Billie Wind is a Native American girl from the Seminole tribe in Florida. When the story begins, Billie has been brought before the tribe’s elders because she doesn’t believe in the tribe’s legends about talking creatures, nature spirits, and other supernatural phenomena. It was her older sister Mary who reported her to the elders, and many of the elders are also her relatives, including her uncles. At first, Billie doesn’t take it seriously. She’s always been a very practical, literal-minded girl who has questioned all of the things that her elders have told her since she was small, and she doesn’t expect their response to be very different from any of the ways they’ve responded to her youthful doubts and questions. However, this time, the elders ask her what she thinks would be an appropriate punishment for her. Billie, thinking the whole thing is ridiculous, suggests that they send her out into the Everglades alone until she finds some animals who talk to her. She expects that the elders will veto that idea because she is probably too young to go out there alone for an indeterminate period, and it’s ridiculous for anyone to expect her to find talking creatures. To her surprise, they approve of the idea and begin preparing for her journey.
Although it was her suggestion, Billie is angry because she doesn’t really want to make this trip. She asks her sister why she reported her to the elders in the first place. Mary says that, ever since she started attending the school at the Kennedy Space Center, she’s been too scientific and that, someday, she’s going to be the head of her family. When that happens, Billie will need more than science to lead a family wisely. Still, Billie is resentful.
As she sets off in her little boat, Billie reflects on what makes her different from her sister. Billie takes after her mother, who is a very practical woman (while her uncle wants to send her off on the trip with a good luck blessing, her mother provides her with food and useful tools), and her father works for the Kennedy Space Center. Both Billie and her brother chose to attend the school there, which is very modern and whose scientific principals appeal to Billie’s practical side and her desire for facts and real answers to her questions about how the world works. Billie is very concerned with the major world issues of the day, which include the possibility of nuclear war (the book was written during the Cold War) and environmentalism. These issues are far more real to her than anything in her tribe’s folk tales, and she believes in her father’s assertion that the development of space travel is important because humans may eventually need to find another planet to live on. By contrast, Mary has refused to attend the Kennedy Space Center school and is deep into the folk tales and traditions of their people. Billie looks to the future, science, technology, and the possibilities that lie out among the stars for answers, while Mary immerses herself in ancient legends and her people’s strong connection to nature and the Earth.
Alone in the Everglades, Billie listens to the calls of birds, wondering if that qualifies as “talking animals”, but she decides it doesn’t. She can make hooting noises at an owl, but it can’t speak back to her in any human language. Looking around for a place to camp, she finds a cave by noting geographical features that indicate that there is probably a cave nearby. Does that qualify as the Earth speaking to her? Then, animals around her become frightened and flee! She wishes that the animals would actually speak and tell her what frightened them, but the smell of smoke soon tells her: there’s a wildfire! Realizing that she can’t possibly paddle her boat fast enough to outrun the spreading fire, she does the best she can to wet herself down with water and take refuge in the cave.
Huddled in the cave during the terrifying fire, Billie thinks about what she knows about wildfires. She knows that occasional fires are necessary for the environment because they clear out underbrush, and that they don’t normally burn hot enough to burn the trees. She also knows that white people, who aren’t as familiar with the environment, try to clear out underbrush to fight fires, which inadvertently makes them burn hotter and makes them more dangerous. Billie also wonders whether her tribe will see the fire and try to rescue her, but they probably don’t know that she’s caught up in it because they probably think she went in a different direction.
As Billie explores the cave a little more, she finds an ancient clay bowl. At first, she thinks that means that the cave was once used as a burial place by her people, but then, she realizes that the bowl is intact. If it was meant to be placed in a burial, it would have been broken. Exploring a little further, she realizes that someone once used this place as a home, and there are other artifacts and the remains of a bed that may have belonged to a distant ancestor. She lies down to keep herself safe from breathing too much of the smoke until the fire dies down.
When it’s safe, Billie explores further, finding carved steps in the stone. She thinks about what she knows about her people’s history and her ancestors. When she goes home and tells everyone where she’s been, she plans to bring her uncle, Charlie Wind, and maybe an archaeologist to investigate this place. However, she also discovers that the ground outside the cave is still hot from the fire, too hot for her to leave. She doesn’t have much food left, and she worries that she might die in the cave before she can manage to leave. Then, she thinks about the turtle and snakes that sought refuge from the fire in the pool nearby. They could be a source of food.
Hearing a sound that makes her think that it’s a call that Charlie Wind makes, she looks around, thinking maybe he’s come to rescue her. It’s not a human, though. At first, she thinks that she sees a little person looking out of the ground, like something from one of her people’s folk tales. It turns out to be a young otter in a hole. She befriends the little otter and manages to catch some fish from the little pool that helps them to survive in the cave. The little otter shows her that the little pool is deeper than she thought, and the little otter catches another fish. It explains to Billie what happens to the fish during fires. They take refuge in underground rivers and pools. She considers whether her ancestors carved these underground rivers on purpose to bring fish to her people. Searching the cave further, she finds many more ancient artifacts from her people, including an old, forgotten medicine bundle.
The destruction of the fire makes Billie think that her father and the other scientists must be right about the Earth dying and people needing another planet to live on. Yet, she soon finds growing plants in an unexpected place. Because the trees burned, light is reaching a place where it couldn’t reach before, and new plants are growing. In some ways, nature turns out to be more resilient and adaptable than Billie expected.
When Billie finally gets the opportunity to leave the cave and go home, she realizes that her boat has burned. She salvages what she can and a few useful artifacts from the cave, and she and her otter friend set out to find another way home. Billie manages to carve a new boat for herself, witnesses the destruction of the little island with the cave that sheltered her because of white people’s development, comes to understand more about the environment and cycles of nature, and befriends an orphaned panther cub and a turtle. The longer Billie has to learn to survive by herself in the natural environment, the more she comes to appreciate her friendships with animals and to understand that she needs a connection with nature itself. She talks to them and learns to read some of the signs nature gives her. Perhaps, after a fashion, animals and the forces of nature do speak to people who are prepared to listen.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
This story is marvelous blending of coming-of-age and survival!
Some other reviewers on Goodreads took offense to the repeated criticism of white people ruining things. I didn’t feel the same way. For one thing, although the main character is a Native American girl, the author, Jean Craighead George, was a white woman. I don’t doubt that real Native Americans feel the way the main character does, but the author is still the one delivering the criticism. Jean Craighead George came from a family of naturalists, so it’s understandable that she would be critical of anybody who disregards or damages the natural environment, and she might well take issue even with the society/culture she was born into because of its treatment of nature.
That leads me to my second point, which is that the criticism delivered in the story isn’t about white people ruining everything and doing everything wrong but focuses, repeatedly, on two things that white people do that trouble the main character. First, the white people accidentally disrupt the natural environment, sometimes while trying to do things that they think will help, because they haven’t studied the environment well enough to understand the effects that their choices have. The way the character notes that clearing underbrush in an effort to stem wildfires actually makes the fires worse when they happen is an example of that. Second, white people destroy parts of the environment and what should be archaeological sites because they prioritize other things, especially development and urbanization. These things, while unpleasant, are true. The story isn’t inventing these problems, just noting them.
Billie doesn’t entirely give up her belief in science. However, through her experiences in the Everglades, she does learn to understand and appreciate the world where she lives more than she did before. Although space and the possibilities of the future are fascinating, so is the Earth, and Billie comes to realize that people need to understand and take care of the world they have rather than expecting to find another one. She doesn’t believe now that there is another planet exactly like Earth anywhere in the universe, and she realizes that, rather than searching for a new, more ideal world in space, people can find what they’re looking for by changing the way they look at the world where they live.
Throughout the story, Billie combines aspects of her people’s legends with scientific concepts that she understands, like “oxidation” and “air pressure”, and she sees how scientific disciplines, like archaeology, can help people to understand the past and how life has changed. Her new knowledge of the natural world doesn’t eliminate her understanding of science but augments it. She learns to read the body language and behavior of animals, realizing that this is a form of “talking.” By the time she encounters a Native American boy on a name quest of his own, Billie realizes that she believes in her people’s stories more than she thought she did. Explaining it to the boy, who also has a very modern view of life, helps her to clarify and share what she’s learned.
The Little Leftover Witch by Florence Laughlin, 1960.
Young Lucinda Doon has a great time on Halloween, running around the neighborhood in her ghost costume. During the night, though, she wakes up to hear someone crying or trying not to cry. When she looks out the window, she sees a young witch. The little witch says that her broom broke, and without her broom, she won’t be able to fly. If she doesn’t get back with the other witches by sunrise, she’ll have to stay on the ground and live among normal humans for an entire year.
Lucinda feels sorry for the little witch and tries to help her. She offers the little witch her mother’s broom, but it doesn’t fly because it isn’t magic. They also try Mrs. Doon’s mops and vaccuum, but they don’t work, either. The little witch doesn’t know what to do. Lucinda offers to let the little witch sleep in her bed for the rest of the night, saying that they can talk to Lucinda’s father in the morning. The little witch insists on sleeping in the closet, though, because she likes the dark.
In the morning, the little witch tells Lucinda that her name is Felina. Lucinda introduces Felina to her parents and explains Felina’s situation. They consider whether a helicopter could help Felina, but Felina says that the only thing that can help her is a magic broom, and even then, witches can only fly on Halloween. Felina says that she’s stuck among humans for the year.
Lucinda is eager to have Felina say with them, and Mr. and Mrs. Doon discuss the situation quietly. Felina has a grouchy disposition, but the Doons can see that she’s lost and in need of help. They don’t seem to think that Felina is really a little witch, although they call her one. They say that they had better report finding Felina to the police, in case someone is looking for her. The police take pictures of Felina and take her fingerprints, and Mr. Doon, who works for the newspaper, makes sure that a report about a lost little witch appears in the newspaper. There are a lot of rumors around town that Felina could have been left behind by traveling gypsies or that her family could have been killed in an accident outside of town. However, none of the rumors come to anything, and nobody comes to claim Felina. Because no one claims her, the Doons take Felina to the court house and get a permit to keep her for a year.
The Doons insist that Felina follow their rules while she’s living in their house. They clean her up by brushing her hair and giving her a bath, although she doesn’t want one. They cannot accommodate Felina’s taste for bat wing soup, so she has to eat what they serve. They also insist that she wear pajamas at night and sleep in bed instead of the closet. When Felina acts up, Mr. and Mrs. Doon sometimes threaten to spank her, but they never do. Instead, they explain to her that, sometimes adults know what’s better for a child than the child does. There are some things that they will let her decide for herself, but when they tell her that something is an “order”, she will have to do it for her own good. Reluctantly, Felina agrees.
During her year with the Doons, Felina has many new experiences, doing things that witches never do. She has to go to school, and she learns to read. She attends a birthday party. Felina plays some mean tricks at the party because she is upset that the other children have birthdays, and she doesn’t. Lucinda’s grandfather, who has accepted Felina as another grandchild, says that problem is easy to solve because Felina can have his birthday, which happens to be October 31. Felina thanks him, the first time she’s ever thanked anybody, and she also apologizes to the birthday girl for spoiling the party, the first time that she’s ever apologized to anybody.
Felina spends Thanksgiving and Christmas with the Doons. Before Christmas, Felina gets upset because a mean boy in the neighborhood tells her that she won’t get anything for Christmas because she’s just a bad little witch and that she’ll get whips and stones instead. Since Felina is sure that she won’t get presents for Christmas anyway, she acts out more. However, Felina does get presents for Christmas, and the Doons assure her that she’s not a bad child but a “dear little witch” and that they love her.
When Felina finally takes off her witch’s hat and lets the other children use it for a making a “snow witch”, she finally loses her witchiness and seems more like a regular little human girl. She doesn’t seem to mind this, discovering that she has other interests besides being a witch and that she likes living with a family that really cares about her. When Halloween comes again and Felina has the chance to return to the other witches, she decides to stay with the family she has grown to love and that really loves her.
My Reaction
I remember reading this book when I was a kid! It’s a good Halloween story, although much of it is set in November through New Year’s. The story speeds through much of Felina’s year with the Doons after January. Felina’s difficulties in learning to cope with family life as a little witch who has never experienced it before mostly take place over a few months, through the fall and winter.
In the end, the judge who grants the Doons the right to keep Felina permanently marvels over her transformation since he saw her the year before, thinking that it’s like magic. Felina being a witch adds a little magic to what is essentially the story of a foster child who hasn’t experienced love or a caring home before and acts out until she realizes that she is safe and loved, which is ultimately the “magic” that leads to her transformation. Felina doesn’t seem sad in the end to not return to the witches or even experiencing inner conflict in choosing between her old life and her new one. Being a witch was magical, but being among people has given her many new experiences, especially the experience of love and caring, which she never seemed to have among the witches. Nobody among the witches seemed to worry about whether or not she was healthy, celebrated her birthday as a special day, cared about her feelings, or encouraged her to consider the feelings of others.
Because, in the context of the story, Felina does turn out to be an actual young witch with real magic rather than merely a lost little girl pretending to be a witch, I remember being a little sad that she essentially gives up her magic and her original witchy personality when she becomes an ordinary little girl. She barely seems to remember that she ever was a witch. In the end, she even gives up her name to name herself after the members of the Doon family at her formal adoption, taking the name Mary Lucinda George. I thought that was a bit much. It made me feel almost like the Doons completely took over her personality in the end and that she became a little too much like another Lucinda rather than a more human version of herself. I would rather have seen her remain Felina but to keep the part about discovering that she has greater interests in life beyond being a witch and that her accomplishments as a human girl have a kind of magic to them.
Still, it is a nice story for Halloween about the magic of family love, and it does carry a sense of nostalgia. It isn’t a very long book or a difficult read, and it’s a charming story that’s great for any time.
The Trouble with Miss Switch by Barbara Brooks Wallace, 1971.
Rupert is a budding young scientist, just entering the fifth grade, and his new teacher is an unusual woman called Miss Switch. A lot of teachers say they’ve got eyes in the back of their head, but it seems like Miss Switch really does. Right from the first, she seems to know what kids in class are doing when she’s definitely not looking. She even seems able to read minds at times, and when kids act up in class strange things happen. A spit ball thrown by a student ends up coming back and hitting him, and a class bully seems to get stuck while getting a drink from the drinking fountain.
In spite of the strange things that happen around Miss Switch, the kids in class like her, though. She makes their lessons interesting, and their grades improve. She’s also much more fair than most of their other teachers. Other teachers play favorites in class, having “teacher’s pets” or treating the girls much better than the boys, but Miss Switch treats everyone the same. That means, when she’s in a bad mood, everyone suffers, but when she’s happy, everyone benefits. The students appreciate the equality, but Rupert can’t help but wonder how Miss Switch is able to do some of the odd things she does.
Rupert tries to put his scientist’s mind to the question to figure out what’s going on with Miss Switch, and he comes to a startling conclusion: Miss Switch is a witch! Before telling anybody what he suspects, he decides that he has to satisfy himself that this is the case and then discuss it with Miss Switch herself. That would only be fair, and since Miss Switch has been fair with her students, Rupert thinks he should be fair with her. He does some research at the library about witches and plans a midnight excursion to the school to have a look around his classroom for clues. However, when Rupert sneaks into the classroom at night, he is started to find Miss Switch waiting for him.
Miss Switch isn’t angry that Rupert is in the classroom at night. In fact, she was hoping that he would do just that because she needs to talk to him. Miss Switch admits that she is a real witch, but she also tells Rupert that she’s in trouble. The whole world has become more modern, and computer-oriented, and the witches are no exception. They’ve recently started using a special computer to evaluate their performance as witches, and the trouble is that the computer gave Miss Switch a bad grade. It says that she isn’t “original” enough with her magic. The computer assigned her to teach Rupert’s class at school while she’s coming up with ways to make her magic more “original”, but if she can’t find a way to do it, she’ll have to spend the next 150 years sweeping the witches’ mountain with her broom. Miss Switch knows that Rupert has a creative and scientific mind, and she’s hoping that he can help her come up with some ideas.
Rupert’s first idea is for Miss Switch to improve the school’s next football game. The school’s team always loses to their rivals, and the school band is terrible. If Miss Switch can improve the band and make the team win for a change, that would be original. Unfortunately, Miss Switch’s attempt is only half successful. She definitely improves the band, but because she enchanted the number of the school’s quarterback instead of the quarterback himself, the other team also benefits because they have another player with the same number. Miss Switch gets a good rating but an F for successful completion. (Personally, I didn’t think that was fair because she was half successful. I think that should actually give her a C average.)
Meanwhile, Amelia, an old friend and fellow classmate of Rupert, has also figured out that Miss Switch is a witch and confronts Rupert about what he knows. Rupert brings Amelia along to his next meeting with Miss Switch, and she asks them for another idea for original magic. While they’re thinking it over, Rupert suddenly realizes that Miss Switch has already been using her magic in successful and original ways in her role as their teacher. To prove it to the other witches and their computer, Rupert persuades Miss Switch to take him and Amelia to the witches’ mountain on Halloween so he can make his case to the computer itself.
This is the first book in a series about Miss Switch, and it’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). There’s also a cartoon movie based on the book that you can see sometimes on YouTube.
My Reaction
I remember both the book and the cartoon movie from when I was a kid! The copy of the book that I have uses a picture from the cartoon on the cover. The cartoon movie is a shorter version of the book, and there were parts of that I remembered better than the book.
I completely forgot the part in the book about Rupert doing experiments on his pets, overfeeding one and underfeeding the other. That sounds cruel, and I’m surprised that his parents knowingly allowed him to do that. Fortunately, when Miss Switch’s magic causes his pets to talk, they tell him how they really feel about his experiments and that he’ll probably kill them if he continues. When Rupert realizes that he’s harming them, he listens to them and stops the experiments.
One of the parts of the book that I remembered the best was the punch cards that they use for the computer. Most kids in the 21st century probably aren’t familiar with punch cards. They were still around when I was a young child in the 1980s, but they were on the way out. My father was a computer programmer, and he told us that punch cards were what he used when he first learned programming. When I was in first grade, we also used some as bookmarks and reading guides (holding them horizontally across the page, just under the line we were currently reading). I have no idea what the punch cards we used as reading guides were originally for. They were just left over from some old project. Even though I never actually used punch cards for their original purpose, I’m still a little nostalgic about them just because they were around when I was young.
I like the part at the end about how Rupert manages to convince both the computer and the other witches of Miss Switch’s original use of magic by simply describing what Miss Switch has done with her magic at school. The idea of a supernatural or magical teacher who uses their abilities to keep order in the class and/or make learning more fun is a great topic for a children’s book, and it’s also explored in other children’s books, such as Vampires Don’t Wear Polka Dots. Kids like stories that combine familiar, ordinary school life with something fantastic.
However, there are parts that I think adults can also appreciate, both because of the nostalgic pieces of the story (like the computer punch cards) and because the computer that the witches use to evaluate their performance seems like the type of performance evaluation that adults encounter in their own jobs. Like some forms of work performance evaluation that are initially touted as “innovative”, this one also proves faulty and unpopular, even among the witches who have been receiving passing grades up to this point. When Rupert accidentally gives the computer a nervous breakdown, many of the witches are actually relieved to be done with it!
The Worst Witch Strikes Again by Jill Murphy, 1980.
It’s a new term at Miss Cackle’s Academy, and Mildred Hubble is back! In spite of the headmistress’s gratitude toward her for saving the school the previous semester, it isn’t long before Mildred finds herself in hot water again. She still manages to get her lessons wrong, and admittedly, sometimes goofs around or does naughty things out of boredom.
In an effort to teach Mildred some responsibility, Miss Cackle makes Mildred responsible for the new girl at school, Enid Nightshade. Mildred is supposed to show Enid around and make sure that she knows what she’s doing. Miss Hardbroom, the potions teacher, is dubious about this because it often seems like Mildred herself doesn’t know what she’s doing. Although Miss Cackle is hopeful that this new responsibility will give Mildred the incentive she needs to improve, so she can set a good example for Enid. However, what no one seems to consider is whether Enid is going to be a good influence on Mildred.
During their chanting lesson, Enid sings funny on purpose, and it makes Mildred laugh, getting her into trouble again. Enid also keeps a pet monkey in her room, even though only cats are allowed at the school, and Mildred accidentally lets it loose! After the monkey causes chaos in the school, it is revealed that the monkey is actually Enid’s cat. Enid changed it into a monkey for fun, but Mildred is blamed for doing it. Mildred can’t bring herself to tattle on Enid. Worse still, Mildred’s best friend, Maud, takes offense to Mildred spending so much time with Enid instead of her. Mildred can’t help it because she knows that Miss Cackle is expecting her to help Enid, but Enid keeps getting her into trouble, and Maud starts hanging out with the insufferable Ethel instead.
Enid continually gets Mildred in trouble, putting her in danger of getting expelled, while nobody seems to suspect Enid. Yet, Mildred has trouble getting angry with Enid because she doesn’t seem to mean the trouble she causes. At least, she doesn’t seem to mean for Mildred to take the blame, although she doesn’t step up to take responsibility and clear Mildred’s name, either. It seems like, rather than setting a good example for Enid, Mildred’s lessons in responsibility will be learning how to stand up to Enid and her escapades!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Some Spoilers
The idea of a teacher helping a student to learn responsibility by making that student responsible for a younger student is a classic boarding school story trope, dating back to Tom Brown’s School Days. However, this story humorously inverts the concept because Enid is a mischievous girl who ends up getting Mildred into more trouble than Mildred ordinarily gets into by herself! I was a bit annoyed at Enid because of how she causes trouble for Mildred and doesn’t take responsibility for it at first. The story makes it clear, though, that Enid doesn’t realized just how much trouble she’s causing for Mildred at first. When Enid realizes that Mildred is in serious trouble with the headmistress, she’s prepared to take responsibility.
It takes a nasty trick played by Ethel to really bring Mildred, Enid, and Maud together. Mildred and Enid pull off a wild stunt to get out of Ethel’s trick, and Maud stands up for Mildred and Enid, helping them to pass off the escapade as an ambitious tribute to the school. Fortunately, it’s enough to smooth things over with both the headmistress and the strict potions teacher!
From this point on in the series, Mildred, Maud, and Enid are all friends with each other.
Mildred Hubble is a girl at Miss Cackle’s Academy for young witches, but she can’t seem to do anything right! It’s only about halfway through her first term, and it seems like she’s always getting confused and making the wrong potion in her potions class. Then, when she gets into a fight with a snobby girl named Ethel, she accidentally turns Ethel into a pig instead of a frog. When the girls at school receive their black cats, they run out of black ones, so Mildred gets a tabby cat, who seems to have even more trouble learning to ride on broom than Mildred did, and that’s saying a lot! Miss Cackle, the headmistress, is kind and tries to be understanding with clumsy Mildred, but Miss Hardbroom, the potions teacher, seems to think she’s a lost cause.
On Halloween, Mildred’s class at school is selected to make a special display. Miss Hardbroom decides that they will do a broom formation. Mildred is nervous about how she will do on her broom, and the mean Ethel sees an opportunity to get revenge on her for the pig incident. Because Mildred accidentally damaged her own broom, Miss Hardbroom orders Ethel to lend Mildred her spare broom for Halloween. Ethel puts a spell on the broom that causes it to act up in the middle of the formation, ruining the whole thing.
Everyone is mad at Mildred, thinking the incident was just more of her clumsiness and inattention. She knows that she will be called to a conference with Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom the next day. Unable to face them, Mildred decides to run away. However, outside the castle, she comes across a group of strange witches, talking about an evil plot to take over the school. Mildred is the only one who knows that the school is danger. Can the worst witch at the school manage to save it?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). This is the first book in a series. There was also a movie from 1986 (also on Internet Archive) and a tv show based on the series. (You can sometimes find the movie or some of the tv episodes on YouTube.)
The 1986 movie is fun and and contains a very trippy scene where Tim Curry, as a wizard, sings a song about Halloween. In the movie, Mildred is played by Fairuza Balk, who later played in the more serious witch movie The Craft in 1996.
My Reaction
When I was in high school, and the Harry Potter books were popular, a friend of mine pointed out that The Worst Witch was basically Harry Potter before Harry Potter existed. It’s true, too. I wouldn’t say that Harry Potter is a rip-off of The Worst Witch because there are many differences between the two series. Harry Potter has much more serious themes about death, prejudice, and oppression that you won’t see in The Worst Witch. The Worst Witch is definitely much lighter in tone. However, it is fun to notice some of the parallels. Both series are about a kid attending a magical school, and there’s a nasty potions teacher, a more privileged student who’s a snob and bully, and a villain who plots to take over the school. (Could the fact that the nasty teacher is always the one teaching the potions class possibly be an indication that many of us still carry traumatic memories from our chemistry teachers?)
I enjoyed The Worst Witch, although the stakes are much less serious than in Harry Potter. It’s a good series for younger children, combining boarding school style antics with magic and villains that aren’t overly scary but still threatening enough for Mildred to be a hero in defeating them. Mildred is a lovable misfit who constantly messes up (sometimes through her own fault and sometimes through someone else’s) but who always manages to come out on top!
The Ghost of Dibble Hollow by May Nickerson Wallace, 1965.
Elisha Nathanael Dibble Allen, called Pug, is excited to be spending the summer at the old family house called Dibble Hollow that his mother inherited! The summer starts out awkwardly when he gets on the wrong side of old Mr. Smith because his dog, Ricky, chases Mr. Smith’s chickens. When people find out that his family are Dibbles and that they’ll be staying in Dibble Hollow, Pug and his sister Helen learn that the locals in the area are afraid of Dibble Hollow. There are rumors that the house is haunted.
Pug thinks that the house is charming. It was built in 1730, and Pug immediately claims a room for himself with a picture of a boy in old-fashioned clothes who looks a lot like him. It does seem odd, though, that Ricky is afraid to enter that room, no matter how much Pug tries to persuade him.
Then, it seems like the family won’t be able to stay at the house after all because the well is dry, and they can’t get water. Pug is upset about having to leave the house and abandon their summer plans, but things change during the night, when Pug meets the ghost who haunts his room. The ghost is Miles Dibble, the older brother of Nathanael, Pug’s grandfather. Miles died young and still haunts the room that he once shared with Nathanael.
The ghostly Miles explains to Pug that he’s been responsible for the rumors that Dibble Hollow is haunted. He does things to scare strangers away from the house. However, he really wants his relatives to stay at Dibble Hollow, so he explains to Pug that there is actually a second well at Dibble Hollow, and it is connected to the house with pipes, but Pug’s grandfather’s eldest brother, Ezra, turned off the water on purpose to fool people into thinking that there was no water at the house, so he could have the house all to himself. Miles explains to Pug how to find the right pipe in the basement and turn the water back on.
The next morning, Pug follows Miles’s instructions and finds the pipe so the plumber can turn the water back on. His family is amazed how he knew where to look, but Pug is vague about how he knew. He can’t tell them about Miles because Miles tells him that only boys under the age of 15 in the Dibble family can see him, and also one other person who is special to Miles, although Miles doesn’t explain who that is.
Pug is happy that his family will be able to stay at Dibble Hollow for the summer, but he also begins hearing about a feud between the Smith family and the Dibble family. People are unsure exactly how the feud started. The plumber, Mr. Potter, says that there are only a few people who really knew the beginning of it. One of them is Miles, who has been dead for more than 50 years at that point. Another is Eb Smith, who was once Miles’s best friend, and is now the elderly Mr. Smith who was angry that Ricky chased his chickens. Pug is interested in being friends with Eb Smith’s granddaughter, Priscilla, but he thinks that he needs to understand the feud between their families before he can do that.
Since Eb Smith doesn’t want to talk to the Dibbles, Pug and Helen go to see Miss Fanny Woodman, the other person Mr. Potter says would know what happened to start the feud. Miss Woodman explains that the feud started when she was 13 years old, after both the Dibble and Smith families made a lot of money at a fair by winning some prizes and selling livestock. The elder boys in the Dibble and Smith families were supposed to take the money home, but they paid Eb and Miles to do it for them because they wanted to stay longer at the fair. However, Eb thought some suspicious men were following them home, thinking that the younger boys would be easier to rob. To evade the thieves, the two younger boys split up. Eb was supposed to lead the thieves on a wild goose chase while Miles got the money safely home. Eb did manage to lose their followers, but Miles never turned up with the money. The Smiths suspected Miles of running away with the money, but the Dibbles suspected the Smiths of having done something to Miles to get all the money for themselves.
At first, Eb didn’t think the Miles stole the money. He thought maybe Miles was playing some kind of trick on him because the two of them had a rivalry over Miss Woodman. Both boys had a crush on her when they were all kids. Miles was a teaser and a prankster, so it would have been in character for him to pull a trick. However, nobody ever saw the thieves who were supposedly following the boys, and the more Eb thought about it over the years, the more he became convinced that Miles was the one who thought he saw them and was the one who suggested that the two of them split up. Nobody ever found Miles’s body, so there was no proof that he ever died. His family eventually decided that’s what must have happened, so they had a memorial service for him and put a marker for him in the local cemetery, but the Smiths still suspected that Miles just stole the money and ran away.
Eb’s feelings for Miles turned to bitterness when he came to believe that Miles took advantage of their friendship to steal from him and his family, and those feelings only got worse when he suffered a series of misfortunes in his life. Eb’s wife died young, leaving him to raise their son alone. Then, his son and his wife also died, leaving him to care for his granddaughter Priscilla alone. Eb has been struggling for money to help raise Priscilla, and the money that his family lost would have made a difference to him. In fact, it still would make a difference to Eb because he’s in danger of losing his family’s old home because he can’t pay the mortgage. Miss Woodman doesn’t believe that Miles was a thief, but without the town knowing what really happened to Miles, it would be difficult to prove that to Eb Smith.
Pug knows that he has access to a source of information that nobody else does – he’s the only one who can talk to Miles himself about what happened! When Pug sees Miles again, Miles confirms what Miss Woodman said. He says that the thieves followed him instead of Eb that night. Miles tried to get away from them by crossing an old bridge, but he fell into the river and was killed. The thieves were alarmed that he was dead, so after searching him for the money, they pushed his body into the river again and got out of town as fast as they could. Miles says that a man called Mr. Miller later found his body down river and had him buried, but Mr. Miller didn’t know the boy’s identity, so he couldn’t notify his family. Instead, Mr. Miller buried Miles under the name of his own son, who died at sea as a cabin boy and whose body was never recovered. Mr. Miller felt that giving the nameless boy his son’s name and a resting place among his family was a kindness to the drowned boy and a fitting memorial to his own son, who was unable to return to rest with his family. People in the town where the Millers lived and live today know the story about the nameless boy buried with the Millers and Miles’s tombstone recounts it, but so far, nobody has made the connection between that nameless boy and Miles. (Except for one other person, who can’t explain how he knows where Miles is buried for the same reason why Pug can’t tell his family how he knew where the water pipe was.)
Pug asks Miles what happened to the money, and Miles says that he successfully managed to hide it from the thieves before he fell in the river. The problem is that he’s not exactly sure where he hid it. He knows he put it in a tree, but it was night, he was confused and in a hurry, his sense of direction was never good, and then, he died a sudden death. He’s been looking for the tree where he hid the money ever since, but he still can’t find it. He just knows that it’s somewhere around the old Smith place, Twin Maples … where Dibbles aren’t really welcome these days. Miles needs Pug’s help to find that hidden money and repair the relationship between the Smiths and the Dibbles!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction and Some Spoilers
Part of the theme of the story is about old grudges. Miss Woodman and Priscilla, among others, tell Eb Smith that the grudge that he’s been holding against Miles and the other Dibbles is only hurting him and that it’s time to let it go, but at the same time, they also understand why he has trouble letting the issue go. The money that Miles was carrying when he disappeared would make a major difference to Eb Smith because he’s been struggling for years to take care of his old family home and his orphaned granddaughter. With the mortgage coming due, the holder of the mortgage, Mr. Pratt, is planning for foreclose and have Eb Smith sent to a retirement home, but that would leave Priscilla without a home. Mr. Pratt says he and his wife would take Priscilla in as a nanny for their four children, but that’s a nightmare job! The Pratts have had trouble keeping a nanny because the children are so badly behaved. Priscilla would be little more than a captive domestic slave to the Pratts. With that much depending on the lost money that would secure the Smiths’ home and future, it’s understandable why Eb Smith has trouble letting the matter go.
Eb doesn’t know that Miles is definitely dead and that he died the night of the fair, when they were chased by thieves. If Miles’s body had been identified and returned to his family shortly after his death, Eb would have accepted years ago that Miles was just the unfortunate victim of the thieves. He would have mourned the loss of his friend and reconciled himself to the loss of the money as something that couldn’t be helped. It was not knowing the truth for years that caused Eb to doubt his old friend and convince himself that Miles was the one responsible for the loss of the money. The restoration of the money is key to helping the Smiths and settling the feud, but knowing the real truth of Miles’s death is also important. As long as Eb doesn’t know the truth, his family’s suspicions, his own suspicions and imagination, and the rumors of the local people are all that Eb has had to fill in the space of what he doesn’t know.
The inability of people to communicate with each other hampers the truth. Pug’s attempts to help the Smiths are hampered because he can’t let Eb Smith know that he’s helping at first. If he did, Eb Smith’s pride and the grudge he holds would probably cause him to refuse the help, even if it hurt him and his granddaughter. Miles refuses to say at first who else besides Pug can see him as a ghost, but Miles later learns that (spoiler) it’s the man who found his body and buried him. Gideon Miller is now a very old man, and he only saw Miles’s ghost once when he was seriously ill, about a year after he buried Miles. That’s the only way that Mr. Miller knows his name and that he is the boy he buried. However, Mr. Miller can’t go to Miles’s family or the Smiths and tell them the truth about Miles because he knows nobody would be likely to believe him. Everyone would just think that he was hallucinating. Mr. Miller and Pug can talk to each other about it because they’ve both experienced Miles and can understand each other’s experiences, but neither of them can convincingly tell anyone else. Pug can’t tell his sister or Priscilla about the things he’s doing to try to help the Smiths, so they think he isn’t really doing much, if anything, although Helen is suspicious that Pug knows things he shouldn’t know and seems to have a hidden source of information. Fortunately, Pug eventually finds a way to show his parents that the unidentified boy buried with the Miller family is Miles.
When Pug has problems with the eldest Pratt boy, Ernie, his father talks to him about grudges and expectations, bringing the story back around to the main theme. People have prejudices against the Dibbles because of what they’ve suspected for years about Miles and the missing money. Pug’s father points out that, while the Pratts definitely have some negative traits, people’s habits of expecting the worst of them just because their family has that reputation, can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people have the sense that nobody expects anything good about them, they won’t even try to do better. Pug and Ernie do end up getting into a fight, but once they’ve got their feelings out and impressed each other with their fighting ability, they make up and become friends. Ernie helps Pug to understand Mr. Pratt better. Mr. Pratt actually thinks he would be helping Eb Smith by sending him to the county old folks’ home because he genuinely thinks Eb Smith can’t manage his house by himself. It’s not just a ploy to get the property and make a personal profit.
When the truth is revealed and the money found, the adults in the story are mature enough to admit that they were wrong about things, and I thought that was a really good example to present to kids. Eb Smith apologizes to the Dibbles, particularly Pug, about how he treated them when they were only trying to help. He also expresses regret that he came to doubt his best friend, not understanding that something truly tragic happened to him all those years ago. Mr. Pratt, rather than being upset that he won’t get the Smiths’ property after all, is actually relieved that things have worked out well for the Smiths. He tells Mr. Smith that he didn’t mean to make things hard on him, that he really did think that what he was doing was best for him and Priscilla, but Ernie has been talking to him about their situation, and he’s changed his mind.
The time period of the story is dated. Miles’s tombstone and an old diary of his that Pug finds date the year of Miles’s death to 1900. Since he’s been dead for more than 50 years or almost 60 years, the story is set c. 1960, just a few years before the book was published.
A disease has killed off all of the adults on Earth, leaving only children. In a world without adults, all of the laws, rules, and structure of society are gone, and the children struggle to survive by themselves. When they run out of food in their own homes, they raid the grocery stores and other people’s homes to get more. However, even those sources of food are starting to run out, and they need to find new sources of food. Children are starting to form gangs and raid each other, desperate for food and resources.
In one particular neighborhood, a girl named Lisa Nelson, struggles to look after her little brother, Todd. She also begins to realize how much her friends in the neighborhood are struggling and the dangers around them posed by other kids. Lisa is more practical and organized than many of the other children, and she begins to emerge as the leader of their neighborhood.
Lisa considers where food comes from before it ends up in grocery stores, and she reaches the conclusion that it’s usually transported from farms and stored in warehouses before being shipped to individual stores. Since the adults died, nobody has been taking food from the warehouses to restock stores, so there are warehouses somewhere that are still filled with food and supplies. She recruits help from other kids in the neighborhood to find a warehouse of food and raid it. However, to maintain control and keep the other children organized, she claims ownership over the warehouse and the distribution of food from it. She even threatens to burn the whole thing down if people start raiding it for food without her permission.
If the children manage their resources wisely, they will be secure for a long time while they figure out how to begin producing new food themselves. However, a gang of children from another neighborhood led by a boy named Tom Logan have been raiding the area and attacking children from Lisa’s neighborhood. The children in the neighborhood struggle to defend themselves from Tom’s gang, but Lisa realizes that their neighborhood doesn’t provide adequate defense. The only way the kids from Lisa’s neighborhood will be safe is if they relocate to a place that offers more protection and will easier to defend.
Lisa chooses the high school, Glendbard, as the children’s new home. It’s an ideal location to create a fortress because it’s surrounded by fences and has a limited number of entrances and exits. It’s self-contained, offering many rooms with indoor corridors with facilities in place for the children to use. Lisa persuades the children from the neighborhood to relocate there, set up organized defenses, and move stores of food into their small fortified city.
Under Lisa’s leadership, the new little city of Glenbard is run efficiently, and it offers the children improved safety, but nothing for them is entirely secure. When Lisa is injured in a battle with Tom’s gang and retreats to a farm outside of town with some of her friends, the children consider what the future of the civilization they want to rebuild will be. Tom and his gang are the immediate threat, but sooner or later, there will be others. Tom knows how to raid and conquer, taking things from other people, but he doesn’t have Lisa’s ability to organize, govern effectively, produce new food and supplies, and inspire real loyalty. If everyone is going to survive, they need an effective leader, someone who can organize everyone and make use of their individual talents to grow and protect their society. If Lisa is going to be that leader, she has to not only learn to fight people like Tom but also help them to see her vision of the future.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). The book has also been made into a graphic novel, although some of the details from the original story were changed in the graphic novel.
My Reaction
I remember reading this book in a middle school English class when I was about 13! It has always reminded me of the episode from the original Star Trek series, Miri, about a planet of children living without adults because all of the adults were killed off by a disease that only affects people adolescents and adults. The Star Trek episode is from 1966, older than this book, so if there is a connection between them, it would have been the Star Trek episode that inspired the book.
In the Star Trek episode, when any of the children gets too old, they also start showing signs of the disease, and it eventually kills them, until the crew of the Enterprise figures out a way to cure it. In this book, it isn’t clear whether or not any of the children are going to be at risk as they get older. The implication seems to be that the disease died off with the last of the adults. Presumably, the children who are alive now will live to grow up and will rebuild their society, as long as they can figure out how to manage their resources, develop new food production, and maintain order well enough that they don’t kill each other off.
Dealing with their own fears is as much of a struggle for the children as simply finding food and supplies, and it fuels much of the violence between them. Children who lack resources more than the others and don’t have the imagination, knowledge, or skill to figure out how to get more turn to bullying and violence to get what they need. They are simply desperate for survival and doing what they know how to do, which for some kids, is more about taking from others rather than scavenging for themselves or about using violence and destruction instead of creating and building. Lisa is more successful than most because she’s a thinker and planner, and she has some knowledge about how the world usually works, which she can use to fill in the gaps left by the adults (like realizing the connection between farms, warehouses, and stores and that what’s missing now is people to produce food and transport it to the places where it’s usually stored and accessed by others, so she can trace resources back through the supply chain). Lisa realizes that thinking things through is the key to survival. She has her worries, like the others, but she manages her emotions and directs her focus on making plans and accomplishing things rather than panicking and taking out her feelings and needs on others.
Around the time this story was written, in the 1970s, there were a number of other dystopian books about people needing to rebuild society after a disaster. (See In the Keep of Time Trilogy for an example.) What makes this particular book different from other dystopian books of its time is that other books tended to focus on nuclear war as the reason for the society-ending disaster. The 1970s were part of the Cold War, and nuclear threats were on people’s minds. In this book, though, the cause of the disaster is a disease, and children are the only people left on Earth. All of the infrastructure is intact, and the primary challenge is for the children to figure out how to use it. The focus on children trying to build a society of their own is great for keeping children interested in the story!
One of the things I liked about this book when I was young was how the children adapted the school into a city. Sometimes, I used to imagine how it would be to live in other unconventional places – a library, a museum (like From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler), or a shopping mall. Some of the features of the school do lend themselves to communal living or a small city. The school’s gates offer them protection from outsiders, the classrooms provide living space, and they have a library, an infirmary, and a cafeteria.
The school in the story is based on a real school. The story is set in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, which is a suburban area near Chicago, where the author lived, and the school, Glenbard, is a real high school there. The children in the story, Lisa and Todd Nelson, are named after the author’s own children.
There is a new graphic novel version of this book. I haven’t read the entire the graphic novel version yet, although I’ve read selections of it. In some ways, what I’ve read so far bothered me because it seemed to me that they made Lisa meaner in the beginning. In the original book, Lisa shares the spoils from her scavenging with other kids, telling them that she would be willing to help them, if they ask her. In the graphic novel, she makes it a point to tell Todd that they got everything they have because they’re smart and work hard, and other people should just learn to do the same. It’s a very conservative/libertarian attitude, but it isn’t completely faithful to Lisa’s original character or the themes of the original story. I have to admit, though, that there are strong connections in the story to libertarian/Ayn Rand philosophy that didn’t occur to me when I was 13 years old because I hadn’t heard of Ayn Rand at that age. As an adult, it jumps out to me more now, and there’s another book reviewer who has noted the connection. The original author was a firm libertarian, which is something else I didn’t know until I was an adult. It just seems to me that the graphic novel version of the book bore down on the callousness of libertarian attitudes, that “I’ve got mine, and screw everyone who doesn’t get their own because I don’t owe you anything that’s mine” kind of attitude, than the original book did.
In the original book, Lisa realizes that she is proud of herself and Todd for learning to survive by their own efforts rather than by resorting to violence and stealing, like other kids have, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t also willing to share whenever she could or thought someone really needed help. The times when she was reluctant to share were when someone had already stolen from her, and she no longer trusted them, not merely because she thought that they weren’t smart enough, not hard-working enough, or too undeserving to merit help. In the original book, Lisa wants to rebuild community and society, and you just can’t be part of a community or society with people who would hurt and betray you if they thought they could get something they wanted for doing that. She does realize that working toward survival is useful for building community and also provides an individual sense of purpose. Like she points out to Jill, who has made it her mission to look after the youngest children, having chores to do and feelings of accomplishment are important to making the younger children feel less afraid because they can see that they have agency (although the book doesn’t use that term), that they are capable of making a difference in their own lives. Lisa works through her own fears and develops her own sense of self-confidence by realizing that she is capable of handling situations, and she wants to help the other kids build that sense of agency and capability. Lisa’s vision for building a new society is for the mutual protection and welfare of everybody, not just self-promotion or personal enrichment. At one point, she thinks to herself how she and her brother can’t focus on just their own survival alone or just getting things for themselves because, for the other kids to be willing to listen to her ideas, they have to be part of the same community with them, sharing their concerns and looking after their mutual welfare. She says to herself, “All the brilliant ideas in the world will be useless if the world collapses around me and I’m the only one left to steal from.”
That’s an issue that I often have in real life with fans of Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand focused a lot on how special her main characters were and that society didn’t appreciate how brilliant and how much better they were than other people and didn’t acknowledge how much more deserving they were than anybody else. Frankly, Ayn Rand’s characters strike me as a kind of wishful thinking Mary Sue. As others have pointed out, the only characters considered “good” in any respect in Rand’s books are the ones who agree with her philosophy, and she just completely trashes everyone else. It’s not that Randian heroes are never compassionate, but they only seem compassionate to people who support them or provide personal validation. To everyone else, they’re ruthless, and anybody who disagrees with them is a villain with no positive traits on purpose.
Lisa kind of represents an Ayn Rand type character in the sense that she has more vision of what is possible for the children as they attempt to rebuild society and better organizational skills, but the focus of the original book isn’t about “look how great Lisa is and other people should acknowledge her greatness as the superior person and defer to her.” Lisa has a sense of communal welfare and an understanding that, while she and Todd have managed so far on their own, they really do need other people. She doesn’t want only rugged individualism and competition with everyone else to prove her own worth or place herself above others. Lisa doesn’t seem to see her position as leader of her new society as some kind of reward for being special or better than other people, and she isn’t trying to hoard all she has for herself as the rewards of her hard work or some kind of token that she’s the most deserving of having things. What she gathers has a purpose beyond simply enriching herself and securing her own future welfare.
She is definitely not laissez-faire in her leadership style, either. When she reveals the existence of the warehouse to the other kids and claims ownership of it, she lets everyone know that she can supply them with things they need but she would rather destroy it all if any of them abuses or misuses it. She uses its existence as a tool to gain and keep their loyalty and get them to do what she tells them, which seems a bit authoritarian. However, there are no adults left, and it seems that Lisa has realized that there always has to be an adult in the room to provide guidance and direction. Although she might not realize it, she effectively creates a kind of welfare state that provides housing, mutual protection, food, and other essentials in exchange for labor and cooperation. Providing for everyone is necessary because they’re going to have to keep everyone alive while they’re preparing for their future. The warehouse has a lot of food in it, but it will run out eventually or things will expire, and to provide for their future, they’re going to have to study food production and get crops growing again. It’s going to take time, and for them to make it to that point, they need to regulate their usage of food and supplies. Lisa is acting as the adult to guide that process.
The other kids are expected to participate and contribute in their new society, although not all kids can contribute in precisely the same way or to the same degree because some of them are much younger than the others. This is something that she discusses with Jill, who thinks that younger kids need more protection. In some ways, they’re both right and wrong in their approaches. Lisa proves correct that younger kids are sometimes capable of more than Jill thinks and that they start to feel better about themselves and the frightening loss of their parents when they realize that they can accomplish small tasks. However, Lisa does sometimes expect too much of them, and Jill is correct that little children would be frightened to patrol as night guards and wouldn’t really make intimidating guards against the bigger kids anyway. Lisa has high expectations of others and high ambitions, but her friends help to keep her more realistic about what other kids can do and what their priorities as a new society should be. When Lisa gets carried away with their accomplishments so far and excited about all the things they can do now that they’re free to do anything they want without adults, she talks about learning to fly an airplane, and one of her friends has to remind her that their first priorities should be to secure sources of food and restore water and electricity.
It seems that Lisa provides goods equitably (she doesn’t seem to provide extra to special favorites, elites, or people she deems as more deserving than others in her society) as long as everyone is willing to go along with her plans. Her primary reason for wanting to be in control is to keep the system functional and equitable. She also relies on people like Jill, who have some altruistic motives and are willing to provide nurturing care for the very young and people who are sick or injured, those least able to help themselves without help from someone else. Lisa and Jill don’t have quite the same philosophy, but building a society requires different people with different types of focus. Both of these characters are necessary for building the new society. Jill even takes in Lisa and Todd after their house burns, so Lisa benefits from Jill’s altruism, which gives her the support she needs while she recovers and makes other plans.
In the original book, her leadership and the resources that she has gathered are treated largely as tool that Lisa uses to achieve her ultimate goal of rebuilding a society. Lisa doesn’t seem opposed to the concept of “common good”, and she really wants to be part of a society. She especially wants a society that actually cares about all of its members and provides what all of its members need, and she recognizes that any society that doesn’t care for its members or provide for them sufficiently isn’t going to survive because nobody’s going to want to join something that doesn’t care about them or provide what they really need. Many of these other kids are also her long-term neighborhood friends, so she has some personal feelings for them. They’re not just there as underlings, and they have worth beyond just serving the system or proving themselves as earners.
The original book’s philosophy has some strong libertarian leanings, but it didn’t strike me as being purely libertarian in the way that the graphic novel seems to. From what I’ve read, it seems like the graphic novel doubled down on the more callous and self-centered form of individualism and took away at least some of Lisa’s consideration for other people. For me, it made her a less likeable, sympathetic character and less inspiring as a leader, and these are frequently requirements of mine when I consider literary characters. Just as people don’t tend to join societies with nothing to offer them, I lose interest in books and characters that don’t offer me what I’m looking for. The graphic novel didn’t grab me in the same way the original book did because it took out some of the aspects that appealed to what I was looking for.
Because of the subject matter, this book is best for older children. According to Wikipedia, it’s recommended for ages 12 to 15, and that estimate seems about right to me. There is real violence in the story. The children start using weapons against each other, and Lisa gets a gunshot wound. When her friend is treating her wound, she gives Lisa alcohol to drink because they don’t have any better painkiller.
Matilda is an exceptional child, a young genius with amazing talents, but her parents are dull and self-centered, and they never notice. They can’t understand why she wants books when everybody else just watches television, her father prefers her brother Michael to her, and she is often neglected by her mother, who just wants to go out and play bingo. At a young age, she takes herself to the library to get her own books. She reads her way through all the children’s books in the library at age four, and she starts reading adult classics.
Her father hates it that Matilda likes books so much because he’s never been able to like or understand them. He prides himself on being clever, but he only uses his brain to come up with new ways to cheat the customers at his used car lot. Matilda maintains her sanity in this awful family by outsmarting them and playing pranks on them whenever they’ve been particularly nasty. Once, she uses superglue to stick her father’s hat to his head, and another time, she manages to convince her family that their house is haunted.
When Matilda is old enough to begin school, her teacher is the kind Miss Honey. Miss Honey’s is greatly impressed by Matilda’s abilities, realizing immediately that she is more advanced than other students her age. She is even more impressed when Matilda explains that she taught herself. The school’s headmistress is the mean and formidable Miss Trunchbull. Miss Trunchbull intimidates everyone, from the students to the teachers. When Miss Honey tries to tell Miss Trunchbull about Matilda’s unique abilities, Miss Trunchbull doesn’t want to hear about it. She knows Matilda’s father, and he’s always talking badly about Matilda, so Miss Trunchbull is prepared to believe the worst about her. She refuses to believe anything positive about her. Miss Honey thinks that Matilda should be put in a higher grade at school because she needs something mentally challenging, but Miss Trunchbull refuses to consider it.
Since Miss Honey can’t move Matilda up to a higher grade, she gives her higher level textbooks to study in class. She tries to talk to Matilda’s parents about her abilities, but they don’t want to heard about it, either. Matilda’s father only values skills that immediately produce money, and he doesn’t think Matilda’s abilities are likely to do that. Matilda’s mother thinks that the only thing that’s important for girls to do is look pretty so they can get good husbands who will provide them with money. Neither of Matilda’s parents think that a college education is important, and her father says that people learn bad habits at universities. Miss Honey points out that, if they were really in trouble, like if they were sick or needed legal help, they would turn to people with university educations, but it does no good. Miss Honey finds Matilda’s parents offensive and realizes that they are never going to do anything to help Matilda and that they don’t care about her future.
Meanwhile, Matilda and her new friend, Lavender, have discovered just how mean Miss Trunchbull is. She locks up misbehaving students and makes girls with pigtails cut their pigtails off for no other reason than she just hates pigtails. When Lavender plays a trick on Miss Trunchbull by putting a newt in her water, Miss Trunchbull, already expecting trouble from Matilda, decides that Matilda was the culprit. Matilda angrily protests that she didn’t do it, and suddenly, she makes Miss Trunchbull spill water on herself just by thinking about it and looking at her glass. Miss Trunchbull angrily accuses Matilda of having done that, too, but nobody can see how she could have when she was nowhere near Miss Trunchbull when that happened.
Later, Matilda confides in Miss Honey that she made it happen. Matilda’s intelligence has gotten beyond her, and she is starting to develop powers of telekinesis. She also realizes that it gets easier for her to use these abilities with practice. Miss Honey invites Matilda to the little cottage where she lives so they can talk more about it. They discuss trying some tests of Matilda’s abilities, but while they’re at the cottage, Matilda realizes that Miss Honey is actually very poor. Miss Honey reveals that Miss Trunchbull is actually her aunt, and not only has she been withholding her wages but she’s defrauded her of her inheritance. Matilda hatches a plan to use her powers to get justice for Miss Honey.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
I saw the movie version of Matilda before I read the book, and I think the book is definitely better! It’s a favorite of many fans of cottagecore and light academia because it has elements of both. Matilda is a highly intelligent little girl whose incredible brain and love of books change her life forever. She loves to read books while drinking hot chocolate, and her Miss Honey, lives in a charming little cottage that reminds Matilda of fairy tales.
I love books that mention other books, and Matilda likes to talk about the books she likes. Her favorite children’s book is The Secret Garden, and she also likes adult classics, like books by Charles Dickens. She says that she’s also read books by C. S. Lewis and Tolkien, but she doesn’t like them as well as some others because they don’t have much humor in them. Matilda thinks it’s important that books for children have humor in them.
Humor is what makes Matilda such a fun book to read! Matilda is badly neglected by her parents, and Miss Trunchbull does some horrible things to the children at her school. In a story with a more serious tone, these things could be truly tragic or make readers angry at the injustice, but the horrible people in this story are played for humor. Their misdeeds are portrayed with whimsy. Matilda doesn’t waste time crying and only rarely gets angry, instead using her powerful mind to devise amusing punishments for the perpetrator and to change things for the better. Readers can relax and enjoy Matilda’s adventures, confident that, no matter what the antagonists dish out, she will always get the upper hand in the end.
In some ways, Matilda reminds me of an earlier children’s book called The Girl with the Silver Eyes because both books involve misunderstood girls with unusual abilities. However, they are not the same story. Matilda is more whimsical fantasy, and The Girl with the Silver Eyes is science fiction. Matilda’s unusual mental abilities come from her need to be intellectually challenged, while Katie, the girl in The Girl with the Silver Eyes, gets her abilities as a side effect of a medicine that her mother took while she was pregnant with her. Both girls frighten and intimidate people and sometimes use their abilities to get back at people who are mean to them, but in different ways. Both of them also begin to thrive when they find people who understand them, especially teachers who help them cultivate their abilities. In The Girl with the Silver Eyes, Katie also learns that there are other children like herself, but Matilda remains unique in her story.
Roald Dahl was opposed to any of his books being altered in any way, but in 2023, the publishers had some of the language in this book changed, particularly words related to appearance, such as skin color or people being fat. It was a controversial decision because of the author’s specific wishes against having his work changed, but the publishers insisted that it was necessary to “ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today.” I can understand the purpose of some of the changes, although I don’t see why some others were changed. For people who want to compare the two versions, there are still plenty of copies of the original version available today. Check the printing date of the copy of your book to see which version it is. Updated books will be printed 2023 or later. The changes were also not implemented in all countries where this book was published. As of 2026, the United States, France, and the Netherlands have not implemented the changes.
The Girl with the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts, 1980.
Katie has recently moved from the country to an apartment in the city to live with her single mother. Katie’s parents divorced when she was young, and for years, she lived with her grandmother in the country. However, her grandmother has now died, so she has gone to live with her mother. Katie has mixed feelings about living with her mother again after years of living without her, and she somewhat blames her mother for not keeping Katie with her instead of leaving her with her grandmother. Katie can’t live with her father because he moves around too much, and she doesn’t even know where he is right now.
At first, Katie wonders if things are going to be different in the city, but Katie soon realizes that the same problems that plagued her in the country have followed her to the city because she still has the same abilities she has always had and can’t resist using them. Katie has always made people nervous, including her own parents and grandparents because she’s not like other children. For one thing, she has strange, silver eyes that surprise everyone who sees them because they seem unnatural. For another thing, Katie has the ability to make things move just by looking at them and concentrating on them. She tries to use this ability only when no one can see her doing it, but people can’t help but notice that odd things happen when Katie is around. Somehow, things move around Katie without Katie apparently moving herself. Sometimes, when things happen by ordinary accidents, people blame Katie for them just because she was around, and they’ve all come to think of Katie as somehow causing strange things to happen. Secretly, many people think that there’s something seriously wrong with Katie, like she might be a witch or something, and they try to avoid her.
Katie knows that she’s never met anyone else like herself, but she wishes that she did because she’s often lonely. It’s hard to make friends when people think you’re strange or dangerous, and even your own family is distant with you because you frighten them a little. Although Katie tries to pretend normality as much as possible, the urge to use her powers is too strong, particularly when someone has made her upset. She subtly uses her powers to spook her mother’s crass boyfriend, Nathan, and her mean babysitter in the hopes of driving them both away.
After Katie succeeds in spooking the babysitter, she overhears her mother talking to Nathan about her. From their conversation, Katie learns things about her mother’s history and herself that she never knew before. Her mother, Monica, had lost another baby before her after being in a car accident, and then she went to work at a pharmaceutical company. She liked the work there and the other women she worked with, and she has stayed in touch with some of them. However, she left the job when she got pregnant with Katie, and some of the other women there also got pregnant around the same time. Originally, Monica had hoped to return to the job after giving birth to Katie, but the company stopped making the product they were working with, and none of the other women who had children returned.
Ever since Katie was born, Monica knew that Katie was odd because she never cried, and she’s always had those silver eyes, yet her mother has trouble thinking that anything could be seriously wrong with Katie because she seems healthy and is very intelligent. Nathan asks Monica whether the drug she was working with could have had some effect on Katie, and whether that could be why Katie is the way she is. At first, Monica doesn’t think so because she says, if that was the case, her friends from that time would have had children who were similar to Katie, and she thinks they would have said. Nathan asks her whether she’s sure that her friends would admit that their children were strange and a little frightening, and whether Monica has ever seen any of these children for herself. Monica has to admit that she hasn’t. Nathan suggests to Monica that Katie’s condition and whatever the conditions of her friends’ children might be could be the reason why the company stopped production of that medicine.
Katie is stunned at this information. She has always assumed that she was a random freak of nature, and it never occurred to her that there might be scientific explanation for her strange abilities. Although she still doesn’t like Nathan, she has to admit that his questions and his theory are sensible. She also begins to wonder about the children of her mother’s old friends and whether they are also like her, with silver eyes and the ability to use telekinesis. She secretly goes through her mother’s belongings to figure out who her mother’s old friends were so she can track them down and meet their children.
When Katie makes friends with a nice older lady, Mrs. Michaelmas, who lives in the same apartment building and persuades her mother that she would make a better babysitter than the others that her mother has tried, Katie finds someone to confide in for the first time. She isn’t alarmed when she discovers that Katie can talk to and understand her cat, and Katie finds herself telling her all about herself and the other things she can do. The older lady takes it calmly, saying that, at her age, she’s seen may things before and doesn’t get too worried about things. They talk about why people get scared of people who are different, and the older lady says that people are often afraid of someone they think might be somehow more powerful than themselves. Katie has powers that other people don’t have, and people are afraid of what she’s able to do that they can’t.
When a new tenant, Adam Cooper, moves to the apartment building, he seems open and friendly with Katie. Unlike other people, he doesn’t seem concerned about her silver eyes, and she wonders whether he could be a confidant, like Mrs. Michaelmas. At first, she thinks Mr. Cooper might be interested in her mother and could make a better boyfriend for her than Nathan, but then, she overhears him talking to her mother and asking questions about her. Mr. C seems way too interested in Katie and why Katie’s babysitters haven’t gotten along with her. In fact, it sounds like he’s planning to call her old babysitters and ask more questions about her. Katie doesn’t know why Mr. C is so interested in her, but she no longer thinks his intentions are merely friendly. When she hears Mr. C asking Mrs. M about whether Katie’s ever done anything odd around here, Katie is sure that Mr. C knows that she has powers that other people don’t have. Then, he tells Mrs. M that he’s been making inquiries about Katie in the town where she used to live, and some people there really think she’s a witch and that she may have caused her grandmother’s death. Katie is horrified because, while she knows that she didn’t do anything to her grandmother, it would be hard to prove because he grandmother died from an accidental fall downstairs. Even having someone open an inquiry into her grandmother’s death and suggesting that she could have been at fault would reveal Katie’s secret powers to the world!
Katie doesn’t know who Mr. C really is or what he wants with her, but she fears that, if he convinces other people that she’s dangerous, she could be locked up for life! She decides that her only hope is to find the other children who are like her. They may be the only people who could understand her and be willing to help.
My Reaction and Some Spoilers
I didn’t read this book when I was a kid, although I saw it around. For some reason, I just put off reading it, although it’s similar to other books that I did read about kids who have mysterious powers. When Katie eventually meets the kids of the other women her mother used to work with, they admit that they all feel like misfits and have wondered for years why they’re so different from everyone else. One of them says he thought that he might secretly be an alien, given to a human family to raise, which reminds me of Escape to Witch Mountain, which was written before this book. However, Katie and the other kids are all human, just mutated by the pharmaceuticals their mothers worked with.
Sadly, there are real-life cases of children changed by their mothers taking dangerous medications while pregnant, but in real life, those children are born with birth defects rather than psychic or telekinetic powers. A famous case of that was the Thalidomide scandal of the 1950s and 1960s, when babies were born with severe deformities after their mothers used the tranquilizer Thalidomide. Most of these cases happened in Europe because the FDA refused to approve the drug in the US due to inadequate testing.
In some ways, this book also reminds me of Matilda by Roald Dahl, but The Girl with the Silver Eyes was published first, so it’s not an imitation of that book. Like Matilda, Katie has powers of telekinesis and pointedly doesn’t like to watch tv but she loves books. I enjoy children’s books that also mention other, real children’s books, and Katie mentions some that she’s read. Among the books that the story mentions her reading are The View from the Cherry Tree, Gentle Ben, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Boxcar Children, The Headless Cupid, and The Scarlet Pimpernel.
Mentions in the story of the dangers of child molesters and her mother has books that are inappropriate for children and stops her daughter from reading them. Katie’s mother thought she might be “retarded” when she was a baby.
Some Spoilers
I had several theories about who Adam Cooper could be and what he might want with Katie. At first, I wondered if Adam Cooper could be the father of one of the other children who are like Katie, secretly investigating the children of other women who worked with his wife to see if they all have the same condition. Then, I thought maybe Adam Cooper worked for the pharmaceutical company and was checking up on the children of their employees for years to find out what happened to them. I was hoping that he wouldn’t be part of a secret government organization, like the one in Stranger Things because that’s been done a lot, and sometimes, I feel like it’s become kind of a conspiracy theory cliche. Actually, none of those are the real explanation.
It turns out that there is an organization that has an interest in children like Katie. They don’t mean them any harm, but they are interested in studying the reasons why children like her end up with special abilities and helping these children to develop their abilities. He confirms that Katie and the children of Monica’s old friends aren’t alone, that there are other children with varying conditions and abilities, some also the children of people who worked with pharmaceuticals and others with no known cause. At the end of the story, Adam asks the children and their families whether the children want to come to the school his organization runs, which sounds a little like Professor X’s school from X-Men or The Mysterious Benedict Society.
However, the children and their parents aren’t entirely sure whether that’s a good idea or not. Adam assures them that the children wouldn’t be prisoners at the school, that their education and development would be prioritized, that they wouldn’t have to hide their abilities from anyone while they were at the school because they would be among others like themselves, and that they wouldn’t be treated like creatures to be merely studied. Still, the children don’t want to be separated from their parents, and the parents are concerned about sending the children away to this unknown school. One of the children asks, since there are four of them living in this area, whether they could form their own day school as a kind of satellite school to the main one, so they can continue living at home and being part of the regular world, not isolated from it. They don’t reach a full decision by the end of the story, but the adults discuss the possibility. Katie and the other kids feel like their lives have already changed for the better, just having each other and realizing that they’re not alone.
The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong, pictures by Maurice Sendak, 1954.
The story takes place in a small fishing village in Holland called Shora. Because the town is small, the local school is also very small, with only six children in the village old enough to attend. Five of them are boys: Jella, Eelka, Auka, and Pier and Dirk (a set of twins). The sixth student is Lina, the only girl. Lina is the one who gets the other students thinking about storks because she writes a story/essay about them. It wasn’t a school assignment. Lina just wrote it because she thinks that storks are interesting. It’s supposed to be good luck if a stork nests on your roof. Lina also notes that, while storks nest in other towns around them, like the one where her aunt lives, they never nest in Shora, for some reason. This starts a class discussion about storks, and the students generally agree that they know very little about storks because storks don’t live in their little village. The teacher says that, even when people don’t know much about a subject, they can still wonder about it, and he challenges the students to wonder about storks and why they don’t nest in their village. He is sure that, if the students wonder about it and think about it, they will learn the reason why the storks don’t come to their village. In fact, he lets the students out of school early so they can spend some time thinking about it. He mysteriously says that their wondering may cause things to happen.
The children are thrilled at being let out of school early, but they feel bound now to wonder about storks and why storks don’t nest in their village. They’re not sure exactly how to begin thinking about this subject or how to figure out the answer, but they take a good look around their village. They find themselves looking at familiar places like they’ve never seen them before, but after a while, some of them become restless. Eventually, the boys all run off to play, leaving Lina to wonder by herself, to her annoyance. However, while wondering by herself, Lina notices something important: that all of the roofs in town are steep and that the school has the steepest roof of all. She realizes that the steep roofs are the reason why the storks can’t nest in Shora. When she realizes that, she also realizes that she knows what to do about it. Her aunt has a wagon wheel on top of her roof, and the storks nest there. Lina realizes that, if they put a wagon wheel on top of the roof of the school, the storks would have a place to nest.
Lina is thrilled that she’s managed to figure out the answer all by herself, but since all the boys ran off, she has nobody to tell about it. Then, an elderly lady who everyone in the village calls Grandmother Sibble sees Lina and asks her what she’s doing. Lina is a little shy about talking to Grandmother Sibble, but she finds herself talking to Grandmother Sibble about the storks and what she’s realized. Grandmother Sibble says that what Lina has realized is true, but she also points out that houses in other towns have trees around them, too. That’s important because Shora doesn’t have trees. Grandmother Sibble says that, if Lina wants to really understand what storks want and need, she has to imagine what it’s like to be stork and consider how a stork would think. Lina likes that idea and starts thinking about what storks would want.
Grandmother Sibble says that, when she was Lina’s age, she was the only girl in Shora, just like Lina is now. Back then, they used to have trees in Shora, and they also had storks there. What changed Shora was that there was a terrible storm that destroyed the trees. Grandmother Sibble says that the storks haven’t returned to Shora since. Lina is surprised about Grandmother Sibble’s story, but it helps explain more about why their village is the way it is. Grandmother Sibble says it’s important to consider the whole picture of the village and everything that’s there and look at it from a stork’s point of view. Grandmother Sibble says that she’s missed the storks ever since they stopped coming to Shora, so she will think about it with Lina and consider what to do. Lina is pleased that Grandmother Sibble is as interested in the storks as she is, and she also realizes that this project has changed the way she looks at Grandmother Sibble. She now sees Grandmother Sibble, not as an unapproachable old lady but as a friend, as someone who used to be a girl very much like herself and who understands how she thinks and what she cares about.
The next day, the teacher asks the students who spent time wondering about storks and what they learned from it. Lina is irritated that the boys say that they thought about storks, too, when they all ran off to play, but the boys tell her and the teacher that they did do some thinking. Jella says that he asked his mother about storks, and his mother says that there were never storks in Shora and that there’s nothing they can do about it. Lina contradicts him, telling the class what Grandmother Sybil said. Jella is forced to admit that his mother was wrong. She probably didn’t know storks had ever been in Shora because she isn’t as old as Grandmother Sibble and wouldn’t remember when they were there. Eelka says that he also thought about trees, partly because he got wet when he was playing with the other boys and wished that there was a tree to hang his clothes on. It made him think that maybe the storks wish there were trees, too. The teacher asks them if that’s their firm conclusion that the lack of trees is the main reason why storks don’t come to Shora, but Lina says that she still thinks that the lack of wheels on the roofs is important because storks nest on the roofs, not in the trees. She thinks that, when the trees in the town died, everyone just assumed that the storks were gone for good and stopped trying to put wheels on their roofs like they used to and like people in other towns do.
As the students argue and debate about the importance of trees and wheels on the roofs, the teacher asks them what they can do to test their theories. The students realize that growing trees would take a long time, and some of them think it might be impossible because their village has too much wind and salt in the air and soil from the sea, which is why the trees they used to have died. Someone points out that one person in town has a cherry tree, but it’s small, and he won’t let anybody near it. He has a fence around it to keep people and animals away, and he scares away birds who try to take the cherries. The teacher says that the cherry tree is evidence that at least some trees can survive in Shora, if they are cared for and protected. He also tells the children that making changes and making dreams come true does take time and work, so they can’t expect results from the theories they test immediately. Still, by trying different approaches, he believes that they will learn more and that they can get storks to nest in Shora again. If they can get even one pair of storks to build a nest in Shora, they will know that they’re on the right track.
Since the idea of putting a wagon wheel on a roof is one that they can do more quickly than growing new trees, they decide to start by testing that theory. The nesting season for storks has already started, so they want to get started right away, or they’ll miss the season. Their teacher agrees to give the students time away from school to work on the project, as long as they’re willing to make up the study time later, and they agree. The teacher helps them to coordinate their search for a wagon wheel they can use. The children are sometimes distracted or tempted to go play instead of working on their project, but they quickly realize that, if they don’t focus on their task, they’ll miss their opportunity.
In the children’s quest to find a wagon wheel they can use, they learn a little more about some of the people in their little community and come to a new understanding and appreciation of them. When a big storm comes, the children worry that all of the storks will be killed and that their efforts have been for nothing, but reassurance and help comes from an unexpected source.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
The author of the book, Meindert DeJong, was born in the Netherlands, and the tradition of putting wheels on roofs for nesting storks is real. If you Google it now, it’s difficult to find a mention of it that isn’t also about this book. I have found some pictures of stork nests on wheels (including some in Alsace, where they apparently have a similar practice) and some up on special poles. It’s a fascinating tradition that, admittedly, I wouldn’t have known about or thought to look up if the book hadn’t described it. There is also another children’s book, Wheel on the Chimney by Margaret Wise Brown, that also describes this type of nest for storks.
What I really enjoyed about this book was how the teacher encouraged the students to work through the issue of why there were no storks in their town in their heads, collect observations, brainstorm different possible explanations, and test their theories. Basically, he was teaching them a simple version of the scientific method, although he never calls it that. When Lina raises the question of why there are no storks in Shora when other towns around them have storks, the teacher encourages the students to put their minds to the question, collect some observations about their town, conduct research (like asking the adults what they know about storks in their town), develop a working hypothesis (the storks need a place to nest), and conduct an experiment to test their theory (provide storks with a place to nest and see if they can get a pair of storks to build a nest there).
The teacher provides some guidance as the children go through these steps, but then, he allows the children to approach the project by themselves, only stepping in when they run into problems. In some cases, the children do run into serious problems, even putting themselves in physical danger, which shows the dangers of not drawing some limits ahead of time or providing more direct supervision, but the children do manage to work out their problems, and fortunately, nobody is seriously hurt. By the end of the book, the children have also drawn many other adults in the community into their project, often in ways that help the adults as well and bring the community closer together. In the process, the children also learn a few things about themselves and their own abilities. In some ways, it reminded me of the Christmas story Starlight in Tourrone, where a community comes together to re-create an old ritual that people in a small village have otherwise abandoned.
I appreciated how the children develop some better understanding for the adults in their community by bringing them into the project or approaching them for help, and parts of the story actively encourage the children to be empathetic and look at different situations from someone else’s point of view.
Grandmother Sibble, the first adult Lina talks to, tells Lina that, to think what would attract a stork, she has to think about the village from a stork’s perspective and consider what a stork would want and need. Lina is fascinated at the idea of thinking like a bird would, but she also comes to think a little like Grandmother Sibble when Grandmother Sibble recounts her memories of how the village used to be when she was a little girl and the great storm that destroyed their trees. Lina comes to realizes that Grandmother Sibble wasn’t much different from herself when she was a girl and that the two of them understand each other better than she thought.
Jella angers a nearby farmer by taking a wagon wheel without his permission, and the teacher helps to soothe the farmer’s feelings by getting him to remember something he did as a boy Jella’s age, so he can understand why Jella did what he did. It’s a bit eye-opening for Jella as well, to see that adults around him were once very much like himself. The teacher also persuades Jella to give the farmer some help to make up for the inconvenience he caused the farmer, and Jella and the farmer bond over a shared love of archery.
Later in the story, when the children consider approaching Legless Janus, an intimidating man in a wheelchair who has lost both of his legs and who has a reputation for having a nasty temper, Pier pauses to consider what it must be like to be Janus, how hard it would be to be confined to a wheelchair, and how that might make a person angry and temperamental. When Pier and his twin try to sneak into Janus’s garden to see if has any wagon wheels, there’s a confrontation between them and Janus, and Pier reveals to Janus some of the thoughts he had. Janus is surprised at how the children see him and the stories that they tell about him. He tells them the truth about how he lost his legs and reveals a shared interest in the children’s project that turns them from mutual antagonists into friends.
Besides the children in the story learning to think about situations from other people’s perspectives and getting to know other people better, the children also learn a few things about themselves that give them some different perspectives on their own futures. Lina often feels a little left out of things because she’s the only girl among the children old enough to go to school in their village. The boys don’t always include her with things they do because they say that girls don’t like to get their clothes wet and messy and that they cry or giggle too much. Even Lina at times wishes that, like a boy, she had less of an impulse to cry at times, and modern readers may roll their eyes at some of the story’s old-fashioned attitudes about boys and girls. With the exceptions of Lina and Grandmother Sibble, women in the story often play subordinate roles in the story, and the story refers to a male stork as being his mate’s “lord and master.” However, there are also parts of the story that prove some of those assumptions wrong. Lina does some daring things in her pursuit of the wagon wheel, and isn’t afraid to get wet or dirty while doing it. The women urge their husbands to help the children in their efforts, even in bad weather, and their support proves important and is appreciated, even when they’re not the ones leading the project. There are also times when the boys get a bit emotional or on the verge of tears, showing that the boys also have emotions, even when they try to fight them or hide them. The roles of boys and girls and men and women in the story aren’t what we typical want or expect in 21st century America, but I liked it that all of the characters are shown as being capable and that their contributions are appreciated.
Grandmother Sibble also helps Lina to see herself and her future from a new perspective. She reveals that, like Lina, Sibble was also the only girl in the village at her age. As the eldest girl of her generation in the village, Grandmother Sibble eventually became the eldest woman in the village, the “grandmother” of everyone, and eventually, Lina herself will someday be Grandmother Lina, the eldest woman in the village, telling stories about what used to be and how things have changed to younger generations. Lina isn’t just a girl but a kind of future village wise woman in the making, actively bringing about some of the changes that will later become part of village lore.
Some of the boys learn a few things about themselves, too. Eelka is a big boy who is often slow and clumsy, which is why some of the other boys, like Jella, are reluctant to let him join in games. Part of his difficulty is that he doesn’t always think things through all the way before he does them, which is how he gets into trouble in the story. Another issue is that, as the youngest of all of his brothers, he’s used to the idea that other people can do things that he can’t do. When Eelka rescues Jella from a dangerous situation, partly brought about by Eelka’s impulsiveness and the need he feels to try to tackle big jobs by himself to prove himself and partly caused by Jella’s own impulsiveness, Eelka comes to fully appreciate that he’s a lot stronger than even he knew. When he and Jella talk about it, Eelka says that his family is in the habit of thinking of him as the “baby” of the family who doesn’t know anything and can’t do things, but the truth is that people grow. Eelka isn’t a baby anymore, and he has developed strengths he didn’t know he had until he is forced to use them. He just needs to learn how to use them wisely.
The village’s shared participation in the project and the quest for a wagon wheel also brings out sides of the adults that some of them haven’t shown for years, giving them new confidence in themselves as well as greater appreciation from the village children. 93-year-old Douwa shows Lina that elderly people are sharper and can do more than she thinks they can and gets the opportunity to relive one of the most heroic escapades of his own youth. Legless Janus enjoys the most exciting adventure he’s had in years and shows that, even though he is now disabled, he has nerves of steel and an ability to take charge in an emergency. He also knows carpentry, so he creates the mount for the wheel on the school and later, he begins making new wheels for other roofs, finding a new trade to practice. He is also the one who reassures the children that reports of storks killed by the storm are exaggerated or made up because he has spent years watching birds and knows their behavior. He says that the storm probably scattered them over land, but they have instincts that would have prevented most of them from being over water when the storm was coming and that they will come resume their journey as the weather clears.
A few other concepts in the story are consideration for the environment, problem-solving, and time management. All through the story, the children are confronted with problems of various kinds, and they have to figure out how to solve them, using their own wits and whatever they have to work with. They also learn the importance of time management because they know that they don’t have long before the storks’ nesting season will be over, so they must use their time wisely, putting aside playing or other distractions to accomplish their mission. I was particularly interested in Grandmother Sibble’s description of how Lina needs to look at the whole picture of the village, what it has, and how it has changed over the years in considering why storks no longer nest there. Essentially, what’s she’s describing is the ecosystem of the village, how all of the different elements work together to either make it a hospital place for the storks or an inhospitable one. The wheel on the roof is one of the factors, but the trees (or lack of them) are also a factor, and the windy and salty conditions are further factors in the growth of trees and how friendly the environment is too wildlife. The story doesn’t use the term “ecosystem”, but that’s what this interplay of different environmental factors is. Changes to one part of the ecosystem will bring about other changes, just as the terrible storm that happened when Grandmother Sibble was young radically changed the character of the village.
There are a couple of things that readers might want to be aware of. First, there is some corporal punishment of children in the story. Janus spanks Jella badly when he tries to steal cherries from his tree, and the farmer hurts Jella’s ear when he takes his wagon wheel without permission. In 21st century America, we don’t generally encourage physical punishment, although Jella does get over these incidents and doesn’t hold it against either of them in the end. Admittedly, Jella was doing something he shouldn’t have been doing both times, and they don’t abuse him beyond the immediate incident either time. Each of them also admits after the fact that each of them might have gone a little too far in their punishment, and both Janus and the farmer do Jella favors, helping him with the wheel on the school project and teaching him how to make arrows for his bow, so the negative experiences are balanced with positive ones. Sometimes, adults in the story also use harsh insults to rebuke children, like “idiot” and “lunkhead”, which we also don’t encourage.
The presence of Janus in the story also leads both the children and readers to consider the feelings of people with disabilities and how people with disabilities would like to be treated. The children are afraid of Janus at first because he has a temper and can be pretty fierce in defending his cherry tree, but they later learn that he actually does care more about the children than his defense of his property makes them think. What Janus really wants the most is to feel useful and to show that he is still smart, strong, and capable, in spite of his disability. Later in the story, when the other men in the village get tired of Janus barking orders at them while they’re putting the wheel on the school, and one of them calls Janus a “slave-driver”, saying that he just needs a whip. Janus retorts that he doesn’t need a whip when he has a sharp tongue. He’s only slightly embarrassed at being called a “slave-driver.” It would be a very negative thing to say about someone in the 21st century US, but in some ways, it actually makes Janus feel a little better that the other men see him as being tough and not someone to be coddled or treated too carefully because of his disability. They even feel comfortable enough to joke with him about it. There is a moment when he’s a little unsure how to take a man’s comment that maybe the “shark” that got his legs should have taken his tongue instead, but when Janus sees that the man isn’t serious about it, he responds in the same bantering way, bragging that his tongue was too intimidating for the “shark”. (His legs weren’t really lost to a shark. That’s a kind of joke/village rumor.) Janus is also thrilled when one of the men makes a thoughtless comment that, if Janus isn’t satisfied with the way they’re working, he should come up on the roof and do it himself. It was a thoughtless thing for the man to say, and there’s an awkward moment when everyone remembers that Janus can’t climb up on the roof without legs. However, Janus tells the children that he’s actually pleased because the way the man made that comment shows that, for a moment, he completely forgot that Janus has no legs. Janus thinks that’s a good sign because it means that people are no longer thinking of him only in terms of his disability. He doesn’t want his disability to define him.
Toward the end of the story, the children do find some drowned storks, showing that an article the children saw in the newspaper about storks being killed in the storm wasn’t all “fake news” as Janus made it sound. At least some storks were killed in the storm. The adults in the story aren’t always right about everything. However, Janus is correct that the storks weren’t all killed. He helps the children to stage a daring rescue of a couple of exhausted storks off a sandbar before the tide comes in, saving them from drowning.
Overall, I though it was a very positive story that provides many things for young readers to think about. Sadly, as of this writing (March 2026), it is out of print. Used copies are still available, although some are a bit expensive, and libraries still have it. There is also an unofficial reading of the story on YouTube.
