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Roxaboxen

Roxaboxen

Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran, illustrated by Barbara Cooney, 1991.

This story is based on reminiscences from the author’s family about the games they and their friends played when they were children in Yuma, Arizona. The section in the back about the author and illustrator explains a little about it. The author was born in 1933. Her Aunt Frances (one of the children named in the story) was 80 years old when the creators of the book were writing the story and drawing the pictures, so she was born around 1910. That means that the children in the story probably made up their imaginary town and played in it in during the late 1910s and into the early 1920s. The clothes that the children wear in the pictures appear to be from around that time as well (some of the girls have dresses with dropped waists, and some of the children wear sailor-style outfits).

One of the great things about this book is the power of imagination. Readers are not only taken back in time to someone’s remembered childhood, but to the place that the children invented: a town that both isn’t there but yet always is because of the imaginations of the children who once played there.  The pictures in this book are beautiful!

RoxaboxenDesertBeginning

A group of neighborhood friends living in a small town in Arizona play games on the edge of the desert. They make a town of their own from stones and old boxes and other things they find, naming it Roxaboxen. Marian, one of the oldest children, names the town and becomes its mayor.

RoxaboxenMayor

Using stones, the children outline the streets, houses, and shops of their town. They sell things to each other, using little black stones for money, and decorate their “houses” with old bottles and bits of broken glass in different colors. Using other things they find, the kids pretend that they have cars and horses. There are rules against speeding in their “cars”, so they also appoint a policeman and create a “jail.” Sometimes, they have “wars”, boys against girls.

RoxaboxenHorses

Time passes, but the children continue to play in Roxaboxen year after year, adding to the town and its lore. Even years later, when they’ve grown up and have moved to other places, Roxaboxen still lives in their minds. In a way, they said that their imaginary town always existed, just waiting for those with the imagination to see it, and through the story and illustrations in the book, it now draws in those who read about it but have never seen it themselves.

RoxaboxenOcotillo

Another great thing about the book is the sense of freedom that the children have. Many modern children wouldn’t be able to go out on the edges of their town and build something for themselves in the same way that the children in the story did. Although, in the freedom of their own minds and their own backyards, maybe some kids are building their own Roxaboxens as we speak.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including one in Spanish and a video reading).

RoxaboxenFrances
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The Mysteries of Harris Burdick

HarrisBurdick

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg, 1984.

Harris Burdick isn’t exactly a mystery story, not even really a story exactly, but it is mysterious.  Most of the book is pictures, and that’s kind of the point.  The premise of the book is that a mysterious stranger known only as Harris Burdick approached a publisher about some stories that he had written and illustrated.  As examples of his work, he gave the publisher a collection of illustrations he had done for each of his stories with accompanying captions.  The publisher loved the illustrations, but Harris Burdick didn’t keep his appointment to bring in the complete stories the next day.  When the publisher tried to contact him about the stories, he was never able to find Harris Burdick and never heard from him again.  However, the publisher continued to be intrigued by the pictures and wondered what the stories were like, so his children and their friends wrote their own stories about them.  The pictures are therefore presented as a collection, and readers are invited to imagine the stories that they are part of.

HarrisBurdickAnotherPlace

I remember one of my teachers using this book as part of a writing exercise, having us each choose a picture and write the accompanying story as we imagined it.  Over the years, I’ve changed my mind about which picture is my favorite.

HarrisBurdickLibrary

I thought for awhile that “The House on Maple Street” could have inspired the author himself in writing Zathura, the sequel to his other book, Jumanji, although there is apparently no direct link between the two.

HarrisBurdickHouse

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.  There is also a collection of stories called The Chronicles of Harris Burdick in which well-known authors present their own versions of each of the stories.

HarrisBurdickVenice

Posted on by TracyC

The Egypt Game

EgyptGame

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, 1967.

EgyptGameGirlsApril Hall has come to live with her grandmother (the mother of her deceased father) because her actress mother is touring with a band as a singer.  April’s mother isn’t a big star, although April likes to brag about her and their Hollywood life.  Really, her mother is mostly a vocalist who occasionally gets parts as an extra, hoping for that big break.  April is sure that when her mother gets back from her tour, she will send for her, and they will live together in Hollywood again. Although, from the way her grandmother behaves, it seems as though April may have to prepare herself for living with her for the long term.  April resents her grandmother’s apparent belief that her mother has dumped her because she is unwilling or unable to take care of her.

April is homesick and misses her mother.  To hide her feelings, she tries to act grown-up and ultra-sophisticated, which makes most people regard her as a little weird.  In spite of that, she makes friends with a girl named Melanie, who lives in a nearby apartment and sees through April’s act to her insecurity and creative side.  April has never had many friends (partly because of her mother’s chaotic lifestyle), but Melanie appreciates April’s imagination.  The two girls realize that they both like playing games of pretend and they both have a fascination with Ancient Egypt.  They go to the library and read everything they can find about Egypt, and it sparks the best game from pretend they’ve ever played.  Along with a few other friends, they start pretending to be Ancient Egyptians, building their own Egyptian “temple” and holding rituals in the old junk yard behind a nearby antique shop.

On Halloween night, the adults try to keep the children together in groups for safety, but the “Egyptians” sneak off alone to conduct one of their “rituals.”  It’s a dangerous thing to do because a child has been murdered in their area.  A young girl who was apparently abducted was later found dead, and people are frightened that other children could be in danger.  Fortunately, the only thing that happens on Halloween is that the Egyptians recruit a couple of new members when some boys from school find out what they’re doing.

However, the game starts taking on a life of its own when it seems that some other, unknown person has also joined in.  As part of their game, the children make up a new ritual and write messages to their “oracle,” asking questions that they want answered. To their surprise, someone starts writing replies.  Whoever is playing oracle and answering their questions, it doesn’t seem to be a child.

EgyptGameRitual

EgyptGameCostumesThe children are uneasy about this unexpected game player because frightening things are happening in their neighborhood.  The kids wonder if the mysterious messages could be from the crazed killer who murdered the young girl. People have been looking suspiciously at the loner who owns the antique store, an older man who everyone calls the Professor.  However, the kids have become too enmeshed in the Egypt game to give it up in spite of their fears.

When April slips out one night to retrieve a text book she left in “Egypt,” she comes frighteningly close to being the killer’s next victim.

This is a Newbery Honor Book.  It is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).  There is a sequel called The Gypsy Game.

My Reaction

Although there are mysteries in the story (who killed the girl and who the unknown player of the Egypt game is), the development of the characters, especially April, is really at the heart of the story.  All through the story, what April wants most is for her mother to come for her and take her home again.  April fears that her mother doesn’t love her or want her, and at first, that keeps her from even trying to love the grandmother who took her in and really wants her.  However, she finds comfort when she realizes that she is creating a new life with her grandmother and friends, who really care about her.  Her mother does write to her later about coming to stay for a brief visit with her and her new husband (her acting manager, who she married on short notice without even telling April or inviting her to come to their wedding), but by then, April has started to feel at home in her new home and wants to share Christmas with the people who have been sharing in her life and adventures more than her mother has.  She never even tells her mother about her brush with death.

EgyptGameChristmas

The characters in the book are diverse, representing different racial backgrounds, ages, and family situations.  Melanie and her younger brother are African American.  Melanie understands more about human nature and how the world works than April does, partly because her mother talks to her about people and explains things.  Melanie realizes from the way that April behaves and how she doesn’t understand certain things, like the fact that there disturbed, dangerous people in the world, that her mother never really talked to her much or explained things when they were living together.  Melanie helps to ground April’s more flighty, insecure personality.  She joins in her imagination games eagerly, but she also helps to bring April more into sync with reality and other people.

The first new player they add to the game, Elizabeth, is Asian and lives with her widowed mother and other siblings.  Like April, she is a little lonely and looking for new friends in her new home.  Each of the kids, like April, have their own inner lives and personalities.  The Egypt game binds them together and provides them with friendship and insights into their lives.

Posted on by TracyC

Susan’s Magic

SusansMagicSusan’s Magic by Nan Hayden Agle, 1973.

Susan Prescott believes in magic, although her mother tries to tell her that it’s all imagination.  Susan gets feelings about things and sometimes seems to have the ability to make things work the way she wants them to.  That’s part of the reason why she can believe that old Mrs. Gaffney is really a witch.  People say that Mrs. Gaffney used to be a fortune teller but had to stop when one of her predictions became frightening true and people got scared of her.  Now, Mrs. Gaffney runs an antique shop, living in a small apartment above it.  But, whether Mrs. Gaffney is really a witch or not, Susan’s life soon becomes entangled with hers through a series of unforeseen events.

Susan lives with her mother, who is a practical, down-to-earth woman, and her older brother Mike, who likes to play football.  Her parents are divorced, and her father lives in another state, only visiting occasionally, often at unpredictable times.  Susan’s father is known for not being very dependable, and he apparently left the family to be with another woman, although the story doesn’t provide many details.  Susan misses her father and is hurt by his absence, lack of dependability, and that he is more interested in being with someone else, somewhere else, instead of with her, her mother, and her brother.

The story begins when Susan sets out one day to buy a present for her mother’s birthday, and another girl she knows from school tells her to have a look at the flea market being held that day at a church.  Susan doesn’t have much money, and even most of the used items at the flea market are beyond her small savings.  Then, she foolishly spends what little money she has on cupcakes and lemonade.  Susan is angry with herself for her  foolishness, but her mistake leads her to greater adventures.

SusansMagicPic1One of the things at the sale which especially captures Susan’s attention is a small stuffed toy elephant.  The elephant is very worn, and Susan feels sorry for him, wanting to take him home and take care of him.  However, her money is gone, and she still has no present for her mother.  Then Mrs. Gaffney spots her looking sad and offers to lend her the 25 cents she would need to buy the elephant.  Although Susan has reservations about accepting such a loan, she does anyway, telling Mrs. Gaffney that she’ll pay her back.

Susan brings the elephant, which she names Trunko, home, and when her mother thinks that Susan meant to give it to her for her birthday, she doesn’t correct her although she has become very attached to him herself.  Her mother, sensing Susan’s attachment to the toy, says that they can share it and that Susan can sleep with it.  Susan thinks this is a good arrangement until someone calls the house to say that the toy elephant was donated by mistake and that the original owner is sad and wants it back.

At first, Susan can’t bear the thought of giving up Trunko. But when she learns that the real owner is Hugo, a member of her brother’s football team, that he has had the toy ever since he was small, and that he really misses it, she realizes that she has to let him have it back.  To thank Susan for giving him back Trunko (originally named Stanley), Hugo gives Susan a stray cat that had been living under his porch.  Susan loves the cat immediately and names her Sereena.

However, Susan’s mother says that they can’t keep the cat because the hill nearby is a bird sanctuary.  Susan tries to persuade her mother otherwise, but she says that they’ll just have to find another home for Sereena.  Susan tries to get an older girl from school to look after the cat for awhile while she tries to persuade her mother to let her keep her, but the other girl refuses.  Then, unexpectedly, the cat runs into Mrs. Gaffney’s shop as Susan is walking past it.

In Mrs. Gaffney’s shop, Susan accidentally breaks a teapot, increasing her debt to Mrs. Gaffney.  However, Mrs. Gaffney turns out to be a cat lover and agrees to look after Sereena for Susan.  This is the beginning of a new relationship between Susan and Mrs. Gaffney as Susan offers to work for her in order to pay off her debt.  Mrs. Gaffney could use some help in her shop because sales haven’t been good, and she’s worried about losing it.

Sereena herself turns out to be good for Mrs. Gaffney’s shop, attracting customers’ attention to the items for sale.  Susan feels jealous about how much Sereena likes Mrs. Gaffney and her shop, as if Sereena has abandoned her like her father and Trunko have.  But, when a beautiful dollhouse in Mrs. Gaffney’s shop catches her eye and it turns out to be even more valuable than Mrs. Gaffney believed it was at first, Susan has to decide whether she is willing to give it up to help Mrs. Gaffney earn enough money to fix up her shop or if she will hold Mrs. Gaffney to her earlier promise to sell it to her for much less.

SusansMagicPic2In spite of the talk about magic and witches, this is not a fantasy story at all.  Susan’s concept of magic has more to do with a way of living, dealing with change, and solving life’s problems.  For the first part of the book, Susan’s “magic” focuses on getting what she wants for herself and getting things to work out the way she wants them to.  But, as the book goes on, Susan matures in the way she deals with the complications in her life.

Toward the end of the book, Susan thinks about reality and fantasy: “The magic part of living was how you fit yourself around real things, she guessed.  A magician was extra good at fitting. That’s why being one was important.”  What Susan really wants and the kind of person she wants to be change.  She comes to realize that, while she can’t get and keep everything she wants in life in the sense that it’s always with her all the time, caring about people and things is also a kind of ownership.  Giving up the toy elephant and sharing the cat with Mrs. Gaffney do not mean losing them completely because she still cares about them and the people connected with them.

Susan also realizes that, even if she doesn’t get exactly what she wants in the beginning, as long as things work out for the people she cares about, she can still be happy.  Although she has to make sacrifices at times for the people she cares about, she earns the love and respect of the people who mean the most to her.  Susan says, “Anyway, magicians don’t lose. They win. Dad, Trunko, and Sereena are mine still in a way.”  She will always be close to her mother and brother, even without her father’s presence, and Hugo, Mrs. Gaffney, and Sereena are all her friends.  Susan is a winner not because she gets what she wants for herself but because she knows how to make things work out in the best possible way for everyone she cares about, and that’s a kind of magic.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

In some ways, this story reminds me a little of the Miyazki movie Whisper of the Heart, which also features a young girl who likes making up stories and who is led to an antique store by a friendly cat and meets an older person who helps her to learn about the person she wants to be and the kind of life she wants to live.  The two stories are not the same, though, and Whisper of the Heart was based on Japanese manga, not this book.  In some ways, however, both this book and Whisper of the Heart are the kind of stories that take on a new life when you read them as an adult because, at that point, you understand some of the feelings behind them better.

Posted on by TracyC

Jumble Joan

jumblejoanJumble Joan by Rose Impey, 1989.

A boy and his friend, Mick, take his little sister upstairs to explore their grandmother’s attic one evening.  The boys are hoping to scare the girl by telling her all sorts of creepy stories about the stuff they find in the attic, but if they’re scaring anyone, it might just be themselves.

A rocking horse becomes one of the dreaded “Ten O’Clock Horses” that might drag a child off into the night if she isn’t in bed on time.  An old stuffed parrot in a cage becomes “The Deadly Vampire Bat”, waiting to suck their blood.  But, the most sinister creature of all might be “Jumble Joan”, who hides by pretending to be a pile of old clothes, ready to steal away any little girls who might want to play dress up in their grandmother’s attic!

Although the brother narrates the story, the pictures show that his little sister knows exactly what the boys are trying to do, and she does things to turn the situation around.

This is one of the books in the Creepies Series.  Kids under the age of seven might find stories in this series a little scary because they focus on how stories about monsters can build in the imagination, even if you know that you made them up yourself.  Still, all of the books have good endings, and this one is pretty funny.

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Flat Man

flatmanThe Flat Man by Rose Impey, 1988.

Before Slender Man, there was . . . The Flat Man!  And he wasn’t quite as scary. As far as I know, there is no connection between the two fictional characters other than a similarity in name.  Still, the Creepies Series, while picture books, should probably only be given to children no younger than seven who like scary stories.  They might provoke nightmares in very young children and sensitive children.  I liked these stories as a kid for their imagination, but individual tastes may vary.

Like all the books in the Creepies series, The Flat Man features a child who enjoys being a little scared and makes up his own imaginary monster to battle with at bedtime.  The entire time, the boy knows that the monster is imaginary and prides himself on knowing just how to deal with him.

While lying in bed one night, the boy imagines the scary creature called the Flat Man for the fun of it.  He amuses himself with imagining that every sound he hears is the Flat Man, a paper-thin creature that can sneak in anywhere, squeeze himself through any crack. But, the Flat Man has weaknesses: he’s afraid of light and open spaces. The boy acts out his duel with the imaginary Flat Man, enjoying his triumph . . . right up until his father comes in to find out what’s going on.

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

My Reaction

Even though his imaginary creature is frightening, the boy enjoys it, comes up with his own solution for defeating it, and acts out a triumphant battle with it. Those who don’t mind a bit of spookiness will appreciate the boy’s imagination and may giggle at how he gets a bit carried away with his fantasy.

Posted on by TracyC

The Dastardly Murder of Dirty Pete

DirtyPeteThe Dastardly Murder of Dirty Pete by Eth Clifford, 1981.

Mary Rose Onetree is starting to think that her father really likes her younger sister, Jo-Beth, better than her.  Her father seems to like Jo-Beth’s dramatic flights of fancy, and he likes to say things to make her laugh.  Mary Rose, on the other hand, is the sensible, practical one, and her father keeps getting irritated with her advice, especially when she frequently turns out to be right.

On their latest car trip, going to visit their Grandmother Onetree on the West Coast, Mary Rose warns her father not to leave the main road (something that he loves to do because he’s a newspaper man and can’t help being curious), and he does so anyway.  Mary Rose warns him that she can’t even find this little side road on the map, but when he sees the sign that says, “Inn of the Whispering Ghost on Skull Valley Road.  Two miles right at the first crossroad ahead,” nothing can stop him from going further to investigate.

DirtyPetePicHarry Onetree and the girls find a ghost town with a hotel, an opera house, and several other buildings.  Although Harry only means to look around for a little while, he forgets to set his parking brake (something else Mary Rose warns him about, which he ignores), and their car rolls backward into a ditch.  Since it’s getting dark, they’re stranded in the ghost town for the night.  But, they’re not alone there.

They find some food in the hotel’s kitchen, and one of the chairs is warm, as if someone had just been sitting there.  In an old newspaper at the hotel, they read about Sorehead Jones, who murdered the hotel owner, Dirty Pete, back in 1905 in order to get his hidden treasure of gold.  But, Dirty Pete wounded Sorehead before his death, and Sorehead died shortly after, swearing that he’d seen the ghost of Dirty Pete.  Supposedly, Sorehead is also a ghost who wanders through the town whispering, “Where is the gold?”

Could the ghost be the mysterious person in the hotel?  But, why would a ghost need food?  Then, Harry realizes something about the town that changes everything, but they still need to confront the whispering ghost before they can leave.

The solution to this one concerns the difference between fantasy and reality, and the lengths that someone might go to in order to make someone else happy.  Mary Rose also comes to realize how much her father really loves her.

This is part of the Mary Rose and Jo-Beth Mysteries series.  It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.