Fog Magic by Julia L. Sauer, 1943.
Greta loves fog and always has, although other people can’t understand it. When she is ten years old, she begins to get the sense that there is something in the fog that she should find. One day, when she goes looking for a lost cow from her family’s farm, she sees a house in the fog that isn’t there when the fog is gone. Apparently, there used to be a house on that site, but it’s gone now. Except when there’s fog.
From then on, Greta loves to walk in the fog. When she does, she meets people from the past. One day, she meets a woman named Laura Morrill, who recognizes her as being from the Addington family and says that her name must be Greta. According to Laura, there’s always a Greta in every generation of Addingtons and that there’s always a child in every generation who has a great love of fog. Greta’s ability to use the fog to travel back in time and see her town as it once was is apparently inherited.
Greta makes friends with Retha Morill, Laura’s daughter. However, when Mrs. Morrill gives her a piece of pie to take home, it disappears, making Greta realize that she can’t bring things from the past to the present. Retha’s parents seem to realize it, too. When Retha offers her a little silver egg cup to take home, Mrs. Morrill suggests that perhaps it would be better for Greta to leave it at their house and use it when she comes. Greta also has the feeling that, when the fog starts to lift, she needs to go home, and Mrs. Morrill agrees.
On another day, Greta and Retha spot an older girl in the woods. Retha seems to know who she is and calls out to her, but she runs from them. They try to catch up to her, but she gets away, and Retha is upset. It turns out that the girl is named Ann, and she was falsely accused of theft. When it was discovered that she hadn’t stolen anything, the townspeople had tried to find her, but she’s been hiding from them ever since, too afraid to come back. At first, people had thought that maybe she had gone to another town to find work, but now that they know that she’s been living alone in the woods, they’re worried about her. The story also upsets Greta because she has heard a local ghost story about a girl who haunts the woods after being falsely accused, and Greta takes that to mean that Ann will die. The Morrills assure her that they will look out for Ann.
Greta is tempted to talk to Retha about her mysterious time traveling in the fog, but Retha stops her from talking about it. Retha says that even her mother doesn’t want to talk about where Greta goes while she’s not with them, only saying that both men who go to sea and the women who wait for them on shore “have to learn to be content and at peace shut in by their horizon.” To Greta, that means that she should be content with wherever she is while she’s there and with the fog that allows her to see her friends in the past.
The more Greta visits the Morrills, the more she gets caught up in the lives and troubles of the people living in the past. At one point, Greta and Retha talk about some of the sad things that have happened to people the Morrills know, and Retha asks Greta if there is sorrow where she lives. Greta has to admit that there is. People generally do have their troubles, no matter when they live. Retha says that her mother says that living and dying are both natural things, so there is no use being sad about them, except when the death is an unnatural one, like in a war. There is no war going on in Retha’s time, but Greta lives during the time this book was written, in the middle of World War II. Greta is aware of the war and says that sometimes people have to fight whether they want to or not, but Retha doesn’t think so. Greta realizes that she can’t make Retha understand the circumstances of the world in the future.
However, as Greta’s twelfth birthday approaches, she has the feeling that things are changing. Her birthday will be the last time that she can visit her fog friends, but they give her a special present to remember them by. Greta’s father seems to know what Greta has been doing in the fog, and he reveals to her, without actually saying it, that he once did the same thing himself. He says that when people grow up, they leave the things of childhood behind, but each of them is able to keep a special birthday gift from the past as a reminder that some things do last.
The ending of the story implies that, although Greta’s adventures in the fog were real, not purely imaginary, she has to give them up to make room for the new things that will enter her life as she grows up. Her life lies in her present and future, so she can’t keep going back to the past. However, her experiences with her friends in the past are part of what has made her more mature, and they will stay with her forever.
The book is a Newbery Honor Book. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
The idea of magic and magical adventures ending at a certain age, as the person begins to grow up, is a classic idea in children’s literature. Sometimes, in other books, it’s implied that the reason this happens is because the “magic” was all imaginary, and the child in the story grew out of that particular kind of imagining, but that isn’t the case in this story. The explanation in this book for why the magic has to end is simple but makes sense. The characters don’t really analyze the issue too deeply, simply taking it in stride. We never find out why this particular family seems to have this tradition of going back in time in the fog as children, and the characters seem to decide that there is no reason to find out why.
Unlike in some modern books, there doesn’t seem to be any particular mission for Greta (or her father or any other generations before her) to fulfill in her time traveling. Greta is mostly an observer of the events in the past, not really participating in them directly or changing them in any way. She doesn’t even seem to influence the thoughts or attitudes of people in the past much. When she talks about the concept of war with Retha, she doesn’t try to change Retha’s mind about it or tell her about World War II and other future events because she realizes that each of them really belongs to two different times and sets of circumstances, and each of them needs to live in their own time, dealing with their own situations. It is their differing situations which give them their attitudes. The Morrills seem to be aware that Greta comes from the future, but they treat the subject carefully, never directly stating where she is from, just hinting at it. From they way they act, it seems as though they’ve met other members of Greta’s family before, but again, the ties between their two families (if any) are never explained, and none of them seems to want to delve too deeply into the matter. For the most part, they just seem to take the whole situation as being a natural part of life in their families and in the area where they live, something just to be enjoyed and not questioned. In fact, some of their attitudes seem to imply that they fear questioning too deeply, as if that in itself might end the magic too soon.
Although the story leaves the reasons behind the time traveling very open and unresolved (probably, other children in Greta’s family will be doing this in the future, also not really knowing why), it is really a very calm story. Not having a special mission to complete in the past leaves Greta free to simply enjoy the company of the people in the past, observing their lives without the stress of needing to solve their problems for them, and readers can similarly enjoy the ride without worrying that anything really bad will happen. You do end up being interested in what happens to some of the characters, like the woman who is in danger of losing her family’s home, but events unfold in the way Greta knows they will. She’s sad when she knows that certain people are going to die (not the woman whose home was in danger, that works out well) and there is nothing she can do about it, but it all seems to be part of the natural circle of life, something that matures Greta when she realizes it.
One of the fun things that I liked about the book were some of the unusual first names of the characters, like Retha, Eldred (Retha’s father), and Ardis (Mrs. Stanton).
In 1707, a man living in Massachusetts named John Noble bought some land in Connecticut which had recently been purchased from a tribe of Indians (Native Americans) living nearby. He planned to move his family there and start a new homestead, but with his children so young and the baby somewhat sickly, it was decided that he would travel to the new land ahead of his family and start building a new house there. The only family member to accompany him was his eight-year-old daughter, Sarah, who came along to cook for him. Before they leave home, Sarah’s mother tells her to “Keep up your courage,” something which Sarah repeats to herself from time to time.
On the way to their new property, Sarah and her father have to camp out in the wilderness, although they do manage to stay one night with a family called Robinson. The Robinson boys tease Sarah, saying that where she’s going, the Indians will probably chop off her head and eat her or do other horrible things. Their sister tells Sarah not to worry because her brothers just like to tease. Sarah’s father and Mistress Robinson also reassure her that the Indians in the area are friendly and that they sold their land knowing that new people would come there.
When Sarah and her father reach the land that is to be their new home, they take refuge in a hollow place in a hillside, and John begins building their new house. However, Sarah is still very nervous and lonely. Then, while Sarah sits, reading the Bible, some curious Indian children from the nearby tribe come to see her. She reads a Bible story aloud to them, and they listen, but she when she finishes the story, she can tell that they didn’t understand what she was saying. Sarah can’t understand them, either, when they try to talk to her. She gets impatient and snaps at them for not knowing English, and they run away from her. Sarah is sorry about that because she realizes that she shouldn’t have been so irritable, and even if they couldn’t talk to each other, it was still nice to have people around.
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, 1971.
With their family suddenly much larger, David’s father bought a new house for them to live in. Actually, it’s a very old house just outside of a small town. People call it the Westerly house after the former owners. Not long after the family moves in, they find out that people used to say that the Westerly house was haunted. Mr. and Mrs. Westerly used to travel around the world with their two daughters because Mr. Westerly worked for the government, but after they settled down to a quieter life in this small town in the late 1800s, strange things started happening in their house. Rocks would fly around the house, seemingly thrown by invisible hands, and someone (or something) cut the head off the carved cupid on the fancy staircase banister. The head was never found. These incidents were reported in the local paper, and people believed that the Westerly family was haunted by a 
Amanda is fascinated by stories of the poltergeist. A friend of hers where she used to live (one her mother didn’t approve of) was teaching her about the occult and how to do magic spells. When David tells Amanda that he thought that his mother was psychic, Amanda is surprised, and she offers to teach David and the other kids about magic over the summer. David eagerly accepts the offer because he finds the subject fascinating and because it’s the only thing that Amanda really seems interested in. The other kids are also fascinated at the idea, even the littlest ones, which takes Amanda by surprise. She had expected them to be scared.
Just as with the Westerly family years ago, rocks are thrown around the house or found just laying around. Things are broken in the middle of the night. Have Amanda’s rituals somehow awoken the poltergeist once more? David has his doubts, suspecting that it’s part of Amanda’s playacting, but she is accounted for when some of these strange things happen. The younger kids are still more fascinated than frightened by these strange happenings, but their stepmother finds them particularly unnerving.
There are some elements of the happenings, particularly the reappearance of the cupid’s head, that are never fully explained, although David ends up knowing more than Amanda by the end. Some aspects of the situation are hinted at. There may be a real supernatural event at the end of the story. Blair appears to have inherited psychic abilities from his mother, and there is a distinct possibility that the Westerly sisters who once lived in the house were just as unhappy with their parents for the changes in their lives as Amanda was with her mother. Although the “poltergeist” as it first appears doesn’t exist, it may be that the “poltergeist” of the past remembers what it was like to be young and unhappy and that she wanted to make amends for past wrongs and to help another troubled young girl to make peace with her life and family. But, if you don’t like that explanation, there is a more conventional, non-supernatural explanation that David considers, which equally possible. Personally, I think it’s a combination of the two, but it’s not completely clear. I think the author left it open-ended like that to make readers wonder and to preserve the air of mystery after the other mysteries have been cleared up.
A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck, 2000.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 