This is the fourth book in The Dark is Rising Sequence, and it picks up not long after the previous book ends.
Will Stanton has been very ill with hepatitis, and the doctor ask advised his parents to send him somewhere to rest for a while and recover his strength. In the previous book, his sister Mary had gone to stay with relatives in Wales after she had the mumps, so his parents agree to send him there. Even after he recovers, Will has a nagging feeling that he’s forgotten something very important. What he’s forgotten are the clues that he and his friends discovered at the end of the previous book, but little by little, they come back to him.
Will calls his relatives Aunt Gem and Uncle David, but really, they’re distant cousins. On his way to stay with them on their farm, Will sees a mountain that locals call “the Grey King”, which begins bringing back Will’s memory of the clues to the next item of power that he and his friends are supposed to find. An encounter with a strange dog with silvery eyes brings back the rest of Will’s memory, reminding him that he is the youngest of the Old Ones and it is his mission to find a magical harp in Wales.
The owner of the dog is an albino boy named Bran, who surprisingly knows the clues that Will had been struggling to remember. Bran reveals that Merriman visited him before Will arrived, told him to keep an eye out for Will and help him, and taught him the first part of the clue rhyme as a show that he can be trusted. The boys talk about what the clues in the rhyme mean. Will is supposed to find the harp on “the Day of the Dead”, which Will thinks means Halloween and which is coming soon, but he’s confused because the rhyme also refers to the end of the year. Bran says that Halloween might have once been regarded as the time of the New Year (which is true, and I discussed it in the History section of my Halloween Ideas site), and the two of them discuss some old traditions and superstitions about Halloween.
On Halloween, Bran and Will go into the mountains, and Will’s knowledge and abilities are tested before they are given the harp. Yet, Will is not the one to play it because he doesn’t know how. Bran is the harper. He also seems to have a strange connection to one of the lords who guarded the harp in the mountains. On the way down, the boys have a frightening encounter with a fox who has been killing sheep in the area, but weirdly, nobody else else can see the fox but the boys. A disagreeable farmer shoots poor Bran’s brave dog because he thinks that the dog is the one killing the sheep, and Bran is inconsolable. (I hate books where the dog dies.)
However, their work is not yet done. Will has to use what he’s learned from Bran about playing the harp to wake the Sleepers, who will aid the Light in the upcoming battle against the Dark. Bran also comes to learn his true identity and that of his mother. Although he is not one of the Old Ones, Bran is special and will play a pivotal role in the battle between Light and Dark.
The book is a Newbery Medal winner. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Spoilers
Even though this book is the Newbery Medal winner in the series, I didn’t like it as well as the earlier books. It’s partly because the dog Cafall dies, and I always hate books where the dog dies. I love dogs, and also, I realize that it’s often a cheap way to give readers and emotional wrench, to kill off a beloved animal. Also, I missed the familiar characters from the earlier books. The Drew children are not in this story, and even Merriman doesn’t play much of a role. For most of the story, Will is alone, although he does make an important friend in Bran, whose past is more mysterious than most people know.
Although, Cafall also represents one of the innocent sacrifices in the name of the battle between good and evil. Bran is angry at Cafall’s death and says that neither he nor his dog were part of Will’s battle or quest, and it wasn’t fair for them to be dragged into it or for Cafall to be killed. He’s partly right, although he is actually much closer to the center of this battle than he knows. Another character in the book talks to Will about the apparent callousness of the Light for those who end up being sacrificed in the struggle. Will’s answer is that some things cannot be helped. They might want to protect everyone and make things work out well for everyone, but circumstances don’t always make it possible, and there are times when trying to save someone or make someone happy could cause something else to happen that would be worse for everyone. I’m not completely satisfied with that explanation because, in this particular instance, I don’t see why this sacrifice was necessary and I feel like it could have been avoided, like I felt that another tragedy in The Dark is Rising could have been avoided. I suppose the principle that avoiding one sort of bad thing could lead to something worse could be true, but I just don’t feel it in these stories.
I was more convinced and intrigued by the concept of people who aid the dark without knowing that they’re doing it. In the previous book in the series, the author addressed the idea of neutral parties in the struggle between good and evil, but this book introduces the idea of ignorant or deluded people who do bad things without realizing. In the story, they aren’t regarded as true agents of the Dark because they haven’t consciously joined the Dark side and don’t even know that there’s any Light/Dark struggle happening around them, but they are doing what the Dark wants them to do and hurting people and the cause of the Light either because they are being tricked and manipulated into doing it or because they have some other motive that allows them to do bad things because they don’t care as much about the concept of good and evil as much as accomplishing their own goal.
In this case, the unwitting helper of the dark is the farmer who shot Bran’s dog. He genuinely did think that the dog was killing his sheep, so he thought that he was just protecting his property by killing the dog. That could be seen as a good motive gone astray, but when Bran’s real history is revealed, it is also revealed that the farmer also has darker motives for his bad behavior that he has been trying to keep hidden. It’s not just about protecting his sheep but also his resentment against Bran and Bran’s father, so he enjoyed hurting them by killing their dog. The farmer’s resentment goes back to when Bran’s mother, Guinevere, brought him out of the past to be raised by his adoptive father in the 20th century. Bran’s real father is King Arthur, but by the time Bran was born, Guinevere had already betrayed Arthur and feared that he would reject his son because of what she did. She wanted Bran to grow up in a safe place, away from his parents’ struggles. At her request, Merlin (which is Merriman Lyon’s real identity), brought her forward in time to the 20th century to find a new home for Bran. Bran’s adoptive father is a good man, and Guinevere knew that her son would be safe with him. He loved her in return and wanted her to stay and marry him, but Guinevere knew she couldn’t stay, so she left secretly, leaving Bran behind. Her departure might have been hastened because the farmer was jealous of Bran’s adoptive father for having Guinevere. Although he didn’t know Guinevere’s true identity, she was a beautiful woman, and the farmer wanted her for himself. He apparently tried to attack her or maybe even force himself on her, and he was fought off by Bran’s adoptive father and a friend of his. Although the farmer is a married man, he still harbors possessive feelings about Bran’s absent mother and resentment toward the men who stopped him from taking her. By extension, he also resents Bran. In the end, he is driven mad by his obsessions and his manipulation by the forces of the Dark.
The day before his eleventh birthday on Midwinter, Will Stanton has an uneasy feeling that something is about to happen. First, the rabbits that his family keep behave oddly. Then, other animals seem to be afraid of him when they never have before. When he and his brother James go to pick up some hay from Mr. Dawson, Mr. Dawson makes an odd comment about “the Walker” being abroad and that it’s going to be a bad night. Then, Mr. Dawson says that he has something for Will for his birthday. He gives Will an odd iron ornament and tells him to keep it safe and not talk about it with other people. Everything about this day seems odd to Will, but he accepts this unusual gift.
That night, Will has an increasing sense of terror, and a rook apparently breaks the skylight in his room during a snow storm. The next day, Will can’t seem to wake up his sleeping family. He puts on warm clothes and leaves the house with a strange feeling that this is somehow his destiny. Things in the area look different, as if he is now in a different time, sometime in the past. Eventually, he sees a man he knows who works for Mr. Dawson, John Smith. John Smith is working on horseshoes for a black horse that belongs to a mysterious stranger in a dark cloak. The mysterious stranger offers him food and a ride on his horse, but Will refuses both. The stranger gives him an uneasy feeling, and without really knowing why, Will says that he is looking for “the Walker.” The cloaked stranger tells him that “the Rider is abroad” and tries to grab him, but John Smith pulls him out of the way, and the stranger is angry. John Smith tells Will that he is just newly woken and will have to figure things out for himself but to trust his instincts today. A beautiful white horse appears, and John Smith says that Will can ride it, if he wants, but Will’s instincts tell him that he needs to go on alone. As he leaves, Will sees John Smith giving the white mare shoes that look like the iron ornament that Mr. Dawson gave him.
As he explores the countryside further, Will encounters a wandering tramp that he saw attacked by rooks the day before and confronts him as being “the Walker.” The Walker is defensive and suspicious, and he asks Will to show him “the Sign.” Will realizes that he must mean the iron ornament that he now wears on his belt, but before he can show it to the Walker, the Rider comes and frightens the Walker away. The Rider sees his Sign and comments that Will only has one of them so far, and that won’t help him much. Fortunately, the white mare comes and carries Will away from the Rider.
The white mare carries Will away into the hills, he has a sensation like he’s falling, and then, he finds himself alone in the snow near a pair of carved wooden doors that appear to be standing by themselves, attached to nothing. Will pushes on the doors and finds himself in what seems to be a great hall, hung with tapestries. There is an old woman and a tall man standing by the fireplace, and they greet him. Will tries to ask them about the doors and why they seem to be standing by themselves, but the doors have vanished behind him. The man says that Will’s first lesson is that nothing is what it seems to be.
The man introduces himself as Merriman Lyon (introduced in the previous book in the series), and he says that he and Will were born with the same gift, the power of the Old Ones. Now that it’s Will’s eleventh birthday, his gift is awakening, but he must learn how to control it. At first, Will doesn’t think that he has any particular gift, so Merriman shows him how he can receive mental pictures from someone else’s mind and send them a mental picture and how he can even put out a fire with his mind. Will becomes convinced that he does indeed have powers that normal boys don’t have. Merriman tells him that this gift is a burden, like many special gifts, but he was born with this gift for a special purpose.
Merriman says that he doesn’t want to tell him too much yet because the full knowledge of his destiny may be dangerous for him while he is still learning to use his gift. However, he does tell Will that he is actually one of the Old Ones, the first of his kind to be born in the last 500 years, and he will be the very last of them. Like other Old Ones, he will play a role in the battle between good and evil. His first role is that of the Sign-Seeker. He must find the six Signs and guard them. The iron ornament is the first Sign, but the others won’t be as easy to find.
Will returns to his family and his ordinary life, buying Christmas presents for his siblings for the coming holiday, but he knows that his life is no longer ordinary. He has much to learn about how to use his powers, and the sinister forces that pursue him to try to stop him from carrying out his mission.
The book is a Newbery Honor Book. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). The book was adapted as a movie called The Seeker in 2007.
My Reaction and Spoilers
Fantasy books sometimes have to deal with the subject of religion and the relationship between magic and religion. This book also does so somewhat, but I noticed that it also seems to try to remove itself from consideration of the issue at the same time. At one point, Merriman discusses the idea of witches and witchcraft trials with Will, telling him that none of those involved were Old Ones, like the two of them. He says that everyone involved with witchcraft trials were ordinary humans, most of the people who were called “witches” were innocent victims although a small number were genuinely evil, and generally, the witchcraft trials were the result of human madness and irrationality, not genuine magic. In other words, readers don’t need to worry about trying to reconcile the power of the Old Ones with witchcraft because the author says that the two of them are two different, unrelated things.
Will and his family celebrate Christmas during the course of the book, and they go to church, so it’s apparently fine for an Old One to also be a Christian. Yet, there is a scene at church on Christmas where Will and John Smith have to stop the forces of the Dark attacking the church. The minister tries by calling on the powers of God and exorcising the evil spirits, but John Smith says that the minister’s efforts don’t work because “This battle is not for his fighting”, apparently indicating that the powers of Light and Dark as portrayed in this story are somehow outside of any religion or the interference of any god because they are forces that are completely unto themselves. The traditional Christian view would be that God commands the forces of good and light while the devil commands the forces of evil and darkness, but they’re saying here that’s not the case in this story. Will’s thought is that there is a place that exists out of time where all the Gods that ever were came from and also all of the forces and powers in the world, and it seems like some of these exist independently of each other, that they don’t have any beginning and so none of them is less old than any of the others. There is an element of pagan and folklore traditions that runs through these books, and I think that part of this concept references that, but I also see that looking at the battle between Light and Dark in this way, as being something independent of absolutely everything else, leaves the author of the stories free to have it play out in whatever way makes a good story without having to make it adhere to any rules and traditions other than the ones she’s chosen.
Of course, even fictional magic has to follow some rules in order to make logical sense to the readers. As I said, there are pagan and/or folklore traditions that are implied to be true or to have more significance than most people would suspect. Will uses holly as a form of protection for his home during Christmas. Aside from its association with Christmas, there are also many folkloric superstitions about holly. It is also revealed that part of what makes Will so special is that he is the seventh son of a seventh son, another concept from folklore.
A theme that is carried over to this book from the first one in the series is that evil can sometimes appear innocent and even friendly. People who have appeared as friends before can be revealed to be secretly evil or coerced to the dark side, even people who have been close before. Those who aren’t as in tune with the battle between good and evil may be fooled by friendly smiles, charming manners, and a pleasant appearance, but those who are aware of the difference between dark and light can feel when someone isn’t right.
There is one case in this book where a previously good person turns to the Dark because he feels betrayed about how Merry put his life at risk for the cause of the Light. I feel like this could have been avoided if Merry had been more honest with him in the beginning about the risks of what they were doing and the reasons why it was so important, but Merry seems to feel like it was all inevitable, something that was fated to be. Yet, at the end of this person’s life, Merry emphasizes that all of the choices this person made were his own, and although he went through much suffering because of things that had to happen as they did, he could have still had a better life even while undergoing his ordeals if he had made different choices along the way. I think I see what he means, that there are some things in life that are unavoidable but people can make them better or worse through their own choices and behavior, but I still feel like Merry set him up for this bad situation because he didn’t explain things properly when he should have. Maybe that was Merry’s bad decision, too?
Parts of this book actually reminded me of The Box of Delights, a vintage children’s fantasy book that also takes place at Christmas. In both books, Herne the Hunter, a character from folklore, makes an appearance, and the boys in each story get turned into different animals through their adventures with magical books.
The Box of Delights by John Masefield, 1935, 1957.
This book is a sequel to The Midnight Folk. Since the events of the previous book, Kay Harker has become a student at a boarding school, and he is now returning home for Christmas.
At the train station, Kay panics when he realizes that he can’t find his ticket, but it is returned to him by a nice old man with a dog named Barney. Kay also sees some men who seem to be looking for someone else. He overhears their description of the man they’re looking for, but they seem to conclude that the man isn’t on the train. Kay thinks that they might be police detectives, looking for an escaped criminal. His conclusion is proven correct when a porter tells him later that the detectives caught the man they were looking for, trying to disguise himself as a duchess. Kay asks what the criminal did, and the porter says that he’s murderer who killed his father-in-law in a very brutal way. Now, the detectives are taking him away in a special card with an armed guard, and he will probably hang for the crime. Kay finds the story thrilling, but he wonders if the guard made it up or embellished it. When he buys a newspaper, he doesn’t see anything about a murder like the porter described in it.
Kay enjoys the train ride home because, when he went to school, it was by car, so he’s seeing things on the journey home that he hasn’t seen before. On the train, he meets a couple of men dressed like theology students, but whether they’re really theology students is questionable. They sometimes speak to each other in a foreign language that Kay thinks might be Italian, and they trick Kay into playing a card game for money that’s like the Shell Game. Kay only plays once, and when he realizes that he’s been tricked, he decides the men are sinister. The two men ask Kay about the countryside, and one of them refers to him as “Mr. Harker” when Kay never introduced himself. Kay asks the man how he knew his name, but the man never really explains. When Kay arrives at his train station and meets Caroline Louisa, who looks after him, he realizes that his coin purse and watch are missing. Strangely, when he checks for them, he finds the ticket that he thought that he’d lost, so the ticket the nice man gave him must have been his own.
The nice man with the dog is also at the train station. Caroline Louisa thinks that he looks like a Punch and Judy man, and when Kay asks him, he simply says that he is a showman. He also seems to speak in odd riddles, telling Kay that “the Wolves are Running” and asking him if he will do anything to stop them biting. Kay says that he doesn’t know what he means. Rather than explaining, the man asks him to go to a shop in town to buy some muffins, and while he’s there, to look for a lady wearing a ring like the one he’s wearing and give her the message that “The Wolves are Running.” Kay is surprised that this man also seems to know his name and won’t explain how.
When Kay returns to Caroline Louisa, he mentions the men on the train who knew his name, and she says that they probably read it on his luggage labels. Without telling Caroline Louisa why, Kay asks if they can stop in town to buy some muffins. Caroline Louisa also mentions that the four Jones children, Peter and his three sisters, will be spending Christmas with them because their parents have to go abroad. Kay gets along pretty well with the Jones children, and Peter will be sharing a room with him. Kay says that he will have to get some extra presents for the Jones children in town as well. They stop in town, Kay buys the muffins as he was told, and sees the woman that the old man described with a ring like his. Not knowing why it’s important, Kay passes along his message to her, and she nods to him. Then, Kay notices that there are people in town with Alsatians, and they seem to be on the scent of something. Kay wonders if they could police dogs, and Caroline Louisa says she doesn’t know, but she doesn’t like them herself because they remind her too much of wolves.
When they get home to Seekings, the four Jones children are already there. (We did not met them in the previous book, so these are new characters to readers, although Kay has already met them at this point.) Kay thinks of Peter as “a good honest sort of chap.” Of his three sisters, Kay thinks of Jemima as being the smart one. Maria is untidy and has a toy pistol. She has a fascination with gangsters, like in the movies, and she wishes that they could find a gang of robbers and have a battle with them. Susan looks like a small fairy.
Kay gets the idea of inviting the man they’ve come to think of as the Punch and Judy man to the house to perform for them. When he goes back to town to invite him, another man wearing the same ring as the others stops him and tells him to pass on the message that “Someone is safe.” Kay thinks that the message is intended for the Punch and Judy man and passes the message on to the old man when he sees him. He tries to ask the old man what he’s been talking about when he talks about the “Wolves”, but he’s evasive. Instead, he tells Kay that he will come perform a Punch and Judy show for the children at Seekings at the time he was thinking of. Kay asks him how he knew he was going to make that request, but he ignores the question. The old man produces the image of a Phoenix in the fireplace at the pub where they are talking, and he says that he has other wonders in a little box that he will show him later.
When the old man, whose name is Cole Hawlings, comes to Seekings to perform for the children, he does many magic tricks that appear to be real magic. After his performance, some Christmas carolers come to the house, and Kay spots three men, who seem to be spying on the house, trying to see into the study. One of them is one of the men who tricked him with the card trick on the train. Cole Hawlings is very nervous about these men and starts talking about wolves running again.
Caroline Louisa is unexpectedly called away to tend to her sick brother, and while Kay is seeing her off, the other children are approached by one of the spying men, who asks where Hawlings went. Maria, who didn’t actually see Hawlings leave, mistakenly says that he left with the carolers. As Kay returns to the house, he overhears the spying men talking about it. They are definitely after Hawlings, and they are associates of Abner Brown, the villain from the previous book. Kay realizes that his old enemy has returned, and once again, he will have to face off against evil magic.
When Kay meets up with Hawlings again, Hawlings says that it’s not really him that the wolves are after but the Box of Delights that he carries. He gives it to Kay for safe keeping. Kay doesn’t fully understand the purpose of the box, although Hawlings shows him how to use it to return home without any time seeming to have passed. The next day, Kay brings Peter with him when he goes to see Hawlings, and the boys witness Hawlings being kidnapped and dragged into an airplane! They try to report it to the police, but the police don’t believe that they witnessed a kidnapping, and someone else turns up in another town, claiming to be Hawlings. Where is the real Hawlings, why do Abner Brown and his people want his box so badly, and what is Kay going to do with it?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiples copies). There have been multiple dramatizations of the book, and you can sometimes find them or clips of them on YouTube.
My Reaction
I felt like this story was more cohesive than The Midnight Folk, which seemed more disjointed. It is still episodic and tries to work in various elements from children’s fantasies, stories, and folklore. When Kay opens the box, he finds a strange book, and when he opens the book, he finds himself in a forest with Herne the Hunter, a character from folk legends. Herne turns Kay into different animals. After a delightful adventure exploring the woods with Herne in different animal shapes, Kay finds himself back in his own bedroom with hardly any time having passed. Later, the children use the box to shrink themselves to hide from the villains and meet fairies. Aside from the traditional and folklore elements, there are also elements of modern stories and fantasies. The children have a fascination with gangsters (probably from movies of the time), and the villains have some pretty impressive equipment, like a taxi that turns into an airplane and airplanes that fly silently, seeming to combine more modern technology with an element of fantasy or magic.
I also liked the addition of Peter and his sisters because it gave Kay other children he could talk to and who could see the things he sees and share in his adventures. Kay doesn’t tell his friends everything, although they do share in various parts of his adventures, and I’m actually amazed that they take these parts in stride and don’t ask as many questions as I think they should be asking. The adults around them are completely oblivious to the magical happenings, with the exception of Hawlings.
As an historical food note, the police inspector recommends to Kay that he have a hot milk drink called a posset, and he describes what goes into one, but the version that he describes is non-alcoholic. The original drink was an alcoholic beverage, but presumably, this one was toned down for children. The way they describe it in the book, it sounds similar to a non-alcoholic eggnog, but served hot.
When the story begins, in 1912, the four Linnet children are in a bad situation. With their father on his way to serve in the army in India with a stop in Egypt, they have been left behind to stay with their grandmother, who is not an indulgent, “grandmotherly” sort of grandmother. First, she’s planning to give away the children’s dog because she doesn’t like dogs. Then, she’s planning to send the two eldest children, Robert and Nan (short for Anna), to boarding school, while keeping the younger children, Betsy and Timothy, to be tutored at home. Worse, she locks the children up by themselves, sometimes in the dark, leaving them to scream.
Admittedly, the reason why they were locked up was because their grandmother had arranged a tea party to show them off to her friends, and the children, not liking parties, had barricaded themselves in a hen house, fighting off the gardener and their grandmother’s companion with rhubarb stalks until they were finally caught. They were locked away from the party guests until they were ready to apologize, which none of them want to do. (Bad strategy on the part of the adults. Some things are their own punishment. Rather than locking the children up, which is cruel, they should have let the children suffer the consequences of their own bad choice. Don’t get them out of the hen house; insist that they stay out there, not being allowed any of the goodies at the party or even being allowed back into the house until they first clean themselves up in the yard. The kids aren’t very good at planning, and I’m sure they don’t have food stores in the hen house. Everyone gets hungry eventually, and it should be clear to the children that it’s their personal choice how long they want to stay that way. But, the grandmother also shouldn’t give away the children’s dog without their consent, so it’s hard to feel too sympathetic here.) Realistically, it is acknowledged that their grandmother could be quite kind with children who were gentle, quiet, and well-behaved, but also realistically, this is not the case with her grandchildren. Frankly, the children are wild and have no inclination to compromise with their grandmother. With all of these things combined, it is clear that life with their grandmother is going to be impossible, and Robert decides that there’s only one thing to do: escape.
Robert manages to break out of the room where he’s been locked up, and he frees his siblings and their dog, Absolom. The four children set off with their dog, intending to walk to the mountains (just some mountains, somewhere to the west – nowhere specific and no real plan involved) and make their living there because Robert imagines that would be a good idea. As they pass an inn, they spot a pony and cart tied up outside, and they decide to appropriate them for some transportation. Besides, Robert has always wanted a pony. Nan is concerned that they’re stealing, but Robert says that they’re just “borrowing.”
The Linnet children have much more in common with their Uncle Ambrose than with their grandmother or other relatives. Uncle Ambrose is similarly unsociable and impatient. Uncle Ambrose was once a teacher, but now that he’s retired, he has no desire to spend time with children again. He also doesn’t like dogs. But, it turns out that the pony they “borrowed” belongs to him and takes them to his house. When Uncle Ambrose realizes who the children are, he takes them into his house and keeps them over night, although he doesn’t introduce himself to them immediately. The children feel much more at home with Uncle Ambrose, even when they don’t know who he is, because his house is a bit shabby and untidy, and he has a pet owl and a cat with kittens. Also, in spite of his gruff manner and assertion that he’s not happy about having children around, Nan has the sense that he actually likes them. The children decide that they’re going to try to behave themselves in this house because they like being there and want to stay.
In the morning, Uncle Ambrose goes to town to get the groceries that his peg-legged gardener, Ezra, neglected to get the other day when the children stole the pony and cart in town. When he returns, he also has the children’s luggage with him. Uncle Ambrose went to see his mother about the children, and when he suggested that he could keep them at his house, the children’s grandmother eagerly took him up on the offer. The children are all intensely relieved that they won’t be sent back to their strict grandmother and her overly-tidy house and can stay with their eccentric uncle, the peg-legged gardener who comes home singing in the middle of the night when he gets drunk, and the wonderfully untidy garden outside, where they can play.
Uncle Ambrose confesses to the children that he has actually missed his students since he retired from teaching. He isn’t particularly fond of children by themselves, but he is fond of teaching them. As a condition of the children staying with him, Uncle Ambrose insists that they allow him to educate them. The children agree to this because one of their reasons for running away was so they would not be split up when Robert and Nan were sent to boarding school. The children just want to stay together with their dog. Uncle Ambrose agrees to this, saying that he doesn’t approve of sending young girls to boarding school at all, although he insists that girls be properly educated as well as boys. He says that he wouldn’t even consider sending Robert to boarding school until he’s had a better grounding because he’s not satisfied with the reports he’s had of Robert’s academic abilities. The children aren’t thrilled at the idea of studying, but they agree to it because staying together and studying with Uncle Ambrose sounds better than being split up or the other alternative, being sent to stay with their Uncle Edgar in Birmingham. Also, Uncle Ambrose is willing to give the children some time each day to themselves, to play or do what they want. He won’t even insist that they show up for meals, but if they miss them, they’ll just have to go hungry. (See? I told you it was a better strategy than fighting to get them out of the hen house.) As much as the kids don’t like the idea of studying, they love the idea of having some freedom. Freedom means that adventures could happen.
Now, the story at this point could have been a complete story by itself – a group of wild, undisciplined kids are left with their strict grandmother, and after a battle of wills between the children and the grandmother and some overly-harsh punishment, the children run away, finding a gruff but kindly bachelor uncle who rediscovers the pleasure of having children around and also happens to have once been a teacher and can tutor the children while their father is away, managing to inspire the children to behave a little better and learn to make some better decisions by granting them a little freedom to make some of their own choices instead of being too controlling. That’s all very nice as a single story. However, in this case, all of that is just the background for the story to come. We’re still in just the first part of the book.
Segue to the Magic
After it’s settled that the children will stay with Uncle Ambrose, they decided to go into town for their first free excursion. They stop at the little store in town to buy some sweets and a picture postcard to send to their grandmother because Nan has been thinking over their time with her and has realized that they were badly behaved and feels guilty about it. The store is managed by Emma Cobley, an old woman in an old-fashioned dress and cap and a red shawl who owns a black cat named Frederick. Emma is a little creepy and she warns the children to stay away from Lion Tor because it’s a dangerous place. (A “tor” is “a high, craggy hill.”)
When the children return to the house, Ezra insists upon introducing them to the bees. The children think that this is a very odd thing to do, but Ezra says that it’s important, and he asks the bees to look after the children. Timothy asks if it’s possible for bees to look out for people, and Ezra says that they once saved his life when he fell into an old tin mine and showed the vicar (the children’s uncle, after he retired from teaching – they’re all living at the vicarage now) where to find him. When Ezra hears that they’ve been to Emma Cobley’s shop, he tells them not to go there anymore. The most Uncle Ambrose buys there is stamps, but neither of them ever buys anything else from her, and Ezra is reluctant to tell the children why. There is something a bit creepy about Emma and some suspicious things in her shop, like the overly-appealing candy and the one postcard that she refuses to allow the children to buy or even look at for long.
As the children start having lessons with Uncle Ambrose, Robert asks him if he will be giving them pocket money. Uncle Ambrose says that he doesn’t give pocket money, but there are opportunities for earning some. He gives them a list of chores that they can do and what he’s willing to pay for doing them. He also points out to Robert that, as the oldest boy, he can’t expect to wriggle out of the tougher chores or leave them to the girls, but if he’s willing to tackle the tougher chores, he will pay him well for it. Uncle Ambrose has somewhat chivalrous sensibilities about what girls can handle, and he also reminds the boys that there are consequences for misbehavior, lying, or stealing. He says that he would never use corporal punishment on a girl, but he has caned boys before and could do the same to his nephews if they give him reason. He tells the children that, from this point on, they cannot interrupt their lesson time with any subjects that aren’t related to the lesson. (He never does hit any of the children and does make reasonable exceptions to this rule later in the story.) It isn’t just the threat of punishment that keeps the children in line, though. It turns out that Uncle Ambrose is an excellent story-teller, and when he starts describing other countries or historical events, the children are captivated. In many ways, Uncle Ambrose makes learning fun because he really loves his subjects and knows how to share what’s fascinating about them with other people. There are parts of the learning that seem like drudgery, but they are balanced out by the parts that are truly fascinating.
The children also gradually begin learning more about the other people who live nearby. There is a black man (called a “Negro” in the story) called Moses Glory Glory Alleluja. (That’s apparently his real name in the story and not just a nickname, to which I say, “God help us all!”) When the children first see him, they’re startled and afraid of him because he’s carrying a curved knife and looks like “a coal-black giant.” They stop and stare at him because they’re afraid, and Ezra tells them not to hurt the poor man’s feelings because he’s a gentle man. As he gets closer to the children, they realize that he’s not as fearsome as they had first thought from a distance. He’s actually very pleasant, and the knife he’s carrying is just a scythe for clearing plants.
Moses works for Lady Alicia (a sort of man-of-all work – cook, gardener, butler, etc.), and Lady Alicia also has a monkey called Abednego. When the kids go with Ezra to pick up a couple of extra beds that Uncle Ambrose is borrowing from Lady Alicia for the children, Abednego takes Betsy’s doll, and she has to chase after him to get it back. In the process, Betsy meets Lady Alicia, an elderly lady in very worn fancy clothes and wearing jewelry. The two of them introduce themselves to each other and explain a little about who they are. Lady Alicia once lived there with her husband and son, but she says that her son, Francis, was “lost” years ago on Lion Tor at the age of eight. She doesn’t explain at this point how that happened or even if her son died or simply disappeared. Her husband also disappeared a few years later overseas because he was a traveler and explorer. She doesn’t seem to expect to see either of them again. This is really where the main plot of the book is introduced.
The Magic
So, now we know that there’s a creepy old lady who owns a shop that isn’t quite what it seems to be and a mysterious and sad old lady whose husband and son have disappeared, and it’s all connected to Lion Tor. The children’s first encounter with Lion Tor happens when Betsy’s siblings realize that she’s missing at Lady Alicia’s house. Not knowing that she’s with Lady Alicia, they assume that she’s wandered off into the woods to pick flowers and go searching for her. Nan finds her way to Lion Tor, where she discovers a cave that is filled with paintings. She knows they weren’t done by cave people ages ago because people in the drawings are wearing modern hats. The artist turns out to be a bearded man in ragged clothes who seems unable to speak.
Nan learns that this man is called Daft Davie, but Nan doesn’t think that’s fair because he seems intelligent and artistically talented, even though he isn’t able to speak. Ezra explains to her that Davie used to work for a blacksmith in another village nearby but some boys kept teasing him and tormenting him because he couldn’t speak, so he eventually went to live by himself at Lion Tor.
The boys eventually find Betsy with Lady Alicia. To their surprise, Lady Alicia seems to be enjoying Betsy’s company, even though she doesn’t normally like visitors. She invites the children to return again with Nan, making an odd comment about how the Linnet family seems “inevitable” but might do her some good.
Uncle Ambrose allows Nan to use the parlor of his house as her private room, where she can do her sewing and darning or just have time to herself. He says that he hasn’t done much with the parlor himself, other than putting furniture in it, because the parlor is usually for the lady of the house, and he’s unmarried. Now that Nan is there, she counts as the lady of the house as the oldest girl, and Uncle Ambrose can tell that she’s a reflective kind of person who can use some quiet time to herself, away from the other children. Nan is appreciative, and she’s also surprised when Uncle Ambrose tells her that the previous lady of the house was Lady Alicia. Before her marriage to the local lord, she was the daughter of the previous vicar, and he found some of her old books in a hidden cabinet in the room.
Uncle Ambrose removed the books from the hidden cabinet and put them on the bookshelf in the room, but out of curiosity, Nan investigates the hidden cabinet and finds that it still contains a notebook. However, the notebook belonged to a young Emma Cobley, not Lady Alicia. The notebook contains what looks like evil witchcraft spells. Nan is alarmed, although later, she’s confused because she sees Emma Cobley at church. She isn’t sure what to think because she can’t imagine that a real, evil witch would go to church. Nan considers that perhaps Emma used to practice witchcraft in her youth but repented later and changed her ways. However, if that’s true, why does Ezra disapprove of her, and how can they explain Emma’s creepy black cat? When Nan studies the spells in the book, seeing spells that can prevent a person from speaking, cause a person to lose his memory, and cause a person to forget affection for another, Emma’s true character and some of the mysterious events of the past begin coming a little more clear.
When Nan talks to Ezra later, he says that Emma Cobley’s father was a black-hearted warlock who taught her evil spells. Ezra says that his own mother practiced white magic and that his family is descended from ancient peoples who were called fairies or gods. Nan had thought that there was something gnome-like in his appearance and isn’t surprised that he’s a bit magical. Ezra further describes the day that Lady Alicia’s son disappeared at Lion Tor. They’d been on a picnic with the boy’s nurse, and the nurse and the boy had been playing hide-and-seek. A mist came up, and they were unable to find the boy. They feared that he might have drowned in the marsh because his cap was nearby, but they were never able to establish that. Some other people thought he might have been kidnapped by gypsies, but there was no evidence of that, either.
In the cemetery of the churchyard, there is a memorial to Lady Alicia’s husband, Hugo Francis Valerian, and his son who was named after him, but the husband’s death date is unknown. The children argue about what that really means. Robert says that the Valerians are dead, but they’re just not buried at the site of the memorial because they were lost and nobody knows exactly when they died and where the bodies are. However, Betsy has the feeling that they’re not dead, and Nan agrees that disappearing isn’t the same as dying. But, is that really true? Are the Valerians alive or dead, and if they are alive, where are they?
Pieces of the past continue falling into place. Betsy and Nan accidentally find old love letters that Emma Cobley wrote to the elder Hugo Valerian … love letters that also contain angry threats when the love wasn’t returned. Pictures that Davie painted on the walls of his cave resemble ones from Lady Alicia’s tapestry. Uncle Ambrose doesn’t believe in the power of witches and thinks that what Ezra has been saying about magic and spells is just superstition, but Ezra knows a few things that Uncle Ambrose doesn’t. He’s the one who knows how to undo Emma Cobley’s wicked spells.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. Sometimes, this book also appears under the title The Runaways.
My Reaction and Spoilers
A Few Concerns
I didn’t like the parts with the harsh punishments or threats of it for the children. Locking children up or caning them would be considered child abuse by modern standards, although my feelings about that are somewhat offset because they kids are pretty wild and the book makes it clear that they are badly behaved in the beginning and provoked the punishment they received. I’m willing to let it go partly because nobody actually gets caned and because of the fairy-tale atmosphere of the story. In fairy tales, there is often a cruel relative, and in this case, it’s more like an overly-provoked one at her wit’s end. In either case, the children’s situation with their grandmother in the beginning establishes the reason why they go to live with their eccentric uncle and have magical adventures.
Some people might not care for the different standards for boys and girls in the story. It’s old-fashioned, out of date even for the time when the book was first published, but the setting is also old-fashioned, so I think it’s meant to establish the time and place. It’s common in older children’s books and stories that imitate them for boys to be given more freedom than girls but also for boys to be subjected to harsher, more physical punishments when they get out of line. Uncle Ambrose seems to have similar feelings in that direction, although he does give the boys and girls the same lessons because he feels that girls’ minds also need to be educated, and he allows all of the children to have equal free time and ability to play and explore the area together.
As another reviewer of this book observed, it seems a little strange that the children would be so frightened of Moses when they first meet him because they used to live in India, and you would think that they would be accustomed to the idea that there are people of different races in the world. This can’t be the first time that they’ve seen people who look different, although I suppose they could be a little intimidated by him being especially tall and carrying a scythe. That might be something that would be a little startling to see very suddenly until you look again and realize it’s just a really tall guy with a farm implement because we’re living in the countryside now. I liked the warning from Ezra to the children to behave themselves and not hurt Moses’s feelings. I thought it was good to emphasize that other people’s feelings are important, and that comment helped to humanize Moses because, even if he looks a little strange or intimidating at first, he’s still a human being with feelings.
However, there is another part of the story not too long after that, when they’re looking for Betsy and Robert, who has a habit of play-acting, pretends like he’s a Roman emperor giving a command to a “coal-black Nubian standard-bearer”, saying, “Slave, lead on.” There seems to be some self-awareness in the story that this wasn’t a good thing for Robert to say to Moses (who is a servant, not a slave, although Ezra later says that there is a rumor that Lady Alicia’s husband may have bought him in a slave market overseas when he was young), and Timothy is concerned that Robert might have offended him. The story says that Moses isn’t the kind of person who takes offense or holds grudges, and he seems to understand that Robert is play-acting, but I felt like this somewhat undermined the message of considering other people’s feelings by suggesting that the best way to be is not to have any particular feelings to consider. That’s not something anybody can count on in real life or insist that others provide for them. Real human beings are not like stuffed teddy bears, who can take endless abuse or respond to any comment with a constant smile and still be lovable and want to snuggle afterward, like none of it matters. Real humans have both feelings and limits, and this is one instance where I felt like someone should have thrown a little cold water on Robert’s play-acting. The whole story has an air of unreality about it, which is part of the charm, but I think even fantasy stories should be real about human behavior.
The Fantasy
The fantasy in the story is really very light, compared to most fantasy books. Although it becomes well-established by the end of the book that Emma Cobley is definitely a witch who cast evil spells which caused Lady Alicia to lose both her son and her husband, the spells and their undoing were done in such a way that Uncle Ambrose never seems to realize that it was all magic. Basically, the children and Ezra find the little figures with pins in them that Emma made, and Ezra recites a magical rhyme that allows them to remove the pins, thus breaking the spells. Then, they burn the figures and Emma’s old spell book, destroying her magic forever. After that, Lady Alicia’s son and husband both come back, Emma actually becomes a much nicer person, and everybody lives happily ever after.
The pace of the story is fairly slow, which is actually part of its atmospheric charm. For a book dealing with an evil witch, black magic spells, and unhappy people, it’s really pretty relaxing. I think part of that effect is because of its gradual pace and also because there are never very serious consequences for anybody in the story. It’s sad that Lady Alicia, her husband, and her son were all parted from each other for a period of years, but when the spells are broken, they are pretty quickly very happy again. Emma Cobley does try to prevent the children from learning her secrets and breaking the spells, but really, nothing bad happens to the children at all. There is one semi-frightening part where the boys and their dog are up a tree with Emma and her friends below it, but then Uncle Ambrose comes and takes the children home, and everything is fine. Emma tries to cast spells on the children at once point, but the children don’t even notice until they find the figures of themselves later. Ezra tells them that the witch’s spells were ineffective against them because he made his own figures of the children first and put them in the church, so they are protected. Emma herself faces no consequences in the end, either. They don’t have to destroy the witch to destroy her magic, and once her magic is gone, she is so changed and everyone is so happy that there’s no retribution, only forgiveness.
On the one hand, the lack of consequences in the story for things the children do make the story feel like the stakes are low. There is a sense of sadness around characters in the story, but is no particular sense of urgency. They are not racing the clock to break the spells, and the villains are pretty ineffectual at putting up obstacles to their success. On the other hand, it seems like most of the story focuses on atmosphere over action. This little village is an enchanting place to be. It’s charming, and the lack of consequences for the children, whether it’s for being racially insensitive or facing down a witch or even just staying out late, make the story feel like a very safe kind of adventure. Uncle Ambrose, Ezra, and their bees won’t let anything serious befall the children, and the worst punishment they have for misbehavior is being sent to bed with gruel (a kind of thin porridge) instead of a proper supper. Uncle Ambrose told them that if they missed meals, it would be their fault, and they’d have to go without. However, he never lets children go to bed hungry, and he even allows them sugar on their gruel. Again, very low stakes, but charmingly so. This story is not stressful, which is good, but it’s not for people looking for excitement.
I was a little impatient with the children for not making the connection between the spells in the book and Daft Davie even after seeing the figurines, including the one with the pin in its tongue. This spell is supposed to prevent people from talking, and who else do they know who can’t talk? There aren’t that many people in the area, and there’s only one person in the story whose main characteristic is an inability to speak. Even as they’re breaking the spells, they don’t know who they’re breaking them for, like they can’t even guess, and Nan is surprised when Davie can suddenly talk afterward. I think this is one of those stories that wants to make readers feel clever for figuring it out before the characters, but that can also feel a little frustrating. If there’s one thing I would change about this story (other than the racial bits), I would want the children to realize the truth about the spells faster and break them more deliberately.
I don’t really mind that Uncle Ambrose never believes in the magic. The book leaves the situation a little open for the characters, and possibly even the readers, to believe that there are other explanations for what happens. Maybe “Davie” lost his memory and ability to speak through an illness. The children in the story know that’s not it, but it’s not important for anybody else to know. Although, perhaps Uncle Ambrose knows more about magic than he lets on because, for reasons that are never explained, his pony never grows old, and his pet owl seems immortal. But, maybe that’s for the readers to decide.
Barbara and Rick Benton have an old woman, Mrs. Cunningham, taking care of them while their parents are away on a trip. They don’t mind Mrs. Cunningham, but she has a habit of cooking cabbage, which makes the house smell bad. One day, they decide to buy a can of air freshener to make the house smell better, but they don’t have much money. After looking over the selection at the store, they realize that they only have enough money to buy a really cheap bottle with a damaged label. They’re not even sure what scent it’s supposed to have, but they decide that it’s better than nothing and take it.
However, the bottle isn’t air freshener at all. When they get it home and open it, a man with an umbrella pops out of the bottle. He introduces himself as a wizard named Harrison Peabody, saying that he was accidentally trapped in the bottle. When they tell him why they got the bottle, he offers to fix the smell for them, producing real roses by magic in Barbara’s bedroom.
It’s pretty impressive, but Barbara soon learns that magic has inconveniences. The roses get in the way when she tries to do her homework, they have thorns that prick her fingers, and she’s worried that it will get messy if she has to water them. She asks Harrison Peabody if he can take them away, but he says that undoing magic is more difficult than doing it. It’s even more inconvenient when he produces a pine forest in Rick’s room because he wanted his room to smell like pine.
The kids let Harrison Peabody, who they call Harry, stay in their attic because there’s an extra mattress there, but they’re careful to hide him from Mrs. Cunningham. Barbara uses Harry’s magical umbrella to get rid of the roses and pine trees while he’s in the bathroom.
It seems like Harry’s magic works sometimes but not always. In the morning, he’s able to use it to remake the attic into a comfortable living space and provide a lavish breakfast, but later in the day, he needs the kids to bring him food. Harry is reluctant to explain, but he finally admits that he’s not a very powerful wizard. All of his magic depends on his umbrella, and the umbrella only does magic when it’s raining. Even then, it will only work its magic if you ask it politely.
The kids take Harry to Prospect Park for a picnic, and in the lake, they spot a sea serpent. It turns out that the sea serpent can talk. His name is George, and he actually knows Harry. George gives Harry and the kids a ride around the lake, and they use the umbrella’s magic to clean the lake and make it suitable for swimming. Unfortunately, they accidentally lose the umbrella in the lake.
The next day, the kids go back to the park to look for the umbrella while Harry stays at home with a cold. George finds the umbrella for them, warning them to remember that it’s Harry’s umbrella and that things often go wrong, even when Harry tries to use it. Ignoring that, Rick impulsively wishes for the umbrella to take him and his sister to the zoo, and when they get there, he also impulsively wishes that all of the animals were free. Then, it stops raining, so he has no chance to take it back.
Chaos ensues, with all of the zoo animals roaming around free and the zookeepers struggling to round them all up again. Then, to the children’s horror, some of the zookeepers catch George, thinking that he’s another escapee. The zookeepers quickly realize that they’ve never seen any animal like George before. They don’t know what he is, but they decide that they can’t let him roam around free. They put him in an aquarium at Coney Island, and it’s up to the children to rescue him!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Spoilers
This book is odd because it gave me so many feelings of the story being incomplete. It seems like it was written as a fantasy adventure story for fairly young kids because all of the problems are pretty easily solved, but there are so many questions left unanswered that I almost feel like it used to be a longer story but was cut down for some reason. Actually, it’s probably that it could have been a longer story but the author chose not to make it longer.
First, we never get any explanation of Harrison Peabody’s background, how he came to be a wizard, and how or where he got that magical umbrella. When the children ask him how he got into the bottle, he says that it was an accident, that he just went in for a little bit and someone capped up the bottle so he couldn’t get out. But why? Was someone trying to get rid of Harry, like those stories where someone tries to get rid of an evil genie by tricking him into going back into the bottle he came from? But, Harry’s not a genie and not a bad guy.
There is also no explanation of how he came to meet George the sea serpent. The closest we get to George’s background is that George says that he was one of the sea serpents that John Van Nyse saw at Steinbokkery Pond, which was once on the site of the Lefferts House, referencing an old story from New York. I liked the reference to a piece of local folklore, and it does help to date Harry a little because, when Harry encounters George in the park, George has to explain to him that the Steinbokkery Pond was drained to build the Lefferts House. Since Harry didn’t know that and has memories of what the area used to be like, Harry must have been in the bottle since before the house was constructed, around 1783. But, again, the story never explains that.
The end of the book is also abrupt. When the kids retrieve the lost umbrella from George, Rick’s sudden wishes to go to the zoo and free the animals seem, well, pretty sudden. He didn’t mention anything about wanting to go the zoo before, and it seems like the kids would have been in a hurry to get the umbrella back to Harry. It feels like that incident was just thrown in to have something zany happen that would add some excitement to the story.
Rescuing George isn’t too hard with the magic umbrella. George decides that he wants to return to the ocean instead of going back to the lake in the park, so the kids wish him to be where he wants to go. Then, after they return to Harry and point out to him that their parents will return soon and will surely notice that he’s been living in the attic, he uses the umbrella to return the attic to its former state. Then, he whispers something to the umbrella, and they both abruptly vanish. There is no indication of where Harry is going; he’s just gone. I think it’s meant to be mysterious, but to me, it just felt odd and incomplete. I had been expecting that there would be some kind of resolution of the chaos that the magic umbrella causes. Maybe Harry would decide that magic has caused too much trouble and he’ll put the umbrella away, saving it only for emergencies. I even thought that there might be some romance with Mrs. Cunningham, who I assumed was a widow, and maybe they would go on to be caretakers for other children, like they were for Barbara and Rick, with the implication that their magical adventures would continue. Instead, Harry just disappears, and the story is over with no further explanation.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle by Betty MacDonald, 1947, 1957, 1975, 1987.
This book has been printed and reprinted many times over the decades. The edition that I used for this review is the same one that I read when I was in elementary school, printed in the 1980s. One of the reasons why the edition matters is that the illustrations were different in the first printings in the book. In 1957, the illustrations were replaced by the ones you see here, which continued to be used in later printings.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is a widow who lives in an upside-down house. Her husband was a pirate, and she has magical cures for the bad habits of the children who live in her neighborhood. Sometimes, she doesn’t need magic for a particular child’s bad habit, just using psychology. Sometimes, certain behaviors, like staying up all night instead of going to bed, are their own punishment, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle advises the parents to let the children do them for a certain period of time so they can find out for themselves why these things are a bad idea, usually with very funny results. This book is the first book in the series, and it particularly uses more psychology than magic.
As an adult, I actually prefer the psychological cures to the magical ones. These stories are meant to be humorous rather than practical, and because of that, they’re not realistic. First, they never really go into the psychological reasons why some of these kids do the things they do, like becoming over-protective of their belongings or suddenly becoming afraid of taking baths. Then, when children suffer the consequences of their misbehavior, the consequences are humorous and exaggerated, like the boy whose room gets so messy that he actually traps himself inside until he decides to clean up and the girl who gets so dirty that her parents can grow radishes on her. However, the fact that there are consequences for the children’s behavior is a useful touch of realism. It gives parents or teachers the opportunity to talk to kids about what they expect would happen if they actually did any of the things kids do in the stories and think about some of the consequences of their own actions. These are stories that can make kids chuckle and then make them think.
I think it’s important to point out that Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle never actually blames the children for their bad behavior, seeing it more as an affliction that they need to be cured from. She likes all children in spite of their bad habits and bad behavior (something I admit that I find hard to do with people in real life), and she wants to cure them of their problems so that other people will see how likeable they are underneath. Even though Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle likes the children, she doesn’t spare them from the consequences of their actions because that is part of the cure that the children need to become the best versions of themselves. Sometimes, the consequences are the cure by themselves, and those are the stories I like best. After all, what makes bad habits “bad” is that they have bad consequences to them. They cause problems, both for the person behaving badly and others. Maybe, sometimes, people need to see the problems for themselves and experience the consequences directly before they find the motivation to fix their behavior. I can believe that part of these stories is realistic. The rest of it is just for fun.
The Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books are collections of short stories, and each one focuses on a different child or set of children, their particular problems or bad habits, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s solutions for them.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
The Stories in this Book:
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Herself
This section of the book introduces and describes Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. She is a small woman with a hump on her back, which she says contains magic. (The hump isn’t really shown in the pictures of her in the book, but she’s supposed to have one.) She has very long brown hair, which she usually wears up, but sometimes, she lets it down so that children can comb and braid it or style it in different ways. Her eyes are also brown, and her skin is described as being a “goldy brown.” (Her racial identity is not specified because it’s not important to the stories. The pictures show her as being white, so maybe she just has a tan, but I find the written description interesting because it could leave the character open to different interpretations and playable by different types of actors. Her description could fit quite a lot of people, really.) She wears brown clothing (although that’s not how she’s shown in the pictures) and smells like sugar cookies. She claims not to know her own age, saying that it doesn’t matter, since she’ll never get any bigger than she is now.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is a widow, and she tells the children that her husband was a pirate who buried treasure in the back yard before he died. She has no children of her own, but she loves all the neighborhood children, and she frequently looks after them and has them come over to play. She doesn’t often speak to the children’s parents because she gets nervous around adults. She also has a dog named Wag and a cat named Lightfoot.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle lives in a little brown house that is upside down. She says that her house is upside down because, when she was a little girl, she used to look up at the ceiling when she was in bed and wonder what it would be like to walk on the ceiling, so when she grew up, she purposely built her house upside down just to find out. The only parts of the house that are normal are the kitchen, the bathroom, and the stairs because none of them would work properly if they were upside down.
When I was a kid, I thought that the upside-down house was the best part of the stories. When people walk around inside it, they have to step over the sills of the doorways because what should be the tops of doors are not flush with the ceiling the way the bottoms are flush with the floor, and these doorways are upside down. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle put little steps into and out of doorways to help with that, but kids like to jump the doorways as a challenge. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle lets them make chalk marks to record the lengths of their jumps. Also, because the ceilings are now the floors, the chandelier is on the floor of the living room, shining upward instead of down, and kids sit around it like it’s a camp fire. The children can also use the slanting ceiling-floors of the house as slides.
Most of this part of the book is backstory for Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, but it explains that the first neighborhood child she made friends with was a girl named Mary Lou, who was running away from home because she hated doing the dishes so much. Seeing Mary Lou going down the sidewalk in the rain with her suitcase, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle invited her in for tea and cookies, and Mary Lou told her about her problems. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle tells Mary Lou that she really likes washing dishes because it’s fun to pretend that she’s a beautiful princess who was captured by an evil witch who makes her do all the cleaning and that the only way she can escape is to have everything clean by the time the clock strikes. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle draws Mary Lou into a game of pretend, where they both pretend that they’re cleaning the kitchen for the evil witch. Then, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle puts on her witch’s costume, pretending to be the witch, inspecting the kitchen to make sure that it’s clean.
It’s so much fun that Mary Lou gets over hating washing the dishes. When she tells her parents about Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, they let her spend time with Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and she brings her friend, Kitty, to visit when Kitty says that she hates making the beds at her house. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle plays a similar game of pretend with Kitty and Mary Lou, where they pretend that they are making beds for a cruel queen who will throw them in the dungeon if the sheets are wrinkled.
Gradually, Mary Lou and Kitty start bringing their siblings and other friends to see Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle gets to know all of the children in the neighborhood. She shows them how to make chores fun, teaches them to do things like bake cookies and pies, and lets them dig for pirate treasure in the backyard. Because she is so good with children, parents in the neighborhood call her to ask for help and advice when they’re having problems with their kids.
The Won’t-Pick-Up-Toys Cure
Hubert Prentiss’s grandfather gives him many wonderful toys, but Hubert doesn’t like putting them away. It’s very difficult to get around his room, and the problem gets worse all the time. Hubert’s mother tries asking other mothers what they do with their children, but they either don’t have the same problem or don’t know what to do. Then, one of them suggests asking Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle because she’s so good with children. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle has met Hubert before because he’s come to her house with the other children.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle suggests that Hubert’s mother let Hubert make his room messy and that she not try to pick up after him or even enter his room. Then, when the room gets to the point that it’s difficult for Hubert himself to even go in or out, to give her a call. After a week, Hubert’s room is so bad that he can’t open his bedroom door and can’t even use his bed. His mother has to feed him through his bedroom window. Even though she’s only able to give him things like peanut butter sandwiches through the window and Hubert doesn’t have anywhere comfortable to sleep anymore, he’s still not motivated enough to leave his room and put away all his toys. However, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle has a plan to motivate Hubert enough that he’s willing to finally clean his room just to get out.
The Answer-Backer Cure
When Mary O’Toole’s teacher picks her to stay in at recess and help clean up the classroom, Mary is so irritated that she tells the teacher to do it herself and to let her go play with the other kids. Her mother tells her that was a rude thing to say to her teacher, but it’s just the beginning of Mary’s bad habit of being rude and impudent to people. Mary thinks that it makes her look smart to contradict people, and her new responses to any order or request her parents and teacher make are “Why should I?” and “I’ll do it because I want to but not because you tell me to.” (Nobody but you cares why you do it, kiddo. They just want it done because they just want to get through the day and accomplish things. You can either be the one who makes that easier or the one who makes that harder or more unpleasant, but things are still going to need to be done either way.)
Mary’s mother goes through the usual routine of calling other mothers for their opinions, and one of them suggests talking to Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s solution is to let Mary keep her parrot, Penelope for awhile. Penelope is as rude as Mary is and repeats many of the things that Mary herself says. At first, Mary thinks it’s funny, but gradually, she begins to see how annoying it is and realizes how she sounds when she talks that way. Her dad actually laughs when he hears how much the parrot sounds like Mary, which makes Mary mad. Penelope also uses remarks that Mary thought that she’d made up herself, but she says them before Mary actually said them around her, making Mary realize that she’s not even as clever and original as she thought she was. When she sees how annoying it is to be around someone as rude and negative as she was, Mary apologizes to her teacher and gives it up.
(Actually, I know a lot of adults who talk just like Mary – “I’ll do it because I want to but not because you tell me to.” If they don’t use those exact words, it’s solidly the exact same attitude. They say they do it specifically because they’re adults and nobody should be telling them what to do under any circumstances, even if it’s something important. For them, it’s a kneejerk reaction to being told something, anything, no matter the circumstances and with little thought or attention to what they’re being told and whether it’s actually worthwhile. I always think of this story whenever I hear them talking that way.)
The Selfishness Cure
Dick Thompson is selfish and greedy. It’s no fun for other kids to come play at his house because he won’t share any of his toys or let anybody touch anything that belongs to him. It’s always “MY” this and “MY” that and everything is “MINE!” Dick’s mother realizes that something must be done when she gives Dick a box of peppermint sticks specifically to share with other kids in order to teach him how to share, and he actually hits Mary O’Toole on the hand with his baseball bat for trying to take one.
When Dick’s mother calls his father at work and asks him what they should do, the father’s first suggestion is a good, hard spanking because that’s something Dick can keep all to himself, but the mother is upset at the idea of more physical violence. The father then suggests that she talk to Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle because she’s helped other children in the neighborhood.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s Selfishness Cure is her special Selfishness Kit. It contains a variety of padlocks that Dick can use to lock up his stuff. It also has labels and paint that Dick can use to label all of his stuff, and it even has a pastry bag for labeling Dick’s food as his with frosting. The idea is to indulge Dick’s desire to prevent anyone from touching anything that belongs to him until it becomes so much of a hassle that he decides that it’s too much trouble.
At first, Dick is really happy that he can label everything he owns with his name and write “DON’T TOUCH!” on it, but as predicted, it turns out to be a big problem. Because Dick has everything, including his lunch, marked with his name and “DON’T TOUCH”, it isn’t long before everyone at school knows and is laughing at him. Plus, as my mother says, “With some kids, you can tell them not to touch something, and they won’t touch it, but there are also kids who, when you tell them not to touch something, just can’t wait to touch it.”
The Radish Cure
Patsy is a perfectly ordinary girl, but one day, she suddenly decides that she hates baths and refuses to take another one. There is no explanation why, and none of the other mothers in the neighborhood seem to be having that problem with their children, but Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle has a solution.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle tells Patsy’s mother to led her go several weeks without washing at all, letting her get as dirty as she wants. Then, she should get a packet of small radish seeds and plant them on Patsy. When Pasty sees that she’s sprouting radishes, she suddenly decides that she’s ready for a bath.
The Never-Want-To-Go-To-Bedders Cure
The three children in the Gray family never like going to bed. Every night, when it’s time for bed, they beg to be allowed to stay up a little later and insist that nobody else in the neighborhood goes to bed as early as they do. It often takes about an hour of whining, complaining, and arguing before their parents are able to get them to bed.
Mrs. Gray goes through the usual routine of asking other parents if they have this problem with their children, but none of her friends do, so she asks Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle what to do.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s advice is to let the children stay up as late as they want to. Mrs. Gray worries that not getting enough sleep will be bad for the children’s health, but Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle says that a day or two with less sleep won’t make much of a difference, and by that time, they’ll realize why going to bed at night is a good idea.
The Gray children think it’s great at first that their parents no longer tell them to go to bed and even let them stay up half the night, but soon, they’re falling asleep in the middle of the day, missing movies that they go to see when they fall asleep in the theater and missing out on fun activities with other kids either because they’re asleep or too tired to enjoy them.
The Slow-Eater-Tiny-Bite-Taker Cure
A boy named Allen has suddenly become obsessed with eating his food very slowly, taking super-tiny bites. It’s a very odd habit, and it makes meal times difficult because he eats very little and take a very long time to do it. I’d be worried if he was having difficulty swallowing, but his mother calls Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle gives his mother sets of dishes in different sizes, from fairly large to ridiculously tiny. At each meal, Allen’s mother uses progressively smaller dishes. Allen is fascinated by the tiny dishes, which fit his new dainty eating, but he’s getting weaker because he’s been hardly eating anything.
I actually found the descriptions of his weakness a little alarming, but his mother then reverses the order of the dishes she gives him, starting with the smallest and then moving to the biggest. As Allen realizes that he feels better when he starts eating more food, his appetite returns, and he gets his strength back.
The Fighter-Quarrelers Cure
Twins Joan and Anne Russell have been fighting with each other a lot, and it’s driving their parents crazy. The twins argue with each other over everything, like who is wearing whose clothing and who had more bacon or the biggest slice of melon on their plate at breakfast, and they even pinch and slap each other. Sibling quarrels are pretty common, but Mrs. Russell asks Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle if there’s anything they can do to end this constant fighting.
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle advises the girls’ parents to make notes about the types of petty things that the girls argue about and spend a day having staged arguments of their own in front of the girls to show them what it’s like to be around that type of arguing all the time.
From the moment they wake up the next day, the twins suddenly find themselves in the awkward position of trying to reason with their parents and referee their quarrels as they become witnesses to the same kinds of petty behavior they’ve been doing themselves. Finally, the girls have had their fill of fighting, and with their petty quarrels now in perspective, the entire family promises each other that they won’t fight like that again.
The Twelve Dancing Princesses retold and illustrated by Ruth Sanderson, 1990.
This is a retelling of the classic German fairy tale collected and published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. There are various retellings of this story, some changing the number of princesses and some giving the characters different names. This one is actually closer to the Andrew Lang version from The Red Fairy Book, published in 1890.
A king with twelve daughters has a strange mystery to solve. All twelve of his daughters sleep in the same room every night. The door to their room is always locked, but every morning, the girls’ shoes are completely worn out, like they’ve been dancing all night. The girls claim that all they do at night is sleep, but that doesn’t explain what happened to their shoes.
The king is confused and troubled by this odd mystery, so he promises the hand of one of his daughters in marriage to the man who can solve the mystery. A series of princes attempt to solve the mystery by sleeping in a room next to the princesses, but in the morning, each of the princes has mysteriously disappeared and the princesses’ shoes are still worn out.
With the mystery getting more mysterious and more urgent, with the princes’ disappearances, a commoner named Michael decides that he wants to try to solve the mystery. A woman Michael meets recommends that he take a job as a gardener’s helper at the castle and see if he can spot something that would give him a hint. The mysterious woman gives Michael a cloak that will make him invisible so that he can follow the princesses and see what they do.
Michael first meets the princesses when the gardener sends him to give a bouquet of flowers to each of them. He catches the attention of the youngest princess, Lina. Lina’s sisters tease her about admiring a simple garden boy, but Michael also likes Lina.
Because he is a commoner, Michael doesn’t think that he can go the king directly and ask to investigate the mystery of the princesses, so he decides to use his magic cloak to spy on them secretly. When he’s invisible, he slip into their room before the princesses are locked in for the night and hides. After everyone thinks that the princesses have gone to bed, they get dressed as if they’re going to a dance, putting on their new dancing shoes. The eldest princess opens a special trap door in the floor, and they all leave secretly, with Michael following them.
Michael follows the princesses through magical woods to a lake where the captive, now enchanted, princes wait to take the princesses to a magical palace in boats shaped like swans. There, the princesses dance with the princes all night, wearing their shoes to pieces.
Lina suspects that someone followed them because Michael accidentally stepped on her skirt a couple of times, and Michael confirms her suspicion when he places a branch from the magical woods into her bouquet of flowers. At first, Lina tries to bribe Michael into keeping their secret by offering him money, but he refuses. She asks him if he plans to tell the king and collect his reward by marrying one of the princesses, but Michael says he won’t. Lina tries to ask him why, but he doesn’t want to answer. The truth is that Michael loves Lina and doesn’t want to get her into trouble or force her to marry him if she doesn’t return his affections.
Eventually, Lina tells her eldest sister, the one who is controlling all of the magic behind their escapades, about Michael and what he knows. Lina’s sisters want to have Michael thrown in the dungeon to keep him quiet, but Lina is horrified and says that if they do that, she’ll tell their father the truth herself. Instead, they decide to openly invite him to their next dance and offer him the magical drink that would enchant him like they did with all of the other princes. Michael overhears their plan and decides that he will see if Lina really loves him. If can’t appeal to her heart, he’ll drink the drink and be enchanted.
When Lina prevents Michael from drinking the enchanted drink at the dance because she loves him and can’t stand to see him turned into a mindless magical slave, the spell is broken on all of the other princes. They all return to the castle, and the magical palace crumbles behind them. When they reveal the truth to the king, he makes Michael the heir to the kingdom with Lina as his wife.
I’ve heard many different versions of this story before, but there are always so many unanswered questions. Just how did the eldest princess come up with this whole magical dancing scheme in the first place? Where did she even learn to do magic? How come the princesses are never tired even though they dance every night instead of sleeping? (Well, I guess that could just be magic because magic can fill many plot holes.) Why did the king just keep giving the girls new dancing shoes when they kept wearing them out every night? My parents would have just stopped giving me things that I repeatedly broke, telling me that I can’t have new stuff if I can’t take care of the old. They’d probably say something like, “I don’t know what you’re doing with those shoes every night, but whatever it is, you’re not going to do it anymore because you won’t have them.” But, fairy tale characters just aren’t that practical, and if they were, the story would have ended much sooner. In fact, why didn’t the king himself just sit up for one night with his daughters and see for himself what they did or split them up and put them in different rooms of his castle to put an end to their hijinks? Just what is the king going to do with the eldest princess, now that he knows that she’s some kind of witch or enchantress? Did her powers break completely when Michael broke her spell? Also, what was the deal with the mysterious woman Michael met on the road, who gave him the invisibility cloak? How did she figure into this, or was she just some random, magical being or enchantress who, coincidentally, just happened to have a magical cloak that she could spare? The story doesn’t really say.
I love the pictures in this book because they are beautiful and detailed, but the art style is a little unusual. Instead of having every picture appear in its entirety on a page, some pictures wrap around to the next page, either giving a hint of what’s coming or a taste of what was on the previous page. Sometimes, I found myself wanting to see the whole picture at once, but I can see how the illustrator was trying to make scenes in the story kind of flow into each other.
The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.
The Case of the Dragon in Distress by E. W. Hildick, 1991.
The McGurk organization start getting interested in the Middle Ages when they acquire a round table, which reminds them of King Arthur’s Round Table, and they begin studying the Middle Ages in school. Shortly after that, Brains buys a set of walkie-talkies at a fire sale. At first, they don’t work, but Brains tinkers with them until he can get them to send and receive. The strange thing is that they only seem to work well at night.
One night, the organization decides to test them, and somehow, they are transported into the Middle Ages. A strange voice speaks to them through their “little black boxes” and sends them on a quest that takes them to the castle of Princess Melisande the Bad. The castle is supposedly guarded by a dragon, but it is really a couple of servants in a dragon costume. Like many others in the castle, they are prisoners of Princess Melisande, who appears young and sweet, but is actually evil. She uses the dragon story to lure brave men to the castle so that she can imprison them and drink their blood. She has leeches put on them, and then she eats the leeches. That is how she maintains her youth, even though she is ancient. Among her prisoners are the king’s son, Prince Geoffrey, and the young chief of the McGurk clan from Ireland, who may be a distant ancestor of Jack P. McGurk.
When the members of the McGurk Organization arrive at the castle, everyone is amazed by their strange appearance, modern clothes, and the little black boxes that talk. Even Princess Melisande is in awe of them, but the McGurk in her prison is weakening, and she may be planning to replace him with the McGurk from modern times.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction and Spoiler:
The two servants who were pretending to be the dragon, Gareth and his sister Gwyneth, are also time travelers, but they are from the 17th century. They were brought to the Middle Ages after drinking a potion that was supposed to cure them of a fever. In their own era, they live close to the castle where they are now imprisoned, and they know that there is a secret passage that leads out of the castle from the dungeon. The kids develop a plan to sneak out of the castle under the dragon costume, but they are caught and thrown in the dungeon. They try the secret passage, not knowing if the path goes all the way through. It does, and they make it to the king’s camp. When they tell the king that Princess Melisande has his son, the king plans to storm the castle and free the prisoners. McGurk says that their mission is accomplished, and the voice from their little black boxes says that it’s time for them to go home. Everyone wakes up in their own beds, as if nothing had happened. They believe that the walkie-talkies are responsible for what happened, but they aren’t quite sure if they actually went back in time or merely dreamed that they did. There is some evidence that they really went back in time, but it isn’t answered definitely.
I liked this book as a kid, although it’s a little bizarre because most of the books in this series are just mysteries involving a group of neighborhood friends that take place contemporary to when the books were written. There is usually nothing magical or supernatural about the books in this series, and it’s kind of a weird departure from the usual format. There is another book after this one that continues their time traveling adventures.
This is the final book in the Indian in the Cupboard series. At the end of the previous book, Omri’s father learned the secret of Omri’s special cupboard and key, that it brings small plastic figures to life.
At the beginning of this book, Omri’s father suddenly announces to his family that he wants to take them on a camping trip. It seems like an impulsive decision because this isn’t something that the family usually does, and Omri figures that it must have something to do with the secret that the father and son now share concerning their small friends from the past.
After Omri’s father discovered his secret, the two of them had a serious talk, and Omri explained to him all about his past adventures and the very real consequences that they’ve had, both in the present and in the past. They need to consider carefully what they’re going to do because Little Bear has asked them for help with some trouble that his tribe in the past is having with the British. Knowing the history of the interactions between Europeans and Native Americans, both Omri and his father know that something serious is about to happen to Little Bear and his people, but how can they help? Omri explains to his father that they have the ability to go back into the past themselves, but in order to do that, they need to find something big enough to hold both of them, and someone else would have to turn the key for them to send them and bring them back.
Omri’s father later admits to him privately that he thought up the camping trip as a way for the two of them to disappear for a couple of days without anyone asking questions. Although he proposed the camping trip, he plans to arrange for him and Omri to have a private trip by themselves, discouraging the others from going along. Omri’s father also thinks that he’s figured out what they can use to send themselves back in time – the family car. It’s big enough to hold both of them, it locks with a key, and there’s even an LB in the license plate number, which they take as a hopeful sign. But then, Omri realizes that there’s a problem with that scheme. Even though the car locks with a key, it’s not the kind of lock that an old-fashioned skeleton key could open. They need a key with a different shape, something flatter. They decide that they need the help of Jessica Charlotte, who made the last key. Fortunately, Omri has a way to talk to her because he has the plastic figure of Jessica Charlotte.
When Omri brings Jessica Charlotte back, he finds that she has attempted to drown herself in a river (an event hinted at in the last book) because of her guilt at accidentally causing her sister’s husband’s death. Omri brings back a WWII Matron who has helped them before to treat Jessica Charlotte. When Jessica Charlotte recovers, she thinks at first that she must have died and that Omri is part of her afterlife. Omri assures her that it’s not the case, that she’s still alive. She is still lamenting over having caused Matt’s death and ruined her sister and niece’s lives, but Omri explains to her that he’s Lottie’s grandson. Jessica Charlotte feels better, hearing that Lottie grew up, married, and had children, so her life wasn’t completely ruined. Omri can’t bring himself to explain how Lottie was killed in a bombing during WWII, but he asks for her help to create a new key. Aunt Jessie, as she asks to be called, agrees to help Omri, and he and his father give her their car key to duplicate.
However, when Aunt Jessie returns with the key, they realize that they’ve miscalculated. When a person comes from the past with anything they make or bring with them, it’s always small, like the miniature people themselves. Aunt Jessie’s key is a duplicate of the key they gave her, but it’s small, too small to use in the car. Omri and his father aren’t sure how to get around this problem, so they decide to go on the camping trip with Omri’s brother Gillon, just camping like normal, while they think it over.
It turns out that something magic happened to the car key while it was in the past with Aunt Jessie. When Omri’s father turns the key in the car, Omri suddenly finds himself in the past, but not the past he was hoping to visit. Because they brought some things that belonged to his Great-Grandfather Matt with them on the camping trip, Omri suddenly finds himself in India, during the time that Matt was living there. Omri is inside a puppet in a marketplace, and his great-grandfather buys him. Also, to Omri’s shock, Gillon is also inside a puppet that his grandfather has.
Their mother eventually rescues them by opening the car and turning the key. She was alarmed because it seemed like her husband and sons all passed out in the car. Omri and his father don’t have a real explanation for her, not wanting to explain that the car key is now magic. (She decides that there must have been an exhaust leak, and they were all overcome by fumes.) Gillon was knocked unconscious when his puppet was dropped on its head, and his mother takes him to the hospital, using her spare car key. (When Gillon recovers, he thinks it was just a weird dream he had because of the car fumes.) Meanwhile, Omri and his father talk about the situation, and Omri’s father reveals that, while the boys were taken to India, he ended up in Little Bear’s time because he was carrying some wampum belonging to Little Bear.
So, know they know that it’s possible for them to use their car key to go back in time, but if they try it a second time, who will turn the key for them to bring them back at the appropriate time? The only other person who can come with them on their “camping trip” who knows their secret and can be trusted to help them is Omri’s friend, Patrick. However, Patrick isn’t happy that he’s only there to help Omri and his father go back in time and that he won’t be going himself. He does agree to help them, but unfortunately, he has plans of his own while Omri and his father are occupied elsewhere.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction:
Although Omri’s father wonders at first whether it’s a good idea to try to help Little Bear because of the risk of changing the past and affecting the future, Omri has learned that it’s not quite as simple as that. During his previous adventures, he has felt an irresistible pull to use the cupboard and the key, even when he wasn’t always sure it was a good idea, and there are indications that Omri’s interactions with people in other time periods seem fated to happen. He did save Jessica Charlotte’s life when she tried to drown herself, and other things Omri has done seem to fit with wider events.
When Omri and his father are figuring out how to help Little Bear with his problems with the British in his time, they do some research about Little Bear’s time and talk about the ways that 18th century British people treated Native Americans. Knowing what Little Bear is likely to face, they feel like they have a responsibility to help him as best they can. When Little Bear explains in more detail what his people have been suffering at the hands of the British and other settlers, Omri feels guilty, knowing that he’s also British, while at the same time knowing that he was not responsible for things that happened before he was born. This is something that people still struggle with today, hearing about difficult periods of history and knowing that their ancestors (or at least other members of their society, if not literally their direct ancestors) played a role in making life difficult for others, setting up situations where real people suffered or were killed. The best Omri can do is to help Little Bear make the best possible decisions to ensure the survival of his people. Of course, being able to help with that much is part of the time traveling fantasy of this story. Real people can’t actually go back in time and intervene to influence others and change the course of history.
The books in this series aren’t for young children, and as the series progresses, they get more serious in subject matter. There is discussion of suicide, not just with Jessica Charlotte’s attempt to drown herself but when Little Bear explains that his first wife killed herself after being raped by white men. There is violence in the story when the Native American village is attacked and people are shot. Overall, the story is pretty straight-forward in the way in confronts the dark sides of history. Omri and his father advise Little Bear to take his clan to a place where they know that they will be relatively safe and among other Iroquois, but they know and admit to Little Bear that even that won’t solve all of their problems and that there will be other hardships in the future. It’s an imperfect solution to a massive problem, but Omri senses that it is best choice that they could make and that Little Bear and his family will live the safest possible life because of the decision they made, and their descendants will survive.
Omri and his father struggle with knowing that things are going to be hard for Little Bear’s people no matter what choices they make. There is no magical solution to everyone’s problems in the story, and the book doesn’t offer a firm moral or solution to Omri’s guilty feelings when he sees firsthand how badly Native Americans were treated (a form of “white guilt“, although the book doesn’t use that term). Overall, I would say that the book confronts the dark parts of history and human guilt on a very individual level. Omri and his father can’t solve the large issues completely because they can’t control them. They can’t control the past, and they can’t control other people, not even the people who come through the cupboard as miniature ones, like living toys. Everyone is an individual with their own choices to make, and every choice, even the wrong ones, changes the course of history.
After Omri saves Jessica Charlotte’s life, she realizes that what she thought was a dream before she stole her sister’s earrings was real, that she saw and spoke to Omri, and that he could have warned her about what would happen if she went through with her theft, how Matt would have died and how everyone’s lives would be changed for the worse. However, Omri did choose not to warn her because not everything was changed for the worse. After Lottie’s father died and her family lost their money, Lottie still grew up, fell in love, got married, and had a daughter. It’s true that she did die young in World War II, while her daughter was still an infant, and changing the theft of the earrings might have changed that in some way, but not without changing other things. Omri has discovered that changing things about the past, even seemingly small things, can change larger parts of history, and his psychic gift seems to guide him toward making only choices that help the flow of history instead of working against it. If he had prevented the theft of the earrings, his great-grandfather might have lived longer and so might Lottie, but if that happened, would Lottie have ever met the man she eventually married and had Omri’s mother? Omri’s father wouldn’t be happy without his wife and sons, and if Omri never existed, would some of the other things he did that impacted history have happened? Also, if Lottie hadn’t died in the bombing during WWII, would someone else have been where she happened to be and died in her place? The bomb that killed her would have fallen anyway because that was part of someone else’s choices, a person who never enters this story and whose decisions can’t be controlled. Time and history and the ripple effects caused by individual choices are complex. Omri has his psychic gift to guide him, and even his father, who admits that he never used to believe anything he couldn’t see for himself, comes to trust it.
People without this sort of magical gift have only themselves to rely on to make the best choices they can to make the world as good as possible, even in the face of others’ bad decisions. I think that a large part of the choices that Omri makes in the story and dealing with “white guilt” in real life come down to the combination of frustration and the acceptance of choices made by other people who can’t be controlled. Modern people might hate what happened in the past and feel badly if people related to them were part of it, but we don’t have the option to change things that have already happened. There comes a point where you have to accept the knowledge that you can’t control others, no matter how much you might want to make better choices on their behalf. The only person you can control is yourself.
I’m a white person, descended from colonial settlers in America, and I don’t actually see “white guilt” as a negative thing. I see it as a human thing. If you can feel real emotion at someone else’s plight, a wish that bad things didn’t really happen, or a feeling that what happened shouldn’t have happened and an honest desire to change even the unchangeable past for the better, it means that you’re a real, thinking, feeling human being with a sense of right and wrong, and there’s nothing bad about that at all. Feelings are just tools, to give us hints of what we need to do or how we need to behave in our lives. Feelings aren’t always completely accurate, but sometimes, they give us hints of things that need to be fixed or clues that whatever we did before didn’t really work, that we made the wrong choice or did the wrong thing. I think what upsets and confuses other white people about “white guilt” is the conflict between loving ancestors and wanting to be proud of them and admitting that some of them had a real dark side and did some pretty awful things. Some people have trouble dealing with that, thinking that it’s impossible to feel two things at once, loving someone and being angry with them for things that they’ve done, but it really is possible. Two things can be true at once, and you can have mixed feelings about many things.
Feelings are complex, as complex as people are, and I think it’s as possible for a person to both like and hate another person for the things they’ve done as it is to both like a sweater for the way it looks but not want to wear it because it’s itchy and uncomfortable. I think that’s about the best advice that I can actually offer to other white people trying to make sense of that feeling. Sure, that sweater looks pretty impressive. It has a nice color and a cheerful pattern, and you might think it would look impressive on you if you wore it, but honestly, it’s better if you just leave it on the mannequin. It’s overpriced, out of style, and won’t look at all impressive when it makes you constantly want to scratch all of the places where it itches. Let it go.
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
The frustrating thing about feelings about the past and about other people’s lives is that we can’t fix those particular things. In real life, we can’t go back in time, and we can’t even “fix” other people in our own time because that’s something they have to do themselves, if they’re going to do it. You can suggest things to other people, but there’s always a point where they have to make the decisions themselves. But, the good news is that, if you can’t control other people, nobody can completely control you! The way I see it, the most useful thing about this “white guilt” is remembering that this is something we don’t want. Maybe there’s something charming about the rosy, nostalgic view of the past, but honestly, you wouldn’t be happy living there, and if you actually had to live with your ancestors, you’d probably discover that you wouldn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things and maybe wouldn’t even get along at all. So, why would you want to try to carry their old baggage with you into your life and spend your life and your precious time constantly trying to explain or excuse their bad choices? You’ve got your own to life.
Give credit where credit is due for both the good and the bad things, and let our ancestors’ records speak for themselves. You won’t accomplish anything for twisting your feelings into knots for trying to protect the feelings of the dead and justify their actions. They don’t even feel anything anymore. They are dead. Let them rest. We don’t want to add to bad things that have been done in the past and to keep having things in our lives to feel guilty about, and that’s okay because there are new choices to be made every single day. Put your focus there. You have a present to live and a future to plan. Knowing about the past is interesting and informative, but the past isn’t where we really live. Admire it like a nice sweater on a mannequin, take note of the price tag, and move on. We don’t have to make the same old choices that have made people, including ourselves, unhappy just because that’s the way things have been before or because we feel like we have something to prove about our ancestors. They had their chance to make the choices in their time, for good or bad (and frequently, some of each, but you can’t help that), and now, it’s our turn to make the choices because this is our time.
Speaking of bad decisions, Patrick almost gets Boone and Ruby killed because of his recklessness when he brings them back while Omri and his father were with Little Bear, which he did just because he was bored and felt left out of their magical adventure, which wasn’t really pleasant and fun for them anyway. Boone and Ruby both make it clear how they feel about that, and Omri also makes it clear that this is the end of the magic for him and Patrick. Boone and Little Bear have their own lives to live, and Omri’s gift tells him that it’s time to let them get on with living their lives without interference. Omri still has the cupboard and the key, but he no longer feels the pull he felt before to use them because he has played his part in history and in the lives of his little friends, and there is nothing more he needs to do. He doesn’t feel the need to lock these things away as he did before because he already knows that he will never feel the urge to use them again. When something’s over and the moment has passed, you just know.
Before the end of the story, Omri’s mother admits to him that she knows all about the little figures and that the cupboard brought them to life, although she never actually saw any of them herself. She has also inherited the family gift and is aware of what the cupboard does, even though she has not used it herself. All along, she’s been pretending that she didn’t know what was going on, although she really did. She’s a little sorry that she didn’t see the little people herself, but she knew that not interfering was the right thing to do. She thinks that letting the magic go and not using the cupboard again are the right decisions, and she doesn’t want Omri or his father to tell Omri’s bothers about the magic because, if they do, it will never end, and it’s really time for it to all end. This really is the final book in the series.
The Mystery of the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks, 1993.
This is the fourth book in the Indian in the Cupboard series. It’s also the longest book in the series and the one that reveals the most about the history of the magical key and cupboard and how their secrets tie into the secrets in Omri’s own family. It was my favorite book in the series when I was a kid!
Omri’s parents have surprised him by telling him that they’re planning on moving to a new house again. Omri wasn’t exactly happy with their last move, and his room and other parts of their new house were damaged after his last adventure with time travel, when his friend Patrick brought back a tornado with him. However, now that the house has been repaired and he’s settled in, Omri doesn’t like the idea of having to pack up and leave and get used to a new place again. His parents want to move to the country, but it’s not even the area where Patrick now lives. Instead, they’re planning to move to a house that his mother has just inherited.
The house Omri’s mother has inherited belonged to an older cousin of hers she never actually knew. He didn’t leave his house specifically to her; it’s just that he died and left no will, and Omri’s mother happens to be the nearest living relative his lawyers could find. When they finally see the house and find out how much land is attached to it, it turns out to be much better than Omri expected.
There are just two things that concern Omri. The first is the package that he asked his father to store at a bank for him – the magical cupboard and key. Although Omri asked his father to put them in a bank deposit box to keep them safe and prevent himself from being tempted to use them again because it’s too dangerous, he doesn’t like the idea of them being too far away from where he’s living. His father promises to have them transferred to a bank near their new home. The second thing that worries him is that his cat mysteriously disappears soon after they move into the new house. (The cat is okay, she just sneaked away to have kittens.) His parents say that she’s just roaming her new territory and might be a little angry for being moved from her old home and that she’ll come back to Omri once she’s settled in, he still worries about her.
One night, he think he hears his cat crying and goes looking for her. He doesn’t see her, but he stumbles on something that was hidden in some old thatch that fell of the roof of the house. It turns out to be a metal box and a notebook belonging to someone named Jessica Charlotte Driscoll, written in 1950. Omri doesn’t know who she is, but the notebook is a story of her life, in which she describes incredible things happening to her which her family doesn’t believe. Omri wonders if she could be a relative of his, and the name Charlotte reminds him of his grandmother, Lottie. He never knew his grandmother and his mother doesn’t even remember her mother because she died in a bombing during WWII, when she was very young. The woman who wrote the notebook couldn’t have actually been his grandmother because she would have been dead for several years by 1950, but perhaps it was a family name.
Omri questions his mother about the cousin who owned the house and her family’s history. Jessica Charlotte turns out to be the sister of Omri’s great-grandmother, his mother’s great-aunt. Great Aunt Jessica Charlotte was the younger sister of his mother’s grandmother. After her mother was killed in the war, Omri’s mother was raised by her grandmother. Omri’s mother had asked her about her younger sister when she was a girl, but her grandmother didn’t like to talk about her. Apparently, Jessica Charlotte had been an actress with a somewhat scandalous past. However, the cousin who used to own this house was Jessica Charlotte’s son, Frederick. Frederick never married, and although Omri’s mother thought that Jessica Charlotte had lived abroad somewhere, it’s possible that she lived at this house for a time.
Much of the story is told through entries in Jessica Charlotte’s notebook. When Omri begins to read the notebook, written toward the end of Jessica Charlotte’s life, he learns, to his shock, that Jessica Charlotte was the original owner of the magic cupboard and that she had her own Little People who visited her from other times and were her friends. After Omri reads that, he questions Gillon, the brother who gave him the cupboard, and he admits that he didn’t really find it in an alley, like he said. He actually found it in the basement of their old house with a bunch of other junk. He just didn’t have the money to buy Omri a birthday present at the time, and Omri had kind of a fascination for secret drawers and boxes, so Gillon thought that he might have some fun with the old cupboard, and he made up the story about mysteriously finding it to make it more interesting. (I suspect that the author was just retconning this part to make it agree with the idea that the cupboard was passed down through Omri’s family, but I like the way this comes out, so I’m okay with that.)
The notebook further explains that Jessica Charlotte had been envious of her older sister because she was prettier, luckier, and often seemed favored by everyone. However, in mocking the young men who came to court her older sister, Jessica Charlotte discovered that she had a talent for mimicry, which led her to become an actress, although her family thought that it was a disreputable profession and disapproved. Jessica Charlotte also discovered that she was psychic and sometimes had visions of the future. She eventually left home and became an actress. Her sister, Maria, still visited her secretly sometimes, against their parents’ wishes.
After awhile, Jessica Charlotte became pregnant with Frederick, which was when she first came to the old house where Omri’s family now lives. She didn’t have any money and couldn’t work while pregnant, and because she was unmarried, she would have been considered shameful if people knew. At that time, the house was a farmhouse belonging to a relative of Frederick’s father. By that point, Jessica Charlotte realized that her boyfriend wasn’t a good person and wasn’t going to be a good father to their son, but he did arrange for this relative of his to help her through her pregnancy. Frederick was born in the house, and because he was illegitimate and sensed his mother’s complicated feelings about him and the circumstances of his birth, he and his mother were never as close as they really should have been.
Meanwhile, Maria got married and had a daughter, Lottie, who was Omri’s grandmother, the one who was killed in the war. Jessica Charlotte says that she did something that wronged Maria and Lottie, and Omri stops reading the diary for a time, but he decides that he really has to continue and know the full story.
Over the years, Jessica Charlotte lived a hard life, supporting Frederick through a mixture of acting and other odd jobs, including fortune telling because of her psychic abilities (although she never used her gift to see into the future for herself or anyone close to her because she was afraid she might see something bad happen to them and be unable to stop it). Meanwhile, Maria was living a very comfortable life with her husband and daughter. Even after their parents died, Maria still had Jessica Charlotte visit secretly because of her tainted reputation, and she never wanted to meet Frederick or talk about him because his birth was the cause of her sister’s scandal. Still, Jessica Charlotte continued to see her sister and became fond of Lottie.
However, Maria was basically a pampered snob who didn’t understand her sister’s life and hardships and also had a streak of self-centeredness. One day, when Lottie was a young child, Maria said that when Lottie was older, she didn’t want her to see so much of her aunt, implying that Jessica Charlotte would be a bad influence on her. Jessica Charlotte was deeply offended by that, but she was also fearful about losing the last family members who were still speaking to her. She had lost so many of her other relationships that she still felt the need to be close to Maria and Lottie as much as she could and visit their pampered and comfortable little world, enjoying occasional tastes of their happier and more comfortable lives.
Yet, Jessica Charlotte’s jealousy for Maria’s pampered life and anger at her callousness continued to eat at her. One day, when Maria was showing her all of her nice jewelry, Jessica Charlotte got the urge to steal a beautiful pair of earrings. First, Maria was being, at the very least, thoughtless and callous for showing off all of her nice jewelry to her much poorer sister, who could never have things like that herself. Maria not only had no concept about what her sister’s life was like outside of her occasional visits, but she purposely never asked her about how she was doing, how her son was doing, or even where they were living, how they were getting by, if they needed anything, or if she could help them in any way. She didn’t know because she didn’t want to know any of these things, and the fact that she didn’t want to know any of that indicates that she knew enough to understand that their circumstances weren’t pleasant. To show off all of her pretty things like that just seems like rubbing it in. Second, Jessica Charlotte had been in need for so long that she saw all of the pretty jewels as symbols of Maria’s comfortable life, something she hungered for herself. The pair of earrings weren’t something that Jessica Charlotte wanted just for the sake of having them but because of what they represented to her, the life that she couldn’t share in and which she knew that Maria would soon shut her out of when she declared that her visits with her young niece would have to stop soon.
Jessica Charlotte planned out the theft in advance, making a duplicate key for her sister’s jewelry box and thinking that her sister would just assume that she’d mislaid that one pair of earrings somewhere. Unfortunately, when Maria noticed that the earrings were gone, she thought Lottie had done something with them, and when she kept insisting that Lottie tell her where they were, Lottie got upset and ran out of the house into the street. Matt, Maria’s husband and Lottie’s father, chased after her and was hit by a cab and killed. Jessica Charlotte felt terrible when she heard the news because she hadn’t meant for anyone to get hurt, but there was nothing she could do to take it all back.
Omri knows how Maria and Lottie’s lives went after that point because of what his mother told him about their family history. After Matt died, Maria and Lottie didn’t have very much money to live on, just a little pension, and then their house was burgled, and many of Maria’s nice things were stolen, including the rest of her jewelry, so she couldn’t sell them for extra money. Maria had to move to smaller, cheaper lodgings and get a job for the first time in her life in order to support herself and her daughter, living a life closer to what her sister had been doing. When Lottie was grown and married, she and her husband helped to support her mother, but after they were killed in WWII, Maria took in Lottie’s daughter (Omri’s mother) and had to keep working in order to raise her. Although they were now living in more equal circumstances, the two sisters did not become close again because of Jessica Charlotte’s guilt about what she’d done. Jessica Charlotte ended up buying the old house in the country where her son had been born and told her sister that she was going to live abroad, never telling her exactly where. She had not expected to see Maria again anyway since Maria was planning to cut her out of her daughter’s life before Jessica Charlotte stole the earrings, and after Matt died, Jessica Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to face Maria. Jessica Charlotte lived in the country house until her death in 1950.
When Jessica Charlotte became too weak to write any longer, shortly before her death, she had Frederick finish the story in the notebook. Aside from the difficult feelings between Frederick and his mother because of the circumstances of his birth and the rough and poor childhood he endured, Frederick also says that the two of them don’t really get along because they are very different types of people. When he was grown, Frederick went into business as a metal smith, eventually owning his own factory that made toy soldiers and other metal toys. During WWII, the government had him convert his toy factory to manufacture munitions. He wasn’t happy about it, but it did make him fairly well-off. After the war, Frederick had hoped to go back to making metal toys, but plastic was coming into vogue as the material of choice for toys, and Frederick couldn’t stand the stuff. He thought that the newer plastic toys were cheap and shoddy compared to his detailed works of art in metal. (It was kind of true.) There were basically two choices before Frederick: convert to making the cheap plastic toys he hated or switch to making different types of metal products. He switched to making metal boxes and cabinets.
Frederick never really believed in his mother’s supposed psychic powers, but when he was upset about plastic ruining his metal toy business, he admits that he let his mother talk him into participating in a silly ritual. He was so angry and upset that his emotions were ruining his health, so his mother told him to build something to put his feelings into and shut them away. Frederick built Omri’s magical metal cupboard. When he was finished making it, his mother had him visualize cleansing himself of all of his anger and hatred of plastic and shutting that feeling away in the cupboard. To his surprise, his mother shut and locked the cupboard with a different key from the one that he’d made to put in the cupboard’s lock (her key to her sister’s jewelry box). He thought that this ritual was kind of crazy at first, but he did feel better after he did it. He felt weak for a time, but then he recovered. He still didn’t like plastic, but not to the point where it harmed his health anymore.
Jessica Charlotte had said her son had also inherited her psychic “gift”, even though he didn’t believe in it. Apparently, his strong feelings about plastic produced a kind of magic spell or curse that affected the key and the cupboard and created the effect of bringing plastic toys to life. Jessica Charlotte discovered this herself because her son had given her a set of plastic figures in order to demonstrate to her how these little figures were inferior to his metal ones. Jessica Charlotte put them in the cupboard and brought them to life, and these little friends of hers brought her some happiness in her final days. Frederick thought that her mother was imagining that she was talking to fairies or something and never found out about his mother’s little friends or the magic of the cupboard.
When Jessica Charlotte realized that she was dying, she used the cupboard to send her little friends back to their own time periods, except for one little maid named Jenny, who refused to go back because she’d had a terrible life in her own time. Instead of making her go back, Jessica Charlotte confided in one of the workmen fixing the thatch on her roof and gave Jenny to him. This man, Tom, was lonely because his wife left him for someone else, so Jenny was good company for him for many years, until one day, she simply turned back to plastic suddenly. When Omri finds Tom as an old man and introduces himself as Jessica Charlotte’s distant nephew, Tom explains all of this to him, saying that all he can think of is that Jenny’s physical body must have died in her own time after having been in an apparent coma for years. He buried her little plastic figure respectfully. Tom is also the one who sent the cupboard and key to Maria after Jessica Charlotte died along with a note dictated to him by Jessica Charlotte, hinting at the nature of the cupboard and key and tacitly admitting to the theft of the earrings, so Maria knew the truth of the theft before her own death.
Omri comes to realize that the metal box that Jessica Charlotte left behind, and which was sealed with wax, must contain her collection of little figures. When his friend, Patrick, comes to visit him at his new house, Omri explains the whole situation to him, and Patrick suggests that Omri’s magic key will probably open this metal box, too. Of course, he also points out that if Omri opens the box with that special key, it will bring the figures inside to life, just as it has with the cupboard and Omri’s old trunk. Omri sees Jessica Charlotte’s old figurines as a way of finishing her story and feels compelled to bring them back to life one last time, although he knows that bringing figures to life always comes with complications, and he will have no way of knowing who or what the figures are until the box is open.
When Omri gets the chance to talk to Jessica Charlotte’s little friends, he not only learns more about his great-great-aunt’s past and the history of the cupboard but also sees an opportunity to change the past of his mother and great-grandmother by preventing the robbery that made them poor. But, if he meddles in the past, what will that mean for his future?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction:
This is my favorite book in the Indian in the Cupboard series. I suspect that the author of the series didn’t originally have an explanation for why the cupboard and key were magic, but that’s just a guess on my part. The explanation behind the magic in this book makes sense, and those parts that didn’t quite mesh with the earlier books (like Omri’s brother’s original explanation of finding the cupboard in an alley) were briefly explained. Sometimes, when book or movie series try to explain something magical or a mysterious secret they’ve left hanging, it turns into a let-down because the explanation feels rushed or implausible or fits clumsily into the earlier parts of the story, but this one was pretty smooth, intriguing, and also opened up some new story possibilities.
In previous books, Omri and Patrick both did impulsive things with the cupboard that put their small friends, themselves, and other people in danger, but in this book, both of the boys seem to have matured. Although Patrick thinks of Jessica Charlotte as a bad person and a thief for stealing her sister’s earrings, Omri tries to explain to him that she was a much more complex and conflicted person than that. Yes, Jessica Charlotte was a thief, but her motives were beyond mere greed, and it wasn’t long before she regretted what she’d done and the lasting hurt that she’d caused her family. In considering Jessica Charlotte’s theft and the theft that the burglar who was one of Jessica Charlotte’s little friends later committed against Maria, partly out of personal greed and partly as retribution against Maria on Jessica Charlotte’s behalf, Omri and his mother both come to terms with their family’s history. Patrick, who in previous books had been the more impulsive one when he and Omri interacted with the little people from the past, acts as a restraining influence in this book when Omri is tempted to change his family’s past for the better by preventing the thefts that left his great-grandmother without money. Patrick is the one who makes it clear to Omri that, just as Jessica Charlotte’s theft of a single pair of earrings radically changed the lives of her sister and niece, if Omri tries to stop those events from happening, he might change his family’s past so much that he might accidentally prevent himself or even his own mother from being born in the first place. After Omri tells the thief to give back the jewel box he stole, Omri worries that he’s gone too far, but it turns out that one request was actually fated to happen, just as it turns out that Jessica Charlotte later realized that she had met Omri briefly in what she thought was a dream when he brought her plastic figure to life. Not all of Omri’s “meddling” with the past was really meddling but was actually part of what was fated to happen and has already had an effect on the past even before he knew it.
At the end of this book, something that Omri has alternately dreaded and wanted to happen: his father discovers the secret of the cupboard and meets Omri’s small friends. In books, there is usually this assumption that if parents ever find out about their children’s magical adventures, they will end because the parents will put a stop to them or somehow, the magic will be ruined. However, in this case, the magic is not ruined, and there is one more book in this series where both Omri and his father take part in the magic.
