Posted on by TracyC

Linda Craig and the Clue on the Desert Trail

Linda Craig

Linda Craig and the Clue on the Desert Trail by Ann Sheldon, 1962.

Linda and her friend, Kathy, are exploring Olvera Street in Los Angeles before a horse show when Kathy notices a strange man watching them.  While the girls were shopping, Linda bought a small horse statue that reminded her of her own horse.  As the girls finish lunch, Linda notices an odd symbol on the statue that looks like an arrowhead, but before she can study it more, the man grabs the horse and runs off.  Linda tries to chase him down to get the horse back, but the man drops it and breaks it.  Linda picks up the horse’s head and decides to go back to the shop where she bought it to see if she can get another one.

The shop doesn’t have another horse like the one Linda bought.  It was unglazed, and the others are glazed.  Disappointed, Linda goes on to the horse show, where she is taking part, along with her brother Bob and his friend Larry.  At the show, they see the mysterious man again, and he apparently steals the broken head of the horse statue that Linda had kept.  Bob thinks that maybe the man is some kind of smuggler and that there was something hidden in the head that Linda hadn’t noticed.

Linda goes back to the shop to talk to the owner again, and he tells her that the horse was a special order from Mexico for a man named Rico.  Rico said that he was a traveling salesman and that he would collect the horse at the shop, but when he didn’t turn up to get it, the shop owner decided to sell it. Linda asks the shop owner to send her another horse statue like the broken one if one comes into his shop and reports all of this information to the police.  Then, when she returns to the horse show, she finds a threatening message, warning her to “Beware. Stay away from C. Sello.”  The note is signed with the symbol of an arrowhead, similar to the one on the horse statue.  Linda also reports this note to the police, but she can’t resist trying to figure out who C. Sello is and how this person fits into the mystery of the possible smugglers.

Soon after, the shop owner calls Linda to say that another horse statue did come into the shop and that he has sent it to her but now someone has broken into his shop and smashed every horse statue he has. Realizing that what they wanted was not in the shop, the bad guys are soon on Linda’s trail, even kidnapping one of her friends by mistake, thinking that it’s her. They even try to poison Linda’s horse!

At the end of a desert trail, the Mojave Trail, there is a ghost town with sinister characters and old cliff dwellings with Native American petroglyphs that may hold part of the secret to the mystery.

The story contains some anecdotes about California history, which is interesting. I have to admit, though, that I thought that the warning note for Linda was pretty silly. C. Sello turns out to not be a person but a clue about what the smugglers are smuggling, and they didn’t have to tell Linda what it was because she hadn’t heard about it at that point and wouldn’t have any reason to know what they were talking about. If they really wanted to get her to leave them alone, they could have left a more vague warning that didn’t include any clues like “Go home!” or “Go away!”

Posted on by TracyC

The Secret of Stonehouse

Stonehouse

The Secret of Stonehouse by Lynn Hall, 1968.

Heather has lived her entire life (as far as she can remember) in Scotland with her grandmother and her uncle, Donald.  Donald has raised her since she was small.  He’s been like a father to her, and she loves him like a daughter.  However, he recently decided to move the two of them to the United States, taking them to a small town in Wisconsin.  Heather can’t understand the reason for the move, and for the first time in her life, it seems like Donald is keeping secrets from her.

Donald seems oddly concerned that Heather shouldn’t tell people that she is adopted, something that he’s never seemed concerned about before.  Heather has asked him about her parents before, but all he can tell her is that his wayward brother Ewen brought her to the family farm in Scotland, saying that she was his daughter and that her mother was dead.  Ewen simply left her with Donald, never trying to see her or talk to her again and never sending her any money. Heather also knows that, although says that he’s going out to search for a new job, he’s been hanging out in other places, spending time with the mysterious Mr. Worley.

Heather makes friends with a boy named Gus who lives nearby.  Gus lets her ride one of the horses that his family owns, Cloud, and invites her to go riding with him sometimes and participate in local riding events called “shodeos.”  Heather loves horses and enjoys their rides together.

On one of these rides, the two of them go near a large, old, stone mansion that gives Heather a strange feeling.  Gus’s family tells her the tragic story of the family who used to live there, the Selkirks.  They were wealthy, but young John Selkirk was killed in an accident the day that his beautiful young wife, Molly, gave birth to their only child, a little girl named Hebron.  John’s parents never recovered from the loss of their son and passed away soon after, leaving just Molly and the baby.  However, when Hebron was only three years old, she was apparently abducted for ransom and later murdered, and her mother died soon after.  The story makes Heather uneasy, and the house gives her a strange feeling, like she’s drawn to it.

However, other sinister things start happening.  Someone in a car that looks disturbingly like Donald’s tries to run her and Cloud off a bridge.  When Donald spends the night away from home “on business”, someone sneaks into the house.  Heather begins to realize that someone is out to get her, some mysterious person means her harm.  Memories, dangerous ones, are beginning to surface in Heather’s mind, and someone is determined to try to keep her from remembering.

Part of the mystery is pretty obvious (at least, I thought it was, and you might guess it from my plot description), but the part that I didn’t guess was who was behind it all.

Posted on by TracyC

Miss Bianca

Miss Bianca by Margery Sharp, 1962.

Miss Bianca is still a hero to the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society after the rescue of the Norwegian poet in the last book.  Bernard is a lesser hero, even though he was part of the mission, but such is the lot the organization’s Secretary.  Since the success of the rescue mission, the society is keen to perform another rescue, a deviation from the society’s usual role of merely providing comfort to prisoners.  The rescue mission that they have in mind this time is that of a little girl.  (The first Disney The Rescuers movie also featured the rescue of a little girl, but the circumstances in the book are very different.)

Patience is an eight-year-old orphan who has been abducted and enslaved by the Grand Duchess and is being held in her Diamond Palace.  The Grand Duchess is cruel, and some people think that she’s a witch.  Miss Bianca appeals to the Ladies’ Guild of the society to help free Patience.  The Ladies’ Guild doesn’t usually take part in the more exciting missions of the society.  The mice are somewhat concerned about what they will do with the child once they have rescued her because other prisoners they’ve helped have had homes to return to, but Miss Bianca assures them that they have a home in mind for the girl, a farm family in Happy Valley who have lost a daughter and would be likely to take in another girl.  The Ladies’ Guild agrees to undertake the mission.  Bernard wanted to come, too, but Miss Bianca insisted that they didn’t need his help.

The Diamond Palace is a strange place, in many different ways.  People often come to see it because it looks like it’s made out of diamonds, although it’s actually rock crystal.  It’s cold all the time, but even weirder than that, there seem to be less servants in the Palace than Miss Bianca would expect, given that the Duchess is always surrounded by ladies-in-waiting, who would be expected to have maids of their own.  It turns out that the “ladies-in-waiting” aren’t real people – they’re clockwork automatons! 

Rather than being a witch, the Duchess is simply an odious person who has so much money that she can give full reign to a nasty personality without anyone stopping her.  She’s so nasty and spoiled and used to forcing people to do what she wants that all of her previous, human ladies-in-waiting found that they just couldn’t handle her increasingly unreasonable demands, like insisting that they all stand perfectly still all day long while she sits on her throne, not even the slightest movement allowed.  No human being could possibly manage that.  When the human ladies-in-waiting all fainted after trying to keep perfectly still for forty-eight hours straight, the Duchess screamed that they all must have done it on purpose and dismissed them, replacing them with automatons.  The mechanical people are almost perfect because they always stand perfectly still until they’re needed and never complain or have human needs, but the Duchess discovers that they’re not quite perfect because there are some chores that they can’t do and she also misses seeing people react fearfully or start crying when she bullies them.  Keeping Patience as her slave gives the Duchess someone to do those chores and also someone to abuse.  The Duchess has had other child slaves before, but the others have died from the abuse, ill-nourishment, and general bad treatment.  (This is a darker story in a lot of ways from the Disney one.)

When Miss Bianca and the other mice meet Patience, she is also under-nourished and desperately lonely.  Miss Bianca sends the others back to the society to report about the automatons and stays with Patience to keep her company, trying to decide how to deal with the strange, mechanical people.  Bernard worries anxiously about Miss Bianca when the others come back without her and decides to go after her.

The Duchess’s other human servant, Mandrake, her Major-domo, is also little more than a slave.  The Duchess has evidence of a crime that he once committed and uses it to keep his loyalty.  Usually, he’s the only one who gets to go out the back door because he doesn’t trust Patience to take out the garbage without running away.  However, Patience tells Miss Bianca that the clockmaker sometimes comes in that way when he comes to wind up the mechanical ladies-in-waiting.  Miss Bianca hatches a plan that involves making the ladies-in-waiting break down.

However, to Miss Bianca’s surprise, the Duchess commands Mandrake and Patience to come with her to her hunting lodge when the ladies-in-waiting break down.  There is no opportunity for escape.  However, it turns out that the hunting lodge is actually above Happy Valley, and Bernard knows where it is.

Of course, they do get Patience safely to her new foster family.  Miss Bianca actually talks to the girl’s foster mother and tells her that Patience will probably forget about her eventually, when she grows up, but the foster mother likes the lullaby that Miss Bianca sings for Patience and promises to keep it as a family tradition.

The darker aspects of the story really bothered me, and I have to admit that I didn’t like it as well as the Disney version.  Mandrake actually reappears in another book in the series.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Toby Tyler

TobyTylerToby Tyler; Or, Ten Weeks with a Circus by James Otis, 1881.

Toby Tyler is an orphan who lives with a church deacon he calls “Uncle Daniel.” Uncle Daniel isn’t really his uncle, but he raised Toby after he was abandoned as a baby. Toby doesn’t know anything about his parents. Uncle Daniel is stern with him and says that Toby eats more than he earns, making it a hardship to care for him. Toby is cared for, but life with Uncle Daniel isn’t exactly happy.

Toby has a fascination for the circus, although Uncle Daniel says that the show isn’t any good, and it’s all a waste of time and money. The circus is certainly cheap, as Toby can see from the first. When he tries to buy some peanuts, he only gets six for the penny he gives, and all or most seem to be bad. The lemonade is basically water with lemon peel in it. But, to Toby’s surprise, the man who sells the snacks at the circus, Mr. Lord, offers him a job. He says that people who work for the circus get to see the show as often as they like, and he could use a boy to help him as an assistant.

TobyTylerPicToby think that it sounds like an exciting offer, and Mr. Lord persuades Toby that the best way would be for him to sneak away at night because his Uncle Daniel might disapprove and stop him from taking the job. Not taking that as a warning, Toby agrees. Toby feels a little guilty about running away and surprisingly homesick, but he decides to stand by the agreement he made with Mr. Lord and see what possibilities life with the circus might have for him.

Life with the circus turns out to be very different from what Toby is used to and what he expects. It’s noisy and dirty, and no one seems to particularly care about Toby or his welfare. Mr. Lord also turns out to be even sterner than Uncle Daniel, not even telling Toby what he expects him to do, just expecting him to do it. Toby works hard, and Mr. Lord acknowledges that he’s better than the other boys who have helped him, but he’s still a temperamental man and hard to please. Like Uncle Daniel, he fusses about how much Toby eats. Toby also has to sell snacks inside the big top under the watchful eyes of Mr. Jacobs, who threatens him with violence if he doesn’t make sales or if people try to cheat him.

However, Toby does succeed in making a few friends in the circus. The first friend he makes is a monkey that he calls Mr. Stubbs. Mr. Treat, who plays the part of the Living Skeleton in the circus sideshow, and his wife, who is the Fat Lady, have seen Mr. Lord mistreating other boys, and they intervene to make sure that Toby is all right, giving him food when Mr. Lord doesn’t. Unlike everyone else Toby has known, Mrs. Treat lets him eat as much as he wants without worrying, saying that some people just need more food than others. Like her husband, Toby seems to have the ability to eat a lot while still being small and skinny.  Mrs. Treat herself maintains an enormous size while hardly eating anything. She says that’s just how some people are.

When Mr. Castle teaches Toby to do trick riding, his status goes up in the circus, and he is no longer under Mr. Lord’s thumb. As far as the Treats are concerned, Toby could stay with them forever. However, life in the circus isn’t what Toby had once thought it was, and Toby can’t get rid of the thought that he’s made a terrible mistake by running away from Uncle Daniel. He wants to go home and make things right with him.

In the Disney movie, Toby stays with the circus, doing well with his trick riding act and having happy adventures with his monkey friend. Unfortunately, in the book, Mr. Stubbs is accidentally shot by a hunter and dies. The book was meant to teach moral lessons about responsibility, whereas the movie was just about fun and adventure.

In the end of the movie, Toby stays with the circus even while being reunited with the people who raised him and missed him when he ran away, giving an all-around happy ending. In the book, Toby feels terrible about the death of Mr. Stubbs (although it wasn’t really his fault), and the hunter who shot him is very sorry because he hadn’t realized that he had shot someone’s pet. To make up for it, he helps Toby to get back to Uncle Daniel. At first, Toby is unsure that Uncle Daniel will want him back, but he misses his old home so much that he says he doesn’t care if Uncle Daniel whips him for running away. However, Uncle Daniel has also missed Toby since he disappeared. As stern and harsh as he could be before, Uncle Daniel genuinely cares about Toby and welcomes him back with open arms.  The ending implies that Toby’s future with Uncle Daniel will be happier than the past because they have much greater appreciation for each other now.

The book is now in the public domain and is available on Project Gutenberg.

Posted on by TracyC

Four Dolls

FourDolls

Four Dolls by Rumer Godden, 1983.

This is a collection of four stories about different, special dolls.  Each of the stories is from the perspective of the dolls themselves, talking about their owners and their adventures.  A common thread through all four stories is the bond between the dolls and their owners and how they make a difference in each other’s lives.

Even though the collection of stories is from 1983, each of the individual stories in the book was written separately, in different years.  You can find each of these stories as their own individual books as well as part of other collections.  I give the original years of each story next to their titles.

The pictures in the book are wonderful, some of them in black and white and some in full color.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

The four dolls and stories are:

Impunity Jane (1955)

FourDollsJane

The word “impunity” basically means freedom from harm, and it’s an apt nickname for the doll Jane.  She’s a very sturdy little doll, the kind that can stand up to the rough play of children and last for a long time.  From the time when she is first bought, she stays with her original owner’s family, passed down through the generations and enjoyed by various girls in the family.  However, they mostly keep her in the family doll house and play with her in different ways.  One girl likes to sew clothes for her and another, who wants to be a teacher, gives her lessons.

There is just one problem: Jane is frequently bored.  More than anything, she wants to be a pocket doll, carried around in her owner’s pocket, seeing the world and experiencing everything.  She doesn’t get much excitement in the doll house where the girls keep her, and her latest owner doesn’t seem interested in playing with her at all.  But, unexpectedly, a boy in the family comes to her rescue, the younger cousin of her current owner.  Although most boys aren’t interested in playing with dolls, Gideon likes to use Jane as his “model”, taking her outside, carrying her around in his pocket, and giving her rides in his toys, giving Jane the adventurous life she’s always dreamed of!

At first, Gideon borrows the doll without his cousin’s permission, and Jane dreads the day that he will give her back, even though she hates to see Gideon feel guilty.  Fortunately, when Gideon does take her back, it turns out that his older cousin is getting rid of a lot of her old toys because she’ll soon be heading off to boarding school. She tells Gideon that he can have anything he wants, so he keeps Jane, who continues being Gideon’s model and good luck charm.

The Fairy Doll (1956)

FourDollsFairy

Elizabeth is the youngest of her siblings and feels like she can’t do anything right.  She’s always making mistakes and can’t even ride a bicycle.  Everyone is used to telling her what to do, and she receives a lot of criticism from teachers and parents and teasing from other children, giving her poor self-confidence.  She is clumsy and break things, she forgets things, and she is frequently punished for every little thing she does.  The more they all scold her, the more mistakes she makes, and they can’t seem to figure out why.

(It’s painfully obvious while reading it – Elizabeth’s family makes her live in a constant state of nervousness, and she’s afraid of really trying many things because they keep telling her that she can’t do anything.  Her siblings seem more outright abusive rather than simply teasing, and her parents seem clueless, not punishing the older siblings for their terrible, bullying behavior.  I think that the family is meant to seem merely impatient with Elizabeth because they forgot how much younger she is than the other children and perhaps thoughtless to the effect that they’re having on her, but it seriously looks like they’re actually gaslighting the poor kid, purposely and systematically undermining her self-confidence for their own sick amusement, even the girl’s father.  Seriously, I hated all of them (except Elizabeth, whose only real problem is being a little kid) before I was very far into the story.)

However, the Fairy Doll that has been passed down in their family seems to have a kind of magic effect on Elizabeth.  No one knows quite where the doll came from because it’s been around for so long, although they use her as a Christmas decoration every year, at the top of the tree.  Only Elizabeth’s mother and great-grandmother seem concerned about Elizabeth at all, and it is at the great-grandmother’s insistence that Elizabeth be given the Fairy Doll to play with all year, after Elizabeth accidentally breaks a crystal bowl. (Which she only did because her bratty sister Josie shoved her from behind while she was holding it. Why did the parents never notice and properly punish the little brat Josie like they should?  I’m telling you, they’re clueless and useless, and possibly gaslighting her.  It really looks like that.  The father even makes a big deal about what use it is to give Elizabeth Christmas presents like the other children when she doesn’t ride the bike he gave her. Look, she’s just a little kid, and it takes some kids longer to learn to balance than others.  What a weird, oddly vindictive father.)

The Fairy Doll seems to suggest things to Elizabeth.  When Elizabeth doesn’t quite know how to do something, the Fairy Doll gives her hints.  When Elizabeth is in danger of forgetting something, the Fairy Doll reminds her.  In other words, the Fairy Doll does what a family is supposed to do and what her family could do if they weren’t so busy bullying her. The Fairy Doll offers Elizabeth help, support, and guidance.  Elizabeth is only seven years old at the oldest in the story, and Elizabeth’s family is too busy yelling at her for doing little things wrong or not knowing things to properly teach her anything.  They say that they tried to teach her to ride a bike, but I wonder how much “teaching” actually happened and how much it was really just yelling and mocking her for not already being able to do it.  I think they also get kind of a kick out of seeing Elizabeth look bad because they think it makes themselves look better. 

(The father in the story seriously disturbed me.  What kind of father is that hateful just because a very young child has some trouble riding a bike? Also, what’s the hurry in her riding it right away? Bikes don’t come with an expiration date, so it’s still going to be there when she grows a little more and learns to balance better.  Taking a little while to learn to ride a bike is hardly a sin, but Elizabeth’s father makes it clear that he does not care about Elizabeth’s feelings at all.  She has to buy his affection by . . . learning to ride a bike?  Because only bike riders are truly worthy of love?  Elizabeth’s family is really useless and weirdly vindictive.  I still hate them.  They are that horrible, just hearing about them.)

Little by little, Elizabeth’s small successes add up, and Elizabeth slowly crawls out of her shell, becoming more confident while her nasty, bratty, horrible siblings (yeah, I’m still angry, and I wonder if the father’s favorite little darling is the little psycho Josie) marvel at how she changes.

Little by little, Elizabeth comes to realize that she can do more than she thinks she can.

The Story of Holly and Ivy (1959)

FourDollsHollyIvy

Holly the doll doesn’t like being in the toy shop.  Abracadabra the owl frightens her, and she wishes that someone would buy her and give her to some girl as a Christmas present.

Meanwhile, Ivy is a troubled orphan who dreams of a new home with a grandmother who could take care of her.  When other children from the orphanage are taken to spend Christmas with families and Ivy is left behind, she tries to take matters into her own hands and find a family for herself.  Is there someone who could make wishes come true for both Holly and Ivy?

I worried about Ivy during this story, even though I knew that she and Holly would eventually end up together and okay.  She is lucky that she didn’t freeze to death.  Abracadabra the owl is also kind of a disturbing character, but they also get rid of him by the end of the story.  Apparently, the assistant in the toy stop doesn’t like him, either.

Candy Floss (1960)

FourDollsCandyFloss

Candy Floss the doll belongs to Jack, who runs a carnival game, a “coconut shy,” where people try to throw balls at coconuts to knock them down and win a prize.  She enjoys living with Jack and his dog.  Jack has a special music box with a little horse on top, and Candy Floss sits on the horse while the music box plays and Jack’s dog begs nearby.  In this way, Candy Floss and the dog earn a little extra money.  When Jack is done working, he takes his dog, Cocoa, and Candy Floss the doll with him to see the rest of the carnival, and both of them enjoy it.

One day, a spoiled girl named Clementina attends their carnival.  Although Clementina is from a wealthy family, and her parents give her all sorts of things, she finds that she is frequently bored and unhappy.  When Clementina sees Candy Floss, she wants her, too, and is angry when Jack says that she can’t have her.  It’s the first time in her life that anyone has said “no” to Clementina about anything.  Clementina steals Candy Floss just to prove the point that when she wants something, she gets it.

However, Candy Floss wants to return to Jack.  She refuses to accept Clementina as her new “owner,” resists Clementina’s efforts to play with her (much to Clementina’s surprise), and finds a way to teach Clementina a lesson about greed.

In the end, Clementina not only returns Candy Floss but helps Jack to run his carnival game for awhile.  Part of Clementina’s unhappiness is caused by the fact that, even though she has many toys to play with, she doesn’t have much to do that is really meaningful to her.  She is surprised when she discovers how good it can feel to really earn something, like the coins that Jack gives her for helping him.

One of the cute things about this story is that it includes the music and words for the tune in the music box.

The book, which contains all four of these stories, is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Under Copp’s Hill

UnderCoppsHill

Under Copp’s Hill by Katherine Ayres, 2000.

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

The year is 1908, and eleven-year-old Innocenza Moretti lives with her relatives in Boston.  They are immigrants from Italy.  Innie, as her family calls her, is an orphan.  According to the story that her grandmother told her, she was the only one of her parents’ children to survive infancy, her siblings being born prematurely and dying shortly after birth.  Innie’s mother was so grateful that Innie survived that she promised her to the Holy Mother at her baptism.  Then, Innie’s parents died in a fire in their tenement building when she was about two years old.  Innie and her grandmother, Nonna, survived the fire only because little Innie had started crying in the night, and she took her outside to walk her around so that she wouldn’t wake her parents.  Because of that experience, Nonna is deathly afraid of fire and also has become convinced that the Holy Mother must have spared Innie (as well as herself).  She thinks that Innie is destined to become a nun and has continued to promise her to the Holy Mother in prayer, repeating the promise regularly.  Although Nonna thinks that the miracles surrounding Innie’s life are signs of a future life in the Church for Innie, her grandmother’s promises in prayer terrify Innie.

Innie feels trapped by her grandmother’s expectations for her, expectations that the rest of her family don’t even know about.  She doesn’t want to be a nun, but her grandmother is sure that she will be.  Because of her fears that her grandmother may force her to become a nun when she grows up, Innie is never on her best behavior.  She thinks that if she gets a reputation as a trouble-maker, the Church will decide that she is unsuited for a religious life.  Unfortunately, Innie’s long-practiced habit of ignoring rules and her problem child reputation lead her to be suspected of something worse than just minor misbehaving.

Innie’s family owns a boardinghouse where they provide food and lodging for young immigrant men.  Innie and Nonna live on the ground floor, and Innie’s aunt, uncle, and cousins live above them.  Innie spends a lot of time with her cousins, especially Teresa, who is about her age.  Her older cousin, Carmela, persuades both Teresa and Innie to join a library club at a new settlement house with her.  The settlement house helps girls and young women from immigrant families by teaching them work skills and aspects of American culture that they can use as they become American citizens in exchange for some of the work that the girls do on behalf of the settlement house.  Carmela has taken a new job as a pottery painter there and tells her parents that it will be good for Teresa and Innie to go there as well because they will receive help with their schoolwork and they will also have classes to teach them skills like sewing, knitting, and pottery, that they can use to make money later.  However, the real attraction of the club for the girls is that they get to listen to music, have dancing lessons, read books, and socialize with other girls about their age.  The prospect of sewing classes isn’t appealing for Innie, but she loves books and looks forward to borrowing some from the settlement house library.

At the settlement house, Innie meets a variety of girls from other immigrant families, not just Italian ones.  In particular, Innie makes friends with a girl named Matela, who is a Jewish girl from Russia.  As the girls talk about a recent, large fire in town, Matela talks about the czar’s soldiers burning things back in Russia and how she misses her grandfather, who is still there.  Innie understands Matela’s feelings because she knows what it’s like to miss someone.  She doesn’t really remember her parents, but she feels the lack of them in her life.  Teresa also becomes friends with Matela, but the three girls agree to keep their friendship secret because each of their families prefers them to associate with girls from backgrounds similar to their own.  Innie’s uncle wants the girls to spend time with other Italians, and Matela admits that her father prefers her to spend time with other Jewish girls.  The adults don’t really understand the cultural mix at the settlement house.

However, from the very first day that the girls begin going to events at the house, strange things start happening.  Things disappear or are oddly moved about.  Food disappears.  A silver teapot belonging to the ladies who run the settlement house is stolen.  Then, someone steals some pottery and a shawl.

To Innie’s horror, she ends up becoming the prime suspect for the thefts because she was caught snooping in an area of the house where she didn’t belong and because she accidentally broke one of the pieces of pottery that the others girls made and tried to sweep it up without telling anyone.  When she and her friends snoop around and try to find the missing objects, Innie discovers one of the missing pottery pieces.  However, instead of being happy for the clue, the ladies who run the house just think that Innie must have broken more of the pottery and tried to cover it up, like she did before, by hiding the rest of the set.  After all, if she was doing some things she shouldn’t have been doing, it’s plausible that she could be a thief, too.

If Innie is going to remain a member of the library club (and continue to have access to books that she can read), she’s going to have to prove her innocence.  In fact, proving her innocence may also be important for Carmela, who is supposed to have a citizenship hearing soon.  If Innie’s bad reputation causes problems for her at work, she may lose her job and be denied American citizenship!

Matela thinks that the thief could be a ghost from the nearby Copp’s Hill graveyard, but Innie is sure that it must be a human being.  There are secrets at the settlement house that even the ladies who run it are unaware of and someone who desperately needs help and can’t ask for it.

Teresa and Matela continue to help Innie, and in the process, Innie confesses to Matela her fears about becoming a nun.  It is Matela who helps Innie to find the solution to her problem, urging her to step outside of the small community of Italian immigrants that her family clings to and to seek advice from a priest in the Irish area of the city.  As a priest, he has the knowledge that Innie needs to understand her faith, and because he doesn’t know Innie’s family personally, he has the objectivity to help Innie to see her grandmother’s promise in a new light and to understand that her future destiny is still in her own hands.  No one can speak for another person or make important promises on their behalf.  A religious vocation is a serious decision that only a mature adult can make for herself, or not make, as the case may be.  The priest tells her that, as young as she is, Innie should focus on learning to be a good person, and then she will see what direction life leads her.  With that knowledge, of course, Innie realizes that she will have to put more effort into behaving herself, but it’s a relief to her to realize that she doesn’t need to purposely misbehave in order to control her life.

Eventually, Innie’s aunt also learns about the grandmother’s promise and Innie’s worries and reassures her that, although her grandmother can be an intimidating woman with what she wants, Innie’s family loves her and that she shouldn’t be afraid to come to them with her questions and concerns. Innie has thought of herself as parentless, at the mercy of her grandmother’s wishes and expectations, but her aunt says that she loves Innie like she does her own daughters and that Innie is as much a part of their family as they are.  If Innie has problems, her aunt will be there for her, helping her find whatever answers she needs.

There is also a subplot about how girls in immigrant families (at least, in ones like Innie’s family) aren’t as highly-regarded as boys.  When the family is discussing important matters, Innie often tries to comment on what she thinks, but her grandmother keeps telling her to be quiet because it isn’t a girl’s place to comment on business that men should handle and her male cousins sneer at her because they don’t think she knows anything.  However, when Innie’s uncle is worried about the legal papers he has to sign in order to open his new grocery business because his English still isn’t good enough to understand them, Innie points out that Carmela’s English is the best of the family because of all the books she had to read and the paperwork she had to complete when she was applying for citizenship and that she would be the best person to study the paperwork.  At first, her grandmother makes her try to be quiet and her male cousins laugh, but Carmela speaks up and says that she can help her father, if he wants her to, and her father agrees, on the condition that she act as translator and adviser and let him make the final decisions about the business.  Carmela is happy because the arrangement allows her to use her skills without taking her away from the pottery painting that she loves.  The point of this part of the story is about acknowledging the talents that people possess and not disregarding them because they are outside of the usual roles and expectations.  It fits in with the subplot about the grandmother’s expectations for Innie’s future, which are not really in keeping with either her talents or character.  The young people in the story are growing up under different circumstances than their parents, and they will have to learn to find their own way in life, using the abilities they have and the education they can find.

In the back of the book, there is a section with historical information about Boston in 1908.  The fire that happens around the time that the story takes place was a real event.  The settlement house with its library club was also real, and the ladies who run the settlement house, Miss Brown and Miss Guerrier, were also real people.  The book explains more about what life was like for immigrant families like Innie’s and about what the future held for girls like her.  Many of the girls who attended the library clubs later became librarians and teachers themselves, which may be Innie’s eventual destiny when she grows up.  The book also mentions that the area of Boston where Innie’s family lived still has many Italian restaurants and groceries that were started by immigrant families like Innie’s, so we can imagine that the grocery store that Innie’s uncle wants to open will be successful.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The Cuckoo Clock

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The Cuckoo Clock by Mary Stolz, 1987.

Erich was a foundling, taken in by the Goddhart family as a baby after he was found on their doorstep. Frau Goddhart has a reputation for kindness, but sadly, that reputation is really all she has. She is outwardly kind, participating in local charities, only to enhance her reputation. At home, she is selfish and cruel, ruling the house with an iron fist and having tantrums when things don’t go her way. She sees Erich as an unwanted responsibility, only grudgingly raising him along with her own children because if she refused, it would ruin her reputation. Her husband is kind to Erich, but Frau Goddhart treats him more like a servant.

Erich only comes to know real love when he becomes Ula’s assistant. Ula is the town clockmaker, a master in his craft. Ula teaches Erich his craft and how to play the violin.

 

When Ula dies, leaving Erich his carving tools and his violin, the selfish Frau Goddhart tries to take them away, thinking that such things are too good for a mere foundling, a charity case. Before she can get these precious things, Erich runs away to seek his fortune elsewhere, but he leaves behind something that convinces the town that, although he may be the ungrateful wretch that Frau Goddhart says that he is, he has a talent that will lead him on to greater things.

 

One of the fascinating things about this book is the pictures, which are charming pencil drawings in a realistic style.  There is also a note in the back about the unusual typeface of the book.

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Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Root Cellar

RootCellarThe Root Cellar by Janet Lunn, 1981.

Rose Larkin is an orphan, living with her grandmother, a stern businesswoman.  Her grandmother travels frequently on business, so from the time Rose came to her when she was three years old, she just took Rose with her wherever she traveled, tutoring her in school subjects in the evening after work.  Rose’s early life is largely one of travel to strange places and isolation.  When her grandmother is working, Rose is pretty much left to her own devices, often either reading alone in their hotel rooms or exploring strange cities by herself.  Not going to school, she has no friends her own age and doesn’t really know how to behave around other children or live as part of a normal family.

When her grandmother dies suddenly of a heart attack in Paris when Rose is twelve years old, her remaining relatives have to decide what to do with her.  She temporarily stays with aunts who are into fashion and high living before goes to live with another aunt and uncle and their boys on an old farm.  Aunt Nan (Rose’s father’s sister) and her husband are better suited to caring for Rose and can give her a more settled family life, but Rose’s other relatives don’t seem to think much of Aunt Nan, who is an author of children’s books.  Rose has heard that Aunt Nan has no sense and that the family has just moved to a shabby little farm house in Canada.  Rose is prepared not to be happy there, on a dumpy little farm, miles from anywhere, with a bunch of strange people.

Her new life gets off to a bad start when there is no one to meet her at the house when she arrives.  As she waits for her aunt and uncle to return, a strange old woman appears who seems to know her.  She calls herself Mrs. Morrisay and acts like she belongs to the house.  But, when Rose’s relatives arrive home, Mrs. Morrisay suddenly disappears, and none of them seem to know anything about her.  Later, Rose sees a girl making a bed upstairs, but her relatives just laugh when Rose asks them about the maid, which is who Rose thought the girl was.  There is no maid in this house, and Rose is the only girl.  To Rose’s annoyance, her relatives think she imagined the whole thing.

Actually, life in her aunt and uncle’s house in the country isn’t as bad as her other aunt has lead her to believe, but becoming part of their household isn’t easy because Rose is used to a very different kind of life.  The house is definitely old and in bad need of repair, and her relatives are noisy and disorganized, at least more so than Rose is accustomed to.  Rose isn’t used to the chaotic life of a family with a lot of children, and Aunt Nan has another on the way.  Also, tourists who are fans of Aunt Nan’s books sometimes stop by the house, and Rose doesn’t like dealing with their scrutiny and questions.  Sam, one of the older boys in the family, seems to resent Rose’s presence in the house, and Rose overhears him saying a lot of bad things about her to her aunt, calling her snobby and criticizing her appearance.  Rose takes his attitude as further evidence that she doesn’t really belong in their house and that she’ll never fit in.  If they think badly of her, why should she think any better of them?

Rose also becomes increasingly aware that there is something not quite normal about her relatives’ house, especially the old root cellar, and the people she saw on her first day in the house are part of it.  Sam thought that he might have seen a ghost in the house one day, an old woman, and Rose recognizes his description as that of the Mrs. Morrisay she saw on her first day there.  She sees Mrs. Morrisay in her bedroom later, suddenly walking through a wall.  Rose thinks Mrs. Morrisay is a ghost, but Mrs. Morrisay tells her that she’s not dead, just “shifting” through time and that she wants Rose to stay in the house and help restore it to its former glory.  Rose doesn’t know why or how she can possibly help Mrs. Morrisay.

Rose learns that her aunt’s house was once an old farm house that belonged to the Morrisay family, and there is still an old root cellar on the property, a relic from the time when people had to store certain kinds of food underground to keep them cool and prevent them from spoiling.  One day, Rose goes down into the root cellar and meets a mysterious girl dressed in old-fashioned clothes, the same girl she saw earlier, making beds.  Although Rose and the other girl don’t realize it immediately, Rose has gone back in time.  The girl was someone who lived on the farm in the past, during the 1800s.

Rose and the girl in the past, Susan Anderson, become friends, and Rose is grateful for another girl to talk to.  Susan is an orphan herself, living with the Morrisay family as a servant girl.  She and Will Morrisay, old Mrs. Morrisay’s son, are friends, and both of them are sympathetic to Rose when she tells them about her new life with her relatives and the problems she has. Rose finds herself wishing that she could stay in the past with them forever.  However, once they realize that Rose is traveling through time when she goes in the root cellar, they also discover that it isn’t reliable about exactly when Rose will reappear in the past.  Although at first there are only days between Rose’s visits from her perspective, months or years pass in her friends’ lives between her visits.  They eventually manage to solve this problem through a friendship pact where they exchange favorite objects.  It’s at a good time, too, because soon Rose’s friends need her help as much as Rose needs them.

After a terrible fight with her relatives in which her aunt slips and falls and Rose worries that her aunt and the baby might die, Rose runs away to the root cellar and goes to see her friends, discovering that in their time, Will has gone away to fight in the American Civil War alongside his favorite cousin and has not returned.  It’s been awhile since Susan has heard from him, and she fears the worst.  Rose suggests that they go to look for Will at his last known location, but it’s a difficult, perilous journey. At first, they’re not sure whether they’ll find Will alive or not.

When they finally find Will, he is a changed man from the war, and Rose and Susan have to help him to remember who he really is and where he really belongs.  In helping Will to remember where he comes from, his life before the war, and how much Susan needs him, Rose comes to realize some important things about herself and where she really belongs.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

As difficult as the choice is, Rose realizes that she must return to her own time, face the consequences of her earlier actions, and do what she can to become a real member of her new family.  After she returns home and the root cellar is destroyed in a storm, it seems as though she might never see her friends from the past again, but friendship can transcend many boundaries, including time.

I didn’t realize this the first time I read the book, but it’s actually part of a loose trilogy.  I say loose because none of the main characters from each story appear in the others (except, perhaps, for one who is in both the second and third books), which also take place in different time periods.  What binds the stories together is the location where the stories take place and also some distant family relations, particularly focusing on the Anderson and Morrisay families.

It is something of a spoiler, but it seems that the time travel in this story may not be so much a matter of the house being special or magical, but because Susan is special.  It is revealed in one of the other books, Shadow in Hawthorn Bay, that her grandmother was psychic.  Will and Susan briefly refer to Susan’s grandmother and her stories about ghosts when talking to Rose.  Susan seems to have little control, especially later in life, over her ability to shift through time, but it may be her special attachment to the Morrisay house and her need for Rose’s friendship and help that makes Rose’s time travel possible.  It’s never explicitly stated that Susan inherited her abilities from her grandmother, but I think that it is implied during the course of the books.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Legend of the Bluebonnet

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The Legend of the Bluebonnet by Tomie dePaola, 1983.

This is a story about the Comanche People in what is now Texas, based on an old folktale.

There has been a severe drought and famine in the land for a long time, and many people have died.  The survivors pray to the spirits for help in ending the drought, and they receive a sign that it will not end until someone among the Comanches makes a sacrifice of the thing that is most dear to them.

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The people debate about who is supposed to make the sacrifice and what object the spirits could want, but one young girl thinks that the spirits are talking about her and her doll.  The girl is called She-Who-Is-Alone because she is the last of her family.  Her parents and grandparents are dead, victims of the famine.  The only thing she has left to remind her of them is her doll, a warrior with blue feathers in its hair, that her parents made for her before they died.

Desperate to end the drought and famine and to save her people, the girl makes the difficult decision to sacrifice her doll by burning it.  Her sacrifice is rewarded not only by the end of the drought but by the sudden appearance of a field of flowers as blue as the feathers in her doll’s hair.  The girl receives a new name from her people, acknowledging her sacrifice on their behalf.

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A section in the back of the book explains a little about the Bluebonnet flower, which is the state flower of Texas, and the origins of the story in the book, which is based on a folktale.  This is also a little information about the Comanche People.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Posted on by TracyC

The Twin in the Tavern

TwinTavernThe Twin in the Tavern by Barbara Brooks Wallace, 1993.

Young Taddy has lived with his Aunt and Uncle Buntz in Virginia ever since he can remember. When they die during an epidemic, he is left completely alone and afraid that he will be sent away to a work house. Before his uncle dies, however, he tells Taddy something that gives him even more reason to be afraid. He tells Taddy that nothing is how it seems and that Taddy is not really their nephew. He says that Taddy will only learn the truth when he finds his twin, but he must beware because he is in danger. Unfortunately, he never says where Taddy’s twin is or what kind of danger he is in.

Before Taddy can decide what to do, a couple of thieves, Neezer and Lucky, come to rob the house because they heard that Mr. and Mrs. Buntz were dead. When they discover Taddy in the house, they bring him with them to Alexandria and make him work in their tavern. Taddy is only given scraps to eat and he must sleep under a table in the kitchen with another boy who works for Neezer called Beetle. However, by coincidence, Neezer and Lucky may have brought Taddy to the very place he needs to be to find the answers about his past and his true identity.

Danger seems to lurk around every corner in the city, and Taddy doesn’t know who to trust. Even when Neezer hires him out to work in the home of the wealthy Mrs. Mainyard and her two daughters, sinister characters surround him, from the suspicious Professor Greevy to the stern John Graves, who visits the family.  At one point, Taddy thinks that he’s found his twin, but the boy mysteriously vanishes. Will Taddy find his twin and the secret of his past, or will the danger that his uncle warned him about find him first?

This book was a BOOKLIST Editors Choice Book in 1993 and won the 1994 Edgar Allan Poe Award.  It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

This was one of my favorite mystery stories when I was a kid!  Orphans with mysterious pasts are staples of children’s literature and make for compelling mystery stories, and the addition of a secret twin makes it even better!  Secret twins can be somewhat cliche in stories, but this one is good because there’s an unexpected twist for Taddy that he never considered until the truth is finally revealed.

Many of Barbara Brooks Wallace’s mystery books involve sinister characters with hidden agendas and children who don’t know who to trust because they don’t fully understand the plot they’re caught up in.  This book is like that because Taddy doesn’t know the real source of danger to him.  Like other children in stories of this type, Taddy frequently depends on the help of other children because he doesn’t know which adults to trust.

The story is set at an unspecified time in the past, although it appears to be sometime in the 19th century.