Posted on by TracyC

Aliens for Breakfast

Aliens for Breakfast by Stephanie Spinner and Jonathan Etra, 1988.

This is the first book in the Aliens for Breakfast Trilogy, a short, easy chapter book series for elementary school children.

There’s a new student in Richard Bickerstaff’s class at school called Dorf. In spite of his strange name, Dorf is a good-looking blond boy with an irresistible smile. Everyone in class admires him and imitates him. Even Richard finds himself admiring Dorf’s clothes and wishing that he could wear the same thing, even his stupid bowling shirt. Then, when Richard sits down to breakfast one morning before school, he learns something startling about Dorf that changes everything.

Richard’s mother gives him a sample of Alien Crisp that came in the mail. She thinks that Richard will love it because of his love of science fiction, but right away, he can tell that this is no ordinary cereal. When he pours milk on the cereal, it comes to life! Actually, he has revived a small alien called Aric, who was sent to Earth from another planet in freeze-dried form in the cereal. Aric is a Commander of the Interspace Brigade, and he’s here to stop an alien invasion on Earth. His target is Dorf.

Dorf is no ordinary boy. He’s an alien in disguise and a dangerous one. His type of alien multiplies, and if that happens, Earth is doomed! There’s only one thing that can stop Dorf … and Aric has forgotten what it is. Being freeze-dried for the trip to Earth has scrambled his memory, but he knows that the weapon they need is an ordinary type of food from Earth.

While Aric struggles to remember what that secret weapon is, Dorf’s hold over Richard’s friends and teachers becomes stronger. Everyone is charmed by Dorft, and everyone wants to do whatever Dorf does. Only Richard resists, and that identifies him to Dorf as an enemy.

Dorf uses his powers to make Richard start dissolving. If Aric doesn’t remember that secret weapon soon, both Richard and Earth are history!

My Reaction

I remember reading this when I was in elementary school, although I forgot most of the story. I remembered the alien arriving in the cereal box, like those little toys we used to get in cereal as kids. I also remembered that he was under threat somehow and that Aric told him that he hoped he didn’t have big plans for the weekend, with the implication that, if they don’t do something, he won’t make it to the weekend.

There’s a lot of humor in the story. I was alarmed at how Richard’s fingertips start bleeding when the dissolving begins. That part sounds a little scary. He bleeds rather than starting to fade out, and I had forgotten about that part in the story. However, there is humor in the story that helps to soften it, and the solution is a simple one that works right away.

The story has some references to real life science fiction, like Yoda from Star Wars and the starship Enterprise from Star Trek.

Posted on by TracyC

A Walk in Wolf Wood

A Walk in Wolf Wood by Mary Stewart, 1980.

John and Margaret Begbie are traveling with their parents through Germany, and the family stops to have a picnic in the Black Forest. From their picnic spot, they can see the old castle on the hill that they visited earlier that day. The children’s parents doze off after lunch, but the children stay awake and see a strange man. The man walks by their picnic spot wearing an old velvet costume and a dagger in his belt, and the children see that he’s crying. The kids worry about the man because he seems so deeply distressed. They decide to leave a note for their parents and follow the man to be sure that he’s alright.

As they go after the man, they spot what looks like the tracks of a large dog, but the man didn’t have a dog with him. The kids realize that these are actually wolf tracks, and John remembers that their father told them that this area is called Wolfenwald, which means Wolf Wood. Then, they find the man’s gold medallion lying on the ground. Going a little further, they find an old cottage. The cottage looks abandoned, but they decide to explore around it anyway, just in case the man went inside. No one answers their knocks on the door, but they see the man’s clothes on the bed inside the house. They decide to leave the medallion with the man’s clothes and go back to their parents, but they suddenly notice that it has become night, and when they try to leave the cottage, they are confronted by a large wolf!

John frightens the wolf away by flinging the medallion at it. When the wolf is gone, the children decide that they have no choice but to risk going through the woods in the dark to find their parents. However, when they arrive at the picnic spot again, their parents aren’t there. The children find the note they left and a bar of chocolate. They eat the chocolate and lie down to wait for their parents to return for them, but the next thing they know, they are woken by the sound of a horn and the horses of a group of hunters. The hunters are pursuing the wolf. When they wave down one of the horsemen, he offers them a coin to tell him where the wolf is. Margaret points the man in the wrong direction to get the hunters off the trail of the wolf. The children aren’t really sure whether it’s a real wolf or just a dog that resembles one, but Margaret has the sense that the wolf needs their help.

The children also need help. They notice that the horsemen are dressed strangely, like people out of the past, and the coin that the man gave them is stamped with the year 1342 although it looks new. Even more strangely, the children suddenly realize that they understood what the man said even though neither of them can speak German. Is this is a dream, or have they gone back in time?

Not knowing what else to do, they decide to return to the cottage and see if the man who owns the medallion is there and can explain things. The man does have an explanation. He explains that he was the wolf. The man, whose name is Mardian, is a werewolf, and Margaret saved his life when she diverted the hunters. Mardian says that he and his family served the dukes who have ruled this land, and he and the current duke grew up together and were best friends for years. However, after suffering a terrible injury at the hands of an enemy and losing his wife, Duke Otho became a changed man, angry and bitter. In a fit of temper, he even accused Mardian of plotting against him. A real enemy in Otho’s circle, an enchanter called Almeric, used Otho’s suspicions to try to eliminate Mardian. When his plots to kill Mardian failed, Almeric used sorcery to turn him into a werewolf. Now, Alermic has promised a reward to the hunter who kills the wolf, and in the meantime, he has disguised himself as Mardian and taken his place in the duke’s castle. So far, the duke hasn’t even noticed that Mardian has been replaced by an imposter. Mardian believes that Alermic will use his position to kill both the duke and his young son so he can take the dukedom for himself. Can the children help Mardian expose the imposter and break the spell?

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

My Reaction

In order to reach the duke and get his help to expose the imposter, the children must disguise themselves as other children from this time period and join in the life of the duke’s castle. Mardian gives them a plausible cover story, in case anyone asks them who they are. They carry off the charade very well, and there are so many people and children in the castle that two more aren’t questioned. John is even mistaken for another boy, called Lionel. John doesn’t know who or where the real Lionel is, although he theorizes that the real Lionel might have died young because many children of this time period did. While real-life castles were full of many different types of people of all ages, I do find it a little difficult to believe that so few people are surprised by children who suddenly appear without any introduction. There does seem to be the implication that people do come and go from this castle, making it difficult to keep track of everyone.

Margaret and John also experience the different expectations people of this time have for girls and boys. John is immediately put to work as a servant, waiting on the noblemen of the duke’s court as a page along with the sons of the nobles. He also has to dodge the rough games that the other boys play that are meant to prepare them for war. On the other hand, Margaret is taken to the nurseries with the other young girls of the castle and lectured about how she should be quiet and modest. The girls are much more closely supervised than the boys, although she finds a way of slipping away from the others to meet with John.

I liked some of the descriptions of the Medieval food in the book. At one point, Margaret thinks she’s eating turkey (a bird native to the Americas and not found in Europe during this time period), but John tells her that it’s actually swan and peacock, birds which were eaten around this time. There are a few instances where alcohol is mentioned because people during this time period drink wine and small beer. The duke also insists that a boy bring him his favorite posset, a drink I discussed in my earlier review of the The Box of Delights.

Posted on by TracyC

Father’s Arcane Daughter

Father’s Arcane Daughter by E.L. Konigsburg, 1976.

Winston Carmichael lives a very sheltered life during the 1950s. His family is wealthy. They live in Pittsburgh, and he attends a good school, but much of his free time is also taken up trying to entertain his sister, Hilary, called Heidi. He particularly has to look after Heidi every week on Thursday, while his mother leaves to get her hair done. Heidi has some developmental disabilities and is hard of hearing, so Winston’s overprotective family is especially overprotective of her. Because of that and because of her frustrations with her own limitations, Heidi is spoiled and frequently acts out when she doesn’t get her way, making her a pain for Winston to help care for. Even servants have often quit over Heidi’s behavior. However, Heidi’s disabilities are only part of the reason why the children’s parents are overprotective. The other reason is the mysterious disappearance of Caroline, Winston and Heidi’s much-older half sister, from their father’s first marriage. Winston is aware that Caroline was kidnapped years before he was born and is now presumed dead, a traumatic incident in their family. Then, one day, a woman claiming to be Caroline comes to the house to see their father.

The story is actually told in the form of flashbacks as Winston recounts it to a woman, who is at first unnamed. Winston explains how he knew about Caroline’s disappearance and how he wanted to know more about this mysterious woman claiming to be Caroline, partly in the hopes of reducing the shadow that Caroline’s disappearance has cast on all of their lives. The children’s father tells them the story of how Caroline was kidnapped 17 years earlier on her way home from the exclusive college that she was attending in Philadelphia. The kidnappers demanded a large ransom in cash, and it took longer than they thought for Mr. Carmichael to assemble that amount of cash because rich people don’t have all of their money in cash and getting large amounts of cash attracts attention from the authorities. Then, the ransom drop went badly and turned into a shootout between the police and the kidnappers at the house where the kidnappers were hiding. At some point, the house caught fire (no one is quite sure what started the fire), and everyone inside the house was killed. At the time, they assumed that Caroline was one of the people who was killed in the fire, but Mr. Carmichael was never sure because the kidnappers had said something earlier about moving Caroline. He always hoped that maybe Caroline wasn’t in the house and somehow survived, but having heard nothing from her for years, it has seemed likely that she died. After Caroline’s presumed death, her despondent mother died of alcohol-related causes. Mr. Carmichael remarried, and he and his new wife had Winston and Heidi. Still, Mr. Carmichael always hoped that maybe Caroline was alive and he would find her one day.

Caroline’s sudden reappearance, although happy for her father, is strange, and Mrs. Carmichael is suspicious that this woman’s real purpose is to claim the inheritance that Caroline was supposed to inherit from her mother’s family. The deadline for claiming the inheritance is approaching, so the woman claiming to be Caroline could be an imposter who is just after the money. Winston studies his mother’s scrapbook, containing all the known details of Caroline’s life, and he comes to understand his father and his family a little better. Caroline becomes more of a real person in his mind, not just a shadowy figure from the past, but he’s still not sure if the woman claiming to be Caroline is the real Caroline.

“Caroline’s” story is that she was rescued from her kidnapping situation by one of the kidnappers, who apparently had a change of heart, but that she had a kind of identity crisis and a sudden realization that she didn’t know who she wanted to be or what she really wanted out of life. She changed her name to Martha Sedgewick, using information given to her about a dead woman by the kidnapper who released her, and went to Ethiopia. There, she taught English for a time and then worked as a nurse. She says that she found it a very liberating experience. Winston, who feels trapped in his stifling, sheltered life understands that feeling. Caroline said that she fell in love for a time but never married the man she loved because there was a war and he died.

Caroline says that when she finally returned to the United States, she found a job as a nurse at the nursing home where her Grandmother Adkins was living. Caroline says that, at first, she wanted to see her grandmother again and get her opinion about whether or not to reveal herself to the rest of the family. However, Grandmother Adkins was senile when she finally saw her, and Caroline merely acted at her caregiver. Mrs. Carmichael thinks this is suspicious and continually quizzes “Caroline” about old acquaintances, trying to catch her slipping up and revealing herself as an imposter. Surprisingly, “Caroline” never seems to slip, and Winston finds himself becoming fond of her. Caroline has had a wide experience of life and is very well read, and she is a very interesting person to talk to. Winston blossoms intellectually under her influence.

I particularly liked the part where Winston realizes that many of his relatives have given him books to read as presents that they have never read themselves. They like to give him books that have a reputation for being “good” books, and it seems like the proper thing to do and something that will enhance their own reputations, but they never actually read the books themselves and can’t talk about them. Caroline hasn’t read all the books that have been deemed “good”, the kind that people read in order to become educated or have a reputation for being educated. However, Winston can tell by talking to Caroline that she has done a great deal of general reading just because she has a curiosity and a desire to know things. She has become a much more knowledgeable person than the people who collect all the “right” sort of books just to have them and never even open them. Many people in the Carmichael family are largely about appearance, but Caroline has substance.

However, Caroline’s presence in the house makes things uncomfortable for the family, not only because of their doubts about her true identity, but because she challenges the life the family is living and the habits they take for granted. Even though some of those habits have been making life uncomfortable for them, the changes that Caroline subtly begins to make also make them uncomfortable by bringing them out of their shells and forcing them to confront things that they have been trying not to confront. For example, Heidi is never scolded for bad habits like snatching things from others’ plates at dinner because she is young and has disabilities. Caroline doesn’t make those allowances, freely telling the family that she doesn’t like it.

Eventually, Caroline’s father is satisfied that she is his daughter and grants her the Adkins’ inheritance, although at his wife’s insistence, there is a proviso that the fortune will revert to the Carmichaels if any evidence surfaces in the future that Caroline isn’t the real Caroline. Caroline accepts those terms, but a battle of of personalities and wills still continues between her and Mrs. Carmichael over the children. Caroline insists that Winston be allowed more freedom, pointing out that Mrs. Carmichael has been using him as an unpaid babysitter while she goes to get her hair done every week. Caroline recognizes that Winston is young and needs to have some freedom and fun, and Mrs. Carmichael is pained that Caroline has caught on to the fact that her hair appointments are also a convenient excuse to get some freedom for herself.

At Christmas, Winston feels sorry for Heidi, watching other people at the family’s Christmas party, but not being able to understand what is being said around her, and knowing that she can’t understand them. On impulse, he gives her the book of poetry that he had intended to give Caroline. To his surprise, she really likes it. He knows that she can read, but he never thought of her as having the mental capacity to understand anything really complex because of her babyish behavior and fits when she doesn’t get her way on something. However, Heidi really does understand the poems and is able to read them to Caroline and tell her what they mean. At first, Winston refuses to believe it, jealous of the attention and coddling that Heidi has always received and not wanting to share Caroline and the intellectual discussions they have with Heidi.

Heidi continues to listen to their discussions and follow them as best she can. Gradually, in their company, Winston notices that her behavior begins to normalize and more of her true intelligence shows, although she reverts to her old habits around their mother. Hilary/Heidi has always been underestimated by her family because of her disabilities as well as being overprotected. Under Caroline’s influence, she learns that she is capable of more than anyone, including herself, believed possible.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Carmichael still distrusts Caroline, and in her determination to protect Heidi from her influence, will not allow her to spend time with her anymore. Caroline tells Winston that she is tired of all the Carmichaels’ pretenses, the way they try to ignore the real issues with Heidi, and she gives him an envelope, which she says will provide Winston with all the evidence he needs to decide whether she’s the real Caroline or not. Winston has to decide which is more important to him, learning whether the Caroline he knows (or thinks he does) is a pretense or accepting the realities of his family’s problems and the help Caroline can offer in learning to deal with them.

There is also a movie version of the book called Caroline? I saw the movie before I read the book, but I’ll explain the difference between the two below because it involves some spoilers.

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

Themes, Spoilers, and My Opinions

The everyone in the story, even the children, speak in a very educated and deep-thinking way, which I found interesting. At first, I thought that the children, especially Winston, should speak a little more colloquially, but then, I decided that it’s really right for him to speak in a more erudite way because of the school he attends and because much of the story emphasizes that he has been very sheltered and largely cut off from forming the sort of childhood friendships that children his age have, so he would probably use much less slang than most kids his age.

During the story, Winston is in the habit of thinking of Heidi by insulting terms, like “troglodyte”, because she is strange and awkward and her weird habits and temperamental fits cause problems for him, like preventing him from bringing friends to the house. At a couple of points, he thinks of her as a “golliwog”, which is an insulting racial term, based on a style of old dolls that look like black-faced minstrels, and later, even Heidi describes herself that way. (The term was actually coined in an old children’s book, where one of these dolls comes to life with some other toys. The doll character was actually a nice character, but since the dolls are considered ugly, its meaning has become an insult.) Winston doesn’t mean that in the racial sense here. He’s trying to convey that Heidi has an awkward, abnormal appearance.

As Winston opens up to Caroline, he finally admits to her that he knows that Heidi is “damaged”, not “special.” In other words, he understands that Heidi has disabilities and that she has been deliberately spoiled by their mother who wants to protect her from having to deal with them. Their mother herself has trouble facing the realities of Heidi’s disabilities and is actually ashamed of her daughter for not being normal, so she tries to ignore them, covering them up with cuteness, pretty dresses, presents, and indulgence. Heidi’s babyish behavior early in the story is not because her mind is infantile, but because of the coddling and overprotection she has received and poor socialization, and also because her family is afraid to face the difficulties that lie ahead for her because of her condition and underrates her capacity to do what other children can do and learn what they learn. It’s true that Heidi has some physical disabilities from birth, and she needs a hearing aid to help her hear (she reads lips up until the point that Caroline insists on her getting a hearing aid) and braces to help correct the way she walks, but her mind is excellent. Through Caroline’s attempts to help her, Heidi herself comes to realize how limited her life has been and the potential she has to expand it if she gets the help she really needs to learn how, and she eventually stands up to insist on what she wants for herself, asking her brother to kidnap her and take her to Caroline to get the help she needs and wants. Caroline acknowledges to Heidi, without being ashamed of her or trying to hide the truth, that she is not “normal” and never will be completely normal, but tells her that if she’s willing to work at it, she can realize her true potential in life, and ultimately, that’s what Heidi wants.

The movie followed the themes of the book very well, showing the effect that Caroline has on the lives of the Carmichaels, helping Hilary/Heidi to realize her true potential, helping her parents to realize what she is capable of and what she needs to make the best use of her real talents, and helping Winston to find his own sense of independence. There are some differences. In the movie, for example, Caroline wasn’t kidnapped. Supposedly, she was killed in a plane crash, although her body was never positively identified, and there was some doubt in her family about whether or not she got on the plane. In the movie, Caroline gives a similar story about feeling the need to go out and find herself, but I think she says that she became a nurse in India, not Ethiopia. (It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie.)

One thing I am grateful for is that both the book and the movie do give a definite answer to the question of whether “Caroline” is the real Caroline or not. I’m often frustrated with movies and stories that leave loose ends like that, like Disney’s Candleshoe, where they never completely establish whether Casey/Margaret is really Margaret.

When Hilary/Heidi decides that she wants the help of Caroline and a friend of hers, who is a doctor, she asks Winston not to open the envelope. Winston keeps it sealed for years, but Hilary (who long since dropped her childhood nickname) is the women he’s talking to when he’s telling the story from his perspective, and at the end, they decide to open the envelope together and find out the truth.

Do you want to know the truth about Caroline?

The Real Spoilers

So, is Caroline actually Caroline, the same Caroline who was kidnapped and evidently killed years before? No, actually she’s not. She really is Martha Sedgewick, the identity that she supposedly took when she said that she was going off to find herself in Ethiopia. However, she is not posing as Caroline for the sake of the inheritance; she’s doing it for the sake of the family and the children. Grandmother Adkins put her up to it.

Martha really was a nurse in the nursing home where Grandmother Adkins lived before her death. She had lived in Ethiopia with her parents, who had died, and so had the man she loved, as she had said before. She had returned to the United States, alone, lonely, and depressed, before getting a job at the nursing home. Grandmother Adkins noticed her striking resemblance to Caroline, and in her confused stated of mind, sometimes thought that she was Caroline. She talked to Martha about the family all the time, which is how she knew all the right details for playing the part of Caroline. Grandmother Adkins knew that if Caroline never returned to claim her inheritance from her mother, that money would pass to Mr. Carmichael, and by extension to his new wife, whom Grandmother Adkins detested. Toward the end of her life, Grandmother Adkins urges Martha to go claim the Adkins inheritance as Caroline – revealing that, in spite of her supposed senility, she has been deliberately coaching Martha to be Caroline for that purpose. Martha decides to go through with the pretense, not because it was Grandmother Adkins’ dying wish or because she really wanted the money, but because she saw Mr. Carmichael at the funeral and was touched by how sad and lonely he looked. Martha didn’t have a family, so she decided to give Mr. Carmichael his daughter back.

In the end, she actually developed romantic feelings for Mr. Carmichael, but she could never admit to them because of their established relationship as father and daughter. Mr. Carmichael might have felt the same way, but he also couldn’t admit to those feelings without destroying the pretense that Martha was his daughter and admitting that Caroline was really dead. Martha came to love the children, and since she realized that they would never be her stepchildren, she did her best to be their big sister.

Miss Trollope, Caroline’s old headmistress, figures out the truth, and “Caroline” openly discusses the situation with her, including her desire to return to college and learn to educate children with disabilities, like Hilary. The real Caroline’s grades were never good enough to attend a university, but Miss Trollope approves of what “Caroline” wants to do and the good she is doing for the Carmichael children, so she does nothing to reveal the pretense or hinder Caroline’s education. However, Miss Trollope later admitted the truth to Hilary when she pressed her for answers.

The reason why Hilary and Winston are discussing this situation and telling the story in the book is that “Caroline” has just died. Hilary is now a business executive, and Winston is a writer. Hilary is a decisive person as well as intelligent, and she decides to put the papers proving Martha/Caroline’s true identity in her coffin, under her head, to be buried with her. Winston says that Hilary is mysterious and arcane, providing the title of the book. Caroline’s life was hidden and arcane, but Hilary’s true depths are also hidden and arcane because of the person she is.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Aliens Don’t Wear Braces

The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids

#7 Aliens Don’t Wear Braces by Debbie Dadey and Marcia Thornton Jones, 1993.

One day, while Mrs. Jeepers’ class is getting ready to take a science test, they hear a strange sound, and the lights mysteriously flicker.  Eddie tries to ask Howie what’s going on, but Mrs. Jeepers sends him to the principal’s office for talking during a test. 

In the office, things are chaotic because the art teacher, Mr. Gibson, is missing, and the second grade teacher is there with her students, asking where the art teacher is.  Eddie meets a strange, pale woman with long, white hair and braces on her teeth.  She says that her name is Mrs. Zork and that she is there to apply for a teaching job.  The principal asks her if she can teach art, and she says that art is her specialty, so the principal hires her as an emergency replacement for the art teacher.  The principal is relieved that a substitute was so handy, but Eddie thinks that it’s a creepy coincidence.

When Mrs. Jeepers takes her class to the art teacher, she is also surprised that Mr. Gibson is gone and questions Mrs. Zork about it.  Mrs. Jeepers says that she saw Mr. Gibson only that morning, and Mrs. Zork tells her that he “had to leave . . . unexpectedly.”  Mrs. Jeepers tells her class to behave for the substitute, but she also seems somewhat suspicious of Mrs. Zork.

Mrs. Zork ignores Mr. Gibson’s previous lesson about totem poles and starts teaching the children pottery.  She seems confused by ordinary expressions, like “you’re all thumbs” and “This place is a zoo.”  When Mrs. Zork escorts Liza to the nurse for a nose bleed, the kids make other discoveries.  A jar of green paint has suddenly turned white, and Mrs. Zork has an old newspaper clipping about a UFO and a star map with a course plotted on it.  Howie, whose father works for the Federal Aeronautics Technology Station, suspects that Mrs. Zork might be an alien.

The kids spy on Mrs. Zork while they’re at recess.  They see her watching a cartoon show on tv, and suddenly, all of the color drains out of it.  It could have been because there was something wrong with the tv, but the kids notice that Mrs. Zork’s braces flash pink afterward, and her hair starts to look more blonde and her cheeks more pink.  Worse still, after Mrs. Zork admires Mrs. Jeepers’ green brooch, suddenly the brooch (as well as Mrs. Jeepers’ hair and eyes) loses some of its color and no longer works in its usual magical way.  Eddie sees it as an opportunity to goof off, and Mrs. Jeepers seems alarmed and leaves the room abruptly.

The children are worried about Mrs. Jeepers, and they can’t help but notice how the art room is looking increasingly drained of color while their new art teacher is getting more and more colorful.  It becomes more and more obvious to Howie that Mrs. Zork is stealing colors from Earth!

This is one of the books where the kids get the most proof of their suspicions, actually seeing Mrs. Zork’s spaceship in her garage.  Even so, Howie’s father doesn’t believe him when he tries to explain the situation to him.  Mrs. Zork tries to convince the children that the spaceship is actually her pottery kiln.  The kids know that somehow, they have to get their colors back to help Mrs. Jeepers and get rid of Mrs. Zork!  Mrs. Jeepers may be creepy, but at least she doesn’t steal colors or give them eternal math problems, like Principal Davis.

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Haunted Hall

The Partridge Family

PFHauntedHall#2 The Haunted Hall by Michael Avallone, 1970.

The Partridge Family will be performing at the Larkland Rock Festival, which is great because, not only was their presence specially requested by the governor of the state, but Laurie will get the chance to meet her crush, fellow rock singer Jerry Jingo.  There is a catch, though.  Instead of arranging for the family to stay in a hotel, Reuben has rented an old mansion outside of town for them. 

Shirley isn’t thrilled about the accommodations because it sounds like a lot of extra work with no one to do the cooking and cleaning for them, but Reuben promises that he will arrange for a housekeeper, cook, and chauffer.  When Shirley asks Reuben about the owner of the house, Reuben says that the owner, J. Watterson Trumbull, doesn’t live there.  In fact, he is currently living in a sanitarium because he’s an incurable firebug.  That bit of disturbing news doesn’t daunt Shirley, though.  Reuben finally wins her over to the idea of staying in this nice, old mansion, and she even starts thinking that it might be fun.

Unfortunately, due to a mix-up at Reuben’s office, there are no servants waiting for the Partridge Family when they arrive at the Turnbull mansion.  The only person they find there is a young man named Duke, who says that he is the caretaker.  When Shirley asks him if Reuben contacted him about the family staying there, he says that he hasn’t heard anything from anyone because the phone is out.  However, he welcomes the Partridges in.  There aren’t many provisions at the house, so they make do with some canned soup for dinner.  There are plenty of beds, and bedding, though.  Laurie thinks that Duke is handsome, but the house is creepy.  She says that it reminds her of the Collins House from the Dark Shadows tv show.  Duke tells the family more about the house’s firebug owner and that the house is called Satan Hall (a detail which Reuben had not mentioned before).

All in Satan Hall is not what it seems.  On their first night there, Laurie hears crazy laughter coming from somewhere.  Duke is also not what he appears to be.  It’s soon revealed that he is not the caretaker, but he and his friends are rock music fans, squatting in what they thought was an abandoned house while they were on their way to the rock festival.  They’re worried about the family discovering the truth.  Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the people in the house, J. Watterson Turnbull has escaped from the sanitarium and is on his way home to stage what he hopes will be his biggest fire yet!

This story, while somewhat spooky, isn’t quite as mysterious as some of the other mysteries in this series because the reader ends up knowing the truth about Duke and that Turnbull has escaped before the Partridge Family figures it out.  Really, I thought that Duke and his friends didn’t behave very realistically.  When the Partridges moved into the house, most of Duke’s friends hid upstairs, in the attic, while he covered for them as the “caretaker.”  However, being rock fans on their way to the very festival where the Partridges would be performing and realizing that the Partridges were in need of help, I’m surprised that he didn’t just explain their circumstances, that they were looking for a place to stay and just happened to seek shelter there, and maybe apply for a job working for the Partridges during their stay.  It would have been a fairly easy way to earn a little extra cash doing some household chores or running errands for the family, it would have justified their stay in the house, and they would have gotten to brag about staying in a mansion with a rock group.  Instead, they try to hide and be mysterious.

However, the youths hiding in the attic are not responsible for some of the other strange things about the house.  Besides being a firebug, Turnbull also created some special illusions in different rooms in order to give guests a scare.  Before the end of the story, Turnbull does burn down the mansions (something he ends up regretting, although fortunately, no one gets hurt).  However, he does develop a new interest in music, which the sanitarium hopes will help take his mind off of fire.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 6 Comments

Mystery of the Silent Friends

SilentFriendsMystery of the Silent Friends by Robin Gottlieb, 1964.

Nina Martin loves her father’s antique store. Although selling antiques is how her family makes their living, there are some that Nina finds it difficult to let go of when someone wants to buy them. Nina especially doesn’t want her father to sell the two automatons that she calls Henri and Henriette. The automatons are beautiful mechanical dolls that each do something special. Nina calls the boy doll “Henri” because he writes the name “Henri Bourdon” on a piece of paper. (Her father points out that it might be the name of the maker, not the doll itself.) The girl doll, Henriette, is a little more complicated and draws a series of different pictures. Most of the pictures seem to be of a little Swiss village, although one of them is oddly of a monkey that looks like the “speak no evil” monkey in the saying “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.”

SilentFriendsAutomatonsFor a time, it seems like there’s no risk of the automatons being sold because no one seems particularly interested in buying them. Then, suddenly, two different men come to the shop and ask to buy the dolls. Weirdly, each of them tells the same story to Nina’s father: that their name is George Ballantine the Third, that their family once owned the automatons, that the dolls are actually part of a set of three, that they own the third doll (a girl doll that plays the spinet), and that they want to purchase the other two in order to reunite the set. Nina’s father is bewildered by these two men with identical stories and identical names and refuses to sell the automatons because of his daughter’s attachment to them and because he doesn’t know which of the two men to believe and doesn’t trust either of them.

Nina comes to think of the two men as “Red Ballantine” and “Brown Ballantine” because of their different hair colors. Brown Ballantine seems to be the more credible of the two. He invites Mr. Martin and Nina to his home in order to show them the third automaton and, hopefully, persuade Mr. Martin to sell him the other two. They visit Brown Ballantine’s apartment in an old brownstone, and he shows them the beautiful, spinet-playing doll as well as the rest of his collection of mechanical toys. However, Mr. Martin still refuses to make the sale.

SilentFriendsMechanicalToys

Nina tells her friend, Muffin, about the two mysterious Ballantines. The two girls are curious about which of the men is the genuine George Ballantine the Third and decide to investigate. When “Red Ballantine” comes to the shop again, trying to persuade Mr. Martin to sell the automatons, the girls ask if he would consider showing them the automaton he owns as a test. At first, the red-haired man is hesitant, but then he agrees that they can come and see his doll. Mr. Martin is embarrassed at the girls’ forwardness in asking, but he admits that he is also curious about the two Ballantines.

SilentFriendsSpyingAt first, they all expect that Red Ballantine won’t be able to show them the third doll and will give up trying to buy the other two, but to their astonishment, he takes them to the same apartment where Brown Ballantine said that he lived and shows them the exact same doll they saw before. Instead of clearing things up, the identities of the two men seem to get all the more confusing. However, Muffin notices something strange about the tune that the doll plays on the spinet that gives them a clue as to why the three dolls are so important.  Later, someone breaks into the antique store and uncovers a hidden secret about Henri as well.

Together, the three automatons are hiding a secret, and only by considering the message that each of them offers can the girls discover what it is.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.  There is also a sequel to this book called Secret of the Unicorn, which involves a secret message hidden in a tapestry.

My Reaction

Although I was pretty sure which of the two Ballantines was the genuine one, I was never completely sure until almost the end.  In a way, I was a little disappointed by the dolls’ final secret because I though it was something that was especially old, from when the dolls were first created, but the secret messages were actually a more recent addition to the dolls’ repertoire by an eccentric man with a treasure to hide and a taste for practical jokes and riddles.  Muffin is a habitual practical joker, and that partly figures into the solution of the mystery.

I thought it was kind of interesting, too, that Mr. Martin has the habit of walking around with a cigarette in his mouth that he never lights, like Inspector Cramer in the Nero Wolfe mysteries.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Mysterious Visitor

Trixie Belden

tbvisitor#4 The Mysterious Visitor by Julie Campbell, 1954.

Now that school has started again, Trixie and Honey see more of the other kids who live in Sleepyside, including a girl named Diana Lynch. Trixie has known Diana for a long time, but ever since her father made a lot of money, Diana has been distant.

Di is deeply unhappy because her parents, particularly her mother, have been trying to live up to their new status by having the household run by fussy servants who don’t care much for children. Diana always has to wear formal clothes, she doesn’t get to play with her younger siblings as much, and she finds it increasingly hard to just relax and have fun with friends.

When Honey and Trixie invite Diana to become a member of the Bob-Whites, she tells them about her long-lost uncle who has recently come to visit her family. Her mother is happy about finally meeting the brother she has not seen since she was a baby, but Uncle Monty has been making Di’s life miserable. Whenever she makes plans to have a Halloween party or do things with friends, he tries his best to interfere and ruin everything. Uncle Monty is rude and offends people. Trixie is convinced that Di’s Uncle Monty is not what he seems to be, but she’s not sure how to prove it.

I love the description of the Halloween party that the kids have at Diana’s house!

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.