and crows, running around and hiding things in the trees. There is also a swing hung in one of the trees.

The Waters’ housekeeper, Mrs. Brown, lives in the city and commutes to her job in the country. She also has a son, Timmy, and she’s been concerned about him. Timmy is recovering from a broken leg. The bullies in his neighborhood dared him to climb a tall pole, and he fell. Although Timmy’s been out of the hospital, he hasn’t been getting enough fresh air and time outdoors in the city because they don’t live near a park. Dee and Ronnie don’t know Timmy, but hearing that he’s been unwell, they suggest that Mrs. Brown bring him along the next time she comes so that they can show Timmy the apple orchard. The children’s mother thinks that’s a good idea and also urges Mrs. Brown to bring Timmy for a visit.

Timmy is a little younger than Dee and Ronnie, and he can’t play many games with the children yet because he still walks with a crutch and can’t run. Still, he is fascinated by the animals in the orchard and enjoys watching them. He doesn’t see many wild animals in the city.

Most of the other children in the area are nice to Timmy, but Gloria is a little bit of a snob. Ronnie finds Gloria annoying because she is so prissy and extra careful about her clothes, and on Timmy’s first day in the orchard, Gloria shows up with a ring that she says has a real diamond and a family. The other children don’t believe her at first because it would be silly to wear an old, valuable ring to an apple orchard, especially when it looks so loose on her finger. Ronnie warns her that it could get lost, but Gloria tells him to mind his own business. She also tries to cheat when they play hide-and-seek, asking Timmy to tell her where everyone is because he can’t play the game anyway. Timmy refuses to help her cheat, and Gloria leaves in a huff. Because this is a mystery story, you can see where this is probably leading.

Mystery in the Apple Orchard play ticket desk

When Timmy comes the next time, the children decide to pretend that they’re going on trips by airplanes, with the trees in the orchard representing the planes. Timmy is sad that he can’t climb with the others, so they make him the ticket agent in the airport. Gloria shows up again, still with her diamond ring, and the other children again warn her that she could lose it in the orchard. Gloria says that’s impossible because she tied it to her finger, and she shows the the string. (What was it they said about the Titanic being unsinkable?)

Naturally, the ring gets in the way while Gloria is playing with the others, catching on a twig in a tree. They have to untie the string to get her loose. The other children tell Gloria to put the ring somewhere safe while she plays, suggesting that Timmy the ticket agent could watch it. However, Gloria decides to put the ring on a stone near the old well that has been filled in. (Considering that there are small animals in the orchard that happen to like shiny things, this was not the best decision.)

Mystery in the Apple Orchard digging

Sure enough, by the time Gloria comes down from her tree and her imaginary flight to Paris, her ring is gone. Naturally, Gloria is upset and admits that she was wearing the ring without her mother’s permission. (Gloria likes to show off.) She accuses one of the other children of taking the ring. Timmy seems like the most logical suspect, since he was on the ground while the others were in the trees, but he denies it, saying that he closed his eyes so he could imagine a flight, like the others were doing. Dee suggests that an animal could have taken the ring. Earlier, a chipmunk carried off the piece of string. On the other hand, crows also like shiny things. Could the crow have swooped down and carried it away?

Gloria still insists that Timmy took the ring, and she threatens to tell her mother that he stole it. Can the others find the ring before Timmy is labeled as a thief?

It take awhile for the other children to find Gloria’s ring, and because they failed to find it with the animals right away, some readers might wonder whether a human was responsible for taking. However, the mystery itself is very simple and wouldn’t really surprise anyone but young children. In the end, though, the important point is that Timmy is so motivated to find the ring and clear his name that he finds the courage to climb a tree again. He has healed from his broken leg more than even he thought he had. Before coming to the country, the doctor had told him that he could stop using his crutch, but he hesitated to do that because he was so afraid of re-injuring himself. Once he gets the courage to try not using his crutch, he discovers that he can also do many other things, although he does freeze up when trying to come back down the tree and needs the help of a couple of telephone linesmen to get back down. The linesmen tell him that it’s okay and that God has smiled on him for helping him to improve and do what he needed to do. Timmy is reassured by the discovery that he can do more than he thought he could, and his mother and Mrs. Waters decide that the Browns should move to the country permanently so that Mrs. Brown won’t have to commute to work and Timmy can have more fresh air, playing with the other children in the apple orchard.

This book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.