Posted on by TracyC

Spot Goes to the Beach

Spot

Spot Goes to the Beach by Eric Hill, 1985.

Spot’s parents take him to the beach to spend the day there. When they get to the beach, Spot wants to get a sailor hat from a stand selling beach equipment, and his father also buys him some beach toys.

Spot plays with a beach ball, builds sand castles, and buries his father in the sand.

Spot and his father later go fishing, and Spot falls in the water, but Spot is fine because he’s wearing a pool float.

Before they leave the beach, Spot also makes a new friend, another puppy!

This is just a cute book for children about the fun things that they can do at the beach.

Like other Spot books, this book is a lift-the-flap picture book. The British version of the title is Spot Goes on Holiday. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Posted on by TracyC

Spot Goes to School

Spot

Spot Goes to School by Eric Hill, 1984.

Spot is going to school for the first time. His mother drops him off at the school, where he meets his teacher, Miss Bear.

Spot and his animal friends participate in typical kindergarten activities. They sing a song while their teacher plays the piano (although Spot hides because he can’t sing), and they play dress up in the classroom playhouse.

They play on the playground and show what they brought for show-and-tell. Spot roughhouses with a friend during storytime, and he loves painting pictures with his friends. When school is over, Spot doesn’t even want to go home because he’s had so much fun!

Like other Spot books, this is a lift-the-flap book. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies), but to be honest, it’s not as much fun to read electronically because you can’t experience the lift-the-flap effect.

Posted on by TracyC

Where’s Spot

Spot

Where’s Spot? by Eric Hill, 1980.

This is the first modern lift-the-flap book for children, inspired by the author’s young son, who was playing with some sheets of papers on which he had drawn some concepts for an advertisement. There was an earlier style of lift-the-flap book from the 18th century, but this first book in the Spot the Dog series led to the popularization of modern lift-the-flap books for children.

Spot’s mother, Sally, notices that her puppy hasn’t eaten his dinner. She doesn’t know where he is, so she goes looking for him.

Sally searches for Spot all around their house, looking behind a door, in a closet, inside a clock and piano, under the stairs, and under the bed. In each place, she finds different animals (no explanation, there are just a lot of animals in this house).

Finally, the turtle hiding under the rug suggests that Sally check the basket, which is where she finally finds Spot.

The story is very simple, and the lift-the-flap concept is what really makes it work. The interactive element is fun, as if the readers are participating in a game of hide-and-seek with the characters. Kids enjoy being surprised by the different kinds of animals hiding all over the house. I loved it when I was a kid!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies), but to be honest, it’s not really a good book to read online because the lift-the-flap effect doesn’t carry over.

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Dragons, Dragons, and Other Creatures that Never Were

Dragons, Dragons, and Other Creatures that Never Were by Eric Carle, 1991.

This is a collection of poems and quotations about various mythical creatures from around the world. The poems and quotes come from various sources. Some are by famous authors and some are nursery rhymes and pieces of folklore. The quote about the leviathan is from The Book of Job.

The illustrations are what really make the book interesting. They are bright and colorful, and the middle section of the book folds out to reveal a particularly long picture of a Chinese dragon.

Although there are common mythological creatures, like dragons, unicorns, yetis, the phoenix, there are also less common ones that some children may not have even heard of, like the giant bird called the roc, the two-headed amphisbaena, the kappa, and the bunyip.

Most of the descriptions of the creatures are in the poems themselves and in the accompanying pictures, but there is a glossary in the back that explains more about what each creature is and where it is from.

The book is available to borrow and read online for free through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Posted on by TracyC

In the Night Kitchen

In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, 1970.

This is a very surreal children’s picture book about a strange dream that a boy has one night.

One night, a boy name Mickey is trying to sleep when he hears a strange thumping sound. He yells for the person making it to be quiet, and he suddenly finds himself falling out of bed.

He continues falling through the floors of his house and loses his pajamas. (Mickey is naked for most of the book, and at times, you can see his private parts in the pictures. The rest of the time, he is covered in batter. This is a very strange book.)

Mickey falls into a bowl of batter in the Night Kitchen, and the cooks mix him into the batter and try to bake him into a cake. However, Mickey climbs out of the oven and into some bread dough, which he shapes into an airplane.

The cooks cry out for milk for the cake they want to bake, so Mickey grabs their measuring cup and flies off in his bread dough airplane to find some.

He dives into a giant bottle of milk, losing the batter that was covering him. Mickey gets a cup of milk and pours it into the batter. The cooks are happy and bake their cake.

Then, Mickey slides down the side of the bottle and ends up in his own bed and in his pajamas again.

Apparently, the whole thing was a dream, but it’s a very odd dream. I didn’t like Mickey being naked in the pictures because I don’t see any particular reason why he should be. This would still be an odd, surreal dream even if he was wearing his pajamas through the whole adventure. It’s not terrible, but I did find that part a little unsettling and unnecessary. The rhymes in the text of the story were cute. I think it would sound nice read aloud.

The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

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The Girl in the Window

The Girl in the Window by Wilma Yeo, 1988.

Kiley Mulligan Culver lives in a fairly small town, Meander, in the southern United States.  Although not much usually happens in their small down, about a year before the story begins, a little girl named Leedie Ann Alcott was kidnapped.  The crime literally hit Kiley very close to home because she and her father (Kiley’s mother died when she was a baby) live on the Alcott family’s estate.  The Alcott mansion was once a plantation, and Kiley and her dad, who is an author, live in the old house that once belonged to the plantation’s overseer, so they know the Alcott family well.  Mr. and Mrs. Alcott are divorced, and Mr. Alcott lives in another state.  Mrs. Alcott owned a children’s clothing shop in town, Kiley would sometimes babysit or play with Leedie Ann, who was younger than she was.  In some ways, Leedie Ann was kind of like a little sister to Kiley.  At the time she disappeared, Leedie Ann was four years old, and Kiley was about nine.  Mrs. Alcott never received a ransom note for Leedie Ann, but everyone is sure that her disappearance was a kidnapping, not just a child wandering off.

A year later, when the story begins, Leedie Ann has still not been found, and no one knows what happened to her.  After Leedie Ann disappeared, her mother closed her clothing shop, and a strange gypsy woman named Pesha came to stay with her.  Pesha is mysterious and secretive, and no one knows why Mrs. Alcott has her staying with her, although they seem to be holding seances.

Then, one evening, Kiley looks up at the Alcott mansion and sees Leedie Ann Alcott standing in the window of her old room! But, before she can do anything, another, shadowy figure closes the drapes on the window.  By the time that Kiley can tell her father what she’s seen, Leedie Ann is gone.  Her father goes to the Alcott house to ask Mrs. Alcott if everything is all right and if she needs anything, and everything seems to be normal (or what passes for normal at that time).  Kiley’s father thinks that Kiley imagined the whole thing, but Kiley knows that she didn’t, and she is sure that she wasn’t mistaken and that it was really Leedie Ann.

Kiley tells her friend, Sarah, about what she saw and persuades her to help find out whether Leedie Ann is really in the Alcott house or not.  Sarah is nervous about it, but she agrees to go along with Kiley’s plan to go to the Alcott house and ask to use the bathroom, pretending that she has been waiting for Kiley to meet her at her house but that she just can’t wait anymore.  While Sarah is supposedly using the bathroom, she’s supposed to check Leedie Ann’s room upstairs.  Kiley can’t do this herself because she wouldn’t have the same excuse that Sarah would and because Mrs. Alcott would know that Kiley knows where the downstairs bathroom is and that she would have no reason to go poking around upstairs.

When Sarah follows through on Kiley’s plan and checks Leedie Ann’s room, she tells Kiley that she did see Leedie Ann there!  However, Pesha saw her spying and made her leave the house.  Kiley and Sarah think that perhaps Pesha has both Mrs. Alcott and Leedie Ann under a spell and is holding them prisoner in their house.  But, what can the girls do to help them?

Kiley comes up with a daring plan to trick Pesha into revealing what she knows about Leedie Ann Alcott by writing an anonymous letter to her as if she already knew that Pesha was involved in her disappearance, but the plan backfires.  The police reopen the inquiry into Leedie Ann’s disappearance (don’t ask me why they didn’t notice that the letter appeared to be written by a child), but Kiley accidentally implicates an innocent person.  Adults in town are nervous, and Sarah’s mother doesn’t want Kiley to see her anymore.  Just as Kiley thinks things can’t get any worse, Pesha asks for her help, offering a charm to help restore Kiley’s friendship with Sarah in return.  Pesha claims that her only purpose is to use her psychic abilities to help Mrs. Alcott find Leedie Ann and that what Kiley believed was Leedie Ann in the window was actually a mannequin left from Mrs. Alcott’s clothing store that Leedie Ann had always begged to have as a life-size doll for herself.  Is Pesha really as innocent as she claims to be?  Can Kiley trust her?  What about Mrs. Alcott?  Above all, where is Leedie Ann Alcott?

Although Kiley may have made a big mistake, the reopening of the kidnapping case does bring to light the real secret behind Leedie Ann’s disappearance.

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

Themes and My Reaction

One of the side plots in the story is about how differences between people can lead to mistrust because people sometimes get a false impression.  Kiley knows that her friends’ mothers don’t really approve of her because she is being raised by her father alone.  Some of her friends’ mothers, especially Sarah’s because she’s overprotective, think that Kiley is a wild child because she doesn’t have a mother to look after her, and they worry that Kiley will be a bad influence on their daughters.  Kiley does sometimes get into trouble because she’s a little daring and a little impulsive, but those are more personal character traits rather than the result of growing up without a mother, and some of her escapades are undertaken in the name of helping someone, like trying to find Leedie Ann.  Her friends’ mothers don’t understand Kiley’s intentions, though, and they never ask enough questions to find out what is really going on.  It seems oddly cold behavior from mothers to me.  Where I grew up, other people’s mothers would have taken more of an interest in a motherless child, purposely checking up on her and wanting to have her hanging around where they could keep an eye on what she was doing.  If they push her away, then she’s even less monitored than she was before.

However, Kiley realizes that everyone’s suspicions about Pesha, including her own, were also based largely on the fact that Pesha is different from everyone else.  For awhile, Kiley helps Pesha to hide from the police because Pesha fears their inquiries.  The two of them get to know each other better.  Pesha is actually a Holocaust survivor. Pesha has the tattoos on her body that the Nazis used to put on prisoners in their concentration camps (I’ve see those tattoos in real life, and I recognized them from the book’s description before Kiley understood what they were) and she tells Kiley about a place in Germany where her family was and terrible things happened.  Besides Jewish people, gypsies were also targets of the Nazis during the Holocaust and were sent to concentration camps along with them.  Pesha fears the police because she fears being locked up again, something that Mrs. Alcott tells to the police to explain Pesha’s sudden disappearance.  Knowing this helps Kiley to become more sympathetic to Pesha and more determined to help straighten out the mess that she helped to cause, eventually discovering the real whereabouts of Leedie Ann in the process.

Something that bothered me about the adults in the story, pretty much all of them, is their lack of interest in asking questions and taking charge.  Even after Kiley’s father realizes that she was helping Pesha to hide from the police, he doesn’t ask enough questions about why she was doing it.  He simply reports Pesha to the authorities and orders Kiley to stay out of it, just like he simply told her to stop imagining Leedie Ann Alcott and making up stories back when Kiley first saw the girl in the window.  Kiley’s father didn’t want to ask the awkward questions to verify what Kiley saw, so it was easier to assume that she didn’t see anything.  Part of that is a plot device, so that Kiley has a reason to dig for the truth herself, but it also figures into the way other adults, like Sarah’s mother, treat Kiley and how they approach the whole inquiry into Leedie’s disappearance.  Instead of checking on what motherless Kiley is doing and helping her father to supervise her, they want to just shrug her off as a problem they don’t want to deal with, figuring that someone else will handle it because they don’t want to get involved.  Then, when Sarah’s mother finds out about Sarah helping Kiley to write the letter that reopened the investigation, she refuses to tell the police the truth about it, allowing the investigation against Pesha to go forward even when she knew it was groundless, just because she didn’t want to get involved.  Disbelieving adults/adults not wanting to get involved is a trope of children’s mysteries because the adults’ non-involvement provides a reason for the children to investigate, but I still find it annoying and irresponsible.

Pesha’s innocence is finally established when Kiley finds the courage to admit what she did in front of everyone at Pesha’s court hearing.  Kiley comes to realize that a quality that she and her father both have is honesty.  Her father didn’t try to hide it when he discovered that Kiley was harboring a fugitive the way Sarah’s mother tried to hide the truth to avoid becoming involved and to hide her child’s involvement, and that’s something to be proud of.  The aftermath of her confession also gives Kiley the opportunity to spot the tell-tale clue of Leedie Ann’s current whereabouts, and Leedie Ann is safely returned to her mother.

Posted on by TracyC

Father’s Arcane Daughter

Father’s Arcane Daughter by E.L. Konigsburg, 1976.

Winston Carmichael lives a very sheltered life during the 1950s. His family is wealthy. They live in Pittsburgh, and he attends a good school, but much of his free time is also taken up trying to entertain his sister, Hilary, called Heidi. He particularly has to look after Heidi every week on Thursday, while his mother leaves to get her hair done. Heidi has some developmental disabilities and is hard of hearing, so Winston’s overprotective family is especially overprotective of her. Because of that and because of her frustrations with her own limitations, Heidi is spoiled and frequently acts out when she doesn’t get her way, making her a pain for Winston to help care for. Even servants have often quit over Heidi’s behavior. However, Heidi’s disabilities are only part of the reason why the children’s parents are overprotective. The other reason is the mysterious disappearance of Caroline, Winston and Heidi’s much-older half sister, from their father’s first marriage. Winston is aware that Caroline was kidnapped years before he was born and is now presumed dead, a traumatic incident in their family. Then, one day, a woman claiming to be Caroline comes to the house to see their father.

The story is actually told in the form of flashbacks as Winston recounts it to a woman, who is at first unnamed. Winston explains how he knew about Caroline’s disappearance and how he wanted to know more about this mysterious woman claiming to be Caroline, partly in the hopes of reducing the shadow that Caroline’s disappearance has cast on all of their lives. The children’s father tells them the story of how Caroline was kidnapped 17 years earlier on her way home from the exclusive college that she was attending in Philadelphia. The kidnappers demanded a large ransom in cash, and it took longer than they thought for Mr. Carmichael to assemble that amount of cash because rich people don’t have all of their money in cash and getting large amounts of cash attracts attention from the authorities. Then, the ransom drop went badly and turned into a shootout between the police and the kidnappers at the house where the kidnappers were hiding. At some point, the house caught fire (no one is quite sure what started the fire), and everyone inside the house was killed. At the time, they assumed that Caroline was one of the people who was killed in the fire, but Mr. Carmichael was never sure because the kidnappers had said something earlier about moving Caroline. He always hoped that maybe Caroline wasn’t in the house and somehow survived, but having heard nothing from her for years, it has seemed likely that she died. After Caroline’s presumed death, her despondent mother died of alcohol-related causes. Mr. Carmichael remarried, and he and his new wife had Winston and Heidi. Still, Mr. Carmichael always hoped that maybe Caroline was alive and he would find her one day.

Caroline’s sudden reappearance, although happy for her father, is strange, and Mrs. Carmichael is suspicious that this woman’s real purpose is to claim the inheritance that Caroline was supposed to inherit from her mother’s family. The deadline for claiming the inheritance is approaching, so the woman claiming to be Caroline could be an imposter who is just after the money. Winston studies his mother’s scrapbook, containing all the known details of Caroline’s life, and he comes to understand his father and his family a little better. Caroline becomes more of a real person in his mind, not just a shadowy figure from the past, but he’s still not sure if the woman claiming to be Caroline is the real Caroline.

“Caroline’s” story is that she was rescued from her kidnapping situation by one of the kidnappers, who apparently had a change of heart, but that she had a kind of identity crisis and a sudden realization that she didn’t know who she wanted to be or what she really wanted out of life. She changed her name to Martha Sedgewick, using information given to her about a dead woman by the kidnapper who released her, and went to Ethiopia. There, she taught English for a time and then worked as a nurse. She says that she found it a very liberating experience. Winston, who feels trapped in his stifling, sheltered life understands that feeling. Caroline said that she fell in love for a time but never married the man she loved because there was a war and he died.

Caroline says that when she finally returned to the United States, she found a job as a nurse at the nursing home where her Grandmother Adkins was living. Caroline says that, at first, she wanted to see her grandmother again and get her opinion about whether or not to reveal herself to the rest of the family. However, Grandmother Adkins was senile when she finally saw her, and Caroline merely acted at her caregiver. Mrs. Carmichael thinks this is suspicious and continually quizzes “Caroline” about old acquaintances, trying to catch her slipping up and revealing herself as an imposter. Surprisingly, “Caroline” never seems to slip, and Winston finds himself becoming fond of her. Caroline has had a wide experience of life and is very well read, and she is a very interesting person to talk to. Winston blossoms intellectually under her influence.

I particularly liked the part where Winston realizes that many of his relatives have given him books to read as presents that they have never read themselves. They like to give him books that have a reputation for being “good” books, and it seems like the proper thing to do and something that will enhance their own reputations, but they never actually read the books themselves and can’t talk about them. Caroline hasn’t read all the books that have been deemed “good”, the kind that people read in order to become educated or have a reputation for being educated. However, Winston can tell by talking to Caroline that she has done a great deal of general reading just because she has a curiosity and a desire to know things. She has become a much more knowledgeable person than the people who collect all the “right” sort of books just to have them and never even open them. Many people in the Carmichael family are largely about appearance, but Caroline has substance.

However, Caroline’s presence in the house makes things uncomfortable for the family, not only because of their doubts about her true identity, but because she challenges the life the family is living and the habits they take for granted. Even though some of those habits have been making life uncomfortable for them, the changes that Caroline subtly begins to make also make them uncomfortable by bringing them out of their shells and forcing them to confront things that they have been trying not to confront. For example, Heidi is never scolded for bad habits like snatching things from others’ plates at dinner because she is young and has disabilities. Caroline doesn’t make those allowances, freely telling the family that she doesn’t like it.

Eventually, Caroline’s father is satisfied that she is his daughter and grants her the Adkins’ inheritance, although at his wife’s insistence, there is a proviso that the fortune will revert to the Carmichaels if any evidence surfaces in the future that Caroline isn’t the real Caroline. Caroline accepts those terms, but a battle of of personalities and wills still continues between her and Mrs. Carmichael over the children. Caroline insists that Winston be allowed more freedom, pointing out that Mrs. Carmichael has been using him as an unpaid babysitter while she goes to get her hair done every week. Caroline recognizes that Winston is young and needs to have some freedom and fun, and Mrs. Carmichael is pained that Caroline has caught on to the fact that her hair appointments are also a convenient excuse to get some freedom for herself.

At Christmas, Winston feels sorry for Heidi, watching other people at the family’s Christmas party, but not being able to understand what is being said around her, and knowing that she can’t understand them. On impulse, he gives her the book of poetry that he had intended to give Caroline. To his surprise, she really likes it. He knows that she can read, but he never thought of her as having the mental capacity to understand anything really complex because of her babyish behavior and fits when she doesn’t get her way on something. However, Heidi really does understand the poems and is able to read them to Caroline and tell her what they mean. At first, Winston refuses to believe it, jealous of the attention and coddling that Heidi has always received and not wanting to share Caroline and the intellectual discussions they have with Heidi.

Heidi continues to listen to their discussions and follow them as best she can. Gradually, in their company, Winston notices that her behavior begins to normalize and more of her true intelligence shows, although she reverts to her old habits around their mother. Hilary/Heidi has always been underestimated by her family because of her disabilities as well as being overprotected. Under Caroline’s influence, she learns that she is capable of more than anyone, including herself, believed possible.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Carmichael still distrusts Caroline, and in her determination to protect Heidi from her influence, will not allow her to spend time with her anymore. Caroline tells Winston that she is tired of all the Carmichaels’ pretenses, the way they try to ignore the real issues with Heidi, and she gives him an envelope, which she says will provide Winston with all the evidence he needs to decide whether she’s the real Caroline or not. Winston has to decide which is more important to him, learning whether the Caroline he knows (or thinks he does) is a pretense or accepting the realities of his family’s problems and the help Caroline can offer in learning to deal with them.

There is also a movie version of the book called Caroline? I saw the movie before I read the book, but I’ll explain the difference between the two below because it involves some spoilers.

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

Themes, Spoilers, and My Opinions

The everyone in the story, even the children, speak in a very educated and deep-thinking way, which I found interesting. At first, I thought that the children, especially Winston, should speak a little more colloquially, but then, I decided that it’s really right for him to speak in a more erudite way because of the school he attends and because much of the story emphasizes that he has been very sheltered and largely cut off from forming the sort of childhood friendships that children his age have, so he would probably use much less slang than most kids his age.

During the story, Winston is in the habit of thinking of Heidi by insulting terms, like “troglodyte”, because she is strange and awkward and her weird habits and temperamental fits cause problems for him, like preventing him from bringing friends to the house. At a couple of points, he thinks of her as a “golliwog”, which is an insulting racial term, based on a style of old dolls that look like black-faced minstrels, and later, even Heidi describes herself that way. (The term was actually coined in an old children’s book, where one of these dolls comes to life with some other toys. The doll character was actually a nice character, but since the dolls are considered ugly, its meaning has become an insult.) Winston doesn’t mean that in the racial sense here. He’s trying to convey that Heidi has an awkward, abnormal appearance.

As Winston opens up to Caroline, he finally admits to her that he knows that Heidi is “damaged”, not “special.” In other words, he understands that Heidi has disabilities and that she has been deliberately spoiled by their mother who wants to protect her from having to deal with them. Their mother herself has trouble facing the realities of Heidi’s disabilities and is actually ashamed of her daughter for not being normal, so she tries to ignore them, covering them up with cuteness, pretty dresses, presents, and indulgence. Heidi’s babyish behavior early in the story is not because her mind is infantile, but because of the coddling and overprotection she has received and poor socialization, and also because her family is afraid to face the difficulties that lie ahead for her because of her condition and underrates her capacity to do what other children can do and learn what they learn. It’s true that Heidi has some physical disabilities from birth, and she needs a hearing aid to help her hear (she reads lips up until the point that Caroline insists on her getting a hearing aid) and braces to help correct the way she walks, but her mind is excellent. Through Caroline’s attempts to help her, Heidi herself comes to realize how limited her life has been and the potential she has to expand it if she gets the help she really needs to learn how, and she eventually stands up to insist on what she wants for herself, asking her brother to kidnap her and take her to Caroline to get the help she needs and wants. Caroline acknowledges to Heidi, without being ashamed of her or trying to hide the truth, that she is not “normal” and never will be completely normal, but tells her that if she’s willing to work at it, she can realize her true potential in life, and ultimately, that’s what Heidi wants.

The movie followed the themes of the book very well, showing the effect that Caroline has on the lives of the Carmichaels, helping Hilary/Heidi to realize her true potential, helping her parents to realize what she is capable of and what she needs to make the best use of her real talents, and helping Winston to find his own sense of independence. There are some differences. In the movie, for example, Caroline wasn’t kidnapped. Supposedly, she was killed in a plane crash, although her body was never positively identified, and there was some doubt in her family about whether or not she got on the plane. In the movie, Caroline gives a similar story about feeling the need to go out and find herself, but I think she says that she became a nurse in India, not Ethiopia. (It’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie.)

One thing I am grateful for is that both the book and the movie do give a definite answer to the question of whether “Caroline” is the real Caroline or not. I’m often frustrated with movies and stories that leave loose ends like that, like Disney’s Candleshoe, where they never completely establish whether Casey/Margaret is really Margaret.

When Hilary/Heidi decides that she wants the help of Caroline and a friend of hers, who is a doctor, she asks Winston not to open the envelope. Winston keeps it sealed for years, but Hilary (who long since dropped her childhood nickname) is the women he’s talking to when he’s telling the story from his perspective, and at the end, they decide to open the envelope together and find out the truth.

Do you want to know the truth about Caroline?

The Real Spoilers

So, is Caroline actually Caroline, the same Caroline who was kidnapped and evidently killed years before? No, actually she’s not. She really is Martha Sedgewick, the identity that she supposedly took when she said that she was going off to find herself in Ethiopia. However, she is not posing as Caroline for the sake of the inheritance; she’s doing it for the sake of the family and the children. Grandmother Adkins put her up to it.

Martha really was a nurse in the nursing home where Grandmother Adkins lived before her death. She had lived in Ethiopia with her parents, who had died, and so had the man she loved, as she had said before. She had returned to the United States, alone, lonely, and depressed, before getting a job at the nursing home. Grandmother Adkins noticed her striking resemblance to Caroline, and in her confused stated of mind, sometimes thought that she was Caroline. She talked to Martha about the family all the time, which is how she knew all the right details for playing the part of Caroline. Grandmother Adkins knew that if Caroline never returned to claim her inheritance from her mother, that money would pass to Mr. Carmichael, and by extension to his new wife, whom Grandmother Adkins detested. Toward the end of her life, Grandmother Adkins urges Martha to go claim the Adkins inheritance as Caroline – revealing that, in spite of her supposed senility, she has been deliberately coaching Martha to be Caroline for that purpose. Martha decides to go through with the pretense, not because it was Grandmother Adkins’ dying wish or because she really wanted the money, but because she saw Mr. Carmichael at the funeral and was touched by how sad and lonely he looked. Martha didn’t have a family, so she decided to give Mr. Carmichael his daughter back.

In the end, she actually developed romantic feelings for Mr. Carmichael, but she could never admit to them because of their established relationship as father and daughter. Mr. Carmichael might have felt the same way, but he also couldn’t admit to those feelings without destroying the pretense that Martha was his daughter and admitting that Caroline was really dead. Martha came to love the children, and since she realized that they would never be her stepchildren, she did her best to be their big sister.

Miss Trollope, Caroline’s old headmistress, figures out the truth, and “Caroline” openly discusses the situation with her, including her desire to return to college and learn to educate children with disabilities, like Hilary. The real Caroline’s grades were never good enough to attend a university, but Miss Trollope approves of what “Caroline” wants to do and the good she is doing for the Carmichael children, so she does nothing to reveal the pretense or hinder Caroline’s education. However, Miss Trollope later admitted the truth to Hilary when she pressed her for answers.

The reason why Hilary and Winston are discussing this situation and telling the story in the book is that “Caroline” has just died. Hilary is now a business executive, and Winston is a writer. Hilary is a decisive person as well as intelligent, and she decides to put the papers proving Martha/Caroline’s true identity in her coffin, under her head, to be buried with her. Winston says that Hilary is mysterious and arcane, providing the title of the book. Caroline’s life was hidden and arcane, but Hilary’s true depths are also hidden and arcane because of the person she is.

Posted on by TracyC

Mystery Madness

Mystery Madness by Otto Coontz, 1982.

While Murray’s parents are on vacation, his older sister, Blanche, is in charge of the house. One day, he calls Blanche to get a ride home from the dentist and hears what he thinks is Blanche shooting their housekeeper.

Earlier that morning, he had heard Blanche talking on the phone to someone about a gun. Then, when he calls home, a friend of Blanche’s, Harold, answers, and Murray hears a gun going off in the background and Blanche apologizing to the housekeeper and talking about blood on the carpet. When Murray gets home, his mother’s Persian rug is missing and sees what appears to be a head in a bucket under the sink in the kitchen, further proof that the housekeeper is dead and that her blood stained the carpet.

Murray doesn’t know what to do because he is sure that his sister would never shoot anyone on purpose, and he doesn’t want to see her go to jail. He consults a private detective, Mat Cloak, who he met in a doughnut shop, for help.

The detective agrees to look into the case, and along the way, he realizes that it has connections to a case that he is already investigating. What really happened to the housekeeper? Is Blanche really guilty of murder? Moreover, who is the strange man who is following Murray around?

It’s a very funny story with some twists that readers won’t be able to guess right away. Part of the mystery is pretty obvious because Blanche is a theater student, but the real mystery is one that Murray isn’t even trying to solve and the real villain is someone who Murray thinks is a victim.

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

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Phoebe the Spy

Phoebe the Spy by Judith Berry Griffin, illustrated by Margot Tomes, 1977.

Phoebe Fraunces is a thirteen-year-old girl living in New York in 1776. The Fraunces family is black, but unlike most black people in the American colonies at the time, they have never been slaves. (There were some free black families who had never been slaves during this period of history, but they were uncommon.) Phoebe’s father, Samuel Fraunces owns a tavern called The Queen’s Head. It’s a popular place for people to meet, and Samuel Fraunces allows some prominent Patriots to meet there in secret and discuss their plans. Being party to such meetings could come with consequences as the colonies are on the brink of war.

One day, in April 1776, Samuel confides in his daughter that he has overheard something disturbing. He believes that George Washington’s life is in danger, that there are soldiers who are willing to kill their general for money. Samuel is worried about what he heard, but he isn’t sure what the plot against George Washington actually is and has no proof of what he heard. He’s afraid that if he tells Washington about what he heard too soon, without proof, the conspirators will just wait for a safer time to strike, so he asks Phoebe to help him uncover the truth. Samuel knows that George Washington will be coming to New York soon, and he has asked Samuel to help him find a housekeeper for the house where he will be staying. Samuel wants Phoebe to take the housekeeper position and to keep her eyes open for signs of danger.

Phoebe doesn’t know if she can do what her father wants her to do. She isn’t sure what she’s supposed to be watching for, and she doesn’t know how she could stop the plot if there is one. Her father tells her that she should look out for a man who is part of George Washington’s bodyguard and whose name starts with the letter ‘T’. This is all that Samuel was able to tell about the conspirator from the conversation that he overheard. He tells Phoebe to be careful, not to trust anyone, and to meet with him regularly in the market to tell him what she has learned. The two of them also discuss how odd it is that a man like George Washington, who owns slaves, would be at the center of a fight for freedom. Phoebe hopes that he will free his slaves after the war is over, although her father doubts that will happen. Still, the Fraunces family supports the cause of the Patriots, and Phoebe agrees to help her father find the conspirators and save George Washington’s life.

Phoebe is young to be a housekeeper, but she is accepted into Washington’s household. There, she meets Mary the cook and her son Pompey. Pompey also performs chores for the family, like carrying firewood. The work isn’t too hard for Phoebe because much of it is what she is accustomed to doing for her family’s tavern, like making beds, cleaning the silver, and making sure that meals are served on time. George Washington doesn’t say much when he’s around Phoebe, but she carefully observes the people around him. Every day, she goes to the market to buy food and see her father.

At first, Phoebe has nothing to report to her father. Everyone around George Washington seems to be nice or at least behaving normally, and nobody’s last name begins with the letter ‘T’. Mr. Green, a member of George Washington’s bodyguard, seems a bit unfriendly, but a younger man, Mr. Hickey, seems rather nice and sometimes gives Phoebe little presents.

However, there is a traitor among the household, and although it pains Phoebe when she learns who it is, she must do her duty and protect the life of the person she has promised to protect.

Some of the pictures in the book are black-and-white drawings, and some are in muted colors.

The original title of this book was Phoebe and the General. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Historical Background

The story is based on the real Fraunces family of New York. Samuel Fraunces really did own a tavern called the Queen’s Head and allowed Patriots to meet there. A note in the back of the book explains that after the war ended, he was given a reward by Congress, and he changed the name of the Queen’s Head to Fraunces Tavern. Fraunces Tavern still exists today, and it is still a restaurant, although part of it has been converted into a museum.

The racial identity of Samuel Fraunces has been in dispute for some time. No one is completely sure what he actually looked like. There is a portrait of a white man that has been reputed to be Samuel Fraunces, but the true identity of that portrait is in dispute. Samuel Fraunces is known to have had the nickname of “Black Sam”, but different sources describe the family differently. All that is known of Samuel Fraunces’s background is that he was born around 1722 and was originally from the West Indies. It’s possible that the Fraunces family may have been mixed race because some sources refer to Samuel Fraunces as “mulatto” (an old term for someone born to a white parent and a black parent, not considered a polite term now), which might explain the other, differing accounts of the family’s race.

The story of Phoebe Fraunces saving George Washington’s life is legend, but the facts regarding that incident are also in dispute. The legend might be based on a misunderstanding, and Samuel Frances’s real daughter, Elizabeth, does not seem to have been old enough at the time to have taken part in this adventure. The story has had a tendency to appear and reappear around patriotic milestones in the United States, first around the centennial in 1876 and then around the bicentennial in 1976, when this book was written.

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Mystery on Skull Island

Mystery on Skull Island by Elizabeth McDavid Jones, 2001.

This book is part of the American Girl History Mysteries series.

It’s 1724, and twelve-year-old Rachel Howell is traveling to where her father lives in Charles Town, South Carolina. Rachel has been living with her grandparents in New York since her mother died seven years earlier. Her father also used to live in New York, but after his wife’s death, he decided to move to South Carolina, hoping to start a new life. Now, her father has established himself in South Carolina and wants Rachel to come and live with him. Rachel has wanted to live with her father for some time, but she’s nervous because she doesn’t know what life in South Carolina will be like.

Rachel’s new life has a terrifying beginning when the ship that is taking her to Charles Town is attacked by pirates. The pirates force the passengers on board to hand over jewelry and other expensive items. They even take Rachel’s pendant, which belonged to her deceased mother. Fortunately, the pirates don’t hurt or kill anyone and let the ship go once they’ve taken everything of interest to them.

When Rachel arrives in Charles Town, she and her father have difficulty recognizing each other at first, but they are happy to finally be together. Rachel’s father is appalled when he hears about the pirates stealing Rachel’s mother’s necklace, but he is relieved that Rachel is all right. He explains that piracy has been a serious problem to shipping in the area. The local government has tried to combat the problem with harsh punishments, hanging many offenders. However, the pirates have money, and so local businesses still tolerate their presence.

The talk of pirates is shocking, but Rachel is soon in for another shock when her father tells her that he has become engaged and that Rachel will soon have a new mother. Rachel had been looking forward to having some time alone with her father to get to know him again, so she is not pleased at the news, but the engagement is the main reason why her father has sent for her. He wants Rachel to have a mother to care for her and for them to live as a complete family again. He tells Rachel that his fiance, Miranda LeBoyer, is from Philadelphia. She will be arriving in Charles Town soon with her aunt.

Rachel’s father is often busy with his work in the shipping industry, but he grants Rachel more freedom than she had with her grandparents, so she is able to explore her new town and make some new friends. The first friends she makes are the Pugh family, especially the daughter, Sally, who is about Rachel’s age. The Pughs own a local tavern, and Rachel often goes to visit them, sometimes helping with chores and learning to cook. She tells Sally about her worries about her new stepmother, but Sally says that she might not be so bad.

Like her life in South Carolina, Rachel’s first encounter with the woman her father plans to marry takes a disturbing turn. First, Miranda seems to disapprove of Sally and her brother, and Rachel fears that she will interfere with their friendship. Then, her father’s new business partner, Mr. Craven, stops by, and Rachel notices that Miranda seems to both recognize and dislike Mr. Craven. She overhears a conversation between the two of them in which Miranda calls Mr. Craven a “scoundrel” and refers to some kind of illegal dealings in his past. Yet, when Rachel’s father tries to ask Miranda what they’re talking about, Miranda lies and says that they’re discussing the weather and hurricanes that occur in Charles Town. Rachel worries about why Miranda would lie to her father and what kind of dishonest business Mr. Craven might be doing. What are the secrets that people in this town are hiding, and is Miranda really what she seems to be? With the help of her new friends, will Rachel find out the truth before it’s too late?

There is a section in the back of the book with historical information about piracy and life in South Carolina during the 18th century.

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