Posted on by TracyC

The Lancelot Closes at Five

The Lancelot Closes at Five by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat, 1976.

“Camelot” is the name of a new housing development being built in Shady Landing, New York. In the beginning of the story, Camelot has only three model homes, demonstrating what the houses in this new neighborhood are going to look like. In keeping with the Arthurian theme, the three model homes are called “the Excalibur”, “the Lancelot”, and “the Guinevere.” Abby’s family decides that they will buy a house there on the Excalibur model because they are tired of their crowded apartment in Brooklyn and Abby’s parents think that buying a house sounds like a good investment for future.

The move isn’t easy for Abby and her family. Abby doesn’t like leaving her old friends behind. There are several things wrong with the new house, including windows that are nailed shut, doorknobs that fall off, and a flooded basement. Also, the people who live in the village of Shady Landing don’t like the newcomers because trees were cut down to build Camelot.

However, Abby soon finds a friend, Heather Hutchins, who likes to be called “Hutch.” Hutch also lives in the new Camelot neighborhood. Hutch’s family is very health-conscious, believing in all-natural foods, which is why Abby doesn’t usually like to eat at their house, and Hutch’s mother is a very competitive person.

Then, Hutch springs a surprise on Abby. Hutch tells Abby that she wants to run away from home. She doesn’t want to be gone for long, just about day during the Memorial Day weekend. She doesn’t want to go far, planning to spend a night in the Lancelot model home. But, she wants Abby to come with her so she won’t be alone.

At first, Abby is a little reluctant, but Hutch is very persuasive, the idea does seem like a fun adventure, and hiding out secretly so close to home doesn’t seem too dangerous. In fact, since the public is invited to come and walk through the model homes, it doesn’t even seem like trespassing. Abby agrees to do it. The girls’ plan is to tell their families that they’re spending the night with each other but conveniently not mention where so they’ll assume that they’re just having a normal sleepover at each other’s house. Then, they plan to visit the Lancelot and hide there until it closes and all the other people leave.

When she proposes her plan, Hutch doesn’t explain her motives for wanting to run away for a day, and Abby decides not to question her, thinking that Hutch will tell her when she’s ready. She does note that Hutch doesn’t seem to get along well with her mother. Hutch’s mother doesn’t seem to connect well with other people in general, being more focused on what she wants them to do than on just acknowledging them or building relationships with them. Worse still, Hutch’s mother is what Abby calls a “scorecard mother,” always comparing her child to everyone else’s child, constantly keeping track of where Hutch is ahead and where she’s behind. Hutch’s mother has overly high expectations of Hutch and pushes for perfection. Hutch’s mother sometimes quizzes Abby about what she does to help out at home and how each of the girls are doing in school so she can compare them. Abby sometimes feels like she’s in the uncomfortable position of defending Hutch to her own mother.

The Lancelot model home is decorated in a fakey pseudo-Medieval style, in keeping with the Camelot theme. When Abby and Hutch sneak in, they pretend to be part of a family group touring the house and then hide under a bed until everyone else leaves. Their plan works, but staying in the house isn’t quite what Abby imagined it would be. The furniture is uncomfortable because it’s made to be looked at and not actually used. Not all of the appliances even work, like the tv, because they’re just for show and not for using. For their “supper”, Hutch has brought candy bars and pastries, things which her mother normally forbids her to have because they aren’t natural and will rot her teeth. Abby still can’t have some of them because she has food allergies and braces, but Hutch brings pound cake for her.

Hutch finally admits to Abby that her main reason for wanting to have this adventure is just to have the chance to do something for no other reason than she just wants to do it. Abby is right about Hutch’s mother. Everything that she wants Hutch to do is centered around gaining something – recognition, awards, physical health benefits, learning things and getting a mental edge. Hutch just wanted the chance to do something without a particular motive other than just wanting to do it and the fun of planning it out and pulling it off by herself, with the help of her friend.

Unfortunately, Hutch gets carried away with the success of her plan and turns on the lights, which attracts the attention of a passing police car, although the police just try the doors, decide that the lights were left on by accident, and leave without finding the girls. Then, Hutch doesn’t want to go to sleep and stays up, eating candy bars in bed, just because she’s normally not allowed to do that. Abby is uncomfortable in the big, fancy bed that isn’t meant to be slept in and can’t sleep, so she leaves and goes home, making Hutch mad. Abby spends the rest of the night sleeping in her sleeping bag in her family’s basement (which is no longer flooded) so she won’t give away Hutch’s secret.

Later, Abby feels guilty about abandoning Hutch, so she sneaks out early in the morning to check on her. Hutch got out of the Lancelot without being noticed, but she’s still mad at Abby for leaving her when she was trying to do something that was important to her. However, there is worse to come. The police hadn’t forgotten about something strange happening at the model home that night, and now, there’s a rumor in the neighborhood that the house was “vandalized” during the night (meaning the mess that the girls left in the house from the food they ate, trying to sleep in the bed, and using the bathroom). Abby is naturally a more timid person than Hutch, and while she has started to appreciate Hutch’s attempts to help her be more bold and take more chances, it makes her nervous that she and Hutch are the “vandals” whose escapades have now made the local paper. Abby’s father, an author, is even attempting his own investigation into the matter.

Abby is not only worried about repairing her friendship with Hutch but not getting found out for what they did. Then, one of the boys at school starts bragging, claiming that he and his friend were the ones who snuck into the Lancelot to hang out that night. He’s not the only one trying to claim credit for the stunt, either. Abby hopes that the whole thing will just die down and be forgotten, but Hutch doesn’t feel the same way. Even though she originally set out to do something just on a whim without looking for recognition, the idea that someone else might claim recognition for what she did galls her. What will happen when Hutch tries to reveal her role in masterminding the night in the Lancelot?

I purposely sought this book out online because I never owned a copy and I remembered it from when I was in elementary school, but the funny thing is that I don’t remember ever hearing the entire story when I was a kid. I think that my class might have just read a selection from the book, maybe as part of one of those story collections that has excerpts from books to demonstrate certain concepts and give samples of stories. I can’t quite remember now. All I remembered was that the main escapade was just a part of the story that took place at the beginning of the book, and the rest was about what happened because of the girls’ secret nighttime excursion. It makes the book a bit different from other children’s books about kids running away and hiding in usual locations, like From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, where most of the book takes place during the kids’ adventure and the kids’ parents are barely seen. In this book, the girls are mostly at their own homes, and the parents have prominent roles.

Runaways generally have two motives – getting away from something or going in search of something, and when you really think about it, they frequently have both. Hutch’s adventure is both about escaping from her mother’s oppressive rules and emphasis on perfection as well as undertaking something unusual and pulling it off for the sense of personal achievement. However, even though Hutch at first insists that she wanted to do it just for the sake of doing something that she wants, with no expectation of recognition or reward, it turns out that isn’t completely true. Part of the reason why she wanted Abby along was to get a sense of recognition from her for the accomplishment as well as her company. Her bad feelings toward Abby for abandoning their adventure and going home were partly because Abby didn’t value that type of uncomfortable adventure as much as she did and didn’t fully acknowledge the cleverness of her plan. Even if it started out as just a fun escapade, undertaken as a brief chance to break a few rules in secret, Hutch badly craves acknowledgement, just not in the form of the constant comparisons he mother makes between her and other people. What Hutch really needs is just to be acknowledged for being herself and to feel valued, no matter how she compares to others. In her attempt to make things right with Hutch again, Abby does something that she never thought that she would ever be bold enough to do: give Hutch’s mother a piece of her mind.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg, 1967.

Twelve-year-old Claudia Kincaid is bored with her dull suburban life in Connecticut with her parents and her brothers. Her life also often seems unfair, like she has more responsibilities than her brothers do and she has more chores than her others friends. Basically, Claudia is bored and feeling unsatisfied with her life. She wants to get away from it all and have a little adventure … although not too much adventure because Claudia isn’t the overly-adventurous type.

Claudia is cautious and methodical. When she plans to run away from home, she carefully plans every step and invites her more adventurous nine-year-old brother Jamie to go with her, both for the companionship and because he is a tightwad and has the cash necessary to fund their adventure. Although Claudia and Jamie bicker as siblings, they’re closer to each other than to either of their other brothers. Jamie eagerly accepts Claudia’s proposition to run away, although at first, he’s a little disappointed when he finds out where they’re going.

Claudia plans for them to run away to New York City because, as she puts it, it’s “a good place to get lost.” The city is so big, Claudia is sure that two runaway children will be easily overlooked. She’s also found a great place for them to stay during their adventure: the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Claudia loves comfort, convenience, and beauty, and the museum can offer all of that without the fees of staying in a hotel. There are exhibits of furniture, which provide them with a bed to sleep in, and interesting exhibits to keep them entertained and educated, and all they have to do is evade the security guards. At first, Jamie thinks that sounds a little too tame, but their adventure soon proves to be exciting and challenging, with enough mystery to satisfy both of them.

Claudia and Jamie develop routines for sneaking around the museum, evading the guards, hiding the backpacks and instrument cases that hold their clothes, and raiding the coins in the fountain for extra money. One day, while they’re hiding in the restrooms and waiting for the museum staff to leave, the staff set up a new exhibit for an angel sculpture sold to the museum by the wealthy and mysterious widow Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, who is actually the person narrating Claudia and Jamie’s story in a letter to her lawyer.

Claudia develops a fascination for the angel and a desire to learn the truth about the theory that the statue was made by Michelangelo. Between the two children, Claudia is the more imaginative and romantic, but Jamie’s logical mind and zest for adventure serve them well as they delve deeper into the mystery. They do learn something important at the museum, but to get the full truth, they have to leave their planned hiding place in the museum and go see Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler herself.

Mrs. Frankweiler is a delightfully eccentric student of human nature, who is fascinated by the young runaways who come to her for answers to a mystery hundreds of years old. In exchange for the details of their exploits, Mrs. Frankweiler gives the children a chance to locate the answers they’re seeking in her strange, mixed-up files. In the process, the children learn a secret that gives both of them the sense of being part of something secret and exciting and much bigger than their ordinary, hum-drum lives, which is what they were originally looking for when they ran away from home.

The book is a Newbery Award winner, and it is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive (many copies).

My Reaction

During the course of the adventure, Claudia and Jamie become closer to each other than they were before they ran away from home. They learn a little more about each other and themselves, and neither of them is quite the same as they were before they started, which is at the heart of Claudia’s reasons for wanting to run away from home in the first place. The language and descriptions in the book are colorful, which is part of the reason why this book is popular to read in schools.

There were two movies made of this story. One is a made-for-tv movie version from 1995, although it changed some of the details from the original story. In the 1995 movie, there is a scene with Jamie getting sick and Claudia worrying about him and taking care of him that never happened in the original book. Also, in the movie, Claudia stops Jamie from taking the coins from the fountain when they had no qualms about raiding the fountain for money in the book. At the end of the book, the children don’t tell their parents where they were hiding when they return home, but in the movie, the parents do find out. There is also an older movie from 1973 which is sometimes called The Hideaways.

Posted on by TracyC

Mystery Madness

Mystery Madness by Otto Coontz, 1982.

While Murray’s parents are on vacation, his older sister, Blanche, is in charge of the house. One day, he calls Blanche to get a ride home from the dentist and hears what he thinks is Blanche shooting their housekeeper.

Earlier that morning, he had heard Blanche talking on the phone to someone about a gun. Then, when he calls home, a friend of Blanche’s, Harold, answers, and Murray hears a gun going off in the background and Blanche apologizing to the housekeeper and talking about blood on the carpet. When Murray gets home, his mother’s Persian rug is missing and sees what appears to be a head in a bucket under the sink in the kitchen, further proof that the housekeeper is dead and that her blood stained the carpet.

Murray doesn’t know what to do because he is sure that his sister would never shoot anyone on purpose, and he doesn’t want to see her go to jail. He consults a private detective, Mat Cloak, who he met in a doughnut shop, for help.

The detective agrees to look into the case, and along the way, he realizes that it has connections to a case that he is already investigating. What really happened to the housekeeper? Is Blanche really guilty of murder? Moreover, who is the strange man who is following Murray around?

It’s a very funny story with some twists that readers won’t be able to guess right away. Part of the mystery is pretty obvious because Blanche is a theater student, but the real mystery is one that Murray isn’t even trying to solve and the real villain is someone who Murray thinks is a victim.

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Silent Nightingale

Three Cousins Detective Club

#2 The Mystery of the Silent Nightingale by Elspeth Campbell Murphy, 1994.

Sarah-Jane’s baby-sitter and friend, Kelly, is graduating from high school. Soon, she will be going away to college. Sarah-Jane is sad that she is leaving, but she is happy her family was able to find her a nice graduation present.

After they pick out their present, Sarah-Jane sees a locket with a nightingale on it in a store window. The nightingale is a Christian symbol for joy, and Sarah-Jane thinks that it would have made a nice present for Kelly if they didn’t already have one.

To everyone’s surprise, someone else buys the locket and leaves it at Kelly’s house. Sarah-Jane feels a little strange that someone else took the idea that she’d had for Kelly’s present. However, it is even more mysterious that there is no note or card with it to say who it is from. Kelly asks the cousins to help her find out who gave her the locket so that she can thank them. As it turns out, the present isn’t just an ordinary graduation present. It’s actually a thank you from someone who has been grateful to Kelly for a long time for a kindness she wasn’t even aware that she had done. Sarah-Jane even had a hand in it herself although she also wasn’t aware of it. Sometimes, it’s the smallest good deeds that can make the biggest difference in someone’s life.

The theme of the story is joy.

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

Themes and Spoilers:

The person who left the present for Kelly is Janice, who works for Kelly’s father. The kids had wondered why she seemed to recognize them when they stopped by Kelly’s father’s office early to show him Kelly’s graduation gown. It turns out that Janice has been grateful to Kelly for years for something kind that Kelly did for her when the cousins were very young. Kelly always used to read to the cousins when they were small, particularly Sarah-Jane. She took Sarah-Jane and the others to the library the day that Sarah-Jane got her first library card. That same day, Janice was also at the library.

Janice had never learned to read and was unable to finish her education. For a long time, she was ashamed to admit to anyone that she couldn’t read. Then, she heard about classes at the library for adults who had never learned to read and decided to go there. When she got to the library, she didn’t know where the classes were being held. She couldn’t read the signs, and she was too embarrassed to ask the librarian. There were some people she knew in the library, and she was so afraid of any of them finding out why she was there that she almost left. Then, Janice saw Kelly with Sarah-Jane and the boys. She saw how happy Sarah-Jane was to get her new library card, and she decided that she really wanted to learn to read, too. Janice knew that Kelly wouldn’t look down on her like some adults would, so she asked Kelly to help her find the class. Kelly helped her, even though she forgot about it later, and Janice was grateful to her for keeping her from backing out.

After Janice learned to read, she was able to finish her education. When she realized that the girl who had helped her years ago was her boss’s daughter, she wanted to give her a present. She wanted it kept secret at first because she was still embarrassed that it took her so long to learn to read. She was worried about what her boss would think of her. However, Kelly’s father doesn’t hold it against her, and Janice’s strict supervisor, Dorothy, even asks her to help tutor her grandson, who has been having learning difficulties.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Mystery of the Secret Dolls

Mystery of the Secret Dolls Cover

Mystery of the Secret Dolls by Vicki Berger Erwin, 1993.

Bonnie Scott is visiting her great-aunts, Nell and Mollie, in Callaway County over the summer. Aunt Nell invited her to come and help set up her new doll museum, but Bonnie also wants to take advantage of the trip to work on a project about family history. Aunt Mollie has a restaurant, and Bonnie wants to talk to her about old family recipes that she uses and make a book about them. Unfortunately, when Bonnie arrives in her aunts’ town, she learns that Aunt Mollie has closed her restaurant and is helping Aunt Nell with her doll museum. From Bonnie’s awkward arrival, when no one comes to meet her at the bus stop and Marc, the grandson of the local doctor, Dr. Allen, has to help her find her way to her aunts’ house, she begins to see that things aren’t quite what she thought they were in her family and in her aunts’ town.

The reason why no one came to meet Bonnie is that Aunt Nell accidentally injured herself when she fell off a table she was standing on in order to change a light bulb. She broke her leg and had to go to the doctor. Now that Aunt Nell is in a wheelchair, she says that she will especially need Bonnie’s help, although Aunt Nell and Aunt Mollie also have a young black girl, Lynette Key, staying with them and helping out. Lynette is the daughter of an old family friend, and her family’s history is intertwined with Bonnie’s family. Through her aunts and Lynette, Bonnie comes to understand a little more about her family’s history with dolls and the relationship between Aunt Nell and Aunt Mollie.

Aunt Nell is the older of the two sisters, and she’s been bossing Aunt Mollie around for years, and she’s apparently the one who convinced Mollie to close her restaurant and help her with the doll museum project. The old family home belongs to both of them, although Mollie lived in another house while her husband was still alive. Now that both women are childless widows and Mollie has moved back into the family home, Nell has gone back to her old ways of bossing Mollie around. Bonnie is alarmed when Mollie reveals that there has been a break-in, vandalism, and a fire, apparently deliberate, at the museum, and she thinks that Nell should put off the opening, but Nell is trying to ignore the situation and charge ahead with the project, dragging Mollie and Bonnie with her. The aunts are going to have a security system installed at the museum.

Aunt Nell says their family, the Scotts, have made dolls for about 150 years. She shows Bonnie her doll collection, including the portrait dolls, startlingly realistic dolls made of every member of their family, including Bonnie’s ancestors, like her great-great-great-grandfather who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Aunt Nell apparently strongly identifies with the South and Confederacy because she keeps trying to blame the troubles at the museum on “some Yankee.” Not in a specific sense and not necessarily with any particular person in mind (although there is one person who is also labeled as a Yankee who is a suspect for awhile), it’s more that she just generally associates Yankees with bad stuff, and she says that she hopes that Bonnie hasn’t turned into a Yankee from living in a big city like St. Louis. Although the dolls belong to both of the sisters, Aunt Nell really thinks of the dolls as being hers, and she’s determined to make Bonnie’s family history project about the dolls, whether Bonnie wants it to be or not. Aunt Nell says that Lynette’s grandmother used to work for her, making dolls, and she’s pleased that Lynette shares her interest in dolls, but Lynette privately tells Bonnie that the situation goes deeper than that.

As you might have guessed, Aunt Nell’s mental version of history, including the history of her own family, isn’t entirely accurate. Marc lends Bonnie a history book about the area written by his grandfather, but Lynette tells Bonnie not to let Aunt Nell see it because she and Dr. Allen have very different views about history, and Dr. Allen is a “Yankee.” Bonnie asks her what she means by that, and Lynette says that the Scotts have never gotten over being on the losing side of the Civil War. Dr. Allen, by contrast, believes that the Civil War turned out just fine with the South losing, which makes him a Yankee. It matters because Aunt Nell’s interpretation and attitude toward the past is affecting life in the present.

Although Aunt Nell is mentally on the side of the Confederacy, she doesn’t say anything in support of the idea of slavery and doesn’t seem to have bad feelings about Lynette being black. Nell is actually very fond of Lynette, treating her almost like a young niece, and I suspect that Nell probably mentally replaces the word “slave” with “servant” in her head, as some of the other characters in the book do until Lynette reminds them that there’s a difference and it matters. Nell’s attachment to her family’s grand history (which may not be quite what she makes it out to be) and her feeling that the doll-making business must pass to a blood relative keep her from fully seeing the potential that Lynette has to continue the doll-making traditions that their families both share, something that Lynette really wants to do.

Lynette says that women in her family have worked for the Scott women for generations, making dolls. They were originally slaves belonging to the Scott family, and they even shared the same last name because slaves were sometimes given the surnames of their masters. (In my home town, I’ve met black people with the surname White, which might seem a little odd and contradictory, but this is the probable reason why they have that last name.) Some slaves changed their last names after Emancipation, but not all. Lynette says that even after her ancestors were freed from slavery, one of her ancestors, Rosa, chose to keep the last name Scott because of her connection to the doll-making business.

Lynette points out a section in Dr. Allen’s history book about the Scott dolls having a connection to the Underground Railroad because some of them seemed to have been used as signals for escaping slaves. Margaret Scott, an ancestor of Bonnie’s, used to make black dolls, each with a distinctive little red heart sewn on the chest, and after she made one, a slave would mysteriously disappear. She eventually had to stop doing it because people in the area were getting suspicious of her and put pressure on her to stop. In fact, Lynette says Margaret’s own father, the Confederate colonel, tried forced her to stop, saying that he’d close down her doll-making business if she didn’t, but that Margaret and Rosa actually continued making the black dolls in secret, something that Aunt Nell doesn’t believe. The history book notes that the dolls are rare and valuable collectors’ items. Lynette says that Aunt Nell only has one of these black dolls, and she keeps it locked up for safe-keeping, denying that there even are others, but Lynette is sure that there are more, possibly hidden somewhere. Lynette wants to find these dolls, not only because they are valuable but because they can help prove her family’s connection to the Scott doll-making business. Lynette says that her ancestors never got the credit for the beautiful dolls they made because they were only ever slaves or employees of the Scotts, and the entire doll business was in the Scott family name.

Lynette wants to become a doll maker herself, but Aunt Nell really wants Bonnie to take over the family tradition, even though Bonnie has never really been interested in dolls and would prefer to talk cooking and recipes with Aunt Mollie. The realistic dolls portrait dolls actually kind of give Bonnie the creeps, but Lynette has a sentimental attachment to them because she’s been around them all her life, since her grandmother was a doll maker. Once Bonnie understands the history between her family and Lynette’s and Lynette’s doll-making ambitions, she sees why Lynette seemed a little cold to her at their first meeting, but she isn’t interested in learning the doll business or competing with Lynette to be Aunt Nell’s successor. Even though Aunt Nell is bossy and doesn’t understand Lynette’s deep desire to be a doll maker and continue the Scott doll-making business, Lynette kind of likes her and wants to show her that she is just as attached to the doll-making traditions as she is. Lynette and Bonnie make a deal that Lynette will help Bonnie get the recipes she wants from Aunt Mollie if Bonnie will talk to Aunt Nell about the black dolls and try to get more information about them.

Bonnie thinks that hunting for the long-lost dolls sounds exciting. It occurs to her that the valuable dolls might be the reason why someone broke into the doll museum. The aunts’ old house is spooky, right next to a graveyard, and on Bonnie’s first night there, someone leaves Margaret’s portrait doll (which looks a great deal like Bonnie) in Bonnie’s room with a note that says, “Don’t believe everything you hear.” What does the note mean? Who left the doll, and is it connected to the other strange things happening around the doll museum? Is someone trying to scare Bonnie? Are the missing black dolls still somewhere nearby, and can Bonnie and Lynette find them? What is the real truth about the dolls and what happened in Callaway years ago?

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

Although this story doesn’t quite deal with racism in the sense of people hating other people because of race, there is a lot in here about the nature of prejudice, on several levels. Aunt Nell has many preconceived notions about her family and how things in her family ought to be. She assumes from the beginning, when Bonnie contacts her aunts to talk about family history, that Bonnie will do her project about the dolls and the family’s doll-making history and that Bonnie will help her with her doll museum and eventually take over the dolls from her. Aunt Nell started out their relationship with a lot of assumptions, and her assumptions about Bonnie have blinded her to the possibility that Lynette could be the successor to the doll-making business and doll museum that she really wants because they share a common love of dolls and skill in making them. Lynette has already started learning the doll-making business, first from her grandmother and then from Nell, because she loves it, and she is willing to work at developing her skills. She has a similar vision to Nell about the doll business and museum, and the two of them get along well, in spite of Aunt Nell’s bossy personality. It’s only Aunt Nell’s narrow vision of family and sense that the doll-making business should pass to family that keep her from considering the possibility at first. Meanwhile, Bonnie and Mollie are both being forced to go along with Nell’s plans because of what Nell thinks they should do as family, while they both have very different interests and would like the freedom to pursue them. Aunt Nell also has been assuming many things about her sister Mollie for years.

Over 100 years earlier, Margaret Scott also belonged to a family that did not share her interests and her vision of the future. Although she used slave labor in building her doll-making business, she and Rosa found a way to use their craft to help escaping slaves. The Scott family took pride in the doll-making business for generations, but there were sides to Margaret and the dolls that they didn’t understand and appreciate. Before the end of the book, Aunt Nell comes to understand that their family has more variety than she had ever considered and that her goals might not be everyone’s goals.

The ending of the story makes sense and is realistic, but I’ll admit that there were a couple of points that I might have clarified or done differently if I had written the ending. Sometimes, when I’m not entirely satisfied by the ending of a book, I like to say what I would have changed about it, but it’s difficult to do that here without giving too much away. Part that I can say is that I wished that Nell and Mollie had thought of more creative ways to combine their separate interests, like how Bonnie’s final family history project ends up being a combination of both – a cookbook of family recipes, illustrated with pictures of the portrait dolls that represent the people who invented or enjoyed the different recipes. In fact, a cookbook of historical recipes with pictures of historical dolls sounds like a book that many people would actually be interested in buying if they published it professionally and even sold copies through the doll museum, and I found myself wishing that one of the characters would mention that before the end of the book.

The story ends with the impression that Lynette will keep working with Nell and the dolls because, while Bonnie says that she’ll come back and visit, she doesn’t have the interest in doll-making that Lynette does, but I also kind of wished that they would clarify more definitely that Lynette would be continuing the doll-making business. The girls are young yet, so maybe they didn’t feel the need to decide their futures definitely, and it’s enough just to show that’s how things are looking at the end of the book. I had half expected that it would turn out that Lynette and Bonnie are actually related because sometimes slave owners did have children with their slaves, and I suspected that one of the Scott family secrets might have been that Rosa was actually a blood relative and that was part of the reason why she was so close to Margaret and why she kept the Scott family name. The story doesn’t bring up that possibility, focusing on a different secret relationship instead, but I’m still keeping it in mind as a private theory. I like the idea because, if it was true, then it would strengthen Lynette’s ties to the doll-making business she loves, and I think that Nell would appreciate the idea of bringing her more fully into the business as a relative. But, perhaps it’s enough that they just both share the same interest in life

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Mystery of Drear House

The Mystery of Drear House cover

The Mystery of Drear House by Virginia Hamilton, 1987.

This book is the continuation of The House of Dies Drear, and the final book in the short series.

The Smalls are now settled into the house that formerly belonged to the abolitionist Dies Drear, who used secret tunnels to help smuggle escaping slaves to freedom as part of the Underground Railroad. Thomas Small’s father is a college professor, who finds the history of the house endlessly fascinating, especially now that they know about the hidden treasure that the caretaker, Mr. Pluto has been guarding for many years.

Apart from the Small family and Mr. Pluto, Pesty is only other person who knows where the hidden treasure is. Pesty (a nickname, her real name is Sarah) is the adopted daughter of the Darrow family, who live nearby. The Darrows are generally known to be nasty and scheming, and they have spent years looking for the treasure they know that Dies Drear hid. In the last book, Pesty helped the others to frighten off the Darrows when they were getting too close to the secret, but Thomas is still concerned that they might be a threat. He also privately questions Pesty’s loyalty, wondering if she’ll continue to keep the secret from the Darrows, although Mr. Pluto is confident that she will because she knew the secret of the treasure even before the Smalls did.

Mac, a boy about Thomas’s age, is the youngest of the Darrow brothers, and he’s not as mean as the rest of his family. Thomas kind of wants to be friends with him, but he’s not sure if he can really trust him. Mac tells Thomas that he can come over to visit sometime and that his mother is an invalid who sometimes spends months in bed. When Mac shows an interest in Thomas’s great-grandmother, who is coming to live with them, Thomas gets the idea to bring his great-grandmother over to the Darrow house to visit Mac and Pesty’s mother.

However, before they can visit Mrs. Darrow, she comes to visit them, entering their house through one of the secret passages that Thomas and his family haven’t learned about yet. She startles Thomas’s great-grandmother with her sudden arrival, and Thomas is irritated that Pesty didn’t tell him about that secret passage even though she knew about it. Pesty explains to them that her mother is mentally ill, a chronic condition of some kind, and she gets a little odd during times when she doesn’t take her medicine. Thomas’s great-grandmother seems to understand the situation, and she insists on escorting Mrs. Darrow home.

In the secret tunnel Mrs. Darrow used to come to their house, there are hidden rooms, and when they all arrive at the Darrow house, Mrs. Darrow begins telling them a kind of odd story, really little bits and pieces of stories that she has told Pesty and Mac before. Pesty seems to have a better understanding of what Mrs. Darrow is talking about than Mac does, but Thomas can tell that Mac has heard his mother tell these stories before and that he is also trying to get a better understanding of them. For some reason, Pesty seems to be holding back information from Mac as well as Thomas.

The story that seems to concern Mrs. Darrow the most is about an Indian Maiden (Native American). She seems to get upset at first when Thomas mentions that Mac had mentioned an Indian Maiden before. It turns out that the Darrows are part Native American, and the “Indian Maiden” is one of their relatives from the past. She played a role in the Underground Railroad with Dies Drear but lost her life when she was caught. The Indian Maiden was hiding secrets that Pesty is still trying to protect, and she has also been worried about Mrs. Darrow, who sometimes acts out part of the old story as if she were the Indian Maiden herself.

Meanwhile, it seems like someone is playing the ghost of Dies Drear and trying to frighten Mr. Pluto into telling him about the hidden treasure. Thomas and Pesty see the tracks of this person one day when they go to visit Mr. Pluto. The relationships between the different members of the Darrow family are complicated, and not all of them are really after the same thing.

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

Mrs. Darrow’s mental illness and the different motives of the younger Darrows vs. the older Darrow boys and their father are at the heart of much of the mystery and peculiarity of the Darrow family. Mac actually opposed his father and brothers the last time they tried to get the hidden Drear treasure, and since then, they’ve been shunning him. Pesty tries to look after Mrs. Darrow as best she can, but she’s been handling the job largely by herself, and at the same time, she could really use the support of a mother who can look after her. Pesty doesn’t really like all of the secrets that she has been forced to keep, but for a long time, she hasn’t felt safe in confiding the full truth of anything to anybody. She feels even more left out of the Darrow family than Mac is because she’s their adopted child, not a blood relative, even though she is always looking after Mrs. Darrow and thinks of her as her “Mama.”

The solution to many of the problems with the Darrows comes with the public exposure of the Drear treasure and the end to all the secrecy. The Smalls decide to give Mrs. Darrow the credit for finding the treasure, so although Mr. Darrow is angry that he will never get his hands on the hidden treasure that he and his family have searched for so long, they will get part of the reward money for finding it. The foundation that receives the treasure also gives jobs to Mr. Small and Mr. Darrow, changing the lives of the Darrows for the better. Even though Mr. Darrow didn’t get what his family originally wanted, they end up with something that improves their situation, and they no longer feel the need to hide Mrs. Darrow’s condition from everyone. The Darrows are freed from part of their past, and now, they’ll be able to go forward with their lives. Mr. Darrow also shows that he really cares about his adopted daughter.

The Darrows are a mixed race family, and their heritage is in keeping with real events in American history. People with mixed black and Native American heritage are sometimes colloquially known as “Black Indians,” and people with that type of mixed ancestry have existed in the Americas since Colonial times. By the end of the story, the Darrows’ full history isn’t completely explained in detail, but it seems that it was probably Dies Drear’s work with the Underground Railroad that brought their ancestors together. Freed and escaped slaves did sometimes intermarry with Native Americans.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The House of Dies Drear

DiesDrearThe House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton, 1968.

Thomas Small, a thirteen-year-old African American boy, is moving from North Carolina to Ohio with his family in order to live in an old house with an unusual history.  His father is a history professor and has rented a house for them that was once owned by an abolitionist named Dies Drear.  Dies Drear was part of the Underground Railroad that smuggled escaping slaves out of the South around the time of the Civil War, and his old house still has secret passages from that time.  The local people believe that Dies Drear still haunts the house along with the ghosts of a couple of slaves who never made it to freedom.

The caretaker of this strange old house is a strange old man called Mr. Pluto.  He lives on the property in a cave that he has made into a house.  Mr. Pluto frightens Thomas, and Thomas is sure that he’s hiding something.

The Smalls’ new town is a close-knit community that doesn’t welcome outsiders. The people seem unfriendly and suspicious of the Smalls, especially the Darrow family.  They know something about the secret passages at the house, but Thomas’s parents don’t want him poking around the passages anymore after he is briefly lost in them.  However, that is where the real secret of the house lies.

Thomas comes to believe that someone is sneaking into the house at night, using the old secret passages.  One night, this person leaves three small metal triangles at the bedroom doors.  These mysterious triangles seem to fit together, but there also seems to be a missing piece.  The Smalls have no idea what these pieces mean or who put them there.  Mr. Pluto holds many of the answers, and he is going to need their help to protect the secret that he has kept safe for many years.

The book is currently available on Internet Archive (multiple copies).  The book won the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery in 1969.  There is also a made-for-tv movie version of the book.  Sometimes, you can find it or clips of it on YouTube.

There is a sequel to this book called The Mystery of Drear House.  There are only two books in this short series.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I love how the Smalls help Mr. Pluto deal with the Darrows in the end, using the ghost stories about the house to their advantage.  There are hints that besting the Darrows, although it hurt their pride, may actually lead to a better relationship with them in the future.

Thomas and Pesty (a nickname for the young adopted daughter of the Darrow family, her real name is Sarah) are also memorable characters.  Pesty is brave for learning the secret that her family has tried to learn but choosing to protect it instead of reveal it.  Thomas is a thoughtful boy who, because of his earlier upbringing, actually feels more comfortable around older adults than around people his own age.

If you’re wondering about why the abolitionist had a strange name like “Dies Drear”, it isn’t exactly explained.  At one point, the story says that he was from New England.  A possible explanation that I found online is that Dies might actually be another form of the Germanic surname Diess, which may be related to the Biblical name Matthias.  Perhaps Dies Drear might have some Germanic ancestry.  Some people use the mother’s maiden name as a first or middle name for a child.  But, that’s just a theory.

Some teachers use this book to introduce students to the concept of the Underground Railroad.  While I was researching the book online, I also found this pdf of classroom worksheets related to the story. (I had a link to a different set of worksheets before, but those were removed, and I found a different set.)  If you’re looking for additional lesson plans, I suggest looking at Teachers Pay Teachers, where teachers can buy lesson plans from other teachers.  (I’m not sponsored by them, I just know about them from a friend who is a teacher and think it’s a useful resource.)

One final point that I would like to make is that there are no white characters in the story.  Dies Drear was a white man, but he doesn’t actually appear in the book, having died over 100 years before.  Every character who does appear in the book is black.  The funny thing is that I can’t remember any point where the book explicitly describes the characters as black.  It might be my memory playing tricks on me, but I seem to remember knowing that they were all black as I read the book, but I can’t think now why I knew it, and I don’t remember a point where the book actually described anyone’s appearance.  I think I probably knew it partly from context, perhaps subtle hints in the story, but it might also be that I knew what the book was about before I read it because someone told me.  I might even have seen the movie version at some point before reading the book, although I’m not sure now because it’s been years since I first read this story, and I can’t remember if I read the book or saw the movie first.  The movie or clips of it sometimes appear on YouTube.  It’s also available on dvd, although I haven’t seen many copies available.

Posted on by TracyC

What Eric Knew

What Eric Knew by James Howe, 1985.

After his friend, Eric, moves away, thirteen-year-old Sebastian Barth receives strange messages from him, hinting at a mystery in the small college town of Pembroke. Eric always used to rope his friends into investigating things and having adventures, but before his family moved away, he started acting strangely and suffered an accident falling downstairs and breaking his leg.

Sebastian shares the notes with his best friend, David, and with Corrie, the new minister’s daughter. Corrie’s family has moved into the house where Eric used to live, near the church and graveyard. Eric’s notes seem to refer to a local legend about the ghost of a prominent woman, Susan Iris Siddons, who used to live in their town and supposedly searches for her lost wedding ring. Corrie thinks she sees this ghost in the graveyard. There is also something mysterious going on in the church, where the Siddons family still maintains a tradition of ringing the bell regularly at 9 o’clock in homage to their ancestors, Susan and her husband, Cornelius.

The dark secrets of the past mix with the troubles still surrounding the Siddons family. Can Sebastian and his friends solve the clues and learn what their friend Eric knew?

The book used to be available to borrow online through Internet Archive, but when I checked recently, it was no longer there.

My Reaction

The story leaves some things unresolved. The kids are never entirely sure how much Eric discovered before he moved, but they do learn that he recruited a couple of friends to help create the appearance of the ghost, possibly to draw attention to the real problem in modern times, which has nothing to do with the supernatural, although there is another troubling secret about the past that the kids uncover, too.

Both sets of problems do center around the prominent Siddons family and the pressures that the current family members, especially the younger generation, suffer as they try to keep up appearances and live up to images of their supposedly perfect relatives. The past secret explains one of the reasons why the Siddons family isn’t as perfect as they had always pretended to be and helps to put the “ghost” of Susan Siddons to rest. This is not a mystery story for very young children because of the dark and serious nature of the problems with the Siddons family. I would say the book would be best for ages 10 and up. The only question at the end is how much of these things Eric really knew.

Posted on by TracyC

Who Knew There’d Be Ghosts?

Who Knew There’d Be Ghosts? By Bill Britain, 1985.

Tommy Donahue and his friends, Wendy “Books” Scofield (the smartest kid in their class as well as being pretty tough) and Harry “the Blimp” Troy (known for being the tallest and biggest kid in their class), prefer playing around the abandoned Parnell house instead of at the park because they like to play games of pretend, based on adventure stories that Tommy has read.  It’s hard to play games of pretend in such a public place as the park because other people either laugh or think that they’re just getting in the way.  Almost nobody goes near the old Parnell house because people think that it’s haunted.  They’re right; it is haunted.

Some people in their town have been trying to arrange for the Parnell house to be turned into a museum because the Parnells were the founding family of their town, but the movement hasn’t been able to raise the money needed to renovate the place.  Now, Tommy’s father, a lawyer, has been recruited to arrange for the house to be purchased by a private citizen who says that he wants to renovate the house and use it as his own residence.  However, Tommy and his friends overhear the buyer, Avery Katkus, and a confederate talking as they look over the house.  Mr. Katkus isn’t interested in the house at all; he wants something valuable that is hidden inside.  When they hear the two men plotting to sneak into the house at night to do some searching for this mysterious something, the kids decide that they will come back at night and watch for them to find out what they’re looking for.  The kids don’t want anything bad to happen to the house because they’ll lose their private playground.

Tommy is the first to go and check out the Parnell house at night, and that’s when he meets the ghosts, Horace and Essie Parnell.  At first, Horace tries to scare Tommy away, but when Tommy explains that he only came to keep watch, Horace asks him what he means by that.  Tommy explains to him about Mr. Katkus, and Horace says that he could use Tommy’s help.  Years ago, Horace’s father made a dying wish that all members of their family should be buried in the family cemetery on the property of the house.  Most of the members of the family are buried there, but Horace, who was killed during the Revolutionary War, and Essie, who accidentally fell overboard from a riverboat and was permanently lost in the Mississippi River, were only two Parnells who were not buried on the property, so their spirits are now bound to the house.  Naturally, Horace and Essie are concerned with the future of the house.

Tommy tries to tell his friends about the ghosts, but they don’t believe him until they see the ghosts for themselves.  When the three kids return to the house the next night, Horace saves them from being attacked by Mr. Katkus’s hired confederate.  Now convinced of the ghosts’ existence, Harry and Books are eager to help save the house, and the key in doing so is discovering what kind of hidden treasure the house holds.

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

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

Terror By Night

PFTerrorNight

Terror By Night by Vic Crume, 1971.

This book is part of the Partridge Family book series, based on the The Partridge Family tv show.

Shirley has been thinking that she and her children could use a vacation, and her family band’s manager, Reuben Kinkaid, suggests a place where they could have a little vacation and do some rehearsing.  Reuben arranges for the family to rent a large house with several acres of land attached in a small New England town not far from Salem, Massachusetts.  That should have been their first clue.  That, and the fact that the town’s name is Haunt Port.

At first, the Partridges are just thinking about how they can rehearse without disturbing anyone on such a big place, and Danny and Chris want to try camping out.  However, when they arrive in town, they learn that the name of the house they’ve rented is Witch’s Hollow and that it’s close to a place called Hangman’s Hill.  Soon after the family arrives at the house, Keith and Laurie also find a dummy hanging from a tree with a note that says, “Welcome! The Hangman.”  It’s pretty disturbing, but Keith and Laurie decide to hide the dummy and not scare the others.  They don’t know who is behind this awful joke, but they don’t want to give that person the satisfaction of seeing them react to it.

However, the disturbing things don’t end there.  The family’s dog, Simone disappears.  Also, people in town seem to have a strange attitude toward the house’s cook/housekeeper, Mrs. Judbury, and her daughter, Prudence.  Prudence is sullen and anti-social with a habit of catching toads for fun.  Keith has to admit that he can see how Prudence might have gotten a reputation for being a witch, but there’s more behind the strange happenings at Witch’s Hollow than that.

Simone eventually returns, although it’s clear that she’s frightened and hasn’t been fed well, and Mrs. Judbury tells the family the story of her family’s history in Haunt Port.  One of Mrs. Judbury’s husband’s ancestors was one of the accusers at the Salem witchcraft trials, but later, when people began to realize that they had executed innocent people, some of the accusers themselves found public opinion turning against them.  This ancestor decided to leave Salem and go to Judbury Port (the old name for Haunt Port) because he had family there, but he and his wife were never really accepted there, either.  This man later hanged himself in despair (at the place called Hangman’s Hill), and his wife later died alone, also shunned by the town.  Although some of the townspeople might feel bad about how things ended up with the Judburys, the old uneasy feelings about the family have remained, and Prudence’s stand-offish attitude, combined with her mother’s apparent psychic premonitions, has fueled some of the old stories.

At one point, Keith tells Prudence that he knows why she acts the way she does, because it’s much easier for her to keep her distance from people and behave strangely than it is for her to try to learn to get along with them and make friends.  Prudence isn’t responsible for what the townspeople did in the past, but she isn’t helping things in the present.  Jane Parsons, whose family owns the local store, also helps in a way because she and Prudence are cousins, and Prudence joins her in welcoming a cousin of their and his friend when they visit town.  As Prudence becomes friendlier, she and her mother become allies in trying to figure out the mysteries of Witch’s Hollow, which turn out to have less to do with past wrongs than current crimes.

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