Posted on by TracyC

Toying With Danger

toyingwithdangerToying With Danger by Drew Stevenson, 1993.

Sarah Capshaw is lamenting to her friend Clark that she hasn’t had an interesting case to solve since she and her parents moved to Wilsonburg when their friend Frog tells them that the local bully saw a monster at the old Harley farm outside of town.  Rumor has it that a mad scientist bought the place.  Naturally, Sarah wants to investigate.

It turns out that the “mad scientist,” Dr. Becker, is actually an eccentric toy inventor.  The “monster” is an electronic Frankenstein monster.  Dr. Becker is actually pretty nice and is even interested in seeing the detective board game that Frog is trying to invent.

Even though the monster wasn’t a real monster, there are still strange things happening in the woods surrounding the old farm where Dr. Becker’s workshop is.  The local bully is hanging around in the woods and trying to scare everyone away.  The kids also see a mysterious man hanging around, and Sarah wonders if he could be spying on Dr. Becker in order to steal his designs.

toyingwithdangerpic2It seems that Sarah is right that someone is trying to spy on Dr. Becker.  The kids learn more about the money involved in buying and selling toy designs when they visit the Too Wonderful toy company for a tour with Sarah’s grandfather.  Making toys is serious business, and companies guard their designs very carefully.  The Too Wonderful toy company wants to purchase some of Dr. Becker’s designs, but one of the members of the company says some strange things about Dr. Becker.  Can the kids trust him?  Can they trust the strange Dr. Becker?  Can Sarah catch the spy before it’s too late?

This is part of the Sarah Capshaw Mysteries series.

Posted on by TracyC

One Ghost Too Many

oneghostOne Ghost Too Many by Drew Stevenson, 1991.

Clark Lannigan meets Sarah Capshaw by accident when she comes to spend the summer with her grandparents in Wilsonburg. Sarah’s grandfather, Conrad Capshaw, is a lawyer, and he is handling the estate of Rodney Maplewood. Rodney Maplewood used to be a museum curator and had an impressive collection of antiques which he kept in his large house, Maplewood Manor.

Maplewood Manor is the oldest and the spookiest house in town. It was once owned by the eccentric Antonia Whitemarsh, who was a spiritualist and believed that her father’s spirit still inhabited the house. Now, people in town think that Rodney Maplewood’s ghost is also haunting the house because lights have been seen in the house at night. Conrad Chapshaw also says that, although nothing is missing, some objects in the house have been moved around.

oneghostpic1Sarah persuades Clark and his friend “Frog” Fenniman to join her investigation of the house, but besides the resident ghost, they will also have to deal with a local group interested in psychic phenomena and a mysterious stranger who is paying the local bully to spy on the house.

This is the first book in the Sarah Capshaw Mysteries series.  Sarah and her parents move to Wilsonburg, and she has other adventures with Clark and Frog, all narrated by Clark.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Jumble Joan

jumblejoanJumble Joan by Rose Impey, 1989.

A boy and his friend, Mick, take his little sister upstairs to explore their grandmother’s attic one evening.  The boys are hoping to scare the girl by telling her all sorts of creepy stories about the stuff they find in the attic, but if they’re scaring anyone, it might just be themselves.

A rocking horse becomes one of the dreaded “Ten O’Clock Horses” that might drag a child off into the night if she isn’t in bed on time.  An old stuffed parrot in a cage becomes “The Deadly Vampire Bat”, waiting to suck their blood.  But, the most sinister creature of all might be “Jumble Joan”, who hides by pretending to be a pile of old clothes, ready to steal away any little girls who might want to play dress up in their grandmother’s attic!

Although the brother narrates the story, the pictures show that his little sister knows exactly what the boys are trying to do, and she does things to turn the situation around.

This is one of the books in the Creepies Series.  Kids under the age of seven might find stories in this series a little scary because they focus on how stories about monsters can build in the imagination, even if you know that you made them up yourself.  Still, all of the books have good endings, and this one is pretty funny.

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Flat Man

flatmanThe Flat Man by Rose Impey, 1988.

Before Slender Man, there was . . . The Flat Man!  And he wasn’t quite as scary. As far as I know, there is no connection between the two fictional characters other than a similarity in name.  Still, the Creepies Series, while picture books, should probably only be given to children no younger than seven who like scary stories.  They might provoke nightmares in very young children and sensitive children.  I liked these stories as a kid for their imagination, but individual tastes may vary.

Like all the books in the Creepies series, The Flat Man features a child who enjoys being a little scared and makes up his own imaginary monster to battle with at bedtime.  The entire time, the boy knows that the monster is imaginary and prides himself on knowing just how to deal with him.

While lying in bed one night, the boy imagines the scary creature called the Flat Man for the fun of it.  He amuses himself with imagining that every sound he hears is the Flat Man, a paper-thin creature that can sneak in anywhere, squeeze himself through any crack. But, the Flat Man has weaknesses: he’s afraid of light and open spaces. The boy acts out his duel with the imaginary Flat Man, enjoying his triumph . . . right up until his father comes in to find out what’s going on.

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

My Reaction

Even though his imaginary creature is frightening, the boy enjoys it, comes up with his own solution for defeating it, and acts out a triumphant battle with it. Those who don’t mind a bit of spookiness will appreciate the boy’s imagination and may giggle at how he gets a bit carried away with his fantasy.

Posted on by TracyC

Scare Yourself to Sleep

scareyourselfScare Yourself to Sleep by Rose Impey, 1988.

A girl and her cousin are camping out in the backyard when they decide to play a game they made up themselves called “Scare Yourself to Sleep.” They take turns inventing and telling stories about monsters lurking out in the darkness. The winner of the game is the one who successfully scares the other.

They talk about the Garbage Goblins, who live in trash cans. The Flying Cat is a creature that is half-cat, half-moth. The Tree Creeper lives in trees and looks like a branch, just waiting to fall down on someone. But, the best of all is the Invisible Man!

However, their stories are interrupted by the girl’s brother, Simon, who is trying to scare them . . . at least, they think it’s probably Simon. The monsters are made up, aren’t they?

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive. It’s part of a series.

scareyourselfpic1

My Reaction and Spoilers

I first read this when I was about seven years old, and I’ve loved it ever since! The pictures show not only what’s happening in the girls’ imaginations but hint at what’s happening in real life, just outside their tent as Simon acts out the things in their stories. It might be a little too scary for very young children, but kids about seven and up will like it (provided that they also like creepy stories).

The illustrations are vivid and detailed, and readers may be wondering up until the very end how much is really imagined. All the books in the Creepies Series are about the power of imagination and how it can be fun to be a little bit scared.

scareyourselfpic3

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.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Talking Table Mystery

TalkingTableThe Talking Table Mystery by Georgess McHargue, 1977.

Annie Conway and her friend How are helping her great aunt to clear out her basement when they find a table that How thinks would work for his pet guinea pig’s cage. However, it’s not an ordinary table. It makes strange noises whenever they press on it, and in the box tied to the top of the table, they find a strange assortment of objects, including a little silver piccolo and some diaries.

Most of the diaries belong to Annie’s great grandfather, but there is one written by an unknown young girl. The girl apparently stayed in Annie’s great grandfather’s house years ago, and her diary refers to the girl’s mother’s strange behavior and the girl’s fears that something bad will happen. The diary itself is mysterious, but soon the kids start receiving threatening notes, telling them to hand over the diaries or something bad will happen. Who wants the diaries and why?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

The basis for the mystery is 19th century spiritualism.  The former owner of the table was a spiritualist who used it for seances, creating rapping noises when the “spirits” were present.  Her daughter was the girl who wrote the diary.  She wasn’t happy about how she and mother kept moving around in search of new clients and how she had to help her mother by playing ghost during seances. They were staying with Annie’s great-grandfather because he was suffering from grief over the death of his young son, and the spiritualist was holding seances to try to contact his spirit.  At least, that’s what Annie’s great-grandfather thought.  The bad thing that the girl thought would happen was that she and her mother would be caught faking their seances, which turns out to be exactly what happened.  Annie’s great-grandfather was angry at being deceived and threw them out of the house, but he confiscated the rigged table and other things they used in their seances, including the girl’s beloved silver piccolo, so they wouldn’t be able to try their act on anyone else.

However, there is one more secret about Annie’s great-grandfather and the spiritualist. Annie and How eventually discover that they had a love affair during the spiritualist’s stay in the house. There is some discussion among the adults about how the spiritualist suffered more consequences and stigma for the affair than the great-grandfather did, although he was a married man when it happened.  As for what eventually happened to the girl and her mother after this incident, the clues are contained in the diary and with the people who now want them.

I thought that the use of the rigged spiritualist table in the story was fascinating. It’s basically like a piece of antique magician’s equipment that not everyone would know existed.  The story also introduces some interesting historical details about the concept of 19th century spiritualism and the types of people who followed it.  Annie’s great-grandfather was grieving for the loss of one of his young children, and like others of his time, he wanted to reach out to the spirit of the one he lost, in search of solace for the loss.  How much of the affair with the spiritualist was fueled by his grief and gratitude for someone he thought was helping him is unknown because we never hear his perspective on that, but his anger at discovering how he had been deceived shows that he did honestly believe that the seances were real and felt betrayed to realize they weren’t.  However, actions have consequences, and there were still some consequences from this incident that were never fully resolved.

The author is very knowledgeable on the subject of spiritualism, and she also wrote a nonfiction book on the subject.

Posted on by TracyC

The Haunted Hotel

The Haunted Hotel

The Haunted Hotel by Janet Adele Bloss, 1989.

Laura and Bill are visiting their Uncle Joe, who is the caretaker of a large hotel in New Hampshire. The hotel is closed for the winter because it is too old and poorly-insulated to heat. The children think that the big, old hotel is fascinating, especially when they begin hearing stories about the ghost of a princess who is said to haunt the hotel and put people under her spell to do her bidding.  It’s just the sort of thing that Laura reads about in her favorite series of mystery books, and she’d love the chance to investigate something like the heroine, Gwen Gilderstar.

Bill rolls his eyes at Laura’s melodramatic mystery obsession, but then the children begin noticing that their uncle is behaving strangely, and they start to wonder if he is under the princess’s spell.  When they first arrived, their uncle told them that his sister, their Aunt Gigi, had gone away to visit a sick friend.  Then, Laura overhears him talking to Gigi on the phone, saying that she and her brother and parents went out to dinner, so she can’t talk to them.  Later, Laura gets the chance to talk to Aunt Gigi and finds out that she only went to visit her friend because Joe insisted and that her friend isn’t sick.  What is going on?  Why would her uncle lie?  Is he under the princess’s spell?

Laura and Bill see mysterious lights and a shadowy figure in the windows of the closed hotel.  Could that be the ghost of the princess?  Even though their parents have forbidden them to go inside the old hotel, the kids go there to investigate.  They hear organ music and a woman laughing, and they find a red rose on the floor, just like the roses in the portrait of the princess.  Then, Bill catches a glimpse of the princess in the elevator, carrying a silver axe!  Laura is determined to solve the mystery, just like Gwen Gilderstar.  She’s afraid, but she knows that she has to do something for her uncle’s sake.

My Reaction

I loved this book when I was a kid because it’s a fun mystery. Laura is a girl after my own heart, who loves mystery stories in the classic girl detective style. “Gwen Gilderstar” seems to be a character similar to Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, or other girl detective characters. Because of her taste in books, Laura looks at everything that happens through the lens of a spooky mystery story, initially not seeing the more practical explanations for the things happening around her. Although the setting of the book, a seemingly haunted hotel that’s closed for the winter season, reminds me of The Shining, the actual plot reminds me more of Northanger Abbey, the classic book by Jane Austen about a girl with an active imagination and a taste for frightening stories.

Posted on by TracyC

The Ghost on the Hill

ghosthillThe Ghost on the Hill by Grace Maccarone, 1990.

This is the last book in the Third Grade Ghosthunters series.

The kids take another field trip, this time to a state park. Native Americans used to live on that land, but most of the tribe died from disease many years ago. There are stories about spirits that live in the hills and the forest. Young boys from the tribe used to perform a ritual where they would dance with the Great Spirit in order to become men.

The third graders have been studying Native American history and customs to prepare for the field trip.  Norma wrote a report about Native American names, which tended to describe some significant characteristic of the person.  Their teacher tells the students that they should think of names for themselves which describe something significant about themselves.  Most of the kids think it sounds like a fun idea, but Joey doesn’t.  He’s just one kid in a family with a dozen other kids, and he’s never felt like there was anything particularly special about him.  That’s why he makes up tall tales about himself that all the other kids find weird and annoying.

ghosthillpicWhen they reach the state park, Dennis Ten Foot Bridge, who is the last of his tribe, tells the students about his tribe, teaches them wilderness skills, and leads them in group activities.  One evening, Joey goes out to practice some rowing on the lake by himself, and he sees what looks like a large ghost at the top of a hill  However, everyone knows that Joey lies about a lot of things, so at first, no one believes him.  At least, no one except Adam.

Adam agrees to help Joey investigate the mysterious spirit. Eventually, all of the members of the ghosthunting group decide to go up on the hill together to see the ghost for themselves.  There, Joey finds the courage to face the spirit directly, and everyone sees the truth. Together, Joey and his friends end up repeating the ancient coming-of-age ritual that the tribe that used to live there would perform.

The solution to the mystery is a little strange, but the book is great for the characters alone. This final book in the Third Grade Ghosthunters series is a coming-of-age story. The other books in the series addressed personal issues and personality quirks in the characters as side-plots, such worrying about not being as smart others, worries about making and keeping friends, and the trouble with teasing. This one focuses on Joey and his sense of identity. He’s always felt that there is nothing special about him compared to his brothers and sisters. In this story, he develops his own character more and gains new confidence. In the process, he ends up becoming more comfortable with his role as a kid in a family with many children as well as appreciating his own uniqueness.  He also finds a name for himself that expresses his new sense of identity.

Posted on by TracyC

Return of the Third-Grade Ghosthunters

return3gghostThe Return of the Third-Grade Ghosthunters by Grace Maccarone, 1989.

This is part of the Third Grade Ghosthunters series.

The same kids who were assigned to figure out the mysterious happenings at their school are now going on a field trip to a farm with their class. They’ll be spending a couple of days on the farm, sleeping over.  Adam has been looking forward to the trip, and he brings his ghost hunting gear with him, just in case.  He hasn’t lost his taste for ghost stories since their last adventure.

At first, things are pretty normal.  Then, during the night, the boys hear howling and see apparitions of a ghostly wolf in their bunk house. Could the farm be haunted?  Or is this some kind of mean joke?  Perhaps it’s the work of the class bully, Jeff? The ghost hunting committee assembles again to solve the mystery.

return3gghostpic2They try to use scientific methods to study the haunting.  They measure the placement of the furniture to see if anything moves while they’re out and sprinkle flour on the floor to get footprints.  But, even though they watch carefully and don’t see anyone enter the bunk house, when they go inside, everything is a mess, and the flour doesn’t appear disturbed.  Everyone else is about ready to admit that this one is a real ghost, but Adam has another theory.

The solution has an interesting twist to it. It’s a good mystery for kids beginning chapter books who like a little creepiness in their reading.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.