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From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg, 1967.

Twelve-year-old Claudia Kincaid is bored with her dull suburban life in Connecticut with her parents and her brothers. Her life also often seems unfair, like she has more responsibilities than her brothers do and she has more chores than her others friends. Basically, Claudia is bored and feeling unsatisfied with her life. She wants to get away from it all and have a little adventure … although not too much adventure because Claudia isn’t the overly-adventurous type.

Claudia is cautious and methodical. When she plans to run away from home, she carefully plans every step and invites her more adventurous nine-year-old brother Jamie to go with her, both for the companionship and because he is a tightwad and has the cash necessary to fund their adventure. Although Claudia and Jamie bicker as siblings, they’re closer to each other than to either of their other brothers. Jamie eagerly accepts Claudia’s proposition to run away, although at first, he’s a little disappointed when he finds out where they’re going.

Claudia plans for them to run away to New York City because, as she puts it, it’s “a good place to get lost.” The city is so big, Claudia is sure that two runaway children will be easily overlooked. She’s also found a great place for them to stay during their adventure: the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Claudia loves comfort, convenience, and beauty, and the museum can offer all of that without the fees of staying in a hotel. There are exhibits of furniture, which provide them with a bed to sleep in, and interesting exhibits to keep them entertained and educated, and all they have to do is evade the security guards. At first, Jamie thinks that sounds a little too tame, but their adventure soon proves to be exciting and challenging, with enough mystery to satisfy both of them.

Claudia and Jamie develop routines for sneaking around the museum, evading the guards, hiding the backpacks and instrument cases that hold their clothes, and raiding the coins in the fountain for extra money. One day, while they’re hiding in the restrooms and waiting for the museum staff to leave, the staff set up a new exhibit for an angel sculpture sold to the museum by the wealthy and mysterious widow Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, who is actually the person narrating Claudia and Jamie’s story in a letter to her lawyer.

Claudia develops a fascination for the angel and a desire to learn the truth about the theory that the statue was made by Michelangelo. Between the two children, Claudia is the more imaginative and romantic, but Jamie’s logical mind and zest for adventure serve them well as they delve deeper into the mystery. They do learn something important at the museum, but to get the full truth, they have to leave their planned hiding place in the museum and go see Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler herself.

Mrs. Frankweiler is a delightfully eccentric student of human nature, who is fascinated by the young runaways who come to her for answers to a mystery hundreds of years old. In exchange for the details of their exploits, Mrs. Frankweiler gives the children a chance to locate the answers they’re seeking in her strange, mixed-up files. In the process, the children learn a secret that gives both of them the sense of being part of something secret and exciting and much bigger than their ordinary, hum-drum lives, which is what they were originally looking for when they ran away from home.

The book is a Newbery Award winner, and it is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive (many copies).

My Reaction

During the course of the adventure, Claudia and Jamie become closer to each other than they were before they ran away from home. They learn a little more about each other and themselves, and neither of them is quite the same as they were before they started, which is at the heart of Claudia’s reasons for wanting to run away from home in the first place. The language and descriptions in the book are colorful, which is part of the reason why this book is popular to read in schools.

There were two movies made of this story. One is a made-for-tv movie version from 1995, although it changed some of the details from the original story. In the 1995 movie, there is a scene with Jamie getting sick and Claudia worrying about him and taking care of him that never happened in the original book. Also, in the movie, Claudia stops Jamie from taking the coins from the fountain when they had no qualms about raiding the fountain for money in the book. At the end of the book, the children don’t tell their parents where they were hiding when they return home, but in the movie, the parents do find out. There is also an older movie from 1973 which is sometimes called The Hideaways.

Posted on by TracyC

Who Knew There’d Be Ghosts?

Who Knew There’d Be Ghosts? By Bill Britain, 1985.

Tommy Donahue and his friends, Wendy “Books” Scofield (the smartest kid in their class as well as being pretty tough) and Harry “the Blimp” Troy (known for being the tallest and biggest kid in their class), prefer playing around the abandoned Parnell house instead of at the park because they like to play games of pretend, based on adventure stories that Tommy has read.  It’s hard to play games of pretend in such a public place as the park because other people either laugh or think that they’re just getting in the way.  Almost nobody goes near the old Parnell house because people think that it’s haunted.  They’re right; it is haunted.

Some people in their town have been trying to arrange for the Parnell house to be turned into a museum because the Parnells were the founding family of their town, but the movement hasn’t been able to raise the money needed to renovate the place.  Now, Tommy’s father, a lawyer, has been recruited to arrange for the house to be purchased by a private citizen who says that he wants to renovate the house and use it as his own residence.  However, Tommy and his friends overhear the buyer, Avery Katkus, and a confederate talking as they look over the house.  Mr. Katkus isn’t interested in the house at all; he wants something valuable that is hidden inside.  When they hear the two men plotting to sneak into the house at night to do some searching for this mysterious something, the kids decide that they will come back at night and watch for them to find out what they’re looking for.  The kids don’t want anything bad to happen to the house because they’ll lose their private playground.

Tommy is the first to go and check out the Parnell house at night, and that’s when he meets the ghosts, Horace and Essie Parnell.  At first, Horace tries to scare Tommy away, but when Tommy explains that he only came to keep watch, Horace asks him what he means by that.  Tommy explains to him about Mr. Katkus, and Horace says that he could use Tommy’s help.  Years ago, Horace’s father made a dying wish that all members of their family should be buried in the family cemetery on the property of the house.  Most of the members of the family are buried there, but Horace, who was killed during the Revolutionary War, and Essie, who accidentally fell overboard from a riverboat and was permanently lost in the Mississippi River, were only two Parnells who were not buried on the property, so their spirits are now bound to the house.  Naturally, Horace and Essie are concerned with the future of the house.

Tommy tries to tell his friends about the ghosts, but they don’t believe him until they see the ghosts for themselves.  When the three kids return to the house the next night, Horace saves them from being attacked by Mr. Katkus’s hired confederate.  Now convinced of the ghosts’ existence, Harry and Books are eager to help save the house, and the key in doing so is discovering what kind of hidden treasure the house holds.

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

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Surprise Island

The Boxcar Children

Surprise Island by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1949.

Mr. Alden has promised his grandchildren a special surprise for their summer vacation. He tells them that, years ago, his father bought a small island because he kept horses and wanted a quiet place for them.  The island has only one little yellow house, a barn, and a fisherman’s hut where Captain Daniel lives.  Captain Daniel operates the motorboat that can take people to the island.  Mr. Alden plans to take his grandchildren to the island to look over the house, and if they like, they can spend the summer there.  The children think that it sounds like fun.

When they get to the island, the children decide that they want to stay in the barn instead of the house.  Captain Daniel also tells them that he has a young man staying with him, a friend who hasn’t been feeling well.  The Aldens’ old friend, Dr. Moore, has come to see the island with them, so he looks in on the young man.  It turns out that the young man was in an accident and had lost his memory for a time, although he has been gaining it back.  He says that he used to live with an uncle but that he didn’t want to go home again until he was sure that he was completely well.  He is going by the name of “Joe”, which is short for his middle name, Joseph.  Captain Daniel says that he’s known the young man all his life, and Dr. Moore also seems to know him, but Joe doesn’t seem to want to talk about himself to Mr. Alden.

The kids enjoy setting up housekeeping in the barn.  It reminds them of when they used to live in an old boxcar.  They use old boxes for furniture, dig for clams, and eat vegetables from the garden that Joe and Captain Daniel have tended for them.  Their grandfather allows the children to stay on the island in Captain Daniel’s charge, but they are mostly allowed to take care of themselves.  Joe sometimes brings them supplies that they ask for from the mainland.  (One of the themes of the Boxcar Children Series is self-sufficiency.  At one point, Jessie comments about how much better things seem “when we have to work to get it.”)  For fun, they go swimming, and Joe spends time with them, telling them about different types of seaweed.  They are surprised at how knowledgeable Joe is.

Henry gets the idea that they can set up a kind of museum of interesting things that they find on the island, like samples of different types of seaweed, shells, flowers, pictures of birds that they’ve seen, etc.  The other children think that it sounds like fun, and they begin thinking about the different types of things that they can collect.While they’re searching for things to collect and add to their museum, the children find a cave and an old arrowhead and ax-head.  They are authentic Indian (Native American) relics!  When they show Joe what they’ve found, he gets very excited, especially when they tell him that they saw a pile of clam shells, too.  Joe explains to the children how Native Americans used to use shells as money called wampum.  He thinks that what they saw was wampum, which the people who used to live there might have made after drying the clams to eat later.  Joe explains to the kids some of the process they would have used to turn the shells into wampum.  He’s eager to go to the cave and look for more Native American artifacts with them, but he urges them not to say anything to anyone else about it because other treasure hunters will probably show up if they do.  The children agree to keep their find a secret until their grandfather returns.

When they return to the cave with Joe, they make an even more incredible find: a human skeleton with an arrowhead inside.  It looks like they’ve found the bones of someone killed by an arrow!

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

My Reaction

As with some other vintage children’s mystery series, the early books in the series were more adventure than mystery.  The most mysterious part of this book concerns the real identity of the young man they call “Joe.”  The truth begins to come out when a strange man who calls himself Browning comes to the island in search of a young man who disappeared the year before while doing some exploring for him.  The young man he’s looking for worked for a museum.

This is the book where Violet first learns to play the violin.  This is a character trait that stays with her for the rest of the series.

Posted on by TracyC

The Court of the Stone Children

The Court of the Stone Children by Eleanor Cameron, 1973.

Nina and her parents have recently moved to San Francisco from Nevada.  Nina doesn’t like living in the city, but the move was necessary because her father has been ill and in need of a job.  Still, Nina misses her friends, and her parents don’t understand how difficult Nina has found it to make friends in their new home.

One of the most popular girls, Marion Charles, nicknamed Marnychuck, and her friends like to tease Nina at every opportunity. Nina doesn’t think that she even wants to try to be friends with them because hanging out at Marnychuck’s house would mean always having to be on her guard about every little thing she says, knowing that they would twist every innocent comment she makes into some sort of joke so they could laugh at her.  They could never be friends because there would be no way that Nina could ever open up to them about anything.  (Sadly, I know the type all too well.)  For example, one day, while the girls are walking home from school, they start talking about things they want to be when they grow up.  Nina says that she wants to be “something in a museum,” momentarily forgetting the word “curator”, until a boy nearby helpfully supplies the word. Of course, Marnychuck and her friends ignore the helpful word and just laugh about “something in a museum” as they walk away.

However, the boy who was listening turns out to be genuinely curious about why Nina wants to work in a museum, saying that it sounds like an unusual ambition.  Nina tells him that, until she had come to San Francisco, she’d never been in a big museum before, and she describes how the one in the park impressed her.  She used to work in a small one in her home town. The boy understands the way she feels and shares her love of the past.  He tells her about Mam’zelle Henry, a local woman who owns a private museum called the French Museum.

Nina visits the French Museum and loves the rooms with old-fashioned furniture.  They give her a strange feeling of timelessness, and before she knows it, she finds herself in a room with another young girl who says, “I knew you’d come.”  Nina isn’t sure who this mysterious girl is, but she asks her to come back another time.

When Nina returns to the museum the next day to return an umbrella that she borrowed from Mrs. Staynes, the registrar at the museum, she speaks to the girl again in the museum courtyard.  The courtyard is full of stone statues of children, and the girl tells Nina that when she was young, she used to wish that they would come to life.  The girl’s name is Dominique, although she says that people usually call her Domi. The two girls begin talking about their lives, although Domi oddly talks about her past in the present tense. Domi tells Nina about her emotionally-distant grandmother and her loving father, who was imprisoned and shot.  The news of Domi’s father being shot comes as a shock to Nina.  Domi tells Nina that, after her father was (“is”) imprisoned and shot, she had a dream about Nina in which her father said that Nina would help them.  Domi also says that the rooms at the museum are from her home in France, which was taken apart to be “modernized”and some of the pieces were sent to the museum. Nina finds Domi’s story confusing, but Domi says that they will talk more later.

Nina meets up with the boy who introduced her to the museum, whose name is Gil, at the cottage of Auguste, who lives on the museum property.  As she talks with the two of them and Mrs. Staynes, Mrs. Staynes brings up the subject of the ring that Nina saw Domi wearing and which also appears in a painting in the museum.  Earlier, Mrs. Staynes had told Nina that she couldn’t possibly have seen anyone wearing that ring, and Mrs. Staynes now explains that the reason why is that she owns the ring herself.  At first, Nina thinks that she must own a ring which is similar to Domi’s, since the two of them couldn’t have the same ring,but then, it turns out that the cat that Domi said was hers also belongs to Auguste.

The answer, as Nina discovers the next time she meets Dominique, is that Domi is a ghost.  Mrs. Staynes does own Domi’s ring now because Domi died a long time ago. Nina faints when Domi’s hand goes right through hers.  When Nina recovers, Domi is gone, and Mam’zelle Henry gives her a ride home.  The two of them bond as they discuss Nina’s ambition to become a curator.

Mam’zelle lets Nina borrow a journal that she found in the garden that belonged to Odile Chrysostome in 1802.  Odile was one of the names of the stone statues in the courtyard, according to Dominique, and Nina learns that the others are also named after members of the Chrysostome family.  The people at the museum say that they don’t know which of the statues is supposed to have which name, but thanks to Dominique, Nina does.

Gil becomes Nina’s first friend her own age, and he’s been working on a project involving time.  Someday, he wants to write a book about the concept of time. Time is important because Domi needs Nina’s help to resolve problems that occurred in the past.

Domi was young during the time of Napoleon.  Her mother had died in childbirth along with Domi’s younger sibling.  After her mother died, her grandmother moved into the house to oversee things and help care for Domi.  However, Domi’s father had protested some of Napoleon’s policies of conquest, and it led to his downfall.  One day, Domi discovered her father’s valet,Maurice, murdered in her father’s bedroom. She had thought that her father was there the night before, having returned from being away for a time, but he was nowhere to be found.  A short time later, her father was charged with conspiring against Napoleon and executed. Domi knows that her father was innocent of the charges, and she suspects that Maurice was killed because he knew something important, but she needs Nina’s help to find the missing pieces.  Domi knows that Mrs. Staynes is working on a book about her father’s life, and she doesn’t want the false accusations against him to be printed.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

I thought that the book started out a little slowly.  It takes quite a while before Nina discovers that the boy’s name is Gil or learns anything about him, and it’s about halfway through the book before Nina learns that Domi is a ghost, although there are hints before it.  I knew that Domi was from the past, although I thought at first that she might be a time traveler of some kind.  Even after Nina learns that Domi is a ghost, it takes a while before Domi tells Nina her full story and what she really needs her to do.  The first part of the book dragged a little for me, and I was a little confused at first about why Odile’s diary was so important, but it turns out to contain the vital clues that Domi needs.  Domi’s father was with the Chrysostome family at the time that he supposedly murdered his valet and was conspiring against Napoleon. There is a piece of physical evidence that proves it, and finding it convinces Mrs. Staynes to change her book. 

One of Nina’s strengths is her power of imagination, and she helps Mrs. Staynes not only to see the truth about Domi’s father but to see him as a living, breathing person.  Before, Mrs. Staynes’ book was mostly facts with little sense of the feelings of the living people behind it, but Nina’s discoveries and imagination help breathe life into the work.  At the end of the book, the past remains unchanged (Domi’s life and that of her father are what they were before), but having the truth known gives Domi peace. Nina also makes peace with her new life in San Francisco, having discovered new opportunities and friends there as well as a nicer apartment for her family to live in.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

The Case of the Muttering Mummy

MutteringMummy

The Case of the Muttering Mummy by E.W. Hildick, 1986.

Joey Rockaway needs to buy a special present for his mother’s birthday. Having broken his mother’s china cat ornament recently, he has decided that he will buy one of the replicas of a golden cat statue from Egypt at the Egyptian exhibit at the local museum. The other members of the McGurk Organization come to the museum with him, and McGurk uses this as an opportunity to give them a kind of memory test about objects in the exhibit.

Actually, everything in the exhibit is a replica, not just the items sold in the museum gift shop. Justin Matravers, a wealthy man who has recently died, collected Egyptian artifacts, but part of his will specified that the collection should never be put on public display. However, his widow, who wanted to show off the collection, had replicas made of everything in the collection so that she could have those put on display.

MutteringMummyCase

McGurk sneers about how everything in the exhibit is fake, although he is actually surprisingly superstitious. The museum always did have a real mummy case on display. They always said that the mummy case was empty, but some of the more superstitious kids, like McGurk, believe that there is a mummy inside the case and that there is a curse on it. McGurk has nicknamed the mummy Melvin. The other kids aren’t afraid of Melvin or Egyptian curses, and while they are looking around the Egyptian exhibit, Mari plays a joke by using her ventriloquist skills to make the mummy case “talk.” This trick sets off a bizarre mystery for the McGurk Organization.

A scholar and author, Harrison Keech, is sketching the replicas at the exhibit and witnesses Mari’s trick and Joey picking out the replica cat for his mother. After he asks Joey if he can take a look at the cat, Keech suddenly becomes very upset, saying that the cat statue is cursed! He says that Mari’s joke has angered the spirit of the mummy and awakened the spirit of Bastet. The mummy was a follower of Bastet, the Egyptian cat goddess, and it will now be drawn to the statue if they remove it from the museum. Mari tells Joey that she can tell from Keech’s voice that he’s making up the whole story and that he shouldn’t let that stop him from buying the cat.

MutteringMummyNight

However, strange things start happening after Joey buys the cat. It seems like someone is following him home, a dark, shadowy figure. Joey thinks it might even be the mummy, come back to life! The others are skeptical, and McGurk arranges a kind of test where Joey brings the statue with him to a meeting of the organization. Sure enough, a strange figure lurks outside their meeting, and they hear strange whispers in a foreign language!

The spookiness doesn’t last for long. It turns out that Mari, as well as being a ventriloquist, has some skill with different languages and recognizes what the “mummy” says as being Greek, not Egyptian, and the phrases as being typical things that someone might say in a restaurant. When the kids find a scrap of bandage outside, they are quick to notice that it’s a modern, elasticized bandage, like the kind you can get at any pharmacy.

So, the question becomes who is playing at being a mummy and why? Is it Keech, wanting to make the kids think that the mummy story he told them is real, and if so, what would he have to gain from it? The only other two people who know about the story are Joanne, who works at the museum, and Donny, her fiancé, who is jealous of the attention she’s been paying to Keech when he comes to the exhibit.

MutteringMummyLies

I have some complaints about this book that hadn’t occurred to me when I read it as a kid. At one point, Donny, who is described as being a social worker, comes to visit the kids because he wants to hire the organization to check up on Keech and his relationship with Joanne. Donny is very jealous, and when he explains how Joanne seems to be falling for all of Keech’s crazy mummy stories, he suddenly turns to Wanda and Mari and says, “You women, you’ll believe anything when a smarmy two-bit jackass like that starts shooting his mouth off!” That’s just really inappropriate for an adult to say to kids, and the whole situation is weird on several levels. First of all, Donny is an adult, and if he’s having issues with his love life, especially with the woman he thinks he wants to spend the rest of his life with, the last thing he should do is hire kids (even really smart ones) to handle the issues for him. Second, Wanda and Mari are young girls, not “women,” and what little girls believe is no business of Donny’s. Trying to imply that Wanda and Mari might someday fall for a “jackass” is not only insulting but implies that Donny is thinking about Wanda and Mari in terms that no grown man should be thinking about girls their ages. I find it disturbing that Donny is apparently a social worker, a person in a position of trust who is supposed to help people in difficult situations to manage their lives, and he’s acting like this. Also, toward the end of the book when the bad guy (I won’t say who it is here, although I thought that the answer was pretty obvious even early in the story) is making his escape, he shoves Joanne aside and calls her a “slut.” That’s pretty strong language for a kid’s book of this level. None of this occurred to me when I was a kid, so maybe other kids reading this wouldn’t notice, but I thought that I’d mention it because these things bother me now.

At one point, Brains gives a demonstration of using water displacement to determine the volume of irregularly-shaped objects, explaining how Archimedes discovered the principal (although I’m not sure that Archimedes’ Principal was quite as he explains it), as the kids investigate what makes Joey’s cat statue so special. You might be able to guess what it is. It seemed pretty obvious to me. The one thing that seemed the most puzzling was how it was done. Mari also offers an interesting explanation of the different kinds of lies that people tell and their motives for doing so.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Giving Thanks

GivingThanks

Giving Thanks by Kate Waters, 2001.

This book describes the feast of 1621 that we think of as “the first Thanksgiving” from the point of view of two boys: Resolved White (a six-year-old English colonist) and Dancing Moccasins (a fourteen-year-old Wampanoag).  The book explains that the reality of this feast is somewhat different from the way many people think of it.  For one thing, the exact date is unknown, and it wasn’t really a single meal but a kind of harvest celebration that took place over several days.  The events of that celebration were re-created using reenactors from the Plimoth Plantation living history museum.

In the beginning of the book, Dancing Moccasins explains that his family has been harvesting their crops and preparing to move to the place where they live in the winter. Wampanoag lived in different places depending on the time of year, moving between them when the seasons changed.  At their winter home, they would continue hunting and fishing, returning to the place where they planted their crops at the end of winter.

GivingThanksBeginning

Similarly, Resolved’s family has finished harvesting their crops and have stored up food for the winter.  Now that most of the hard work is over, they have time to relax and celebrate.  The community is planning a feast.  Resolved and his friend, Bartle, follow some of the men, who are going out hunting and target-shooting.

The colonists meet up with some of the Wampanoag, which is how Dancing Moccasins and Resolved first see each other.  Dancing Moccasins returns home and tells his father what he has seen.  Then, a messenger arrives from their chief, Massasoit, saying that he will be visiting the colonists soon, and Dancing Moccasins’s father is invited to come.

GivingThanksMessenger

Just as Dancing Moccasins is wondering about the purpose of this visit, Resolved is wondering the same thing because word has reached the colonists that they will soon be visited by the chief and representatives of the tribe.  (The book explains in the back that the exact reasons for the Wampanoag visit to the colonists are unknown today, only that it happened at the same time that the colonists were planning their harvest feast.) The two boys meet again when Dancing Moccasins accompanies his father on the visit to the colonists’ village.

GivingThanksGovernorDinner

When the Wampanoag arrive at the village, they are treated as honored guests, and some of the Wampanoag go deer-hunting to provide a present for their hosts.  The chief dines with the governor of the colonists.  The Wampanoag build shelters for themselves, where they will stay during their visit.

GivingThanksShelters

Eventually, Dancing Moccassins invites Resolved to play a game with him and some other Wampanoag boys when he sees him watching them.  Some of the Wampanoag men also join in the games that the English men play, like competing to see who can throw a log the farthest.

GivingThanksGames

At the end of the day, Dancing Moccassins and Resolved each eat with their own families, but there is plenty for everyone.

There is a section in the back with historical information about the harvest feast, traditions about giving thanks among both the colonists and the Wampanoag, and how Thanksgiving eventually became a national holiday in the United States.  There is also information about food and clothing in the time of the story and a recipe for samp (a kind of corn pottage eaten by the Wampanoag and later adopted by the English colonists).  The book also has some information about the Plimoth Plantation living history museum and the reeanctors.  It is part of a series of books by the same author about the lives of children in Colonial America.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Tapenum’s Day

Tapenum's Day

Tapenum’s Day by Kate Waters, 1996.

This is about a day in the life of a Wampanoag boy living in the area around Plymouth, Massachusetts during the 1620s.  His life is reenacted by Issac Hendricks, who was a participant in the Wampanoag Indian Program at the Plimoth Plantation living history museum.

In the beginning, Tapenum introduces himself, explaining a little about his people and the strangers who have only recently come to their land, the English colonists, whom the Wampanoag call wautaconuoag (meaning “coat-men”).  Tapenum has just learned that he was not among those young men chosen to train as pniesog, a special kind of warrior among the Wampanoag who also possessed spiritual powers and acted as advisors and diplomats for their chief.  It has come as a great disappointment to him that he was not chosen for training.  To improve his chances of being chosen later, Tapenum has decided to train himself to improve his strength and hunting abilities.

Tapenum's Day Begins

Tapenum goes out hunting early in the morning, while his mother and sister are still asleep.  He starts before eating anything because he says that being hungry “makes the hunter more serious.”  Eventually, he catches a rabbit and a squirrel.  His mother is pleased with his catch, although his father has done even better by bringing home a wild turkey, which is even more difficult.

Tapenum's Day Hunting Trip

Later, Tapenum meets up with a friend, Nootimis.  The two of them go fishing in a canoe.  Nootimis knows that Tapenum is disappointed about not being chosen, but Tapenum says that at least he can still spend time with him before (hopefully) going away for training next year.

Tapenum's Friend

After fishing, Tapenum goes for a run as part of his training, and he sees smoke.  When he investigates, he finds an old wise man named Waban making a canoe.  Waban was a pniese himself when he was younger, and Tapenum offers him the fish he caught, hoping that Waban can tell him some things that will help him to be chosen for training.

Tapenum meets Waban

Tapenum ends up spending the rest of the day with the older man, learning and perfecting his skill at fletching arrows.  Waban also explains to him the importance of patience.  Tapenum is in too much of a hurry to grow up and begin serious training, but growing up takes time and so does developing the kind of strength and wisdom that he will need as warrior.

Tapenum learns some lessons

There is a section in the back of the book that explains more about the Wampanoag people, the the Wampanoag Indian Program, the Plimoth Plantation living history museum (now called Plimoth Patuxet), and the boy reenacting Tapenum’s life.

This is part of a series of books focusing on the lives of children in Colonial American history.  It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Meg Mackintosh and The Mystery at the Medieval Castle

Meg Mackintosh Mysteries

MMCastle

Meg Mackintosh and The Mystery at the Medieval Castle by Lucinda Landon, 1989.

Meg is visiting Dundare Castle with her teacher and some other students.  Dundare Castle is a special museum where people can learn about life in Medieval times, although it used to be a private home.  The owner’s family came from Scotland, and they built their home to look like their ancestors’ castle there.  Eleanor, the owner, now calls herself the Duchess of Dundare, and with her staff, dresses up to recreate the lives of people from the 1300s.

MMCastleTour

One of the Duchess’s prized possessions is a silver chalice studded with jewels that has been in her family for generations.  She keeps it on display in the castle’s “abbey,” guarded by the actor playing the part of a knight, Knight Henry.  But, when Meg and her classmates get to the abbey, the chalice is gone, and Knight Henry is lying on the floor, unconscious!

MMCastleTheft

Not long before they found Knight Henry, the kids had seen a robed figure run across the courtyard.  Monk William falls under suspicion, although the Duchess doesn’t really believe that he is guilty because he’s been with her family for a long time.  There are other possible suspects, and Meg believes that both the thief and the chalice are still in the castle.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

MMCastleSearch

My Reaction

I love this series because the books are interactive, giving readers the opportunity to figure out the clues and solve the mystery along with Meg. As Meg interviews the other actors in the castle and explores every room, readers are invited to study the pictures and consider the evidence to see if they can solve the mystery before Meg can.  At various points in the story, there are questions for the reader to consider, giving them the chance to pause and see if they’ve noticed what Meg has seen. I recommend that adults who are introducing children to the mystery genre read a couple of these stories along with them and discuss the clues as they go, helping children to learn how to notice details, solve puzzles, and think critically. It’s a good learning opportunity as well as a fun mystery!

Posted on by TracyC

What’s a Ghost Going to Do?

WhatGhostDo

What’s a Ghost Going to Do? by Jane Thayer, 1966.

Gus is a friendly ghost who lives a quiet life alone in his old house, which is run-down and shabby, with winter visits from his mouse friend.  However, Gus discovers one day that the property is being sold.  The government wants the land to turn into a park, and if that happens, Gus’s house will be torn down!  If they decide to tear the house down, where will he go?

WhatGhostDoSale

For a time, Gus tries living with another ghost in another old house nearby, but that arrangement doesn’t work because the other ghost doesn’t like Gus rattling chains.  Then, Gus tries living in a hole with his mouse friend, but it’s really too small for him.  The only place that seems right for Gus is his old house, which is in danger of being destroyed!

WhatGhostDoHints

In desperation, Gus whispers in the ears of the man in charge of preparing the park for the government, Mr. McGovern, trying to get him to notice the virtues of his house.  Fortunately, Mr. McGovern accepts Gus’s vision of the house as a beautiful piece of the past and finds a way to restore it to its former glory so that Gus can keep his home and others can appreciate it, too.

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Gus’s house becomes a museum in the park, and Mr. McGovern also officially acknowledges Gus as the resident ghost.

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

WhatGhostDoMuseum

My Reaction

I’ve had this book since I was a little kid. I always felt sorry for poor Gus throughout the book, but the story has a nice ending, with Gus and Mr. McGovern finding a creative way to restore the house and put it to good use, filling it with antique furniture for both Gus and the public to enjoy. I haven’t read any of the others in the series yet because this is the only one I’ve ever had.

Posted on by TracyC

Mystery Up the Winding Stair

Mystery Up the Winding Stair by Helen Fuller Orton, 1948.

Harry Hunter and his mother have been living with his grandfather in his big mansion while his father is in Japan doing work for the government. His family has owned the mansion for a long time, and it has a small museum in it containing Native American artifacts and things relating to pioneer life, including a small log cabin built in a large room up a winding staircase.

When Harry’s mother goes on a trip to see his father, Harry and his grandfather invite Harry’s cousins to visit them: Ned and his sister Lou, and Carol, whose family has only recently moved to the area.  When the children try to decide what they would like to do together, Carol suggests a treasure hunt.  Their grandfather sends them on a treasure hunt to find something that he hid himself a long time ago: a set of silver spoons made by Paul Revere and a diamond. The explanation is that the grandfather is rather absent-minded and has forgotten where he hid the treasure, although he knows that it’s somewhere in the house.

A storm leaves them all snowbound in the mansion, but they are not alone. There are mysterious footsteps, someone using a secret staircase to the attic, and signs that the bed in the cabin has been slept in. The children begin to realize that someone else is in the house with them, and this person wants the treasure for himself!

This book is out of print, but you can borrow and read it online for free through Internet Archive.  Internet Archive requires you to sign up for an account to borrow books, but the account is free, and you read the books directly in your browser.  There are no overdue fees because the books simply disappear from your virtual loan list when your time is up.  You are allowed to re-borrow books as long as copies are available (not being “borrowed” by other people).

My Reaction and Story Background

The house the mansion in the book was based on was the old summer home of Governor Washington Hunt, located in Lockport, New York. (I learned about the house from an article about the story behind the book and an event related to the book that was held at the library in Lockport, but the site that had the article doesn’t have it up anymore. I think I saved a copy somewhere, but I’m having trouble finding it right now.)  It was called Wyndham Lawn and later became a children’s home. It’s now a private school called the Henrietta G. Lewis Campus School.  When the author, Helen Fuller Orton, was young, some of her relatives rented Wyndham Lawn from its owner, and she lived with them for a time.  In the article, the author noted that the house had been changed somewhat since the time when she lived there in the 1880s in order to accommodate the needs of the children’s home.

When I first read this book, I thought that the part about the grandfather simply forgetting where he hid an important treasure was a little cheesy, but the treasure hunt in a mansion with its own museum is fun. It’s a little spooky when the kids realize that there’s an intruder in the house with them while they’re snowbound, although it’s pretty obvious to readers of the story who the intruder was. The house really makes the story because it is a fantastic setting! It’s a very cozy mystery for winter.

I enjoyed the story and learning about the history of the real house. I also considered what Harry’s father is doing in Japan because this book was published just after WWII. I don’t think they ever explain why Harry’s father is in Japan on government work, but I’m sure he’s involved with the occupation and reconstruction of Japan after the war. It’s a subtle reference to current events at the time this story was written that’s not part of the main story but is used as part of the reason why the main story is happening.