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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.

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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.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Kirsten Learns a Lesson

Kirsten, An American Girl

Kirsten Learns a Lesson by Janet Beeler Shaw, 1986.

It’s November, 1854, and now that nine-year-old Kirsten’s family has settled in their new home in Minnesota and the harvest season is over, it’s time for the children to go to school. Kirsten and her brothers, Lars and Peter, will go to the small local school with their cousins, Lisbeth and Anna. Powderkeg School is a one-room schoolhouse in a little log cabin. Lisbeth and Anna’s stories about what Powderkeg School is like worry Kirsten. They talk about how strict their teacher, Mr. Coogan, is. Sometimes, the boys in class get rowdy and fight, and Mr. Coogan uses physical punishment on them. However, the girls tell Kirsten that she probably won’t have any problems with Mr. Coogan because he likes children who are well-behaved, and Kirsten is well-behaved. Still, Kirsten is nervous about what her new school will be like.

When they get to school, they learn that Mr. Coogan was injured in a fall from his horse, so they will have a replacement teacher, Miss Winston, who has only recently arrived from Maine. When one of the mean boys in class says he hops the horse also stepped on Mr. Coogan, Miss Winston tells him that nobody talks out of turn in her class and, although they live in the country, “we are not savages like the Indians.” (This is a 19th century attitude toward Native Americans, but this concept is challenged later in the story.)

Miss Winston has each of the children in class introduce themselves so she can get to know everyone. When it’s Kirsten’s turn to say her name, she forgets to address her teacher as ma’am, like the other students. Miss Winston insists that she say “ma’am”, and when she sees Kirsten struggling with the language, she asks Kirsten if she speaks English. Kirsten says that she speaks a little, and her cousins explain that her family just came from Sweden and that they speak Swedish at home. Miss Winston says that “practice makes perfect”, so Kirsten will practice her English in school. For now, she will have the easiest lessons and share seven-year-old Anna’s schoolbook.

When the mean boy, Amos, laughs at Kirsten, Miss Winston glares at him and strikes the school’s iron stove with her ruler, startling the students. Miss Winston says that her father was a ship’s captain, so she knows how to be in charge of her students, like he was in charge of his crew. Then, she deconstructs the sentence “Miss Winston hit the stove”, pointing out which words are the subject, verb, and direct object of the sentence. Then she warns the class to “Be careful that the direct object of hit isn’t the student.” The implication is that Miss Winston is just as willing to use physical punishment against her students as Mr. Coogan was.

When Amos introduces himself to Miss Winston, we learn that he is nineteen years old, the same age as the new teacher, but the new teacher says that, in spite of being the same age, she’s still the teacher, and he’s the student. In spite of being more a young man than a boy in age, Amos has only just finished the third reader, and Miss Winston says her role is to help him read and do math like a man would, embarrassing Amos. (He can’t use his age to put himself on an equal footing with the new teacher because they are not intellectual equals. She’s the same age, but she has graduated from her own school and become a teacher, and he’s still struggling along with low level math and reading.)

Anna helps Kirsten with her lessons, and Miss Winston praises her for helping to teach Kirsten, but she doesn’t praise Kirsten for doing a good job. At the end of the school day, Kirsten and her cousins talk about the new teacher. Anna thinks that Miss Winston seems nice, but Kirsten thinks that Miss Winston doesn’t like her and that she seems very strict. She asks if that was what Mr. Coogan was like, and Lisbeth says he was worse. The best part of the day for Kirsten was lunchtime, when the children were allowed some play time. When she ran around and played tag with the other children, it didn’t matter if she didn’t speak much English.

When the girls play school with their dolls, Anna imitates Miss Winston and her comment about “savages.” Kirsten asks the other girls what that word means. They say it means “wild.” Kirsten asks them if the Indians (Native Americans) are really like that, and they say that some people say they’re kind and will help people if they need food but others day that they’re “cruel and bloodthirsty.” They’ve seen an Indian man before. He came to their house when their mother was roasting meat, and he left when their mother gave him some. They thought he looked pretty “savage” because his face was painted, and he had eagle feathers in his hair. The girls say that Native Americans also wear knives and live in tents. As a farmer, their father is concerned about the Native Americans. He knows that, if the farmers take too much of their usual hunting grounds for farming, it will drive away the animals, and the Native Americans will be starving and angry. While he is happy that he has been able to secure some farmland for his family (I explained a little about the famine conditions and lack of farmland in Sweden around this time that caused people like the Larsons to leave their country when I covered Meet Kirsten), he is aware that the Native Americans also need land for their survival.

At school, Miss Winston announces that each student will memorize a poem and recite it for the class. When they recite their poems, she wants them to say them with feeling and show the emotions their poem is trying to convey. Kirsten worries about this assignment because she’s still learning English. It’s hard enough for her to learn to read anything in English and understand the meaning of the words. She doesn’t know how she can also learn to memorize an entire poem and say it in front of everyone. Miss Winston gives Kirsten a short poem to learn, but having even a short one doesn’t seem to help Kirsten.

Meanwhile, Kirsten has her first encounter with a Native American when she spots an Indian (Native American) girl watching her while she’s getting water from the stream. The girl runs away, but Kirsten finds a blue bead that she dropped. Kirsten takes it and leaves her a little pretend cake that she and her cousins made for their dolls. Later, she finds that the cake is missing and that there’s a green duck feather in its place. She and the Indian girl trade little objects in this way, gradually becoming friends.

Kirsten’s secret friendship with the Native American girl becomes a comfort to her when school is stressful. Frontier teachers often board with families who live near the school, and when Miss Winston comes to stay at Kirsten’s aunt and uncle’s house, Kirsten feels like school is following her home. What’s worse is that Kirsten’s family will be joining them for dinner, and they will practice English during the meal. Kirsten knows that the meals, instead of being comfortable family time, will now be like lessons, and they will struggle to say things they would want to say because her family still hardly knows English. Worse yet, Miss Winston is cross with Kirsten because she can’t seem to memorize even her short poem.

Sneaking away to visit the Native American girl, who is called Singing Bird, gives Kirsten an escape from her struggles with English. Somehow, Kirsten and Singing Bird manage to communicate well enough with each other, even though neither of them speaks each other’s language. Then, Singing Bird takes Kirsten to see her village. To her surprise, Kirsten realizes that she has been gradually teaching Singing Bird English words without realizing it. However, Singing Bird’s people are going to be moving on soon. Kirsten’s uncle is correct that farming is driving away the animals the Native Americans depend on for food, and they’re suffering for it. Singing Bird invites Kirsten to come with her tribe when they leave, and it’s tempting to think of living an exciting life, traveling with Singing Bird and not going to school. But, is that what Kirsten really wants?

The book ends with a section of historical information about frontier schools in the mid-1800s.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

Along with the first book in the series, this is the book that I remember the best of the Kirsten books. I think I either didn’t read the others or didn’t finish them because there are some sad things in the Kirsten stories that I didn’t like. In the first book, Meet Kirsten, another child Kirsten befriends on the journey to Minnesota dies of cholera. It’s historically accurate that some children died of disease on the journey west, but it was still hard to take. I also talked about how the reason why families like Kirsten’s wanted to come to America was that Sweden was experiencing famine around this time. The first book didn’t say much about that, but in this book, Kirsten remembers experiencing hunger in Sweden when her father’s crops failed and how her little brother cried from hunger.

Kirsten understands the plight of the Native Americans when they have to move to a new area when their food supplies run low. However, when Singing Bird invites Kirsten to come with them, she realizes that would mean leaving the rest of her family, and she can’t do that. While it’s tempting to go with her friend and escape the problems in her life, Kirsten can’t do that without also giving up the good things in her life and trading the problems in her life for a different set of problems. Although there are appealing aspects to their lives, the Native Americans also have their own struggles. To use an old adage, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. People say it in different ways, but just because someone else’s situation is different doesn’t always mean that it’s better.

In this book, we also see what it’s like for Kirsten’s family as they begin learning English, so they can communicate with other people in their new country, and the children begin going to school. The little frontier school is different from other schools they’ve experienced before, and the teachers are strict. They have to be strict because some of the students are rough and fight with each other physically, and they have to make it clear that they’re not going to put up with that. This is a real-life aspect of schools from this time period. Fortunately, we never see the teacher actually using physical punishment against anybody. She just threatens to do it so her students will think twice about misbehaving.

When Miss Winston comes to board with Kirsten’s relatives, Kirsten thinks that everything is going to be worse, that she’s constantly going to be bombarded with lessons and the problems she’s been having at school. However, it turns into an opportunity for Kirsten and Miss Winston to get to know each other better. At first, Miss Winston can’t understand why Kirsten is having such a difficult time remembering her poem, even though it’s pretty short and easy. It’s partly because she’s still having difficulties with her English, but also, the content of the poem has no relation to anything currently happening in Kirsten’s life. It doesn’t interest her, and her mind is preoccupied with all the changes happening in her life, making it difficult for her to focus on the poem and remember it. When Miss Winston shows Kirsten a model of her father’s ship, it brings back memories of the ship Kirsten’s family traveled on when they came from Sweden. Miss Winston realizes that Kirsten has strong memories of the ship, so she gives her a different poem to memorize, one about a ship. Kirsten finds this poem easier to remember because it connects to memories she already has.

Although Miss Winston can be tough, she genuinely does care about Kirsten and looks for ways to help her learn. It just takes time to figure out the best way to help her, and Kirsten also needs time to adjust to her new language and new home. Once Kirsten sees that it’s possible for her to learn and for her new home to begin feeling like home, she begins to feel better about her new life in Minnesota.

I enjoyed the realistic aspects of the story and the references to historical events and real life conditions on the frontier. I think I liked this story better as an adult because I understood more about the historical background than I did when I was a kid. Parts of this series are still sad. Kirsten remembers people being sick and dying on the journey to America, and although she doesn’t go into detail about it, her family did suffer genuine hardship in Sweden.

Posted on by TracyC

Lady Margaret’s Ghost

Felicity, An American Girl

Lady Margaret’s Ghost by Elizabeth McDavid Jones, 2009.

This book is one of the mystery stories published to accompany the American Girl series of historical books. The main character of this book, Felicity Merriman, lives in Colonial era Williamsburg, Virginia, around the beginning of the American Revolution.

Felicity’s mother is going on a trip to visit a relative, along with Felicity’s younger siblings. As the oldest girl in the family, Felicity will be in charge of the household while her mother is gone and her father and his apprentice, Ben, are working in the store her father owns. It’s a big responsibility and an honor that Felicity’s mother considers her capable of managing the household, but because Felicity is still young and some household tasks involve heavy work that is difficult for her to do alone, her mother has hired a temporary cook, Mrs. Hewitt, to help her. Because Felicity is known as a daydreamer who doesn’t always pay attention to what she should be doing, her mother reminds her to focus on the task at hand while she’s minding the house, although she has faith in Felicity and is sure that she will do a good job.

Soon after her mother leaves, a crate arrives at the house for Felicity’s father, along with a letter. The letter explains that a cousin of Felicity’s father has died and that the crate contains some family heirlooms that his cousin left to him. These heirlooms once belonged to a common ancestor of theirs, Sir Edward Merriman, a wealthy nobleman and the first member of their family to live in the colonies, more than 100 years earlier. Felicity’s father didn’t know his cousin well because they never lived very close, and his cousin was much older, but he does know the history of the heirlooms. The heirlooms include a lady’s silver vanity set and a silver cup and rattle for baby. The story is that Sir Edward’s wife, Lady Margaret, owned the vanity set, and the rattle and cup were for their infant son. Unfortunately, the baby was stillborn, and Lady Margaret died shortly after the birth. After her death, her husband and the household servants believed that she still haunted the house. The haunting may have been part of the reason why Sir Edward decided to leave his home in England and go to America, but even though he later remarried and had other children, he could never bring himself to part from the things that belonged to his first wife and child. Even before Felicity’s father tells her about the ghost story, Felicity gets a strange feeling from the vanity set, and she wonders if the objects could be haunted.

However, Felicity soon has to turn her attention to household issues. Mrs. Hewitt, the temporary cook arrives, and she is a brusque and unpleasant woman. She is rude and condescending to Felicity when they are working in the kitchen together. Because Mrs. Hewitt is so rude, Felicity is nervous and makes mistakes, making her look like more of a fool to Mrs. Hewitt. They can’t easily replace her because cooks are in demand right now because this is Publick Times in Williamsburg, and there are many visitors to the city. Everyone is busy tending to them. Mrs. Hewitt was the best they could find available. Felicity’s father does speak to her about her rudeness to Felicity. After that, Mrs. Hewitt is sullen and resentful, and she is even more pleased whenever she sees Felicity doing something wrong.

There is also an exciting event taking place. Felicity has entered her horse, Penny, in a horse race at the fair in town! Ben, her father’s apprentice, will ride her. The day of the race, Penny seems to be doing well, but then, she suddenly develops a problem during the race. When Felicity and Ben check her out to see what was wrong, they discover that someone put burrs under Penny’s saddle! Worse still, the wounds caused by the burrs become infected. Felicity is very upset and worried about Penny, and she wonders who would have hurt her horse. There were a couple of men looking at her before the race. There was also a boy named Dawson and a girl called Anne.

Dawson turns out to be a runaway, but he also has some knowledge of horses. Although Felicity is a little suspicious of him at first, Dawson helps to heal Penny’s wounds. He also says that he saw Anne gathering burrs, but it was probably on behalf of someone else.

When Felicity realizes that her treasured coral necklace, which her mother also wore as a girl, has disappeared, Felicity questions whether she carelessly lost it or if someone has stolen it. Felicity has been doubting herself and her ability to manage the household because of all the mistakes she has made since her mother left, and the clasp of the necklace was a little loose. This could just be another disastrous mistake, but it is suspicious that Anne seemed so friendly to her at the race and then ran away from her later. Anne also literally bumped into Felicity at the race. Could she have taken the necklace? Dawson seems to think so, but then again, can Felicity really trust everything he says?

Felicity still gets an odd feeling from Lady Margaret’s heirlooms, and she thinks that she sees something white moving around at night. At first, she thinks that it could be Lady Margaret’s ghost, but then, strange things begin happening around the house. Things disappear, and Felicity worries that maybe she carelessly mislaid them. Then, her necklace unexpectedly turns up, and Lady Margaret’s vanity set vanishes! Are these strange things part of the haunting of Lady Margaret or the work of a thief? If it’s a human thief, is it the work of the runaway Dawson, mysterious Anne, unpleasant Mrs. Hewitt, or the mysterious person who arranged for Penny to be hurt?

The book ends with a section of historical information about Colonial era Williamsburg. The story is set during Publick Times, which was when court was in session in Williamsburg. People would gather in Williamsburg during Publick Times to see the trials in court and attend a public fair in Market Square. The fair offered various kinds of entertainment, games, and races, like the horse race in the story.

My Reaction

The story leaves it a little ambiguous at the end about whether Lady Margaret’s ghost exists, but if she does, she is not harmful and has nothing to do with the thefts in the story or what happened to Penny at the horse race. As the section of historical information explains, there are many new visitors in Williamsburg during Publick Times. This was a good setting for the story because there are many strangers to the city with unknown pasts and motives, and crowds at the fair might harbor thieves.

Part of the story and part of the section of historical information in the back focuses on the subject of orphans. Both Dawson and Anne are orphans, and neither of them is really being cared for. Dawson admits that he used to steal to support himself after his father died, but he is seriously looking for work. Anne technically has a guardian, but her guardian is abusive and uses her as a servant rather than taking care of her.

When the thefts occur and mysterious things start happening around the Merriman house, both Dawson and Anne look like the best suspects, but there are also possible adult suspects. Even after Felicity realizes Anne’s situation, she isn’t entirely sure which of the men at the fair that day is Anne’s guardian. Mrs. Hewitt also looks suspicious because she is so unpleasant and seems to be trying to make trouble for Felicity. I though the book did a good job of supplying an array of suspects to consider. The solution to the mystery was one of the possibilities I thought was most likely, but there were enough other possibilities to make the story interesting.

Posted on by TracyC

Thimble Summer

Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright, 1938, 1966.

It’s summer, and Garnet is a 9-year-old girl living on a farm with her parents and brothers in a rural community in Wisconsin. The story is episodic, with each chapter describing things that happen to Garnet over the course of one magical summer when she found a silver thimble down by the river. Garnet thinks that the thimble itself is magic, but maybe the magic is just in the happy summer adventures that follow.

The book is a Newbery Medal winner. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including one in Chinese).

The chapters in the book are:

The Silver Thimble

It’s been hot and rainless, and the crops are in danger of being ruined if they don’t get some rain soon. It’s a real worry because, if the crops are bad, Garnet’s family won’t be able to pay their bills. When Garnet and her brother Jay go swimming in the nearby river, Garnet finds a silver thimble. It’s a lucky find, and Garnet becomes convinced that the thimble is magic and that something wonderful is about to happen. Jay thinks that’s silly, but that night, the rain they’ve so badly needed comes! Garnet and Jay are so overjoyed with the rain that they go out running in the rain in the middle of the night, until they are frightened by lightning striking something, and their mother calls them back.

The Coral Bracelet

Garnet’s best friend is a girl name Citronella, who lives nearby. Citronella’s great-grandmother lives with her, and she tells the girls stories about what it was like when she was young. She tells them about Indians (Native Americans) who would sneak into her family’s house in bad weather to get warm and leave them presents as thanks. (I don’t know if any Native Americans ever did this in real life, but she says it like it really happened.) Then, she tells the girls about a special coral bracelet that she wanted at the general store when she was young and some foolish risks she took to get it.

The lucky thing that happens in this chapter is that Garnet’s father gets a government loan to build a new barn.

The Lime Kiln

The family needs to make lime for building their new barn. The kiln needs to burn for three days straight, and they all need to take turns tending it, day and night. Jay and Garnet are allowed to stay up all night there with their father. Friends help them, and neighbors come to visit and talk with them. Garnet brings along a picnic with sandwiches and apple pie that they eat at midnight.

The Stranger

While they’re tending the kiln, a strange boy comes along and asks them for food. His name is Eric, and he’s a parentless boy who travels around and makes his living from odd jobs. He tells them about his life and travels, and Garnet’s father hires him to help the family build the new barn.

Locked In

Garnet likes having Eric at the farm, but she’s also a little jealous that Jay wants to spend more time with Eric now than with her. Garnet starts spending even more time with Citronella, and the two girls build a tree house together. The girls tell stories in their tree house, and because it’s going to rain again, Garnet suggests that they go to the library in town. They get so engrossed in their books that they lose track of time and get locked in the library. Garnet thinks this is a fabulous adventure until Citronella points out that it’s Saturday, and the library is closed on Sunday. If they can’t find a way out, they could be there for the rest of the weekend!

Journey

It’s harvest time, and everyone is occupied in picking crops and canning foods. Garnet helps, and she is temporarily put in charge of the threshing machine. Unfortunately, she falls asleep and lets the straw stack pile up until it falls over and makes a mess. Eric tells her not to worry about it, but Jay yells at her and tells her that she had no business helping out as a girl and that she should be at the house with the women. Garnet is so upset at the way Jay has been critical of her lately that she decides to run away and hitchhike around, like Eric used to do.

“As a Ragpicker’s Pocket”

Garnet is still running away, and she takes a bus to the next town. By the time she has explored the town and looked at all the store windows, she isn’t so upset and can see the funny side of what happened with the thresher, and she’s about ready to go home. She buys a few things for her family at the dime store and a hot dog to eat. Then, she has a horrible realization: she’s out of money. How is she going to get back home?

Fair Day

Garnet goes to the fair with her family and neighbors, and she enters her pig, Timmy, in a contest. Timmy was the runt of his litter, but Garnet has taken special care of him, and she thinks that he has a good chance of winning a prize.

Ice-Cream Cones and Blue Ribbons

Garnet and Citronella enjoy the wonders of the fair while Garnet is waiting for the pig contest. They spot the lady sword-swallower darning her socks, they ride the rides, and they have snacks. The girls get stuck on the Ferris wheel when it stops working, and Garnet worries about getting down in time for the judging of the pig contest.

The Silver Thimble

The silver thimble hasn’t been mentioned since the first chapter, but when Garnet looks back on all the good things that have happened this summer, she’s still sure that it’s magic. All the good things that have happened started right after she found it. She shows the thimble to Eric, and the kids talk about what they want to do with their futures.

My Reaction

This story is more like a collection of stories, some of which continue each other. The book is somewhat episodic, leading up to the fair at the end of the summer. The stories are pretty gentle, slice-of-life adventures. Eric has had a hard life, but he doesn’t want to dwell on it too much, and things improve for him when he decides to stay with Garnet’s family. There are hints that Eric might marry Garnet someday, and the two of them might stay on the family’s farm. Eric has had enough of traveling in his young life, and he wants to be a farmer and thinks that he would like to save up money and buy land near the family’s farm. Jay wants to be a sailor or something else that will let him travel and see the world, although he thinks that he might want to come back to the farm when he’s done traveling and farm it with his father and Eric.

The book fits with the Cottagecore genre, and it would make good bedtime reading. Foodies will enjoy the mentions of old-fashioned treats, like apple pie, griddle cakes, and vinegar candy. Garnet also imagines that each of the kitchen things have their own personalities.

I liked Garnet’s name, which is very unusual in the early 21st century. Citronella is an even more unusual name, but I prefer Garnet. I think it’s charming, and it’s one of the less-common gem names used for girls. In the story, Garnet mentions that the librarian frequently gets her name wrong because gemstone names are popular in her time and area. There are other girls in town named Ruby, Pearl, Opal, and Beryl, and the library usually calls her Ruby, the most popular of the gemstone names.

There are some stereotypical mentions of Native Americans in the story. They’re not derogatory, and they’re minor parts, but there were a couple of things that struck me as being a little stereotypical, like the kids saying that they’re Comanche Indians doing a rain dance when they’re running around in the rain. I also didn’t care for the way the characters kept pointing out which people were “fat” or “fleshy.” They’re not really shaming these characters, just sort of remarking, but I just felt like it was rude and unnecessary. You see this sometimes in older children’s books. Fortunately, none of the fat characters are considered bad characters in this story, as they sometimes are in other books. There aren’t really any bad characters in the story in general. Jay is annoying at times and says things that put down his sister and girls in general in a bratty, macho kind of way, but nobody in the story is a villain.

Posted on by TracyC

Return to Gone-Away

Return to Gone-Away by Elizabeth Enright, 1961.

This story picks up the spring after the previous book, Gone-Away Lake, with Portia Blake’s parents purchasing one of the old houses in the abandoned resort community now known as Gone-Away Lake. They’ve bought the large house that’s in the best condition, the one formerly known as the Villa Caprice. The wealthy woman who had once owned it had died many years before in the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, leaving no heirs. Few other people would be interested in owning it since the lake has become a swamp, so the Blake family got a really good deal on it. The Blake family think the place is wonderful, filled with some amazing old things, and they’re looking forward to fixing it up and restoring the old garden. They plan to use the house as a summer home, and they will still live in their apartment in New York, where the kids go to school, for the rest of the year.

Portia’s aunt and uncle live nearby with her cousin Julian, and the two remaining residents of the old resort community, affectionately known as Aunt Minnehaha and Uncle Pin, still live there. Portia and Julian are part of a club they call the Philosopher’s Club, after Uncle Pin’s old group of friends, which includes Portia’s younger brother Foster and a couple of other kids who live in the area. They have a meeting space in another of the old, abandoned houses.

When the Blakes see the Villa Caprice again, the parents feel less optimistic about their purchase of the house because it looks shabbier than they remembered, and there is so much to fix. The adults know that it will take a lot of money and hard work to restore the house. However, the children are still enthusiastic because they know the old house is full of some fascinating things. One of the first things they run into is a dummy set up by the former owner to frighten and discourage trespassers. They nickname him Baron Bloodshed. When the adults realize that the old chandelier in the house is a Waterford chandelier, they begin to see that there may be some worthwhile treasures in the house after all.

The Blake family takes the children’s spring vacation to start cleaning the house and sorting through the things inside. They find some other valuable, collectible items, like a set of Lowestoft china and antique Chippendale furniture. The adults realize that, if they sell some of these valuable antiques, they can use the money to pay for the renovation of the house. The children have little interest in such things, but they are amazed by some of the old-fashioned features of the house, like the old dumb waiter. Foster climbs inside the old dumb waiter, gets stuck, and has to be rescued. His parents tell him off because it was a dangerous thing to do and the old rope holding it might have been rotten.

The children look forward to spending the whole summer exploring the house and seeing what other treasures it has to offer. Aunt Minnehaha tells them more about the wealthy woman who used to own the house, Mrs. Brace-Gideon, who was a very determined woman who was accustomed to telling everyone what to do and getting her way because of her money. She was self-centered and callous in some ways, but she was also a brave and just woman in others. When Aunt Minnehaha tells them a story about how Mrs. Brace-Gideon dealt with a burglar who was trying to rob her wall safe, Julian begins asking more questions about the safe because they haven’t seen any sign of it. Aunt Minnehaha says that Mrs. Brace-Gideon wasn’t a very trusting woman, so she probably either told everyone the wrong room it was in on purpose to keep its location a secret or maybe had it moved after that incident or removed the safe entirely when she decided that she wanted to move to California. Even if the safe still exists, concealed somewhere in the house, it’s not likely that it would contain anything really valuable because Mrs. Brace-Gideon might have taken her valuables to California with her. All the same, the kids think that it would be exciting to try to hunt for the safe, in case it’s still hidden somewhere.

The kids begin another fun summer, improving their club’s meeting place with discards from their new house, enjoying outdoor fun with their friends, hearing stories about the past escapades of the people of Gone-Away, and spending the night camping out in a spooky old house during a thunder storm. They enjoy finding new treasures among the abandoned belongings of Gone-Away, and before the summer is over, they find the greatest treasure of all!

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

My Reaction

This is a fun sequel to the original book! I loved hearing about the things the family discovered in their old house and how the adults let the kids have some neat old things for their club. The small details in the book are magical, like the addition of the dummy they call Baron Bloodshed and the way he keeps scaring them because they keep forgetting that he’s there until they stumble on him again.

It’s the sort of idyllic summer in a unique location that kids dream of having! I liked the treasure hunt for the lost safe, and there are many small adventures and escapades along the way. The stories that the older couple tell the children about wonderful past summers both offer the kids inspiration for their summer and are like little mini-stories within the bigger one.

Even though this old, abandoned community and the house the family is fixing up are charming, there is also some acknowledgement in this book that there are dangers in exploring and playing in the abandoned houses. The incident with the dumb waiter could have been dangerous, and there is also a collapsed stairway in the story. While these houses full of valuable antiques and hidden treasures are wonderful, the inclusion of some of the dangers of abandoned places, no matter how exciting they are to explore, add an element of reality to the story.

Posted on by TracyC

The Silver Nutmeg

The Silver Nutmeg by Palmer Brown, 1956.

It’s late summer, and it’s very hot. The well is dry, so Anna Lavinia has to go to the spring whenever they need water, and the paw-paws are falling off the trees even though they’re not ripe yet. Anna Lavinia is spending most of her time outside, singing songs from her favorite book Songs from Nowhere, because her mother is making the green paw-paws into preserves, and it’s a smelly process. Nothing seems like it’s going right, and even Anna Lavinia’s animal friends are grumpy because of the heat.

Anna Lavinia looks at Dew Pond Hill through the hole that her father recently made in the garden wall. He made it because he’s been thinking that Anna Lavinia has been too cooped up, and he wants to “broaden the horizon for her” and give her a new “point of view” in a very literal sense. Anna Lavinia thinks that she already has many points of views on many issues, but she does like the new vista that her father has opened up for her.

Things seem to improve on this very hot day when Uncle Jeffrey comes to visit. Uncle Jeffrey deals in spices, and he brings herbs and spices with him to replenish the family’s supply. Uncle Jeffrey also likes to collect samples of flowers and leaves, which he keeps pressed in a book with labels of their names (if he knows them) and the places where he found them. This time, Anna Lavinia notices a special purple flower in his book that she has never noticed before. There are no notes about it in the book, but she is sure that it is something special.

Then, she notices three men digging for something by the dew pond on the hill and decides to go see what they’re doing. Uncle Jeffrey warns her against going to the dew pond because he says that dew ponds are always bewitched. However, her mother thinks that’s nonsense and sees nothing wrong with Anna Lavinia going to look at the dew pond. When Anna Lavinia talks to the diggers, they joke with her at first that they’re digging a hole to go to exotic places on the other side of the world, but then, they admit that it’s just a ditch for water. They want to drain the dew pond! Anna Lavinia is upset about that, and they explain that they need the water to grow their parsnips. They say that this won’t be the end of the dew pond because they plan to fill in the ditch, and the pond will eventually fill up again. However, they really need the water now.

Anna Lavinia goes to look at the dew pond and enjoy it while she can, thinking how awful it is that it’s going to be drained just when her father created a new view of it for her. While she thinks about it, she tosses a few acorns in the water. Then, suddenly, one of them jumps back out of the water at her! Strangely, the acorn also seems completely dry. Curious, Anna Lavinia tosses in another acorn. This time, when it flies back at her, it has a note pinned to it that says, “Please don’t throw acorns at me.” When Anna Lavinia looks into the water, she doesn’t see her own face reflected back at her. Instead, she sees a blond boy in a green sweater. She looks around, but she doesn’t see anyone else by the dew pond but herself. When she calls out to the boy to ask where he is, he says that he’s on the other side of the pond – the underside!

The boy says his name is Tobias, and he’s playing with a boat on the pond. Anna Lavinia asks if he can come up to her through the pond, and he says he could but he promised his mother that he wouldn’t. However, she can come through the pond to him, if she likes. He says that, for her to get through, the water must be completely still, no ripples, and that she must jump in as hard as she can. Anna Lavinia asks what will happen if she doesn’t do it right, and Toby tells her that she’d probably just get all wet and get a scolding from her mother. Anna Lavinia debates about it because Toby is upside down compared to her, and she’s not sure how gravity will work on the underside of the pond. Toby says that the right side up depends on your point of view and there is no gravity where he is. He shows her a net in a tree where she can jump and teases her about being afraid. Deciding that it’s a small risk, Anna Lavinia jumps in along with her pet lizard, which she calls a thobby.

It works just like Toby said it would, and Anna Lavinia lands safely in the net. Once in Toby’s land, she experiences a strange sensation that they call “the tingle.” (It’s not a dirty thing, although I did raise an eyebrow at first.) This sensation is a kind of force that Toby says flows through the ground in his land, and it’s what keeps objects from just floating around all the time in the absence of gravity. If you lift an object off the ground, it will float around in the air because there is no gravity, but once it’s in contact with the ground or in contact with another object that’s in contact with the ground, it will stay where it is, held in place by this force, until someone or something else causes it to move. Toby describes it as being like a kind of magnetism.

With Toby’s help, Anna Lavinia experiments with this lack of gravity. Toby explains that people can’t fly in his land, although birds can fly through the air with their wings. People do lose contact with the ground if they skip or jump, but it’s usually not a big deal because they can sort of maneuver themselves in the air until they can get back down to the ground or grab hold of something that’s grounded. It’s impossible to fall.

All of Toby’s world is the underside of our world, and the ground they’re walking on is the inside of the ball that is the Earth. Because it’s the inside of the Earth, it’s dimmer than the outside world. The light that comes through comes through bodies of quiet water, like the dew pond. Toby says that, while people from this inside world can go to the surface area through any still pond, they typically don’t. For one thing, they find it difficult to deal with the gravity of the outside world, and it will turn them bandy-legged if they stay too long. For another, people who left used to be banished by their own people if they returned, so those who have gone to the outside world have often stayed. Toby’s Aunt Cornelia still misses the man she had planned to marry. After the two of them quarreled about his desire to see the world, he vanished, and Aunt Cornelia thinks that he probably went to the outside world, never to return. Things have changed now so that people who left are now allowed to return, so Aunt Cornelia hopes maybe her sweetheart will come back, but Toby doesn’t think there’s much hope of that.

When the children hear a baby crying, Anna Lavinia insists on finding the baby and seeing why nobody seems to be tending to him. It turns out that the donkey pulling a gypsy wagon has pulled the wagon over a cliff, which isn’t as dire as it sounds, since nothing in this land can fall. However, the wagon is now stuck sideways on the side of a cliff, and things from the wagon have been tossed around and are hanging in mid-air, including the baby in his basket. Toby and Anna Lavinia rescue the baby, and his grateful mother offers them a reward for their help. She gives Toby a tambourine, and she tells Anna Lavinia’s fortune. The fortune comes out strangely backward because Anna Lavinia is from the outside world, but from what they gypsy sees, it looks like Anna Lavinia is going to do something to make an old man happy.

Anna Lavinia has a lovely visit with Toby and Aunt Cornelia, but then, she suddenly remembers that the men are going to drain the dew pond today! By the time she and Toby return to the dew pond, it’s dry! With the pond dry on her side, Anna Lavinia can’t get home … unless still waters run deep.

This book is the sequel to an earlier book called Beyond the Pawpaw Trees, which first introduced the character of Anna Lavinia.

My Reaction

The book is sweet and would probably appeal to fans of Cottagecore. The characters sing songs and recite rhymes throughout the story, which might appeal to young children. I was a little divided over whether I liked having the story interrupted by the songs and rhymes, but the songs and rhymes really are a part of the story and add to its charm. It’s a little like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, where a girl goes to a magical land, where things don’t work as they do in the ordinary world.

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, there’s a lot of random nonsense, and that’s fun, but I liked that this particular story uses a kind of pseudo-scientific focus on magnetism and gravity. Neither the magnetism nor gravity works the way it does in the real world, and it adds a kind of science-fiction twist to the fantasy world in the story. Even with this almost science-fiction twist, we still have that old-fashioned, cottagecore style fantasy atmosphere that’s charming and whimsical rather than technical. I haven’t read the first book in this series, but I understand that it uses similar concepts. Nothing really stressful happens in the story, and it would make a nice bedtime story.

My one complaint is that there are some stereotypical gypsies and comments about gypsies in the book. They are always referred to as “gypsies” and not Romany or any other name, and for some reason, they make a point at the beginning of the story that gypsies always go barefoot. I’m not sure what the point to that was except to establish that gypsies have eccentric habits. It’s not unusual for children’s books from the mid-20th century to have stereotypical gypsies as characters, although it might rub people from the 21st century the wrong way.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

The Summer Birds

The Summer Birds by Penelope Farmer, 1962.

Aviary Hall is an old, Victorian-era house in a small village in England. It doesn’t really have an aviary, although there are hummingbirds on display in a glass case in the drawing room. Like other houses of its type, it has greenhouses and a walled kitchen garden. Twelve-year-old Charlotte Makepeace and her younger sister, ten-year-old Emma, live there with their grandfather. Every morning, they walk to school, and they admire the birds in the area, wishing that they could fly like that themselves. One morning, they meet a strange boy on their way to school. Charlotte is cautious about meeting strangers, but Emma talks to the boy. Charlotte says that they should hurry, or they’ll be late for school. The boy says that he doesn’t go to school, so Emma invites him to come with them to their school. Charlotte isn’t sure what their teacher would think of the strange boy showing up, but they have to go or they will be late.

However, when they arrive at school, Charlotte gradually begins to realize that nobody seems to notice the new boy except for her and Emma. Other people just look past him, and nobody asks who he is. It’s like they can’t even see him. As the lessons at school continue, Charlotte’s attention wanders, and she finds the heat of the room uncomfortable. Then, the boy invites Charlotte to come away with him, promising that he will teach her more than she will learn in class.

At first, she thinks that people will notice if she leaves, but they don’t. She and the boy run away from the school, and Charlotte feels wonderfully free, like a bird. The boy asks Charlotte if she would like to fly like a bird. Charlotte doesn’t see how that’s possible, but they says that it is and shows her that he can fly. The boy teaches her some exercises to make sure she’s strong enough. Charlotte can’t fly at first, just falling to the ground when she tries, but when the boy urges her to continue trying, she gradually realizes that she is staying in the air longer and longer. They have a wonderful time on this adventure.

The boy is very mysterious about who he is although he asks many questions about Charlotte and her home and family. Charlotte asks the boy if the other kids from school can also learn to fly. The boy says that they have to learn one-by-one, but he will teach them individually, and it has to be a secret.

Then, suddenly, Charlotte finds herself back at school. No one has noticed that she was gone, not even Emma. At first, Charlotte wonders if it was all just a dream, but she discovers that she still has the ability to fly and has to be careful not to let other people see her feet leave the ground when she kicks her feet. Emma can tell that Charlotte has a secret, and she’s irritated when Charlotte refuses to tell her what it is. However, Charlotte knows that Emma will learn soon enough.

Emma learns to fly the next day, and gradually, other children at school also start to be able to see the boy and get their own flying lessons. Charlotte’s best friend, Maggot (a nickname, not her real name), seems particularly accepting of the strange boy and his strange powers of invisibility and flying. She seems to understand things about him, maybe even more than Charlotte does, saying that her uncle has told her about such things.

Their teacher discovers what they’re doing when she catches one of the children flying, and she questions them about it. The children don’t want to admit anything to her because they call swore an oath to keep it a secret, but the mysterious boy says that their teacher is all right and reveals himself to her. He explains that he taught the children to fly, and their teacher is surprisingly accepting of that. She asks if she can also learn, but the boy explains that he can only teach children. The teacher regretfully says that she suspected that might be the case, and the children begin to consider that their ability to fly might also fade with age. The teacher invites the boy to join their class for the rest of the term and seems to quietly support their flying adventures.

When school lets out for the summer, the children continue their flying adventures, still a secret from their parents. The boy, who has still not told anyone his name, is very strange, and not just because he can fly. Charlotte sees him eating insects, which he says he loves, and he doesn’t seem to understand things about school and ordinary houses. During an argument among the boys in the group, who don’t want to be bossed by the mysterious boy without reason, one of the boys, Totty, challenges the mysterious boy about who he really is, where he really comes from, and how he came by his flying magic. The other children are afraid to challenge the mysterious boy because they know that he is strange, they worry that there may be something evil about his magic (although they doubt it), and they fear losing the ability to fly.

The children decide to settle the conflict with a special challenge. If the mysterious boy wins the challenge, he wants to stay with them for the rest of the summer, being their leader and not explaining anything about himself. If Totty wins, the mysterious boy says he will explain who he really is and then leave, although he will let the children keep their ability to fly until the summer is over. The mysterious boy wins the challenge, but at the end of the summer, he makes them all an offer that could change their lives forever.

The book is the first book of the Aviary Hall Trilogy, although it isn’t as well-known as Charlotte Sometimes, which is the third book. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction and Spoilers

Although Charlotte and Emma are sisters, this is the only book in this short series in which they both appear together. Each of the other books focuses on each of the girls separately. Charlotte Sometimes, the best-known book in the series, is set when Charlotte goes away to boarding school, and the second book in the series, Emma in Winter, takes place while Charlotte is away at school, focusing on Emma, who is left at home. All three books focus on growing up and issues of personal identity, although they do it in somewhat metaphysical terms and with fantasy elements.

Charlotte Sometimes focuses on personal identity as Charlotte finds herself traveling back and forth through time, trading places with another girl who attended her school in the past. At times, Charlotte feels like she’s losing her identity as Charlotte and becoming more like the other girl. One of the things I liked about The Summer Birds was getting a glimpse of Charlotte just being in her own identity all the way through the book. The beginning of the book makes it clear that the other children at school think that Charlotte is a prig (someone who is rigidly well-behaved to the point of being obnoxious), but it also clarifies that it’s because she feels compelled to look after Emma and set a good example for her.

The two girls live with their grandfather Elijah, who is obsessed with astrology, and an elderly, lazy housekeeper. The book never really explains what happened to their parents, but it seems that Charlotte and Emma are orphans. It is established in Charlotte Sometimes that their mother is dead, and this book mentions that their father was a sailor. Their grandfather likes girls to be well-behaved, and Emma is anything but, so Charlotte keeps trying to teach Emma how to act to keep their grandfather happy and trying to smooth things over with their grandfather when Emma misbehaves. In Emma in Winter, Emma has to face up to the realities of her personal behavior and other people’s reactions to her behavior without Charlotte running interference or taking responsibility on her behalf. That’s her coming-of-age moment, and it leads her to become more mature, personally responsible, and better-behaved herself and to appreciate what Charlotte was trying to do for her.

Although each of the books in this short series can be read independently of each other, I think reading all of them adds some depth and understanding to the characters. Charlotte was always a very responsible and cautious person in Charlotte Sometimes, showing that there is continuity to her character, but knowing the history of why is that way makes her more understandable. Although the other children sometimes consider Charlotte a drag for pointing out things that they shouldn’t be doing, it’s Charlotte’s serious nature that causes the other children to question the offer that the mysterious boy makes them at the end of the summer.

We also get to meet Charlotte’s best friend in her home town in this book, a girl called Maggot, who never appears and is never even mentioned in Charlotte Sometimes. The reason why she doesn’t appear in later book is that she is the only one who decides to accept the mysterious boy’s offer at the end of the book, leaving with him to be forever young as a bird. Charlotte is tempted by the offer, but she realizes that accepting it would mean giving up everything else and everyone else in their lives. The children would be happy for a while in their freedom as birds, but they would eventually miss their parents, and their parents would grieve for them because they would never be able to return. Although the other children don’t always listen to her, she is able to persuade them that this is really a serious matter that is about their very lives, forever, not just a brief summer lark. In the end, Maggot is the only one who can accept the offer because she is the only one who has no one left in the village to miss. She is an orphan and lives with an uncle who pays little attention to her. It is implied that he would hardly notice if she left, whereas Charlotte and Emma’s grandfather really would miss them, even if he sometimes doesn’t like their behavior. Maggot was also always the most birdlike, and she probably knew that the boy was really a bird before the others did because her uncle is a gamekeeper.

There are still some questions left unanswered at the end of book, but that is typical of this series. Readers might have guessed that the boy was really a bird all along, but we still don’t really understand his magic or see what happens in the village after Maggot leaves with him. We don’t know for sure that Maggot’s uncle doesn’t miss her or try to look for her, what the other villagers decide happened to Maggot, or if the teacher ever tells anyone what she knows about the children flying or if she understands what happened to Maggot herself.

Overall, it’s a pretty slow-paced book. Most of the story feels like pretty low stakes until the part at the very end, where the boy offers to let the other children come with him to be young birds forever. Then, it becomes a serious question of whether they are willing to continue with their normal lives, growing up and losing their flying magic, or if they’re willing to give up everything and everyone they know and love forever to keep it. Even though most of the story is peaceful, I had the feeling from the beginning that there might be a sinister turn somewhere because the boy’s behavior didn’t always seem straight-forward and friendly, and he was definitely keeping secrets. I had the feeling that the mysterious bird boy wanted something from them or was going to try to get them to do something they shouldn’t eventually. It’s an interesting premise, although I still think that Charlotte Sometimes is the best in the series. Events in this book are also mentioned in Emma in Winter, when characters in the story discuss them with each other, showing that all of the local children still remember their flying adventures together and that the events in this book didn’t just happen in their imagination.

Posted on by TracyC

The Enchanted Castle

The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit, 1907.

Boarding School Break

Two brothers and two sisters spend most of their time at boarding schools. The boys go to a school for boys, and the girls go to schools for girls, so the only times when they are together are when they are home for school holidays or visiting at the house of a kind, single lady who lives near to their schools. Although the children’s parents are grateful for their single friend for hosting the children as guests from time to time, the children find it difficult to play at her house because everything is so neat and proper, and they don’t feel quite at home. Then, during one school break, one of the sisters, the one who makes it home first, comes down with measles. With their sister sick, the other siblings can’t go home, which is a great disappointment, and their parents have to make other arrangements for them. When the children tell their parents that they don’t want to visit the single lady for the entire school holiday, the parents arrange for the boys, Gerald and James (called Jerry and Jimmy), to board at their sister Kathleen’s school. It will be fine for them to be there because Kathleen (called Cathy) is the only student remaining at the school during the holiday, and there will only be one teacher there to supervise them, the school’s French teacher.

This arrangement suits them better than going to the single lady’s house, although they think that they ought to find something special to do during the school holiday. Kathleen suggests that they write a book, but the boys aren’t thrilled by the idea. They would rather do something outdoors, like playing bandits. However, they are a little concerned about the French teacher’s supervision. Fortunately, Gerald is good at charming grownups, when he wants to. Through a combination of flattery and small, thoughtful favors to the teacher, he gets on her good side, and he manages to convince her that he and his siblings would like to have some time to themselves to play and explore outside, maybe in the woods. The French teacher understands that what they really want is some freedom from supervision, but she agrees to give them some time to themselves.

The children don’t actually know if there are any woods in the area, but they decide to do some exploring and see if they can find an adventure of some kind. They end up getting lost during their exploring, but they find it exciting. When they sit down to rest, they find a cave and decide to explore it. The cave turns out to be a tunnel that leads them to a beautiful garden with a lake with a decorative waterfall and swans. The children imagine that it’s the garden of a magical castle. Going a little further, they find a thimble with a crown on it and a thread tied to it. It looks like the kind of thimble that might belong to a princess.

Meeting the “Princess”

When they follow the thread, they find a young girl in a beautiful dress who looks like she might be a princess. She looks like she’s asleep, so she looks like an enchanted princess or Sleeping Beauty. Jimmy doesn’t really believe that she’s a princess, but the others aren’t so sure, and anyway, it makes a fun game to pretend that she is. Since Jerry is the eldest of the children, Cathy thinks that Jerry should kiss her to wake her up. Jerry refuses, so Cathy says Jimmy should do it. Although Jimmy is sure that she’s really just an ordinary girl dressed like a princess, he says he’ll kiss her to prove he’s braver than Jerry and that he should be the leader for the rest of the day.

When Jimmy kisses the girl’s cheek, she opens her eyes and says that she has been asleep for 100 years. She insists that she’s a real princess and asks them how they got past the dragons. Jimmy still doubts that, even though she shows them a mark where she pricked herself on a spindle, just like in the Sleeping Beauty story. She invites them to come back to the castle and see her beautiful things. The children say that they are hungry, so they go with her go get something to eat.

When they get to the “castle”, the princess brings them bread and cheese to eat with some water. This seem depressingly ordinary, and the princess apologizes, saying that was all she could find. However, she claims that the food in the castle is magical, so it can be whatever they want. The children imagine that it’s roast chicken and roast beef, but all they get is bread and cheese. Cathy doesn’t want to admit at first that it’s just bread and cheese because (like with the Emperor’s New Clothes), there is an implication that there is something wrong with her if the magic doesn’t work for her. Jimmy isn’t discouraged by that, so he asks the princess if it’s a game, but the princess denies it, insisting that the food is magical.

Then, the princess takes the children to a hidden door behind a tapestry. The room inside has paneled walls and blue ceiling with stars painted on it. The princess calls it her “treasure chamber”, but the room is completely empty. The princess acts surprised when the children say that they can’t see any treasure, and they refuse to believe it’s because they’re magical or invisible. The princess has the children close their eyes while she says some magic words. When they open their eyes, suddenly, there are shelves with jeweled objects on them. The children have no idea how the princess accomplished this trick, so they start to believe that maybe she can do magic.

The Invisibility Ring

The princess suggests that they all put on some of the jewels and be princes and princesses, too. It’s amusing for a while, but the boys start getting tired of dressing up, and they’re still a little skeptical about who the princess is. They suggest that they go play outside, but the princess insists that she’s actually grown up and doesn’t play children’s games, and she has the others help her put all the treasures back in their proper places. She tells the children that various pieces of jewelry have magical property. Jimmy asks her if that’s really true or if she’s kidding, but the princess insists that it’s true. Jimmy asks her to demonstrate how the magic works. The princess says that she will try on the magic ring that makes her invisible, but only if everyone closes their eyes and counts first.

When the children open their eyes, all of the shelves of jewels are gone and so is the princess. Jimmy says that it’s obvious that the princess just went out the door of the room. When they close their eyes and count again, Jimmy keeps his eyes open and sees the princess hiding behind a secret panel. When he tells the others, the princess says that he cheated. The weird thing is, even though they hear the princess say that he cheated, they still don’t see her. They tell her to stop hiding and come out, but she says that she already has. She says that if they want to pretend like they can’t see her, that’s fine, but the children seriously can’t see her. When the princess realizes that they’re serious that she’s actually invisible, the princess suddenly gets scared. She tries to shake the boys and get them to say that she’s not invisible, and Jerry catches hold of her, still unable to see her. She tells them that it’s time for them to go because she’s tired of playing with them.

Jerry makes the princess look in a mirror to prove that she’s invisible, and the princess gets very upset. Cathy sensibly tells her to just take the ring off, but the princess says it’s stuck. She admits that the whole thing, up to this point, was just a game of pretend. She says that the treasure shelves were hidden behind some paneling, and she just moved it with a hidden spring. She never expected that any of it was actually magical. The truth is that the girl’s aunt works at the house as a housekeeper and that her name is Mabel. She was just playing at being an enchanted princess because the rest of the household is away at the fair, and she happened to hear the other children coming through the hedge maze, so she roped them into her game.

Since one of the objects that Mabel claimed was magical was a buckle that would undo magical spells, Cathy suggests that she try the buckle. Mabel says that’s no good because she only made up that it was magical, but Cathy points out that she also made up the part about the ring being magical, and it turned out to be true, so she might as well try the buckle. Mabel would, but they accidentally locked the key inside the room and can’t get in now.

The children sit down to think about the situation. Since they can’t think what to do, the other children think maybe they should leave and go get their tea, but Mabel insists that they can’t just leave her invisible like this. Instead, she suggests that she go with them to tea and leave her her aunt a note. While they have tea, maybe they can think of something else to help Mabel. In her note, Mabel says that she’s been adopted by a lady in a motorcar and is going away to sea. The others say that’s lying, but Mabel says that it’s fancy instead of lying and that her aunt wouldn’t believe her if she said that she was invisible.

When they return to Kathleen’s school, they have tea and supper. They let Mabel have one of the three plates laid out for them, and Jerry and Cathy share one between them. Fortunately, the French teacher isn’t eating with them and doesn’t see an invisible person eating, but the children don’t know how they’re going to handle breakfast the next morning. They say that Mabel can stay the night with them, sharing Cathy’s bed and borrowing a nightgown. Mabel says that she can get some of her own clothes from the house tomorrow because no one will be able to see her and that she’s starting to see some possibilities for being invisible.

In the morning, the maid who comes to wake Kathleen sees Mabel’s discarded princess dress on the floor and asks Kathleen where it came from. Kathleen makes an excuse that it’s for playacting, which means that she and her brothers will have to figure out some kind of play to put on with it. Mabel thinks that acting sounds exciting, but Kathleen reminds her that she’s still invisible, so no one can see her perform anything.

The children feel bad about Mabel’s lies in the note to her aunt, and they insist that they should go and tell her the truth. Mabel doesn’t think this is a good idea because her aunt won’t believe her, but she reluctantly agrees. When they try to talk to her, the aunt doesn’t really want to listen to them, thinking that it’s just another one of Mabel’s pranks. She says that maybe Mabel was changed at birth and that her rich relatives have finally claimed her. They try to tell her that Mabel is with them, only invisible, and the aunt tells them not to lie to her. They ask about Mabel’s parents, and the aunt says that she’s an orphan. The children think that Mabel’s aunt is crazy because she doesn’t seem concerned about her and doesn’t want to hear anything they have to say, but Mabel says that she thought that her aunt might act that way because she spends so much time reading novels and can imagine anything.

In the meantime, Mabel has had some thoughts about what she can do. She says that she might be able to continue living in the house where her aunt works because the place is supposed to be haunted, so she can play ghost herself. However, the others think that she should stay with them. They just need a way to get some money to buy extra food for her.

Sine the fair is still going on, Mabel suggests that Jerry put on a magic show at the fair to get some money. The others say that Jerry doesn’t know any magic tricks, but Mable points out that it doesn’t matter when he has an invisible friend who can move things around, unseen, and make things disappear. Jerry dresses up as a conjurer from India (in a way that would be considered equal parts cheesy and offensive by modern standards because it involves black face), and he puts on the magic show with Mabel’s help. It’s incredibly successful, and toward the end of it, Mabel feels the ring coming loose. She takes it off and gives it to Jerry, who ends the act by vanishing himself.

Jerry’s and Eliza’s Invisibility

Now, Mabel is visible again, and it seems like they’ve solved their problem, but now, they have a new one. The ring is now stuck on Jerry’s finger, and he is the one who’s stuck being invisible. Although Mabel can now go home, she insists on staying with the other children and taking part in their next invisible adventure.

Jimmy says that, if he was invisible, he would turn burglar. The girls point out that would be unethical, so Jerry decides that he will be a detective. There are advantages to a detective being invisible. Then, Mabel remembers that the treasure room is still locked from the inside, and they have to do something about it. Jerry says that, as an invisible person, he can sneak in easily enough through a window. When he does this, he ends up foiling a robbery by actual burglars, although he also ends up letting them escape from the police because he knows that conditions in prisons are horrible and can’t bring himself to send anyone there.

After his adventure, the ring comes loose from his finger while he’s in bed, and the maid at the school, Eliza, finds it and decides to “borrow” it for an outing with her fiance. When her fiance can hear Eliza’s voice but not see her, he thinks that he’s taken some kind of strange turn or fit, possibly because he’s been in the sun too long. The children convince him to go home and lie down while they deal with Eliza. They take Eliza on a little adventure of her own because they’re beginning to see that the ring doesn’t come off someone’s finger until its purpose is fulfilled. Afterward, they manage to convince Eliza that it was all a strange dream that she had because she felt guilty about taking the ring without permission. The children also think that the ring’s power might be diminishing and could be completely spent because it seems like its effect has been lasting shorter and shorter amounts of time every time it’s used. However, this is really just the beginning of the ring’s magic, and it can do much more than they think it can.

The Living Dummies

At this point, they feel a little guilty that they haven’t spent much time with the French teacher, who is supposed to be looking after them, so the buy her some flowers. She is pleased with the gift, and they have a little party with Mabel as their guest. They find out that the French teacher has artistic abilities, although she rarely has time to draw these days because she’s so busy teaching. Mabel also tells them more about the man who owns the house where her aunt works. Although the house is grand, the man who owns it doesn’t really have enough money to support it and live there full time with a full staff because his uncle wrote him out of his will for falling in love with a girl he didn’t approve of. It’s sad because he also never married the girl because she was sent away to a convent, and although he did try to find her, he never did. Mabel, whose knowledge of convents comes from the scandalous gothic novels that she and her aunt read (much like the kind the main character reads in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey), speculates that the girl might be bricked up in a wall by now because that’s the kind of wicked thing that happens in books. The French teacher tells her that real convents aren’t like that and that the women who live there are good and take care of girls without parents, although they can also be strict, and the girls aren’t allowed to leave. She says it in a way that implies that she was one of those girls raised in a convent.

Since the children had claimed earlier that they were going to put on a show of some kind with the princess outfit, they decide to go ahead and perform for the French teacher and Eliza. To fill out the audience for their performance, they make a bunch of stuffed dummies, which the French teacher finds amusing. The children use the ring as a prop in their play, although none of them put it on, and Kathleen wishes that the dummies were alive so they could have better applause from the audience. To the children’s amazement and the French teacher’s and Eliza’s terror, the dummies (which the children think of as “Ugly-Wugglies”) do come to life and start clapping. In a panic, the children debate what to do. Jerry realizes that the ring is actually a wishing ring and is responding to the children’s wishes, so he wishes on the ring that the dummies were not alive, to undo Kathleen’s wish, but it doesn’t work.

To Jerry’s surprise, the dummies begin speaking to him, although their speech isn’t clear because they don’t really have proper mouths. They ask him for a recommendation to a good hotel or suitable lodgings. The dummies don’t seem to know what they are, and they are behaving like respectable, aristocratic people. Jerry tells them that he can show them to some lodgings, if they will wait for him a little. He makes some excuses to give himself time to reassure the French teacher and Eliza that the effect with the dummies was just a trick pulled by the children with string, and he recruits Mabel to help him find a place for the dummies. He does this in an insulting and condescending way, and Mabel tells him off for that, but she agrees to help him. They decide to hide the dummies somewhere on the grounds of the big house where Mabel and her aunt live, thinking that the magic will wear off eventually and that the dummies will turn into dummies again by morning. The dummies turn nasty when Jerry and Mabel try to shut them away, and they are helped by a strange man.

The strange man demands an explanation from the children about the angry people they’ve shut away, but the children don’t want to explain. The man says, if they won’t tell him what’s going on, he’ll simply have to let the people out and ask them, but the children are afraid of what the dummies will do if they’re released. The man assumes that the imprisoned people are other children and this is all some children’s game, so Jerry and Mabel decide that they have to tell him the truth, even though they know it all sounds crazy. They can tell that the man doesn’t really believe him. The man thinks maybe Jerry has a fever or something, and he says that he’ll see the children home. Jerry can tell that the man plans to open the door after the children are gone, and he warns him not to do that. He insists that the man wait until tomorrow to open that door and to wait for them to meet him to see it opened because, by then, they’re sure that the dummies will just be dummies again. The man reluctantly agrees.

When the children arrive the next day, they discover that the man didn’t wait for them to open the door, and he is now lying unconscious and injured, apparently attacked by the dummies. The dummies are gone except for the most respectable dummy, who seems concerned about the unfortunate man on the ground. Mabel runs for smelling salts to revive the unconscious man, and Jerry looks around to see where the other dummies are. They find that the other dummies have turned back into piles of old clothes, and only the one living dummy is left. He seems to be becoming far more real. The children revive the unconscious man, who turns out to be the new bailiff. The bailiff assumes that the strange visions he had were because he was injured accidentally. After the children are sure that he’s all right and send him on his way, they try to figure out what to do with the remaining living dummy.

The remaining dummy seems to have developed a life of his own and is quite a wealthy man, although the children aren’t sure that this will last because the ring’s magic never seems to last very long. Jimmy says that he wishes he was wealthy, and the other children are horrified to see him age quickly, turning into an elderly, wealthy man. Jimmy doesn’t seem to remember who they are, and he refuses to turn the ring over to them when they ask for it, trying to stop his wish. He acts like the dummy is an old acquaintance of his, and he just wants to go to the nearest railway station with his dummy acquaintance.

Jerry sends the girls home to make some excuses for his and Jimmy’s absence, and he follows the now-elderly and wealthy Jimmy on the train to London. There, he learns that Jimmy and the living dummy have somehow acquired business offices, staff, and backstories. Other people seem to have somehow known the two of them for years (a warping of reality that makes Jerry’s head swim because neither of them existed in their current state before) and say that they are business rivals. Jerry pumps a boy who works at one of the offices for information, claiming that he’s a detective and is trying to reunite the elderly Jimmy with grieving relatives. The boy’s advice is that it will be difficult to get through to elderly Jimmy but that he might use the living dummy’s rivalry with elderly Jimmy to arrange things. The living dummy (now known as U. W. Ugli) helps Jerry to get control of the ring, and he wishes himself and Jimmy back to the house where Mabel lives.

The Ring’s True Power

Jimmy is restored to his younger self, and the children debate about what to do with the ring. They can see that it has some dangers. Mabel says that she ought to put it back in the treasure room, where she found it. However, while they’re in the treasure room, they begin to wonder if any of the other pieces of jewelry are magical, since the ring became an invisibility ring after Mabel pretended it was. Mabel can’t remember exactly what she said any of the other pieces of jewelry did because, at the time, she was just playing pretend and making things up. Then, something occurs to Mabel. She realizes that the ring only became an invisibility ring because she said it was one, and it turned into a wishing ring when they started calling it that. She says that proves that the ring does whatever they tell it to do, changing its powers to match whatever they say. To prove the point, she declares that the ring will now make people tall, and when she puts it on her finger, she is suddenly unnaturally tall.

Mabel’s experiment did prove the point, but they now have to hide Mabel until the effects wear off. The children get a picnic from Mabel’s aunt and go to hide out in the woods overnight. However, Mabel complicates things when she turns the ring into a wishing ring, and then, she accidentally turns herself into a statue. The children have a nighttime adventure with some living statues, learning that all statues apparently have the ability to come to life at night. They can also swim, so they have a nice swim and a feast. The statue of Hermes tells the children that “‘The ring is the heart of the magic … Ask at the moonrise on the fourteenth day, and you shall know all.'”

Then, the children learn that Lord Yalding, the man who owns the big house, is planning to come, and that he is thinking of renting the house to a wealthy American. Mabel’s aunt is busy, getting the house ready for Lord Yalding and the American. However, it turns out that the children have already met Lord Yalding without realizing it, and with the ring and the treasures in the hidden treasure room, they have the power to secure his future and reunite him with his lost love … if only they can figure out how to manage the ring’s power without causing any more chaos.

The book is now public domain and available to borrow and read for free online through Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive (multiple copies), including an audio recording from Librivox. The story was made into a BBC television miniseries in 1979, but it’s difficult to find a copy these days. As of this writing (April 2024), the only dvd release was in Australia in 2013. Sometimes, clips of it appear on YouTube.

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

For the first part of the book, it isn’t obvious that there will be any real magic in the story. At first, the children are all just playing pretend with each other, and even when Mabel turns invisible, it’s possible to believe that the children might still be playing pretend and letting their imaginations run away with them. Because the adults don’t seem that concerned about Mabel, I thought that they might have been humoring the children in their game, but the children later realize that the ring has the effect of muting people’s concerns for the one wearing it, even if they’re doing something bizarre or dangerous. That ends when the person takes off the ring, and people become more concerned about them and where they’ve been. The magic in the story is real, and as the story continues it involves too many other people, even adults and various bystanders, for it to just be a game.

Throughout the book, various adults experience the effects of the magic ring and witness things that the children do with it. They come up with various explanations for what they’ve witnessed, so they can disregard it, but they unquestionably experience magical events along with the children and have some consequences from the children’s adventures. While Jerry retrieves Jimmy from London when he accidentally turns himself old and wealthy, they never do retrieve the living dummy, so U. W. Ugli remains doing business there until his magic finally wears off. His employees don’t seem to know what he is and have memories of having worked for him for years, so they report him missing when he finally disappears, and the notice appears in the newspaper.

There’s a lot of humor in the story as the children experiment with the magic, deal with the consequences of their adventures, and try to invent excuses to explain away the inexplicable. There are times when they do try to tell adults the truth about what they’ve been doing and what’s happening, but most of the time, the adults don’t believe them. Sometimes, they feel a little bad about lying to adults and making up stories, but they have to resort to that because nobody really believes the incredible truth.

When the children start telling Lord Yalding the stories of their magical adventures and about the treasures they’ve found in the house, they are unable to prove what they say at first. Lord Yalding gets a chance to experience the magic himself, he thinks that he’s going crazy. At the proper time, the ring’s magic reveals itself to Lord Yalding, his love, and the children so they can all see the true magic and learn the ring’s history, which is a story of magic and tragic love. Lord Yalding comes to understand that he is not crazy and that the magic is real. His lover makes one final wish that turns the wishing ring into a wedding ring. The magic ends, and the castle and grounds are changed because of it, becoming less grand and more ordinary, but Lord Yalding and his bride are able to have their happy-ever-after.

I thought it was interesting that the author provided a backstory for the magic ring, explaining where it came from and its effect on the house and its grounds. I didn’t think there were many clues to that backstory provided along the way, and some buildup to the explanation would have been nice. However, I recognize that the author didn’t have to provide any explanation for the magic at all. Many other fantasy stories don’t offer explanations for magical objects, leaving that up to readers’ imaginations, because the focus is more on the effects of the magic rather than its origins.

As far as we know, the children’s other sister, the one who was sick with measles in the beginning, never finds out what her siblings have been doing during this particular school break. The children remain close to Lord Yalding and his wife, and they host them at their house during school breaks afterward. In fact, it sounds like they spend more time with Lord and Lady Yalding than they do with their parents.

Overall, I enjoyed the story. E. Nesbit’s fantasy stories are children’s classics, and they have influenced other children’s fantasy books that came after them, especially Edward Eager’s Tales of Magic series.

Problem Points

Although the original story is now public domain, there are different versions of this book because there are simplified forms of the story for younger children, and some newer editions have removed some of the problematic parts of the story. Some of E. Nesbit’s books contain problematic racial language or stereotypes or have children doing things that would be unacceptable by modern standards. In this book, such incidents are relatively mild, and their absence wouldn’t materially change the character of the story.

For example, when Jerry dresses up an conjurer from India, he uses black face as part of his costume. In the 21st century, use of black face is considered derogatory toward people with dark skin. In a way, Jerry’s costume is played for comedy because it’s made from pieces of his school uniform, and someone points out that he’s left out spots in his skin makeup. Nobody believes that he’s a real conjurer from India, although they are impressed by his act because they can’t figure out how he accomplishes his tricks.

There is also some anti-Catholic sentiment, although the children seem to say certain things because they’ve gleaned them from sensational novels or things other people have said, and the author does correct for it. The first instance of this comes from Mabel’s concept of the dark deeds done in convents, which she has apparently learned by reading gothic novels. I’ve read some old gothic novels myself, and the idea that sinister things happen in secrecy in convents and abbeys was a popular concept from 18th and 19th century literature. It’s partly due to anti-Catholic sentiment and, probably, because the idea of a closed society that isn’t open to the general public makes for a compelling setting for dark secrets, somewhat like the way secret societies and boarding schools have become the setting for sinister happenings and dark deeds in Dark Academia literature. However, the other does have the character of the French teacher contradict this view of convents with a more benevolent and realistic one, that the people in them are caring but strict. There is one other comment that Jimmy makes in the story when he’s arguing with Mabel, when he seems to be implying something about Jesuits, a branch of Catholic priesthood:

“If you’d been a man,” said Jimmy witheringly, “you’d have been a beastly Jesuit, and hid up chimneys.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what this comment meant, although I think it might be a reference to the ways Catholics hid priests in priest holes, little hidden rooms, when they were at risk for arrest, torture, and even execution in Elizabethan England. Some of these little hiding places were in fireplaces, which I think is what the reference to hiding in chimneys means. At the time, the children were arguing about bravery, so I think Jimmy is implying that Mabel is the type to run and hide in the face of danger. (That might actually be the best option when there’s real danger. Just saying.) If I’ve understood his meaning, that makes Jimmy’s comment more of a slur against Mabel’s bravery than against Jesuits, although he does still call the Jesuits “beastly”, and he’s implying that’s a bad thing to be.

When you read public domain versions of the story online, they will have these elements in the story because they were part of the original book. However, if you find a physical copy in a library, it may or may not have these elements, depending on the printing. If it was printed during the late 20th century or any time during the 21st century, there is a good chance (although not completely guaranteed) that it’s a revised version and may have these parts written out or at least toned down.

Posted on by TracyC

Conrad’s Fate

Chrestomanci

Conrad’s Fate by Diana Wynne Jones, 2005.

This is the fifth book in the Chrestomanci series.  In this series, there are many different dimensions, and in each of those different dimensions, there is a copy of every person.  Different versions of our world can differ dramatically in their history across the dimensions, and individual people’s lives can differ dramatically between the dimensions. There is one person in each generation who has no duplicates in any of the other dimensions.  This person is called the Chrestomanci.  All of the talents, abilities, and lives that would have been spread across the other dimensions are now centered on that one person, giving that person, literally, nine lives.  The Chrestomanci fills an important role, being better able than anyone else to travel across the dimensions, and he acts to keep a balance between them and make sure that the different worlds keep their proper course.

Conrad lives in the 7 series of worlds in Chrestomanci’s universe. His family owns a bookshop. Well, technically, his Uncle Alfred owns the bookshop. He started it with Conrad’s father, but he says that Conrad’s father needed a large amount of money before his death, so he sold Alfred his half. When he was young, Conrad and his older sister, Anthea, imagined that their father probably lost a large amount of money at the casino. Conrad likes that idea because he’s a bit of a risk-taker himself and likes doing adventurous things, like rock climbing. Uncle Alfred tells them that they’re wrong about their father gambling. He says that he thinks that the aristocrats at the mysterious Stallery Mansion stole a large amount of money from their father. He doesn’t explain any more about how that happened, but he cautions Conrad not to be such a risk-taker because he has bad karma.

Conrad doesn’t understand what karma is, and his sister explains that karma is sort of like fate, but it’s the consequences of good or bad deeds committed in previous lives coming back to affect the present life. She thinks that the only way to clear bad karma is to correct for the misdeeds of the past. Conrad is intrigued and asks if it’s really possible for people to live more than once, but everybody else is busy with things they’re trying to do, and nobody will give him a straight answer. Conrad can’t help but wonder what this could all mean for his karma and his fate.

One day, while Conrad is looking for a book in the shop that is part of a series he’s been reading, he realizes that the books in the series have changed titles, and although he can tell that the basic stories are the same, some of the details are different. When Conrad asks his uncle about it, Uncle Alfred is very angry. He says that it’s the fault of the aristocrats at Stallery Mansion. Uncle Alfred explains that the aristocrats at Stallery Mansion make themselves richer by very literally playing the possibilities. They use powerful magic to evaluate different possible realities and make little shifts in the nature of reality itself to make things go the way they want them to go for their business interests, so they can turn bigger profits. The problem is that any little change in reality can have a ripple effect, changing many other details of life around them, from the titles of books to the color of everyone’s mailboxes. Not everyone notices these magical changes in reality because they use mind games to fool people into thinking that whatever changes they made were always like that. (It’s a weird combination of gaslighting and the Mandela Effect.) They also use powerful enchantments around their area to stop people from sensing what they’re doing, so powerful that they disrupt computers and television sets. Uncle Alfred is a magician himself, so he can tell what they’re doing, and he despises them for their manipulations.

However, Uncle Alfred is greedy and manipulative, too. Conrad discovers how greedy and manipulative he is after his sister leaves home to go to university. Both his mother and uncle are angry at her for leaving because she had been doing much of the work around the house and bookshop, and they had never had to pay her to do it. Anthea knows they’ve been taking advantage of her, and that’s the reason why she knows that she needs to leave and build a life of her own. Conrad misses her after she goes, and his uncle has to actually hire another girl and (gasp!) pay her to work for him. He frets constantly about how much it costs to actually pay someone wages in exchange for work. The other girl, Daisy, tells Conrad that his uncle isn’t hard up for money at all. The bookshop is very successful, and with what it brings in, Uncle Alfred could afford to pay her much better than he does. He just doesn’t want to do it because he’s so stingy. All of the money he brings in, he spends on himself. For the first time, Conrad becomes aware of how much money his uncle spends on fine port and tailored clothes. His mother is also two-faced, spending all of her time writing books about the oppression and subjugation of women while making Conrad do all the cooking in Anthea’s place. Conrad’s not very good at cooking, but his mother won’t cook anymore because she doesn’t want to be subjugated as a woman. She’s not above subjugating her own children for her benefit, though.

Conrad realizes that he has to use the techniques that Daisy uses to get his mother and uncle to stop exploiting him as badly as Anthea. He stops cooking and refuses to make any more food until his uncle agrees to give him things he wants as payment, like a bicycle. He notices that other kids at school get presents from parents without having to work for them or bargain for them, like he does, but he supposes that it’s all part of his bad karma.

Uncle Alfred has been blaming all of the changes that have taken place since Anthea left on Conrad’s bad karma. Conrad isn’t sure whether he lived a past life or not, since Anthea said that she didn’t believe in past lives, but since he keeps getting into trouble in various ways, he suspects that his karma might really be bad. He also starts blaming his bad karma for any accident he has (which all sound like perfectly ordinary accidents that could happen to anybody, really), and he starts feeling like maybe he deserves it all somehow for past sins. He asks his uncle what he could have done that could cause his karma to be bad. His uncle says he doesn’t know and that he’ll try to figure it out with magic.

When Conrad is getting old enough to go to high school, Conrad realizes that he’s going to have to use some kind of persuasion or negotiation to get his uncle to let him go on with his education. He wants to learn magic himself, but he knows that his uncle will probably want him to work in the bookshop for free, like Anthea did. His plan is to offer to work part time for his uncle in exchange for the money to attend high school with his friends when word spreads that Count Rudolph of Stallery Mansion has died. His heir is a 21-year-old man, and he only has a younger sister. People speculate that both of them will have to marry soon to ensure that their family line will continue. Sure enough, there is an announcement that the new count, Robert, will marry soon. People say that the old count’s wife is a controlling person and that she will control her son and his new wife, too. For some reason, the news upsets Uncle Alfred and his group of magicians.

Then, when it’s time for Conrad to leave his school and declare whether or not he’s going on to high school, his mother shocks him by telling him that he can’t go to high school because he already has a job at Stallery Mansion. Conrad demands that his Uncle Alfred explain what this job at Stallery Mansion is and why he signed him up for it. His Uncle Alfred says that he has learned through his magic that, in Conrad’s previous life, he was supposed to kill a wicked person, and he failed to do it, so this person continued their wickedness and has been reborn as an equally wicked person. Uncle Alfred says that this person’s current incarnation is someone at Stallery Mansion and that he got Conrad a job as a servant there so he can take care of the mission he failed to do in his previous life … to kill the person he is supposed to kill. Uncle Alfred says that this is the only way that Conrad can clear his bad karma and go on to live his own life. If he doesn’t, fate will take retribution on him by killing him before the year is out. Conrad isn’t sure whether to believe Uncle Alfred or not, but Uncle Alfred’s magician friends all say the same thing to Conrad, that they can read his bad karma and that it will hang over him and may kill him soon if he doesn’t clear it. As horrible as it is, twelve-year-old Conrad resigns himself to going to Stallery Mansion as a servant with a mission to kill some unknown evil person to save his own life.

When he goes for his interview at Stallery Mansion, Conrad is hired on as a page boy along with another boy, who is taller, handsomer, and very well-dressed. This other boy calls himself Christopher Smith, although Conrad is sure that “Smith” isn’t really his last name. At first, Conrad regards Christopher as a professional rival, but Christopher assures him that he isn’t interested in competing to move up the ranks of the servants. In fact, he admits that he is here for another purpose, and as soon as he’s found what he’s looking for, he will leave. Both Conrad and Christopher have their own intrigues.

Of course, Christopher is really Christopher Chant, who is currently in training to be the next Chrestomanci in his world. He is in Conrad’s world to find Millie, who has run away from boarding school because the other girls there were bullying her, and she didn’t feel like she was learning anything. Christopher had tried to tell their guardian, Gabriel DeWitt, who is the current Chrestomanci, that Millie was miserable, but he wouldn’t listen. After Millie disappeared, DeWitt still wouldn’t listen when Christopher tried to tell him that Millie was no longer in their world, so he went in search of her himself. He knows that she’s somewhere close, somewhere in Stallery Mansion, but he can’t find her, and he’s very worried. It feels like she’s trapped somewhere, but Christopher isn’t sure where.

Conrad is moved by Christopher’s story and offers to help him find Millie. Then, Christopher also witnesses the changes in reality that Conrad has seen and sees how someone at Stallery has been playing with probabilities. When Conrad confides in Christopher about his bad karma from a previous life, Christopher is sure that what his uncle told him isn’t true, no matter what his uncle and his uncle’s friends said. Together, Conrad and Christopher must confront the mysteries of Stallery: who is changing the nature of reality at Stallery and how, where is Millie and why can’t they find her, what is the truth about Conrad’s fate?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

I really liked seeing young Christopher Chant in this adventure, while he’s still learning how to be the Chrestomanci. As an adult, Christopher is always very sure of himself and able to handle just about anything, but here, he’s still young and not always sure of himself. He has high self-confidence from knowing that he’s a powerful, nine-lived enchanter, but in this story, he runs up against things that he doesn’t completely know how to handle. He puts on a show of knowing what he’s doing, but both Conrad and Millie know that there are times when he’s just bluffing or muddling his way through.

I also enjoyed seeing Christopher’s relationship with Millie develop more. They were both children in The Lives of Christopher Chant, but they have known each other for years now. It’s pretty clear that Christopher has strong feelings for Millie from the way he desperately searches for her when she’s lost. Millie knows that he’s powerful, but she also knows his faults from growing up with him. She knows that there are times when he’s lazy and doesn’t want to bother learning something, so he just bluffs his way through. He’s also grown accustomed to getting his way with things. When Millie first told him that she was unhappy at school, he wanted to run away with her so they could live alone on an island together, and Millie realized that was a terrible idea. She likes Christopher, but she doesn’t want to live alone on an island or have him constantly dictating what they’re going to do. That was why she took matters into her own hands and ran away on her own. Since Christopher is a teenage boy, I can guess why he wants to be alone on an island with the girl he likes, and even Conrad realizes that Christopher is trying to be like a knight errant to Millie by single-handedly charging to her rescue. Christopher really does love Millie, and he’s trying to be her hero and help her in romantic ways.

Christopher is a little full of himself and still has some growing up to do, but both Conrad and Millie admit that they like him in spite of his faults. The fact that they know both his good and bad points and still like him makes their relationships with him stronger. Christopher’s faults, like his superior attitude and fussiness about his clothes are minor in the face of bigger issues. He’s on the side of good, where other people in the story definitely aren’t, and although he is powerful, he never abuses those powers. Millie respects Christopher, and he does his best to look after her. At the end of the story, Conrad says that Christopher and Millie are engaged to be married, and Christopher trusts Millie with the ring that contains one of his extra lives.

When Conrad and Christopher start working at Stallery Mansion, they both learn about the divided world of a wealthy mansion with servants, with areas where the family lives and the areas where the servants live, like that shown in Upstairs Downstairs, Gosford Park, and Downtown Abbey. The boys have to learn to make themselves unobtrusive, like they’re pieces of furniture, except when they’re needed to do something for the family. They also learn to be observant and to anticipate the needs of the people they serve. Conrad has some experience with housework and cooking from home, but when Christopher arrives, he has little or no idea how to do certain things because there are staff at Chrestomanci Castle to take care of the chores. Christopher isn’t exactly humbled by his time as a servant, but he does gain the experience of working a regular job and doing menial chores, like polishing shoes. It is a learning experience for him.

I thought it was pretty obvious from the beginning that Uncle Alfred and his friends were villains and that they made up the idea of Conrad’s bad karma to manipulate him into doing their bidding. Fortunately, both Christopher and Anthea help to convince Conrad of the truth before he does anything horrible. Anthea has also discovered that her father was the real owner of the bookshop, not their uncle, even has a half partner. When he died, he left it to their mother and to his children after her. Uncle Alfred has been using memory spells of his own to manipulate everyone into believing that he owns the bookshop. Anthea only realizes it after being away from his influence for a few years and meeting Conrad again at Stallery.

What Christopher realizes about Stallery Mansion is that it’s built on a probability fault, a place where several different probabilities happen to meet. The mansion keeps shifting between different probabilities, and the reason why they have trouble finding Millie is that she has gotten trapped in one particular probability. They can’t reach her until the mansion is in her particular probability. Part of the peculiar shifting of the mansion through probabilities seems to happen naturally because of its location, but both Christopher and Anthea realize that someone is helping it along. Unraveling the mystery of who is responsible reveals some further secrets about Conrad’s family and Conrad himself. Conrad has magical abilities and ends up receiving training from de Witt along with Christopher.

While Christopher and Millie learn a few things from their experiences, Gabriel de Witt also admits at the end of story that he has learned a few things about the way he was treating both of them. As their guardian, he takes his job of educating them and preparing them for the future seriously, something that he berates Conrad’s mother for neglecting for her own children. However, he confesses that he has neglected the emotional well-being of his wards and that he is partly responsible for them running away. When Millie complained about her school and Christopher told him off for ignoring Millie’s unhappiness, Gabriel brushed it off as teenage melodrama, but he later admits that he should have taken their complaints more seriously. After Millie ran away, he did what he should have done in the first place and went to the school to see the conditions there for himself, and he admits that Millie was right that it wasn’t a good school. He promises Millie that he will find her a better school where she can finish her education. He still makes it clear to Christopher that he was behaving like a hothead by running off himself and taking unnecessary risks, but the two of them eventually forgive one another. Later books show that Christopher and Millie still have respect and affection for Gabriel as adults. Gabriel de Witt isn’t always a perfect guardian and he doesn’t always understand young people, but he does care about his young wards and wants the best for them, which contrasts with the way Conrad’s mother and uncle were just using him and his sister with no thought to their well-being or future.