Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures; Or, Helping the Dormitory Fund by Alice B. Emerson (Stratemeyer Syndicate), 1916.
One day, while Ruth Fielding is out with her friends, Helen and Tom, they see a film crew working by the river. (Because this is the 1910s, they are making a silent film and using the kind of old-fashioned movie camera that needs to be cranked, like the one shown in the picture to the right.) They talk about whether to not they would like to be in movies themselves. The girls think it sounds exciting, but Tom thinks that they’re too young. The girls say that they are not too young because the actress who is being filmed looks like she’s about their age. As they watch, the young actress accidentally falls into the river, which is freezing cold because it’s winter. Ruth and her friends hurry to help pull her out before she drowns. When they get her out of the river, Ruth is appalled at how unconcerned the director is for the actress’s health while she’s clearly suffering from the cold. Ruth and her friends take the actress, Hazel Gray, back to the Red Mill where Ruth lives, where she can warm up and recover.
While Hazel is resting at the Red Mill, she and Ruth tell each other about themselves. Like Ruth, Hazel is also an orphan. Her parents were actors, and some friends raised Hazel to be an actress after her parents died. Ruth tells Hazel that she has been thinking about writing a movie scenario (script) just for fun, and Hazel offers to show it to the director if she does. Ruth isn’t sure she likes the idea because she didn’t like the director, Mr. Grimes. Hazel explains that, while the director can be callous and abrasive, he is a famous director who really knows his business and can help actors and scenario writers make their careers.
The next day, Mr. Hammond, the manager of the film company, comes to the Red Mill to see how Hazel is and to ask Ruth about how the accident happened. He seems concerned about whether or not Ruth’s description of what happened matches what Mr. Grimes told him. Ruth explains what she saw to Mr. Hammond, and she also tells him what she thinks about Mr. Grimes’s lack of concern about Hazel’s welfare. Mr. Hammond says that it’s impossible to change other people, indicating that he knows how callous and unpleasant Mr. Grimes can be, but he promises to make sure that Hazel gets a fair deal for her acting and the accident she suffered.
While he is there, Mr. Hammond becomes fascinated by the quaintness of the Red Mill. He thinks that it would make an excellent setting for a movie. Ruth says that she would love to write a scenario about the Red Mill herself. Mr. Hammond asks her if she’s ever written a scenario before, and Ruth admits that she hasn’t, but there has to be a first time for everything. Mr. Hammond is amused and says that he would be very interested in any scenario that Ruth might write. However, he suggests to her that, before she writes a scenario about the Red Mill, she write a short story about something else, something exciting, so he can see what her writing is like. Ruth happily agrees, and after she returns to boarding school with her friends, she starts writing.
Ruth and Helen are now seniors at their boarding school, and they are starting to think nervously about their lives after graduation. They know that they want to go on to college, but they find the prospect intimidating, too. Neither of them is quite sure what they want to do with their lives. The idea of growing up in general sounds frightening.
The girls aren’t the only ones showing signs of growing up but feeling awkward about it. Ruth finds herself getting unexpectedly jealous about Tom having a crush on Hazel. Helen says that Ruth simply hasn’t been paying attention to the things the boys are doing. All of Tom’s friends at his school have crushes on actresses, and they’ve been collecting pictures of them from the newspapers and pinning them up in their rooms. At the same time, Tom seems oddly sullen that other people are starting to treat Ruth and his sister as young ladies. It’s one thing for him to have a crush on Hazel, who is a couple of years older than they are, but he doesn’t seem to like the idea of Helen and Ruth seeming too grown up.
These things are in the back of Ruth’s mind as she finishes writing her story. After she sends her story to Mr. Hammond, a fire breaks out in one of the dormitories at the school because of a neglected candle. The dormitory that is destroyed is the one where Ruth lives with her friends. Ruth is tempted to try to save their belongings, but the teachers tell her that it’s just too dangerous. They’re just thankful that all the girls are safe.
After the fire, there is the question of rebuilding the dormitory. At first, they think that the insurance money will pay for a new dorm, but it turns out that the school’s forgetful headmaster accidentally let the insurance policy lapse. Some of the girls at the school are from wealthy families, and they are sure that their parents would be willing to contribute to the building of a new dorm, but Ruth sees a couple of problems with that. First, while the wealthier students’ families would certainly be able to contribute sizable amounts toward the building project, the families of poorer students may hesitate to contribute at all because they may be embarrassed that they cannot possibly match the donations the wealthier families can contribute. Second, the girls are overly relying on their parents. While the parents may be glad to help, Ruth thinks it would be better to find a way that the students themselves can contribute to the building fund. The other students agree that they would all like to find a way for everyone to contribute.
An idea for a group project the entire school can participate in comes to Ruth when Mr. Hammond sends Ruth a check to pay for her first story. He thinks that Ruth has a great talent for writing, and he’s going to make her story into a short, one-reel movie! That makes Ruth realize that, if she can write a short story for a short movie, she can write one for a long, five-reel picture. If she can write a long scenario for a movie, all of the girls in the school can be in the film! She thinks that she can persuade Mr. Hammond to produce the picture and distribute it to the surrounding town, and the royalties from the movie can pay for the dorm reconstruction.
Mr. Hammond agrees to help Ruth and her friends make a movie on behalf of the school, and the school’s headmistress agrees to allow the students to participate in the project. The donations that the school has already received from the parents have paid for the removal of the ruins of the old dormitory and the beginning of the construction of the new one, and the money the girls earn from the movie can pay for the completion of the building project. Ruth already has an idea for the plot of the movie, one about girls at a boarding school, so they can film the movie on their own campus. Mr. Grimes turns out to be the film director, and he is still temperamental, but he shows more patience when dealing with the students than he had before.
There are complications, of course. Hazel Gray is one of the professional actresses helping with the movie, and Ruth is still jealous about how fond she seems of Tom. Then, there is drama when the other girls learn which girl left the candle unattended and vent their wrath on her. The girl, Amy, was already a troubled student with an unhappy home life. Then, Amy gets upset when the boy she likes seems to be getting too friendly with Ruth, and she runs away. Ruth and the other girls have to search for her, and they learn the embarrassing secret behind the dormitory fire and some other secrets that Amy has been hiding from them.
This book is now in the public domain and available to borrow and read for free online through Project Gutenberg.
My Reaction and Spoilers
Is There a Mystery in the Book?
Not exactly a mystery, but there are some things that Ruth and her friends discover some secrets about their prickly fellow student, Amy, and when she runs away, the other girls have to figure out where she went and rescue her. Although Ruth and the other girls are unhappy with Amy because of the dormitory fire and because Amy frequently has a sour attitude, but they become more sympathetic when they learn more about some secrets that Amy is hiding. The embarrassing secret behind the dormitory fire is that Amy is afraid of the dark. She doesn’t want to admit it to the other girls because she doesn’t want to be teased, but that’s why she left a candle burning in her room; she was afraid of returning to her room after dark. The school has electric lights, but she grew up in a more old-fashioned town and isn’t used to them.
Worse still, Amy is terrified that her father will find out that she caused a fire at school. He is already harsh with her, and it has gotten worse since he remarried. He seems to view the child from his first marriage as a nuisance, and it seems like he sent her to boarding school to get her out of the way as he starts a new life with her stepmother. Actually, Amy’s father’s reasons for sending her to boarding school were not just to get her out of the way. Ruth and the others learn that part of Amy’s difficulties with her stepmother have partly been because Amy behaved badly toward her because her aunts disliked her and were a bad influence on Amy. It wasn’t just that the boy she liked seemed to like Ruth that made her run away; she had gotten an angry letter from her father that not only accused her of doing something bad before she left home but also saying that he has heard rumors about her involvement with the fire. He is coming to the school to find out for himself what she’s been doing there, and Amy is terrified of what he will do when he gets there.
To find Amy, the girls and Curly (the boy Amy likes) have to think of all the things they know about Amy and the places she could have gone. Curly knows more than the girls do because Amy confides in him. I appreciated that Ruth and the other girls are much more active in this story in solving the problem of Amy’s disappearance than they often are in other books. In the earlier books in this series, Ruth and her friends frequently rely on chance and coincidence to reveal hidden information and other people to carrying out the final action, but this time, they use their own reasoning to figure out where to look for Amy and go after her themselves. In some ways, I think that the more active roles that Ruth and the others play in the story are because they are growing up. Amy is younger than Ruth and her friends, and they feel responsible for her. In earlier books, adults and others were looking after them and helping them, but now, they are older than someone else. I’m looking forward to seeing how this develops in other books in the series.
When they find Amy, she has had a bad reaction from poison oak or poison sumac, and everyone feels sorry for her. Amy gets the first sympathy that she’s had for some time. Amy straightens out her relationship with her father when he comes and realizes that she was unfair to her stepmother. The other girls at school forgive Amy for the fire when they find out what she’s been through, and her father makes a generous donation to the building fund.
Characters That Age
One of the most unique features of this book is that the characters are growing up, and it’s part of the story. That’s something that doesn’t happen in other, later Stratemeyer Syndicate books. In this book, Ruth and her friends graduate from their boarding school. As the girls think about their graduation and going on to college, they’re a little intimidated because they don’t know what they want to do with their lives, but Ruth discovers her talent for writing movie scripts/scenarios. (These are silent films in her time, so there’s no dialog for the “script.” Any dialog that the audience needs to understand would have been shown in text in the intertitles. I think that’s why they call this form of script a “scenario” in the book.) There is some awkwardness in the way the boys and girls in the story start looking at each other because they realize that they’re becoming young ladies and young men. They’re not used to thinking of themselves and each other in that way, and they’re developing crushes.
You won’t find this sort of thing much in the on-going Stratemeyer Syndicate book series, like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Those characters are frozen in age on purpose, and the Ruth Fielding series was part of the reason why. In early Stratemeyer Syndicate book series, like Ruth Fielding and the Rover Boys, the characters did age. They grew up, graduated from school, got married, and eventually, had kids of their own. The problem for the Stratemeyer Syndicate was that, when their characters got married and became parents themselves, they were starting to get too old to be teen detectives and young adventurers. Their child audiences wanted to read about kids like themselves or teenagers or young adults, not people who were more like their own parents. So, whenever characters started getting too old for the target audience, they would have to end that series and start a new one. After going through the Rover Boys and Ruth Fielding and some of their other popular series in this way, they realized that they could keep a book series going much longer if they just didn’t let the characters age.
That’s why Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys are frozen in age somewhere in their late teens or early 20s, and the books typically leave it vague which it is. It’s mostly important that readers know that the characters are young but old enough to travel and have adventures by themselves. Nancy Drew is not going to school, and if she takes any classes in individual books, she isn’t studying for a degree. If she did, her series would eventually end because she would graduate and move on to adult life. Similarly, the Hardy Boys are learning to be private detectives by working with their father, who is a private detective, but they will always be in that apprentice phase, so their series can continue. There are times when the characters date other characters or have crushes, but their romances don’t progress to anything serious because that would also age the characters. Every decade or so, the books in those series get revamped or the characters get a new, updated series that incorporates modern technology and culture, but the characters stay roughly the same age throughout. It’s basically what happens with new Scooby-Doo cartoon series, but with books, and the Stratemeyer Syndicate did it with their characters first.
Part of the reason that I wanted to read the Ruth Fielding books was that I knew the characters would age, and I also knew that she was a kind of prototype for Nancy Drew. The Nancy Drew series started around the time Ruth Fielding’s series ended, as a replacement for Ruth Fielding. Fortunately, we’re not at the end of Ruth Fielding’s series yet. The series doesn’t end with her boarding school graduation. It continues through her time in college and into her career in the movies.
Mary Jane is a twelve-year-old African American girl in the American South in the 1950s. Her father is a lawyer, and her older brother, James, is also studying law. Her older sister, Lou Ellen, is a nurse. Her grandfather used to teach at the state agricultural college, and now, he has a farm where he likes to experiment with different types of plants. Mary Jane spends her summers on her grandfather’s farm. Although this seems like a perfectly normal middle-class background, as a black girl in the 1950s, Mary Jane is aware that her race makes all the difference to some people, and she’s about to become even more aware.
Things are changing in society and education. When Mary Jane graduates from her old school, there is an announcement that the high school in her town that was formerly for white students only, Woodrow Wilson High, will become integrated and that black students, like Mary Jane, will be allowed to attend there the following school year, if they want to apply. It has a junior high school division, which is how she can move from the elementary school to the high school. Her older siblings attended the all-black high school for their education, and they have done well for themselves since, but Mary Jane knows that Woodrow Wilson High can offer her the best level of education that she can get for her town, and she wants to go there. It offers a wider curriculum than the all-black school, especially in the sciences, and Mary Jane’s ambition is to be a biologist. Her grandfather says that he became a biologist without attending the fancy high school. He was mostly self-taught, working his way up from being a farm laborer and cleaner to afford more education, but Mary Jane says that things are changing. People’s expectations about education are changing. Mary Jane knows that going to Woodrow Wilson High will give her knowledge she needs and wants and will open up important opportunities in her life. She also insists that it is her right to attend the school of her choice, so there is no reason for her not to go to that school. Her grandfather and parents ask her if any of her friends will be going to that school with her, and she says that only one boy she knows will be going, but she also insists that she doesn’t want to attend high school for socializing. She wants an education.
Education is the reason why Mary Jane’s family has done as well as they have. Mary Jane’s great-grandmother was a slave, and Mary Jane likes to hear her grandfather tell the story about how she learned to read and write in secret. When she had learned enough, she forged a pass for herself to leave the plantation where she lived so she could go north to New York City and start a new life. People with an education have an advantage in life.
Mary Jane thinks her great-grandmother was incredibly brave, and her grandfather says that she will also have to brave, especially if she attends Woodrow Wilson High. Even though she will be allowed to go there now, her grandfather knows that many people won’t want her there. Teachers and students and students’ parents have all made up their minds about what black people are like, and they’ll have many assumptions about Mary Jane before they’ve even met her. Her grandfather warns her that her education will be difficult, frequently lonely, and may involve some real hurt. Mary Jane isn’t too concerned at first because she says that things are changing and that she used to play with some white children in her neighborhood when she was little. Her grandfather says that it’s true that some white people care and can be friendly and helpful. People need friends and help from other people, and even Mary Jane’s great-grandmother found help from white people when she arrived in New York. Her grandfather says that there will be days when Mary Jane will feel like the whole world is against her, but it will help if she remembers that not everyone is against her and some will want to help.
When Mary Jane returns home from her trip to the farm to get ready for the new school year, things are exciting. Her father has given her new furniture for her room, so her room looks more grown-up and is a better place for studying. She also gets a new vanity table so she can do her hair in her room. Her mother buys her new clothes and has her hair done at a beauty parlor for the first time. Mary Jane doesn’t really care that much about clothes or having the latest hair style, but her mother says that appearances are important in high school. Her mother comments on the thing that “they” are wearing this year, not really defining who “they” are, and even the hair dresser says that if “they” say mean things about her, she shouldn’t pay attention. It bothers Mary Jane that people keep saying things like this to her because she realizes that “they” are the people who are going to be her new classmates at her new school, and it seems like everyone is bracing themselves and preparing Mary Jane to expect bad things from them. Mary Jane tries to tell herself and others that this experience of going to a new high school won’t be as bad as everyone seems to expect, but it really feels like everyone is trying to prepare her for a terrible ordeal. She knows that there are bound to be some mean kids, but there were mean kids at her old school, too. Is it really going to be that much different?
An article about Mary Jane and the other five black students who will now be attending Wilson High as it integrates appears in the local paper. (The book and the article refer to them as “Negro children” because “Negro” was a more common word at the time and considered one of the more polite words until around the time of the Civil Rights Movement, which is why it’s still a part of some organizational names, like the United Negro College Fund. Sometimes, the book also uses the term “colored” for similar reasons. The black people in the story refer to themselves by both of these terms. The Civil Rights Movement is responsible for the shift to “black” as a generic term because people wanted to distance themselves from older words that carried more emotional baggage, which is why “Negro” sounds out-of-date to us. It feels like it belongs to this time and these people, some of whom definitely have emotional baggage.) Everyone in town knows that there will be black students going to the formerly all-white high school. Mary Jane’s aunts and uncles give her presents and school supplies, and one of her aunts even thanks her for being the first in the family to do this because things will be much easier for the younger cousins who will come after her. It all makes Mary Jane realize that she is doing something very novel and that she will be accomplishing something beyond giving herself a better education. On the one hand, she feels proud, like a brave explorer entering uncharted territory, but on the other, she begins to get very nervous.
The night before Mary Jane’s first day at Wilson High, her father tells her that he will be taking her to school, accompanied by one of the other black students and his father. Mary Jane is surprised because the school is within easy walking distance. Then, her father tells her the reason why everyone is so nervous. While Mary Jane was visiting her grandfather on the farm over the summer, there were public protests and complaints about the black students attending the white high school. Some white adults have threatened that they will stop the black students from attending the school, and the students’ parents and the police are preparing to protect the children, if necessary. Mary Jane’s simple first day at a new school just a few blocks away is going to be much more complicated and possibly dangerous than she had imagined. Her father tells her that if she’s had second thoughts about it, nobody would blame her if she decided to back out at the last minute. However, Mary Jane can’t bring herself to do that. Even though she is starting to get scared, backing out would seem like a betrayal of the trust people are putting in her and her family’s dedication to improving themselves through education. Her aunt and cousins are hoping that she will pave the way for others. She wants to be like her brave ancestor, who escaped from slavery. She tells her father that she still wants to go to Wilson High.
As they approach the school on the first day, there are police cars in front of the building and angry, screaming protestors yelling things like, “Go back to Africa!” and “Two-four-six-eight, We ain’t gonna integrate.” (This is a direct, literal quote from one of these types of protests from real life. People shouted that at Ruby Bridges, too.) Grown women are threatening to rip young Mary Jane’s curls right out of her head, and all she can do is keep her eyes forward and keep walking past them into the school as the police officers physically retrain the protestors from actively carrying out their threats. (This is also completely true-to-life. Grown adults did threaten children, and there is historical film footage that shows them doing it. They really were like this, and I’ve had feelings about that since I saw some of that footage when I was still a child. In this one, the white man at the very beginning delivers an implied threat about how long the black students will live because he thinks it’s impossible for the police to stay at the school forever – remember, you heard it directly from him, not from me. I was a white child, but that didn’t make me feel any better when I saw things like this. I don’t think anybody in their right mind should ever trust that someone wouldn’t hurt you when you’ve already seen what they’re willing to do to some other defenseless kid, even if the ostensible reason doesn’t seem to apply to you. People’s toleration of you only lasts until they decide it doesn’t, and some people are more unstable, volatile, and generally untrustworthy in their personal temperament than others, especially when they’re deliberately being that way in public, in front of cameras and police. These people knew dang well what they were doing, it was deliberate and planned, and they were proud of themselves for doing it and weren’t at all sorry. Even young me could see that.) Fred, the black boy Mary Jane knows from her old school, shows Mary Jane how his hands are shaking after they get inside the building.
This ordeal is only the first of many ordeals. At the junior high assembly for the students in the lowest grades at the school, which includes Mary Jane and Fred, some of the students start chanting about how they don’t want her. The school principal puts a stop to that, calling the behavior “disgraceful”, but that doesn’t put a permanent stop to it. A girl named Darlene in her home room refuses to sit next to her because her mother told her not to, but the teacher tells the girl that students in her class sit where they are assigned and won’t take any nonsense. When Mary Jane talks to Fred, he says that he’s been receiving worse. Other students have kicked him and knocks his books out of his hands. The one white student who showed them any kindness at all was a blond girl who showed them how to find their classrooms. (This film footage of a newscaster interviewing white students at Central High in Little Rock in 1957 shows the mixed feelings of the white students at the time of integration. Some were against it, some seemed to be okay with it, and most seemed to think that the violent demonstrations against the black students were just taking everything way too far. I found it interesting when some students commented that the parents were more of a problem than the students because that was my sense as well.) The screaming mob is still outside the school when it’s time to go home, and flashes go off in their faces because there are photographers taking pictures of the new black students. At the end of the day, Mary Jane returns home to her mother, who has been listening to news reports about the protests at the school all day, picturing that her daughter might be beaten and bloody and could be lying in the halls of the school, dying.
Mary Jane is proud of herself for getting through this ordeal as well as she has, but this is only the first day of a very long school year. The ordeal isn’t confined to the classroom, either. Grown-up strangers, both men and women, call the house and threaten to murder her if she continues attending the school, some saying that they’ll blow up the family’s house. Mary Jane’s father just leaves the receiver off the hook and tells Mary Jane to ignore it. When Mary Jane sees her picture in the newspaper, awful Darlene is behind her in the picture with her face ugly and twisted in hate. (I think that image might have been inspired by the lady with the vicious expression in this famous photograph taken in front of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. When Darlene and her mother were first introduced, this was the face that I pictured for them.) Mary Jane thinks about what her grandfather told her and wonders if Darlene’s only problem is that she just doesn’t know Mary Jane and has too many assumptions about her. (I think Darlene’s issues go much deeper than that, but I’ll rant about that in my reaction below.) What keeps Mary Jane willing to keep going to Wilson High is the story about her slave ancestor. This school integration ordeal is a major defining moment of her life, and she imagines what stories she might have to tell her children someday.
The days continue, and the reactions to the students integrating at the school are almost schizophrenic. There are more protests, insults, and threats, but there are also more newspaper stories and even an offer for Mary Jane to be interviewed on a television show in New York. Mary Jane is excited at the idea of being on television, but her parents turn down the offer because she is a student who should be in school, not a television star in New York. Part of society declares that it wants to see the black students dead and might even make it happen if the police weren’t physically restraining them while part of society is praising the students for their bravery in the face of the protestors who are threatening to kill them. (The book doesn’t quite phrase it like that, but I think that’s actually a crucial point. This schizophrenic social reaction is like the mixed feelings that were exhibited in the footage I linked above.) Mary Jane even gets a fan letter from a girl in Tokyo, praising her for her bravery. Mary Jane tells everyone who asks that it’s “all right”, but on the inside, it really isn’t.
Mary Jane comes to understand what her grandfather tried to tell her about how her education at Wilson High would be lonely and even hurtful. She and Fred eat lunch together every day because no one else will eat with them. Other students either pointedly ignore them or stare at them like they’re exotic wild animals or harass them. Even though Mary Jane said that she wanted to go to school for an education, not to socialize, it’s hard when nobody wants to talk to her except to give her a hard time. Trying to ignore the yelling protesters outside the school also distracts her from listening to her teacher. Fred is the only one who really understands because he is going through the same experiences she is, but he gets busier when he joins the school’s basketball team. The boys on the team start accepting him because he plays basketball, but Mary Jane has trouble finding a club that will accept her. Even her old friends from her old school are busy now at the school where most of the black kids go, so they aren’t available to hang out on weekends, like they used to. It seems like they even resent her a little for going to Wilson, like she thinks that she’s better than they are and too good for their school. Gradually, the adult protesters stop coming to the school and calling the house, but the student bullies are still there at school, and Mary Jane is still painfully lonely.
There are times when people try to reach out to Mary Jane at school, but it doesn’t come off well because their efforts are clumsy and Mary Jane has been trying so hard to bury her feelings and resentment that she can’t bring herself to accept their efforts. A girl named Sharon acts nice and talks to Mary Jane, and Mary Jane briefly softens, but then, it turns out that Sharon is only pumping Mary Jane for information about her background because she believes a conspiracy theory that her family is actually from New York and that they were paid (by unspecified sources) to come to this town for the sole purpose of infiltrating this high school. Mary Jane is shocked, and when she tells Sharon that this is her home town and she was born there, Sharon loses interest and walks away from her before she’s even done speaking. This just makes Mary Jane even more reluctant to open up to anyone who approaches her. The choir teacher assumes that all black people are good at singing because of Negro spirituals, but Mary Jane insists that she can’t sing, which is true. She’s never been able to carry a tune, so it’s embarrassing to be pressured to sing when she knows she can’t. Although being good at music is a positive stereotype compared to some of the other stereotypes people have about black people, it’s still just as wrong for Mary Jane as all of the others, and it’s embarrassing to be confronted with it. Mary Jane feels like nobody will look at her outside of the usual stereotypes. Mary Jane does well in her classes, but she could use a little help in French. Her French teacher offers her tutoring after school, but Mary Jane turns it down because she feels like the teacher is offering it out of pity. At lunch, she buries herself in her French book, teaching herself phrases about all of the things she hates or how to tell herself that she doesn’t care, to avoid the other students who are being mean to her or staring at her, but in the process, she misses seeing students who are trying to get up the courage to actually talk to her for non-conspiracy and non-bullying purposes.
Things change when Mary Jane rescues a squirrel from a cat. She loves animals and knows how to care for them because of her grandfather. Sally, the girl who helped her find her class on the first day, also loves animals and is happy that Mary Jane saved the squirrel, and the two of them bond over their temporary pet. Sally helps Mary Jane to get the squirrel home, where Mary Jane’s mother says that she can only keep it until it has recovered. The girls’ mutual caring for the squirrel and their attempts to find a permanent home for him help them develop their own friendship and help Mary Jane to create bonds with the other students.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
About the Author
The author of this book, Dorothy Sterling, was not a black woman herself, and even if she had been, she would have been too old to be one of the students experiencing desegregation directly at the time it happened because she was born in 1913. Everything she talks about in this book was based on what she observed as an adult at the time of the Civil Rights Movement. She was a Jewish-American journalist, writer, and historian from New York. As an adult writer, she was researching strong women from history to use as inspiration for girls when she learned about Harriet Tubman. She found Harriet Tubman’s story particularly inspiring, and she was amazed that nobody had ever taught her about Harriet Tubman or other strong black women when she was young. She supported the Civil Rights Movement, and when the characters in this book talk about sympathetic white people who try to help, she’s partly talking about herself. Although Dorothy Sterling also wrote mystery stories for children (I’ve covered a couple on this site already), one of her best-known books was a biography of Harriet Tubman for children. She also wrote other nonfiction books about African American history. This video on YouTube explains a few details about her life. She also wrote an autobiography.
My personal reaction and Past Reading History
I wanted to read this book because I was intrigued about a story involving school desegregation that was written while it was all happening. I noticed, as I was reading the book, that it particularly drew on the desegregation of Central High in Little Rock in 1957 for inspiration, and based on the historical footage that I linked above, it was pretty accurate in its interpretation. I think the author was paying close attention to the events and news footage available at the time.
However, I knew before I even started reading it that it was going to be stressful because I find all stories about bullying and one-upmanship in any form to be stressful. I’ve mentioned that many times on this site, and I’ve probably also mentioned that I believe that racism is an extension of a bullying personality and one-upmanship behavior. I firmly think that this is part of Darlene’s problems. If racists weren’t bullying someone based on race, I’m positive that they’d be bullying someone else for some other reason or no reason at all because I think they are the type of people who don’t feel like they’re on top until they’re putting someone else down. It’s the combined defensiveness and aggression of petty social climbers who are deeply insecure about what, precisely, their real social position is, like they automatically move down some kind of imaginary numbered rank anytime something good happens to someone, somewhere. Who they’re putting down or why are probably just a matter of opportunity for them. I think they’re obsessed with being on top and look for any excuse to justify it that they can, unless they’re in a situation where they don’t feel the need to justify themselves at all.
I’ve come to these conclusions based not just on my reading but observations from life, and for me, that’s the worst part of reading books like this. I have names and faces from real life that I associate with the racists in these stories and with aspects of their personal behavior. Some of them might be classified more as bullies than racists, but since their behavior is practically identical, how much difference does it really make? Not much to me. If that sounds like contempt, derision, and judgement … yes, it absolutely is. I am very judgemental about this. While I understand issues like anxiety and insecurity and sympathize with other sufferers, I have very little sympathy for someone who uses their anxieties and insecurities to actively harm other people, and I insist that they must be stopped. Tolerance, like everything else, has limits, and here is where I draw the line. I think everyone has some issue that deeply bothers them and which they find intolerable, and in choosing this particular one, I think I’ve made a decent choice.
When I was a kid, I have to admit that I didn’t enjoy reading books about racism like this in school, but not for the reasons that certain people have been alleging, and I have feelings about some of these allegations, too. I’ve been reading in the news recently that certain people don’t want kids to read books about racism and similar issues in school because they’re afraid that white kids will be ashamed to be white, a much-disputed assertion. Since I grew up a white girl in public schools where we read stories about the Civil Rights Movement and incidents of racism similar to the ones described in this story, I think I’m qualified to have an opinion about my feelings at the time and the long-term effect that type of reading had on me.
I can’t speak for every kid out there, but that definitely was not what bothered me as a kid. When I say that I didn’t enjoy reading about racism, what I mean is I just didn’t like the frustration of hearing about mean people while being unable to do anything about them. It is depressing and frustrating to hear about awful things happening when there’s nothing you can do to stop them or change them because they happened before you were even born. I wasn’t sorry for the racists in those stories, and I didn’t identify with them or what they were doing on a personal level. I didn’t feel like one of them or want to be one of them or even want to be friends with them. I didn’t want any of them in my vicinity or even in my mind. I wanted to be rid of them or to avoid them. They are very mean and extremely frustrating people who don’t care and won’t stop, and that is stressful even just to hear about! I don’t like having them around even in book form, and it just can’t be avoided when the main story is specifically about people dealing with them and their antagonism. That’s the main hardship for books about racism for me. I know that’s the feeling that these stories are supposed to impart, to make you feel like you were there and show you what that felt like. It’s not supposed to be fun reading because nobody thinks that going through situations like that with racists and bullies picking on you is fun. These kinds of books are meant for education and encouraging empathy and understanding. There can be a kind of fulfillment in that, although it can be an emotional ordeal to get there. Life is full of mixed emotions.
As an adult, I think that it was good for me to read some books about some of the more turbulent and racist periods of our history for general understanding of life, history, and society, even though they were emotionally difficult to get through. I don’t regret reading any of them, and I would recommend that kids and young adults read at least some books of this type. I don’t think it’s something to read all the time. It helps to vary it a bit with lighter subjects to avoid getting too frustrated and depressed. It’s not what I would call light reading, but it’s worth it when you go into it with the understanding of what you’re reading and why. I think talking to kids about what these kinds of stories are about and what they’re referencing before they read them can help to prepare them for the rollercoaster of emotions they’re bound to experience while reading them. In fact, I think discussing difficult emotions in the context of both history and fiction can be an important tool for learning to identify and deal with difficult emotions in life in general.
As for the responsibility of white people with racism, I’ve come to realize as an adult that there are two definitions for the word “responsible”: the one where someone is at fault for something and the one where someone feels called to take action and control of the situation. I knew, even as a child, that as far as these past incidents of racism were concerned, I was not in the first category, but I very much felt the second one while being in a position where I could not take the action I wanted to take. I always felt like an old soul who took life more seriously than the other kids, and I very much understand the feelings of the children in this particular story. They have no control over the adults in their lives and the adults’ behavior because they’re just kids, but because the adults have not been behaving responsibly and dealing with issues in their society, it all falls on the shoulders of the kids to work it out among themselves somehow. It’s doubly hard because some of those same adults are sabotaging their efforts and recruiting their classmates to be against them every step of the way.
I was very interested in the interviews of the white students that I linked above because some of them did have the feeling, even at the time, that the parents were more of a problem than the students in the desegregation process. Even in cases where the students were acting out, it seemed to be because their parents already were and were urging them to do it. Even today, it’s a common complaint from teachers that the students with discipline problems are the ones whose parents also behave badly and who urge them to ignore their teachers’ efforts to get them to control themselves and to treat others with respect. The things that happened in both the story and in real life desegregation look like just a more extreme version of the same types of disrespect and bad behavior.
Sally becomes Mary Jane’s friend, but she can’t always do everything she wants to do with her friend because the adults in her life try to stop her. Her parents wouldn’t be so hesitant about what they allow her to do or the friendships she makes if they were able to make all the decisions by themselves, but during the course of the story, we learn that they are under pressure and threats from the pushy and racist people in their neighborhood. Because those people put themselves and what they want to do first and seem willing to back that up with harm, Sally’s parents feel forced to put their own priorities and standards second. That means Sally and her feelings and priorities come third, pushed aside by the angry and pushy neighbors and Sally’s parents’ efforts to protect her … from their own neighbors. Neighbors are supposed to be the people who have your back, but in both the story and in real life situations like this one, neighbors could be the people threatening a knife in your back if you don’t do what they want, and that is truly scary.
The adults in this community may, possibly, care about Sally somewhat, in a sort of shallow and general way because she is a child, but their hatred and their suspicious conspiracy theories (like the one Sharon has) are far more important to them than Sally and her parents are, and it shows. They back up those feelings with definite and deliberate actions. If they have to hurt, intimidate, or frighten their neighbors to get their way, even a child, so be it. If they have to exclude Sally from a store to exclude the person Sally’s with at the time, they do that. Sally’s white, but these other white people are not her friends. They do not treat her like a friend at any point in the story. She’s just a pawn in this nasty game they’re playing, and they get upset when she doesn’t play like they want her to.
I can see that Sally’s still a little higher than black people like Mary Jane in this social hierarchy, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not by that much because certain other people insist on being first, and they back that up with threats and violence. That’s something that Mary Jane comes to see during the course of the story. Just because Sally is white doesn’t give her immunity from bad treatment from other white people. The people who are higher up the social chain have created their own team in this goal (like Darlene’s mother’s little coffee klatch of nastiness – the antagonistic mothers’ group that is not the PTA but thinks it should rule the school), and everyone else is the enemy or at least an acceptable casualty.
That was something I realized as a child, too. It’s something that still rankles. The racists and bullies both in real life and these stories might not have picked a white kid like me as their first target, if they had a more obvious target of opportunity, but that wouldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t be a target. There’s no such thing as being safe around someone like that. The list of people and things they tend to nitpick and attack certainly isn’t limited to just one thing, is it? From people who dress in ways they don’t like to people who read things they don’t like to people who believe things they don’t like, they have about as many things to criticize about people who live in their own neighborhoods as Mrs. Mortimer did about the whole entire world. (See Countries of the World Described … or don’t. It’s an example of Victorian era children’s nonfiction that can teach you about as much about prejudice and mental illness as it can about geography. Few geography books would go as far as being critical not only about the personal habits and beliefs of people in every single country they cover but also about the relative quality of their rivers and trees, but Mrs. Mortimer is an intrepid armchair explorer, mainly followed by people with morbid curiosity.) In fact, I’m pretty sure that there are at least two things about me that would have made me a target for this particular group eventually, including the fact that I clearly do not like those kinds of people because of the way they act.
They might think they’ve got the right to dislike anybody they wish, say whatever they want, and treat other people as badly as they like, while thumping on the First Amendment to justify it, but God help the person who openly says anything against them. It’s maddening. That’s why I have that urge to get rid of them or get away from people like that. There just can’t be anything good from a relationship with someone like that. I don’t like these kinds of people because they are mean and selfish, and I feel constantly frustrated and angry around them. Those are not likeable qualities to bond over. I think these people care about themselves and their own status way too much to be truly concerned for anyone else’s well-being, either in the short term or the long term. Everyone is disposable if they think their own ego or social status are in the balance. This is why I feel the way I do about bullying and one-upmanship. They get in the way of everything that’s more decent and interfere with everyone who’s more responsible. People who are determined to be #1 at all costs are bound to give someone else #2, if you see what I mean.
Darlene
I came back to add something to this review. I forgot to say what it was that I would have wanted to do if I had been present for the incidents described in this story or something similar. When I was a kid, I remember daydreaming about several possibilities, most of which would have likely ended with the racists and bullies wiping the floor with me because I was a small and nerdy little girl with glasses who wasn’t physically strong and didn’t expect any mercy from them for the sins of not liking them, telling them off, or fighting back. Of course, I’m 40 years old now, and that makes a difference.
If I were in charge of Darlene and had the ability to make unfettered decisions regarding her education and discipline, I know exactly what I would do, this is the way I would describe it to Darlene herself:
“Darlene, you know exactly why you’re here today and why I want to talk to you. By now, everyone at this school knows how you’ve been picking on Mary Jane and starting fights with her, and we all know why. I don’t want to argue this point with you. I’ve discussed this situation with your teachers, and you’ve been behaving this way in all of your classes. They’ve spoken with you and with your mother multiple times, and you have made no effort to improve. You’ve made it clear that you think that Mary Jane is undeserving of being at this school and that black people are inferior. You seem to think that you know a lot about black people. We’re going to find out just how much you really do know. Normally, when a student is physically aggressive with her classmates and disrespectful to her teachers, she might be suspended or expelled from school, but since you like to think of yourself as different and not bound by the rules of behavior that the other students follow, we are going to treat you as a special case. For the rest of this semester, you will be our exchange student to the local black school.
While you are there, you will follow their rules and listen to their teachers. Nobody will suspend you or expel you from that school because I know you would probably see that as a reward for your bad behavior. No, you will attend that school every day, and you will not be allowed to run away from any problems you decide to create there. Every day, you will return to that school and see the same people, who will all remember whatever you did or said to them the day before, and you will face the consequences of your actions. If you don’t, you might have to stay another semester to get their full school experience. You thought it was acceptable to be rude and abusive to the only black girl at a white school. Now, we’ll see how the only white girl at a black school manages.
Maybe you think you know how that will go, but I say that you don’t. Nobody really knows what other people will be like until they’ve actually met them and spent time with them. Nobody gets to control other people. The best any of us can do is behave as well as we can and hope that other people will do the same and at least treat us with respect. Of course, because humans have free will, they still have the ability to choose to treat you badly anyway, just like you did with Mary Jane, and that’s the risk you’ll be taking, both at the black kids’ school and everywhere else you go in life when school is over. The black children might surprise you. If the black students treat you better than you’ve treated Mary Jane, you might want to consider which of the two of you is really the better person. On the other hand, if they treat you just as badly as you’ve treated Mary Jane … well, at least you’ll find out what it’s like to be at the mercy of people who act just like you.
One thing I know for sure is that, if you’re as smart as you like to think you are, you’ll learn to work on making friends instead of enemies. Consider it important training for later life. Adults don’t always get to choose who they live near or who they have to work with, but they still have to live and get their jobs done. And you know what? Adults who know that they are capable of doing that, managing their emotions and getting on with life, no matter where they are who’s around have better self-esteem than those who don’t think they can do those things. That realization is an important tool in building self-confidence. Not all of the kids at school realize that your bad behavior is partly because you are not self-confident, but I can tell. That’s why you try so hard to control other people, isn’t it? I think you don’t feel like you have control of yourself or that you don’t measure up, and that’s why you put other people down, but that’s not a healthy way to deal with these feelings. Facing up to difficult situations and seeing that you can handle them and that you can control yourself, even when you don’t feel like it, will do much more for you. You won’t worry so much about who other people are or what they’re doing if you’re satisfied with yourself and your ability to manage yourself and deal with life, instead of trying to hide from things and people that make you uncomfortable or fight against them.
I know what I’m talking about, partly because that’s how I try to look at the situation when I’m dealing with you. I don’t find it easy or pleasant to deal with you because you do tend to take out negative emotions on other people. When you lash out at other people, it creates disturbances for me and your teachers to deal with, it encourages other students to behave badly, and it distracts everyone from the things they need to do. It makes my life and job as hard as you’ve been trying to make Mary Jane’s life and time at school, and that’s why this behavior can’t continue. However, as difficult as it is I’m still here, still doing my job, and trying to look after your education, even though it not easy or pleasant. I’ll still be checking up on you and working with you even while you’re attending the other school because I still want you to learn from this experience, both academically and emotionally. I also have a responsibility to your hosts at your new school to see that you don’t become a punishment or burden for them. You will learn how to behave yourself because I will be supervising your time there, I will tell you how to behave appropriately, and I will ask your hosts if you have been following my instructions. You will practice what I teach you, or there will be further consequences for you from me.
It’s better to work on developing emotional regulation skills and behavioral control while you’re young rather than older. This is serious, and it will affect your life in the future, even if you can’t imagine it now. The truth is that most adults quickly lose patience with other adults who can’t manage themselves and their emotions. Adults tolerate some of that in children, up to a point, because we know you’re learning and need time to practice, but by the time you are an adult, there will be the expectation that you have already mastered these skills. If you can’t control yourself as an adult, people will be angry with you and see you as immature and a troublemaker. It’s the sort of behavior that can end marriages and get people fired from their jobs. Employers will be less willing to tolerate bad behavior than your teachers are because they won’t want you to distract everyone from their jobs or drive away customers and co-workers. Even if you think that your only job will be that of a housewife, you should know that housewives sometimes have to help their husbands entertain bosses and co-workers. If you have a reputation for provoking people and creating disturbances and you make trouble between your husband and his co-workers, whoever they may be, it won’t reflect well on your husband’s career. Think, Darlene. This is your future we’re talking about. When you’re an adult, it will be no good saying that everyone should just accept you doing these things because people acted like that when you were a kid or your mom did this or said that when you were young. When you’re an adult, everyone will be looking at you and only you, and they won’t want to hear about what you did when you were a kid or what people used to let your mother do.
If you don’t learn to get along with people instead of antagonizing them or taking out your feelings on them, you’ll be arranging a lifelong punishment for yourself that will be far worse than anything I would arrange for a semester, and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself. A person who can’t get along with people could end up very lonely. You may find it difficult to make new friends, except among people with equally negative habits, and you may even lose some friends that you have when people get tired of all the fights, drama, and negativity. After this exchange student experience, I believe that you will not only come to see the reality of the people you’ve been harassing but will also acquire greater discipline and emotional control. If you don’t work on these things or if you continue to do things that provoke other people, you will at least learn how to face the consequences of your actions. You are dismissed.”
The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles, illustrated by George Ford, 1995.
This is a beautifully illustrated picture book about Ruby Bridges, one of the first black children to attend a school that was formerly all-white during the desegregation of schools that took place during the Civil Rights Movement. The story is told in the form of the memories of Ruby and other people, looking back on their experiences, rather than as a first-person account.
When the book begins, it introduces Ruby as the child of a poor family who moved to the city after her father lost his job picking crops when farmers began using mechanical pickers instead. After her family moved to New Orleans in 1957, her father worked as a janitor, and her mother became a cleaner at a bank.
The book explains briefly that schools were segregated at the time, and that black children were not given an education that was equal to what was offered in white schools. Because the book is for children, it doesn’t go deep into detail about the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation or exactly how Ruby Bridges’s family became involved. (Ruby was selected as one of the children because she passed a test for academic aptitude, showing that she could keep up with a class of white children, who had better early education.) It simply says that, in 1960, a judge decided that four young black girls would be sent to schools that had been for just white children and that six-year-old Ruby Bridges was one of them.
It was a harrowing experience for young Ruby. There were protesters outside the school, yelling angrily and threatening the little girl. For her safety, she had to be escorted by armed federal marshals.
Parents in the area refused to send their children to school so they wouldn’t be in the same classroom with a black child, so Ruby Bridges was literally in a class all by herself. Her teacher, Miss Hurley taught Ruby in an otherwise empty classroom. Miss Hurley was surprised at how Ruby was able to keep a good attitude in spite of the angry protestors and the lack of other children.
One day, Miss Hurley was looking out the window as Ruby approached the school, and she thought she saw Ruby saying something to the angry crowd before coming inside. When Miss Hurley asked Ruby what she said to them, Ruby said that she was talking to them; she was praying for them. Miss Hurley hadn’t realized it before, but Ruby had a ritual of praying for the people who were angry and hated her every day before school. This was just the first time that Miss Hurley had seen her doing it.
Ruby also said the same prayer after school. This prayer was part of what helped her get through those difficult days of hostility and loneliness.
The book ends by explaining that the parents soon began to send their children to school again and let them join Ruby’s class because they realized that life had to continue and that keeping their children from their education was hurting them. The angry protestors gradually gave up. Ruby continued going to school and eventually graduated from high school. She later married a building contractor and had four sons of her own. She founded the Ruby Bridges Educational Foundation to help parents become more involved with their children’s education and to promote equality in education.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction
I’ve heard the story before of Ruby Bridges praying for the people threatening her and protesting against her. This particular rendition is very good, although there is one thing that confuses me. According to this book, her teacher’s name is Miss Hurley, but I understood her name was Barbara Henry. I thought perhaps Hurley was her maiden name and that she later got married, but I haven’t been able to find anything to confirm that. I haven’t found anything to explain where the name Hurley came from at all. I’m not the only reviewer who questions the name confusion.
Ruby Bridges wrote books herself about her experiences, at different reading levels, and they’re also available on Internet Archive.
Nick is a creative boy in elementary school who is known for pulling elaborate stunts, like turning his classroom into a tropical paradise with fake trees and real sand. When he gets to fifth grade, he has Mrs. Granger as his language arts teacher. Mrs. Granger has a sense of humor about some things, but she also has some strict rules and is all business when it comes to her specialist subject. Her vocabulary lists for her students are extensive, and her favorite thing is the unabridged dictionary. Nick likes words and enjoys reading, but he finds the dictionary to be boring. When he sees a word he doesn’t know, he would rather ask someone else what it means than look it up in the dictionary.
In most classes, Nick is good at asking teachers questions to sidetrack them from assigning homework. The other kids know he does this, so they aren’t surprised when he asks Mrs. Granger about her big unabridged dictionary and where all the words in it come from. Unfortunately, for Nick, Mrs. Granger is also onto his trick, and rather than answering the question herself, she assigns Nick to look up the answer and tell the rest of the class what he’s learned the next day in addition to his usual homework assignment. Nick is upset because he usually doesn’t have much homework at all, and now, he has to do more.
When Nick gets home, he reads about dictionaries in his encyclopedia, but he’s not sure that he understand everything he’s read, and it all sounds terribly dull. Then, Nick gets one of his creative ideas that he thinks will make this boring assignment more fun. When it’s time for Nick to give his report, even he is surprised at how much he has to say about the dictionary. Mrs. Granger loves his report, although even she tries to cut Nick short when he goes on for too long. Although the other kids were initially bored, they begin to enjoy Nick’s report when they realize that he is actually using it to waste an entire class period. Eventually, Mrs. Granger tells Nick that he’s at a good stopping place in his report, and she praises him for all of his work. Nick, annoyed that she’s making him look like a teacher’s pet, decides to ask one more question. He says that he still doesn’t understands who decides what the meanings of words are, like who decided that the word “dog” refers to a dog. Mrs. Granger tells him that everyone who speaks English does. Words mean whatever the people who use them agree that they mean. People who speak other languages use different words to refer to the same animal, but those words are valid to them because they all agree on the meaning of the words.
Then, Mrs. Granger says something that really starts Nick thinking. She says that if everyone in their classroom decided that they wanted to call a dog by some other word, and they got other English-speaking people to agree on it, that word would come to mean “dog.” If enough people agreed to use their new word and agreed on its definition, the new word would be put into the dictionary. To answer Nick’s original question, people who speak a language determine the words of that language and whether they are included in the dictionary. Mrs. Granger adds that the dictionary is the work of many experts over many years, and there are good reasons why each of the words included in the dictionary are there. The dictionary contains the laws of the English language, and while those laws can change, it takes time.
Later, when Nick is walking home with his friend Janet, Janet finds a fancy pen. Nick thinks about what Mrs. Granger said about how people like him, who use a language everyday, decide what words mean. It reminds him how, when he was little, he used to use a baby word that his family understood meant “music.” He had to give up using that word when he went to preschool because nobody outside of his family understood that word, but Nick understands how the word had meaning in his family because they all understood what Nick meant when he used it. While he’s thinking about it, he bumps into Janet, who drops the pen. On impulse, when Nick gives the pen back to her, he decides to give the pen a new name. He calls it a “frindle.”
At first, Janet is confused about what Nick means by “frindle.” It’s the beginning of a new experiment for Nick. Out of curiosity, Nick tries to see if he can teach a saleslady at a local store that the word “frindle” means “pen.” He goes to the store and asks for a frindle, pointing to the pens. Then, he gets some of his friends to do the same thing. After several kids all ask the same lady for a “frindle”, she begins to respond to it by automatically reaching for a pen. Nick is excited because he has just created a new word. “Frindle” now means pen because he decided that it did, and he got other people to agree on the meaning. Nick is making language history!
To make sure his word becomes part of language, Nick gets his friends to use the word “frindle” instead of “pen” at school … in Mrs. Granger’s class. Mrs. Granger isn’t amused by the class’s excessive use of the word “frindle” for pen because she knows that this is another of Nick’s stunts, and it’s a distraction from school lessons. She tries to discourage Nick from promoting it at school, and Nick points out that he’s only doing what she said about how words are made. Mrs. Granger explains how words in language evolved from other words that also have meaning, but “frindle” doesn’t have that kind of evolution because Nick just made it up, based on nothing. Nick insists that “frindle” means something to him and his friends, and they’ve already sworn an oath to each other to keep using it.
To Nick’s surprise, Mrs. Granger responds by showing him a sealed envelope. She tells him that it’s a letter for him, but she doesn’t want him to read it now. The letter is for him after the question of “frindle” is resolved. For now, she just wants Nick to sign the envelope and date it so that he’ll know what she hasn’t switched envelopes or tampered with the letter in any way. Nick is confused, but he does sign the envelope, and Mrs. Granger mysteriously says, “And may the best word win.” It seems like Mrs. Granger is declaring a war of words, pen vs frindle, but are Nick and Mrs. Granger really on opposite sides?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Spoilers
This is a fun and humorous story that does a great job of showing how languages evolve and the purpose and meaning of language. Nick and his friends unwittingly give themselves an education during the course of their stunt. The reason why Nick had to sign and date the envelope is that Mrs. Granger is also enjoying their experiment, and she has made a prediction about how it will all turn out. Anyone who has ever had to deal with a small child who has learned a bad word can guess what Mrs. Granger has realized and how her own actions are calculated to make sure she gets the result she really wants.
Something that not even Nick fully reckons with until his experiment is well underway is that, now that all of the kids at school know about “frindle”, he can’t stop them all from using the word, even if he wants to. Although Nick originally created the word, words in a language belong to everyone who uses them. This is both a thought-provoking book about the nature of words and language and a good story for stopping periodically and having kids make their own predictions about what will happen next.
Even kids have power because they are also language-users, and they have the ability to influence the language and understanding of everyone around them by the words they choose! Nick is very much an idea person, but after “frindle” starts getting so much national media attention, he starts to get intimidated by the level of power he has. He has become more conscious of the consequences of his ideas and how they can affect large numbers of people. For a time, he becomes more shy because of that realization, but Mrs. Granger gives him some encouragement. She tells him that he has many good ideas and that she’s sure he will go on to do great things with them. Nick regains his confidence and realizes that he can use his powers for good, supporting good causes.
Grover Goes to School by Dan Elliott, illustrated by Normand Chartier, 1982.
This nostalgic picture book about a child’s first day of school features Grover, one of the characters from the Sesame Street tv show.
Grover is very exited about his first day at school. He’s ready and has everything he needs, but then, he starts to worry about whether the other kids at school will like him or not. His mother tells him that all he needs to do is be himself, but Grover decides he’s going to try hard to get everyone to like him.
Grover’s attempts to get the other kids to like him cause him to agree to do things that he doesn’t really want to do. When a boy named Truman likes Grover’s nice, new crayons and offers to trade him his old toy truck for the crayons, Grover doesn’t really want to make the trade, but he agrees because he wants Truman to like him.
Then, Grover offers to clean up while the other kids have snack time. Grover does a good job cleaning, but the others forget to save a cookie for him.
The day gets worse with Grover helping the others play jump rope when he doesn’t want to and feeling obligated to trade his lunch for food that he doesn’t want. Finally, Grover bursts into tears
Seeing Grover sad and upset, a girl named Molly asks him what’s wrong. Grover explains everything that’s been happening to her, and she says that she’ll play with him and cheer him up. Molly doesn’t know how to play jacks, which is Grover’s favorite game, but she says that she’d like to learn, and Grover enjoys teaching her.
When a boy named Bill offers to trade his old pencil box for Grover’s nice, new one, Grover decides to say no and keep the pencil box he loves. Grover worries that Bill might be mad at him, but he’s not. Instead, it turns out that Bill also likes jacks.
Making friends with Molly and Bill turns Grover’s day around, and by the time he comes home, he’s feeling much better about school.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
I loved this picture book when I was a kid! I used to watch Sesame Street as a young child, and I liked Grover, who is a shy monster kid who just wants to be friends with other people. In this book, he not only shows little kids how to get used to school on their first day but also teaches a lesson about trying too hard to get people to like you and what it means to be a real friend with someone. Grover realizes that he doesn’t have to do things he doesn’t want to do or give people things to buy their friendship. People still like him even if he sometimes tells them “no.” Like his mother says, he just needs to be himself, and he learns to make friends in ways that are comfortable to him, finding kids who genuinely care about others’ feelings and share common interests.
Two Are Better Than One by Carol Ryrie Brink, 1968.
This is a gentle coming-of-age story about two thirteen-year-old girls in Idaho during the early 1900s, but it’s told in a interesting format, as the reminiscences of one of the girls as an old woman and focusing on a story that the girls were writing together as teenagers. It’s like a story about a story within a story.
One Christmas, elderly Chrystal Banks receives a special present from her old friend, Cordelia Crump. The package contains two miniature dolls (she calls them “pocket dolls”) that Chrystal gave to Cordelia 60 years before. At first, Chrystal doesn’t remember giving her friend Cordy” these dolls but admits that her memory is starting to fail her. As she studies the little china dolls and their exquisite details, she begins to remember them and when she gave them to her friend. The dolls’ names are Lester and Lynette, and Chyrstal remembers how Cordy used to say that the little dolls were magical because any day she carried them seemed to become special and exciting. Even when Chrystal and Cordy grew older, supposedly too old for dolls, they still continued to love and believe in the magic of their special pocket dolls.
Before young Chrystal Reese (as she was known before her marriage) gave the dolls to Cordy, they were a Christmas present to Chrystal from her Uncle Dick. That was the Christmas when the girls were in seventh grade and were early thirteen years old. Uncle Dick had acquired a number of interesting presents for Chrystal on his trip to Europe. He doted on his niece because she had no parents or siblings, living only with her grandmother and Aunt Eugenia and their dog, Rowdy. All of the presents are wonderful, but the little dolls are something special. As she unwraps them, they are hidden within a small box inside another box inside of another box (not unlike the story itself). Chrystal loves the elegant, detailed, jointed dolls immediately and names them Lester and Lynette because they just seem like the right names for the dolls.
Immediately, she goes to see if the little dolls will work well in the dollhouse that she’s made out of orange crates. She has spent considerable time and most of her allowance money putting paint and wallpaper into the little house and making furniture for it. She made all of the dollhouse furniture to fit two small dolls that she already has, Elsie and Eileen. However, Elsie and Eileen are four inches tall, and Lester and Lynette are only about two-and-a-half inches tall, so they won’t work in the house. At first, Chrystal is unsure what to do with the tiny dolls. She loves them, but she’s going to have to figure out where to put them and how to play with them if they won’t fit into the doll house. Then, she gets the idea to give the little dolls to her best friend, Cordy. It’s a sacrifice to part with such a lovely present so soon after getting it, but she wasn’t satisfied that the little bottle of perfume she was going to give Cordy was really a good present. Besides, the girls are so close that they already share everything with each other, and as they like to say “Two are better than one.” Giving the dolls to Cordy won’t be like giving them so much as sharing them with someone who can help to make them even more fun.
Cordelia Lark (her maiden name) grew up in a well-off family with mostly boys. Her father was president of the local bank and president of the school board and a civic leader in other ways, and Cordy had four brothers and no sisters. Cordy and Chrystal are kind of like the sisters neither of them ever had. They like to call each other “Tween”, which is their special pronunciation of “Twin.” They justify being twins because their birthdays are only two weeks apart, so they’re almost exactly the same age.
On the way to Cordy’s house to give her the special Christmas present, Chrystal passes by the courthouse. When she and Cordy pass the courthouse, they can see the barred windows of the jail, and they make up stories to spook each other about how one of the prisoners might escape. On this particular day, Chrystal sees one of the prisoners gripping the bars of his window and looking out. He’s the first prisoner Chrystal has ever actually seen. She’s a little afraid of him, and when he starts talking to her, she doesn’t know what to say at first. The man first asks her what she’s staring at, and then he wishes her a Merry Christmas, even though he’s not having one. Not knowing what else to do, Chrystal murmurs “Merry Christmas” back and hurries on.
When Chrystal gets to Cordy’s house, the two girls exchange presents. It turns out that each of them almost got the other some perfume, but each of them changed their mind at the last minute and decided on something better. Cordy’s present to Chrys (as she sometimes calls her) is a book, which makes Chrystal happy because she loves books and didn’t get any for Christmas this year. But, it’s not just any book. This is Chrystal’s first grown-up novel instead of a children’s book. (They mention the Oz books, the Little Peppers, and the Little Colonel series as books they’ve read.) It makes Chrys feel grown-up. It’s a romantic story about a Southern girl during the Civil War who falls in love with a Northern soldier and eventually marries him. Chrys says that Cordy shouldn’t have told her the ending before she’s read it, but she’s still thrilled at having her first grown-up book.
Chrys worries that, since Cordy gave her a grown-up present, she’ll think that the little dolls are babyish, but Cordy loves Lester and Lynette immediately. She says nobody gave her a doll this year, and she felt disappointed because she loves dolls, and it just didn’t seem like Christmas without one. Chrys explains that these are pocket dolls, and they’re meant to be carried around in pockets, so they can go everywhere with the owner. Cordy says that they’re so tiny and perfect that they must be magic, and she decides to keep the names that Chrys gave them, Lester and Lynette. Cordy thinks that the little dolls are perfect to take along on adventures.
When Chrys tells Cordy about the prisoner, the two of them are nervous, although they don’t really think he can escape. Chrys asks Cordy to walk her home, but after they pass the courthouse, Cordy realizes that she’d have to walk past the courthouse alone on her way home. So, Chrys and Cordy turn around and walk the other way again, but then, they realize that they still have the same problem. No matter which way they go, they have to pass the courthouse, and no matter who walks who home, one of them will have to go alone at least partway. After they go back and forth a couple of times, they pause in front of the courthouse, and Cordy has an idea. She gives Chrys the Lester doll, keeping the Lynette doll for herself. That way, each of them will have someone to keep them company, and it will be like they aren’t alone. It gives each of them enough courage to go the rest of the way home, and it’s the beginning of their adventures with the dolls.
Chrys is inspired by her first grown-up book, and she thinks that maybe she’d like to write novels when she grows up. When the girls are in school, they like to write notes and funny poems with each other when they’re supposed to be studying, and Chrys suggests to Cordy that they start writing a novel together. Cordy agrees, and they decide to take turns writing chapters. They decide that the story will be about Lester and Lynette, and Chrystal writes the first chapter. Chrystal calls the story “The Romantical Perils of Lester and Lynette.”
However, the girls get in trouble for goofing off and not paying attention in class. Their strict teacher, Miss Hickenlooper, decides that the two girls can’t sit together anymore, and she confiscates Lester and Lynette and locks them in her desk. The girls are devastated. If the teacher wanted them to move desks, that was disappointing but justified, but she had no right to just take the dolls. The girls think that they’ll have to wait until the end of term to get them back, but they continue writing the story about the dolls. Chrystal had been going to write the first chapter about an elopement, but because the dolls are now imprisoned in the teacher’s desk, she decides to write it as a prison escape instead.
In the new version of the first chapter of the story, Lester and Lynette are brother and sister, and they are imprisoned in a castle overlooking the Rhine river in Germany (part of the the girls’ geography lesson in school) by their evil guardian, Baron von Hickenlooper. Lynette is rescued/kidnapped by a Viking pirate named Oskar, who carries her away from her brother, who still remains in the castle.
From this point on, the events in Chrys and Cordy’s lives alternate with new chapters of their tandem story about Lester and Lynette. Pieces of the girls’ lives work their way into the story. When the girls are ready to trade turns writing the story, they give each other what they’ve written so far and say “Muggins!” (The word comes from playing games like Dominoes and Cribbage where, if one player spots that another has missed a score or failed to count something properly, they can call “Muggins!” and add the overlooked points to their own score. I think what they’re implying is that this story is a game where one person picks up whatever the other one has left unfinished.) The girls also continue adding verses to an unflattering poem that they started writing about their teacher.
By accident, the girls loose track of the mean poem about their teacher, and Miss Hickenlooper finds it. At first, the girls are terrified that Miss Hickenlooper is going to be furious with them and do something horrible in punishment, but to their surprise, she starts crying. Miss Hickenlooper end up having a heart-to-heart talk about the girls’ experiences in Miss Hickenlooper’s class, what Miss Hickenlooper hoped for when she started teaching, and why she took Lester and Lynette from them. Miss Hickenlooper had wanted to be a teacher for a long time and was looking forward to it, but she had been away from it for a long time because she had to take care of her mother during a lengthy illness. Since she started teaching again, she can tell that her students haven’t been happy with her, but after reading the poem, she realizes that it’s worse than she thought. Even strict teachers can be respected by their students as long as they’ve taught their principles well and the students are learning valuable lessons. Miss Hickenlooper feels like she’s failed as a teacher because she hasn’t managed to connect with her students at all, and she’s making them miserable. The girls come to the surprising realization that their teacher really does care about her students and what they think of her.
The talk between the girls and Miss Hickenlooper was a little uncomfortable because the girls realize that they’ve done an injustice to Miss Hickenlooper by writing the mean poem about her, but I actually liked this part of the story because it’s the kind of honest communication that I often find missing in stories. Rather than anyone blustering or dodging or trying to save face, the girls and their teacher honestly discuss what happened and how they feel, and everyone involved learns something from the experience. The girls appreciate having this “human” communication with their teacher, and it earns their respect, more than any angry tirade or show of strength on their teacher’s part ever would have. It’s this very kind of open honesty and humanity with real feeling behind it that’s been missing from the class so far, and it’s what has prevented Miss Hickenlooper from really connecting with her students.
The girls apologize to Miss Hickenlooper about the poem, and Miss Hickenlooper admits the justice of some of their complaints. Miss Hickenlooper admits that maybe she went a little far in making Cordy turn out her pockets and taking her dolls from her for an extended period of time. Getting into someone’s pockets and taking personal possessions is a kind of invasion of privacy, and Miss Hickenlooper says that she only did it because the girls weren’t paying attention in class, which is true. In return, Chrys and Cordy acknowledge that they only wrote the poem to blow off steam because they were angry, but they also went too far, and they really should have considered their teacher’s feelings. The girls promise not to write any more poems like that, and Miss Hickenlooper gives Lester and Lynette back to them. Miss Hickenlooper says Cordy can keep the dolls in her pocket if she wants as long as the girls pay attention in class from now on. To further apologize, the girls make cards for their teacher and give her the two bottles of perfume that they almost gave each other for Christmas (“Two are better than one.”), and they start going out of their way to be nicer to her.
The girls’ talks with Miss Hickenlooper through the rest of the school year give her feedback that helps her to improve as a teacher. Later, when the girls are watching a lightning artist (someone who paints pictures very fast, not the more modern definition of someone who works in animation) at work and happen to see Miss Hickenlooper in the store as well, they point out that one of the artist’s pictures reminds them of the Rhine that they studied in class. Miss Hickenlooper doesn’t think much of the quality of the painting, but she admits that it does look like the Rhine and that another painting the artist did reminds her of Switzerland when she was there. The girls are amazed that Miss Hickenlooper has been to Europe because, other than Chrys’s Uncle Dick, they don’t know anyone who has. They ask her why she never talked about it in their geography lessons because that would have made them much more exciting, hearing about other countries from the perspective of someone who was actually there. Miss Hickenlooper is surprised. She says that she was only focused on teaching the lessons that she was assigned to teach and just never thought about including anything personal because she didn’t think her students would be interested in her personal stories. Again, it’s that personal element that Miss Hickenlooper needs if she wants to connect with her students on a personal level.
As the story continues, the girls also start to consider their attitudes about boys and men and future husbands. So far, most of their knowledge of boys has come from the boys at school and Sunday school and Cordy’s brothers, all pretty immature and rowdy. But, the girls are growing up, and so are some of the boys. New young men also come into the girls’ lives.
A friend of Chrystal’s grandmother asks her if she would be willing to rent a room to her 19-year-old son, who is looking for a place to stay as he takes his first teaching job at the local college. (That sounds young for a college teacher. In modern times, a nineteen-year-old would be a college student himself. Remember, this is the early 1900s, and education in the United States was very different then. Back then, teachers didn’t need to have the advanced degrees that they do now, and Mr. Banks later explains that he skipped grades when he was younger to get through school faster.) Chrystal’s grandmother agrees, although Chrystal isn’t anxious to have a teacher living in her house after her problems with her own teacher at school. Chrys also isn’t sure what to expect from a man living in the house because there’s never been a man in this house before. Cordy’s brothers are pretty rowdy. However, their new lodger, Mr. Banks, turns out to be quiet, polite, and very nice. (His last name is an indication that he’s going to be Chrystal’s future husband. There’s six years’ difference in their ages, but as times goes on, and Chrystal gets older, that’s not going to seem like as much of a gap.) He is the first person to ever address Chrystal as “Miss Reese”, which makes her feel grown-up.
Cordy’s family also has a boarder, Mr. Crump, who is attending the local college (obviously, Cordy’s future husband, based on her future last name). Mr. Crump is working his way through college by selling pots and pans, and Cordy goes with him to help carry things, bringing along Chrys because “Two are better than one.” The girls end up giving him some advice on his sales patter that helps him make more sales.
Meanwhile, the girls’ Sunday school class, which calls itself the Dorcas Club, decides to host a masquerade party with the boys’ class (who have dubbed themselves the Armored Knights) as their guests. Chrys and Cordy think of the boys as immature and uncouth and roll their eyes at the older girls who are boy-crazy. Then, because the party is on Presidents’ Day, all of the girls in the group want to go dressed as Martha Washington, and there’s a big argument about it. Originally, Chrys and Cordy wanted to be Martha Washington, too, but since that’s what all the others want, they decide that they want to do something completely original. Inspired again by the dolls, they decide to go dressed as dolls. However, because they don’t want to be like the prissy girls trying to be pretty and impress the boys, they decide not to go as elegant dolls but as old rag dolls in patched clothing.
The girls do win prizes for both the funniest and most original costumes at the party because they’re the only girls who don’t show up as some version of Martha Washington. However, the triumph turns against them because the girls who are in charge of the main entertainment for the evening have decided to turn it into the girls’ very first dance party with the boys, something that Cordy and Chrys weren’t expecting. Rag doll costumes are good for fun and games, but not so much for serious dancing and the possibility of budding romance. While all of the boys are wearing various fanciful costumes themselves, like pirates and clowns and cannibals, it turns out that they’re only interested in the girls who dressed in pretty clothes as Martha Washington, and none of them want to dance with the rag dolls. Chrys and Cordy were proud of themselves for being more original than the other girls, but it seems that the boys prefer “pretty” to “original.” At the end of the evening, none of the boys even want to walk Chrys and Cordy home. Chrys and Cordy feel embarrassed because their efforts to be “original” seem to have strayed a little into the outlandish at a time when the other girls and boys are starting to seriously get interested in each other.
Fortunately, their families guessed that something of the sort might happen and asked the young men boarding with them to go to the house hosting the party and walk the girls home if they had no one else to walk with them. Mr. Crump confirms to the girls that boys would prefer to walk with girls who made an effort to look pretty instead of girls who look like rag dolls. Mr. Crump says that there will be other parties, and next time maybe they’ll go as something more elegant, like Martha Washington, but the girls aren’t too thrilled about doing this type of party again. Mr. Banks takes a different view and says that he actually thought that the rag doll costumes were rather clever and that it was really better for the girls to be different instead of trying to be like every other girl in order to not stand out. “Sometimes it may hurt, but I think it’s better to be original.” Mr. Banks the college teacher is more mature than Mr. Crump the college student, and I think he has the right idea. Looks and clothing styles change, and people have different priorities when they get older, but original thinking and an interesting personality are hard to replace and never go out style. When Chrystal says that she doesn’t even know how to dance, Mr. Banks offers to teach her, so she can be more confident at future parties.
Having the boarders walk them home actually turns out to be an unexpected victory for Chrys and Cordy because, while the other girls were making fun of them for not having any of the boys dance with them or walk them home, Chrys and Cordy ended up being escorted by young men. Getting boys is all well and good for young girls, but being escorted by young men makes Chrys and Cordy look like young women, putting them on a higher level than mere girls. Chrys and Cordy don’t see it that way at first because Mr. Crump and Mr. Banks are just their families’ boarders and friends and treat them like younger sisters (at this point in their lives, anyway), but the other girls notice that the young men are more mature than the Sunday school boys, and it causes them to look at Chrys and Cordy with a little more respect for having their attention. In some respects, Chrys and Cordy might seem less mature than the girls who are excited about wearing makeup and getting boys because they’re into outlandish costumes and dolls and “romantical” stories, but in other respects, they may actually be a little more mature than the other girls for being confident in their individuality and the new awareness they’re acquiring of other people’s feelings. In the end, girls want to marry men, not little boys, anyway.
Through the spring, the girls have other adventures and continue writing their story with their dolls. Along the way, there are other signs that the girls are growing up. They notice that this is the first year when they’re more interested in getting new Easter bonnets than they are in their Easter eggs. Cordy’s family is heavily involved in the social life of the local college because two of their boys are students there, and Cordy even gets to go to some of the campus parties. She helps to serve punch there and sometimes gets to dance. She eventually arranges for Chrys to come with her to help with serving and have her first dance, too. Miss Hickenlooper also discusses the girls’ future with them, suggesting that they take exams to see if they can skip the eighth grade and go straight into high school because she thinks they’re smart enough to pass. The girls are uncertain if they want to go on to high school so quickly. They know they’re growing up, but they haven’t thought about high school yet (and this is a time period when not everyone even attended high school). There is also the horrible thought that one of them might pass the test while the other didn’t, and they might end up going to different schools and being in different grades. Miss Hickenlooper says that they don’t necessarily have to go on to high school yet, if they feel that they’re not ready, even if they’re offered the opportunity, but she urges them to take the tests anyway to see if they have the option. It makes the girls start questioning their future lives, what they really want, and where their education will take them.
At one point, Cordy’s brothers find their unfinished novel in Cordy’s room, steal it, and use it to make fun of the girls. The story isn’t really very well written because Chrys and Cordy are only thirteen years old. As readers will have noticed, there are spelling mistakes all through the story, and the girls also get mixed up about geography because they’re just focused on making the story exciting instead of really thinking about the setting. After their characters’ adventures on the Rhine, the girls send them floating in a boat to a tropical island with coconuts and palm trees because they don’t think about just how far away the tropics actually are. (Being shipwrecked on an island is also a common trope of vintage and antique children’s books, so they’ve probably read this type of story themselves. Just scroll through my lists of children’s books from the 1900s and earlier, and you’ll see what I mean.) Although Mr. Crump was laughing at the girls, too, he rescues the story from Cordy’s brothers and gives it back to them when he sees that the joke is going too far. However, the girls are somewhat dispirited, thinking that their story might be deeply flawed. At first, they don’t know if they really want to continue writing it, but in their desperation, they turn to the one person they know will be honest with them about what they’ve written and can not only tell them whether or not the story can be fixed but how to do it – their teacher, Miss Hickenlooper.
The story is one of those gentle, calm stories with a few funny episodes and some genuinely touching moments. Fans of slice-of-life historical books like the Betsy-Tacy serieswill like this book. It is a coming-of-age story for Chrys and Cordy, as they begin to develop new attitudes and come to a deeper understanding of themselves and other people and start thinking about the future. However, the girls’ adventures also teach other people around them some lessons.
One of the themes of the book involves how people let their personalities show. Although the girls were originally thought silly for their outlandish rag doll costumes at the party, they were more bold and creative than the girls who just wanted to look like everyone else. Even though their creativity wasn’t fully appreciated at first, it ends up working in their favor in the long run.
One of the biggest developments in the story is the relationship between the girls and their teacher, and the keys to that relationship are learning how to see other people as people, how to be open about showing their personal sides, and how to appreciate people with different personalities. The girls begin as thoughtless students, and their teacher is a strict disciplinarian with little patience for their goofing off, which is why the girls see her as their antagonist. However, the girls’ eventually realize that, through their mean and complaining poem, they’ve hurt their teacher’s feelings as much as she’s hurt theirs, maybe more. It leads them to see her in a new light, as a person and just just their jailer (the role of her alter ego in the girls’ story). The honest talks between the girls and their teacher not only helps the girls to become more thoughtful and considerate of others’ feelings but also show their teacher that the key to improving her teaching and developing a better relationship with her students is to be a little more personal with her students. She gradually learns that letting her students see her as a person with interesting life experiences earns their respect more than just acting like an unfeeling drill sergeant enforcing discipline. Inspired by the girls’ interest in her travels when she was younger, Miss Hickenlooper starts bringing postcards and souvenirs from her travels to class to show during geography lessons. The students are fascinated by her souvenirs and stories and start thinking of her as an a kind of intrepid explorer or sophisticated world traveler instead of a dull woman who focuses on dry memorization and gets mad at them for daydreaming in class. As she tries new ways of approaching her lessons and adding in personal experiences, Miss Hickenlooper takes on a whole new role in the children’s lives and sparks all of their imaginations. All of the students, not just Chrys and Cordy, start behaving better because they become genuinely interested in what Miss Hickenlooper has to say and show them. They don’t want to make her angry because she’ll stop telling the interesting stories if they don’t get their work done. Just because she’s gotten more interesting and personal doesn’t mean she’s gotten soft. Don’t be afraid to be interesting and different!
The girls never actually show Miss Hickenlooper their story because they’re a little embarrassed by what they’ve gotten wrong, but they ask her questions about some of the things that they put in their story to find out what’s right. They do end up finishing the story and giving Lester and Lynette a grand wedding, but they also acknowledge that they are getting too old and busy with other things to continue playing with dolls, even Lester and Lynette. They plan to put Lester and Lynette away for now as souvenirs of their childhoods. Later, they do tell Miss Hickenlooper about their novel, and while she hasn’t read it, she has the feeling that she knows what it’s like from knowing the girls and their writing. (The girls wrote about scenes from their novel when asked to describe places they know for their high school entrance exams.) She tells them that she appreciates their imaginations but that they should remember to focus on the real world around them and gaining real experiences to write about in the future.
There are also themes that focus on what growing up and maturity mean. Because the story focuses on one school semester in the girls’ lives, there are many questions that the book leaves unresolved about what happened in the girls’ later lives, but it seems that their lives turned out well, and they look back on their experiences with Lester and Lynette as a turning point when they really started growing up. Toward the end of the story, the girls begin appreciating some of the possibilities of life and the wider world that they never considered before. Through it all, there is also the girls’ constant friendship. At the very end, elderly Chrys writes a letter to elderly Cordy, thanking her for sending the dolls and reminding her of this special time in their lives.
The author of this book, Carol Ryrie Brink, was also a child around the time that Chrys and Cordy were children. There is a picture of her as a child above her biography on the dust jacket of the book. She is also the author of Caddie Woodlawn, which is better known than this book.
I love books that contain details about life in the past, and there are a lot of fun details included in this story. I’ve mentioned some above, but that’s just scratching the surface. At one point, Chrystal says that the only paper she has that’s good for painting pictures is the pieced of paper that separate pieces of Shredded Wheat in the box. The lined paper from the notebooks she uses for school isn’t as good. When she’s out of those pieces of paper, she has to eat more Shredded Wheat to get more. I don’t remember seeing any similar kind of paper in shredded wheat boxes in my lifetime, so this must be something that existed before modern packaging.
At the college dances, the girls have dance cards for the young men to write their names and initials in to secure spots for dances. There are also occasional mentions of food, and Chrys mentions having floating island pudding for dessert, which I’d never heard of before. It’s a kind of meringue that floats on a base of vanilla custard.
Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall by Alice B. Emerson, 1913.
Since Ruth and her friends have helped her Uncle Jabez to recover his stolen cash box in the previous book, Uncle Jabez has decided to send Ruth to Briarwood Hall, the boarding school that her best friend, Helen Cameron will attend, so the two of them can stay together. Briarwood Hall is an exclusive school, where the primary entrance requirements are academic records and teacher recommendations. Ruth has already graduated from the local school in her uncle’s town although she is a little younger than Helen, and she is ready for the high school level. Helen’s twin brother, Tom, will be attending a military academy close to the girls’ boarding school.
The three of them travel alone to their schools, without adult chaperones. They amuse themselves by seeing if there are other students bound for their schools traveling on the same train and steamboat they take to their boarding schools, but they can’t find any. However, they do see an interesting older lady with a veiled hat who attracts their attention because she looks doll-like and speaks French. For some reason, this lady seems greatly upset by a strange man with a harp who is part of a musical group entertaining passengers on the steamboat.
The mysterious French woman turns out to be the girls’ new French teacher at Briarwood Hall. She seems very nice to the girls when they are introduced to her as they’re riding in a coach to the school after they get off the boat. Mary Cox, a fellow student who is older than Ruth and Helen, rides to the school with the girls and the French teacher. On the way to the school, Ruth notices that Mary seems to oddly ignore the French teacher, speaking only to her and Helen.
Mary is a Junior at the school, and tells the girls about the school clubs. The two main clubs at Briarwood are the “Upedes” and the “Fussy Curls.” I was glad that Ruth and Helen thought that these sounded by strange names for clubs, too. Mary explains that they’re just nicknames for the official club names. The Upedes are members of the Up and Doing Club, a group of girls who like lively activities. There are other groups at school, like the basketball players, but the Upedes and Fussy Curls have a particular rivalry for members. Mary is a member of the Upedes, although, in spite of the groups’ rivalry for gaining new members, Mary strangely doesn’t invite Ruth and Helen to join her group and doesn’t seem to want to explain what the rival group does.
When the girls leave the coach, Mary says that she doesn’t like the French teacher because she’s a poor foreigner, and Mary doesn’t know why she’s at the school. (Mary sounds like she’s rather a snob.) Mary says that she thinks it’s strange that the French teacher never wears any nice clothes and doesn’t seem to have any personal friends or relations. (Yeah, definitely a snob toward someone who just seems a bit unfortunate, like it’s some kind of moral failing, not having nice clothes or personal connections to show off.) Helen says that the French teacher does have personal acquaintances because she seemed to know the harp player on the boat, something that seems to interest Mary. Ruth has the uneasy feeling that they shouldn’t have mentioned it, not knowing exactly what the teacher’s connection to the harp player is. Helen likes Mary, but Ruth has reservations about her friendship.
Mary Cox shows the girls where their dorm room is. Helen and Ruth are sharing a room by themselves. Another girl, a senior named Madge Steel, comes by to talk to the girls and invites them to a meeting of the Forward Club (known as the “Fussy Curls” because of its initials) that evening. Ruth wants to go to that meeting because Madge seems very nice, and the Forward Club includes members of the school faculty. However, Helen says that she’d rather attend the meeting of the Upedes that evening that Mary told her about. Helen thinks that they owe Mary their loyalty because she was the first to meet them and was helpful in finding their room. Besides, the Upedes have no teachers in their club, and Helen thinks that it sounds more exciting and free from supervision than the Forward Club. Ruth thinks that she would prefer to get closer to her new teachers and some well-behaved girls instead, and it’s the first major disagreement that the friends have. Mary talks Ruth into going to the meeting of the Upedes that evening because that was the invitation that they received first, but Ruth says that she won’t join any club officially until she’s had a chance to see the other girls involved and learn what the clubs are really like. Ruth’s stance seems to be the wise one as the school’s headmistress tells the girls that joining clubs on campus are fun but that they should beware of getting involved too much with girls who don’t take their studies seriously and waste their time, and they learn that Mary Cox’s nickname at school is “the Fox”, suggesting that she’s as sly as Ruth has sensed. Although Mary didn’t mention it to the girls before, she’s actually the leader of the Upedes.
That evening, the girls are introduced to other students, and at the meeting of the Upedes, the school’s very own ghost story. Briarwood wasn’t always a school. It used to be a private mansion, and a wealthy man lived there with his beautiful daughter. The wealthy man was the one who commissioned the creation of the fountain with the marble statue that still stands on the school’s grounds. Although people on campus say that nobody really knows what the statue of the woman playing a harp in the fountain is supposed to represent, the ghost story claims that the figure was modeled after the beautiful daughter of the mansion’s former owner. However, according to the story, the girl fell in love with the man who sculpted the statue of her, and the two of them eloped, leaving her father alone and sad. Rumor had it, though, that the girl and her new husband must have died somewhere after they ran away because people started hearing mysterious harp music at night on the grounds of the mansion. Eventually, Briarwood was sold, and the school’s founders, the Tellinghams, bought it, and sometimes, people still hear harp music on the school grounds. Every time something strange or momentous happens at the school, people hear the twang of the harp.
That night, Ruth and Helen become the targets of a frightening hazing stunt by the Upedes that seems to bring the ghost story to life, but when something happens that frightens even the hazers, it brings into question how much of the ghost story is really true.
The book is now public domain and available to read for free online in several formats through Project Gutenberg. There is also an audio book version on Internet Archive.
Spoilers and My Reaction:
I liked this story much better than the first book in the series because it is more directly a mystery story than the first book, and Ruth makes a deliberate effort to untangle some of the puzzling things happening at her new school.
It’s pretty obvious that there is a connection between the ghost story of the girl with the harp and the French teacher’s apparent discomfort at the suspicious harpist. Ruth finds out pretty quickly that the harpist from the boat is lurking around the school. That revelation explains the frightening happenings at the hazing incident, although it still leaves the question of the connection between the harpist and the French teacher. At first, I thought that it was going to turn out that there is some truth to the ghost story the Upedes told, but that actually has nothing to do with the real situation. In some ways, I felt like the real situation was a little to straight-forward and resolved a bit too quickly at the end, considering the build-up they’d had about it. It is interesting that, of the students at the school, only Ruth comes to learn the full truth of the French teacher’s secret. Even Helen doesn’t know what Ruth eventually discovers, partly to save the French teacher’s reputation and partly because Ruth and Helen’s friendship is suffering for part of the book.
Unlike newer series produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, characters in the older Stratemeyer series, including the Ruth Fielding series, grow, age, and develop their lives and personalities. In this book, when the girls go away to boarding school, the differences in Helen and Ruth’s backgrounds and personalities become more obvious. It leads them to clash in some ways, and they both worry about endangering their friendship with each other, but by the end of the book, each of the girls develop a greater sense of who they are and what they really stand for.
Helen is more familiar and comfortable than Ruth is with the traditional rituals of boarding school, even taking some glee in the mean hazing ritual of the Upedes, and she badly wants to fit in with the cooler older girls at school, willing to put up with their mean bossing to take part in their schemes for the fun and excitement. However, Ruth, is naturally more serious and shy and less accustomed to having things her way or telling others what to do anywhere she’s lived than the wealthy Helen. Ruth overcomes some of her shyness and learns to be more assertive as she stands up for herself and the other new girls at school, called “Infants” by the older girls. Ruth decides to refuse to join either the Forward Club, which has a reputation of being made up of girls who toady up to the school faculty, or the Upedes (which was initially founded as a protest group to the Forward Club, which is why most of the activities of their club involve breaking various school rules and instigating pranks), after experiencing their mean pranks and bossiness. Instead, she takes a joke of Helen’s seriously and decides to form a secret society of her own. She talks to some of the other new girls at school, and they feel the same way they do, that they don’t want to choose between either the Upedes or the Fussy Curls and would rather have a club of their own, where they won’t be dominated or hazed by the older girls. Helen gets upset at Ruth starting this new group because she thinks that they won’t gain any new friends or have any real fun or really be a part of this school if they don’t join an already-established group. Helen thinks that a group of new girls would look ridiculous because they wouldn’t know what to do with their club and will look like a group of babies. However, Ruth realizes that this is nonsense. There are enough interested girls among the newcomers to give them a good group of friends and they can think of their own things to do where they can be the leaders. Ruth turns out to be more of a leader and Helen more of a follower, and Ruth is also more creative, thinking of new possibilities in life instead of stuck with someone else’s creation. I wish that the book had gone into more details about what Ruth’s club actually does. She and some of the other girls periodically go to meetings of their club, but they don’t say much about what they do at the meetings.
Helen and Ruth temporarily go separate ways at school. Helen joins the Upedes, and Ruth and some of the other new girls carry out the plan to form a new club that they call The Sweetbriars. The other girls who help form The Sweetbriars are as independently-minded and creative as Ruth and like the idea of forming their own school traditions. Helen criticizes Ruth for being a stickler from the rules because she doesn’t want to take part in school stunts that might get her in trouble, but although Helen is more inclined to break rules in the name of fun, she is still less independent in her mind than Ruth because her rule-breaking is done following the dictates of the Upedes and the traditional school stunts of having midnight feasts with other girls in their dorm rooms. They are not stunts of her own creation or particularly imaginative, and while she is brave about school demerits, she is not very brave about what other people think about her. After the Upedes have treated Ruth very badly and spread rumors about her, Ruth finds the courage to tell Helen how hurt she is that she continues to be friends with people who have treated her so badly when she wouldn’t have put up with people mistreating a friend of hers. She doesn’t ask for an apology and says that she’s not sure that one is even warranted, but she wants Helen to know how she feels. Helen has felt like hanging around Mary Cox has made her act like a meaner person, and she feels like she can’t help herself in Mary’s company. Understanding how Ruth really feels reminds Helen that she risks damaging her relationship with her best friend if she doesn’t do something about her behavior, and when Mary is ungrateful and lies to Helen after Ruth and Helen’s brother help save her life during a skating accident, Helen begins to see Mary for what she really is.
In the second half of the book, the Mercy Curtis from the first book in the series reappears. In the first book, she spent most of the time being bitter because she had a physical disability that prevented her from walking, and she was overly sensitive about how people looked her. However, at the end of the first book, Mercy received some treatment from a surgical specialist that has enabled her to regain her ability to walk. She still walks with crutches, but her spirits have improved now that she is able to move more easily on her own, without relying on her wheelchair. Because she had previously spent much of her time alone, studying, she qualifies for admittance to Briarwood and decides that she would like to join her friends, Ruth and Helen. When Mercy comes to the school, she is still sharp-tongued, although less bitter about herself. She rooms with Ruth and Helen and joins the Sweetbriars. She adds a nice balance to Ruth and Helen’s friendship. Ruth gets to spend some time with Mercy and the other Sweetbriars when Helen is with the Upedes, and Mercy is very serious about her studies, so she insists that her friends not neglect theirs, keeping then on task in the middle of their social dramas.
As a historical note, there is a place in the story in, Ch. 22, where the book describes Ruth as wearing a sweater, defining it as if readers might not know exactly what a sweater was, calling it “one of those stretching, clinging coats.” The reason for that is that sweaters were actually a relatively new fashion development for women in 1910s, although men had worn sweaters before. Women often wore shawls in cold weather before sweaters became popular, but sweaters left a woman’s arms more able to move freely than a shawl would allow, as this video about women’s clothing during World War I from CrowsEyeProductions explains.
The Rover Boys at School by Arthur M. Winfield (aka Edward Stratemeyer), 1899.
The three Rover boys, Richard, Thomas, and Samuel (called Dick, Tom, and Sam), live with their aunt and uncle in the country, but they learn that they are going to be sent to boarding school. The boys have been restless on the farm because they used to live in the city.
The boys’ father, Anderson Rover, is a mineral expert and made his fortune in mining. The family had lived in New York, so the boys are accustomed to city life. The boys’ mother died of a fever when they were young. After his wife’s death, the boys’ father traveled restlessly because of his grief, leaving the boys at boarding school in New York. Then, he had the notion to go to Africa and left the boys with their Uncle Randolph. The boys and their uncle haven’t heard from him since, and they worry that something has happened to him.
When the boys first arrived at the farm, they enjoyed the outdoor life of the country, but there isn’t much variety to the activities, and the boys start getting to trouble when they get bored. Their Uncle Randolph spends all of his time in studying scientific farming, and he can’t understand why the boys can’t take an interest in the subject or at least give him some peace and quiet for his work. The boys aren’t too impressed because, so far, their uncle doesn’t seem too successful at it. Richard (Dick) is the oldest of the three boys and is often quiet and studious, so he gets along better with Uncle Randolph than the others. He is 16 at the beginning of the series. Thomas (Tom) is fun-loving, likes to play pranks, and is 15 years old. His pranks are part of the reason why the boys are driving their uncle and aunt and their cook crazy. Samuel (Sam) is 14 years old and athletic.
Uncle Randolph doesn’t know much about kids or young people, so boarding school seems like the ideal solution. The boys’ aunt and uncle think that the boys need some discipline. They do, but the boys are also looking forward to seeing something of the world and having some adventures, so the prospect of going to boarding school sounds exciting to them. They’ve been to boarding school before, but they think it would be exciting to go to a military academy.
Before the boys leave the farm, Dick is attacked by a tramp, who steals his watch and pocketbook (wallet). The boys chase him and get the wallet back, but Tom almost drowns and Sam is almost swept over a waterfall while they try to pursue the tramp, who escapes in a boat with the watch. The boys are sad about the loss of the watch, which belonged to their father.
Tom gets a letter from his friend, Larry Colby, to say that he’s going to be attending the Putnam Hall Military Academy soon, and Larry’s father has recommended the school to the boys’ uncle. Uncle Randolph says that he’s decided to take the suggestion. The boys think it sounds exciting, and they’re glad that they’ll be going to school with someone they know. Uncle Randolph says that the headmaster of the school, Captain Victor Putnam, is a former military man who has a reputation for being kind to his students but strict on discipline, so it sounds like what the boys need.
Later in the story, they explain that Captain Putnam is a graduate of West Point and that he used to serve under Major General Custer, helping to put down Indian uprisings (Native American) until he was injured in a fall from his horse. For this book’s original audience of boys living in the late 19th century, this probably would have sounded exciting and noble, but not to people from the early 21st century. However Captain Putnam would have looked at it, quelling Native American uprisings would be essentially admitting to being part of their oppression because they weren’t uprising for nothing, and that fall from his horse is probably the only reason why he would even still be alive at the time of this story, given what eventually happened to Major General Custer. Because Custer had been a Civil War hero, people were shocked and saddened by his sudden and violent death. As with many people who die young, they romanticized his past and exaggerated his story, turning him into a legend for young people to live up to. Eventually, the romanticism wore off, and the reality stayed (he was the bottom of his class at West Point, not a student parents would really want their kids to emulate, and there were darker sides to his life and personality than most people in the 1800s would have known and which wouldn’t be appropriate talk for children), which is why his modern legacy isn’t as great as people a hundred years or more ago would have thought. Captain Putnam doesn’t look as exciting and heroic as advertised by association, but it’s enough to know that the Rover boys would have thought that it sounded impressive because of what their elders would have told them and so would their earliest readers, for similar reasons.
Before the boys leave for school on the train, Tom plays one last trick on the unpleasant station master by throwing a firecracker into some trash that the station master was burning, setting the mood for the boys’ eventual arrival at school.
After the train ride, the boy have to continue part way by boat. On the boat, they meet three pretty girls (how fortuitous) and a bully who also goes to their new school, Dan Baxter. The bully is harassing the girls by continuing to try to talk to them when they want him to leave them alone. Dan doesn’t say anything shocking to the girls, it’s more that he’s off-putting because he’s rather pushy and full of himself and can’t read a room to see that he’s making the girls uncomfortable because of the way he talks. It’s awkward. The Rover boys step in and try to get Dan to leave the girls alone, making an enemy of Dan. The girls (Dora Stanhope and her two cousins, Grace and Nellie Laning, who belong to prosperous farming families in the area) are grateful for the intervention and think that the Rover boys are better behaved than Dan is. The boys talk to the girls about their new school and learn that they don’t live far from the school, although they don’t mix with the students there much because the students at Putnam Hall don’t leave the campus very often. The boys hope that they’ll have the chance to see the girls again while they’re at Putnam Hall. (You know they will.)
Tom’s Putnam Hall experience starts off with a bang … literally. As the boys arrive at the school, Tom decides to give the other students a “salute” by scaring them with another of his firecrackers. That’s when Tom gets his first taste of military discipline from the Head Assistant Josiah Crabtree, the second in command at the school and the strictest disciplinarian in the place. Most of the school would have given the prank a pass, especially from a new boy, but Josiah Crabtree takes exception to Tom’s attitude and doesn’t accept his excuse that he doesn’t need to answer to Crabtree because he has only just arrived at the school, isn’t an official student yet, and shouldn’t be subject to the school’s rules. (Tom may have thought that military school would be exciting, but it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t have the first clue what military discipline is about.) Crabtree marches Tom off and locks him in the guard room to wait for Captain Putnam to return to the school and administer his discipline. This is actually in Tom’s favor because Captain Putnam understands that his students are still boys, and therefore, he isn’t as strict with them as he would be full adult soldiers.
Josiah Crabtree’s ultra-strictness has caused him to be not well-liked by other students at the school. When he and Tom discuss Tom’s prank while waiting for Captain Putnam, Tom continues to argue the point that he is not yet a student at the school and that Crabtree has no right to lock him up like he has. Tom tells him that he wants to be released to stay at the hotel in town so he can contact his guardian because he may not wish to join this school after all, threatening to tell his uncle of his mistreatment. Crabtree is correct that setting off a fire cracker to scare people isn’t the best way to start off on the right foot with the faculty (I wouldn’t have liked it if someone did it to me, and this is a school where people learn to fire real guns, so you can’t have people who treat firearms and explosives like toys), but Tom’s point that immediate imprisonment before he’s even really joined the school and been notified of the school’s rules is a valid criticism, and he is not so committed to the school at this point that he can’t leave if he wants to. If Tom makes false imprisonment a public issue, it would damage the reputation of the school. That threat is worrying to Crabtree, who knows that he has already rubbed others the wrong way and made a few enemies of his own.
Tom runs away from Crabtree and hides in the forest outside the school. He plans to walk into town, but along the way, he spots a campfire. He listens in on the conversation of the men sitting by the campfire. He discovers that one of them is the tramp who stole their father’s watch before, and he listens to the men discussing some clandestine “mining deal.” When they catch Tom spying on them, Tom confronts the man called Buddy about stealing his father’s watch. Buddy and his friend deny it, and Tom fights with them before running away and getting help at the Laning farm, where he meets Grace and Nellie again and the family gives him a room for the night. When he explains his story to the family, he learns that Josiah Crabtree has been courting Dora Stanhope’s widowed mother because she owns a sizeable farm and has money from her first marriage.
In the morning, Tom returns to the school and makes his case to Captain Putnam, arguing as he did the night before that he had not yet officially joined the school before Josiah Crabtree imprisoned him and confiscated and searched his luggage. Captain Putnam makes it clear to Tom that certain things, like fire crackers, are forbidden at the school, and he will have to accept that if he’s serious about being a student there. Tom asks what the point is of him joining the school if he’s going to have marks against him before he’s even had a chance to properly start, and Captain Putnam says that if Tom still wants to join, he’s willing to let bygones be bygones and let him start school with a clean slate. Captain Putnam sees Tom as intelligent and spirited even though he’s undisciplined, and is willing to give him a chance. Tom accepts and joins the school, although Crabtree is still annoyed at Tom getting away with his prank and running away the previous night. When Tom rejoins his brothers, he tells them about seeing the thief who stole the watch, and they discuss how awful it would be for Dora if the martinet Crabtree became her stepfather.
Because The Rover Boys is an early Stratemeyer Syndicate series, there is more adventure and the general friendships and rivalries of life at a boarding school than there is mystery. The boys and their friends get used to the routines, rules, and drills of military school, getting into fights with the bullies, playing sports, and pulling stunts with their friends. However, there are villains in the story with secrets for the boys to learn. Josiah Crabtree hasn’t been honest with Dora Stanhope’s mother, trying to use pressure to get her to marry him so he can use her money and property for his purposes … including money and property entailed for Dora under her late father’s will. Crabtree claims to have money of his own, bur shows no evidence of it. Although, who has been giving the bully, Dan Baxter, large sums of money and for what purpose? What about the watch thief and his friend? Why do they keep hanging around?
By the end of the book … not too much is resolved, compelling readers to continue on to the next book in the series to find out what happens.
This book and others in the series are now public domain and are easily available online in various formats through Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive (including audiobook).
My Reaction
I never read any of this series of books when I was a kid, but having grown up with other Stratemeyer Syndicate books, like Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and the Bobbsey Twins, I was curious about this first series produced by the Syndicate. I picked several of the books to get a feel for the series, and I had several reactions. First, the Rover Boys, like other early Stratemeyer Syndicate series, is almost but not quite a mystery series. It has some elements of suspense, but the little mysteries and secrets of the villains in the story come secondary to physical adventures and the drama of boarding school life for much of the book. In fact, the action kind of breaks for stories about football and baseball games the boys play at school, which don’t really have anything to do with the villains’ plots and are just part of school life. Although, the bully Dan Baxter loses favor with other boys at school when they discover that he actually placed a bet against the school’s own football team before a game, which seems pretty disloyal. I also suspected at first that at least some of the villains’ threads would be connected, but really, they have very little to do with each other, which was disappointing.
Stratemeyer Syndicate books have a pattern of ending chapters on cliffhangers in order to keep kids reading to find out what happens, which begins to show in this book, and often, the mystery/suspense elements in early stories help to set up these cliffhangers while the plot is more about the characters’ lives. Personally, I prefer stories that are more definitely mysteries, where the characters are making active efforts to solve problems and discover the villains’ secrets instead of just randomly stumbling on information. This particular story kind of annoyed me because the entire book ends on a cliffhanger. In fact, the only problem/mystery that gets resolved in the story is that Dick eventually gets his watch back. The other villains are still hanging around. At the end of the book, Crabtree is still hanging around, in spite of multiple interventions, trying to get Dora’ mother to marry him and turn over Dora’s inheritance from her father. The bully, Dan Baxter, left the school, but is apparently hanging around with Crabtree. It also turns out that Baxter’s father is secretly an old enemy of the Rover boys’ father and thinks that Anderson Rover cheated him out a mine years ago and still has the paperwork to prove it, possibly carrying it with him to Africa, for some reason. The Rover boys’ father is also still presumably lost somewhere in Africa, doing who-knows-what there. All of these problems are left hanging, apparently to be resolved in later books with other problems probably being added along the way. The only thing that I felt really certain about at the end of the book is that Dick is probably going to marry Dora in the future because he is already trying to be her protector, and his brothers will probably marry her convenient cousins, Grace and Nellie, in some order.
Second, I was bracing myself throughout the story to watch for its use of racial language. One thing to watch with old Stratemeyer Syndicate books is racist language and attitudes. In the 1950s and 1960s, with the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, the Syndicate revised and updated its different series. They changed and removed outdated language, including racial terms, and also updated references to culture and technology. The version of this particular book that I used for my review is the old public domain version. I already talked about Captain Putnam’s service with Major General Custer and how people at the time would have felt about that compared to modern people, but there is also a black man called Alexander who works at Putnam Hall. He doesn’t have a very big role in the story, but I wanted to talk about him because of the way the book describes him. The book describes him using the words “colored” and “Negro”, which are outdated now although acceptable for the time period (that’s why they’re part of the names of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was founded in 1909, and the United Negro College Fund, founded in 1944). However, during the Civil Rights Movement, people wanted to distance themselves from terms that were used during periods of high discrimination, so they began shifting to the use of “African American” as the specific term and “black” as the generic. This is the sort of language update that the Stratemeyer Syndicate books received in later reprintings.
Later in the book, one of the boys’ friends jokingly imitates a “Negro minstrel” in an old minstrel show (an entertainment people of this time would have been familiar with which included caricatured characters of black people), saying “That’s the conundrum, Brudder Bones. I’se gib it up, sah!” (“Brudder Bones” was a stock character in one of those shows, although I don’t know much about it because I’ve never seen a real minstrel show. I think there was a similar reference to the name “Bones” as a minstrel show character in the book Cheaper by the Dozen as well.) This is another cultural element that would be removed from later Stratemeyer Syndicate books and that also appeared in other older children’s books that were written prior to the Civil Rights Movement, including at least one of the Little House on the Prairie books. These references get a bad reaction in modern times because this type of caricature is a mean style of humor that probably wouldn’t have lasted very long against anybody who had the authority to complain about it at the height of its popularity. To put it another way, it’s the kind of humor where someone is definitely being laughed “at”, not “with,” and some even included songs with descriptions of horrifically violent things happening to black people masked as comedy. If you’ve never seen this kind of reference to minstrel shows before, you are not missing anything for having grown up without it. There’s nothing inherently funny in the friend’s little joke, and it wouldn’t mean anything to anybody who didn’t know what the reference referred to. It seems to be one of those things that only becomes amusing when someone recognizes the source of the reference, and as I said, I’m not even sure exactly who “Bones” was supposed to be, other than some kind of stock character. I vaguely know what the reference is from, but not enough to connect with it in the way the original audience might have, and anyone younger than I am probably wouldn’t recognize even that much. I don’t want to put undue emphasis on this line in the book because it was only one line, and the Rover boys weren’t really into it either because they were worried about a problem they had at the time that wasn’t really funny, but I thought that I should explain the background of this comment and point it out as another reason why the Stratemeyer Syndicate books needed revising.
When referring to their father, who is still missing in Africa, the boys also worry that maybe he was killed or taken prisoner by “savage” tribes. “Tribes” in many children’s books of this period are described as “savage.” The exact location their father was trying to reach is not specified, just somewhere in Africa where there is a jungle, although a later book in the series has more about it.
Some general old slang in this book really dates it, like the use of the word “fellows” instead of “guys” and the word “peach” for “tattle” or “tell on” someone. Even later Stratemeyer Syndicate series, like the Hardy Boys, use language that would sound dated to modern people, like the word “chums” for “friends.” These old slang terms were also changed and removed from later reprintings.
There were also some features of this story that took me by surprise. Pranks and stunts are regular features of boarding school stories, but I was surprised at some of the roughness of the boys at the school as well as some of the punishments. At one point, the boys realize that Crabtree has pushed Dora’s mother to marry him, and they’re on their way to town to get married immediately. The Rover boys tell their friends and get them to swarm the carriage, pretending that it’s part of a game they’re playing, trying to delay or disrupt their trip to town and their wedding plans. The boys cause an accident with the carriage that causes Mrs. Stanhope to get a broken arm and a cracked rib. They’re lucky nobody broke their neck. It’s a pretty violent way to interfere, even though they’re trying to save Mrs. Stanhope and Dora from Crabtree’s machinations.
One thing I did enjoy was the description of the game of Hare and Hounds (also called Paper Chase) that came right before the carriage scene. I’d never heard of the game before, but apparently, it’s been a popular game in British schools for centuries. Probably, the reason I’ve never seen it played is because the playgrounds and yards of the schools I attended wouldn’t have been large enough to make a really good game. One person plays the role of the “hare” and is given a head start, leaving a trail of bits of paper behind him as he goes. The other players are the “hounds”, and they try to find the hare by following the trail of paper bits, like they were hounds following a scent. The object of the game is for them to catch the hare before he reaches a designated finishing point. At a school where you can see pretty much the entire playground and everyone on it at once, there wouldn’t be any point in following a trail or any real challenge to the game, but it sounds like an interesting game to play if you can find a large enough space for it.
Six-year-old Ramona Quimby thinks of herself as brave. Now that she’s going into the first grade, she’s no longer just a little kid. She even stood up to some boys on the playground who were making fun of her older sister, Beatrice, for being called “Beezus.”
However, Ramona soon discovers that not every sees her the way she sees herself. Beezus is embarrassed at the way her little sister told off those boys and is sure that they’re now going to make a much bigger deal of the incident at school because of it. Beezus says that she’s sick of her silly nickname, which rhymes with “Jesus” and just wants to be called “Beatrice.” Ramona agrees with her, both because she feels bad that she accidentally embarrassed her sister and because it’s her fault that Beezus got her nickname. When she was smaller, Ramona couldn’t pronounce the name “Beatrice” very well and ended up saying “Beezus” instead, and the mispronunciation stuck. Ramona is trying hard to be a big kid now, and she doesn’t like to remember that she used to not even be able to say her own sister’s name. Ramona agrees to call her sister Beatrice in public and to only use the Beezus nickname at home.
Ramona wants to be taken seriously, and she hates it when her mother is amused by some of the silly things she does. (I know the feeling, and so do many other people!) The last thing she wants is to just be a silly little kid that people laugh at, and nobody seems to understand how she feels. She especially hates it when her sister keeps calling her a pest.
Fortunately, their mother understands that part of the problem is that the girls are getting bigger, and they’re starting to feel cramped sharing a room with each other. Mr. and Mrs. Quimby have decided to add an extra room onto the house so the girls won’t have to share anymore, and Mrs. Quimby is going to take a part-time job to help pay for it. Before the girls can start arguing about who gets the new room, Mrs. Quimby tells them that it’s already decided that they will take turns, trading off rooms every six months and that Ramona will have the first turn in the new room.
Watching the workmen make a hole in the wall of their house and build the new room is fascinating, although Ramona doesn’t have the patience for planning, methodical work, and learning how different tools are supposed to be used, like her friend Howie. Ramona prefers playing their made-up game of Brick Factory, where she and Howie smash old, broken bricks with rocks. Ramona takes the opportunity to put her special initial, a Q with cat ears and whiskers, into the wet concrete for the floor of the room, and she can’t resist the opportunity to jump through the new hole in the wall of their house. The workmen cover the hole with a sheet of plastic when they go home for the day, but the girls think it’s kind of spooky having a hole in the wall of their house. They imagine that something horrible could sneak in through the hole, like a ghost, maybe one that looks like a gorilla. Ramona can’t wait to tell the other kids all about it when she starts first grade!
Unfortunately, the new school year doesn’t start out the way Ramona hopes. Instead of everyone being excited about her news and how she watched the workmen chop a hole in the side of her house, everyone laughs because the teacher had just made a joke about her being Ramona Kitty Cat because she drew the cat ears and whiskers onto the Q on her name tag the way she always does. Ramona hates being laughed at and made to feel like a fool. Worse still, her friend Howie doesn’t defend her because Ramona said that they “chopped” a hole instead of “prying” it open with crowbars. Because of Ramona’s technical inaccuracy, Howie makes her sound like she was lying about the whole thing!
Then, when the kids make paper bag owls for Parents’ Night, Susan copies Ramona’s design, and the teacher, Mrs. Griggs, praises Susan to the whole class for coming up with the idea of having the eyes looking to the side. She doesn’t even notice Ramona’s owl. Ramona, afraid that everyone else will think that she’s the copycat because of Mrs. Grigg’s public praise of Susan’s owl, just like they all thought she was a liar and laughed at her before because of what Mrs. Griggs and Howie said on the first day of school, crumples her owl up and throws it away before anyone can see it. But, that doesn’t help relieve Ramona’s feelings at the injustice of the situation. She’s owl-less because of Susan stealing her idea. In a fit of temper, she crumples up Susan’s owl, too, and runs away when Susan tells on her even though Mrs. Griggs repeatedly says that she doesn’t like tattletales. (Honestly, I’ve never understood why adults tell kids that. It just encourages kids to behave badly and label others as “tattletale” when they complain, even when the complaint is just. It just gives bullies more power to act with impunity. I also think kids should be encouraged to talk about things, especially some of the more difficult things to talk about, and the whole “I don’t want to hear from tattletales” shuts down conversations before they even start. I’ve guessed that it has something to do with not wanting to take the time to deal with a lot of petty complaints, but at least hear someone out before you decide what they’re going to tell you and how important it is!) Even when Ramona explains the situation to her mother, she can tell that her mother doesn’t fully understand how she feels, and she is forced to apologize to Susan. Mrs. Griggs makes it all the more embarrassing by forcing Ramona to apologize in front of the whole class. Ramona knows that Mrs. Griggs doesn’t understand her and is sure that Mrs. Griggs hates her.
Ramona’s new room isn’t much of a comfort, either. She finds it a bit spooky, and when she’s alone in it, her imagination runs wild, like it did the night that she and her sister were imagining what kind of ghost could get in through the hole in the wall. Ramona certainly doesn’t feel very brave and grown-up about having a room to herself, but she refuses to admit it because she doesn’t want anyone to think that she’s a baby for being scared.
Things come to a head when Mrs. Griggs sends home a progress report that says that Ramona needs to use more self-control and keep her eyes on her own work. Ramona knows that it’s totally unfair because she’s been very self-controlled since the owl incident, in spite of Mrs. Griggs’s inconsiderate lack of understanding, and the only reason why she sometimes looks at the paper of the boy next to her is that he’s been seriously struggling with his work, and she’s been trying to help him. When Ramona is so fed up that she tells her family that she needs to say a bad word and the worst word she can think of to say is “guts”, everyone laughs at her, and Ramona bursts into tears, unable to take it anymore.
Tears and anger serve a purpose, though. Sometimes, an outburst is the only way to make someone understand, and understanding is what Ramona most needs. The family has an honest discussion about Ramona’s feelings, and Beezus tells her that she understands what it’s like to be little and laughed at for doing or saying something silly, reminding her mother about the times when she laughed about things she did, back when Ramona was too little to remember it. Beezus says that her mother’s laughter hurt her feelings when she was Ramona’s age, too, and Mrs. Quimby apologizes. Beezus also says that she never liked Mrs. Griggs very much when she was her teacher, either. Ramona asks if she could switch to the other first grade class at school, but her mother is reluctant to arrange it because her schoolwork has improved and because some of Mrs. Griggs’s criticism was correct and that Ramona does need to improve on her self-control. Mrs. Quimby also says that she wants Ramona to learn to understand and work with different types of people. Mrs. Griggs might not be her kind of person, and she might not always understand Ramona, but Ramona isn’t always easy to understand.
Personally, I didn’t think that last comment was a very good way to put it. One of the great things about the Ramona books is that Ramona’s feelings are easy to understand and identify with. Beezus certainly understood what Ramona meant about what it’s like to be laughed at for just being a kid. It’s something many of us experienced when we were kids, and we identify with how Ramona feels about it. (Didn’t Ramona’s mother ever go through this herself, or does she just not think about it? I kind of wondered when she didn’t seem to understand what her daughters were talking about at first.) I think it would have been better to put more of the emphasis on the idea that different types of people need to learn to respect each other and get along even when they don’t fully understand each other. Other people aren’t always easy to understand, but that’s not because Ramona herself is difficult to understand. Ramona’s feelings aren’t any less understandable than Mrs. Griggs’s, it’s more that not all people have the same capacity for understanding others because they don’t have as much empathy as others or the imagination to consider circumstances they haven’t personally been in themselves or are too focused on their own priorities and don’t have the time or patience for understanding. Adults often don’t consider things from a child’s point of view because their adult priorities in their busy adult lives take precedence, they discount the validity of what children think and feel because children are less experienced in life and sometimes express themselves clumsily, and they don’t slow down and take a step back or a second look or listen when they should. But, they could show a little more consideration for the child’s feelings even they don’t fully understand them. My own first grade experience wasn’t any better than Ramona’s, and I had my own “Mrs. Griggs.” Adults forget that kids can feel and experience things beyond their ability to fully explain them to others. One of the difficulties of being young, at least for me, was not having the vocabulary necessary to make myself understood or ask all the questions that I wanted to ask, and I often had to deal with adults who were short on patience. I can see that Ramona also struggles with finding the right words to express what she’s feeling or what’s really happening, like when she used the word “chopped” instead of “pried” to describe how the workmen opened a hole in the side of her house. I think that learning words and new ways to communicate with different people is an important part of the story.
Fortunately, Ramona’s father is right that the bad things will blow over, and Ramona’s situation improves. Some of the other kids in class become sympathetic to Ramona because they recognize that Mrs. Griggs shouldn’t have made her apology to Susan an embarrassing public apology. Ramona, although frequently bored in class, learns to read better, and she enjoys reading, finding that she can read more interesting stories when she knows more difficult words. She also meets her older sister’s teacher, and he calls her Ramona Q instead of Ramona Kitty Cat, like Mrs. Griggs did, making Ramona realize that there’s life beyond first grade and that better, more sympathetic teachers are waiting for her. She also becomes less afraid of her new room.
A scary encounter with a dog on the way to school that causes Ramona to lose one of her shoes also brings some unexpected sympathy and understanding from Mrs. Griggs. Ramona comes to understand that Mrs. Griggs is trying to be helpful when she offers her one of the old boots from the lost and found to replace the shoe she lost, that Mrs. Griggs simply doesn’t understand Ramona’s feelings about those old boots (they’re old, dirty, and kind of yucky), and that she isn’t likely to understand because she has her own priorities. Instead of getting mad at Mrs. Griggs for her lack of understanding, this realization causes Ramona to come up with her own creative solution to the problem. Ramona gains a better image of herself because of her creative problem solving and her bravery in a difficult situation. Mrs. Griggs also begins to show signs of understanding that Ramona is a creative person who needs a little room to demonstrate her creativity.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
Big changes are happening in the life of Amber Brown. She’s back from her trip to England, during which she got chicken pox, and she’s about to start fourth grade. However, her best friend, Justin, has moved away, so she’s going to have to face the start of the new school year without him. Amber worries about whether she’ll be able to find a new best friend. Meanwhile, she’s also still adjusting to her parents’ divorce and her father’s move to Paris, France, and her mother has recently started dating a man named Max. Amber’s mother wants Amber to meet Max, but Amber doesn’t feel ready for that and is still quietly hoping that maybe her father will come back and her parents will reconcile.
Amber’s friend problems seem be solved when Brandi sits next to her in their new class. Brandi has changed since the last school year and is no longer best friends with snobby Hannah. Being friends with Brandi also forces Amber to make some changes. Brandi is quick to tell her on the first day that she isn’t Justin and that Amber can’t expect her to do the things that Justin would have done. Brandi is less excited about being friends with Amber than Amber is about making friends with her.
Amber worries that she doesn’t know how to make friends and especially that she doesn’t know how to make a best friend. She and Justin got to know each other when they were little kids, and Amber didn’t even have to try to make him her friend. However, that turns out to be the key to making friends with Brandi – not trying so hard and letting their friendship develop naturally.
When Amber and Brandi both have to go to the school’s afterschool program because their mothers work, they get to know each other better. Brandi hasn’t actually lived in Amber’s town for very long, having moved there to only about a year before, and when she moved, she also left behind her best friend and had trouble making a new one. When Brandi joined Amber’s class the year before, almost everyone already had a best friend and didn’t seem interested in making time for a new one, which is why she tried being friends with nasty Hannah. However, Hannah turns out to be mean to everyone, even the person trying to be her best friend, which is why Brandi stopped trying to be Hannah’s friend. Brandi has actually wanted to be friends with Amber for some time, but Amber was always too occupied with Justin, and after Justin left, Brandi was afraid that Amber was just looking for a Justin replacement and wouldn’t like her for who she really is. Amber tells her that she really does like her for being Brandi.
Amber comes to realize that it’s actually a good thing that Brandi isn’t exactly like Justin. She still keeps in touch with Justin by mail, but it’s also fun doing things with Brandi that she would never have done with Justin. Brandi teaches Amber to blow bubble gum bubbles with her nose. Because Brandi is a girl, Amber and Brandi can also do girl things together, like braiding each other’s hair. Brandi also likes to read more than Justin does, and the girls start talking about books with each other. Amber learns that not all changes are bad or difficult and that letting new people into her life brings interesting variety.
By the end of the book, she also comes to understand more about why her mother values her new relationship with Max. Justin’s mother was Amber’s mother’s best friend, and when Justin’s family moved away, Amber’s mother lost her best friend, too. That, combined with her loneliness since her divorce, led Amber’s mother to seek out new relationships, which is how she met Max and became fond of him. Max is apparently a nice man, and he even goes to the trouble of seeking out a particular mermaid toy for Amber because Amber’s mother told him that Amber really wanted one. At the end of the book, Amber still isn’t sure that she’s ready to meet Max because she feels like she needs some time to adjust to the other changes in her life first, but she begins to feel a little more open to the idea of change and letting new people into her life.
The book is very realistic about the gradual changes that Amber goes through as she starts fourth grade and learns how to make a new friend. Not everything in her life is completely resolved, like her feelings about her parents’ divorce and her mother’s new boyfriend, but Amber is making progress and growing up a little.
The book is available to borrow and read online through Internet Archive.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 