Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Orphan Train

Boxcar Children

#105 The Mystery of the Orphan Train by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 2005.

Grandfather Alden is going on a business trip to Kansas, and he’s taking his grandchildren with him. They’re going to be staying at an old Victorian house that a friend of grandfather’s, Kate, has turned into a bed and breakfast. The house has been in their family for years, and one of its claims to fame is that a famous photographer, Ethan Cape, once stayed there and photographed her grandmother, Sally Crawford. Ethan Cape was known for his photographs of famous people, like royalty and movie stars, and nobody knew why he made it a point to visit this house in Kansas and photograph a woman he supposedly never met before, who wasn’t famous at all. People have offered to buy the photograph from Kate, but she refuses to sell it.

The Aldens find the old Victorian house charming, but Kate also tells them that there’s a mystery surrounding her grandmother. Not only does nobody know why Ethan Cape came to see her and photograph her, but Sally said before she died that she had a secret to share with her family. Unfortunately, she passed away before she could tell them what it was. It might have been the reason why she knew Ethan Cape and why he came to see her, but Kate thinks they’ll probably never find out.

A woman who’s staying at the bed and breakfast at the same time as the Aldens is fascinated by the bluebird necklace that Kate wears. The necklace used to belong to Sally, although nobody knows exactly how or when she got it or how old it really is. The woman recognizes it as an antique and tries to pressure Kate to sell it to her, but Kate refuses. Even a professor who is also staying at the bed and breakfast suggests to Kate that she might want to sell something for some extra money.

Far from wanting to sell anything, Kate has been trying to find some old family antiques that were sold years before when her grandfather needed money, repurchase them, and use them to furniture the bed and breakfast. She shows the Aldens one of the pieces that she’s managed to track down and buy, an old desk. It’s a bit of a mess, so the Aldens offer to help clean it up. While they’re cleaning, Henry finds a hidden compartment in the desk with a strange message for Sally signed “Thane Pace.”

When they show the note to Kate, she’s astonished, but she recognizes the name. Thane Pace was a boy who saved Sally’s life when she was a young child. Sally had been skating one day when she fell through the ice, and Thane Pace saved her. Thane Pace himself is a bit of mystery because he didn’t live in Sally’s town. He told everyone that he had come in search of his missing sister. They had both been sent out west on the orphan train as young children, but they were adopted by different families. However, nobody knows what happened to Thane Pace because, even though he saved Sally’s life, Sally’s father soon chased him away, accusing him of theft!

Was Thane really a thief? What does his message to Sally really mean? When Kate’s bluebird necklace suddenly disappears, the Boxcar Children investigate the mysteries of Sally’s past and consider if they’re related to the mystery of the missing necklace.

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

I loved this story, and it’s a new favorite of mine in this series! I love how the children have to look into the past and solve a kind of treasure hunt to learn the secrets of a pair of orphans from the past and the real identity of the famous photographer who once visited the house and his connection to it. Part of the mystery might seem obvious to adults and older readers who enjoy word games, even from my description, but I enjoyed the treasure hunt and riddles that lead the Aldens to the full story of what happened all those years ago.

I enjoy books with historical references, and the story explains a little about the history of the orphan trains, which ran from the mid-1800s to the 1920s. It was an early form of organized foster care in the United States, carrying orphans, homeless/abandoned children, or children whose parents were unable to care for them away from crowded orphanages in cities on the east coast of the United States to communities in the Midwest, where children were in demand as extra helpers on farms or in houses or just as family members for people who were unable to have children of their own. The orphan trains were later replaced with more modern forms of foster care, and there are rules now regarding the transporting, placement, or adoption of foster children across state borders. These rules exist to provide greater oversight for the protection of the children, the suitability of their new placements, and their continued welfare.

One of the criticisms of the orphan trains was that they provided too little oversight over the quality of the foster parents and their treatment of the children. The way the trains worked was that they had scheduled stops, and interested members of the communities could come to view the children from the train and select one or more to take home with them. There was little other qualification for a potential foster parent to take a child than for them to simply show up and little follow-up on the treatment of the children once they were placed with a new family, especially with the early orphan trains. They were known for placing most of their trust in “the kindness of strangers” will little verification. The result was that some orphans were lucky and were raised by families who loved them, treated them well, and educated them, while others were used as little more than slave labor.

Orphan trains were also known for their disregard for the relationships between siblings. They were focused on getting the children placed in homes as quickly and efficiently as possible, and if that meant splitting up siblings because a potential foster family only wanted one child, they would do that, which is the basis for the history behind this story. Potential foster families often had in mind the age of the child they wanted before they ever met any of the children, and they were eager to get exactly the type of child they had in mind. Some families specifically wanted boys who were old enough to help with farm work immediately, and they weren’t interested in infants, who would need extra care before they would be old enough to be useful. Other families specifically wanted infants so they could raise them as members of their own families without the influence of the children’s birth families, their memories of the past, or any bad habits they may have acquired hanging over them. These differing priorities among the foster parents are the reasons why siblings like Thane and his sister were separated from each other. However, Thane never forgot his sister, and he wanted to make sure that she knew the truth about their past in the end.

The disappearance of the necklace isn’t directly related to the secrets of the past, but the necklace is important as a family heirloom and the shared connection between Thane and his sister. It’s a separate puzzle from the treasure hunt to learn the truth about Thane, but it’s still fun and interesting.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Caboose Mystery

Boxcar Children

Boxcar Children Caboose Mystery cover

#11 Caboose Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1966.

Boxcar Children Caboose Mystery - Grandfather Alden talks to the train conductor

Grandfather Alden has a friend who owns a railroad, and he rents out cabooses to people who want to travel with the railroad. It’s a bit like traveling in a trailer, having a contained living area that includes a small kitchen, but the caboose is attached to a train and travels the rails, no need for driving. This story picks up after the Schoolhouse Mystery, with Grandfather Alden renting two cabooses so he can travel with his grandchildren. He will travel in the bigger caboose with Henry and Benny, and the girls, Jessie and Violet, will travel in the smaller one.

When Grandfather Alden takes the children to see the cabooses, the conductor, Mr. Carr, tells them that the bigger caboose has a history, but they’ll be hearing more about that later. A postman, Sid Weston, is at the station to deliver a letter for Mr. Carr, and he wants to have a look at the bigger caboose, but Mr. Carr doesn’t allow it. The Aldens wonder why he seems so curious about it.

Boxcar Children Caboose Mystery - man walking in the rain

When they embark on their trip, the Aldens are able to travel back and forth between the two cabooses to visit with each other. They enjoy watching the countryside going by while the train is moving. At every place the train stops, there is something interesting to see. At one stop, they get fresh corn to cook, and at another, they see beavers building a dam. There’s a man who lives by Beaver Lake who people call “Old Beaver.” Old Beaver is kind of a hermit, but he’s dedicated himself to protecting the beavers and their habitat. For some reason, when the Aldens tell him about the cabooses they’re traveling in and the number of the bigger caboose, 777, Old Beaver is disturbed and runs away.

Benny can’t forget about what Mr. Carr said about the bigger caboose having a “history,” and everyone wonders why Old Beaver had such a strange reaction to hearing the number of the caboose. They find out from a station master called Shaw that the caboose used to belong to a circus train. The circus owner’s wife lived there. A man who works for the station now used to be a clown with that circus, called Cho-Cho. His wife, Chi-Chi, was a tightrope walker and best friends with the circus owner’s wife, but she died suddenly when she fell during one of her performances. Cho-Cho left the circus after that.

Boxcar Children Caboose Mystery - Violet sewing

There is a mystery surrounding Chi-Chi’s death because she used to own a beautiful diamond necklace that was given to her mother by royalty. She used to hide it when she wasn’t wearing it, and not even Cho-Cho knew where she kept it. After her death, nobody could find the necklace, and the police believed that it was stolen by the Thin Man who worked for the circus sideshow. Cho-Cho was friends with the Thin Man and didn’t want to think he had taken the necklace, but people had seen Chi-Chi showing him the necklace before she died, and nobody remembers seeing him give it back to her. After he was accused, the Thin Man ran away, and people thought that was an admission of guilt. The man called Old Beaver was the Thin Man’s best friend, and he blames the accusations for making his friend run away. Nobody knows where he is now.

It’s a sad story, but it confirms what Benny suspected, that there’s a mystery surrounding their caboose. Could the necklace be hidden there, or is there something there that could tell them where the necklace is?

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

Like many of the other early Boxcar Children books, there is often more adventure in the story than mystery. The mystery of what happened to the necklace is a definite mystery, but the Aldens end up finding the necklace more by accident than solving the clue that was left behind by Chi-Chi for Cho-Cho. Once they find the necklace, they understand what the clue was supposed to mean rather than figuring out what the clue meant to figure out where the necklace was. Still, it was a nice story. Finding the necklace also solves problems for the unhappy former circus performers they’ve met. Figuring out where the Thin Man is so they can tell him that his name has been cleared adds a secondary mystery for them to solve. The Thin Man’s name is cleared, Old Beaver feels better for knowing that the Thin Man is no longer a suspect, and Cho-Cho gets the necklace.

The idea of traveling in a caboose, or better yet, a pair of cabooses, sounds like the kind of fun adventure that many kids would enjoy! It’s a colorful way to travel, and while the kids travel by railroad, they learn a few things about the train and how it is run. At one point, they get to see the engine of the train and talk to the engineer. The things they see along the way are interesting, too. There is a point where Benny separates from the others to go see a talking horse from the circus while the rest of the family tours a glass factory and gets to pick out some pieces for themselves. The places they visit aren’t always the kinds of things families would seek out as destinations, but it’s charming that they get to travel this way on a train. They have fun along the way, and there’s always something interesting, wherever they stop.

There is a note from the author at the beginning of the book about the inspiration for this story, a trip that she took by caboose herself:

To My Readers
The Little North Railroad is a storybook railroad, but the cabooses are real cabooses. With the help of six very kind trainmen, I myself took a trip by caboose, riding on the back platform and feeling just like Benny. I ran the Diesel engine, blew the whistle, rang the bell, and watched as the trainmen set off dynamite on the track, just as it says in these pages. As for the story, the adventures are wholly imaginary.

Gertrude Chandler Warner

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Houseboat Mystery

The Boxcar Children

The Boxcar Children take a houseboat trip with their grandfather, but they encounter thieves, blackmail, and suspicious characters. Children's mystery book.

#12 Houseboat Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1967.

Mr. Alden takes his grandchildren on a houseboat trip. It’s a peaceful trip at first, but they keep having encounters with someone driving a black car recklessly. It seems like the car turns up every place they go.

Then, Mr. Alden takes the children to an auction because Violet and Benny have never seen an auction before. They think it’s really interesting, but the auction is cut short because a valuable vase has been stolen. The police say it’s just part of a string of thefts that have been going on in the area.

After that, they visit a place called April Center, which is owned by an old friend of Mr. Alden. It’s a sort of mock town/park/tourist center. Cars aren’t allowed inside, so people rent horse-drawn carriages to go around the place and see various attractions. However, Mr. Alden and the kids notice that the horse that draws their carriage looks unusually thin, like it hasn’t been fed well. Mr. Alden knows his old friend loves animals and wouldn’t allow a horse in April Center to starve. He and the children start asking the horse’s owner about it. The horse’s owner, Sam, says that his boss is a nice man who pays him well, but eventually, he admits that he is short of money because he’s being blackmailed. His brother is in some kind of trouble, and someone threatens to go to the police about it if he won’t keep paying him. When the Aldens talk to Sam’s brother, Jeff, they are surprised that he also has an underfed horse, and he tells them the same story of blackmail. Someone has been making each of the brothers think that the other is in trouble, and they’ve both been paying money to hush it up.

Then, someone breaks into the Aldens’ houseboat and steals a clock, which is odd, and the Aldens think that maybe the thief was actually after something else. Could there be a connection between the break-in, the thefts, the blackmail, and the other strange things they’ve been seeing on this trip?

My Reaction

This isn’t one of those mysteries where readers need to figure out which suspect is responsible for something. There aren’t exactly suspects in this story at all. It’s more the case that the Aldens witness a series of strange and suspicious events, and they need to figure out the connection between them. Actually, the story feels more like an adventure than a mystery story. When the culprit is finally caught, it’s nobody we really know, just a random suspicious character that they keep bumping into along the way. To be honest, I really prefer a more traditional mystery, where readers get to know the suspects and have a chance to figure out who is doing what along with the characters.

There is a funny running gag in the story that the Aldens are allowed to name the houseboat anything they want during the time they’re renting it, and they can change the lettering on the boat as often as they want. Every day, they rename the boat after a different member of the family or someone they know. When they give the boat its final name at the end of the story, it’s a joke on reason why someone broke into their boat, which is one of the most mysterious parts of the mystery.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery Girl

Boxcar Children

#28 The Mystery Girl by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1992.

The Alden children are visiting their Aunt Jane, and Aunt Jane takes them to her local general store. The general store, like all old-fashioned general stores, carries a wide variety of goods, and the kids like the shop. However, the owner has been having some trouble. He’s lost his usual employees, and he has some new competition from a modern shopping center that’s been built. The store is still great as a local store for people who live nearby, but customer service is suffering without the usual employees. At the moment, the store owner only has one employee, a 19-year-old girl named Nancy.

Nancy is pleasant and eager to work, but the Aldens can tell that she’s not very experienced. When Nancy is overwhelmed, trying to deal with multiple customers at once, Henry steps in and helps her because he used to work in a hardware store. He knows how to help a customer pick out hardware, and he can operate the store’s old-fashioned cash register. Both Nancy and the store owner are grateful for the extra help, and the Aldens offer to help out more until the store owner can hire someone else as a permanent employee. Aunt Jane approves of the kids working at the store, and because her house is some distance from the store, the store owner agrees to let the Aldens stay in one of the nearby cabins he owns, like Nancy.

The Aldens enjoy their time working in the old-fashioned store, and they like Nancy, but they soon begin to worry about her. Nancy claims that she’s worked in stores before, but they can tell that she really doesn’t know much about how to work in a store. She’s oddly evasive about her past and her family, and sometimes, she seems to forget what she told them about her past and family before when they try to ask her for more details. Then, they catch Nancy putting some money in the register when there are no customers in the shop and taking some things from the store for herself. Is Nancy stealing?

A woman shows up and tries to ask the Aldens a few questions about Nancy, but they don’t know much to tell her and don’t know why she’s asking. Then, a young man shows up and wants to speak to Nancy. They later hear Nancy arguing with this young man, and the young man says that they will continue look for Nancy and will find her, wherever she goes. Is Nancy in some kind of trouble?

My Reaction and Spoilers

I enjoyed the mystery. It doesn’t feel very high stakes, and I thought the answer was pretty obvious, but child readers might find it more mysterious. Unlike some other early Boxcar Children, this book is definitely a mystery with clues that readers can consider along with the Aldens to figure out what’s been going on and the identities of some of the people involved.

I figured out from the first that Nancy is a runaway, and that’s why people are looking for her and why she’s evasive about her past. Technically, at her age, nobody can compel her to return home, but I figured that her family was pressuring her to come back. I was a little concerned that there might be a darker reason for her to run away, like an abusive relationship or her having been involved with a crime, but there isn’t. She’s just a young woman who had a falling out with her family. She isn’t accustomed to working yet or being on her own, which is why she struggles at the store. This is her first job outside of school, and she lied about having previous experience to get it. She’s also been lying and dodging questions about her past so nobody will connect her with her family.

The Aldens realize, when they see the inside of Nancy’s cabin, that she doesn’t have many belongings. Nancy later admits that she took some things from the store because she needed a few essentials, but she also says that she put money in the cash register to pay for it. She just did it secretly because she didn’t want anybody to question her about why she needed some basic things that most people would expect her to have already. Although Nancy claimed that she was from a poor family and has been on her own for a while, the Aldens know that isn’t true because of her inexperience and because she wears a ring that looks pretty expensive. A person with a ring like that probably came from a family with money, and Nancy couldn’t have been too desperate for money, at least not for too long, or she would probably have sold the ring. Another clue for the Aldens is a photograph that Nancy has in her cabin, which helps to explain who the young man is.

Nancy eventually explains why she ran away from home, and she manages to work things out with her family. The story ends on a good note, with things improving for the general store, too. Nancy agrees to stay working at the store until the owner can get more permanent help, and she’s grateful that she now knows how to do her job better, thanks to the Aldens. One of the owner’s former employees also returns, and the general store proves to have a loyal customer base.

Posted on by TracyC

Imagine a Day

Imagine a Day by Sarah L. Thomson, paintings by Rob Gonsalves, 2005.

This book celebrates the power of imagination and invites readers to use their imaginations, envisioning things that are impossible but amazing!

There isn’t exactly a story to the book. Each page poses something for readers to imagine with an accompanying picture where the shifts from the real world to the imaginary or impossible one are shown.

Each of the illustrations is surreal, with perspective changes from the real to the unreal.

The book invites readers to imagine powerful and amazing things, like “when grace and daring are all we need to build a bridge”, “when you forget how to fall”, “when we build a moat not to keep strangers out, but to welcome them in”, “when everything you build touches the sky”, “when you build the world around you piece by piece”, or “when the edge of the map is only the beginning of what we can explore.” All of this amazing things are things that could happen on a wonderful day! Just imagine a day like that!

The best part of the book is the end when we “Imagine a day … when a book swings open on silent hinges, and a play you’ve never seen before welcomes you home. Imagine … today.” Books are a key that unlocks a person’s imagination!

My Reaction

The pictures are amazing, and they really make the book! The pictures use perspective to shift the characters and their actions from the ordinary world to the extraordinary! Fence posts or toy blocks gradually morph into buildings. Streets become rivers, and rivers become trees. People on swings or bikes start off on the ground and end up above the trees! I’ve shown a number of pictures from this book to show you what they’re like, but there are many more to enjoy!

The pictures are fascinating to look at, and each of them seems like it could represent the beginning of a story. In that way, the book reminds me a little of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. The things the book invites readers to imagine are positive, inspiring, and uplifting, and I think this book would be good to use for a story-writing prompts. Even adults can find this enchanting book inspirational for their creative powers!

Posted on by TracyC

Rules of Summer

Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan, 2013.

The book starts with the phrase, “This is what I learned last summer:” On every page, there’s a different “rule of summer”, something that the kid and his brother learned from their summer adventures.

However, they’re not having the ordinary kind of summer adventures. He apparently learned not to leave a red sock on the clothesline when a giant red rabbit appeared, and he learned not to drop his jar when he and his brother were catching falling stars.

The pictures show all kinds of strange things happening, like a giant lizard and weird plants spilling into the living room, which apparently taught the boy not to leave the back door open overnight and a tornado that came after the boy stepped on a snail.

At the end of the book, the two boys sit in front of their tv with pictures of all the strange creatures they’ve seen pinned to the wall. Are they pictures from the boys’ imagination or memories of a fantastic summer?

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

My Reaction

The book is set in a gritty, urban environment where some surreal things happen. Either that, or the surreal adventures all take place in the boys’ imaginations. They could be turning regular adventures in the city where they live into sci-fi, dystopian epics. There is no backstory to anything in the book, so it’s all up to the readers’ imaginations whether anything in the book actually happened or not.

Their world may be post-apocalyptic (at least in their imaginations), peopled by all kinds of strange creatures and robots. There are no other humans in the book other than the boys. I don’t really like gritty or dystopian style books or art, but this book appealed to me because it leaves so much up to the imagination, including whether or not the boys just imagined everything. To me, the last picture, where the boys are just sitting in front of their tv with pictures they’ve drawn all over the walls suggest that they imagined their fantastic summer adventures, but that’s never clarified. In fact, there are a couple of additional pictures after the story ends that suggest maybe it wasn’t all imagination, but you can make up your own mind.

Posted on by TracyC

Matilda

Matilda by Roald Dahl, 1988.

Matilda is an exceptional child, a young genius with amazing talents, but her parents are dull and self-centered, and they never notice. They can’t understand why she wants books when everybody else just watches television, her father prefers her brother Michael to her, and she is often neglected by her mother, who just wants to go out and play bingo. At a young age, she takes herself to the library to get her own books. She reads her way through all the children’s books in the library at age four, and she starts reading adult classics.

Her father hates it that Matilda likes books so much because he’s never been able to like or understand them. He prides himself on being clever, but he only uses his brain to come up with new ways to cheat the customers at his used car lot. Matilda maintains her sanity in this awful family by outsmarting them and playing pranks on them whenever they’ve been particularly nasty. Once, she uses superglue to stick her father’s hat to his head, and another time, she manages to convince her family that their house is haunted.

When Matilda is old enough to begin school, her teacher is the kind Miss Honey. Miss Honey’s is greatly impressed by Matilda’s abilities, realizing immediately that she is more advanced than other students her age. She is even more impressed when Matilda explains that she taught herself. The school’s headmistress is the mean and formidable Miss Trunchbull. Miss Trunchbull intimidates everyone, from the students to the teachers. When Miss Honey tries to tell Miss Trunchbull about Matilda’s unique abilities, Miss Trunchbull doesn’t want to hear about it. She knows Matilda’s father, and he’s always talking badly about Matilda, so Miss Trunchbull is prepared to believe the worst about her. She refuses to believe anything positive about her. Miss Honey thinks that Matilda should be put in a higher grade at school because she needs something mentally challenging, but Miss Trunchbull refuses to consider it.

Since Miss Honey can’t move Matilda up to a higher grade, she gives her higher level textbooks to study in class. She tries to talk to Matilda’s parents about her abilities, but they don’t want to heard about it, either. Matilda’s father only values skills that immediately produce money, and he doesn’t think Matilda’s abilities are likely to do that. Matilda’s mother thinks that the only thing that’s important for girls to do is look pretty so they can get good husbands who will provide them with money. Neither of Matilda’s parents think that a college education is important, and her father says that people learn bad habits at universities. Miss Honey points out that, if they were really in trouble, like if they were sick or needed legal help, they would turn to people with university educations, but it does no good. Miss Honey finds Matilda’s parents offensive and realizes that they are never going to do anything to help Matilda and that they don’t care about her future.

Meanwhile, Matilda and her new friend, Lavender, have discovered just how mean Miss Trunchbull is. She locks up misbehaving students and makes girls with pigtails cut their pigtails off for no other reason than she just hates pigtails. When Lavender plays a trick on Miss Trunchbull by putting a newt in her water, Miss Trunchbull, already expecting trouble from Matilda, decides that Matilda was the culprit. Matilda angrily protests that she didn’t do it, and suddenly, she makes Miss Trunchbull spill water on herself just by thinking about it and looking at her glass. Miss Trunchbull angrily accuses Matilda of having done that, too, but nobody can see how she could have when she was nowhere near Miss Trunchbull when that happened.

Later, Matilda confides in Miss Honey that she made it happen. Matilda’s intelligence has gotten beyond her, and she is starting to develop powers of telekinesis. She also realizes that it gets easier for her to use these abilities with practice. Miss Honey invites Matilda to the little cottage where she lives so they can talk more about it. They discuss trying some tests of Matilda’s abilities, but while they’re at the cottage, Matilda realizes that Miss Honey is actually very poor. Miss Honey reveals that Miss Trunchbull is actually her aunt, and not only has she been withholding her wages but she’s defrauded her of her inheritance. Matilda hatches a plan to use her powers to get justice for Miss Honey.

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

My Reaction

I saw the movie version of Matilda before I read the book, and I think the book is definitely better! It’s a favorite of many fans of cottagecore and light academia because it has elements of both. Matilda is a highly intelligent little girl whose incredible brain and love of books change her life forever. She loves to read books while drinking hot chocolate, and her Miss Honey, lives in a charming little cottage that reminds Matilda of fairy tales.

I love books that mention other books, and Matilda likes to talk about the books she likes. Her favorite children’s book is The Secret Garden, and she also likes adult classics, like books by Charles Dickens. She says that she’s also read books by C. S. Lewis and Tolkien, but she doesn’t like them as well as some others because they don’t have much humor in them. Matilda thinks it’s important that books for children have humor in them.

Humor is what makes Matilda such a fun book to read! Matilda is badly neglected by her parents, and Miss Trunchbull does some horrible things to the children at her school. In a story with a more serious tone, these things could be truly tragic or make readers angry at the injustice, but the horrible people in this story are played for humor. Their misdeeds are portrayed with whimsy. Matilda doesn’t waste time crying and only rarely gets angry, instead using her powerful mind to devise amusing punishments for the perpetrator and to change things for the better. Readers can relax and enjoy Matilda’s adventures, confident that, no matter what the antagonists dish out, she will always get the upper hand in the end.

In some ways, Matilda reminds me of an earlier children’s book called The Girl with the Silver Eyes because both books involve misunderstood girls with unusual abilities. However, they are not the same story. Matilda is more whimsical fantasy, and The Girl with the Silver Eyes is science fiction. Matilda’s unusual mental abilities come from her need to be intellectually challenged, while Katie, the girl in The Girl with the Silver Eyes, gets her abilities as a side effect of a medicine that her mother took while she was pregnant with her. Both girls frighten and intimidate people and sometimes use their abilities to get back at people who are mean to them, but in different ways. Both of them also begin to thrive when they find people who understand them, especially teachers who help them cultivate their abilities. In The Girl with the Silver Eyes, Katie also learns that there are other children like herself, but Matilda remains unique in her story.

Roald Dahl was opposed to any of his books being altered in any way, but in 2023, the publishers had some of the language in this book changed, particularly words related to appearance, such as skin color or people being fat. It was a controversial decision because of the author’s specific wishes against having his work changed, but the publishers insisted that it was necessary to “ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today.” I can understand the purpose of some of the changes, although I don’t see why some others were changed. For people who want to compare the two versions, there are still plenty of copies of the original version available today. Check the printing date of the copy of your book to see which version it is. Updated books will be printed 2023 or later. The changes were also not implemented in all countries where this book was published. As of 2026, the United States, France, and the Netherlands have not implemented the changes.

Posted on by TracyC

In the Garden with Dr. Carver

In the Garden with Dr. Carver by Susan Grigsby, 2010.

This picture book is about George Washington Carver, as told by a young girl named Sally.

The first time Sally sees him is when he’s traveling with his wagon, pulled by a mule. Sally knows that Dr. Carver is a famous plant scientist from Tuskagee and that he uses his wagon as a kind of mobile school. It contains seeds, plants, and gardening tools, and people come to Dr. Carver for advice about growing plants. The nutrients in the soil of this area have been depleted by growing cotton, and Dr. Carver has been advising them about how to restore the soil. He also advises them about new ways to use common crops.

Dr. Carver visits Sally’s school to help the children with their garden. He teaches them how to use observation to notice the conditions that benefits plants and figure out how to help plants that aren’t doing well. When a boy is about to kill a spider, Dr. Carver stops him, pointing out that the spider helps their garden by eating bugs that are pests for the plants. He teaches the children that everything is part of an ecosystem (although he doesn’t use that word) and that they need to observe and understand the roles each plant and creature has in the ecosystem before deciding to eliminate or change anything. The reason why they remove weeds like dandelions is that their presence doesn’t help the other plants, and they take resources the other plants need. Although, he also shows them that dandelions are edible, so they are not wasted.

Dr. Carver teaches the children about restoring the nutrients in depleted soil using fertilizer and compost made from decaying plant matter and organic materials that most people simply throw away. Dr. Carver teaches them not to waste anything, helping them to make a scarecrow and markers for their plants from scraps of wood and other things people have thrown away.

Eventually, Dr. Carver has to return to Tuskagee, but the lessons he teaches the children stay with them.

There is a section at the back of the book that explains that Sally and her school are fictional, but George Washington Carver was a real person and the story is based around his life and writings. He was born as a slave in Missouri about a year before the abolition of slavery, so he grew up as a free person. He began learning about agriculture and botany from an early age, and as he grew older, he sought out schools that would help him further his knowledge and share it with others. He taught at Iowa State College before Booker T. Washington (see More Than Anything Else for a picture book about his youth) recruited him to be the head of Tuskagee‘s Department of Agriculture in 1896. He also believed in bringing education to people who couldn’t come to a college to learn by sending out bulletins about farming techniques and booklets for teachers in lower grades to use in their classrooms. His mobile school in a wagon was another form of outreach that has been imitated in other places.

My Reaction

I enjoy books about historical figures, and I found this story about George Washington Carver gentle and fascinating. There are some parts that I think I appreciate more as an adult than I would have as a child, making this a book that I think would appeal to readers across different ages and something that parents and teachers would enjoy sharing with children.

Although Sally wasn’t a real person, the lessons she and her classmates receive from George Washington Carver help to illustrate Carver’s real-life work and the lessons that he shared with people of his own time. I appreciated the level of detail the story provided about how people can use observational skills to diagnose and fix possible issues with ailing plants, the importance of understanding that plants exist as part of an ecosystem and that gardeners and farmers need to understand how all parts of the ecosystem interact, and how nutrients can be restored to depleted soil. I can’t remember whether I had heard before about how cotton farming depleted soil nutrients, but I appreciated how that explanation helped explain a real problem facing farmers of Carver’s time and how Carver was helping them to solve it.

I think this book would appeal to fans of cottagecore as well as people interested in American history. The illustrations are beautiful, and even the inner covers are lovely, with small, labeled pictures of plants and creatures. As the book explains, George Washington Carver himself used drawings of plants and creatures in his work, and in the story, he teaches the children to make their own drawings to help themselves study details of the natural world.

Posted on by TracyC

The Little House

The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton, 1942.

A family builds a strong little house in the countryside, dreaming of their descendants living in her. The little house is happy in the countryside, watching the changing seasons as the years come and go.

Over time, things begin to change, though. Other farms are built around the little house, but then, a big road is built, and the little farms gradually give way to suburbs.

Eventually, the houses around the little house turn into bigger houses and apartment buildings. As time goes on, the little house is no longer in the countryside or even the edge of the city, but it’s actually engulfed by the city itself.

The city becomes more and more crowded with taller and taller apartment buildings, more roads and trains, and crowds of peoples. The little house stands empty and becomes run-down. She can hardly see the sky and can’t feel the changing of the seasons the way she used to because there isn’t much nature around her to sense changing.

Fortunately, the little house is rescued from this terrible situation. One day, the great-great-granddaughter of the man who built the house spots the little house in the city and recognizes it as the one her family owned. When she and her husband look into it, they verify that this is her family’s old house, and they decide that they want to move it to the countryside, like when her family lived there.

Because the little house was built so strongly, they’re able to move it intact to the countryside. The little house is happy to once again live in the countryside with the family who always loved her!

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

My Reaction

This vintage picture book is about the nature of change. Growing cities do expand into the countryside around them, so a house that was once outside of the city is gradually touched by and then engulfed by the nearby city as it expands. Readers get the feelings of the house as the world around her changes. At first, she’s a little intrigued by the city and isn’t sure if she likes it or not, but as the city becomes overcrowded, the house is neglected, and she can no longer sense the seasons, she decides that she doesn’t like it. When things change for the house again, she is relieved.

I remember this story from when I was a kid, and I remember feeling sad when the poor house was run-down and neglected in the city, surrounded by the towering apartment buildings. However, the book has a good ending. Houses can be moved, and the family that once owned this house remembers it and rescues it from the city, moving it to the countryside, where they all feel more at home. Things change, but sometimes, they change for the better. The house can’t move itself when it isn’t happy, but the family gives it the help and attention it needs.

When I reread this book as an adult, it suddenly occurred to me that this book was originally published during WWII, when the world was changing in some very scary ways. I think a book like this might have been reassuring to children of that time. Life is full of changes, but sometimes, things can change for the better again.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

What To Do About Alice?

What To Do About Alice? by Barbara Kerley, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham, 2008.

Theodore Roosevelt had done many things in his life, from herding cattle to hunting grizzly bears, but one thing he could never seem to do was manage his daughter, Alice. From early childhood, Alice was a lively girl, always having things she wanted to do and places to go. She called it, “eating up the world.”

Alice’s mother died when she was a baby, only two days after she was born. The loss was very difficult for her father, and people felt sorry for Alice. However, since Alice had no memories of her mother, she didn’t feel the loss so much, and she didn’t want people to pity her. Eventually, her father remarried, and Alice had half-siblings. Because of her father’s political career, the family traveled between New York and Washington, DC. Alice enjoyed this lifestyle and the experiences she had in different places where they lived.

For the most part, Alice’s childhood busy and full of fascinating experiences, but she did have problems as well. She went through a period where she had to wear braces on her legs because they weren’t growing properly. (The book doesn’t explain why she had this condition, partly because the exact cause is unknown. The common belief was that she might have had a mild form of polio, but that isn’t definite.) The braces worked, and eventually, she no longer had to wear them. Her father encouraged her to engage in physical activities and learn to ride a bicycle because he didn’t want her previous condition to make her overly cautious.

It turned out that there was little need to worry about that. Alice was a wild child! She would run off to explore the cities where she lived, and she once joined an all-boys club, sneaking them in disguised as girls! Concerned that Alice was getting too wild and becoming a bit of a “tomboy” (a girl who acts like a boy and likes things boys like – I don’t think this term is used as much anymore because the modern view is more that people shouldn’t allow themselves to confine their interests based on gender stereotypes).

Theodore Roosevelt considered sending Alice to boarding school to give her some discipline and teach her more ladylike habits, but the idea upset Alice so much that he eventually decided to let her continue her education at home. Alice used the books in her father’s library to study seriously. She read books by famous authors and studied subjects like Greek, geology, and astronomy, discussing them with her father.

When Alice was seventeen years old, Theodore Roosevelt was elected President of the United States. Alice and her half-siblings thrilled people with their wild behavior and exotic pets. (The book mentions Alice’s pet snake, Emily Spinach.) However, Alice also developed a serious interest in politics. She became a goodwill ambassador and took part in public projects, like the Buffalo Exposition. Her antics often became the subject of newspaper reports and society gossip. It earned her some criticism, but because she was such a personable young woman, she was also a social success. She gained the nickname of “Princess Alice.”

Eventually, Alice married a congressman named Nicholas Longworth. She continued to act as an advisor to her father and take part in diplomatic events. The entire time, she was known as an irrepressible personality!

My Reaction

I enjoyed the book for its fun look at a colorful character from American history, although it was on the cartoonish side. In multiple pictures, she is shown holding a giant spoon. It confused me a little at first, and then, I realized that it was a reference to her saying about “eating up the world.”

The Roosevelts were a colorful family in general. Teddy Roosevelt encouraged his children (and nieces and nephews, as explained in the book about Alice’s cousin, Eleanor) to be brave and daring, and Alice and her half-siblings were known for their wild stunts and the small zoo of bizarre animals that members of the family kept as pets. The book shows Alice and her half-siblings sliding down the stairs in the White House on serving trays, something that they did in real life, although it doesn’t explain in the text that’s what they were doing.

Alice was both a scandalous figure and an admired person in her time, and I thought the book did a good job showing that. She was an eccentric person who often trampled on social conventions, but she was also a highly social person and pleasant to be around, so she tended to shine in social and diplomatic situations.

Her life wasn’t always as happy and cheerful as the story shows. She had tensions with both her father and stepmother while she was growing up, and her marriage wasn’t especially happy. There were times when she opposed her husband politically, and she is also known to have had affairs with other men. Her daughter was probably the result of one of these affairs. Of course, these darker subjects aren’t exactly suitable for a children’s picture book. The book gives enough of an indication of tensions within her family by showing her father’s reactions to her various antics and the way she threw fits to convince her father not to send her to a traditional school. Overall, the book is a fun introduction to the life of a fascinating but complex person.