problem solving – Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories

The Magic Attic Club

Princess Megan by Trisha Magaw, 1995.

Meg and her friends are planning to perform a short play of Peter Pan at a local nursing home. Her friends chose her to be their director, and Megan is really looking forward to it. Then, her mother does something that threatens to derail the project.

Megan’s mother is a lawyer, and she frequently has to work late. The problem is that, this time, she’s going to have to work on Saturday, interviewing witnesses for a trial. However, that Saturday, Megan’s mother was supposed to be at the high school, receiving donations for a food drive. She asks Megan to take care of the food donations, but the problem is that the play Megan and her friends are supposed to perform is also on Saturday. Helping with the food drive would make it difficult for Megan to get to the play on time. Megan’s mother is tired and in no mood to listen to Megan’s objections that it wouldn’t be fair to derail her project with her friends. Her mother just wants Megan to take care of her obligations for her.

While Megan is fuming about the unfairness of the situation and worrying about what to do, she decides to visit their neighbor, Ellie Goodwin. Megan and her friends have a standing invitation to visit and explore her attic, which has the ability to send them to other places and times when they put on different costumes and look at themselves in the mirror.

This time, Megan tries on a purple princess dress, and she finds herself in a Medieval village in France, near a castle. She meets a peasant girl named Michelle. Michelle tells her that there’s been trouble over the matter of the unicorn and the feast.

When Megan asks what she means, Michelle explains that Lord Claude and Lady Helene are hosting a feast and joust at their castle and that the king (who is supposedly Megan’s father in this world) has been invited as an important guest. At the end of the feast, they want to give the king a unicorn’s horn as a gift, but the problem with that is that they have to kill the unicorn to do that. Alternatively, it is possible to befriend a unicorn and get filings from its horn that also have magical powers, but Lord Claude and Lady Helene want to give the king the whole horn. Michelle confesses to Megan that her mother, who works in the castle’s kitchen secretly released the unicorn that they’d captured for the purpose. If they knew she was the one who did it, she would be in serious trouble.

Megan wants to help Michelle and her mother, and as someone who supposedly has the rank of princess, she should have some authority. However, she’s not entirely sure what kind of influence she can have because she knows that she’s not a “real” princess. Everyone thinks that she’s the king’s daughter, but Megan knows that she’s not. Can Megan find another way to save the unicorn’s life and Jacqueline from punishment, without revealing herself as an imposter princess?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

Some children’s books that involve time travel have real, historical information for educational value, but this one, and others in the series, are pure fantasy. Megan doesn’t visit real Medieval France. This is a fairy tale version of the Middle Ages with a unicorn and an invisibility cloak. There are a few accurate details for the Middle Ages, like the practice of using straw or other plants on the floors and the fact that intricate tapestries took years of work to complete. However, the focus is definitely on fantasy.

The invisibility cloak is critical to Megan’s plan to save the unicorn and make the king realize the value and beauty of the unicorn before someone can kill it on his behalf. When the king sees the unicorn for himself and reads the note that Megan wrote for him, he accepts the living unicorn and its presence as his gift instead of the horn. The problem with the unicorn is resolved pretty quickly, and so is Megan’s situation with her mother.

At first, I was expecting that the situation that Megan encountered in the fantasy world would have more of a direct parallel to Megan’s situation in her regular life, but it doesn’t really. It mostly serves as its own adventure, although it does highlight that Megan is creative when it comes to problem-solving and can be relied on in difficult circumstances. What Megan really needs to do is to explain to her mother why it would be difficult for her to take over her mother’s project without compromising her own. When Megan finally explains, it turns out that her mother didn’t know about her project with her friends. Handling both of their projects requires some careful scheduling and a little help from a friend, but they manage to work it out.

I really like the pictures in the Magic Attic Club books because they remind me of the ones in the American Girls books. They have a similar quality.

Olivia Sharp, Agent for Secrets

OSPizzaMonster

The Pizza Monster by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat and Mitchell Sharmat, 1989.

Olivia lives in a penthouse in San Francisco with her chauffer, Willie, and her housekeeper, Mrs. Fridgeflake. Her wealthy parents live there, too, but they are often traveling and are rarely home. When her best friend, Taffy, moves away, Olivia is lonely. She buys herself a pet owl named Hoot, but that still doesn’t completely help. She needs something to help keep herself busy. Olivia realizes that she is good at keeping secrets and at helping people with their problems, so she decides to busy herself running a service to help people with their secret problems. She has a bunch of flyers made and hangs them up around town saying that she is an agent for secrets and will help people.

A boy named Duncan, who Olivia knows from school, asks her to help him with his friend, Desiree. He says that they were together at the pizza parlor when she suddenly got angry and walked out. He doesn’t know what made her angry, but he asks Olivia to help him find out and fix their relationship.

Olivia’s attempts to help are a matter of trial and error. At first, Olivia thinks that Desiree was merely offended that Duncan gave her the smallest slice of pizza. She suggests that Duncan buy her another whole pizza, but that doesn’t work. Even Olivia’s idea to buy her a lot of different kinds of pizza doesn’t work. Eventually, Olivia talks to Desiree herself and learns that there is another reason why she is angry with Duncan.

It turns out that the problem doesn’t have anything to do with pizza but with Duncan himself. He’s always full of doom and gloom and criticism for everything. What Duncan needs is an attitude adjustment. He doesn’t realize that his pessimism and negativity makes it difficult for others to be around him. Olivia encourages him to be more positive and to develop his sense of humor. Once his attitude improves, so does his relationship with Desiree.