Secret of the Tiger’s Eye by Phyllis A. Whitney, 1961.
Benita Dustin’s father is a writer, just like she hopes to be one day. When her father announces that they will live for a year in South Africa with his Aunt Persis so that he can do research, it sounds like a grand adventure. The trouble is that her father’s editor has given permission for her son, Joel, to accompany them because she thinks the experience would be good for him, too. Benita’s little brother, Lanny, gets along well with Joel, but Benita and Joel fight and tease each other almost constantly. Benita gets annoyed with Joel’s obsession with facts and information, and Joel thinks that Benita’s stories and flights of fancy are silly.
Aunt Persis’s house is wonderful with a beautiful tower room where Benita is allowed to stay. There is even a fantastic story about the ghost of a tiger that Aunt Persis’s husband shot years ago in India haunting the grounds of the house and the little cave in the garden. Although Joel scoffs at the idea of a tiger ghost, Benita is captivated by the story, especially when strange things begin to happen around the house. Benita learns about the tragic death of Aunt Persis’s adopted son, Malcolm, and the strange theft of the emerald diadem that Aunt Persis received from the rajah that her husband saved from the tiger years ago. However, she will need Joel’s help to make sense of the situation, a difficult prospect at the best of times but almost impossible to ask for after Joel plays a cruel joke on Benita and tries to get Lanny to help gang up on her. Then, Benita’s father tells her something that changes everything, and all the time, someone with sinister intentions is watching and waiting . . .
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
Besides the mystery, there is also a subplot about the nature of hate and prejudice. In South Africa, at the time the story was written, apartheid was still in force. Benita makes friends with a girl of mixed race called Charis, and they talk about racial issues in South Africa and the U.S. during the 1960s. Although Benita wouldn’t think of being prejudiced against anyone on the basis of race, she finds it harder to understand people with different personalities, like Joel. Although the story focuses on Benita and the lessons she learns, I personally found Joel and his mistakes harder to accept. Both Joel and Benita need to learn to be more understanding of each other, but in a way, I think Joel is worse because of his deliberately cruel pranks and because he already knows a couple of things that Benita doesn’t which should have influenced his behavior. Joel is deliberately trying to pick fights, and the book never really explains what he expected to accomplish by that. Everyone needs a motivation, and Joel never really explains his, so he comes off seeming like he’s just there to be a mean character for no real reason.
I also wish that the parents in the story had more frank and straight-forward discussions with the kids. As a professional writer and a professional editor, they should have been able to settle the kids’ arguments about imagination vs. facts or at least put the situation into perspective by explaining what they do in their jobs. After all, Benita’s father is going to South Africa specifically to do research. In other words, even fiction writers need to have a nonfiction background and real facts to use as a basis for their fictional stories. Realistic backgrounds give stories the grounding they need in order to feel real to readers. (Although that does depend somewhat on the type of story. Fantasy stories don’t need to be based on real life, although they do have to have a consistent logic within the story so readers feel like they can understand the world in which the stories take place and the rules by which the magic in the story works. If the story is meant to be surreal, the internal logic can be more loose.) Editors, like Joel’s mother, fact check stories as well as ensuring that they are compelling for readers, helping to make decisions about where fictional stories need to be factually correct and where the author can depart from the facts for the sake of the story. I think that Benita and Joel really should have had a better grasp of their parents’ professions and the balance between fact and imagination in fiction. Of course, if they did, there would be less conflict in the story.
Fortunately, Benita and Joel work out their differences while confronting the mysterious situation and become friends when they learn to allow each other to be themselves and to appreciate each other’s good points.
Mystery on the Isle of Skye by Phyllis Whitney, 1960.
The Twenty-Four-Hour Lipstick Mystery by Bonnie Pryor, 1989.
Danny is the first to notice that there is an octagonal window in the wall of the house, but none of the rooms has a window in that shape. Sometimes, lights can be seen through this window at night. Also, Cassie finds what looks like lab equipment among Miss Murdock’s boxes. Is Miss Murdock involved in something illegal? Does it have something to do with the burglaries that have been occurring around town? Why is the grumpy old gardener sneaking around? Just what is in that hidden room?
#6 The Valentine Star by Patricia Reilly Giff, 1985.
But then, Emily and “Beast” (Richard Best) make a serious mistake. It was hot inside at lunch, and they couldn’t resist the urge to run outside in the snow for just a couple of minutes without their coats. Then, they got locked out and had to get Beast’s sister to let them in a different door. They thought no one saw them, but a neighbor did and contacted the school. Now, Emily is afraid of what will happen if their teacher finds out that it was her and Beast. Will the school be angry enough to hold them both back a grade or maybe worse? Maybe Emily will be spending Valentine’s Day in the school office instead of at the party, watching Ms. Vincent enjoy her special valentine . . . especially if Sherri happens to know what they did.
Valentine Blues by Jeanne Betancourt, 1990.
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, 1989.
Soup by Robert Newton Peck, 1974.
Some of the stories are laugh-out-loud funny, and some of them have kind of a moral lesson to them, like the time when Rob realized that he didn’t have the heart to lie to his mother even if it would allow him to escape punishment for talking back to the school nurse, the time when Soup and Rob tried to cheat Mr. Diskin out of some money so they would have enough to go to the movies but ended up feeling guilty, and how the boys made themselves sick by attempting to smoke cornsilk. Others are just stories of childhood events and friendship, like the story of how Rob and Soup played football and how Soup loaned Rob his new shoes when his were ruined. Even though Soup often got Rob into trouble, he really was a good friend and went out of his way to make Rob feel better when he needed it the most.
The Curse of the Egyptian Mummy by Pat Hutchins, 1983.
The Ghosts of Cougar Island by Peggy Parish, 1986.
