Posted on by TracyC

Frankenstein Moved In on the Fourth Floor

Frankenstein Moved In on the Fourth Floor cover

Frankenstein Moved In on the Fourth Floor by Elizabeth Levy, illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein, 1979.

Frankenstein Moved In on the Fourth Floor new neighbor

Sam lives with his brother and mother on the 19th floor of a large apartment building. One day, when he and his mother are going to meet his brother at a friend’s house, they try to take the elevator down to the ground floor, but it doesn’t seem to be working. With no other choice, they take the stairs, and when they reach the fourth floor, they discover the reason why the elevator isn’t working.

A new neighbor, Mr. Frank, is moving into the apartment building, and he’s stopped the elevator at his floor to unload all of his stuff. He has boxes and boxes of wires and other electronic components, and he gets really upset when anybody else touches them. He has refused all offers of help to unload the boxes, he’s kept the elevator tied up, and he’s been rude to his new neighbors about these things.

Frankenstein Moved In on the Fourth Floor reading book

Sam thinks that Mr. Frank is frightening. He looks weird with those strange headphones with an antenna he keeps wearing. When he and his mother go to pick up his brother, Robert, Sam tells him about Mr. Frank and his theory that Mr. Frank is actually a monster. Sam thinks that Mr. Frank looks like Frankenstein. Both of the boys are into movie monsters, but Robert thinks at first that Sam is making it up. The boys have a debate about whether Mr. Frank would actually be Frankenstein the scientist or the monster that Frankenstein created in the book and movie because, although many people call the monster Frankenstein, that was actually the name of the monster’s creator. When the boys consult an abridged version of Frankenstein, Sam becomes convinced that the book’s description of Frankenstein the scientist sounds like Mr. Frank.

Frankenstein Moved In on the Fourth Floor walking up stairs with candle

The next day, the boys go down to the apartment house’s basement, where tenants have storage rooms. Sam wants to see what Mr. Frank is storing in his storage room, but when the boys start talking about the possibility that he might keep bodies in there, they chicken out. In the meantime, Mr. Frank gets on everyone’s nerves at the apartment house. He’s always bringing in new boxes of stuff and leaving empty ones around. Neighbors hear weird noises coming from his apartment that sound like moans and groans. Mr. Frank claims that the noises are his music. Then, he overloads the electrical circuits in his apartment and causes the entire building to black out. Nobody knows what he’s doing with all that electrical equipment of his. Mr. Frank’s weird electrical experiments make Robert think maybe Sam was right about Mr. Frank being Frankenstein.

Frankenstein Moved In on the Fourth Floor discovering the Dracula doll

The boys decide that it’s important for them to take a look in Mr. Frank’s storage room, but when Robert accidentally leaves his Dracula doll behind, they realize that Mr. Frank will find out that they’ve been snooping. They may have to face the wrath of Frankenstein!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). There is a sequel to this book called Dracula is a Pain in the Neck.

My Reaction and Spoilers

Frankenstein Moved In on the Fourth Floor confrontation

This story is a kind of mystery story because the boys are trying to figure out if Mr. Frank is actually Frankenstein and if he’s making monsters with his electrical experiments. However, it really reminds me of the The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids, a series about kids who suspect various people in their town of being different supernatural creators. This book is older than that series, and from the way the story goes, there are more logical explanations for Mr. Frank’s behavior. However, like with The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids, the kids don’t really get firm answers at the end. It looks like Mr. Frank is probably just some weird, temperamental musician who likes to experiment with electronics, but the story leaves it open to interpretation.

Posted on by TracyC

Molly Moves to Sesame Street

Molly Moves to Sesame Street by Judy Freudberg, illustrated by Jean Chandler, 1980.

The characters from Sesame Street greet a new neighbor who is getting used to a new home and needs some new friends.

Molly and her parents are moving into a new apartment on Sesame Street, but Molly feels uncomfortable because nothing in this new neighborhood feels familiar. Her new room is still bare and doesn’t look or feel like home. Molly’s parents reassure her that it will feel more like home once all of her belongings are unpacked.

After Molly helps to unpack for awhile, her parents encourage her to go out, explore the neighborhood, and make some new friends. They say that, by the time Molly comes back, they’ll have things unpacked, and her new room will look much better.

When Molly first meets the characters from Sesame Street, they’re playing a game of hide-and-seek, but they all come out when she calls to them. They all introduce themselves to Molly and invite her to join their game.

After they play, they all go to Mr. Hooper’s store for ice cream and sodas. Molly is happy that she’s having fun and starting to make friends, and she’s starting to like her new neighborhood.

When Molly returns to the apartment, her parents have finished unpacking and arranging her new room. Molly is happy because it looks and feels more like home, and she invites her new friends to come over and see it.

This is a fun and reassuring picture book for young children that shows how making a new home look familiar and making new friends can help them to feel more at home when they move to a new place.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, some in different languages), but some later printings of the book have different illustrations and include Elmo, who wasn’t in the first edition of the book.

Posted on by TracyC

Mystery of the Secret Message

secretmessageMystery of the Secret Message by Elizabeth Honness, 1961.

Penny lives with her aunt and uncle because her mother is dead and her father travels on business much of the time, dealing in Asian art.  Thanks to his travels, Penny and her aunt and uncle have quite a collection of Asian art themselves.  However, Penny has just been told that her father’s airplane crashed in the Pacific Ocean.  No survivors have been found, although Penny still has hope that perhaps her father survived and might yet be found.

At the same time, Penny and her aunt and uncle are moving into a house from the apartment where they used to live. Penny is happy about the move because she knows that she won’t have to worry as much about being quiet and not disturbing the neighbors, like she had to do in their apartment. This means that Penny can bring her friends over to the house to play and have parties. Also, their new house has a very special feature: its own private elevator.

Penny loves the new house and soon begins building a tree house with the help of Pete, a boy who lives nearby.  She tells Pete about her father and her hopes that he might still be alive.

However, events take a disturbing turn when Penny receives a package from Japan containing a beautiful wall scroll. The package appears to have been sent by her father, who meant it as a present for her new room in her new house. Was the package sent before his death, or did he somehow survive the crash?

There is also something odd about Penny’s new neighbors.  Penny’s new house is actually half of a duplex, and the new neighbors, the Carruthers, have also recently moved in after renting the other half. When Penny accidentally gets stuck in the elevator and hears voices coming through the wall, she starts to suspect that her neighbors might not be what they seem to be.  They show an unusual interest in her family’s collection of Asian art, asking to see pieces and borrow pieces for an exhibition that Mr. Carruthers is holding at his gallery.  One of Penny’s friends even catches Mrs. Carruthers sneaking around, looking at things uninvited.

When Penny and her friends have a sleepover on an evening when her aunt and uncle are out, someone sneaks into the house, leaving muddy footprints on the floor.  Penny isn’t sure that her aunt and uncle will believe her because they seem to like the Carruthers, so at Pete’s suggestion, she continues to spy on them, using the elevator to listen in on their conversations through the walls.

When her uncle catches her one day, using the elevator without permission (something she is not supposed to do), she finally explains her suspicions and what’s she’s heard the Carruthers say.  Together, Penny and her uncle discover a hidden secret about the wall scroll Penny recently received, which points to a number of secrets that Penny’s father kept from her and the rest of his family for years.  A stranger from the government helps Penny to fill in some of the blanks, but he has a favor to ask in return that requires Penny to take a big risk.

My Reaction and Spoilers

Although this book is much older than I am, it was a favorite of mine when I was a kid, yet another of my used book sale treasures! I actually got rid of my first copy years ago, when I was cleaning some things out, but I missed it, so I got another one. It’s actually a collector’s item these days.

I always liked the feature of the elevator in the story and how Penny uses it to find the right spot to hear what her neighbors are saying through the wall. I love intrigue, and as a kid, I liked the idea both having a house with an elevator and of overhearing clandestine conversations that reveal sinister secrets. There are points in the story where the two-faced Carruthers think that they have the upper hand, and Penny has to be careful not to let on just how much she knows.

As I explained, the neighbors are not what they seem to be, and Penny’s father was involved in things that his family knew nothing about. Since it’s not easy to get hold of this book right now, I’ll include a couple of spoilers. Penny’s father was acting as a spy for the US government, using his profession as an art dealer to travel to locations he needed to go and to smuggle information back to the US. He is apparently dead, killed in the plane crash, although there are hints that the crash wasn’t an accident, that it may have been intended to kill him. However, before his death, he managed to smuggle his last important information to Penny in the wall scroll that he sent her. When Penny manages to convince her uncle that something isn’t right about the Carruthers, he begins making inquiries and learns the truth about Penny’s father. A government agent speaks to the family and arranges a plan to fool the Carruthers into thinking that they’ve found what they were looking for, but the plan requires Penny to spend an evening in the house alone with them.

Posted on by TracyC

The Bogeyman Caper

eeebogeymanThe Bogeyman Caper by Susan Pearson, 1990.

This is part of the Eagle-Eye Ernie  mystery series.

Everyone says that the old yellow house in their town, White Bear Lake, Minnesota, is inhabited by a bogeyman, but Ernie doesn’t believe it. She decides to prove to her friends that there is no bogeyman in the old house.

Ernie finds ways for her and her friends to keep an eye on the house.  At first, all they see is a creepy-looking old cat. Then, William finds a strange bone in the yard, and Ernie sees a red glow inside and hears tapping sounds. Are her friends right about the bogeyman, or is there another explanation?

Ernie uses her powers of observation to determine that many of the spooky things about the house and its new owner are actually familiar, both to herself and her friends.

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery on October Road

OctoberRoadThe Mystery on October Road by Alison Cragin Herzig and Jane Lawrence Mali, 1991.

A strange man has moved next door to Casey.  He always wears a bandana tied across the lower part of his face, like a bandit.  His pets are the strangest dogs Casey has ever seen, huge Irish Wolfhounds.  He’s started fixing up his new house, but for some reason, he only likes to work at night.

One day Casey and her friend Cats (really, they’re both named Catherine, but they each have nicknames) go to take the man some bread that Casey’s mother baked, and they’re frightened away by one of the dogs.  Casey goes back to get the bread they left behind, and the man tells her to go away and leave him alone.

Casey and her friends (Cats and Benny, a boy Cats likes) are curious about this strange man.  They even wonder if he could be some kind of gangster, hiding out.  At her friends’ urging, they sneak into his house one day to look around.  When the man comes back unexpectedly, her friends get away in time, but Casey falls and hurts her ankle.  The man finds her in his house, and she learns the truth about him.

The man isn’t a bad guy, and Casey even becomes a friend for him.  The story ends on Halloween, when the man creates a special Halloween display for Casey of beautifully carved pumpkins.  The part that always fascinated me was the way he carved them, by peeling the skin off the pumpkin and only leaving it in places where he wanted dark lines.

Part of the story is about how appearances can be deceptive.  The stranger is actually a good person, but he is physically disfigured, which is why he doesn’t like people to see him.  For part of the story, Cats isn’t really a very good friend for Casey, neglecting her feelings and the feelings of the mysterious stranger in order to impress Benny.  But later, when she realizes that Casey was right about the stranger and that she was really hurt in their little escapade, she shows that she can be a better friend, too.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.