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Clifford's Halloween

Clifford

Clifford’s Halloween by Norman Bridwell, 1986.

Halloween is Emily Elizabeth’s favorite holiday! Emily Elizabeth talks about the various holidays that she and Clifford enjoy, but Halloween is the one they enjoy the most.

Last Halloween, she considered various costumes for Clifford, but Clifford decided that he wanted to be a ghost, covered with a giant sheet. (I love how they say that nobody could guess who the giant ghost is, like there could be someone else in the neighborhood that big.)

When you’ve got a giant dog, bobbing for apples doesn’t go the way you expect.

However, when you’ve got a giant dog, nothing else is very scary, either.

The book ends with Emily Elizabeth considering different costumes for Clifford for this Halloween, inviting the reader to think of other possible costumes.

I like the idea of letting kids consider which Halloween costumes they like the best from the ones that Emily Elizabeth considers. Kids like making choices, and trying to think of costumes that would work on a gigantic dog presents a creative challenge. When Emily considers dressing Clifford as a knight, they don’t consider where she’s going to get a suit of armor that size, but the books in this series don’t worry much about the logistics of caring for a dog the size of Clifford.

When I first read this book back in the 1980s (I was four years old when the book was new, although I can’t remember exactly how old I was when I first read it), I didn’t think too much about the Indian (Native American) costume with a pipe, although I wouldn’t think of suggesting that as a costume for anyone now. It’s partly because there’s something of a stigma against Native American costumes now. It’s not enough of a stigma to get people to stop wearing them and major costume retailers from selling them, but enough that some people raise eyebrows at them because of some of the connotations attached to them. If you read some of the reviews of Native American costumes on Amazon, like I did, it seems that more of them were purchased for school plays and projects or Thanksgiving plays than for Halloween. However, the part about this costume that particularly jumped out at me was the ceremonial pipe. Kids sometimes dressed as American Indians for Halloween when I was young, although the practice is discouraged now, but with all of the anti-smoking campaigns aimed at children when I was young, most of our parents wouldn’t have even considered giving us a peace pipe as part of a costume, even ignoring the social and cultural implications of that. I think that idea shows the age of the book’s creator. I grew up in the American Southwest, but I didn’t grow up on old western shows where peace pipes were a common feature. I didn’t see those shows until I was older, and by then, they looked pretty cheesy. I think that the book’s author was from the generation that was raised on those westerns and had nostalgic associations with them.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Count Draculations!: Monster Riddles

Count Draculations!: Monster Riddles compiled by Charles Keller, 1986.

This is one of those themed joke books for kids that has monster and Halloween-themed jokes.  The jokes are the basic kid-friendly question-and-response type with lots of puns.  There are also some cute black-and-white illustrations.

Some of my favorite jokes:

Why do witches get A’s in school?

Because they are good at spelling.

How do you get into a locked cemetery?

With a skeleton key.

Why did Frankenstein’s monster go to the psychiatrist?

He thought he had a screw loose.

Why did the invisible man go crazy?

Out of sight, out of mind.

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Halloween Cookbook

Halloween Cookbook by Susan Purdy, 1977.

I remember getting this book from my school library when I was a kid. I never actually made anything from it because it was a little beyond my cooking skills. Still, I was fascinated by the recipes in the book, especially the stew inside the pumpkin.

Some recipes in the book use specifically Halloween shapes and colors, while others are more general fall and harvest-themed recipes. The recipes are organized by category with section for food that can also be used as Halloween decorations and other sections for brunch and lunch, vegetable dishes, meat dishes/main courses, and snacks and desserts.

Some of the recipes are old, traditional ones from around the world, such as the ones for Fried Pumpkin Blossoms (an Italian recipe) and the Indonesian Corn Fritters. A brief section at the beginning of each recipe explains a little about the recipe’s background.

In the beginning of the book, there are notes about converting between units of measurement, including converting between imperial and metric units. There is also a guide for converting between Celsius and Fahrenheit temperatures. There are other cooking tips for beginners, such as how to separate eggs (I’ve never done it with my hands, like in the book, but it’s useful to know) and how to chop onions and press garlic.

Posted on by TracyC

The Spookster’s Handbook

The Spookster’s Handbook by Peter Eldin, 1989.

This is a fun book of jokes and tricks for Halloween or just having some spooky fun with friends, possibly at a sleepover. The book is divided into the following sections:

Making Monsters – How to make costume pieces and turn yourself into a bug-eyed monster, a warty witch, and more! There are also tricks, like making a ghost image appear on a wall, casting a glowing face on someone else’s shadow, and making Bigfoot footprints.

Screamingly Funny – A chapter of ghost jokes.

Ghostly Tricks – Magic tricks that look somewhat ghostly, like making a friend “float” in the air and making magical symbols appear on blank cardboard.

Monster Pranks & Practical Jokes – Tricks that produce ghostly illusions, like how to take ghostly pictures, produce taps with no obvious source, and cause ghostly flashes of light in a dark room.

Haunting Your Own House – Describes typical do-it-yourself haunted house tricks for producing scary noises.

Monster Laughs – A chapter of monster jokes.

Scare Your Friends – Tricks and pranks for spooking your friends with a finger in a box, strange noises, or a glowing skull.

Terrible Trivia – Fun facts about superstitions and telling the future.

Fang-Tastic! – A chapter of jokes about vampires.

My favorite parts of the book are the superstitions and the ways to make scary haunted house noises. I haven’t actually tried the noise tricks yet, but at some point, I’m planning to try a few!

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

Posted on by TracyC · 5 Comments

We’re Going on a Ghost Hunt

We’re Going on a Ghost Hunt by Marcia Vaughan, illustrated by Ann Schweninger, 2001.

On Halloween night, two kids go out on a ghost hunt. This is a cute picture book, told as a poem, with a lot of repetition of phrases and sound words, like “thump” and “stomp.” The book also encourages children to notice details. The “ghost” appears in the scene where the children pass through the “swamp” and the ghost costume appears again at the end of the book.

As the kids go on their ghost hunt, passing through a swamp and past a haunted house and other scary things, they repeat that they’re not afraid.

The kids are brave, right up to the point where they finally find a ghost.

The kids run home to their mother, who gives them cupcakes and reads them a story.

Three guesses who the red-sneakered ghost was. Happy Halloween!

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Ankle Grabber

The Ankle Grabber by Rose Impey, 1989.

This book is part of the Creepies series, where children have fun imagining monsters. The stories are about the power of imagination and the fun of being a little scared. Sometimes, even though the children know that they made up the monsters themselves, they also get scared of their creations. Books in this series can be good for talking to children about how their imaginations can run away with them and scare them, but I’d use caution when introducing them to very young children because they can make nervous children more nervous by feeding their imaginations. These books would probably be best for ages seven and up. Fortunately, even when the kids’ imaginations run away with them, the stories always end in reality, and the hero of this story is … Dad!

Every night, a little girl has her mother check her room for monsters, but no matter how well her mother searches for them, the girl is still terrified of the monster who lives in an invisible swamp under her bed. She calls this monster the Ankle Grabber because she believes that if she isn’t careful, the monster will reach out from under the bed and pull her down into the swamp by her ankles.

But, as is inevitable when you’ve got a monster under your bed, the girl realizes that she has to go to the bathroom. Getting in and out of bed without being caught by the Ankle Grabber is a tricky proposition. The girl tries to get into and out of bed by jumping so that she can avoid the monster.

When she misses her jump back into bed and lands on the floor, her father comes in to see what’s wrong. Her father has scared off monsters for the little girl before, so he sticks his head under the bed to scare off the Ankle Grabber, too.

Nothing is so scary that Dad can’t make it better!

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

Posted on by TracyC

My Sister the Witch

My Sister the Witch by Ellen Conford, 1995.

Norman Newman is convinced that his sister, Elaine, is a witch. When he goes to her room one evening to call her to dinner, he catches her all dressed in black and chanting strange words.

Norman likes to read horror and mystery books, and he uses some of the techniques that he has learned from reading his favorite mystery stories to investigate his sister. Some of these techniques don’t work as well for Norman as they do for the characters in his books, partly because he doesn’t really know how they work (like which end of a glass you’re supposed to put against a door when you’re trying to listen in on someone) and partly because the characters and situations in books are fictional and some of the things they do don’t work that well in real life.

Early in the story, Norman uses one of his scary stories for a book report for school, and his teacher tells him that she wants him to start to read other types of books. She makes him write an extra book report, telling him that he has a week to read something outside of his usual genre and report on it. That incident and some other pieces of bad luck cause Norman to think that maybe Elaine really is a witch and that she put a curse on him, just like a witch in the book he just read.

Norman’s friend, Milo, thinks that Norman’s imagination is just running away with him. It’s happened before because of the scary stories he reads. Once, he thought that their teacher might be an alien.

When Norman has a brief streak of good luck, he starts to think that whatever curse Elaine put on him may be over, but then, he gets sick to his stomach. He goes to the library to get a book for his new book report, and he also gets a non-fiction book about witches. Then, he overhears Elaine talking to her friend, Deirdre, about something being powerful and scaring Deirdre’s sister. The two of them begin chanting together. Norman decides that he was right about Elaine being a witch and that Deirdre must be a witch, too.

After some research, Norman and Milo learn that, to get rid of the effects of a magic spell, they need to learn the words to the spell and say it backwards. Norman doesn’t remember the whole spell from when he heard Elaine say it, so Milo says that he’ll just have to look for a copy of the spell in her room. The book they consult also says that a spell can be neutralized if the person it was cast on duplicates it, which means gathering all the materials used in the spell, but Norman doesn’t know where he would find things like newts’ eyes and frogs’ toes. Either way, it looks like Norman’s going to need a copy of Elaine’s spell. However, even when he gets it and tries to break the curse, things still go wrong. What can Norman do to get rid of this bad luck spell?

I particularly liked the character of Milo in the story. Milo uses a wheelchair because he was hit by a car when he was young and can’t walk. Norman notes that, although Milo can’t use his legs, he gets around very well in his wheelchair and that he has very strong arms. Milo is also more level-headed than Norman, pointing out to him how he has allowed his imagination to run away with him in the past.

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

Spoilers and Other Thoughts

I thought that the secret behind Elaine’s spell was pretty obvious from the beginning because the book repeatedly says that Elaine wants to be an actress. It reminded me of other stories I’ve seen where someone’s playacting was mistaken for some real life danger. Overall, I enjoyed the book, even though I figured out what was going on pretty quickly. Kids might be in suspense for longer.

By the end, Norman still hasn’t learned his lesson because the next scary story he reads leaves him looking at his dog suspiciously. There is at least one sequel to this story called Norman Newman and the Werewolf of Walnut Street.

Posted on by TracyC

The Witches of Hopper Street

The Witches of Hopper Street by Linda Gondosch, 1986.

Kelly McCoy and her friend, Jennifer, are offended that another girl from school, Rae Jean, is having a Halloween party and didn’t invite them. Jennifer says that they could just throw their own party on Halloween, but Kelly says that’s no good because everyone else they know is going to Rae Jean’s. It isn’t so much that Kelly really likes Rae Jean; it’s more that she hates being excluded.

The girls talk about what they want to dress as for Halloween, and Kelly suggests that they be witches because she’s fascinated by the witches she saw in a play of MacBeth. Kelly also has a book called “Magic and Witchcraft”, and she says that they could study the book and become real witches. Jennifer doesn’t see the attraction of becoming a witch, but Kelly promises that they’ll only perform white magic, where you use magic to perform good deeds, instead of black magic, which involves cursing people. Although, she might make an exception for just a few little black magic spells against Rae Jean. Jennifer says that Kelly can’t be serious, but Kelly says that she is because it’s awful being the only ones in the sixth grade not invited to Rae Jean’s party. Jennifer points out that Adelaide also wasn’t invited. The girls know that Adelaide isn’t popular because she’s overly tall and awkward and much smarter than the other kids. Then, Kelly gets an idea – there were three witches in MacBeth, so maybe they should invite Adelaide to become a witch with them.

When the girls see Adelaide on her way to Rae Jean’s house to help her with her math homework, they stop her and suggest to her that she join them as witches. Kelly tells her that Rae Jean is dangerous and that dangerous things will happen at her party. Adelaide says that she’s not going to the party anyway. Then, Kelly pretends to tell the future with a deck of cards, predicting that there will be a mysterious death in 24 hours. Her prediction comes shockingly true when Rae Jean’s cat kills her pet parakeet.

Kelly knows that the parakeet’s death was partly her fault for taking him out of his cage when Rae Jean brought her cat around, showing off her prize-winning pet, but she also blames Rae Jean for bringing her cat to her house in the first place, and the reason why they took the bird out of his cage was that Rae Jean was goading them about how dumb the bird was. (I think that the kids’ mother shouldn’t even have let Rae Jean bring her cat into the house. The other kids said that they didn’t want to talk to her, but the mother insisted that they let her in because she’s a “nice” girl. That was an irresponsible thing for the mother to do, and she’s not a good example to her children. When you have a pet in the house, you have to make the pet’s safety a priority, especially over being polite to someone who is rude and insulting anyway. Rae Jean shouldn’t have been allowed to bring a predatory pet into their house, uninvited, simply because she wanted to and the mother didn’t have the guts to say no and enforce some house rules. Of course, this is one of those annoying incidents in books that’s used to move the plot forward. If the parents acted anything like mine, it wouldn’t have happened, and this would be a different story.) Adelaide is impressed that Kelly’s prediction came true, and she agrees to be a witch with Kelly and Jennifer.

Kelly walks the others through rituals for being a witch, like signing their names in a Black Book (really, it’s an old brown science notebook), preparing their broomsticks (they’re supposed to be rubbed with the fat of a newborn piglet and belladonna, but the best they can do is strips of bacon and dieffenbachia), and preparing magical rings to protect themselves from evil creatures (Kelly got hers at an estate sale so she’d have one that belonged to a dead person, but the others just got their rings from the quarter machines at the supermarket). The girls pledge to keep their “coven” secret, but then someone leaves a message for them that says, “Midnight is the witching hour. Then you shall be in my power.” All of the girls deny having written it. So, who did? Who else knows about their witchy activities?

Kelly still hasn’t given up her plans to use this witch business to ruin Rae Jeans’ party. She soon acquires a new pet, a skunk, from her brother Ben’s friend Buster, whose father is a veterinarian. She calls the skunk Cinnamon and declares that he is her familiar. To keep the boys quiet about their activities, they have to let Ben and Buster join the coven as warlocks. As an initiation, all of the witches and warlocks have to drink salt water and eat beef liver. Kelly’s mother is perplexed by some of the odd things that they do, but she doesn’t question them too much, and none of the adults ever discover that the kids sometimes sneak out at night to perform rituals. (I could never have gotten away with this sort of stuff as a kid because my mother was always the type to ask a lot of questions about everything and get specific answers.)

Kelly gets the idea of making a voodoo doll of Rae Jean, using an old sweater of hers that Rae Jean’s mother gave her because she helped to get a box of old clothes down from the attic for a sale and because Rae Jean told her that the sweater was scratchy. To get Rae Jean’s hair and nails, the witches open a “spa” business at Kelly’s house. They succeed in getting hair and nail clippings, but Rae Jean gets scared away when their “spa” treatment involves mud that they just dug up in the backyard and has a worm in it. After they make the doll, they decide it looks really awful and sticking toothpicks in it is creepy, so they take the toothpicks out and get rid of it. Instead, they decide to focus on giving Rae Jean the “evil eye” – basically staring at her to make her feel uncomfortable. (That one works whether you’re a witch or not.) When Rae Jean and some others in class get sick, some of the other kids start to believe rumors that the girls have spread about a “poison plague.”

Eventually, Halloween comes, and Kelly gets the idea for her, Jennifer, and Adelaide to use their witch act while passing out candy to the trick-or-treaters. They put the candy in their “cauldron” (an old camping pot), give themselves fantastical names, and perform chants while handing out candy. They have fun with that, but they still feel left out of the party, so they decide to try one last witchy trick on Rae Jean. They decide to brew up a love potion (just apricot juice with honey, and they even think it tastes good themselves), sneak into the party as fortune tellers, and slip the potion into the party punch. Rae Jean’s mother is amused by their fortune telling act and lets them into the party, although Rae Jean isn’t happy to see them.

When Kelly’s new pet skunk gets loose in the party, there is some momentary chaos before Kelly manages to explain that the skunk is deodorized and can’t spray. During their time at the party, the girls learn the true identity of their mystery message writer and have an honest talk with Rae Jean about their feelings and apologize for the witchy things they’ve been doing. Rae Jean also tells them the reason why she didn’t invite them and how left out she felt when she didn’t get invited to a big party that Kelly had soon after she moved to the neighborhood. Rae Jean comes to realize how much she has provoked the other girls into hating her with some of her behavior, and she apologizes bringing cat to Kelly’s house and killing her parakeet. However, Kelly is also forced to acknowledge that she’s also provoked Rae Jean with her quick temper and attempts at revenge. All of the girls owe each other some apologies, and they make up. Kelly and her friends promise to give up all the witch stuff.

However, before they cut it out entirely, they have one last thing to do. Adelaide read about an old superstition that explains how to see a real witch at midnight on Halloween night, and before Halloween is over, the whole “coven” decides that they have to try it. What they see is a bit startling, and although it has an apparently logical explanation, gives the kids an appropriately witchy scare. Could there possibly be a real witch in their neighborhood?

I didn’t like the parts of this story about dead animals. I hated the part where the parakeet was killed, and later, I felt sorry for a cat that died (of natural causes, and it was a sickly stray, not Rae Jean’s cat). I never like stories where animals die, especially through human cruelty or carelessness. Yet, I have to admit that I have a particular attachment to this book, which I remember reading when I was ten years old. Some of their rituals are a little gross, but as I a kid, I think I was attracted to the idea of having a secret, mysterious club and intrigued by the identity of the mysterious message-writer. At the end of the story, they think they know who wrote the note, but their last midnight ritual causes them to have second thoughts.

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

My Halloween Story About My History With This Book:

This particular book and I have a history. This book was important to me as a kid because it sparked something formative, but to tell you what that something was, I have a confession to make: When I was a kid, I wanted to be a witch. I was in high school before the first Harry Potter books appeared, so it wasn’t about that. No, my introduction to witches was The Wizard of Oz, my favorite movie when I was five years old. I liked Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Dorothy was my favorite character, but I liked Glinda, too. Later, when I saw the movie of Bedknobs and Broomsticks, my interest in witches increased. I also read The Blue-Nosed Witch when I was young, and I was hooked. For a portion of my early childhood, my favorite Halloween costume was a traditional witch costume.

I didn’t want to curse people or be an evil witch, like the Wicked Witch of the West, in spite of my traditional witch costume with the pointy hat. No, I wanted to be a Good Witch and maybe ride a broom and bring suits of armor to life and maybe defeat Nazis in a way that is far less gross than melting them, like in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. I had discernment. I had standards. I also had a fear of heights after falling off the monkey bars when I was four, so that probably should have been a clue that broomstick-riding was out for me, but when you’ve got magic, I guess these things aren’t much of a problem. I can’t say that I was really ambitious about wanting magical powers because I didn’t really do anything to acquire them, it was just that I kind of liked the idea … except for that one time, and that’s what this little side story is leading up to.

When I was about ten years old, I read this book with a friend, and we were both enchanted with the idea of making up our own rituals and becoming “witches” and maybe trying some spells on Halloween, just to see if magic works. I only had sort of a vague notion of what kind of spells that we could do. I guess I was picturing something like Bedknobs and Broomsticks, where you recite a rhyme and something is supposed to happen, but I didn’t know any real spells, just movie stuff, and I was clever enough to realize that the stuff in movies probably wasn’t real. Naturally, being a bookish person, I decided that the best way to learn more was at the library. PSAs on tv always told you to “Read more about it“, whatever “it” was. (This was the early 1990s, and I didn’t have access to the Internet yet. That wasn’t even an option.) If anybody had some real spells books, especially ones placed at a convenient height on shelves that a not-very-tall ten-year-old could reach, it would be my local public library, right? I was actually surprised myself when I found one in the library catalog. I really didn’t think it was going to be that easy. That wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was when I actually picked up the book and opened it.

Now, I have to admit here that I didn’t read the whole book, and years later, I can’t remember the title or even what the cover looked like. I kind of wish I did because there are people I would like to show this book to just to prove that it actually exists. When I told my mother about it later, she thought that I dreamed the whole thing, but I swear I didn’t.

This book did have “spells” of various kinds. I picked one from the table of contents (I forget what, but something that sounded like something two ten-year-old girls might want to do on Halloween) and looked at the instructions. It was disgusting. It involved things like animal entrails, which I wouldn’t have known where to get and wouldn’t have wanted to touch even if someone handed me a free bag full. There were other things about animal parts on different pages that disgusted me, too. Under no circumstances was I going to kill cute animals just to do some dumb trick on Halloween, and I wouldn’t have wanted these animals parts even if someone else had done the dirty work of getting them. I wasn’t a vegetarian, but these were definitely not things I could just buy at the grocery store, or better yet, cooked and yummy with a side of fries and a plastic toy.

As I was staring at this book, I suddenly realized that I had no desire to do anything it described and that I was never going to do anything it said. Then, I had a worse thought: someone else must have thought this was a good idea, or they wouldn’t have written it down. Maybe I didn’t want to mess with animal entrails and body parts to gain magical powers, but someone else obviously would. What kind of person would do such a thing? Whatever kind it was, it wasn’t me, and I knew it. The image of the type of person I would have to be in order to do any of this, in order to take any of this seriously, disturbed and repulsed me more than just what was written in the book itself. I slammed the book shut, shoved it back on the shelf, and ran away. I never saw it again, although I did try to find it again once to show it to my mother so that I could prove that I wasn’t dreaming. It wasn’t even in the catalog anymore then.

My guess is that, whatever this book was, either someone stole it from the library (it is the sort of thing an aspiring evil witch might do) or lost or damaged it or some parent or librarian realized that this might not be the best book for children and had it removed from the shelves. Since then, I’ve wondered who put that in the kids’ section in the first place. I’m not fond of censorship, but I have to admit that this book was pretty dang gross and creepy. Was that spell book really serious, or did I miss some introductory part that would have explained that it was all part of some larger ghost story or something? What was the point of the book? I’ve often wondered. All I really remember now is that it was in the first row of children’s non-fiction books at the library, probably the 100 or 200 section of the Dewey Decimal System.

I’m actually glad I did look at it, though, because it made me realize a few things about myself. I realized that there were limits to the things that I was willing to do and that I had the power to say no when something was beyond my limits. My friend was disappointed and thought I was a bit of a wimp for chickening out on our witch experiment so soon and not even showing her the book, but I didn’t care that much. I was firm. I also came to realize that sometimes, it’s the things we don’t do or won’t do that define who we really are. In the end, it may not matter what that book actually was so much as that it left me with a stronger sense of who I was. I should have paid more attention to the part in the Bedknobs and Broomsticks movie where Miss Price said that she realized a long time ago that she could never really be a witch because nobody who felt the way she did about “Poisoned Dragon’s Liver” could be a real witch. I came to appreciate the sentiment.

This experience didn’t completely scare me away from stories with witches in them, as evidenced by the Halloween stories I cover here. I was born close to Halloween, and I like the holiday because I enjoy the imaginative costumes and playing pretend. (Not to mention chocolate. I also enjoy chocolate.) I enjoyed the Harry Potter books, too. But, I know where the dividing line is between pretend and real. It doesn’t trouble me now because I already put the book back on the shelf and said no when it was asking too much, and some decisions stick for life. I don’t worry too much about giving fantasy books to kids, either. Everyone has decisions to make in life about who and what they want to be, and I figure that the younger generations might as well learn where the dividing line between fantasy and reality lies early in life. A bit of a scare now and then might even help them to think more deeply about life’s consequences and make better choices.

If that spell book had been less scary and disgusting, like something that Wiccans use that involves pretty things like crystals and herbs instead of entrails, I actually might have tried a few spells as a child, probably raiding the spice drawer in the kitchen or dismantling my rock collection for spell ingredients. However, Jenny Nicholson did a YouTube video, demonstrating how that typically goes for the aspiring witch. I thought it was hilarious, especially after my childhood escapade. I doubt that I would have had quite the range of objects that Jenny describes, and my parents would have been mad at me if I tried to throw eggs at trees, but I probably would have achieved similar levels of results if my friend and I had actually gone through with our experiment that Halloween. As an adult, I mostly think that things like that are more psychological tricks than anything else, and I find descriptions of them amusing now.

Anyway, that’s my creepy experience with “real” magic. If anyone thinks that they know what that creepy spell book was, feel free to tell me. I don’t feel like I have anything to prove magic-wise, but I still have people I’d like to convince that I didn’t just imagine that the book exists.

Posted on by TracyC

Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth

Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by E. L. Konigsburg, 1967.

Elizabeth tells the story about how she first met her friend Jennifer one Halloween. Elizabeth is new in town, and doesn’t know many people yet. She doesn’t have any friends to walk with to or from school, and she encounters Jennifer in the woods she passes through on her way to school. When they meet, Elizabeth is dressed as a Pilgrim for the school’s Halloween parade. Jennifer also happens to be wearing a Pilgrim costume, and she’s sitting in a tree. Elizabeth sees that Jennifer is about to lose a shoe because it’s too big for her, so she impulsively pushes the shoe back onto Jennifer’s foot. Jennifer says that witches don’t lose things, and Elizabeth tells her that she’s not dressed like a witch because she’s wearing a Pilgrim costume. Jennifer says that this is what real witches dress like, not like the silly pointed hat costumes. (It becomes more clear later that Jennifer is referring to the accused witches at Salem, Massachusetts.) Elizabeth admires Jennifer’s costume because it looks more authentically old-fashioned than hers does, like a real antique. Elizabeth points out that they’ll have to hurry or be late to school, and Jennifer says that she’ll walk with her in exchange for the cookies Elizabeth is carrying. Elizabeth gives her the cookies because she isn’t hungry and badly needs some company. Jennifer makes it barely on time to her class, but Elizabeth is slightly late because she’s in a different class that’s further down the hall.

Elizabeth describes the Halloween parade at school, and you can tell that this book was written decades ago because there are kids wearing cardboard boxes because their costume is a pack of cigarettes, which would never happen at a 21st century school. Even in the 1980s and 1990s, when I was a kid, nobody would have dressed as a pack of cigarettes. There were a lot of anti-smoking campaigns when I was young, our teachers and most of our parents wouldn’t have allowed it, and with more exciting things to be, like super heroes and Ninja Turtles as well as the traditional witches, ballerinas, robots, vampires, and monsters, why the heck would somebody want to be a pack of cigarettes anyway? Lung cancer may be scary, but dressing as a pack of cancer sticks isn’t exactly fun Halloween scary. If you want to be a box of something, at least pick crayons so you can tell people you’re the sharpest crayon in the box. But, I digress.

At the parade, Elizabeth sees Jennifer unsnap the tutu of school mean girl Cynthia, who is dressed as a ballerina, so it falls down. It’s not a serious embarrassment because Cynthia’s still wearing her leotard underneath. Still, Cynthia is one of those two-faced kids who are good-looking and act like perfect angels when adults are watching but turn into nasty little monsters when the adults look away, so this minor embarrassment pleases Elizabeth and many of the other kids. Jennifer also passes a note to Elizabeth to meet her for trick-or-treating that evening, telling her to bring two bags. As the students parade across the stage for the costume contest, Jennifer amazes everyone by wearing a paper bag over her head that doesn’t have any eye holes cut into it, yet she doesn’t have any trouble walking, somehow seeing where she’s going or knowing where to go anyway. This is one of the odd things that Jennifer does that makes Elizabeth wonder if she really does have powers of some kind.

When the girls meet for trick-or-treating, Jennifer tells Elizabeth to give her the bigger bag of the two bags she brought. It’s a bit rude, but Elizabeth is fascinated by Jennifer and lets it go. Also, Jennifer has brought a small wagon with her. Jennifer has invented and mastered an act to get extra candy. At each house, she acts weak and breathless and asks for a drink of water. When the home owners give her a drink of water, she drops her empty bag, so the home owners will feel sorry for her and give her more candy. Then, out of sight of the home owner, Jennifer empties her bag of candy into the little wagon and does the same performance at the next house. Elizabeth wonders how Jennifer is able to drink so much water, but they collect an amazing amount candy from Jennifer’s act.

After Halloween, Jennifer tells Elizabeth to meet her at the library on Saturday, and she invites Elizabeth to become her apprentice witch. Elizabeth thinks it over and decides to accept. Jennifer begins leading Elizabeth through a series of rituals to make her into a witch. The first ritual involves both of them putting a drop of their blood on an old key that Jennifer was wearing around her neck. Afterward, Jennifer gives the old key to Elizabeth to wear. This ritual is kind of like a friendship pact.

Jennifer gives Elizabeth books to read from the library about witches and tells her to eat a raw egg every day for a week (she does it by mixing it into a milkshake), insisting that she also bring her a hard-boiled egg. From there, they progress through a list of other strange foods. When their grade starts rehearsing for their Christmas play, the food of the week is raw onions, which Elizabeth happens to love, in spite of being a notoriously picky eater. People notice the onions because Elizabeth is supposed to be a puppy in their school play that the princess played by nasty Cynthia gets for Christmas, and Cynthia can’t bear to get close to her.

Being Jennifer’s apprentice also means putting up with her rudeness and bossiness. When the girls decide to try making an ointment to change themselves into animals, they argue about what animals they’re going to be. Sometimes, Elizabeth finds Jennifer difficult to deal with because she isn’t considerate of her feelings, but she’s also fascinating because Jennifer is a serious reader and likes to talk about a wide range of interesting things, from witchcraft trials to Vincent Van Gogh to shipwrecks to the guillotines used in the French Revolution to secret codes. Their rituals continue through Christmas and the New Year and into the spring, with Jennifer promoting Elizabeth to Journeymen Witch and assigning her various “taboos”, things that she isn’t supposed to do.

For most of the book, Elizabeth doesn’t tell her mother about being friends with Jennifer. Jennifer, as a witch, is rather odd, and Elizabeth’s mother wants her to be friends with nice, normal children. In particular, she wants her to be friends with Cynthia because, like other adults, Elizabeth’s mother has been taken in by Cynthia’s two-faced act and thinks that Cynthia is a sweet, well-behaved little girl. When Cynthia invites her to her birthday party, Elizabeth knows that the invitation was really from Cynthia’s mother because she and Cynthia aren’t friends. However, Elizabeth’s mother makes her accept the invitation. The party is a trial because, thanks to Jennifer’s taboos, there are many party activities that Elizabeth can’t do (no eating cake, no pin-the-tail-on-the donkey because she can’t touch pins, etc.), but Elizabeth decides to make the most of it and enjoy being an oddball. Elizabeth has some fun when she realizes that she can act mysterious and witchy about knowing certain things and winning at the games she plays. She knows where the treasure is in the treasure hunt because it was just behind a pillow on the couch and she accidentally sat on it earlier, she wins at the clothespin drop game because she’s shorter than the other girls and finds the game easier, and she knows who brought which gift to the party without looking at the tags because she was the first to arrive and remembered what everyone else brought when they came. Of course, she doesn’t explain this to anyone, she just acts mysterious and witchy, like Jennifer. When she talks to Jennifer about the party, Jennifer acts like Elizabeth has actually used her witch powers to do those things, but Elizabeth insists that they were just ordinary incidents and her good memory for remembering the presents. Jennifer seems a little disappointed that Elizabeth doesn’t seem to see what she’s getting at with the witch business, and Elizabeth is disappointed that Jennifer doesn’t seem interested in the gossip she’s collected about the “normal”, non-witchy girls at the party.

The girls get a toad, which they name Hilary Ezra, their first compromise with each other by combining the two names that they wanted. Jennifer says that the toad will help them with their flying spell. They treat the toad like a pet, giving it insects that they’ve caught and measuring how far he can jump. They both love Hilary Ezra, but when Jennifer plans to add Hilary Ezra to their flying potion, Elizabeth refuses to allow it. She makes Jennifer set Hilary Ezra free. Jennifer tells Elizabeth that she’ll never be a witch because she’s too sentimental and dismisses her as her student witch.

Elizabeth is angry at Jennifer and thinks that their friendship is over as well as the witch business. However, after thinking it over, Elizabeth realizes something: Jennifer actually wanted Elizabeth to stop her from putting the toad in the pot with the other ingredients because she changed the order in which the ingredients were added from the order that was given in MacBeth, saving the toad for last and making a big show of dangling him over the pot, waiting for Elizabeth to stop her. Still, it makes Elizabeth mad that Jennifer made her stop her when she could have stopped herself and probably would have if Elizabeth hadn’t intervened.

Elizabeth has a right to be angry, but she also goes back to being lonely, and she doesn’t like that. While she’s alone at her family’s apartment one day, she spends some time looking at the greenhouses on a nearby farm called the Samellson Estate, and some of Jennifer’s cryptic comments about Hilary Ezra’s origins and her father being a “plant wizard” fall into place. The more Elizabeth thinks about it, the more the things Jennifer acquired for their “spells” make sense and the more Jennifer herself begins to make sense. Then, Jennifer makes the first move in repairing their friendship.

The book is a Newbery Honor book. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

One of the important points about this story that helps make Jennifer more understandable as a character is that she’s African American and this book was written in the 1960s. The book doesn’t refer to Jennifer’s race or describe her physical appearance apart from her clothes until about halfway through the story, although she does appear in pictures before that. The 1960s was the time of the Civil Rights Movement, and in 1967, when this book was first published, Martin Luther King, Jr. was still live. School desegregations were a recent issue. The only time in the book that Elizabeth mentions race is when she notices Jennifer’s mother at the performance of the school play for the PTA, and she says that she knew that the woman must be Jennifer’s mother because “she was the only Negro mother there.” This one line says, without really saying it, that Jennifer is the only African American kid in her class because, if there was even one other, the black woman in the audience could have been somebody else’s mother.

When the story begins, each of the girls has a reason to feel like an outcast – Elizabeth because she’s new at school and doesn’t know anybody and Jennifer because she’s the only black kid. Both of them are lonely, and they’re actually a good fit for each other in terms of their interests, but in order to become real friends, they have to learn to relate to each other without the cover of their made-up witchcraft rituals. After Elizabeth realizes where Jennifer actually lives and what her life is really like, and Jennifer shows that she cares about Elizabeth’s feelings, the two of them are able to bond as friends instead of witches.

Elizabeth never explains why Jennifer came up with the witch idea in the first place, and the book ends soon after their friendship is repaired, so it’s left up to the readers’ imaginations. It might have something to do with feeling like an outcast because of her race and because her father is a blue-collar worker when the kids who live in the nearby apartment building are the children of white-collar workers. Because Jennifer feels different from other kids and often spends time alone, reading books and playing games of pretend, she might have felt uncomfortable explaining herself to Elizabeth, fearing that she might not accept her. Training Elizabeth to be a witch gave the two girls a reason to see each other, adventures to share, and something interesting to talk about. As long as Elizabeth needed Jennifer to teach her witch things, Jennifer would feel confident that she’d stick around as a friend. The girls gave that up when Jennifer realized that Elizabeth would be her friend anyway and might actually like her better just as Jennifer instead of a witch.

Posted on by TracyC

Cassie Bowen Takes Witch Lessons

Cassie Bowen Takes Witch Lessons by Anna Grossnickle Hines, 1985.

Cassie Bowen and Brenda Bolter have been friends for years, but lately, Brenda has been getting friendlier with Sylvia, another girl in their fourth grade class at school. Sylvia is a mean girl, and the favorite target of her meanness is Agatha Gifford, the new girl at school. Sylvia likes to call her “Saggy Aggy” and “Thrifty Gifford” because Agatha always comes to school wearing dresses that are too loose on her and Sylvia thinks that she probably got them at a thrift store. Most of the girls at school wear brand new jeans, not dresses. Agatha doesn’t bother to fight back when the other girls tease her, and Cassie doesn’t know what to say or do about it, even though the teasing makes her uncomfortable, too.

Even if the other girls are right about Agatha wearing used clothes, Cassie can understand. Cassie wears jeans like most of the other girls, but hers are actually hand-me-downs from an older cousin. (The story of my own youth, too. Thrift stores are the story of my present because I still don’t have much money, and anything I don’t spend on clothes is something I could potentially use to buy books, most of which will also be used because I like older books and because it maximizes my buying power. Life and budgets are about priorities.) Cassie’s mother hasn’t had money to buy new clothes since Cassie’s parents got divorced. The book is vague about what happened in Cassie’s family before the divorce, but Cassie’s father now lives in another state and doesn’t even write or communicate with the family, and he’s certainly not sending money. Cassie’s mother says that he’s got to sort out his life, and Cassie says that her father is kind of a “creep” now, but the book doesn’t go any deeper into it. It’s more important that Cassie’s family is now tight on money, and Cassie has mixed feelings about the divorce. On the one hand, she misses her father and wishes that the divorce had never happened, but on the other, she’s also angry with her father for his part in the divorce and the ways that he changed from the father she knew and loved before. Cassie’s mother says that everyone changes over time, and sometimes, when they change, they grow apart. Cassie will soon come to understand that better through her experiences with Brenda.

Cassie doesn’t like the ways that Brenda is changing, and she resents Brenda sharing the secret hideout they built with Sylvia without even talking it over with her. One day, when the girls are going to their secret fort, they pass the old house where Agatha lives with her grandmother. There are neighborhood rumors that Mrs. Gifford is actually a witch because her old house looks kind of creepy and she often does odd things, like talking to her plants. As the girls pass her house, they hear her talking to her flowers, and suddenly, Sylvia trips up Brenda so that she goes sprawling into the flower bed. As Mrs. Gifford laments about her flowers, Sylvia dramatically exclaims that they must pick some flowers and actually starts yanking more out of the bed until Mrs. Gifford angrily chases them off with a broom.

Cassie is appalled by the entire incident, although she admits that it was funny, watching Mrs. Gifford chase the other girls. Brenda is fascinated with Sylvia because of the daring way she likes to show off and grab attention, and it inspires her to do the same thing, finding ways to make fun of people or cause trouble. It upsets Cassie, who just wants Brenda to be the same Brenda she’s always known. Brenda also tells Cassie that Sylvia has amazing things in her room, like a collection of glass animal figurines. Sylvia even gives her one to keep. Also, Sylvia’s parents supposedly let her stay up as late as she wants, and she can usually get her way with them just by throwing a tantrum. Brenda thinks that all this is cool, which makes her different from the kids I knew growing up. Most self-respecting fourth graders were beyond tantrums and would have been called babies if they had admitted to having one at that age. Having great clothes and a lot of cool stuff in her room would have gone a long way, though.

When the children’s teacher, Mr. Gardner, assigns the kids partners to work on presenting a story to the rest of the class, Cassie hopes that she and Brenda will be partners so that things can be like they were before. However, Brenda and Sylvia end up being partners, and Cassie is assigned to Agatha. Cassie isn’t enthusiastic about it, and Agatha notices, but Cassie decides that she’s going to be as friendly as she can. She asks Agatha about which story she would like to present to the class because she doesn’t like reading that much, and Agatha says that she knows because she’s noticed that Cassie is better at math. Cassie is surprised that Agatha would know that, considering how new she is, and Agatha says that she envies her because she’s been having trouble with fractions. Agatha says that she really likes the story The Nightingale because it reminds her of a beautiful music box that her grandmother owns, and Cassie is fascinated.

One day, when Cassie’s brother is off playing baseball and Brenda and Sylvia are working on their project together, Cassie passes by Agatha’s house and is invited in. Cassie hesitates at first because the house is creepy, but she has to work on the project with Agatha, so she accepts. Agatha’s grandmother serves the girls rose hip tea and cookies. Cassie thinks that rose hip tea sounds weird at first, but it tastes nice. Mrs. Gifford is an eccentric lady, but rather sweet. She introduces Cassie to Roberto, her favorite plant. Part of the reason why she talks to plants is that she lived alone and was lonely before Agatha came to live with her. She is also a member of the same gardening club that Cassie’s mother belongs to. Cassie uses the cookies at tea to explain fractions to Agatha, and Mrs. Gifford shows Cassie her music box, which is beautiful. The music box is special to Mrs. Gifford because it was the last present her father gave her before his death, when she was about the age of the girls now. Cassie understands the feeling because she prizes the teddy bear that her father gave her before he went away.

The more Cassie learns about the Giffords, the less strange they seem, and she no longer believes that Mrs. Gifford is a witch. Agatha tells Cassie that she lives with her grandmother because her parents were killed in a car accident. The only other family she has is an older sister who is away at college, which is why Agatha can’t live with her. Cassie acknowledges that Agatha’s situation is worse than hers because, even though Cassie misses her father, she’s not an orphan. Agatha also explains that the reason why she wears those dresses to school is that her old school was a private church school, where all the girls were required to wear dresses. When Cassie explains to Agatha’s grandmother that there is no requirement about dresses at their school and that most of the girls wear jeans, Agatha’s grandmother is surprised and says that she didn’t realize, so she buys Agatha some new clothes, taking Cassie with them on their shopping trip.

The new clothes fit Agatha better, and Cassie hopes that they will help her fit in better at school, but Sylvia and Brenda won’t let up on the teasing. In fact, Sylvia seems irritated at Agatha dressing more normally and mocks her, saying, “What’s she trying to do? Act like a normal person?” Cassie tries to tell them that Agatha is normal, but they don’t believe her. Soon after, Brenda asks Cassie if she wants to hang out when she’s on her way to see Agatha again about their project. In an effort to get Brenda to ease up on Agatha, Cassie asks Brenda to come with her so that she can see for herself that Agatha and her grandmother are fine.

The Giffords are nice to Brenda, but during the visit, Mrs. Gifford’s special music box disappears. Agatha says that Brenda stole it, and Cassie gets offended by the accusation, saying that Agatha is making it up and telling her that she doesn’t want to be friends anymore out of loyalty to Brenda. Unfortunately … Agatha was right, and Cassie is shocked when she discovers the truth. Cassie retrieves the music box from Brenda, but with Brenda and Sylvia both angry at her for taking the music box back and Agatha and her grandmother probably mad at her for bringing Brenda to their house in the first place and siding with her over the theft, what is Cassie going to do?

I think the ending of the story is very realistic, although it does leave some things unresolved. Agatha does forgive Cassie for not believing her after Cassie returns the music box. Cassie doesn’t tattle on Brenda and Sylvia because they had accused her of being a tattletale earlier, but she does eventually tell her mother everything that has been happening with Sylvia and Brenda. Her mother reassures Cassie that she did the right thing, even if Brenda didn’t. She says that it sounds like Cassie is angry at Brenda for a lot of things besides this, and Cassie agrees that she doesn’t like it that Brenda is so mean sometimes. Cassie mother says that everyone changes, and sometimes, they change for the better and sometimes for the worse. Cassie doesn’t think she and Brenda will ever be friends again, and her mother says that someday Brenda will also get tired of Sylvia’s meanness, but even if she doesn’t, Cassie will find plenty of other friends. Cassie realizes that she and Agatha really do understand each other, and she’s glad when they make up. At school, Sylvia and Brenda both tease Cassie now, saying that she’s taking witch lessons from the Giffords. It hurts Cassie’s feelings to see her old friend turn against her, but she follows Agatha’s advice and ignores them.

Sylvia and Brenda are never punished for the things they’ve done, which is sadly the case for most of the little bullies I knew as a kid. However, it is nice that Cassie and Agatha realize that they are better friends for each other than either Brenda or Sylvia would have been. I noticed that there is also potential for them to be friends with other people in their class besides Brenda and Sylvia. When Cassie got to school at the end of the book, a girl named Stacy asked her if she wanted to play tether ball, which shows that other girls don’t think badly of her for hanging out with Agatha. I also wished that the book would show more of Pam, who had been Sylvia’s best friend at the beginning of the book before Sylvia and Brenda started hanging out. After being abandoned by Sylvia, perhaps she would also be open to making some new friends. Cassie and Agatha might have other options for making new friends.

There is no magic in the story or witchcraft of any kind. In fact, Brenda and Sylvia probably never really believed that Agatha or her grandmother are actually witches. It’s more that, for reasons of their own, Sylvia and Brenda were looking for someone to pick on, and the “witch” accusations were just their excuse. That’s why they were so irritated when Agatha started dressing like the other girls. If their excuse for bullying Agatha disappeared, they didn’t want to lose their ability to bully her. It was never about making Agatha dress or act like the other girls; it was always about Sylvia and Brenda’s need to have someone to victimize. The truth is that even if the Giffords had seemed less strange in the beginning, Sylvia and Brenda probably would either have picked on them anyway or maybe selected some other victim, perhaps going straight to Cassie as their first choice, because they were looking for a victim and would have found one eventually because that was always their goal.