Posted on by TracyC

No Such Thing as a Witch

No Such Thing as a Witch by Ruth Chew, 1971, 2013.

A new neighbor moves into one of the apartments in the brownstone next door, and the first sign that Nora and her brother Tad notice that this new neighbor isn’t a normal person is when they spot a squirrel who appears to be reading a tiny newspaper. The “newspaper” turns out to be one of the neighbor’s business cards. Maggie Brown has a business taking care of people’s cats and other animals. She seems to have a strange ability to communicate with animals and get them to do what she wants.

Nora begins to suspect that Maggie Brown might be a witch when she seems to communicate easily with their dog and when her brother starts getting along with Maggie’s cat, Henry, when he normally doesn’t like cats. The secret turns out to be Maggie’s fudge, which she says she makes from an old family recipe. A person who eats one piece loves animals, even if they didn’t before. Two pieces allow a person to talk to animals and understand what they say.

Tad has little restraint when it comes to the fudge, and when he eats too much, the kids understand just how powerful the fudge really is. Eating three pieces makes a person act like an animal, and four pieces will turn the person into whatever animal they were thinking of at the time. Tad accidentally turns himself into a cat, and Nora has to help cover for him until he turns back into himself. The effects of the fudge are always temporary, no matter how many pieces a person eats, so Tad doesn’t suffer any ill effects.

The children are intrigued by Maggie Brown and become friends with her, although Nora is unsure at first how much they can trust her. She is sure that magical Maggie must be a witch,her fudge can cause problems when their animal escapades go too far, and she doubts whether Maggie is even taking care of her animals when she finds that Maggie has been plucking out a bird’s feathers. She changes her mind after a trip to the zoo, where Nora learns that the bird has a problem with its feathers and Maggie has only been plucking out the bad ones to allow new ones to grow.

However, other people have problems with Maggie. A local shopkeeper resents Maggie after she confronts him about a cat he tried to abandon, and her landlady, who is not an animal lover, becomes concerned about the animals she’s been keeping in her apartment. When the landlady decides to call the health department and get someone to inspect Maggie’s apartment for health violations, Nora and Tad decide to see if they can turn her into an animal lover with the help of Maggie’s fudge.

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

My Reaction

It’s a fun story about a magical neighbor and her magical fudge, which allows people to talk to animals or even turn into animals, if they eat enough. The two kids in the story enjoy having a little magic enter their lives in their otherwise ordinary neighborhood. Maggie never actually admits to being a witch, but she comes to realize that the kids understand that her fudge is magical, and she trusts them with the secret. The adults in the story never figure it out, even though some of them also eat the fudge.

Although the effects of the fudge are temporary, they do help change people’s attitudes about animals even beyond when the effects wear off. Tad continues liking Henry the cat after he gets used to him, and Nora develops better feelings for Maggie’s pet lizard once she gets to know him. The fudge allows them to get to know the animals better, look at them in a different light, and generally give them a chance. The kids hope that, once the landlady has had some samples of Maggie’s fudge, she will also develop better feelings for animals over the long term.

One other thing I wanted to mention is that, while the kids refer to Maggie casually, their mother is always trying to correct them, insisting that they call her Mrs. Brown instead, because she’s an adult. It’s traditional for children to address adults in a formal way as a sign of respect, although people in general have become much more relaxed about that. When I was a kid in the 1980s and early 1990s, I was always taught to refer to adults formally, by last name, although when I was in college in the early 2000s, that habit weakened. I had professors who preferred to be called by their first names, in spite of their academic credentials, and friends’ parents starting wanting to be called by their first names. People in Arizona are largely informal anyway, and many people even have business acquaintances call them by their first names. As a now middle-aged adult in the 21st century, I also prefer people to call me by my first name, partly because I feel more relaxed with the informality, partly because it’s what I’ve been called for most of my life, and also because my last name is a little long and some people find it difficult. I don’t care if kids even call me by my first name because that’s just who I am, and I think they probably have an easier time if they just think of me by first name.

Posted on by TracyC

Lucky Dog Days

Pee Wee Scouts

Lucky Dog Days by Judy Delton, 1988.

Mrs. Peters tells the scouts that it’s Help-a-Pet month. The kids start talking about the kinds of pets they have, and Mrs. Peters asks them if they would like to do something to help a pet. She suggests that they could walk dogs at an animal shelter or raise money for homeless pets.

Mrs. Peters takes the scouts to an animal shelter. The kids like seeing all the animals, although Tracy turns out to be allergic to them. The other kids walk the dogs around the shelter yard. This turns into chaos because Rachel decides to walk a dog that’s really too big for her to handle, a St. Bernard. (The adults should have stopped her, but they never do in this series when a kid is about to do something they shouldn’t. They take Rachel’s word for it that she can handle a St. Bernard because she has walked her uncle’s Great Dane. However, even dogs of the same size don’t have the same temperament, and I think a real shelter worker would know the individual animal’s temperament and not offer an oversized dog with a lot of energy to a six-year-old child.) When her dog starts running and dragging her, the other dogs get out of control, too. Fortunately, they’re all in a contained yard, so none of them gets away. The incident ends with Rachel crashing into a lily pond in the yard.

Mrs. Peters tells the children that they will have a rummage sale to raise money for the animals at the shelter. All of the scouts will donate things to sell and collect donations from others. Tracy tells Molly and Mary Beth that she will help them collect donations. Molly is annoyed that Tracy is coming with them because she thinks Tracy is bossy and that her sniffling is gross. However, it turns out to be a good thing that Tracy comes because she brings a wagon with her to collect donations, which the other girls hadn’t thought to do. Unfortunately, their wagon disappears when the girls try to visit one last house to ask for donations and leave it unattended.

It turns out that some of the other scouts, Roger, Sonny, and Tim, found their wagon and try to claim the donations as their own at the next scout meeting. The boys say it’s theirs because they just found it on the sidewalk, but the girls tell Mrs. Peters what happened. Mrs. Peters smooths things over, saying that it doesn’t matter because these items will be sold to help the animals. Molly doesn’t think it’s fair for the boys to get credit for the work the girls did gathering donations, though. (I think Mrs. Peters should also have had a word with the boys about not taking things if you don’t know who they belong to and don’t have permission to take them. The adults in this series never explain things enough.)

There is one particularly fancy necklace that looks like diamonds among the donations. Mrs. Peters says that, rather than putting a price on it, they will auction it off to the highest bidder. They also have some adoptable dogs at the sale to attract people who might adopt them. It was Molly’s idea to have adoptable dogs there to sell because a lady expressed interest in Mrs. Peters’s big, black dog, Tiny. To Molly’s surprise, the lady who eventually buys the fancy necklace and pays a thousand dollars for it is the woman who donated it. When they ask her about it, she explains that it is a real diamond necklace and that she donated it by a mistake. However, even though she paid a lot of money to get it back, it’s still only a fraction of its real value, and she’s happy to make a big donation to a worthy cause.

In the end, Mrs. Peters congratulates the scouts on how much money they raised and how many animals were adopted that day. There is just one puppy left from the animals who were at the sale. The kids are attached to the puppy and don’t want to send him back to the shelter, so Mrs. Peters decides to keep him as a mascot for the troop. They name him Lucky, and Mrs. Peters says that they can take turns keeping him at their houses. (Except for the kids with allergies, like Tracy.)

My Reaction

The name of the book comes partly because the month is August, and Mrs. Peters explains to the kids what the “dog days” of summer are, although she just describes what the weather is like rather than explain why they’re called “dog days.” The term comes from the period after the rising of the dog star Sirius, but then again, I suppose that could be difficult to explain to six-year-olds. Not all adults would necessarily know it, either. I had to look it up myself to get the explanation. Even so, the name is appropriate because the theme of the book is pets, and it is set during late summer.

I still think that the adults in the story could explain some things to the kids more. That’s often a part of books in this series, although that’s also where much of the excitement of the story comes from, things going wrong because the kids don’t entirely know what they’re doing. Any lessons learned are more implied than spelled out.

The kids also keep insulting each other, even though they’re also kind of friends in the stories. We don’t really know why Molly thinks Tracy is bossy because she doesn’t really explain that. It just seems to her that Tracy tends to tell other people what to do and get her way. Molly relents a little in this book, though, because it turns out that Tracy has some good ideas, and even when she thought Tracy screwed up because they lost the wagon, everything worked out for the best.

Posted on by TracyC

The Pet Day Mystery

The Pet Day Mystery by Mary Blount Christian, illustrated by Joe Boddy, 1989.

This book is part of the Sherlock Street Detectives series.

It’s Pet Day at school, and twins Walter and Ann are bringing their dog, Watson, and their cat, Fuzz Face to school with them. Watson is really Walter’s dog, and Fuzz Face is Ann’s cat. The school bus is chaotic and noisy because the other children have their pets with them, too.

At school, each of the kids tells the rest of the class about their pet. When it’s time to go to lunch, the kids give their pets food and water and leave them in the classroom.

When they come back from lunch, a pair of hamsters are missing, and their owner, Tina, thinks that Fuzz Face might have eaten them. Ann points out that Fuzz Face couldn’t have eaten the hamsters because Fuzz Face was in his cage during lunch.

The kids figure that the hamsters are probably hiding somewhere in the room, and they ask Tina to tell them everything she knows about the hamsters so they can find them. They use what Tina tells them about the habits of hamsters to figure out where they are.

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

My Reaction

It’s a fun picture book mystery, but it’s also educational, like other books in the series. The information the kids give about their pets is true. Some of them say where their pets originally came from, like Pedro, who says that his pet parrot is a breed that comes from South America. Ann mentions that her cat takes vitamins and has to go to the vet sometimes, like people have to visit their own doctors. I liked how the characters use facts about the behavior of hamsters to figure out where the hamsters went.

I was a kid about the age of the characters at the time this book was published, although I don’t remember reading this book at the time. When I was in kindergarten, the year before the book was published, we had a special pet event in my class, but we didn’t do it like the class in this book. As I recall, different people brought in pets on different days so it was less chaotic and there was no chance of one pet eating another, which is a real risk. Also, all pets had to be in cages to keep them from running away or causing trouble, and they were never left unattended. My mother helped me bring our pet birds to class, and she took them home with her immediately afterward, so they weren’t left sitting around the classroom.

The book has a vocabulary list and glossary in the back.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Sammy Keyes and the Runaway Elf

Sammy Keyes

Sammy Keyes and the Runaway Elf by Wendelin Van Draanen, 1999.

Every year, Sammy’s town, Santa Martina, puts together a calendar with pictures of people’s pet dogs. People whose dogs are chosen for the calendar pictures get to ride in the town’s Christmas parade with their pets. Sammy is a cat-lover instead of a dog-lover, so she’s usually not too interested in the parade float with the dogs, but now, her friend Holly is living and working with the people who own the dog-grooming business and who prepare the float.

Sammy goes to the parade early to help Holly and the others to get the canine calendar float ready. She meets Mr. Petersen, the disagreeable man who assembles the dog calendar. Then, they learn that one of the dog owners has broken her leg and will need someone else to manage the dog, Marique, on the float. Marique is important because she’s trained to jump through a hoop, and they’re planning to have her jump through a Christmas wreath on the float. The dog owner’s daughter says she can’t be on the float with the dog because she promised her mother that she would make a video recording of the parade for her, so she has to be in the audience. Various other people also refuse to handle Marique because they have other jobs to do or other dogs to manage. Eventually, Sammy gets recruited to ride on the float and handle Marique.

At first, it goes pretty well, and Marique is a big hit with her jumping-through-the-wreath act. Then, some people show up dressed like the Three Wise Men and carrying cats, for some reason. Marique jumps off the float and runs off into the crowd. Before Sammy can do anything more than shout a warning to the others on the float to hold on to their dogs, both the cats and the other dogs start going wild and running in all directions. Everyone jumps off the canine calendar float and begins chasing after their dog. Sammy searches for Marique through the chaos.

Sammy doesn’t find Marique, but she does meet an unhappy little girl named Elyssa, who is dressed as an elf. Officer Borsch finds both girls and escorts them back to Elyssa’s mother. Officer Borsch wants to take Sammy home (which is a problem because Sammy secretly lives with her grandmother at a retirement community that doesn’t allow children, and they’ve been trying hard to avoid anyone finding out), but Elyssa insists that she wants Sammy to stay with her. When Elyssa goes to buy Sammy a soda, her mother questions Sammy about what Elyssa said to her. Elyssa seems to have an odd obsession with the moon and a tendency to run off by herself (making her the “runaway elf” in the title), but her mother doesn’t want to explain it. Elyssa asks if Sammy can spend the night with her. Sammy says that she has to get home, but Elyssa’s mother says it’s okay if the girls want to see each other tomorrow. Elyssa’s mother encourages the friendship between Elyssa and Sammy because Elyssa seems to need someone to open up to, although Sammy isn’t quite sure why.

Sammy’s grandmother’s friend Hudson finds Sammy, and she explains what happened with the Canine Calendar float. The more Sammy thinks about it, the more she suspects that her school nemesis, Heather Acosta, was one of the people dressed as Wise Men and holding cats. She can’t prove it, but it’s the sort of nasty trick Heather would do. The problem is that Sammy has also realized that Marique jumped off the float right before the cats and dogs went crazy. Just before the chaos started, Sammy heard someone calling Marique’s name, and Marique took off in the direction of the voice. Who was calling to Marique, and where is the dog now?

Marique’s owner, Mrs. Landvogt, is blaming the groomer who was managing the float for the disaster and her dog’s disappearance, which Sammy knows isn’t fair. Then, Sammy’s best friend, Marissa, calls her and says that Mrs. Landvogt is a neighbor of hers and wants to see Sammy. When Sammy meets Mrs. Landvogt, she is angry and in no mood for excuses. Mrs. Landvogt has received a ransom note for her dog, proving that someone took the dog on purpose. Rather than expecting apologies from Sammy for losing her dog, she insists that Sammy find Marique and get her back. At first, Sammy says that she doesn’t think she can do that, but Mrs. Landvogt says that she knows all about Sammy, and more importantly, she knows where Sammy really lives. If Sammy doesn’t find Marique, Mrs. Landvogt threatens to report Sammy and her grandmother for violating the terms of the retirement community. Sammy has no choice but to undertake the investigation. She also needs to find out where Mrs. Landvogt gets the information she uses to pressure people. Sammy isn’t her only victim … and therein may lie the solution to the mystery.

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

My Reaction

In this book, Sammy feels a little awkward about Elyssa wanting to be friends with her because Elyssa’s a few years younger than she is. When kids are young, a few years’ difference in age makes a big difference in terms of knowledge, behavior, and interests, and she has trouble seeing what she and Elyssa would have in common and do together. When she talks to Hudson about it, he doesn’t think that age is such a big issue. He’s in his 70s, about the age of Sammy’s grandmother, and a few years’ age difference doesn’t make much of a difference to adults. Sammy is uncomfortable, thinking about how Hudson is decades older than she is. She likes spending time with him, but she worries that maybe she looks like a baby to him and that he just tolerates her in the way she tolerates Elyssa as first. As an adult who’s spent time babysitting and playing with younger cousins, I know it’s not really like that, not to people with depth to their relationships and personalities. People of different ages and backgrounds can still bond with each other over common interests and enjoying talking to each other and spending time together. People who are young at heart and enjoy nostalgia can also have fun sharing in kids’ activities. Playing kids’ games with kids won’t make you a kid again, but it can be fun to feel like one for a few hours at a time, now and then. There’s also something to be said for getting in touch with earlier versions of yourself that have never completely left you and being reminded of the things that you loved when you were young, another theme that enters into the story when Sammy considers some of the unhappy adults around her and what’s made them that way. During the course of the story, Sammy and Elyssa become real friends, and Sammy does help her to come to terms with what’s really bothering her.

During her investigation and through her budding friendship with Elyssa, Sammy begins to learn the secrets of some of the unhappy people in her community. The truth is that everyone has suffered some form of hardship or loss in their lives, and as I mentioned last year when I was talking about experiencing Christmas in a Pandemic, feelings like this can come out stronger around Christmas. Christmas is both the last major holiday before the New Year and a time that people romanticize as being perfect and magical. The problem is that life itself isn’t perfect and magical, and people can feel angry and depressed when the reality of their situations doesn’t match their vision of how their life and Christmas should be, especially if they’re really dealing with a serious situation or long-term unresolved feelings, as many people in this story are.

There is real grief and loss in the story. Elyssa is still struggling to come to terms with the death of her father the year before. He was a police officer who was killed in a situation that went horribly wrong. Elyssa was not at her father’s funeral because a psychologist said that she might find it traumatic at her age. Instead, her mother simply told her that her father went to heaven. However, Elyssa understands more than her mother thinks she does. She knows where her father is buried, and when she runs off by herself, she often goes there to stare at his grave and try to understand how he can be underground and in heaven at the same time. Elyssa’s worries and confusion come out when Sammy’s nosy neighbor, Mrs. Graybill, the one who suspects the truth about Sammy’s life with her grandmother and has often tried to expose it in the past, becomes injured. Mrs. Graybill’s health deteriorates, and she becomes a patient in the nursing home where Elyssa’s mother works. Sammy becomes her only visitor there and learns the truth about her unhappy past and how the resentments she’s borne throughout her life have harmed her and left her with many regrets. Sammy is actually at Mrs. Graybill’s side when she dies, and the two make peace with each other before the end. Witnessing the death of a former nemesis and coming to terms with her real humanity is an emotional roller coaster for Sammy, but facing her own inner turmoil helps her to see how to help Elyssa face hers.

Not everything in the story has a perfect resolution. Sammy does figure out where Marique the dog is, and the dog is safe, but she can’t bring back Elyssa’s dad or Mrs. Graybill, and there are some people who are going to have to learn some lessons of their own about how to resolve their feelings and face up to their own hardships and bad decisions. The brighter spots in the story are what Sammy learns from her experiences and with helping other people face their problems. People really do have to face up to their situations, even when they’re unpleasant, and deal with their emotions in healthy ways. The people in the story who are the most unhappy are those who have tried to hide from their feelings or deal with them through spite and long-term resentment. Sammy comes to understand the importance of forgiveness and focusing on positives instead of negatives when it comes to dealing with one of her own long-term problems: her own mother.

Before the beginning of the series, Sammy’s mother, Lana, left Sammy with her grandmother while she was pursuing an acting career. Even though Sammy had missed her mother when she first left, she has come to realize that she resents her mother for abandoning her to the precarious, secretive life she lives with her grandmother and for putting her second to her acting ambitions. She feels like being a mother wasn’t important to Lana and that her mother only thinks of her as an afterthought when Sammy was depending on her so much. I would say that there is definite truth that Lana has neglected Sammy and her welfare and that Sammy has justification for being angry with her. In this book, Lana is excited about getting her biggest part yet, and Sammy is mortified to find out that this amazing role is in a commercial for anti-gas medicine. Lana sees the commercial as a possible stepping stone to something better, but Sammy thinks it’s embarrassing and a terrible result for the sacrifices that Sammy herself has had to make in her life for the sake of Lana’s “career.” However, seeing what long-term anger and resentment has done to other people in the story causes Sammy to consider that she should also learn to cultivate some forgiveness in her life for Lana so she won’t go down the unhappy paths that other people have. To get past the parts that she has genuine reason to feel angry about Sammy remembers the good times that she and her mother shared before, the times when Lana was nice to her and motherly, and the reasons why she missed her mother in the first place.

I can see why a little forgiveness can be healing, but I don’t see it as a perfect solution, especially not to problems like Sammy’s. Sammy and her grandmother are genuinely living a precarious life which Lana doesn’t seem to understand or appreciate. Even though Sammy finds a way to stop the blackmail in this story, her danger isn’t over, and she lives with it every single day. If Sammy is caught living with her grandmother, her grandmother could actually lose her home, and Sammy might be sent into foster care because social services might decide that neither her mother nor grandmother can or is willing to provide for her. I think it’s important to understand that Sammy isn’t just harboring a petty resentment against her mother; she’s dealing with a serious situation. Hiding in her grandmother’s little senior apartment with only extremely minimal belonging isn’t a fun adventure for her, it’s actually a serious situation with lasting consequences to her well-being. While her desire to temper her resentment toward her mother with some forgiveness and positive memories can help her get a healthier emotional balance, as a responsible adult, I think that Lana’s failure to address the reality of this situation and her role in it is going to remain an unhealthy problem in the lives of her nearest and dearest. If this were real life instead of a fictional story, I think it’s likely Sammy would be showing even more emotional trauma and would probably be in foster care already. It wouldn’t matter then if Lana wanted forgiveness or for people to look only at her good points when she had fun with her little girl because I don’t think judges award custody on that basis, not to someone with a long-term history of neglect because she wanted the freedom to “follow her dreams.”

This book isn’t a particularly happy story for Christmas. It turned out to be darker even than I thought it would be when I started, and Sammy Keyes mysteries tend to be a bit gritty. I would say that it’s more thought-provoking. I would not give this book to a child currently suffering from trauma because, when someone is actively suffering, dealing with characters’ suffering can feel like pulling double duty or rubbing salt in the wound. However, for those in the mood for a deeper understanding of dealing with life’s difficulties, especially at a time of year when everyone expects happiness and joy, it isn’t bad.

Parts of the story are genuinely touching. Sammy is understanding and gentle with Elyssa and changes her life for the better. There are even a couple of bonding moments between her and Officer Borsch. Officer Borsch was a friend of Elyssa’s father, and when Sammy asks him about what happened, Officer Borsch candidly admits that he was there when he was killed and still has nightmares about it. Sammy understands nightmares because she had them when her mother left her. Later, the two of them help each other. Sammy uses some of Hudson’s advice for a little psychological warfare on Heather that gets her to admit the cat prank in front of Officer Borsch. Officer Borsch promises to put some healthy fear into Heather that will help keep her in line in the future. The resolution of the prank also saves Officer Borsch some embarrassment at the office because he was on duty when it happened and took some flak for it, and Sammy also learns something about Borsch’s nemesis on the force from Mrs. Landvogt that will allow Borsch to resolve a serious problem that both he and Elyssa’s father had tried to solve.

Posted on by TracyC

Aria Volume 2

Aria Volume 2 by Kozue Amano, 2003, English Translation 2008.

The is the second volume of the second part of a fascinating manga series that combines sci-fi, fantasy, and slice of life. The series takes place about 300 years in the future, when Mars has been terraformed and renamed Aqua (because of all the water on its surface). The human colonies on Aqua are designed to resemble old-fashioned cities on Earth (called Manhome here). The people of Aqua prefer a much slower pace of life than people on Manhome, and aspects of life on Aqua more closely resemble Earth’s past.

The series is divided into two parts. The first two books are the Aqua volumes and introduce Akari Mizunashi, the main character, a young girl who came to Aqua to learn to become a gondolier in the city of Neo Venezia (which resembles Venice). Female gondoliers, called Undines, give tours of the city, giving Akari plenty of time to admire the beauty of her new home and meet interesting people. The two Aqua books are the prequel to the main series, Aria. Aqua covers Akari’s arrival on the planet, her introduction to life on Aqua, and the beginning of her training. The main Aria series show Akari’s continuing training, her progression to becoming a full Undine, her evolving relationships with her friends, and as always, her delight in learning more about her new home and admiring its beauty.

In the second volume of the Aria series, winter comes to Neo Venezia, and Akari experiences the delights of the changing season and the celebration of a New Year as well as continuing to learn more about her new home.

The series has received some criticism for being slow and lacking danger and adventure, but that is not really the point of the series. The main purpose is to show people how to appreciate the small pleasures of life. The sci-fi and fantasy elements (the spaceships, advanced environmental controls, intelligent Martian cats, and even the occasional appearances of the legendary Cait Sith) are mainly background to the stories about the magic of friendship and simple pleasures. Each volume contains a few short stories about Akari and her friends and the little adventures they have on a daily basis and the life lessons they learn. It’s a great series for relaxing when you’re stressed out.

The stories included in this volume are:

Snow Bug

Snow Bugs (a kind of fluffy aphid) appear on Aqua at the onset of winter. They are larger than Earth aphids, and they look like cute little puff balls with eyes.

Akari makes friends with one of them when she and Alicia go out to gather some firewood, and she brings her Snow Bug friend home with her for awhile.

However, the Snow Bugs appear at this time of year because they are migrating to their winter home, and as snow comes to Neo Venezia, Akari has to accept that her little friend must move on with the other Snow Bugs as it gets colder. Fortunately, Snow Bugs have long life spans, so Akari can count on seeing her little friend again next winter.

Utopia

Akari has trouble adjusting to the winter in Neo Venezia because it’s much colder than the winters she is accustomed to on Earth. Aika suggests visiting a hot spring, which Akari has never done before because people on Earth are more technological and not so much into the beauties of nature. Alicia takes Akari and Aika to visit a very special hot spring where the baths are built into a magnificent old mansion.

The mansion has been there for years, and parts of it are now crumbling with disuse, but the hot water from the spring beneath it is now allowed to flow through the lower floors of the old mansion, giving it a mysterious atmosphere, yet it’s still a very relaxing hot bath.

The girls indulge themselves in the baths and have dinner on one of the upper floors with a grand view of the ocean. (Alicia is older than the other girls and a legal adult, so she drinks alcohol. She lets the teenage trainees try a small amount to see what it’s like, but mostly, the younger girls have iced coffee milk.)

After the younger girls have a nap, they go back in the baths, and Alicia shows them a special part of the hot springs. Akari feels a little guilty for taking the day off and indulging themselves, but Alicia says that a break now and then is good.

This is one of my favorite stories in the Aria books because I just like the idea of a mansion being turned into a giant hot spring bath, with water flowing through it. The crumbling bits look a little dangerous to me, but it’s fun to imagine what the rest of the house might be like.

A Day in the Life of the President

President Aria may be an intelligent Martian cat, but he is still a cute kitty. He does cute kitty things, like climbing into bags and boxes, worrying about Akari’s hair dryer, and fighting with a hair brush. It even says that he doesn’t like baths, although he didn’t mind going to the hot spring in the previous story.

Martian cats are supposed to be as intelligent as humans, and it’s established in the series that President Aria and other cats have their own community with Cait Sith, the king of the cats, sneaking off sometimes to meet with each other, but President Aria also does things that people would expect from ordinary pet cats, and it’s not clear why. Then again, it might not matter. The Aria stories are mostly atmospheric and about emotions, so not everything has to be completely explained.

Voices of the Stars

Akari learns about the Gnomes, a group of people who control the gravity on Aqua. Alicia tells her about the gnomes one day when she explains why the gravity on Aqua seems to be the same as on Earth even though its natural gravity would be much less strong. The Gnomes live in their own community underground and only come up to the surface from time to time to go shopping.

One day, Akari and Aika see a group of Gnomes shopping. They help one of them, who is having trouble loading his supplies into his boat. Akari offers to take him home in her gondola, and he accepts, taking her and Aika to see where the Gnomes live underground.

The Gnome, Al, is a trainee Gnome, just a few years older than Akari and Aika, although he is short and looks younger and, oddly, speaks like an older, old-fashioned man. He explains to the girls how the Gnomes control the gravity on Aqua by conducting special high-mass gravitational rocks through a network of pipes surrounding Aqua’s core. As always, the science and technology on Aqua are borderline magical.

Al shows them where he works, and the machinery that controls the sending of rocks through the pipes is like a large pipe organ, making beautiful musical sounds as it works. Al becomes a recurring character in the Aria stories.

Auguri Di Buon Anno

Akari celebrates New Year’s Eve with her friends. It’s interesting how they compare Japanese New Year’s traditions with ones from Venice, from the types of food eaten during the holiday to the way that Japanese people traditionally consider New Year’s Eve a family holiday, while Akari’s friends consider it a holiday to spend with friends in public. Alicia explains to Akari that one of the traditions of Neo Venezia is similar to a traditional Italian custom of throwing out old things on New Year’s Eve as a way of throwing off bad memories from the previous year.

Akari and Alicia join their other friends in the public square on New Year’s Eve, and Akari reflects on how much her life has changed during the last year, since she came to Aqua. During that time, she’s had many new experiences and made many new friends, and she’s grateful for everything that’s happened and all of the good memories she’s had.

Akari and her friends stay out all night and see the sun rise on the first day of the new year.

Carnival

Akari is introduced to the traditions and wonders of a Venice Carnival! Alicia explains the origins of the tradition to her.

However, Akari becomes intrigued by mysterious figure dressed as Casanova. Rumor has it that the same person has played the role of Casanova for 100 years, but no one knows who it is.

Aika and Akari try to follow a member of Casanova’s entourage to see if they can find out who Casanova really is. The two girls get separated, but Akari meets up with Casanova, and he invites her to join his entourage to parade through the crowd.

In the end, Akari does get a look at Casanova without his mask, and it’s a magical end to Carnival!

Posted on by TracyC

Jessica the Blue Streak

Jessica the Blue Streak by Sucie Stevenson, 1989.

Jessica is a six-month-old puppy who has just arrived at her new home. The lady the family bought the dog from warned them to keep Jessica in her crate at night to keep her out of trouble, but the family is confident that they know about dogs.

They already have two dogs, Chelsea and Wolf, and they’re hoping that all three dogs will be friends. Chelsea doesn’t mind Jessica, but Wolf bites the new puppy.

On her first day with the family, Jessica runs wildly through the house, peeing on the floor and grabbing random things to run around with and chew on. She makes messes and eats the cat’s food. Soon, she’s even getting on Chelsea’s nerves.

That night, when they put Jessica in her crate, Jessica howls and cries. What can the family do with this wild puppy?

The story is based on a real dog, Jessica, who was owned by the author’s family, who are all characters in the story. I know from my own experience with my adopted rescue dog that it’s normal for a dog to cry at night in a new home. Puppies are little babies, and like small human children, they need comforting when they’re scared in a new place.

Posted on by TracyC

Clifford's Tricks

Clifford

Clifford’s Tricks by Norman Bridwell, 1969.

A new girl moves next door to Emily Elizabeth. The new girl, Martha, also has a dog, although her dog, Bruno, is a normal-sized dog, unlike Emily Elizabeth’s dog, Clifford.

Martha is competitive and brags that her dog is probably smarter than Clifford. Martha and Emily Elizabeth compare the tricks that their dogs can do, although Clifford’s tricks are different from those of normal dogs. His tricks tend to go wrong or cause problems because of his large size. For example, Bruno can retrieve a newspaper for Martha, but when Clifford tries to do the same thing, he comes back with the whole news stand.

Martha tries to show off Bruno’s bravery by getting him to walk the railing of a bridge, but Bruno doesn’t want to do it because it’s too dangerous. When Martha tries to show Bruno how easy it is, she falls off the bridge into the river. Bruno jumps in to save her and also gets into trouble.

Fortunately, Clifford is big enough to save them both.

Martha is grateful that Clifford saved her and her dog, but each girl still loves her own dog the best.

The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive. The edition that I have is the older edition of the book with pictures that are mostly black-and-white, except for Clifford, who is red. However, there is also a newer edition with full color pictures.

Posted on by TracyC

The Cat Next Door

Magic Charm Books

The Cat Next Door by Elizabeth Koda-Callan, 1993.

A little girl (unnamed, like the other girls in this series) really wants a kitten of her own. However, the girl’s mother won’t give her a kitten because she doesn’t think that the girl is responsible enough to care for one. In the past, the girl has had a hamster and a gerbil, and she left most of the animals’ care to her mother.

Soon, the girl gets a chance to prove that she can be more responsible. The woman next door is going away for a week, and she needs someone to look after her cat, Clover. The girl says that she would like to take care of Clover. Besides playing with Clover, the girl would have to feed her, change her water, and clean her litter box, but the girl says that she is willing to do it.

The girl loves Clover, but Clover is very shy around her at first. It takes time and patience for the girl to make friends with her and to take care of her. Once the cat gets used to the girl, the two of them have fun together.

When the neighbor returns from her trip, she is pleased that the girl took good care of her cat and gives her a silver cat charm as a memento. The girl misses Clover, now that she no longer needs to take care of her and still wishes for a cat of her own. Her wish is fulfilled when Clover has kittens, and the neighbor gives one to the girl.

All of the books in this series originally came with charms like the ones described in the stories. This book originally included a little silver cat charm for the reader to wear. The hole in the cover of the book was where the charm was displayed when the book was new. The books in the series often focus on the unnamed main character (who could represent any girl reading this story – the books were aimed at young girls) developing new self confidence, and the charms were meant to be either a sign of their new self confidence or inspiration for developing it. In this case, the charm is a reminder of the girl’s experience with the neighbor’s cat, which taught her what she needed to know to take care of a pet of her own.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

FourthGradeNothingTales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume, 1972.

Fourth-grader Peter Hatcher is being driven crazy by his younger brother, Farley, who everyone calls Fudge because he hates his name.  People think that two-year-old Fudge (he turns three during the book) is cute, and his mother sometimes spoils him or gives in to his tantrums.  To Peter, Fudge is a little terror, and he feels like his parents don’t care as much about him as they do about Fudge.

Most of the book is kind of like a series of short stories about Fudge’s antics which take place over the course of several months.

When Fudge goes through a phase of refusing to eat unless he gets to eat on the floor under the table, like a dog, their mother allows Fudge to get away with it, even patting him like a dog.  Peter thinks that his mother would be better to let Fudge not eat until he gets hungry, and Fudge’s doctor gives her the same advice, but his mother lets Fudge’s behavior continue until their father gets tired of it and dumps a bowl of cereal on Fudge’s head, declaring, “Eat it or wear it!”

Fudge sometimes gets Peter into trouble, too.  Peter’s mother takes them to the park along with Peter’s friend Jimmy and Sheila, a girl they know from school who also lives in the same apartment building as Peter.  Their mother has to run back to the apartment for a moment, so Sheila volunteers to baby-sit Fudge.  Mrs. Hatcher only allows it on the condition that Peter help her.  Of course, Sheila, who is a pest, decides to chase Peter and tease him about having cooties, so no one is watching Fudge until he falls off the playground equipment and knocks out a couple of teeth.  Peter can’t help but notice that he gets more of the blame for that from his mother than Sheila does, even though she was supposed to be the main baby-sitter.

Fudge’s third birthday party is a disaster, with other little kids as messy and troublesome as Fudge himself.  He gets into Peter’s room and messes things up, including a project Peter was working on for school.  For many of Fudge’s antics, Peter is able to laugh about them in the end, but there is frequently frustration at his mother’s inability to stop Fudge from doing some of the things he does or her willingness to put up with them and her seeming favoritism at times for the cute younger sibling.

Then, Fudge does the worst thing he could possibly do and eats Peter’s pet turtle, Dribble, the one he won at his friend Jimmy’s birthday party.  Peter loved Dribble, talking to him throughout the book when he didn’t want to talk to his parents, and while everyone else is concerned for Fudge’s health and giving him presents for getting better, Peter is angry that his pet is now dead and no one seems to care about him . . . or about Peter himself.  Or so Peter thinks.

There is one more present from Peter’s parents and grandmother: a pet that Fudge would never be able to eat, and it’s for Peter alone.

Peter’s parents do care about him, even though they can get so caught up in Fudge’s antics and rescuing Fudge from them that it can be difficult to show it.  Most of the time, Peter is able to laugh with his parents at Fudge’s antics, which are pretty funny, but once in awhile, he also needs them to understand how the things that Fudge does affect him, too.

Reading it again as an adult, I sometimes find myself getting a little annoyed with the mother in the story.  Being a mother of a young child isn’t easy, but Mrs. Hatcher does take out her frustrations on Peter (something she even admits to at one point when he confronts her about blaming him for Fudge’s playground accident and she apologizes), and I take issue with some of her priorities and assumptions about Fudge’s behavior.  Sometimes, it seems like she doesn’t know her own child as well as his brother does and she doesn’t take take pragmatic steps in dealing with him and preventing problems before they start.  At times, I found myself thinking, “She’s making a mistake here.  Does she really not see this coming?”  Admittedly, I’ve read the book before, so I have an advantage, but putting a three-year-old into a suit he hates for his birthday party with other three-year-olds?  Seriously?  Suits are things adults are interested in, not three-year-olds, and many adults try to avoid wearing formal wear whenever they can.  She was trying to dress him up like a doll, not a real small child, and it was more for her sake than for his.  Sometimes, Mrs. Hatcher is reluctant to punish Fudge (admittedly, he is pretty young for most punishments), although she does spank him once when he ruins Peter’s school project, showing that she can stand up to him when it’s important.

Possibly, Peter was a different, calmer child when he was young, and Mrs. Hatcher sometimes expects Fudge to be the same way when he isn’t.  That might also explain the episode when Mr. Hatcher invites a business associate to stay with them for awhile, not considering that not everyone is used to putting up with a young child and some of the chaos that goes with it.

The age difference between Peter and Fudge is also important to the story.  Fudge looks up to Peter and wants to do a lot of the things he can do and have things like the stuff Peter has.  Having two kids with very different ages also makes family life a little harder because the children are in different phases of life and have different needs and interests.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash

JimmysBoa

The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash by Trinka Hakes Noble, pictures by Steven Kellogg, 1980.

The fun thing about this story is the backward way that the girl begins telling it, somewhat resembling The House that Jack Built, or better yet, the old No News Joke. The joke is really closer to the format of the story, with someone explaining the least eventful thing that happened as though it were the most important when it was just the end result of everything else.

A young girl (unnamed) arrives home, and her mother asks her how she liked her class trip to a farm that day. She says that it was boring until the cow started crying. When the mother asks her why the cow was crying, she says that the farmer wasn’t paying attention to where he was driving his tractor and knocked a haystack over on the cow.

As the mother continues to ask her daughter questions about what happened, backtracking through events, the real story begins to reveal itself:

The girl’s friend, Jimmy, had a pet boa constrictor, and he brought it along on the field trip so it could meet all the farm animals.

JimmysBoaFieldTrip

However, the chickens became frightened, and one of them laid an egg on one of their classmates. She thought that someone else threw it at her, so she threw another egg at him, which hit yet another student.

JimmysBoaEggs

From there, it turned into one big food fight, with students throwing eggs at each other, and when they ran out of eggs, they threw corn at each other. The corn was for the pigs to eat, so the pigs wandered onto the school bus and started eating the children’s lunches. From there, chaos ensued until the farmer’s wife suddenly screamed, and the children’s teacher hustled the children onto the school bus to go home.

JimmyBoaLeaving

The children never knew exactly why the farmer’s wife screamed (although the reason is actually in the title to the book), but two things quickly became evident: Jimmy accidentally left his boa constrictor behind on the farm, but he has acquired a pet pig because there was still one left on the bus.

This summary doesn’t quite do the story justice because the backwards way the story starts out is part of the fun. The pictures in the book are hilarious, and the boa constrictor is shown at the end to have become a beloved pet of the farmer and his wife, even making friends with the chickens.

This is a Reading Rainbow Book.  It is currently available online through Internet Archive.