Posted on by TracyC

Pippi Longstocking

PippiLongstocking

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren, 1950.

Pippi Longstocking is an iconic figure in children’s literature, a little red-haired girl with amazing strength (she can lift a horse all by herself) and a quick wit, who can “always come out on top” in any situation and is frequently doing exciting and hilarious things without adult supervision. The books in her series were originally from Sweden, with the first one written in 1945, but I’m reading a later English translation.

In the first book, she comes to live by herself in a house, which she calls Villa Villekulla, in a small town in Sweden when her father, a ship’s captain, is washed overboard at sea.  Although others fear that he is dead, Pippi thinks it more likely that he was washed up on an island of cannibals, where he will soon be making himself their king.  (Of course, Pippi turns out to be right, but that’s getting ahead of the story.) Her mother died when she was a baby, so Pippi now lives all by herself, except for her pet monkey and horse. She pays for the things she needs with money from the suitcase of gold coins that her father left for her and spends her time doing just as she pleases.

Tommy and Annika, the children who live next door to Ville Villekulla, are perfectly ordinary, basically obedient children, who live normal lives with their parents. When Pippi moves in next door, their lives get a lot more exciting. The first time they meet her, she’s walking backward down the street. When they ask her why she’s doing that, she says that everyone walks that way in Egypt. Tommy and Annika quickly realize that she’s making that up, and Pippi admits it, but she’s such an interesting person that they accept her invitation to join her for breakfast. They’re amazed when they find out that Pippi has no parents, only a monkey and a horse living with her, and are entertained by the tall tales that she tells.

When they go back to see her the next day, Pippi tells them that she’s a “thing-finder” and invites them to come and look for things with her. Basically, Pippi is a kind of scavenger, looking for valuable things, things that might be useful, or (which is more likely) just any old random junk that she might happen across. Pippi does find some random junk, although she makes sure that Tommy and Annika find better things (probably by hiding them herself).

Then, the children see a group of bullies beating up another boy and decide to intervene. The meanest of the bullies, Bengt, starts picking on Pippi, but picking on a girl with super strength isn’t the wisest move. She picks him up easily and drapes him over a tree branch. Then, she takes care of his friends, too.

Word quickly spreads through town about this strange girl. Some of the adults become concerned that such a young girl seems to be living on her own. A couple of policemen come to the Ville Villekulla one day to take Pippi to a children’s home, but she saucily tells them that she already has a children’s home because she’s a child and she’s at home. Then, she tricks them into playing a bizarre game of tag that ends with them being stuck on the roof of the house. The policemen decide that perhaps Pippi can take care of herself after all and give up.

Tommy and Annika try to persuade Pippi to come to school with them, but that doesn’t work out, either. Pippi, completely unfamiliar with the routine of school, thinks that the teacher is weirdly obsessed with numbers because she keeps demanding that her students give her the answers to math problems that Pippi thinks she should be able to solve on her own. The teacher concludes that school may not be for Pippi, at least not at this point in her life.

Tommy and Annika delight in the wild things that Pippi does, like facing off with a bull while they’re on a picnic, accepting a challenge to fight a strongman at the circus, and throwing a party with a couple of burglars.  When they invite Pippi to their mother’s coffee party, and their mother’s friends begin talking about their servants and how hard it is to find good help, Pippi (having already devastated the buffet of desserts and made a mess in general) jumps in with a series of tall tales about a servant that her grandparents had, interrupting everyone else.  Tommy and Annika’s mother finally decides that she’s had enough and sends Pippi away.  Pippi does leave, but still continuing the story about the servant on the way out, yelling out the punchline from down the street.

However, Pippi becomes a local hero when she saves some children from a fire after the fireman decide that they can’t reach them themselves.

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

My Reaction

I have to admit that, as a character, Pippi sometimes annoys me with her obvious lies and some of the stuff she does. She openly admits that she lies after telling some of her tall tales, but it’s the parts where she admonishes her listeners not to be so gullible that get to me. You can tell that her listeners aren’t really fooled at all; they’re just trying to be polite by not calling her a liar directly, and then she insults them for it. Maybe it’s Pippi who’s really the gullible one, thinking that she’s fooling people when she isn’t really. 

Admittedly, Pippi’s wild stories are sometimes amusing.  I liked the one where she claimed that the reason why other people don’t believe in ghosts is that all of the ghosts in the world live in her attic and play nine-pins with their heads.  When Tommy and Annika go up there to see them, there aren’t any, of course, and Pippi says that they must be away at a conference for ghosts and goblins.

I just don’t like it that Pippi seems to be deliberately trying to make people look dumb when she’s the one saying all the stupid stuff and it’s really obvious that people know it. I also don’t like the part where she makes such a mess at the coffee party because she seems to be trying to be a messy pain on purpose.  She insists that it’s just because she doesn’t know how to behave, but I get the sense that it’s just an excuse and that Pippi just likes to pretend to be more ignorant than she is, pushing limits just because she likes to and because she usually gets away with it.  I didn’t think it was very funny.  But, Tommy and Annika seem to just appreciate Pippi’s imagination, enjoying Pippi’s antics, which bring excitement and chaos to a world controlled by sensible adults, which can be boring to kids, and accepting Pippi’s stories for the tall tales they are, playing along with her.

Pippi herself is really a tall tale, with her super strength, her father the cannibal king, and her ability to turn pretty much any situation her to advantage.  Part of her ability to “come out on top” is due to her super strength and part of it is that Pippi approaches situations from the attitude that she’s already won and isn’t answerable to anyone but herself.  This approach doesn’t always work in real life (I can’t recommend trying it on any of your teachers, or worse still, your boss – not everyone is easily impressed, especially the people who pay your salary), and nobody in real life has Pippi’s super strength to back it up. The adults in the story frequently let Pippi win because they decide that fighting with her just isn’t worth it. (Admittedly, that does happen in real life, too. I’ve seen teachers and other people give in to people who are just too much of a pain to argue with because they’re too impatient or find the argument too exhausting.)  Kids delight in Pippi’s ability to get the better of the adults, who usually have all the control, and in Pippi’s freedom to do what she wants in all situations.

One thing that might surprise American children reading this story is that the children in the story drink coffee. Tommy and Annika say that they are usually only allowed to drink it at parties, although Pippi has it more often. It isn’t very common for American children to drink coffee in general because it’s usually considered more of an adult’s drink and because of concerns about the effects of too much caffeine on young children. Children in Scandinavia tend to drink coffee at a younger age than kids in the United States.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Bed-Knob and Broomstick

BedKnobBroomstickBed-Knob and Broomstick by Mary Norton, 1943, 1947.

This book is actually two books in one.  The title Bed-Knob and Broomstick is the one used for editions that include both the first book, The Magic Bed-Knob, and the sequel, Bonfires and Broomsticks.  Together, these two books were the basis for the Disney movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks, although the plot of the movie is considerably different from the two books. Because the movie is based on both of the books at once and because I read the combined edition, I’ll explain the plots of both of the books in one post.

There are two major differences between the movie and books that change many other things about the plot. The first one is that there is no mention of World War II in the books, even though the books were written during that time.  Miss Price was not studying magic to help the war effort, and the children were only in the countryside for vacation, not because they were evacuated there. Also, in the books, Emelius Jones (Emelius Brown in the movie) was a man they met when they traveled through time, not a man living in London during their own time.  He was not involved in Miss Price learning magic, although the two of them do end up together in the end.

The Magic Bed-Knob

At the beginning of the first book, the three Wilson children – Carey (who is described as being “about your age”), Charles (“a little younger”), and Paul (six years old) – are spending the summer with their Aunt Beatrice in Bedfordshire. There is never any mention of the children’s father in the books. Probably, their father is dead, although he might have left the family and went to live elsewhere or may be fighting overseas, although there is no mention of that in the book, making me think that it is probably not the case. The children apparently live with only their mother in London, and because she works, she always needs to find somewhere for them to stay during the summer, when they’re out of school. (This is a major plot point in both of the books.  In the Disney movie, the three children are orphans who have no memory of their birth parents, and their guardian was killed in a bombing shortly before they were evacuated to the countryside.  You only get their full backstory if you see the anniversary edition of the movie that includes the deleted scenes.)  While the children stay with Aunt Beatrice, they enjoy playing in the countryside, and one day, they happen to meet Miss Price, who they find with an injured ankle.

Miss Price is a respectable spinster from the village who gives piano lessons and is often seen riding around on her bicycle.  When they find her hurt, Carey says that they should get a doctor for her, but Miss Price insists that she doesn’t want one. Instead, she just asks the children to help her get home. As she starts to lean on Carey and Charles, Paul picks up a broom nearby. The older children thought it was just an old garden broom, but Paul calmly says that it belongs to Miss Price because it’s what she rides around on. The others are shocked, but Paul simply says that that he’s seen her improve in her flying, so Miss Price knows that he’s seen her riding her broom more than once. Miss Price is worried that everyone in the village will know now that she’s a witch, but Paul hadn’t even told his brother and sister what he’d seen.

The children help Miss Price get home, and they allow their aunt to think that Miss Price simply fell off of her bicycle. When the children are able to speak to Miss Price privately, they ask her directly if she’s a witch, and she admits that she’s studying to be one. She says that she’s had some talent for magic since she was young, but she never really had the time to develop it. The children are convinced that, while Miss Price might be a witch, she’s not a wicked one, and she says that’s true, that she started too late in life to be that way and that wickedness doesn’t come naturally to her. However, she’s still worried that the children might tell people about her magic.

Carey is the one who suggests that Miss Price give them a magical object as part of their pledge of secrecy (unlike in the movie, where it was Charlie’s idea), with the idea that, if they ever told anyone that she’s a witch, the magic would stop. Charles suggests that Miss Price could give them a magic ring that would summon a slave to do their bidding, but she says that she couldn’t manage that and that she has a better idea. Miss Price asks the children if they have anything on them they can twist, like a ring or a bracelet. The only thing they have is a bed-knob that Paul twisted off the end of his bed (basically, because he discovered that he could).

Miss Price says that the bed-knob will do nicely, and she casts a spell on it that will allow the children to travel to the destination of their choice when they put it back on the bed and give it a twist. If they turn it in one direction, they can travel in the present time, but turning it the other way can send them to the past. Also, because Paul was the one who had the bed-knob, he’s the only one who can make it work. Miss Price isn’t troubled by Paul’s young age because she thinks that it’s best to learn magic young, although she warns the children to be careful.

Because it’s Paul’s bed-knob, Carey and Charles give him first choice of where to go, but they think the places he wants to go sound mundane. He wants to either see a museum exhibit that the others saw without him once or to go home and see their mother in London. Carey and Charles try to persuade him to go someplace more exciting, but Paul insists that he wants to go home.

The bed whisks the children home to London, but when they get there, their mother isn’t home. Apparently, their mother has gone away for the weekend herself, and the children find themselves alone on their bed, in front of their house, on a foggy night. A policeman bumps into them, and when he demands to know who they are and where the bed came from, he doesn’t think it’s funny when they say, “Bedfordshire.” He takes them to the police station to spend the rest of the night. Fortunately, they find a way to get back to the bed and use the spell to return to their aunt’s house before they’re missed in the morning. It’s not quite the adventure that the children had been hoping for when they started out, but it’s just the beginning of their amazing summer!

However, magic turns out to be more dangerous than they thought. Their next adventure takes them to an island with cannibals (yeah, one of those scenes, sigh – I think that the island of talking animals in the movie was more fun), and they narrowly escape after Miss Price has a duel of magic with a witch doctor. Their magical adventures create problems that the children can’t explain to their aunt without giving away Miss Price’s secret. Eventually, their messes and wild stories cause their aunt to send them home to their mother. Miss Price considers that magic might cause more problems than it solves and tells the children that she’s thinking of giving it up for awhile. However, Paul keeps the bed-knob in the hopes that their adventures aren’t done yet.

BedKnobBroomstickChildren

Bonfires and Broomsticks

In Bonfires and Broomsticks, two years have passed since the children’s first adventures, and Aunt Beatrice has died. Carey and Charles, worried that Paul would talk too much about their magical adventures, tried to convince Paul that it was all just a dream, although they weren’t very successful.

Then, the children see an advertisement in the newspaper that Miss Price is offering to board a couple of schoolchildren in her house for the summer for a fee. The children’s mother works, and she always has to find somewhere for the children to spend the summer, when they’re not in school. They still have the bed-knob, so they tell their mother that they want to visit Miss Price, hoping they can have more adventures with her. At first, their mother doesn’t understand why they would want to visit Miss Price so badly, but since she seems like a nice, respectable woman and an old friend of Aunt Beatrice’s, she agrees.

Miss Price is happy to have the children stay for the summer, but they are disappointed when they learn that she was really serious about giving up magic. The children discover that Miss Price bought the old bed that they had used for their previous adventures at the estate sale after their aunt’s death. She’s been sleeping on it in her own room. They want to try the bed-knob on the bed, but Miss Price takes it from them. She tries to make their summer vacation a normal vacation with normal activities, like picnics and croquet.

But, even Miss Price can’t resist the opportunity to try the bed-knob one last time. One morning, Carey and Charles discover that Paul and Miss Price have traveled somewhere on the bed without them. When the two of them confront Paul about it, he says that they only went to a nearby town, just to see if the spell on the knob still worked. Carey and Charles understand, but Carey thinks that if they got to use the bed once more, she and Charles should have one more turn. She especially wants to try going into the past, which was something they hadn’t had a chance to try last time. Miss Price is reluctant, but finally agrees after Carey pressures her about it.

The children travel to London of 1666 (ending up there accidentally, when they were aiming for the Elizabethan era), where a man named Emelius Jones has been living as a necromancer. When he was young, he studied magic under a mentor who, as he was dying, finally told him that everything he learned was fakery. It was all an act that he used to get money from gullible people, although it paid very well. The old man leaves Emelius his business, but Emelius is always nervous, worrying both because someone might discover that it’s all a fake and because others might believe that it’s real and that he should be hung as a witch. The only reason why he stays with it is because he has no other business to follow.

The children meet Emelius after ending up lost and stopping at his house for directions. The children can see how nervous and unhappy Emelius is, and they ask him about himself, discovering that his home town is actually close to where they’re staying with Miss Price. They reveal to him that they are from the future and invite him to come home with them for a visit.

Miss Price isn’t happy to see that they’ve brought someone back from the past with them, but she ends up liking Emelius. Before sending him home, they learn that Emelius’s aunt, who lived near to where Miss Price now lives, died the same day that Emelius left London in the past, which is coincidentally shortly before the great fire that destroyed a good part of the city. They know that Emelius’s London lodgings will likely be destroyed in the fire as well, but at least he can move into the house that he will inherit from his aunt.

However, after they send him back to his own time, the children and Miss Price learn that Emelius never made it to his aunt’s house because he was executed for practicing witchcraft. Unable to leave poor Emelius to such a terrible fate, they come up with a plan to rescue him.

The combined book edition is available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

Changing Emelius’s past also changes Miss Price’s future. Neither of them has ever married, and both of them have been lonely, and they come to the conclusion that the two of them were meant to be together. In deciding that they will live their lives together on Emelius’s aunt’s farm in the past, they put an end to the magical traveling bed. Only Paul can make the magic bed-knob work, and once he sends them into the past (not going with them), they can never return. But, Carey has one final vision of the two of them, being happy together, so she knows that they will be alright.

Overall, I preferred the Disney movie to the original books.  I think the war-based plot was better than the children’s random travels to cannibal-filled islands (I never liked those tropes in children’s stories anyway) and other places.  At one point in the books, Carey did speculate about the use of magic in war, but she rejected the idea because the notion of someone with the ability to conjure a dragon that could breathe mustard gas or who could turn whole armies into mice was just too horrible.  The spell that Miss Price used against the Nazis in the movie was part of their plan to rescue Emelius in the second book, but I think the movie’s ending was much more exciting.

Posted on by TracyC

Escape to Witch Mountain

EscapeWitchMountain

Escape to Witch Mountain by Alexander Key, 1968.

This is the book that the Disney movie of the same name was based on.  In fact, there have been three movie renditions of this book, although the 1975 Disney version is the one I know the best, and it’s the only film version to call the children by their original book names, Tia and Tony (other versions use the names Danny and Anna or Seth and Sara).  There are some major differences between the book and each of the the movies.  For one thing, most people in the book think that Tia is mute because she speaks at a frequency that ordinary humans can’t hear.  Only her brother, Tony, can hear what she’s saying.  She uses the little case with the double star emblem that she’s had ever since she can remember to carry paper and pencils so that she can write messages in order to make herself understood by other people.  In the 1975 movie, Tia can speak to Tony telepathically, but both children can speak aloud normally and be understood by everyone.

When the book begins, Tia and Tony know that they’ve always been different from other children.  They look different: they have olive skin, pale hair, and very dark blue eyes, which is a somewhat unusual combination. They can do things that others can’t: Tony can make things move with his mind, Tia can open locks without using a key or any other device, and only Tony can understand the strange way that Tia talks that others can’t even hear. They can’t remember any other home than the one they had with Granny Malone, the woman who adopted them, but now that she’s dead, they find themselves wondering who they really are and where they came from.  Tia has shadowy memories of a time before they came to Granny Malone, when they were on a boat and something bad happened to them, but she can’t quite remember what.

With no known relatives to go to, the children are taken to an orphanage, Hackett House, after Granny Malone’s death.  It’s a tough, inner-city environment, where no one has any patience with Tia and Tony’s strangeness.  However, when the children from the orphanage are sent to Heron Lake Camp in the mountains during the summer, a nun recognizes the double star symbol on Tia’s case as one that she had seen before on a letterhead, giving the children their first clue to finding their origins.

Then, a figure from one of Tia’s memories, Mr. Deranian, comes to the orphanage to claim them, saying that he’s their uncle. The children can tell that he’s no relative of theirs. They run away to see a kind priest, Father O’Day, an associate of the nun they met earlier. Father O’Day is the only one who believes the children when they talk about what they remember of their past and isn’t frightened by their strange mental powers. When the children show him a map that they found in a hidden compartment in Tia’s case, he offers to help them find the place marked on it and, hopefully, someone who knows who the children are and where they belong.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.  There is a sequel to this book which was also made into a movie, Return from Witch Mountain.

My Reaction and Spoilers

As the children and Father O’Day try to elude Deranian and the others who are chasing them, more of Tia’s memory returns. The children are from another planet. Years ago, their planet was destroyed when it crashed into one of their twin suns. Their people, who call themselves the Castaways, knowing that their planet would not be habitable for much longer, had already begun looking for a new home. Earth was the nearest habitable planet, so some scouts arrived early and began to create a home for them in the mountains of North America, which was the closest environment to their former home.

Unfortunately, when the rest of the children’s people came to Earth, the group that Tia and Tony were with crashed in Eastern Europe. The book was written during the Cold War, so the place where they crashed was controlled by Communists. When the Communists realized the powers these people possessed, they planned to make use of them themselves. One of Tia and Tony’s people escaped with the children and managed to get them aboard a ship heading for America. Before he died of a gunshot wound, he placed some money and a map in Tia’s case so that the children would know where to find the rest of their people. However, the children were traumatized by the experience, and Tia blocked the memory out of her mind. The ship’s captain, upon reaching the United States, gave the children to Deranian, a friend of his. Deranian, not knowing who the children were or what powers they possessed, gave them to Granny Malone to raise. Later, he found out about the children’s abilities from his contacts in Eastern Europe and tried to get the children back.

In the end, Father O’Day manages to reunite the children with the rest of their people, who take them to the community they have built on Witch Mountain, a place where locals are too superstitious to go, named for the odd things they’d seen there when the Castaways first arrived. Father O’Day plans to go there and join the community along with the children someday.

In spite of the Communists being enemies during the Cold War, Tia and Tony say that one of the reasons why their people had trouble establishing themselves in America at first was that they were unaccustomed to the idea of having to buy land to live on.  On their world, no one owned land; land was just there for people to live on and care for.  Their people’s early scouting expedition included selling pieces of their ships in order to raise enough money to buy some land in order to build their community.  Father O’Day is impressed with the Castaways’ commitment to the common good of all people and unselfish sharing.  So, although the oppressive Communist regimes of the Cold War are enemies in the book, some of the ideals of sharing and supporting the common welfare of everyone are still attractive ideals in the book.  The implication in the book is that Tia and Tony’s people are socially as well as technologically advanced and have created the best of all possible systems, a blending of ideals to create the ideal balance.

I can understand why the movies did not include Tia speaking at a frequency no one else can hear and appearing mute.  That would be difficult to show in a movie that relies on characters being able to communicate with each other, and it makes sense to replace it with an ability to communicate telepathically by choice instead.  None of the movies include the Cold War references that were present in the book, and the character of O’Day or the person who helps the children to reach Witch Mountain changes from movie to movie, but the plot of the 1975 Disney movie is still the closest to the original book.

Posted on by TracyC

Guns in the Heather

GunsHeatherGuns in the Heather by Lockhart Amerman, 1963.

This book was the basis for the Disney made-for-tv movie The Secret of Boyne Castle. However, the book and the movie are very different.  Although they have a similar premise, many details were changed in the movie version, the first of which is that the location of the story was moved from Scotland, as it was in the original book, to Ireland.

Jonathan Flower, sometimes called “Posy” by his friends, spends most of his time at various boarding schools.  His mother died when he was very young, and his father has a government job that takes him all over the world, so Jonathan has been in boarding schools in various countries, seeing his father whenever he can during school breaks.  For the most part, Jonathan doesn’t really mind it.  He and his father get along pretty well, and he knows that his father’s work is important.

Right now, he’s at a boarding school in Scotland.  He’s made a lot of friends there, spending holidays like Christmas and Easter at various friends’ homes.  He’s also developed an interest in rugby and cricket.  He anticipates that his father will meet him at the end of the school year so that they can go mountain climbing together over the summer break.  However, shortly before his father is expected to arrive, Jonathan receives a telegram from him, saying that he is to go to a certain place and meet a Mr. Finch.  Because the telegram contains certain words that this father uses when a situation is urgent, Jonathan goes to meet Mr. Finch and is kidnapped.

Mr. Finch, who also goes by the alias Dr. Fisher, holds Jonathan captive in a house, pretending that Jonathan is a patient who has volunteered for an experimental treatment.  Fortunately, Jonathan’s father, disguised as a milkman, soon rescues him.

While Jonathan’s father, who is actually a government agent, attends to some of his duties, Jonathan tries to go to the American embassy, only to be misled and almost recaptured. For a time, he is on his own, unsure of who to trust and how to reconnect with his father. When the two of them finally meet again, they both seek shelter with friends, but their enemies aren’t far behind, no matter where they go.  They end up staying with friends who own an old castle, but their enemies are planning a siege.

My Reaction

The style of the writing in this book doesn’t make for a particularly easy read.  It’s not overly difficult, but it starts off slow and is very dense, unlike many more modern books.  The scenes also change quickly throughout the book, and I had trouble keeping track of who some of the characters were.  Overall, I preferred the movie, even though it didn’t follow the book very closely.

In the Disney movie version, a strange man drives onto the grounds of an Irish boarding school, stumbles out of his car, and whispers an urgent message to a teenage American exchange student (played by a young Kurt Russell and renamed Richard Evans) that is meant for his older brother.  Then, the man dies from a bullet wound.  Another man, who is ostensibly from the American embassy in Dublin, abducts Richard after saying that he needs to go to the embassy to make a statement about the stranger’s death.  Richard is also accompanied by an Irish friend, Sean, when he is lured away from the school, and his friend helps him as they escape from the enemy spies holding them captive.  The two of them search for Richard’s older brother (who they have only just learned is a spy, whereas Jonathan was aware that his father worked for the government) to give him the dead man’s message.  In both the book and the movie, there is a final showdown with the bad guys at a castle, but in the movie, they go to the castle to retrieve a secret message that the dead man left there.  I don’t think that the movie is available on dvd, but I have seen it on YouTube and Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Jumanji

Jumanji

Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg, 1981.

Judy and Peter, a brother and sister, are left home alone while their parents go to an opera. In spite of their parents’ warning not to make a mess because they’ll be bringing guests by later, the kids scatter all of their toys around while playing. Then, the kids go to the park to play for awhile, and they find a board game labeled Jumanji with a note that the game is free to anyone who wants to play it. Judy and Peter decide to give the game a try and take it home.

JumanjiPark

Jumanji turns out to be a kind of race game. Players are supposed to make their way down a path through a jungle, facing all kinds of dangers, until someone reaches the golden city of Jumanji. The instructions warn them that once a game has begun, it will not be over until one of the players reaches Jumanji.

JumanjiGameStart

At first, Peter thinks that the game is boring and easy, but it soon becomes apparent that things that happen in the board game are starting to happen in real life when a live lion suddenly appears after an encounter with one on the game board.  Peter is scared and wants to stop playing, but Judy reminds him that they can’t stop because the game won’t end until one of them reaches the end of the path on the game board. Until the game ends, they’re stuck with the lion and anything else that happens to appear because of the game. They have no choice but to keep playing, facing each danger as wild animals rampage through their house.

JumanjiLion

Chris Van Allsburg books always have amazing illustrations, and the pictures in this book are especially good!  At the end of the book, the children see two other children find the game, which leads to the sequel, Zathura.

JumanjiRhino

There is a movie version of this book, but the movie differs greatly from the original story. In the movie, the two kids were friends, not brother and sister, and the boy ends up trapped in the game for a period of years until, finally, a new set of kids starts playing and helps the original players to finish their game.  When their game ends, the original children are returned to their own time, and no one but them knows that they were ever gone.  Things turn out better for the future children as well because the older players make things better for everyone in their own time.  There were no players stuck in the game in the original book, and everything takes place during a single day.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

JumanjiParents

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Westing Game

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, 1978.

It all starts when a mysterious person invites six sets of people to live in the new apartment building, Sunset Towers.  Sunset Towers is a luxury apartment building, but the rent for these individuals and families is surprisingly affordable.  That is because these people are special, and the owner of these apartments is preparing for a very special game.  Although there doesn’t seem to be anything to tie these people together at first, they do share a special connection that isn’t immediately obvious, a connection to the wealthy but mysterious Samuel Westing.

Among the new tenants of Sunset Towers is young Turtle Wexler.  Although she is often in the shadow of her overly-shy but pretty older sister, Angela, she has ambitions of her own in life.  While her mother dreams of making it in high society, Turtle (whose real name is also something of a mystery to the other tenants for most of the book) wants to become a successful businesswoman when she grows up, and one of the things she wants most is a subscription to the Wall Street Journal.  To raise the money she needs, Turtle accepts a bet to sneak into the supposedly empty Westing House on Halloween night, earning $2 for every minute she spends there.  There are stories that the place is haunted and that Mr. Westing’s body lies rotting on an oriental rug there, but Turtle doesn’t believe them.  As it turns out, she’s right.  Instead, she finds Mr. Westing dead in bed.

To everyone’s surprise, the tenants of Sunset Towers are all named in the will, but not in an ordinary way.  In order to determine who the final heir will be, they must all play The Westing Game.  The heirs are divided up into teams of two and given $10,000 and a set of clues.  They must use these to give an answer at the end.  But, what kind of an answer?  Mr. Westing’s will implies that he was murdered, but is that really true?  Could his murderer even be among the heirs/game players?

As the book continues, readers learn more about each of the contestants.  Each of them has their own personalities, ambitions, and problems.  For example, Angela Wexler is about to be married but seems less than enthusiastic about the wedding.  Cristos Theodorakis suffers from a strange malady that keeps him confined to a wheelchair.  Sydelle Pulaski was actually invited to join the tenants by mistake, but it might be the best mistake of her life.  Mr. Hoo is worried about his restaurant, and Madame Hoo dreams of returning to China.

The competition is fierce in the Westing Game.  Players are suspicious of other players cheating.  Things around the apartments start disappearing, and some mysterious person has even started planting explosives in unlikely places!  Whether the thefts and explosions have anything to do with the contest itself is for the reader to discover, but there is an answer to the Westing Game, and only one of the contestants will discover it.

The book is a Newbery Award winner.  There is a movie version of the book called Get a Clue! (1997), although it doesn’t follow the book completely.  There are multiple copies of the book currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

One of the great things about the Westing Game is how the seemingly mismatched pairs of contestants actually complement each other, giving people new perspectives on their lives and the answers to problems that some of them have been struggling with.   Lonely Flora Baumbach, grieving for her deceased daughter, is paired with young Turtle, who finds in her a more motherly person than her own mother, someone who values her for her intelligence and her unique skills in a way that no one else does.  Mrs. Baumbach enjoys having someone to care for again, and Turtle blossoms under her care and attention.  Mr. Hoo, meanwhile, finds some unexpected support for his business from Mrs. Wexler, who develops broader interests in life than her previous social ambitions and an unexpected flair for business and marketing.  Judge Ford, who was educated by Mr. Westing and always worried about how to repay the debt, finally finds a way to repay his kindness, a way that Mr. Westing would have approved.  Bertha Crow, an unhappy woman who turned to religion to atone for past sins, finds new happiness with someone who understands and accepts her past and is willing to help her continue her good works.  Even Angela, who seems to have everything a young girl would want (good looks and a kind fiance with a promising future in medicine), figures out what she really wants in life and finds the courage to stand up for it.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Lisa and Lottie

LisaLottieLisa and Lottie by Erich Kastner, 1969.

First, a note about the copyright: the date I give is for the edition I own, which is an English translation of the original German book.  The original copyright date for the story is 1949.  This is the story that was the basis for Disney’s The Parent Trap, both the version with Hayley Mills (1961) and the later Lindsey Lohan version (1998).  Neither movie completely follows the original story (although some of the dialog in the Hayley Mills version is almost word-for-word from the English version of the original story) because the settings are shifted to new locations, but both of them capture the concept of twins who were separated as infants by their divorced parents only to meet again years later by accident.  As in the book, each of the twins has been living a different kind of life with one of their parents, but they decide to switch places so that each of them can meet the parent they’ve never known.

Lottie Horn is a very serious little girl.  She can’t help it because she lives with her single mother, who spends much of her time working, and she relies on Lottie to take care of a number of household chores.  But, her mother feels badly that Lottie has been growing up so quiet and serious, so to help her relax and make more friends her own age, she decides to send Lottie to summer camp at Bohrlaken on Lake Bohren.

Shy Lottie thinks that her summer is going to be horrible when she meets up with boisterous Lisa Palfy, a girl who strangely looks exactly like her.  Lisa is shocked at the sight of this girl who looks so much like her, and after some teasing, joking, and staring from all the other girls, she loses her temper and kicks Lottie in the shin.  The camp leaders decide to give the two girls beds next to each other, saying that they’ll just have to get used to each other.  Lottie thinks that it’s going to be awful, but when Lisa sees how unhappy Lottie is, she apologizes and starts being nicer to her.

LisaLottiePic1

The two girls discuss their lives and their strange resemblance with each other, and some unsettling details are revealed.  First, they learn that they not only share a resemblance but the same birthday.  They also realize that they were both born in the same city, although Lottie now lives in Munich and Lisa lives in Vienna.  This strange coincidence is troubling enough, but then each girl reveals that she lives with only one parent: Lottie lives with her mother, and Lisa lives with her father.  Lottie has no memory of her father and no knowledge of what happened to him, where he might be, or even if he’s still alive.  Lisa also has no memory of her mother, but she did once see a picture of her, a picture which her father hid somewhere after he found her looking at it.  The girls start getting suspicious, so Lottie shows Lisa a picture of her mother, and Lisa confirms that it’s an identical copy of the picture of her mother she saw before.  Lisa and Lottie realize that they are long-lost sisters.

LisaLottiePic2Through the rest of the summer, the girls discuss their lives and parents in great detail and continue speculating about the reasons for their parents’ separation and why they were never told about each other’s existence.  They are somewhat angry at their parents for not telling them the truth, but they each also want to know more about the parent that they have never really known and perhaps to learn the truth behind their parents’ separation. They begin hatching a plot to switch places so that Lottie can go to Vienna to meet their father and Lisa can go to Munich to be with their mother.  They get little notebooks and fill them with as many details of their lives as they can think of so that each girl can seem to behave like the other, although they know it won’t be easy because they’ve lived very different lives.  They don’t like the same foods, and Lottie knows how to cook, but Lisa doesn’t.

Still, the girls proceed with their plan.  When it is time to leave camp, the girls dress as each other.  Lisa puts her hair in braids as Lottie always does.  Lottie lets her curls hang loose, like Lisa usually does.  Then, each of them boards the train for the other’s city at the station.

LisaLottiePic3Lisa is overjoyed to finally meet her mother in Munich.  But, her mother has to work very hard as a photographic editor for a newspaper, and they don’t have much money.  Lisa isn’t as good at cooking or taking care of household chores as Lottie is, so she finds it difficult to help, although she learns quickly.

In Vienna, Lottie meets her handsome but somewhat reclusive father.  Her father is an opera conductor, but he’s also a composer who needs to spend much of his time alone in order to compose his music, which was the primary reason for the divorce.  He always wanted to devote his life to the arts, and he felt that marriage and family life got in the way, although he dearly loves his remaining daughter and dotes on her.

But, life in Vienna isn’t that great for either Lottie/Lisa or her father.  Rosa, the housekeeper who often looks after “Lisa” and takes care of their apartment only pretends to like her when her father is around and steals from the household funds.  Also, in spite of finally having plenty of time along for composing music (which is successful), her father is lonely and unhappy.  Although he doesn’t want to admit it at first, he misses the comforts of family life and the company of his wife.

Each girl, because of her different personality, manages to make changes in the life of the other and in their parents which are for the better, but the charade cannot continue forever.  Lottie finds out that their father is considering marriage to a woman who doesn’t like her.  Then, Lottie falls seriously ill.  More than ever, she needs her mother . . . and her twin.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive (they have multiple copies).

My Reaction and Spoilers:

LisaLottiePic4The book is much less of a comedy than either of the two Disney movies, although there are some funny parts, like when Lottie (as Lisa) takes over the household accounts to stop Rosa’s stealing and ends up turning her into a much better housekeeper with her practicality.  Surprisingly, Rosa actually starts respecting her more and even liking her better because of it.

Much of the focus of the book is how divorce affects children as well as parents, although there is room for debate on how each side views the issue, and some modern families may disagree with some of the points characters in the story make.  The point of view of the story shifts between each of the girls and also between their parents and other characters to show different reactions to the situation.

The children are understandably upset at the entire issue and believe what their parents did was wrong.  The girls admit that they do not think of either of their parents as evil or cruel, but they view the separation and lies that were forced on them without their consent as cruel.  Lottie even has a nightmare which is a twisted version of Hansel and Gretel in which her father threatens to cut both her and her sister in half because it would only be fair for each parent to get half of each child.  At camp, the girls see one of their friends crying, having just found out that her parents are going to get a divorce.  Other girls at the camp call her parents mean for making the decision while she was away at camp and just springing it on her with no warning at all.  For the children in the story, the worst part about parents divorcing is when they give little or no thought to how the children will feel or be affected by the decision and don’t even talk about the situation with them.

Some of that sentiment is echoed by adults in the story, although the adults are a little more ambivalent on the issue, knowing that different people and different circumstances must be judged on an individual basis.  The adults try to do what they think is best for the children, but they make mistakes, partly because they are too absorbed in their own concerns to understand the entire situation, and they come to realize it.  The overall sentiment of the book seems to be that, while marriages are made up of only two people, families are made up of more, including the children.  When a couple divorces, it not only affects the marriage, but the whole family as well, and parents need to remember that.

Like the movies, the book also ends happily, and the father finds a way (with the help of Lottie) to balance his work life with his family life.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery at Fire Island

mysteryfireislandThe Mystery at Fire Island by Hope Campbell, 1978.

Darcy Littlewood, called “Dash,” is appalled when her art teacher tells her not to draw anything over the summer.  Drawing comes almost as naturally as breathing to Dash, who wants to be a cartoonist when she grows up.  She’s always doing sketches and caricatures of people she sees, especially her younger brother, JC (James Colson Littlewood, also known as “Coleslaw”).  But, her art teacher thinks that her style has grown too strong and inflexible too early in her life.  He thinks that if she takes a break from drawing for the summer, she’ll be able to come back to it with a fresh approach that will allow her to try different styles as she grows older.

To Dash, the idea of not drawing at all is intolerable, especially since she broke her leg shortly before the start of summer vacation.  She can’t go much of anywhere or do much of anything while her family is staying at their beach house on Fire Island.  Without much to do, she doesn’t know how she’d entertain herself if she couldn’t draw.

Her older sister, Candace, isn’t happy about spending the summer on Fire Island, either.  She says that there’s never anything to do there, although their mother attributes part of her boredom to the fact that she’s the only one in the family who doesn’t have an outstanding talent or a particular goal in her life.  Everyone else in the family is artistically-inclined in some way.  Mrs. Littlewood is a writer, Mr. Littlewood teaches drama, JC has acting skills and a special talent for imitating people, and Dash has her art.  Mrs. Littlewood thinks that Candy’s attitude would improve if she found something that she was especially good at and truly cared about.

While Dash is brooding about her inability to stop drawing in spite of her art teacher’s request, she makes the acquaintance of Mrs. Guizot, an eccentric older woman who spots her drawing caricatures.  It turns out that Mrs. Guizot is an art lover, and she quickly becomes a fan of Dash’s work.  But, there is something mysterious about Mrs. Guizot, or at least the man they see her talking to.

Both Dash and JC notice that the man has a peculiar way of standing and walking.  Dash draws it, and JC imitates it.  So, when they see the same man on the beach later that night, looking different without his beard and wig, but still walking and standing the same way, they wonder why the man was in disguise.  Also, he seems to be going out surfing when there aren’t any waves for surfing.  Then, they discover that he’s bringing scuba tanks with him, and they aren’t real scuba tanks.  What is the man doing?

The kids try to investigate the mysterious man with JC doing much of the leg work at first because Dash can’t get around very well.  JC is worried about what they might learn because the man might turn out to be truly sinister and violent.  He even has suspicions about Mrs. Guizot.  Later, Dash’s leg improves and she’s able to take a more active role in the investigation, but the kids pretend like she’s still laid up as a cover for their activities.  The kids’ investigation doesn’t go as planned, but they do uncover a crime and also inadvertently help their sister to find her life’s vocation.

Part of the story has to do with seeing with depth.  Part of the reason why Dash’s art teacher wants her to observe more and draw less is so that her art will contain more depth.  Dash also learns to see the depths of people, the things they keep hidden behind their facades.  Her sister, Candy, also has hidden depths which even she doesn’t appreciate yet.

The story was later made into a tv movie by the same name, and the picture on the front cover of this edition of the book is from the movie.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Candleshoe

candleshoeCandleshoe by Michael Innes, 1953.

I own the movie version of the book, which was originally named Christmas at Candleshoe (although it’s not about the holiday).  It contains the text of the original story, but the picture on the front cover is from the movie.

The Disney movie is very different from the original book.  For one thing, the hero of the story is a boy (Jay), not a girl (Casey/Margaret), and unlike the movie version, the child’s identity is established for certain by the end of the book. The book has a happy ending, and so does the movie, but part of the movie’s point was that the idea of family isn’t dependent on blood relations alone, so it isn’t important whether Casey is really Margaret or not (although there are strong hints that she is).

The book is a bit hard to follow at first because it jumps back and forth between different places and different sets of characters, although it all takes place during the course of a single day and night.  Actually, I’m not sure this can really be called a children’s book, but I included it here because of the movie tie-in.  Because of the difficulty level of the book, I’d really recommend it for older children or adults.  Personally, I have to admit that I liked the movie better.

The story takes place in the mid-twentieth century, after WWII. There are two manor houses involved, Benison Court and Candleshoe. Benison Court, the newer of the two, is owned by the Spendloves, and Candleshoe, the older one, is owned by the elderly Miss Candleshoe. The two families are related, and neither one of them has as much money as they used to. The Spendloves take in some extra money by offering tours of Benison Court and showing people paintings and antiques owned by the family for generations. To raise some additional money, they decide to sell a couple of the paintings by Titian. To their surprise, the expert they call in to evaluate the paintings tells them that the paintings are forgeries.  Archdeacon, who cares for the antiques and library at Benison, reminds the Spendloves that during the war, the paintings were sent to Candleshoe for safekeeping.

Meanwhile, a couple of American tourists, the wealthy Mrs. Feather and her son Grant, having seen Benison, stop by Candleshoe. Mrs. Feather is fascinated by the old place, in spite of its state of disrepair, and Miss Candleshoe invites them to have dinner there and spend the night. Mrs. Feather has an interest in purchasing Candleshoe for herself and fixing it up.  Miss Candleshoe and her longtime friend, the retired chaplain, Armigel, know that there is not enough money for them to fix up Candleshoe, and they like the idea of traveling, so they are willing to consider selling the manor house. This plan does not sit well with Jay, the orphaned son of Miss Candleshoe’s housekeeper, Mrs. Ray.

After Mrs. Ray died, Miss Candleshoe cared for Jay, and now, with Miss Candleshoe and Armigel showing signs of senility, Jay has been handling much of the practical running of Candleshoe. On this particular evening, Jay is worried about more than the possible sale of the property. He has been noticing strange people paying unusual attention to the house. He suspects, correctly, that they intend to break into the house that night, and he has assembled a small army of local children, armed with antique weapons, to defend the place. Grant, befriending Jay, admires the boy’s practical turn of mind but worries that they are not up to the task of handling the siege that is coming to this isolated country house. As the danger presses closer, the Spendloves, Archdeacon, and the art expert are heading toward Candleshoe in search of the missing paintings.

The answer to all of these problems may lie in the strangest feature of the house: the Christmas box, a stone monument in the gallery made by Gerard Christmas and dedicated to the memory of an ancestor of the Candleshoes, who may have been a pirate. According to the lore of Candleshoe, the box will open at a time when Candleshoe is in crisis and will save the day.

The book is available online through Internet Archive.

But, is Casey Really Margaret?!

I think so. I want to say, “yes, she is,” but “I think so” is about as definite as I can be because the movie changed the story from the original book.

Whether or not Casey is actually Margaret, the lost heir to Candleshoe, is the burning question everyone is left with after watching the Disney movie Candleshoe. The movie deliberately left Casey’s true identity unresolved at the end, probably because they wanted to have the people at Candleshoe decide to accept her into their family on her own merits, not just because they had to because she’s the heir to the place. In the beginning, the audience is told that missing heir of Candleshoe, Margaret, was kidnapped as a young child by her own father, apparently in some kind of marital/custody dispute, and that she disappeared after his death in a car accident and has not been located although attempts to find her were made in the ten years that have passed since her disappearance. Casey is a teenage girl who was apparently an abandoned child with an unknown past and no memory of her early life who bears an odd resemblance to Margaret, including a couple of distinctive scars that are like ones Margaret was known to have. She is recruited as by con artist to play the part of Margaret, returning to Candleshoe as the lost heiress in order to gain access to the house and find a hidden treasure. Although Casey initially came to Candleshoe under false pretenses as part of a con with the promise of a share of the Candleshoe treasure and a red Ferrari as her payment, she eventually becomes fond of the people there and decides that she can’t let them be cheated by the real villain. Casey proves herself to be part of the Candleshoe family through her loyalty to them, and in the end, they would accept her whether she really was Margaret or not. It’s a nice sentiment, but viewers still have the urge to ask who Casey really is.

Casey is legitimately an orphan or abandoned child, found at about the right time and the right age and in the right place to really be Margaret. She has no memory at all of her early childhood, her parents, or where she came from, and she also bears some telltale scars that match ones that young Margaret was known to have. That’s what we’re told about Casey. Casey’s history is never explained in detail in the movie (we never find out under what circumstances she was found and entered into the Los Angeles foster care system), but from what we do know, her history meshes well enough with Margaret’s known past that it would seem plausible for her to actually be Margaret. Is she really Margaret, and Harry Bundage, the con man, just persuaded her that she was only pretending in order to use her for his own ends? Or, is the real Margaret still out there somewhere? If Casey actually is Margaret, did she lose her memory in the car crash that killed her father, or did he abandon her somewhere before his death, even though he had kidnapped her from her mother and took her to a completely different country?

When Harry Bundage is briefing Casey about Margaret’s background, he poses the theory that Margaret was in the car when her father crashed it and that she may have wandered off in a state of shock after the accident. That explanation might be partly for the benefit of the viewers, helping to explain how Casey could be Marget and not remember it. A young child suffering from shock might be unable to tell anyone who she was or what had happened to her. An accident may even have left some bruising that might have obscured the telltale scars that could have identified her, but again, the matter is never fully settled, and we just don’t know enough of Casey’s background to make a full connection. There are enough pieces to make it possible, maybe even probable, but nothing that definitively settles the matter.

In the final scene of the movie, Casey asks Margaret’s grandmother what will happen if Margaret is ever really found and comes home, and the grandmother says cryptically that maybe she already has. It’s a brief hint that the grandmother thinks Casey might really be her kidnapped granddaughter, even though she accepts that Casey was lying to her earlier about things she said she remembered and knows that Casey herself thought that she was just an imposter. Casey does have those telltale scars, and it does seem like quite a coincidence that two random girls of the same age and similar circumstances would have identical sets of scars. However, the movie stops short of declaring that Casey really was Margaret all along, and the unanswered questions still rankle viewers. So, some of us turned to the original book to get more detail, but it turns out that it doesn’t completely help.

As I said, the original book was different from the movie. Not only was the child hero in the book a boy instead of a girl, he wasn’t kidnapped and taken to America the way that Margaret was. In the book, Jay definitely knows who his mother was, and it’s the question of who his father was that establishes his identity as the heir to Candleshoe. It turns out that Jay’s father was the nephew of the lady of Candleshoe, making her his great-aunt rather than his grandmother. Her nephew had been a ne’er-do-well, and although his family didn’t know it, he had married an American woman before his death. He died not too long after the marriage, but by that point, he had fathered Jay. Jay’s mother knew about her husband’s family, but she wasn’t sure yet whether or not she wanted to tell them about Jay. She took the job as housekeeper so she could observe the family and decide whether or not to reveal their relationship. Unfortunately, she died in an accident before she made up her mind. By the end of the book, Jay’s identity is established, and he is definitely proven and recognized to be the heir to Candleshoe, and because of that, I believe that Casey really is the missing Margaret. At least, that’s as close to confirmation as we’re likely to get. If the child in the book was the rightful heir to Candleshoe, it would make sense if the child in the movie was, too, even if it’s not really the same child.

Of course, that’s not full proof, and it doesn’t answer the questions about Margaret’s kidnapping or her father’s accident or how Casey was found and placed in foster care in California without anyone else connecting her with the missing Margaret when Margaret’s disappearance was reported to the authorities and newspapers. I have a theory that Harry Bundage was right that Margaret was in the car during the accident and that she did wander away from the scene of the accident in shock and possibly suffering injuries that covered up her identifying scars, but that’s still just a theory. There’s nothing in the movie or book that I could use to prove it. We don’t even know exactly why Margaret’s father in the movie kidnapped her in the first place or why Margaret’s mother died not long after she disappeared. (A convenient accident or illness for story purposes so there’s one less person to try to identify Casey/Margaret, or did she kill herself out of despair at the loss of her husband and daughter? The movie doesn’t say, so those are just guesses, too.) There’s a lot of backstory missing, and the book doesn’t clarify these points because of the differences between the book and movie. I guess it’s not really important to the story in the movie, but inquiring minds still want to know.

Posted on by TracyC

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

ChittyChitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming, 1964.

Not everyone is aware that the creator of James Bond wrote a children’s book, although the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a children’s classic.  However, the movie differs greatly from the original book, which doesn’t have anything to do with a toy-obsessed baron who has forbidden children in his kingdom, and there is no Truly Scrumptious (sorry).

Commander Caractacus Pott, retired, is an explorer and inventor who lives in a little house in the countryside with his wife Mimsie and their children, a set of eight-year-old twins named Jeremy and Jemima.  Some of the locals call Commander Pott, “Crackpott” because of his strange inventions, which never earn him very much money until one of this inventions pays off when he sells the candy whistles he creates to Lord Skrumshus’s candy company.

With the money he earns, Pott decides to buy something that his family has wanted for a while: their own car.  But, they don’t want just any boring car like everyone else.  They want something special.  They find it when they spot a former racing car that’s due for the scrap heap.  No one wants it because it would take a lot of time and money to fix.  The Pott family falls in love with it immediately, and Jemima thinks it might even be magical because the license plate says “GEN 11”, which looks like “genii” (or “genie”).  The garage man is relieved to find a buyer who appreciates the car’s history and potential and says that she’s sure to reward them for saving her from being scrap.

After Pott spends a great deal of time fixing up the car (which they name “Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang” because of the sounds it makes) and adding some additional inventions of his own, he begins to suspect that both Jemima and the garage man are right: the car is magical and does want to repay them for saving her life.  He starts to notice changes that the car makes to herself overnight, adding extra buttons and features that he knows he didn’t put there.  He’s not sure what they’re for until the family gets stuck in traffic the first time they decide to take the car out for a picnic. Messages on the car’s dashboard light up, telling Pott to pull some of the car’s mysterious levers.  When he does, the car sprouts wings and flies over the other cars in front of them, over towns and beaches, and even over the English Channel!

ChittyPic2

Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang takes the Pott family to a sandbar so they can have a private beach all to themselves.  But, that’s only the beginning of their adventure!  Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang can also turn into a hovercraft, and the family decides to take it on a special holiday to France.  When they reach the coast of France, they find a cave and start to explore it.  Someone has set up various devices inside to scare people away, but that only makes the Pott family more curious and determined to find out why.

It turns out that the cave is a hideout for a band of smugglers, and when the Pott family destroys it, they want revenge!

ChittyPic1

At the end of the book, there is a recipe for “Monsieur Bon-Bon’s Secret ‘Fooj'” (they mean ‘fudge’, Monsieur Bon-Bon is a character in the story).

Having known the movie version since I was a kid, I really prefer the movie to the book.  With a magical car at their disposal, the more fairy-tale story about the castle and tyrannical, toy-obsessed baron seems more fitting than the story about smugglers.  But, that being said, the book is still a lot of fun.

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