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Somewhere in the World Right Now

Somewhere in the World Right Now by Stacey Schuett, 1995.

This picture book explains time zones by showing what people and animals all over the world are doing at the same time, reminding children that, somewhere in the world right now, it’s a different time of day.

The book begins with A Note to the Reader, explaining that it takes 24 hours for the Earth to make one full rotation on its axis and that the Earth is constantly turning. This rotation is what makes the sun seem to move across the sky and creates our periods of day and night. Then, it explains how, in 1884, our formal system of time zones was established to standardize how times of day are expressed around the world. There are 24 time zones, roughly equal in size, with a few adjustments for geographical boundaries. Within each time zone, it is the same time, and it is one hour different from the time zones on either side of it. It also explains that the international date line is an imaginary boundary drawn through the middle of the Pacific Ocean that marks the point at which new days begin. There is a map in the book that illustrates all the time zones we will be traveling through and the International Date Line. The places we see in the rest of the book are also labeled on the map.

The main part of the book shows what people and animals around the world are doing “right now”, compared to a child in the United States. We don’t see the child in the United States until the very end of the book, but everything else is based around her “right now.” The text doesn’t specify where each of the places are, but each picture has a map in the background with labels that indicate the location to readers.

The first place we see is London, England. It’s the middle of the night (or possibly very early in the morning, after midnight but the sun isn’t up – according to the map at the beginning of the book, it’s 1 am), but a baker is preparing fresh bread to sell in the morning. Meanwhile, there are elephants sleeping in Uganda, whales swimming in the sea, penguins protecting their chicks in Antarctica, and a little girl sleeping in Madagascar.

It’s dawn in India, and people there are waking up. People are eating breakfast in Bhutan, and people are on their way to work in the morning in China. At the same time, it’s lunch time in Siberia, and there are kangaroos and koalas eating their own lunch in Australia.

Meanwhile, it’s afternoon on the western coast of the United States. There’s a fishing boat returning to port in Alaska, and a girl on a farm in California. As we move further east, it gets later and later. When we reach Chicago, it’s evening, and people are heading home. In Guatemala and Honduras, children who have been playing outside head for home, and families are having supper.

Eventually, we reach Boston, Massachusetts, where someone is reading a story book to a little girl before bed. It’s 8 pm, according to the time on the map at the beginning and the clock next to the little girl’s bed. All the things that we’ve seen in the book are happening, somewhere in the world, right now, as she is going to bed.

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

My Reaction

This book is educational, showing children how time and time zones work around the world, but it’s also a good, gentle bedtime story. Although we don’t really know it until the very end, it’s framed around a girl who is going to bed and is hearing a bedtime story. It is relaxing to think about how different things are happening in different places, to people and animals around the world, almost counting them off like counting sheep. No matter when it is or where you are, there’s someone, somewhere in the world, going through a different point in their day.

I found the human parts of the story more interesting than the animal portions, but I think children would enjoy hearing about the animals and seeing the animal pictures. It’s also relaxing to think about animals just going about their routines, like people go about theirs. There’s nothing stressful happening to any of the people or animals in the story.

I remember, when I was younger, I sometimes pictured things happening around the world when I had trouble sleeping. I can’t remember why I started doing this, if it was because I read this book or one like it. Somehow, though, I found it reassuring to think that, somewhere, it was daytime for someone else and that there were always people awake somewhere. It might be just me, but somehow, I found that idea reassuring because it meant that there were other people taking care of things, and it was their turn to be awake and do things, so I could have my turn to relax and rest.

All in a Day is a picture book on a similar theme, but instead of just showing what’s happening around the world at one particular moment, All in a Day follows children in various countries through the course of an entire day.

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All In a Day

All in a Day by Mitsumasa Anno and others, 1986.

The format of this book is a little unusual. The book was a cooperative project among authors and illustrators from different countries to show children what is happening around the world at the same moment in different time zones.

Mitsumasa Anno, the primary author of the book, is from Japan, but he writes as a boy called Sailor Oliver Smith, or “SOS”, who has been shipwrecked with his dog on an uninhabited island near the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean at noon on January 1 (which is also midnight on New Year’s Eve, Greenwich Mean Time). He is on the island for a full day before he is rescued, sending out appeals for help and thinking about what other children around the world are doing at every hour of the day as they celebrate the New Year.

As you read through the book, the small pictures of the children in different countries tell a complete story for each child in each country. The little mini-stories within the main story are presented almost comic book style. They contain no text themselves, but the boy on the island offers commentary on what’s happening with the children in other countries. During the time when SOS is asleep on his island, his dog, Matey, takes over the narration.

Children in Brazil are making and flying kites with their family and going swimming at the beach. People in Australia also go to the beach because it’s summer there in January, and they camp out overnight. A boy in the US sneaks out of bed to get a look at the party his parents are having at midnight, and is woken by his cat the next morning. The boy in England wakes up his too parents early in the morning by playing his trumpet. People in Kenya go a busy market and have dinner as a family. Children in China set off firecrackers, watch fireworks, and eat special foods. The story in Japan is about a little girl whose toy is stolen by a dog, and her cat chases after the dog to get it back. At first, they worry because the cat doesn’t return home for dinner, but the cat eventually comes in late with the toy, eats its fish, and goes to bed. Because this book was written in the 1980s, the book refers to Russia as the Soviet Union. The boy in the Soviet Union goes sledding with his friends and tries to ride his bike in the snow, which doesn’t work well. Children in various countries watch tv and read books during the day, and readers get to see their dreams when they sleep. At the end of the book, SOS sees a ship coming to pick him up at 9 am on January 2.

There is a message at the beginning of the book from all of the authors and illustrators who participated about children around the world, encouraging children to think about children in other places and what they might be doing throughout their day. Because it’s a different time of day in different places, some children are asleep in bed while others are awake and playing. However, it reminds readers that, no matter who we are, where we live on Earth, or what we look like, we’re all human beings on the same planet with the same sun and moon looking down on our days and nights. It’s a call for empathy and unity among nations and the people who live everywhere on Earth. In the back of the book, there is more scientific information about the movement of the Earth around the sun and the rotation of the planet and what makes different time zones. There is also information about the different authors and illustrators around the world who contributed to the project.

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

My Reaction

I have a vague memory of reading this book when I was young, but I can’t remember exactly when I read it. I think I was an older child because I already understood the concept of different time zones. I do think that kids who are a little older would get more out of the story and the concept of different time zones than very young children.

Older children would also probably find it easier to follow the different story lines of the children in each country. The format of the story may be a little difficult for very young children to follow because it does feel a little disjointed, getting just a snippet of each child’s day and night per page. However, the book is interesting to reread multiple times, following each child’s day, and I remember being fascinated by the notion of what everyone around the world was doing at different times.

The call for people to think about other people in other places and the call for international understanding is a nice, peaceful message for the New Year. As an adult, I was interested in seeing which authors and illustrators contributed to the book. Each set of illustrations for different countries has a different style. The illustrator for the boy in the US is Eric Carle, known for The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Not all of the illustrators are actually from the countries they illustrated, but more are. The two exceptions were for Brazil and Kenya, but the illustrator who did the pictures for Brazil did live there for a time, and the the couple who did the pictures for Kenya wrote and illustrated other books about Africa.

Somewhere in the World Right Now is a picture book on a similar theme, but instead of following children around the world through an entire day, it just shows what’s happening around the world at one particular moment. I think that makes Somewhere in the World Right Now a little easier to follow for younger children.

Posted on by TracyC

Changes for Kirsten

Kirsten, An American Girl

Changes for Kirsten by Janet Beeler Shaw, 1988.

It’s winter, and Kirsten’s brother, Lars, is going to set animal traps in the woods with his friend, John Stewart, who lives nearby. Kirsten is friends with John’s sister, Mary. Trapping animals for their pelts is one of the ways that the boys make some extra money. The local men are all away, working at a logging camp for the winter. Kirsten isn’t really interested in trapping animals so much as she just wants to get out of her family’s little cabin because she’s been cooped up due to the winter weather, so she persuades the boys to let her come along on their trapping expedition.

As they go through the woods, Kirsten spots an animal snare that someone else set out, and John explains that there’s an old trapper called Old Jack who lives by himself in the woods. He has no family and often prefers to be by himself and avoids meeting many people, although he sometimes helps locals with their own traps. The snare is probably one of his traps. When they find a trap that has a baby raccoon caught by the tail, the boys say that it’s too small for them to kill it for its pelt, and Kirsten feels sorry for it. She persuades them to let her take it home and nurse it back to health, like she did with an injured bird, before releasing it into the wild again.

Kirsten is supposed to leave the little raccoon in the barn because, as her family tries to explain to her, wild animals are wild and uncontrollable. However, Kirsten feels sorry for the little thing because the barn is cold, so she brings it into the cabin. It turns out to be a terrible idea. The raccoon gets loose and knocks over an oil lamp that sets the cabin on fire! Kirsten makes her her little brother and sister get out safely, and when she realizes that the fire is spreading too fast for her to stop it, she manages to save the painted trunk with some of her family’s most important belongings. Unfortunately, the cabin is completely destroyed.

Kirsten’s aunt takes in Kirsten, her mother, and her siblings. It’s a little crowded in her house, but at least, they have a place to go. Everyone is understandably upset, although they are not too hard on Kirsten for causing the disaster. However, her mother says that they had been hoping that maybe they could buy a little land with the money Kirsten’s father is making at the logging camp, but she doesn’t see how they can now. They’re going to have to build a new cabin and replace some of essentials that they lost in the fire.

Then, John and Mary Stewart tell the Larsons that their family will be moving to Oregon because their father has found a new job managing a logging camp there. Kirsten is sorry to see the Stewarts leave because they’ve been good friends, but Aunt Inger points out that the Larsons’ problems will be solved if they can manage to buy the Stewarts’ house. The Stewarts’ house is much bigger than the little cabin where the Larsons lived, and the Stewarts will have to sell their home before they can move anyway. The problem is that the Larsons just don’t have the money to afford the Stewarts’ house.

All Lars can think to do is try to make more money through trapping. Kirsten goes along to help him, and one evening, they stay out much later than they mean to and get lost in the dark woods. When the spot some human tracks in the snow, they think that they are probably the tracks of Old Jack, the trapper hermit. Kirsten thinks that Old Jack sounds frightening, but with no one else to turn to for help and shelter, they decide to follow the tracks to where Old Jack lives. When they find Old Jack’s home in a cave that he has turned into a rough house, they make an important discovery that changes everything for the Larsons.

The book ends with a section of historical information that explains how new settlers moving westward turned frontier areas like the area where Kirsten’s family lived into more settled towns. The farms where people lived became less isolated, and railroads connected cities and rural areas across the country. The first transcontinental railroad in the United States was completed by the time Kirsten would have turned 24 years old, changing the ways that people and goods traveled.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

This was one of the books that I remember I didn’t like in the Kirsten series when I was a kid because it’s just so painful when the family’s cabin burns. Reading the book again, I appreciated how the family wasn’t overly hard on Kirsten about bringing the raccoon into the cabin that caused the fire. I couldn’t really blame the others if they were upset with Kirsten because it’s a major disaster that destroys their home and leaves them in a very precarious position. However, even though they’re understandably upset at the situation, it is nice that they don’t lay a guilt trip on Kirsten about it because that would have made it a much sadder story.

It also helps that the situation works out for the best in the end. When they hear that the Stewarts are moving, they do want the Stewarts’ house, but they just don’t think they will be able to afford it. What changes for the Larsons is that they receive an unusual sort of inheritance from Old Jack. When Kirsten and Lars are lost in the woods and seek shelter from Old Jack, they discover that Old Jack has died. There doesn’t appear to be any foul play. Old Jack was an elderly man, and he seems to have died from natural causes in his house. It’s a grim discovery, but while Kirsten and Lars shelter in his house with the body overnight, they also realize that Old Jack has a hoard of fine animal pelts. Since Old Jack has no family and no one to inherit his property, there is no dispute that the Larsons can claim his pelts because they found his body and plan to arrange for his burial. With the money that Old Jack’s pelts bring, they are able to afford the Stewarts’ house, which is much better than their old cabin. The Stewarts also leave them some furniture and household supplies.

I do like it that the story worked out for the best, although I wasn’t fond of the theme of trapping animals for pelts. I remember that this was an aspect of other books that I read as a kid, like Where the Red Fern Grows, but I never liked hearing or reading about it. I understand hunting for food, and I know the family in the story traps animals for fur because they badly need money, but it’s not a subject that I enjoy hearing about. The metal traps the boys use for trapping animals are considered inhumane in modern times, and their use is now banned or restricted in many countries and states.

Posted on by TracyC

Homespun Sarah

Homespun Sarah by Verla Kay, illustrated by Ted Rand, 2003.

This picture book tells a story in rhyme about a girl living in 18th century Pennsylvania and what she and her family do to make her a new dress when she begins outgrowing her old one.

As Sarah gets dressed one morning, her old dress is noticeably tight, and it’s beginning to get too short for her. Because her family lives on a farm, they must produce most of what they need themselves, and that includes clothing. For Sarah to have a new dress, they must make one themselves entirely from scratch, which is what “homespun” means – they make the dress from homemade cloth from yarn that they have spun themselves.

Various family members carry out different household chores, and as the story continues, readers see how everything they do is not only a part of the family’s daily life but also contributes to the creation of the new dress. The family raises sheep, so they must start by sheering the sheep to get the wool for the dress.

In between doing routine chores, like doing the laundry and making new candles, they card and comb the wool and spin it into yarn with their spinning wheel. The family also owns a large loom, which is how they weave the wool yarn and flax into cloth called linsey-woolsey. The cloth they make is blue and red, dyed using plants that they have produced and gathered.

Once they’ve made the homespun cloth, Sarah’s mother measures her to plan the size of the dress and sews the dress. Sarah gets a new red dress, while her younger sister gets a blue one. Sarah is excited about her new dress, which fits her much better than the old one, and spins around to show it off!

The author’s note at the beginning of the book says that the story is set in Pennsylvania during the 1700s, and she wanted to show how people lived during that time, having to produce everything or almost everything they used by themselves. It also shows various aspects of family life, from where and how they slept to what they ate. The characters in the book, even the children, are shown drinking beer, but the author explains that is because water wasn’t considered entirely safe to drink. The beer they drank back then was very weak and “barely alcoholic”, which was why the children could have it. (We have water treatment facilities and devices available in the United States in modern times to ensure the quality of the water, so this isn’t something that we typically do now, especially with children, and I have more to say about this in my reaction.)

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

My Reaction

When I was a kid, I often skipped over prefaces and author’s notes because I just wanted to get to the story, but the author’s note really adds some historical depth and helps to clarify some aspects of the story that children might misunderstand. For example, I thought that the clarification about the mention of the characters drinking beer was important. Alcohol, chemically speaking, is actually a mild poison. It’s mild enough that humans can have it in small amounts without dying or even becoming ill (although we can get sick or die from large amounts, and some people have a greater or weaker natural tolerance to it, compared to each other), but even weak alcohol might kill germs in water and make it safer for humans to drink. This is the way it’s being used in this book. Because this book is for children, it’s helpful to explain this so that child readers understand that what the characters have isn’t quite the same as modern beer and that it’s not okay for children to drink modern beer in the same way. I think this is good book for parents or other adults to read with kids, so the adults can point this out to kids and help them to understand other historical elements of the story that they might miss or misunderstand.

The author’s note also explains that, because people during the time the story is set, had to make their own clothes by hand, and making was a very time-consuming, labor-intensive process, people had far fewer clothes back then than they do now. It was common for someone to have only one set of clothes that they wore every day until they were no long usable. Getting a new set of clothes was an exciting occasion, and that’s what the story in the book tries to capture. When readers see what this family goes through to create just one new dress for a girl who is outgrowing her last one, they can understand how much that dress means to the girl who receives it.

I love books that show how things are made, so I appreciated this book for the process it shows. However, because the story is told in short, simple rhymes and focuses on the how the process would look to a casual observer without getting too detailed, I felt like there were many parts of the process that were implied rather than stated. For example, they don’t explicitly mention that the red and blue dyes for the cloth came from the red berries the girls gathered or the blue flowers of the flax plant, but it’s implied by the earlier mentions of these plants and the way the book showed the characters gathering them. That could be enough for a casual reader, but I’m the kind of person who likes hearing the details of the process, so I would have liked more detailed explanations.

I did appreciate the way the book showed aspects of daily life in the 18th century. Some of them are explained in the author’s note, but there are also other parts of daily life to notice in the pictures. One of my favorite ones was the way that the youngest child in the family is tied to her mother or older sister’s apron strings to keep her from wandering away and getting into trouble while they’re doing their chores.

Posted on by TracyC

The Halloween Play

The Halloween Play by Felicia Bond, 1983.

Halloween is coming, and the students in Roger’s class at school are preparing for their Halloween play. The class rehearses their play every day, and they make invitations to the play to send out to people in town.

On the night of the play, the school’s auditorium is full of people waiting to watch the play, and Roger waits backstage for his turn to go on stage. He doesn’t have a big role in the play, but his role is important.

The other students in Roger’s class go on stage, dressed as witches, ghosts, and skeletons. They perform the songs and dances they’ve rehearsed. The audience laughs at the funny parts, and everyone is enjoying the play.

All the time, Roger is backstage, listening and preparing for his part. He counts down the lines until the moment comes when Roger steps on stage for the play’s finale!

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

My Reaction

I remember reading this book when I was a little kid, and it was a Halloween favorite of mine! Felicia Bond is better known today as the illustrator (but not the author) of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, which was originally published two years after this particular picture book. The art style between the two books is noticeably similar, but the book about the Halloween play is different because this is about mice who live like people and do not interact with humans. I was also amused that one of the student mice in this book was dressed in an orange shirt with a black zig-zag and black shorts, like the cartoon character Charlie Brown, who wears a yellow shirt with a black zig-zag and black shorts. The tv special It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was known for popularizing the concept of Halloween tv specials, and Roger the mouse plays a large pumpkin in his class’s Halloween play, although Roger isn’t the mouse wearing the Charlie Brown style clothes. Roger is the one in the sweater with an R on the front. I was just amused by this little detail in the pictures of his class.

This picture book is a sweet little story about a mouse boy and the Halloween play given by his class. School plays on a wide variety of themes are a common experience for human children attending both public and private schools, and they are often memorable points in children’s school experiences. They can also be very emotional experiences. Students can be nervous about plays and being on stage in front of an audience, and sometimes, there are conflicts about which students get the best parts. This cute little picture book doesn’t have any drama in it and doesn’t talk about stage fright, although there are other children’s books that address these issues.

Instead, the story is more about a magical evening and the small but important role played by one particular student. Much of the story shows the build-up to the play, and when the play begins, Roger only appears on stage at the end of the play. The rest of the time, he’s listening to the other students from back stage, waiting for his cue to step into the spotlight. We don’t know exactly what the play is about, but it’s not that important. Those quiet moments of anticipation backstage are magical, and Roger will never forget how exciting this evening has been!

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Stonestruck

Stonestruck by Helen Cresswell, 1995.

It’s WWII and Jessica knows that she will be evacuated from London soon, along with other children from her school. She doesn’t want to leave London and her mother, even though the bombings have gotten increasingly worse and frightening. Her father has already gone away to the front, and she has no idea if he will ever return. Then, one night, the unthinkable happens: their house is destroyed in a bombing. Jessica and her mother survive the bombing by sheltering in their basement, but Jessica’s pet cat is nowhere to be found. She doesn’t know if he survived the bombing and ran away somewhere or if he is buried somewhere in the rubble of their house. Jessica is traumatized, but with their home gone, her mother makes the decision to send Jessica away from London early. Jessica’s mother has decided that she will volunteer for service as an ambulance driver.

Jessica is terribly upset and worried about what will happen to her when her mother sends her away to Wales alone, but her mother assures her that she will be fine and that she will soon be joined by the other children from her school. They are being sent to a Welsh castle, where they will have classes together. Jessica’s mother tries to tell her that it will be fun and exciting, going to school in an old castle, but Jessica is too frightened and traumatized to think that this will be a fun adventure.

When Jessica’s train arrives at the station in Wales, she is met by Mr. and Mrs. Lockett, the gardener and housekeeper at the castle. They are friendly and welcoming to her, but on their arrival at the castle, Jessica hears a frightening scream. The Locketts don’t explain to her what the sound is and act like they haven’t heard a thing. When Jessica wakes up early the next day, she is relieved to see a peacock on the castle grounds, who gives the same strange cry that she heard the night before.

She is satisfied that the weird scream she heard has a logical explanation, but then, something else frightening happens. Although the morning is clear, there is one, strange, dense patch of mist on the castle grounds. Jessica thinks that it’s strange to see such a dense patch of mist in only one spot when there’s no mist anywhere else. Then, she hears a voice calling her name from the mist and the sound of children’s laughter. Jessica is confused because she’s only just arrived and hasn’t met anyone else there except the Locketts, and the rest of her classmates from her school in London aren’t there yet. It gives her an uneasy feeling, and when she sees a hand reach out of the mist and beckon to her, she becomes terrified and runs away.

At breakfast, Mrs. Lockett is cheerful and behaves in a perfectly ordinary manner. She expresses sympathy to Jessica over her ordeals during the bombings in London and the loss of her house and asks her what she plans to do before the other children arrive. She confides that she and her husband are not accustomed to children because they have none of their own, confirming that Jessica should be the only child in the castle right now. Jessica assures her that she can entertain herself. She asks Mrs. Lockett about the peacock that made the screaming sound, but Mrs. Lockett says that there are no peacocks on the ground and that she didn’t hear any scream. Mrs. Lockett is very disturbed by Jessica’s mention of a peacock. She says that the family that owns the castle won’t have peacocks on the grounds because they’re bad luck, and she sternly tells Jessica not to imagine things. Then, Mrs. Lockett gets a call that a train with 30 evacuees will be arriving, and she needs to help arrange accommodations for them. She leaves Jessica to entertain herself, but she warns her to stay out trouble and to stay away from the pond.

Jessica explores the grounds of the castle and meets Mr. Lockett again. Mr. Lockett, who prefers to be simply called Lockett, is kind to her, and she asks him about the peacock. Lockett seems to believe Jessica that she saw a peacock and finds it worrying. He says the same thing that Mrs. Lockett said, that peacocks are bad luck. He says that, for most people, a peacock’s cry means coming rain but that it means tears at the castle. He says that he knows that Jessica is sad right now, but he says that she should remember that she won’t always be sad. Some day, she will be happy again. He also cautions her to be careful what she wishes for.

When Mrs. Lockett returns, she says that she’s made arrangements for the evacuated children who are coming. She is sympathetic to the evacuees. Arranging housing for them is a hassle, although she says it’s for their own good to be evacuated. Lockett says that it’s good up to a point. He doesn’t speak much, but he observes that, while it’s necessary for the children to be sent away from the bombings, it isn’t so good that they’re being separated from their parents. He says that he’s sure that Jessica would rather be with her mother. Jessica is surprised that he understands how she feels. She says that, while the castle is nice and definitely safer than London right now, she really misses her her mother. Mrs. Lockett doesn’t want to dwell on that. Instead, she encourages Jessica to come with her to meet the evacuees’ train. She says that these new children from London will be friends and company for her. Jessica isn’t so sure because these children are strangers to her, not friends from her school, but she does go to meet the train with Mrs. Lockett.

People from the village have gathered to meet the other evacuated children. Some of the women have prepared food for children’s arrival, and some are talking about how many children they’ve been told to accept into their homes and their fears that some of them will have lice. When the children get off the train, Jessica can see that they are all hesitant and scared. Among the crowd, Jessica sees a boy she recognizes from the night of the bombing, standing outside of a burning house. She doesn’t know his name, but she feels a kinship with him because he also lost his home. Unlike the other children, he has no bags with him. Then, suddenly, the boy vanishes in the steam from the train. No one else seems to notice that he was there or that he’s now missing. Jessica wonders if she just imagined him.

The children’s teacher is checking the children’s names off a list as they are assigned homes, but Mrs. Lockett stops her, saying that she’ll see to it herself. However, Jessica notices that Mrs. Lockett puts it off. Jessica asks Mrs. Lockett how many evacuees there are, and she vaguely says about 20 or so, when she had said 30 before. When Jessica asks her again exactly how many there are, Mrs. Lockett says that it’s an old superstition in their town, that no one should ever count children twice. Jessica asks her why that is, but she brushes off the question. Later, Jessica sees Mrs. Lockett burning the list of evacuees. With the list gone, no one will be able to count how many evacuees there are.

After her mother calls the castle to check on her and tries to pretend that things are fine when Jessica knows they’re not, Jessica feels the need to go for a walk by herself. Mrs. Lockett lets her go, warning her to be back before dark. As Jessica explores the castle grounds, she experiences more strange phenomena. She sees the peacock and the mist again and hears a voice calling her name. She sees a boy on a horse vanish into the mist. Then, a troop of phantom children charge past her, laughing and calling her name, and Jessica is shocked to see that one of them looks like her!

Jessica knows that she’s not just imagining the things that she’s been seeing, and she struggles to understand what’s happening and what it means. She realizes that, every time something strange happens, she either sees the peacock or hears its cry. She also remembers that, the first time she heard its cry, she had the strange feeling that, while she went into the castle, a part of herself stayed outside. Is that other part of her the phantom girl that she saw, being chased by the other phantom children? It looked like her, but it also felt alien, like it isn’t really her.

Jessica discovers that the boy who vanished at the train station ran away and has been hiding out on the castle grounds. He was afraid to let himself be sent to a strange home with the other evacuees because he’s heard that evacuees are treated horribly. Jessica tells him that she’s been treated kindly at the castle. Before she can learn the boy’s name, he runs away again, frightened by a strange old woman.

The old woman is frightening and seems to know who Jessica is. She says that she’s going about her rounds, leaving food out for the children. She knows about the phantom children, who run around in the mist with their hands linked. She refuses to tell Jessica her real name, just telling her to call her Priscilla, and she warns Jessica to keep repeating to herself that things aren’t always what they seem.

Jessica asks Mrs. Lockett if she ever played chain tag, the type of tag game where children join hands whenever they’re caught and then continue chasing other children. Mrs. Lockett says that the children around here call that game Fishes in a Net. When there are four or more children in a chain, they surround other children to trap them. She says that she played it in another place as a child, but not here because their mothers would never allow them to. Jessica asks why, and Mrs. Lockett hesitates to answer, but she makes a reference to a boy she knew when she was young, who apparently played the game too many times and disappeared. Before he disappeared, he talked about the peacocks, which was why they decided to get rid of the peacocks on the grounds. Mrs. Lockett says that the Green Lady wanted him for her own. When Jessica asks her about the Green Lady, Mrs. Lockett suddenly brushes it off as an old legend that doesn’t mean anything. Lockett the gardener says that some stories build power with the telling, and that’s why people don’t want to tell them.

However, Jessica realizes that there is truth to the legend that Mrs. Lockett doesn’t want to explain. Mrs. Lockett knows that there’s enough truth to it to destroy the list of evacuated children so it will be harder to keep track of who’s there and who isn’t. The people of this town don’t count children twice because something that lurks in the mist vanishes children away, and no one wants to notice it or admit it’s happening, that it’s been happening for generations. As long as they don’t count children twice, they can tell themselves that no one is missing and nothing is wrong, even when it is. Jessica begins writing about all of her strange experiences in the journal that her mother gave her, trying to solve the mysteries of the castle and the mist. Something in the mist is after her, beckoning her to come to it, and like the others before her, if she goes to it, she will never come back.

At Jessica’s urging, Lockett tells Jessica what he knows about the story of the Green Lady. The Green Lady isn’t human. She’s a shapeshifter with a heart of stone. Years ago, she kidnapped the young lord of the castle, Harry, because he was a beautiful boy, and she wanted him for her own son. However, Harry was desperately lonely, living only with someone who had a heart of stone. He refused to speak aloud again until he had a human playmate. So, the Green Lady began stealing playmates for him, but it was never enough. There is one playmate in particular that Harry is waiting for, the one whose name he calls in the mist. That’s Jessica. Because only Jessica, frightened and lonely in a strange land, has the ability to break the spell.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers:

Some reviewers on Goodreads have pointed out that this book is very similar in plot to an earlier book by the same author, Moondial. In Moondial, as in this book, there is a young girl who is sent away from home and encounters mysterious phenomena that involves children in past times who are suffering and need her help to free them. However, the two stories are not identical, and I like the way this particular book is framed around WWII child evacuees from London.

It is important to the plot that the child evacuees from London are scared because of the war and have been wishing that they can go home, but that they haven’t been raised in the atmosphere of fear and superstition that the children in Wales have been. They have worries, but they’re not the same worries as the Welsh people have. Jessica learns from Lockett that it is the wishing themselves away that splits the children’s spirits and leaves them vulnerable to being captured by the trapped spirit children. Lockett understands what is happening better than anyone and how the unhappy children from London feel because he was also once an unhappy child. He was abused at home when he was young, and he also wanted to get away. However, when confronted by the spectral children whose hearts have also turned to stone, he changed his mind and escaped their clutches. He explains to Jessica what she has to do to reclaim that part of her that split off from her when she wished that she could go home, and from there, Jessica realizes what she needs to do to end this ghostly game of tag and free the other trapped children. The first step is reconciling herself to her situation as it exists and no longer wishing herself away. In doing so, she is doing what all of the adults around her have been failing to do, both about the supernatural phenomena and about the current war – facing up to the situation and not trying to pretend like it is less serious than it really while no longer wishing it away. Then, she realizes that the only way to end the spectral children’s game is to beat them at it, and for that, she needs help from other children.

When one of the other child evacuees from London has been captured and spirited away, Jessica and the boy who has been hiding out convince the other child evacuees to help them get him back and free the other children who have been taken across the generations. They have some work convincing the other evacuees of what is happening, but when they do, they form their own team for chain tag or Fishes in a Net and face off against the team of spectral children. It has to be the evacuee children who end this curse because the Welsh children are too afraid to do it, and the Welsh children’s parents would never risk them in the attempt. The Welsh people aren’t as careful about the evacuee children, and some of them have been bullying and abusing some of the evacuees. There is some concern when they realize what the evacuee children are going to do, but no one stops them.

It isn’t entirely clear what happens when the evacuee children free children who were taken from previous generations because these older children simply vanish. Even Jessica isn’t entirely sure whether the children returned to their own times or if they’ve simply passed on. However, the people of the Welsh town realize that the children have finally been freed and that the spell is broken, and they are grateful.

Parts of the story were stressful to read. First, I found the loss of Jessica’s cat upsetting. They never learn exactly what happened to the cat during the story. Then, Jessica finds out that the other boy who lost his home also lost his mother and siblings in the bombing, showing her that her own losses, while serious, aren’t the worst ones. There are also instances where the local children bully the London children, and the Welsh parents blame the London children for it. Some of the Welsh people are kind to the evacuees, but some also bully and abuse them, seeing them as only rough, poor children who are troublemakers and an inconvenience to them.

Even Mrs. Lockett says that she feels lucky that she got Jessica as an evacuee because she is gentle and well-behaved, not like the other London children. Jessica realizes that this is an unfair prejudice. Although she does not consider herself a brave person, she finds her courage when she begins to confront some of the adults around her about the way they look at the London children and how they treat them. She asks the adults directly if they realize that the London children also don’t want to be there and that no one asked them if they wanted to be sent away from their parents. The adults, confronted with the reality of the the children’s feelings and the reasons for their being there, entrusted to their care, are embarrassed. They don’t have real reasons for their prejudices against the evacuees, only their unfair feelings and bad behavior, and they realize that when they are confronted directly with the realities of the situation and their own behavior. Really, I think that facing up to realities, even ones that are strange and scary, is one of the major themes of the book. It is Jessica’s realization that she can do that, when even the adults around her can’t or won’t, that gives her the courage to do what she needs to do to end the spell and save herself and other children.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Moondial

Moondial by Helen Cresswell, 1987.

Araminta Kane, called Minty, has always had the ability to sense things that others can’t. For as long as she can remember, she has had the ability to sense and even see spirits. She doesn’t talk about it much because this happens to her routinely. When she does mention it, her mother assumes that it’s imagination or a trick of the light. Minty becomes more aware of her ability after her father dies, and she is still able to hear his voice from time to time.

She has been learning to cope with her father’s death and the changes to her life since it happened. She and her mother have been getting along pretty well, but her mother has to work long hours. It’s bad enough that Minty has to be alone so much on weekends, but her mother wonders what she will do during her school holidays. Minty’s mother decides to send Minty to stay with her godmother, Mrs. Bowyer, in the village of Belton, for the summer. Mrs. Bowyer is an elderly lady who lives in an old, stone cottage, which is near the old manor known as Belton House. Belton House once belonged to Lord Brownlow, but it is now owned by the National Trust (UK organization that focuses on preservation and protection of historic sites) and operates as a tourist attraction, open to the public. Mrs. Bowyer used to work for the Brownlow family as a domestic servant, and now, she sometimes helps out in the gift shop at Belton House.

Minty is happy about spending the summer with Mrs. Bowyer, who they call Aunt Mary, because she has heard about Belton House, and she would like to see it. She knows that there is a hidden tunnel on the property, and the idea of exploring it sounds intriguing. However, she wonders if that will be enough to keep her occupied all summer, and she does worry about whether her mother will be all right without her. She knows that her mother is still mourning her father and that she sometimes cries at night. Minty’s mother reassures her that she will be fine and that they’ll be too busy working to be sad and lonely. She also reassures Minty that she won’t be bored while she’s in Belton. When she stayed with Aunt Mary as a child, she always had the feeling that Belton was unusual somehow, that unseen things were happening beneath the surface. Minty asks her if she means ghosts, that the village is haunted. Her mother isn’t quite sure because she never actually saw any ghosts or anything of the kind.

Aunt Mary is happy to have Minty stay with her, and she says that Minty can help her in the shop at Belton House. She says that things at Belton House aren’t like they were in the old days, when the Brownlows lived there, and she remarks that they would turn over in their graves if they saw all the tourists and school groups tramping through their house and grounds. Before her mother leaves Belton, they explore the nearby churchyard together. Even though it’s July, Minty feels a strange gust of cold air. She senses that there is something strange about it, she plans to return later and examine the area more closely.

Minty has a strange sense that time doesn’t work in quite the same way in Aunt Mary’s village that it does elsewhere. She thinks it makes sense that time would stand still in the old graveyard because everyone there is dead, but Aunt Mary herself seems to move as if she’s in a different time as well. Aunt Mary is puzzled even about basic pieces of modern technology, not understanding even what Minty’s headphones are for.

While Minty is with Aunt Mary, she gets word that her mother has been in a car accident and is in the hospital. Minty is terrified of losing her mother as well as her father. A nice man named John Benson from her mother’s office is helping to arrange things, and Aunt Mary urges Minty to try not to think about it or worry too much, but Minty can’t help it. When Minty feels like she needs to get out of the house and go for a walk, Aunt Mary suggests that she go explore Belton House and meet Mr. World, the groundskeeper, who likes children.

When Minty meets World, he asks her if she’s there to meet the children. At first, Minty doesn’t know who he’s talking about, since she just saw a tour group of other children leaving the grounds. She asks if there are any children currently living in the old house, but World isn’t talking about living children. World tells her that there are children who haunt the place. He says that they’re trapped and need someone to free them, and he thinks that Minty will be “the one to turn the key” and set them free. This isn’t exactly reassuring talk for Minty’s current situation, but she has the feeling that what World says is true and that she’s just been given a kind of invitation that she can’t refuse.

In the gardens of the manor, Minty finds a mysterious sundial that has the power to take her back in time. The very first time she encounters it, it gives her a strange feeling, and for some reason, she keeps thinking of it as a “moondial” instead of sundial. Suddenly, Minty finds herself back in the Victorian era with a boy named Tom. Tom is an orphan from London who works at the manor house, and the adults there abuse him. Minty tries to intervene, but none of the adults can see or hear her, and she suddenly finds herself back in her own time, uncertain of what made her travel through time and what brought her back to the present.

Later, when Minty visits the old house again, she has another encounter with the sundial/moondial and finds herself visiting the grounds of the manor at night. This time, she meets a girl from the past called Sarah. Sarah sings little rhymes (old, traditional ones – Poor Mary (sometimes called Poor Jenny or Poor Sally, and sometimes she’s weeping for a lost sweetheart and sometimes for a playmate) and Girls and Boys Come Out to Play (listen on YouTube). Minty watches as a frightening adult dressed in black hurries her back into the house, calling her a “little devil.”

When Minty visits Tom’s time again, she learns that Tom has also seen Sarah. He seems to also have the ability to travel through time, and when he sees Sarah, it’s also at night. Tom still thinks that both Minty and Sarah are ghosts. Minty doesn’t know why this is happening, but she senses that she needs to help Tom and Sarah.

When Minty visits the hospital, she isn’t sure what to say to her mother, who is still in a coma, so she decides that she will make recorded tapes about her time-traveling adventures that she can play for her mother, along with some music. The doctor approves of Minty make tapes for her mother to listen to, but Minty tells him that what she has to say is private, and she makes him promise that he and the nurses won’t listen to them while they’re playing. The doctor promises that there won’t be anyone in the room, and they won’t listen to the tapes themselves.

Then, Aunt Mary has a visit from a strange woman called Miss Raven, who says that she’s an author investigating the ghosts at the manor house. Aunt Mary even accepts Miss Raven as a lodger at her house. However, Minty has a strange feeling that Miss Raven is not to be trusted. Miss Raven tries to get Minty to admit that she has seen ghosts. She watches Minty closely and tries to get Aunt Mary to limit Minty’s freedom to go places by herself. World also shares Minty’s suspicions of Miss Raven. He tells her that Miss Raven is probably after the children, and it’s up to Minty to save them. She doesn’t know how to do that, but she’s determined to try.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. There is also a BBC miniseries based on the book. It’s available on DVD through Amazon, and you can sometimes see it or clips of it on YouTube. There is also a similar (although not identical) story by the same author called Stonestruck, which involves child evacuees from London during WWII.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I read Stonestruck first, and I read Moondial specifically because another reviewer mentioned the similarities between the two stories. It seems like the author wanted to revisit the themes of Moondial in a somewhat different setting and with some twists when she wrote Stonestruck. The two stories aren’t identical, but there are similar themes of captive children or children’s spirits trapped across time. The time travel in this book centers around the mysterious sundial/moondial, while Stonestruck has ghostly children playing a game, and capturing other children.

There are features of both books that I like, so it’s difficult to choose a favorite between the two of them. I like the features of the child evacuee and the ghostly game from Stonestruck. This one has a truly haunting ending with a frightening scene on a Halloween night in the past. The ending of Stonestruck is a little more open-ended than the ending of Moondial. You can read my review of Stonestruck for more about how that ends, but it’s less definite what happens to the captive children or captive children’s spirits in that book. In this one, we do find out what happens to them. There are hints of Tom’s fate all the way through the story, but Minty doesn’t recognize it immediately, partly because “Tom” is actually a nickname rather than his real name. He later explains to her that kitchen boys are always called “Tom” no matter what their real names are.

Time is important to the story, and Minty realizes that the key to the time travel is that the supposed “sundial” is actually a “moondial.” Sarah refers to it as a “moondial” when they see her because Sarah typically only comes out at night because her face is disfigured by a birthmark and people think it’s a sign of the devil. Since Sarah almost never sees the sundial when the sun is out, it’s a “moondial” to her. The superstition about birthmarks is historical. However, I though that what the characters say about measuring time was interesting.

At one point, World gives Minty a book about sundials to study, and he explains that “clock time is mean time. Sundial time is what they call apparent time …” and the only exact time is star time. Minty takes that to mean that the moondial measures true time. You can measure time by the stars, using Polaris and the Big Dipper, and measuring time that way is based on a 24-hour clock rather than standard 12-hour clocks. Measuring time based on the Earth’s rotation, relative to fixed stars, is called sidereal time. What World says about clocks being based on “mean time”, meaning the “the sun’s average (mean) rate for the year” is true. Sundials measure “how the sun travels across the sky“, but the movement isn’t completely regular, which is why our clocks use the average movement rate. Because of the variations in the sun’s movement from the average or mean calculations, you can’t accurately set a clock or watch by a sundial, unless you know how to calculate for the variations. That’s what World means about sundials showing apparent time. Measuring time by the positions of the stars in the sky creates a “day” that is just slightly shorter than the standard 24-hour day that we measure on clocks. However, star time isn’t the only true way of measuring time. Stars appear to move with the rotation of the Earth, which is pretty accurate, but we now also have the concept of atomic clocks. Even those aren’t 100% accurate, though. There doesn’t seem to be a 100% infallible accurate way of measuring time, but atomic clocks are only off by about 1 second every 100 million years. They’re about as close to full accuracy as we are able to get. The book doesn’t go into all of the scientific details of measuring time because it’s a fantasy story, but I thought that working some real concepts of measuring time into the story was fascinating.

The book also works in the concept of the mottos that are traditionally carved on sundials, like the ones that say they only count the sunny hours. However, some sundials have deeper inscriptions, and the concept of inscriptions on sundials explaining time travel appears in some other fantasy books, like The Time Garden. In this book, Minty considers inscriptions like, “For the Night Cometh – cutting off all Power of Passing of Time” and “Light and Shadow by turns, but always Love.” Both of these inscriptions give her clues to how the moondial works and what she needs to do to help the distressed spirits of the past children, who are trapped in time. Tom and Sarah are both lonely and unloved children where and when they are. When Minty reunites them with the spirit of Tom’s sister, Dorrie, who he is separated from in life, the three spirits are able to be the love and company they each need. There are two carved figures on the sundial, Chronos and Eros – Chronos representing time and Eros representing love. Love transcends time.

Miss Raven is the villain of the story, even though we don’t really meet her until later in the book. Miss Raven may possibly be a witch, and she uses cats to spy on Minty. The details about how and why Miss Raven became a witch are never clarified. She also seems to have originated from Sarah’s time and was once her governess, although that isn’t really clarified, either. Did she turn evil because of her resentment of Sarah, or was she always like that? We also don’t really know why she’s after the children or the children’s souls. At the end, she seems to have vanished, perhaps banished by something Minty did on a fateful Halloween of the past in her final travel through time, although Aunt Mary thinks that she has departed in a normal way. There are things that aren’t fully explained by the end of the story, although we do learn what happened to Tom, and Minty knows that Tom’s spirit is now free and happy with the spirit of his sister and another lonely girl who badly needed friends.

The Halloween scene in the final time travel is really chilling, and it’s especially spooky in the miniseries version of the book.

Posted on by TracyC

Moon Window

Moon Window by Jane Louise Curry, 1996.

Joanna Ellen Briggs (usually called JoEllen or Jo) lost her father five years ago, when he died in a car accident. Since then, it’s just been her and her mother. Jo has adjusted to the loss, and she and her mother have been happy together. At least, that’s what Jo keeps telling herself. Now, her mother is getting remarried, and Jo feels like her life has been completely turned upside down. Her new stepfather, George, is a nice man, but Jo can’t stand the idea of her life changing. George is a law professor, and Jo’s other relatives like him, but Jo is afraid of what this marriage will mean for her. She and her mother will be moving to George’s house in Boston, and she is afraid that nothing will ever be the same again.

At the heart of her worries is the fear of losing her mother, just as she lost her father. The truth is that Jo has never fully adjusted to her father’s death. She participates in a wide range of classes and activities, but it’s not because she really loves any of these subjects or activities. Her gymnastics, choir practice, piano lessons, and the host of other classes and hobbies that she pursues with so much energy and perfectionism are to keep her mind occupied so she won’t have to think about her father or her worries about what might happen to her if something happens to her mother. Ever since her father died, there has always been the lingering fear of something happening to her mother, and that’s why Jo fears change in her life. She has settled into a routine that makes her feel relatively safe and keeps her from thinking too much about what might happen in the future. George’s entry into their lives has broken the routine, will bring even more changes, and has caused Jo’s tightly-controlled feelings to creep to the surface.

Even during the wedding, Jo privately hopes something will happen that will stop the ceremony and keep all of these frightening changes from happening, but nothing does. However, Jo’s grandmother has noticed how upset Jo is, even though Jo tries to keep a blank face and hide her feelings. Her grandmother realizes that Jo is bottling up her emotions, and she sees the moment when Jo finally lets loose, just as her mother and George leave on their honeymoon. Instead of throwing birdseed after the car, like everyone else, she turns and throws her little bag of birdseed at one of George’s young nephews, hitting him in the eye.

Originally, the plan had been for Jo to stay with George’s brother and his family while her mother and George are on their honeymoon. However, because of her bad behavior toward George’s nephews, the boys’ mother refuses to have her as a guest. Jo’s grandparents hurriedly consider other arrangements for Jo. They would take her themselves, but they will soon be traveling to a conference they are attending. Jo’s grandmother laments about Jo’s behavior and moods, and that reminds her of Witch Ellen, an ancestor in an old painting at Winterbloom, the old house where her frail great-aunt lives. Granty Nell, as they call her, is actually a distant cousin and is over 100 years old, but she loves children. Jo’s grandmother remembers that one of Jo’s cousins recently visited Granty Nell at Winterbloom and had a wonderful time. Winterbloom is a strange old house near Walpole, New Hampshire, but Jo’s grandmother has fond memories of the place, and Granty Nell has live-in help, so she won’t be dealing with Jo alone.

Granty Nell accepts Jo as a visitor, but Jo is stunned that she has so suddenly been dumped with a relative she doesn’t even know, in an old stone house in the middle of the woods. At first, Jo plans to run away and go back to the apartment where she and her mother have been living and stay there until her mother comes to get her so her mother will regret leaving her and think twice about ever leaving her again. However, Winterbloom is no ordinary place, and leaving is much more difficult than Jo realizes.

Granty is unexpectedly sharp in spite of her age, and she can read Jo like a book, noting her thinness and chewed fingernails. She speaks openly to Jo about her feelings about her new stepfather on her first day at Winterbloom. Granty lets her speak and doesn’t criticize her feelings. Instead, she tells Jo a little about the house and their ancestors, and she offers to let her explore the house and choose one of the guest bedrooms for herself. When she decides which room she wants, she can tell the housekeeper, Mrs. Craig. Mrs. Craig’s husband Thomas and son Tom take care of the grounds and garden of Winterbloom. The three of them live in a little cottage nearby, so only Granty and Jo will be living in the big house.

As Jo explores the old house alone, she notices that the furnishings are rich but old and shabby. She wonders why Granty hasn’t replaced them because she is supposedly wealthy. Each of the bedrooms has a fireplace that has an iron Franklin stove fitted inside and wardrobes instead of closets. The furnishings are all old-fashioned and a little shabby, but there is something in every room that catches Jo’s attention, like an interesting painting or an embroidered stool. In spite of herself, Jo finds herself liking things or becoming intrigued by them, although she is still determined to run away. Then, while exploring the attic, she finds an old turret room with a round window, the kind that her mother likes to call a “moon window.” Jo tries to open the window, but she discovers that someone has painted it shut. She manages to pry it open anyway, using a knife that she finds in Granty’s desk drawer. Outside the window, there is a large tree, good for climbing. Jo realizes that, with her gymnastics skills, it would be easy for her to climb down the tree and escape when it’s time for her to run away.

Thinking that she’ll probably only stay for one night before running away, Jo chooses the yellow bedroom, the one with a high bed with yellow brocade curtains that has a step stool for climbing into it. Granty tells her that is the room where her grandmother stayed when she came to visit Winterbloom when she was young. Winterbloom is undeniably charming, in spite of its shabbiness, and Jo can’t help but think that the dining room, with its tapestries and long, candlelit table looks like it’s set for a fairy tale feast.

To Jo’s surprise, Granty tells her a little of her own history at dinner. Like many of the women in their family, Granty’s first name is Ellen, although the younger generations think of her as Granty Nell. Jo had assumed that Granty had grown up at Winterbloom, but actually, she originally lived in New York. Like other young girls in the family, she also came to visit Winterbloom as a child when the woman that she once called Granty lived there. When Granty Nell was 17 years old and having one of her visits to Winterboom, both of her parents died in a flu epidemic. (I thought at first that she was referring to the 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic, but later events in the story show that the dates don’t line up. Her parents must have died earlier.) As an orphan, she continued living at Winterbloom with her Granty until the following September, when she went away to college. She was a schoolteacher for a time until her Granty died, leaving her Winterbloom and all of her money, on the condition that she change her last name to Macallan, which is the family’s maternal surname. Granty Nell wasn’t originally happy about having to change her name, but she did it anyway because she loved Winterbloom. Jo wishes that someone would give her a house to live in so she wouldn’t have to live with George. George’s house in Boston is very modern and definitely not charming. Granty Nell tells her to be careful about what she wishes for because, since she returned to Winterbloom, she hasn’t traveled very far from it, and there are many interesting places she has never seen. Clinging too much to one particular place can keep a person from moving on to other, more exciting places.

Although someone (possibly Mrs. Craig or Granty) has tried to make the yellow room more cozy for Jo by moving all the things that she admired in the other rooms into that room, Jo is still determined to run away. She almost resents how comfortable Winterbloom is for her, making it difficult for her to leave. Early in the morning, Jo slips out through the moon window in the attic and climbs down the tree from the house. She originally planned to ride her bike the two miles from Winterbloom into town because her grandparents left her bike there for her to use, but she can’t find the bike when she reaches the ground. She assumes that the Craigs must have moved it and that she’ll have to walk to town to catch the bus.

However, during her early morning walk to town, it slowly begins to dawn on her that something isn’t right. She overhears some children talking about a cannon, which is strange. Then, she has an encounter with a man on horseback, who talks like he’s a local doctor who’s been out to see patients. Since when do doctors ride around on horses to see their patients? Jo becomes more uneasy, and when she reaches the town, she realizes why. The town doesn’t look the way it did when she passed through it with her grandparents. Suddenly, there is no Interstate highway, and there is a covered wooden bridge that isn’t there anymore in Jo’s time. Somehow, it looks like going through the window has sent Jo back in time, although she’s not sure when or if that’s really what is happening. Disoriented and terrified, Jo returns to Winterbloom and climbs back up to the moon window, leaving her knapsack hidden in some bushes to retrieve later.

The next day, Jo tries to tell herself that what happened early that morning was only a dream, but there are hints that it wasn’t. Not only is her bike exactly where she left it, like it never moved, but the bush where she left her knapsack isn’t there anymore, and there’s no sign of the knapsack. Jo searches the area to check if she was just mistaken about where she left the knapsack, but it really isn’t there. When Granty suggests that they go into town for lunch, Jo sees that the gate to Winterbloom isn’t the same in the present as it was in the past, and the road to town is paved while the road she walked along in the early morning wasn’t. Yet, there are aspects of the countryside that are eerily familiar, which indicates that what she experienced wasn’t just a dream. She might have been able to dream about the road and town as they were in the past, but she shouldn’t have been able to accurately dream about features of the area that she hadn’t seen before and that have been there for a long time.

Their trip to town is cut short because Granty becomes ill. Young Tom, who is driving them, says that Granty suffers from agoraphobia, which is why she gets ill or panics when she gets too far from Winterbloom. This is part of the reason why she has not traveled very far since she inherited the house. Granty later says that this isn’t entirely the case, but through many years of living at Winterbloom, it has become more and more difficult for her to leave it.

Jo still plans to run away, and she realizes that she left her flashlight in her knapsack, wherever that is now. She decides to search the attic for something she can use instead. In spite of herself, she finds the old clothes in the trunks in the attic charming and decides to try wearing some of them. Then, at the bottom of one of the trunks, she finds her knapsack! The knapsack isn’t the way it was when she last saw it, though. It has clearly aged, and so have the things inside. The flashlight no longer works, the clothes are yellowed with age, and the leather and rubber on her hiking boots has hardened and cracked. It’s like they’ve been stored in the attic for more than 100 years! The boots are wrapped in a newspaper, now deteriorated, but when Jo examines it, she finds the date of July 1809 and references to some of the people and things she encountered during her early morning excursion. Now, Jo is really scared.

Jo races to the turret room and looks out the moon window, but what she sees frightens her more. Although it’s afternoon in Winterbloom, it’s dark outside the moon window. More than that, there’s no tree outside the window, and the countryside that she sees isn’t the woods that surround Winterbloom. Jo recognizes what she sees as the same scene in a painting in her room at Winterbloom. The moon window is no ordinary window. It looks out on different times and places.

Once she gets over her fear, Jo is intrigued at this “window of time” and wants to know more about how it works. She even thinks that, if she can learn to control it, she might be able to go back in time to just the right moment to keep her mother from getting married again, which she thinks will solve all of her problems. However, the next time she tries the window, she finds herself meeting a young Granty Nell in 1897, when she was just a girl about her age called Nell, which is short for Ellen. Nell catches her sneaking around in a dress that looks very much like her dress. (Really, it’s the same dress, just aged about 90 years because Jo found it stored in the attic and tried it on.) Jo attempts to explain to her who she is and how she got there, taking Nell to the turret room in the attic and showing her the moon window. Jo is curious where the moon window will lead if they go through it in the past, wondering if it will take them to the future, but it ends up leading them further into the past. Jo and Nell end up in 1764, when the house was first being built. They are both caught sneaking around by a young Indian (Native American) and the stonemason who is building the house for Ellen Hawke. Ellen is a common name for women in their family, and this Ellen was the one who created Winterbloom and the one for whom all the other Ellens were named, including JoEllen. She is also considered a “wise woman”, and she is the Witch Ellen who appears in a painting at Winterbloom. Jo recognizes the stonemason’s last name as her grandmother’s maiden name, making her wonder if they are also somehow related. She wonders if maybe the stonemason will marry Ellen Hawke, making him her distant ancestor.

As Jo begins to consider people’s complex relationships across time, it occurs to her that, if she and Nell aren’t careful, they might accidentally change something in the past that will endanger their own existence. For the first time, she also begins to wonder what might happen if she successfully changes things so her mother never meets or marries George. Is it possible that she would be preventing the potential birth of a half-sibling, and if so, is that what she really wants to do?

Back in the present day, Granty Nell begins remembering an incident from her youth that she always thought of as a dream with a girl named Joanna and a trip back in time, and she begins connecting it with some strange questions Jo has been asking her. Years ago, Granty Nell had removed the furnishings from the turret room (the ones which Jo had delighted in and are now her the Yellow Bedroom that she is using) and scattered them through the house. She had the moon window painted shut and kept the door to the turret room locked, sensing that the moon window was magical and dangerous. Now, in spite of Nell’s precautions, things are coming full circle, and Jo is doing what Nell realizes she has done before.

Although Granty Nell loves having Jo at Winterbloom, she begins to realize that she must get Jo away from the place as soon as possible, before Jo becomes trapped in the same web that has kept Nell herself tied so tightly to Winterbloom all these years. Solving the mysteries of Winterbloom and the spell it has on the other Ellens in the family means exploring the past of the first Ellen, Witch Ellen.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

I enjoyed this story and its atmosphere! I think fans of Cottagecore would enjoy Winterbloom, with its old-fashioned, comfortable shabbiness and rooms with quaint, magical touches. This is also one of those books that mentions what the characters eat. I’m not much of a foodie, but there were a couple of things that interested me about their meals at Winterbloom. I find it interesting when books mention unusual dishes or foods that they call by unfamiliar names. At one point, they have what Granty calls “Indian cake” for lunch. It’s described as a type of corn bread, so I think it’s named for Native Americans rather than Indians from India. (I ask that question almost every time I see “Indian” in writing, unless it’s specified.) I’d never heard of that before, so I tried looking it up, and from the description, I think it might be similar to this recipe for a corn bread pound cake from 1827. I’m not 100% sure it’s the same thing, but it seems reasonable because it’s described as both a corn bread and a cake. As charming as Winterbloom is, though, it also has a dark side that Jo must confront.

Themes

Jo’s immediate problem is obvious from the beginning of the story. There have been many other children’s books about children adjusting to changes in their lives, including the remarriage of a parent. It’s understandable that children who are accustomed to having only one parent might cling to that parent and be afraid of changes that might cause them to lose that parent or experience less of that parent’s attention and affection. Although adults might say that coming to love someone else doesn’t mean loving other people less, but Jo already knows that, when her mother spends more time with George, she spends less time with Jo. Her mother still loves her, but Jo feels neglected and forgotten, fearful of what this will mean for her future and her relationship with the only parent she has left. Even before her mother married George, there were times when her mother was so preoccupied, thinking about George, that she forgot to get breakfast for Jo or buy groceries, as she normally did, making Jo nervous about her mother still providing for her through this relationship with George. I’m sure that her mother doesn’t mean to give Jo this feeling. It’s just part of the awkwardness of making a major change in their lives and adjusting to a new normal. I’ve reviewed others on this theme before, including The Haunting at Cliff House, which also features time travel.

There are a couple of things that make this story different from others that I’ve read. One that surprised me at first is that Granty Nell knows about the magic of the window. In many books for kids that involve magic and time travel, the adults don’t know what’s going on and never learn. The magic or time travel is meant to give the children in the stories perspective on their lives and problems and teach them lessons, not to do anything for the adults. Typically, the adults either don’t know what’s going on, while the children learn about the magic or face their problems on their own, or the adults don’t find out what’s been happening until after the child has resolved the situation, like Rose in The Root Cellar, which is about an orphan adjusting to a new life with her relatives. In this story, Granty Nell has known about the magic of the moon window since she was young, when she first met Jo on one of her time travel excursions. At first, Nell thought that Jo was a dream, but through her years with the house, she came to understand the dangers of the window and the hold that the house can have on people, particularly on young girls named Ellen, who are coping with the loss of a home or a parent.

It isn’t obvious right away, but this is also a story about generational trauma, but with a magical/supernatural twist. Like other Ellens in the family, the first Ellen, Ellen Hawke (maiden name Ellen MacAlpin, also called Ellen MacAllan or Witch Ellen) also suffered the lost of her father and home early in life. The family’s ancestral home, Castle MacAlpin in Scotland, was destroyed by fire, and her father died in the fire. Ellen wanted to save him, but she couldn’t. The MacAlpins were unusual people, who possessed real magic, and Nell thinks that they might actually be descended from elves. After her father died, Ellen married, and later in life, after her husband died, she went to New Hamsphire to start over. People were always nervous about her and her magical abilities, so whenever it looked like people might be about to put her on trail for being a witch, she would move and start over.

Like Granty Nell, Witch Ellen has also lived an unnaturally long life, and (spoiler) she is still living secretly in Winterbloom. At least some of the other Ellens in the family were also her, pretending to be one of her own descendants. When she came to New Hampshire, she built a new version of the home that she had lost, which is Winterbloom. The shabby, old-fashioned belongings in the house are actually a clue to the house’s true problem. Granty can’t change things too much, even when she wants to, because Witch Ellen won’t let her. The house is a monument to her old life, and she can’t let go of it. However, Ellen eventually discovered that Winterbloom was a poor substitute for her lost home. It’s undeniably a charming house, but it’s not the original castle, so it just couldn’t be the same and would never feel the same to Ellen.

When Jo finally speaks to Witch Ellen directly, she admits that, rather than bringing her solace, Winterbloom haunts her because it can’t be what she wants it to be. Witch Ellen tells Jo that, for a long time, she has been waiting for a descendant of hers to undo a terrible mistake that she made years before, which has kept her bound to the house. That is, assuming that Witch Ellen is telling the truth.

For most of the book, readers don’t know what’s behind the magic of the house or if the witch in the family is in control of what’s happening. I expected at first that Witch Ellen would be a sympathetic character who would help Jo to understand the magic and maybe teach her something to help her cope with her situation, but that isn’t the case. Jo must confront the question of whether the mission that Ellen gives her would really break the spell of Winterbloom or if the curse of Winterbloom was always Ellen’s inability to accept life as it came and to try to control the outcomes. Ellen was always a controlling person, and her own children left her and Winterbloom years ago because she frightened them. Witch Ellen was never satisfied with her life, even the parts that were really good, because she couldn’t let go of the old home that she lost. Her new home, the men she married, and even her own children were never good enough for her because she was clinging to her memories of her old life and her plan to get it back. It was an obsession with her, and it has guided everything she has done. When Ellen became Nell’s guardian as her “Granty”, she began controlling her, keeping her bound to Winterbloom all these years to accomplish what she wanted. When Nell wouldn’t do it, Ellen began searching for another descendant who would, which is why she keeps inviting other young descendants to visit Winterbloom.

Jo is capable of doing what Ellen asks, but she has begun to see Ellen’s selfishness for what it really is. Ellen is prepared to sacrifice the lives and futures of her descendants to change the past, without regard for what that would mean for anyone else. Jo is different because she can see the bigger picture, and she does care about other people. She worries about her future, and that’s why she is afraid of the changes brought by her mother’s remarriage, but she has come to see that there are limits to what she’s prepared to do about that because of her concern for the welfare of other people. Jo realizes that she doesn’t want to be trapped at Winterbloom forever or to endanger her very existence and the existence of other people in her family to accomplish Ellen’s mission.

In many books about children coming to accept stepparents, the children come to suddenly love the stepparents at the end of the book, or at least find something about them to appreciate or an ability to see things as the adults around them do. That isn’t the case with this book. Maybe Jo will come to appreciate George once she becomes more accustomed to him and her new life, but for now, she has come to see that trying to control other people’s lives can be truly damaging, not just to them but also to other people around them and even to herself, and that it isn’t healthy to remain stuck in the past. Although accepting change can be difficult and can sometimes mean accepting bad outcomes along the way, Jo comes to see that she would rather keep moving forward in life and letting others move forward.

If something bad hadn’t happened in their family centuries before, maybe none of them would even exist now. Maybe accepting her mother’s marriage to George will one day mean accepting a younger half-sibling and having to share her mother with George and that sibling, but Jo recognizes that this half-sibling has the right to exist as much as she does. The half-sibling is only a potential idea at this point, not a firm reality, but the knowledge that there could potentially be one someday causes Jo to think about the effect that her decisions can have on people, including possible future generations. Letting her mother, George, and the potential half-sibling have their lives will mean having to make some changes to her own life, but Jo sees that it also allow her room to consider new possibilities for her own life in the future and to keep moving forward. The contrast between having the ability to move forward and being stuck in the past is enough to convince Jo to stop fighting her mother’s marriage and to focus on moving forward and seeing what life holds.

Children’s Literature References

This is one of those children’s books that also references other children’s books. Because generations of children have visited Winterbloom, Jo finds old children’s books on the shelves there, like The Five Children and It by E. Nesbit and a Nancy Drew book from the 1930s. When Jo reads The Five Children and It, she reads a part about how people can make themselves wake up at a particular time without an alarm clock by really focusing on the time they want to wake up before they go to bed. I haven’t read this book yet, but I have done that before, made myself wake up at a particular time because I had it in my mind that was when I wanted to get up. It does seem to work at least sometimes, although The Five Children and It says that it only works if you really, really want to wake up at that particular time. If you don’t really want to get up, it won’t work. When Jo reads the Nancy Drew book, she tells Granty that she’s surprised that Nancy Drew is that old, and Granty tells her how the Nancy Drew books are periodically rewritten to update them with the current time and habits, changing language and technology to be current. This is true, and I’ve talked about that on this site before. As this story notes, in the original books, people were driving roadsters and using typewriters, and in the updated versions, they have sports cars and computers.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Case of the Phantom Frog

McGurk Mysteries

The Case of the Phantom Frog by E. W. Hildick, 1979.

Mrs. Kranz, an elderly sculptor, has been looking after her nephew’s 7-year-old son, Bela, because his parents were in a car accident and are still in the hospital. She consults the McGurk Organization because strange things have been happening since Bela came to live with her. At first, she is reluctant to say what is really bothering her. She was referred to the McGurk Organization by Willie’s mother, and she frames her request as hiring the kids to watch Bela while she’s working. McGurk turns down the offer, saying that the oldest members of the McGurk Organization are only 10 years old, not really old enough to babysit, and babysitting isn’t the kind of job they handle anyway. Wanda tries to refer Mrs. Kranz to a regular babysitter she knows, but Mrs. Kranz is strangely desperate and insists that she wants the McGurk Organization.

Because they’re reluctant to accept the job, Mrs. Kranz finally admits that there is a mystery connected to Bela. She starts by telling them that she’s afraid of frogs, like some people are really afraid of bugs or rats or other creatures. Ever since Bela came to stay with her, Mrs. Kranz has been hearing an unusually loud frog sound in her house, particularly in the evening, after Bela is in bed. Bela insists that he never hears it, but it’s giving Mrs. Kranz the creeps. She’s tried to search the house as best she can, but she can’t find the frog anywhere. It’s not the kind of thing that she can go to the police about, but it’s driving her crazy. The real reason why she wants the McGurk Organization to spend time with Bela is to see if they hear the frog, too, and if they can figure out where it is.

This time, McGurk is intrigued enough to accept the case, plus Mrs. Kranz offers them a larger fee for their services than they usually have. They consider the idea that Mrs. Kranz could be making up the story about the phantom frog she hears just to get them to accept her babysitting job, but they decide that isn’t likely, both because of the generous amount of money she’s paying them and because she seems genuinely frightened.

When they get to Mrs. Kranz’s house, it’s a big place that looks almost castle-like, and it’s surrounded by trees. Mrs. Kranz invites them in and introduces them to Bela. Bela was born in Hungary, where Mrs. Kranz was from originally. He doesn’t seem glad to meet the members of the McGurk Organization. In fact, he tries to ignore them and talk to them as little as he can. He doesn’t really want to talk to them about the frog when they ask him about it. He just says that maybe he’s heard a frog and that his aunt has frogs on the brain.

McGurk is annoyed with the kid, so he teases him about his name, saying that Bela sounds like a girl’s name. Bela defends his name, saying it’s Hungarian. Joey tries to defuse the situation, saying that Bela Lugosi was a famous actor in old horror movies, and he was also Hungarian. McGurk is intrigued by the mention of old horror movies because he loves them, and he starts asking Bela about whether there are things like vampires and werewolves in Hungary. Bela says that monsters are just stupid kid things. Brains is inclined to agree with Bela because there’s no scientific evidence that such things exist, and McGurk gets irritated with both of them.

When McGurk consults with the other members of the organization about Bela, he says that he thinks Bela is hiding something. His theory is that Bela is making the frog sounds himself to scare his aunt as a prank and that his hostility toward their presence and their questions is to cover up for what he’s doing. Wanda takes a different view because she thought that Bela seemed scared of something when they were talking to him, and she thinks that Bela is covering up his fear. Maybe he’s afraid of the frog or the frog sound and doesn’t want to admit it. Brains thinks that the sound could have some ordinary explanation, like sounds from the plumbing system that have been misidentified.

Aside from his hostility toward their questions, Bela seems like a well-behaved kid to watch. When it’s time for bed, he doesn’t argue with the older kids or make a lot of special requests or excuses to stay up later. In fact, he seems eager to go to bed. His only requests are that they leave the lights on and the window slightly open for air. As soon as Bela is in bed, the members of the McGurk Organization station themselves at strategic points around the house, waiting to see what they can hear and where it seems to be coming from.

They do hear the frog, and it sounds unnaturally loud, like it’s a monster frog! Most of them aren’t sure where the sound came from, but Brains is pretty sure that it came from Bela’s room. When they go inside, Bela seems like he’s asleep, and they don’t see a frog anywhere. They’re convinced that Bela is faking that he’s asleep, although Bela puts on an act like he was really asleep. McGurk knows that he must have been awake while they were out of the room because they left the light on for him, and when they first entered the room, the light was off. At some point, Bela must have gotten up and turned it off himself, although they don’t know why he would do that. For some reason, he also shut his window.

It seems pretty clear that Bela has something to do with the frog noise. The next night, they rig up a microphone in Bela’s room so they can monitor the sounds there. When they hear a loud frog sound, they hurry up to Bela’s room and find a frog sitting on his pillow .. and there is no sign of Bela! McGurk stuns the others when he makes the announcement that Bela is a werefrog! McGurk thinks that Bela has the transformation powers of a werewolf, but he’s turning into a frog instead of a wolf. They go to the kitchen, where McGurk finds some garlic, and when they return to Bela’s room, the frog is gone, and Bela is back in bed. Is Bela really a werefrog, or is there another explanation for what’s happening?

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

My Reaction

I remember reading this book when I was a kid, and I did a book report on it for school. I even did a little diorama about the story that looked like Bela’s bedroom, with a little frog made out of modeling clay. It was cute, but I can’t show it because I don’t have it anymore.

I found the story pleasantly creepy when I first read it as a kid. Even though I was sure that there must be some logical explanation for the phantom frog and Bela’s apparent transformations, I honestly wasn’t sure what it was at first. The mystery isn’t that complicated for an adult, but it’s creepy and mysterious for a child.

It sometimes seems to me that kids in the McGurk books are a little mean to each other and call each other names too much. I didn’t like it that McGurk was teasing Bela about his name in this book. However, it does serve a purpose in this story because the discussion of Bela’s name is what introduces the mention of Bela Lugosi and the idea that there might be a supernatural explanation for the phantom frog and that Bela might be a werefrog. Mrs. Kranz doesn’t suggest that idea to the kids when she first consults them about the frog. McGurk is the one who thinks of it because he’s really into old horror movies, and Bela being Hungarian, like Bela Lugosi, suggests a connection to the supernatural to him.

Not all the others are really as convinced as McGurk is, but they are creeped out by the phantom frog that appears and disappears and Bela’s odd behavior. Brains is the least convinced of everyone that there’s a supernatural explanation for the frog, reminding everyone that he invented an “invisible dog” in a previous book. He knows that it’s possible to create some pretty convincing illusions. He’s the one who convinces McGurk to investigate the possibility that Bela is faking everything somehow.

I like to take note of times when characters in books reference pieces of pop culture from the time when they were written. At one point, the kids in the story are watching a Peanuts special on tv, based on the characters from the comic strip. That comic strip was still being written and published at the time this book was written, and I remember watching Peanuts specials on tv myself as a little kid in the 1980s.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Case of the Crazy Collections

The Bobbsey Twins

The Case of the Crazy Collections by Laura Lee Hope (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1991.

Before I begin, I’d like to acknowledge Sean Hagins, for supplying me with photos of this book! Usually, I take pictures of books myself, but I just couldn’t find a physical copy of this one. Sean is a big fan of the Bobbsey Twins, particularly the New Bobbsey Twins mysteries, and you can see some of his video reviews as well as videos about his photography work on his YouTube channel, SJHFoto. Thanks, Sean!

The Bobbsey twins’ neighborhood is having their annual block party, and the Bobbsey twins and their parents are helping to set up for it. As part of the party, the neighborhood has rented a tent, where kids from the neighborhood are displaying their collections. The neighborhood kids collect all kinds of things, like baseball cards, comic books, soda cans, autographs, and coins. One boy, Kevin, has an autographed baseball that his grandfather gave to him. The neighbors are charging people money to see the exhibit of collections, and the money will be used for a pizza party later.

Later, Kevin’s autographed baseball disappears. Could the baseball thief be Mr. Sher, a visitor staying with their neighbor, Mr. Andersen? Mr. Sher tried to buy the baseball from Kevin earlier, but Kevin turned him down. Then again, Kevin’s cousin, Steve, was jealous that Kevin has the baseball. Steve turned down the offer of some of his grandfather’s old collectible items in favor of a savings bond, which he has already cashed in and spend on video games. Steve tried to borrow more money from Kevin earlier, but Kevin turned him down because Steve hasn’t yet repaid him for money Kevin loaned to him before. Danny, the neighborhood bully, was also mad at Kevin earlier. He’s a friend of Steve’s and didn’t want to have to pay to see the collections. Then again, another local girl, Jennifer, collects autographs, and they see her at a collectors’ shop. Would she know the value of an autographed baseball, and was she trying to sell it? With so many people coming and going from the tent where the collections were on display, it’s hard to say who might have taken something. The thief may have even been the Bobbseys’ own dog, Chief, who has developed a habit of collecting and hoarding baseballs.

Then, another boy realizes that his prized hologram sticker is missing. Could the thief have taken that, too? Their clues are an unexplained slit in the back of the tent, some footprints, and a pin with Greek letters on it. Can the Bobbsey Twins find the valuable baseball and return it to Kevin?

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

My Reaction

Something I thought was interesting about this story was that it brings up the concept of collecting things for fun or sentimental value vs. collecting things because of their monetary value. Most of the kids in the neighborhood collect things just for fun. At first, Kevin doesn’t seem to fully realize the value of the autographed baseball. His attachment to the baseball is because he got it from his grandfather. When he had the offer to sell it to Mr. Sher, he refused because the baseball reminds him of his grandfather.

I had a strong suspicion about the identity of the baseball thief early in the story, and my guess turned out to be right, but I liked it that there were plenty of other suspects to consider. There are child suspects, adult suspects, and even the Bobbseys’ own dog. Any of these could be plausible. When they realize that the hologram sticker is missing, it raises the question of whether the person who took the baseball also took the sticker, if the sticker was taken by someone else, or if the missing sticker is just a red herring. Overall, I enjoyed the mystery, and I liked the abundance of suspects.