Drac and the Gremlin by Allan Baillie, pictures by Jane Tanner, 1988.
The great thing about this book is that you really need to look at the pictures in order to get the full story. If you read the text alone, it sounds like a magical space adventure story, but when you see the pictures, you realize that it all takes place in a girl’s imagination as she and her younger brother play in their backyard. The book never mentions the children’s names (or directly talks about reality at all). The girl calls herself “Drac, the Warrior Queen of Tirnol Two”, and her younger brother “the Gremlin of the Groaning Grotto.”
Drac begins by trying to capture the The Gremlin. She pursues him across the jungles, but when she finally traps him, she receives a message from the White Wizard. The White Wizard is being attacked by “General Min” (their cat, Minnie) and desperately needs her help! Drac persuades the Gremlin to help her.
The two of them get into Drac’s “anti-gravity solar-powered planet hopper” and race to the rescue! They arrive just in time to save the White Wizard in her current form (a moth).
But, they are soon facing another peril: “The Terrible Tongued Dragon” (their dog)! Drac is almost overcome by the dragon, but the Gremlin saves her just in time!
Their adventure ends at the palace, where the “White Wizard” (their mother) rewards them with “the Twin Crimson Cones of Tirnol Two” (ice cream).
I love the way that the adventure unfolds in the children’s minds and the pictures show what is actually happening to the children, as their mother and everyone else sees them. The pictures are beautiful and realistic. The book was originally published in Australia, and I recognize some of the plants from pictures that a friend of mine there has sent me!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
Molly McIntire misses her father, who is a doctor stationed in England during World War II. Things haven’t been the same in her family since he left. Treats are more rare because of the sugar rationing, and she now has to eat yucky vegetables from her family’s victory garden all the time, under the watchful eyes of the family’s housekeeper. Her mother, while generally understanding, is frequently occupied with her work with the Red Cross. Molly’s older sister, Jill, tries to act grown-up, and Molly thinks that her brothers are pests, especially Ricky, who is fond of teasing. However, when Molly and her friends tease Ricky about his crush on a friend of Jill’s, it touches off a war of practical jokes in their house.
Halloween is coming, and she wants to come up with great costume ideas for herself and her two best friends, Linda and Susan. Her first thought is that she’d like to be Cinderella, but her friends are understandably reluctant to be the “ugly” stepsisters, and Molly has to admit that she wouldn’t really like that role, either. Also, Molly doesn’t have a fancy dress, and her mother is too busy to make one and also doesn’t think that they should waste rationed cloth on costumes. Instead, she suggests that the girls make grass skirts out of paper and go as hula dancers. The girls like the idea, but Halloween doesn’t go as planned.
Everyone loves the girls’ costumes, and they collect a good number of treats in spite of the war rationing, but Ricky takes his revenge for their earlier teasing by spraying them with water and ruining their costumes and all of their treats. When the girls get home, and Mrs. McIntire finds out what happened, she punishes Ricky by making him give the girls the treats that he’s collected, except for one, which she allows him to keep. However, to the girls, this seems like light punishment, and they’re offended that he got off so lightly.
Because he laughed at the girls, saying that he could see their underwear after he sprayed them with water and ruined their skirts, the girls decide to play a trick that will give Ricky his just desserts. The next time that Jill’s friend comes to visit, the girls arrange to have Jill and her friend standing underneath Ricky’s bedroom window when they start throwing all of his underwear out the window, right in front of Ricky. Ricky screams at the girls that “this is war!” just as their mother arrives home.
Their mother makes it clear that war is a serious thing, not a joke. There is a real war on, and their childish pranks are wasting time and resources (like the food that Ricky ruined on Halloween – sugar is rationed, and some of their neighbors had gone to a lot of trouble to save their rations to give the kids a few treats). She also points out that this is how real wars start, with “meanness, anger, and revenge.” Faced with the reality of what they were doing, Molly and Ricky apologize to each other and clean up the messes that they each made under their mother’s direction.
In the back of the book, there is a section of historical information about what life was like for civilians in America during World War II. People with relatives overseas worried about them, but people in service had to be careful about what they said in letters home, in case those letters were intercepted by enemy forces. Some of the luxury goods that people were accustomed to having became more scarce, although the rationing wasn’t as bad in the United States as it was in Europe (this is covered more in a later book in the series) because certain types of materials had to be saved for the war effort (like the metals used to make cans for food, which is why victory gardens were important) and because factories that ordinarily made civilian goods were converted to make equipment for the armed forces. For example, they mention that car factories were making things like tanks and airplanes and clothing factories were making tents and uniforms. People referred to the efforts that civilians were making to save needed materials for the war as “fighting on the home front,” reminding themselves and others that the small sacrifices that they made each day, like driving their cars less to save gas or raising food for their families, helped to make a big difference for a larger cause.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume, 1972.
Fourth-grader Peter Hatcher is being driven crazy by his younger brother, Farley, who everyone calls Fudge because he hates his name. People think that two-year-old Fudge (he turns three during the book) is cute, and his mother sometimes spoils him or gives in to his tantrums. To Peter, Fudge is a little terror, and he feels like his parents don’t care as much about him as they do about Fudge.
Most of the book is kind of like a series of short stories about Fudge’s antics which take place over the course of several months.
When Fudge goes through a phase of refusing to eat unless he gets to eat on the floor under the table, like a dog, their mother allows Fudge to get away with it, even patting him like a dog. Peter thinks that his mother would be better to let Fudge not eat until he gets hungry, and Fudge’s doctor gives her the same advice, but his mother lets Fudge’s behavior continue until their father gets tired of it and dumps a bowl of cereal on Fudge’s head, declaring, “Eat it or wear it!”
Fudge sometimes gets Peter into trouble, too. Peter’s mother takes them to the park along with Peter’s friend Jimmy and Sheila, a girl they know from school who also lives in the same apartment building as Peter. Their mother has to run back to the apartment for a moment, so Sheila volunteers to baby-sit Fudge. Mrs. Hatcher only allows it on the condition that Peter help her. Of course, Sheila, who is a pest, decides to chase Peter and tease him about having cooties, so no one is watching Fudge until he falls off the playground equipment and knocks out a couple of teeth. Peter can’t help but notice that he gets more of the blame for that from his mother than Sheila does, even though she was supposed to be the main baby-sitter.
Fudge’s third birthday party is a disaster, with other little kids as messy and troublesome as Fudge himself. He gets into Peter’s room and messes things up, including a project Peter was working on for school. For many of Fudge’s antics, Peter is able to laugh about them in the end, but there is frequently frustration at his mother’s inability to stop Fudge from doing some of the things he does or her willingness to put up with them and her seeming favoritism at times for the cute younger sibling.
Then, Fudge does the worst thing he could possibly do and eats Peter’s pet turtle, Dribble, the one he won at his friend Jimmy’s birthday party. Peter loved Dribble, talking to him throughout the book when he didn’t want to talk to his parents, and while everyone else is concerned for Fudge’s health and giving him presents for getting better, Peter is angry that his pet is now dead and no one seems to care about him . . . or about Peter himself. Or so Peter thinks.
There is one more present from Peter’s parents and grandmother: a pet that Fudge would never be able to eat, and it’s for Peter alone.
Peter’s parents do care about him, even though they can get so caught up in Fudge’s antics and rescuing Fudge from them that it can be difficult to show it. Most of the time, Peter is able to laugh with his parents at Fudge’s antics, which are pretty funny, but once in awhile, he also needs them to understand how the things that Fudge does affect him, too.
Reading it again as an adult, I sometimes find myself getting a little annoyed with the mother in the story. Being a mother of a young child isn’t easy, but Mrs. Hatcher does take out her frustrations on Peter (something she even admits to at one point when he confronts her about blaming him for Fudge’s playground accident and she apologizes), and I take issue with some of her priorities and assumptions about Fudge’s behavior. Sometimes, it seems like she doesn’t know her own child as well as his brother does and she doesn’t take take pragmatic steps in dealing with him and preventing problems before they start. At times, I found myself thinking, “She’s making a mistake here. Does she really not see this coming?” Admittedly, I’ve read the book before, so I have an advantage, but putting a three-year-old into a suit he hates for his birthday party with other three-year-olds? Seriously? Suits are things adults are interested in, not three-year-olds, and many adults try to avoid wearing formal wear whenever they can. She was trying to dress him up like a doll, not a real small child, and it was more for her sake than for his. Sometimes, Mrs. Hatcher is reluctant to punish Fudge (admittedly, he is pretty young for most punishments), although she does spank him once when he ruins Peter’s school project, showing that she can stand up to him when it’s important.
Possibly, Peter was a different, calmer child when he was young, and Mrs. Hatcher sometimes expects Fudge to be the same way when he isn’t. That might also explain the episode when Mr. Hatcher invites a business associate to stay with them for awhile, not considering that not everyone is used to putting up with a young child and some of the chaos that goes with it.
The age difference between Peter and Fudge is also important to the story. Fudge looks up to Peter and wants to do a lot of the things he can do and have things like the stuff Peter has. Having two kids with very different ages also makes family life a little harder because the children are in different phases of life and have different needs and interests.
The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo by Judy Blume, 1981.
Freddy Dissel hates being the middle child in his family. Before his younger sister, Ellen, was born, he had his own room. Now, he has to share with his older brother, Mike. Mike gets new clothes, while Freddy has to wear Mike’s hand-me-downs. Mike and his friends won’t play with Freddy because he’s too little to play their games, and Freddy can’t play with Ellen because she’s too little for him. Freddy hates always being caught in the middle with nothing special to distinguish him from his siblings.
Then, Freddy finds out that there’s going to be a play at his school. Seeing it as his chance to do something special that his siblings haven’t done, he asks his teacher if he can be in it. At first, she tells him that the only kids in the play are older kids, around his brother’s age, but seeing his disappointment, she says that she’ll talk to the teacher in charge of the play, Ms. Matson, and see if there’s a part for him.
When Freddy gets his chance to try out for a part, he demonstrates to Ms. Matson that he can speak up loud and isn’t afraid to hop around on stage in front of everyone. He’s thrilled when she gives him the part of the green kangaroo. Now, his family and everyone else can see him do something that his brother and sister don’t get to do!
Even though he does get a little stage fright right before the performance, working through it and playing his role as the green kangaroo gives Freddy new confidence. From then on, he’s not just Freddy the middle child but Freddy, the one and only green kangaroo!
Janie Stanley has decided to open her own detective agency, The J.V. Stanley Agency, Incorporated, Private Eyes, with the help of her younger siblings and some other friends. Eight-year-old Janie has had many different aspirations in her young life, from being a Shakespearean actress to being a vampire, so her older brother, David, doesn’t take her detective games too seriously at first.
However, at Mr. and Mrs. Stanley’s New Year’s Eve party, Janie’s “investigations” come to everyone’s attention when she borrows David’s tape recorder to make audio recordings of guests talking and plays them on the stereo that has been hooked up to speakers to play music for the party. Gossipy Mrs. Dorfman recognizes her own voice, saying uncomplimentary things about her hosts and the other guests, and leaves in a huff of embarrassment. When Janie’s father confronts her over the incident, Janie says that she was trying to find evidence on a murderer. When her father and David question her further, she says that old Mr. Rupert, the deceased father of the Mr. Rupert who owns the local grocery store in Steven’s Corners, was murdered.
When old Mr. Rupert died around Thanksgiving, all the kids in the area were sad. He was always nice to kids when they were in the grocery store and would sometimes give them candy for free. They called him Grandpa Rupert. But, Grandpa Rupert’s death was a heart attack, natural causes. When David asks Janie what makes her think it was murder, she says that she suspects his son and his wife because they inherited the grocery store. David says that he doesn’t think that Al Rupert would have killed his father. Janie also says that she heard that there was no autopsy after the death, and she thinks that’s suspicious. David says that it was well-known that Grandpa Rupert had heart trouble, so a heart attack wasn’t unexpected. Janie also says that Huy, the younger brother of her friend, Thuy Tran, saw the mailman talking to Grandpa Rupert just before he died, but David doesn’t see why that’s so suspicious. Eventually, David and her father talk Janie out of her murder investigation idea, but it turns out that the “murder” wasn’t the only investigation that Janie has undertaken.
Dogs in the area have been disappearing, and the Tran family has come under suspicion. The Trans haven’t been living in the United States for very long. Originally, they came from Vietnam. The reason why people are looking at them suspiciously is because dogs started disappearing around the time the Trans moved to the area, and there are rumors that Vietnamese people eat dogs. (Hint: No, the Trans aren’t eating dogs. That’s an old stereotype/rumor that’s been used against various immigrant groups, and no dogs are eaten in this story.) Janie knows that the Tran family isn’t guilty of dognapping, but proving it is another matter. After the trouble at the New Year’s Eve party, she asks David and Amanda to help her investigate. At first, they don’t want to, but David does have to do a journalism project for school with a partner, Pete Garvey. Pete Garvey is the school bully who also has a crush on Amanda (which is established in a previous book in the series), but he likes the idea of interviewing people about their missing dogs.
However, even though David, Amanda, and Pete Garvey begin talking to people about the missing dogs, Janie and the other members of her detective agency are still on the case! David has great misgiving about Janie’s involvement. Then, suddenly, Pete doesn’t want to work on the project anymore and starts behaving suspiciously. What does he know that no one else does?
Sixteen-year-old Seikei returns home to visit his birth family in Osaka while Judge Ooka investigates reports of smugglers in the city. Seikei is a little nervous about seeing his birth family because he hasn’t gone to see them since he was adopted by Judge Ooka about two years before. All he knows is that his younger brother, Denzaburo, is helping his father to run the family’s tea business, which is probably a relief to Seikei’s father because Denzaburo was always more interested in the business than Seikei was.
However, things have changed in Seikei’s family since he left Osaka, and his homecoming isn’t quite what he imagined it would be. Seikei had expected that his older sister, Asako, might be married by now, but she says that Denzaburo is keeping her from her dowry because he needs her to help run the family business. Although Denzaburo enjoys business and the life of a merchant, it turns out that Asako has a better mind for it than he has. The two of them have been running the family’s tea shop by themselves because their father is ill. Also, although the family no longer lives above their shop, having bought a new house for themselves, Denzaburo says that he sometimes stays at the shop overnight to receive deliveries of goods. Seikei knows that can’t be true because no one ever delivers goods at night in Osaka. Denzaburo brushes off Seikei’s questions by suggesting that the three of them visit the puppet theater together to celebrate Seikei’s visit.
At the puppet theater, Seikei learns that Asako is in love with a young man who is an apprentice there, Ojoji. Because Ojoji is only an apprentice, the two of them cannot afford to get married, something that Denzaburo laughs about. However, before Seikei can give the matter more thought, they discover that one of the narrators of the plays has been murdered, strangled.
They summon an official from Osaka to investigate the scene, Judge Izumo, but Seikei isn’t satisfied with his investigation because it seems like Judge Izumo is quick to jump to conclusions. Then, suspicion falls on Ojoji. Asako doesn’t believe that the man she loves could commit murder and wants Seikei to ask Judge Ooka to intercede on Ojoji’s behalf, so Seikei begins to search for evidence that will help to prove Ojoji’s innocence.
The mysterious happenings and murders (there is another death before the book is over) at the puppet theater are connected to the smuggling case that Judge Ooka is investigating, and for Seikei, part of the solution hits uncomfortably close to home. However, I’d like to assure readers that Asako and her beloved get a happy ending.
During part of the story, Seikei struggles to understand how the villains, a group of bandits, seem to get so much support and admiration from other people in the community, including his brother. It is Asako who explains it to him. It’s partly about profit because the outlaws’ activities benefit others monetarily, but that’s only part of it. In Japan’s society, birth typically determines people’s roles in life, and each role in society comes with its own expectations about behavior, as Seikei himself well knows. Seikei is fortunate that circumstances allowed him to choose a different path when he didn’t feel comfortable in the role that his birth seemed to choose for him; he never really wanted to be a merchant in spite of being born into a merchant family. Others similarly do not feel completely comfortable with the standards that society has set for them, and their fascination with the outlaws is that the outlaws do not seem to care what society or anyone else thinks of them. The outlaws do exactly what they want, when they want to do it, dressing any way they please, acting any way they please, and taking anything they want to use for their own profit. Denzaburo, who was always willing to cut corners when it profited him, sees nothing wrong with this, and he envies the outlaws for taking this idea to greater lengths that he would ever dare to do himself.
The idea of throwing off all rules and living in complete freedom without having to consider anyone else, their ideas, their wants, their needs, can be appealing. Asako understands because, although she is better at business than either of her younger brothers, she cannot inherit the family’s tea business because she is a girl. She thinks that, because the system of society doesn’t look out for her interests, she has to look out for herself, and what does no harm and makes people happy (in the sense of giving them lots of money) shouldn’t be illegal. At first, Asako sees their activities as victimless crimes. Although she doesn’t use that term to describe it, it seems to be her attitude. However, do victimless crimes really exist? Seikei has a problem with this attitude because what the outlaws are doing has already caused harm in form of two deaths and the risk to Ojoji, who may take the blame for the deaths even though he is innocent. Asako might not care very much about the others at the puppet theater, but she does care about Ojoji.
It’s true that Seikei has defied the usual rules of society by becoming something other than what he was intended to be, and for a time, he struggles with the idea, comparing himself to the outlaws, who were also unhappy with their roles and wanted something different. However, the means that Seikei used to get what he wanted in life are different from the means that the outlaws use, and Seikei also realizes that his aspirations are very different from theirs. While Seikei had always admired the samurai for their ideals and sense of honor and order, the outlaws throw off the ideals of their society in the name of doing whatever they want. Although the outlaws do benefit some of the poorer members of society, paying money for goods that the makers might otherwise have to give to the upper classes as taxes and tribute and trying to stand up for abused children when they can because their leader was also abused as a child, their main focus is still on themselves and what they and their well-paying friends want. Seikei is concerned with justice and truth, which are among his highest ideals. Even though he learns early on that, as a samurai, he could claim responsibility for the deaths at the theater himself because, in their society, a samurai would have the legal authority to kill someone for an insult. Claiming responsibility for the killings would allow Ojoji to go free, and it would be one way to solve the problem quickly and make Asako happy, but Seikei cares too much about finding the truth behind the murders and bringing the real murderer to justice to take the easy way out. It is this difference in ideals and priorities between Seikei and others around him which set them on different paths in life.
One thought that seemed particularly poignant to me in the story is when Seikei reflects that we don’t always understand the importance of the choices we make in life at the time when we have to make them because we don’t fully understand all the ways in which a single choice can affect our lives. He thinks this when the leader of the outlaws offers to let a boy who was abused come with them and join their group after they intervene in a beating that the boy’s father was giving him. They tell him that joining their group would mean that he could do whatever he wants from now on. The boy, not being sure who they are or what joining their group would really mean for him, chooses to stay with his father. Seikei wonders then whether the boy will later regret his decision or not. His father obviously doesn’t treat him well and may not truly appreciate his show of loyalty by remaining, although joining the outlaws comes with its own risks. It’s difficult to say exactly which two fates the boy was really choosing between in the long run and which would be likely to give him a longer, happier life, which is probably why the boy chose to stick with what he already knew.
There is quite a lot in this story that can cause debates about the nature of law and order, society’s expectations, and the effects of crime on society and innocent bystanders. I also found Seikei’s thoughts about what makes different people choose different paths in life fascinating. I’ve often thought that what choices a person makes in life are determined about half and half between a person’s basic nature and the circumstances in which people find themselves, but how much you think that or whether you give more weight to a person’s character vs. a person’s circumstances may also make a difference.
The story also explains what fugu is, and there is kind of a side plot in which Judge Ooka wants to try some. A lot of the characters think that the risk involved in eating the stuff isn’t worth it, but well, a samurai never fears death, right?
There is a section in the back with historical information, explaining more about 18th century Japan and the style of puppet theaters called ningyo joruri, where unlike with marionettes or hand puppets, the puppeteers are on stage with the puppets themselves, wearing black garments with hoods so that the audience will disregard their presence (except for very well-known puppeteers, who might reveal their faces). For another book that also involves this style of puppetry, see The Master Puppeteer.
Bed-Knob and Broomstick by Mary Norton, 1943, 1947.
This book is actually two books in one. The title Bed-Knob and Broomstick is the one used for editions that include both the first book, The Magic Bed-Knob, and the sequel, Bonfires and Broomsticks. Together, these two books were the basis for the Disney movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks, although the plot of the movie is considerably different from the two books. Because the movie is based on both of the books at once and because I read the combined edition, I’ll explain the plots of both of the books in one post.
There are two major differences between the movie and books that change many other things about the plot. The first one is that there is no mention of World War II in the books, even though the books were written during that time. Miss Price was not studying magic to help the war effort, and the children were only in the countryside for vacation, not because they were evacuated there. Also, in the books, Emelius Jones (Emelius Brown in the movie) was a man they met when they traveled through time, not a man living in London during their own time. He was not involved in Miss Price learning magic, although the two of them do end up together in the end.
The Magic Bed-Knob
At the beginning of the first book, the three Wilson children – Carey (who is described as being “about your age”), Charles (“a little younger”), and Paul (six years old) – are spending the summer with their Aunt Beatrice in Bedfordshire. There is never any mention of the children’s father in the books. Probably, their father is dead, although he might have left the family and went to live elsewhere or may be fighting overseas, although there is no mention of that in the book, making me think that it is probably not the case. The children apparently live with only their mother in London, and because she works, she always needs to find somewhere for them to stay during the summer, when they’re out of school. (This is a major plot point in both of the books. In the Disney movie, the three children are orphans who have no memory of their birth parents, and their guardian was killed in a bombing shortly before they were evacuated to the countryside. You only get their full backstory if you see the anniversary edition of the movie that includes the deleted scenes.) While the children stay with Aunt Beatrice, they enjoy playing in the countryside, and one day, they happen to meet Miss Price, who they find with an injured ankle.
Miss Price is a respectable spinster from the village who gives piano lessons and is often seen riding around on her bicycle. When they find her hurt, Carey says that they should get a doctor for her, but Miss Price insists that she doesn’t want one. Instead, she just asks the children to help her get home. As she starts to lean on Carey and Charles, Paul picks up a broom nearby. The older children thought it was just an old garden broom, but Paul calmly says that it belongs to Miss Price because it’s what she rides around on. The others are shocked, but Paul simply says that that he’s seen her improve in her flying, so Miss Price knows that he’s seen her riding her broom more than once. Miss Price is worried that everyone in the village will know now that she’s a witch, but Paul hadn’t even told his brother and sister what he’d seen.
The children help Miss Price get home, and they allow their aunt to think that Miss Price simply fell off of her bicycle. When the children are able to speak to Miss Price privately, they ask her directly if she’s a witch, and she admits that she’s studying to be one. She says that she’s had some talent for magic since she was young, but she never really had the time to develop it. The children are convinced that, while Miss Price might be a witch, she’s not a wicked one, and she says that’s true, that she started too late in life to be that way and that wickedness doesn’t come naturally to her. However, she’s still worried that the children might tell people about her magic.
Carey is the one who suggests that Miss Price give them a magical object as part of their pledge of secrecy (unlike in the movie, where it was Charlie’s idea), with the idea that, if they ever told anyone that she’s a witch, the magic would stop. Charles suggests that Miss Price could give them a magic ring that would summon a slave to do their bidding, but she says that she couldn’t manage that and that she has a better idea. Miss Price asks the children if they have anything on them they can twist, like a ring or a bracelet. The only thing they have is a bed-knob that Paul twisted off the end of his bed (basically, because he discovered that he could).
Miss Price says that the bed-knob will do nicely, and she casts a spell on it that will allow the children to travel to the destination of their choice when they put it back on the bed and give it a twist. If they turn it in one direction, they can travel in the present time, but turning it the other way can send them to the past. Also, because Paul was the one who had the bed-knob, he’s the only one who can make it work. Miss Price isn’t troubled by Paul’s young age because she thinks that it’s best to learn magic young, although she warns the children to be careful.
Because it’s Paul’s bed-knob, Carey and Charles give him first choice of where to go, but they think the places he wants to go sound mundane. He wants to either see a museum exhibit that the others saw without him once or to go home and see their mother in London. Carey and Charles try to persuade him to go someplace more exciting, but Paul insists that he wants to go home.
The bed whisks the children home to London, but when they get there, their mother isn’t home. Apparently, their mother has gone away for the weekend herself, and the children find themselves alone on their bed, in front of their house, on a foggy night. A policeman bumps into them, and when he demands to know who they are and where the bed came from, he doesn’t think it’s funny when they say, “Bedfordshire.” He takes them to the police station to spend the rest of the night. Fortunately, they find a way to get back to the bed and use the spell to return to their aunt’s house before they’re missed in the morning. It’s not quite the adventure that the children had been hoping for when they started out, but it’s just the beginning of their amazing summer!
However, magic turns out to be more dangerous than they thought. Their next adventure takes them to an island with cannibals (yeah, one of those scenes, sigh – I think that the island of talking animals in the movie was more fun), and they narrowly escape after Miss Price has a duel of magic with a witch doctor. Their magical adventures create problems that the children can’t explain to their aunt without giving away Miss Price’s secret. Eventually, their messes and wild stories cause their aunt to send them home to their mother. Miss Price considers that magic might cause more problems than it solves and tells the children that she’s thinking of giving it up for awhile. However, Paul keeps the bed-knob in the hopes that their adventures aren’t done yet.
Bonfires and Broomsticks
In Bonfires and Broomsticks, two years have passed since the children’s first adventures, and Aunt Beatrice has died. Carey and Charles, worried that Paul would talk too much about their magical adventures, tried to convince Paul that it was all just a dream, although they weren’t very successful.
Then, the children see an advertisement in the newspaper that Miss Price is offering to board a couple of schoolchildren in her house for the summer for a fee. The children’s mother works, and she always has to find somewhere for the children to spend the summer, when they’re not in school. They still have the bed-knob, so they tell their mother that they want to visit Miss Price, hoping they can have more adventures with her. At first, their mother doesn’t understand why they would want to visit Miss Price so badly, but since she seems like a nice, respectable woman and an old friend of Aunt Beatrice’s, she agrees.
Miss Price is happy to have the children stay for the summer, but they are disappointed when they learn that she was really serious about giving up magic. The children discover that Miss Price bought the old bed that they had used for their previous adventures at the estate sale after their aunt’s death. She’s been sleeping on it in her own room. They want to try the bed-knob on the bed, but Miss Price takes it from them. She tries to make their summer vacation a normal vacation with normal activities, like picnics and croquet.
But, even Miss Price can’t resist the opportunity to try the bed-knob one last time. One morning, Carey and Charles discover that Paul and Miss Price have traveled somewhere on the bed without them. When the two of them confront Paul about it, he says that they only went to a nearby town, just to see if the spell on the knob still worked. Carey and Charles understand, but Carey thinks that if they got to use the bed once more, she and Charles should have one more turn. She especially wants to try going into the past, which was something they hadn’t had a chance to try last time. Miss Price is reluctant, but finally agrees after Carey pressures her about it.
The children travel to London of 1666 (ending up there accidentally, when they were aiming for the Elizabethan era), where a man named Emelius Jones has been living as a necromancer. When he was young, he studied magic under a mentor who, as he was dying, finally told him that everything he learned was fakery. It was all an act that he used to get money from gullible people, although it paid very well. The old man leaves Emelius his business, but Emelius is always nervous, worrying both because someone might discover that it’s all a fake and because others might believe that it’s real and that he should be hung as a witch. The only reason why he stays with it is because he has no other business to follow.
The children meet Emelius after ending up lost and stopping at his house for directions. The children can see how nervous and unhappy Emelius is, and they ask him about himself, discovering that his home town is actually close to where they’re staying with Miss Price. They reveal to him that they are from the future and invite him to come home with them for a visit.
Miss Price isn’t happy to see that they’ve brought someone back from the past with them, but she ends up liking Emelius. Before sending him home, they learn that Emelius’s aunt, who lived near to where Miss Price now lives, died the same day that Emelius left London in the past, which is coincidentally shortly before the great fire that destroyed a good part of the city. They know that Emelius’s London lodgings will likely be destroyed in the fire as well, but at least he can move into the house that he will inherit from his aunt.
However, after they send him back to his own time, the children and Miss Price learn that Emelius never made it to his aunt’s house because he was executed for practicing witchcraft. Unable to leave poor Emelius to such a terrible fate, they come up with a plan to rescue him.
The combined book edition is available online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction and Spoilers
Changing Emelius’s past also changes Miss Price’s future. Neither of them has ever married, and both of them have been lonely, and they come to the conclusion that the two of them were meant to be together. In deciding that they will live their lives together on Emelius’s aunt’s farm in the past, they put an end to the magical traveling bed. Only Paul can make the magic bed-knob work, and once he sends them into the past (not going with them), they can never return. But, Carey has one final vision of the two of them, being happy together, so she knows that they will be alright.
Overall, I preferred the Disney movie to the original books. I think the war-based plot was better than the children’s random travels to cannibal-filled islands (I never liked those tropes in children’s stories anyway) and other places. At one point in the books, Carey did speculate about the use of magic in war, but she rejected the idea because the notion of someone with the ability to conjure a dragon that could breathe mustard gas or who could turn whole armies into mice was just too horrible. The spell that Miss Price used against the Nazis in the movie was part of their plan to rescue Emelius in the second book, but I think the movie’s ending was much more exciting.
The Mystery of the Midnight Visitor by John and Nancy Rambeau, 1962.
One day, Gabby is going fishing on the beach at Morgan’s Landing. Miss Wellington, a family friend, owns the property along with the old mansion known locally as Morgan Castle. She has given permission to Gabby to fish there, but Gabby is surprised to meet a stranger on the beach as well. This stranger is an old man who says that his name is Admiral Lavendar. When Gabby tells him that he’s on private property, the old man moves on. Then, Gabby spots smoke coming from Morgan Castle!
When Gabby goes to investigate, he finds that someone has shut Miss Wellington in a closet and that there is a fire in the bedroom that had once belonged to Mrs. Morgan, the former lady of the house. He gets Miss Wellington out of the closet, and they call the fire department. The firemen put out the fire and tell Miss Wellington that it was apparently caused by a dropped candle.
Morgan Castle was once owned by the wealthy Morgan family that gave Morgan Bay its name. However, the house has become shabby over the years. Miss Wellington inherited the house after Mrs. Morgan died because there were no other Morgans left. However, she doesn’t actually live in Morgan Castle because she has a house of her own. People have been saying that perhaps the house should be torn down because of its poor condition. Miss Wellington doesn’t have much money and says that she would find it difficult to manage the upkeep of the house.
Gabby and his brother Bill and sister Vinny don’t want to see the old beautiful old mansion destroyed, and there is still the mystery of who dropped the candle and why to consider. A small silver box that Gabby found on the beach turns out to be a jewelry box that once belonged to Mrs. Morgan. Mrs. Morgan wasn’t particularly interested in jewelry, but she did own one particularly fine emerald necklace that was never found after her death. Perhaps the person who dropped the candle was looking for it!
To give Morgan Castle a new purpose and prevent it from being torn down, the kids convince Miss Wellington to let them turn it into a Historical, Boat, and Tennis Club, dedicate to celebrating local history and providing entertainment for local people.
At first, the mysterious Admiral Lavendar looks like a likely suspect for the person sneaking around Morgan Castle, but he turns out to be very helpful to the children and their plans. There is another stranger in town who has the knowledge to seek out Mrs. Morgan’s lost necklace.
This book is part of a series that were once used as classroom readers.
John and Susan are brother and sister, living in a perfectly ordinary town in Connecticut. They are tall, good-looking, and good in school and at sports, so they are generally popular and are often chosen for positions like class president. However, their home life is unusual because they are orphans who live with their grandmother, who sometimes requires them to look after her as much as she looks after them. Their grandmother isn’t very strong, but she is spirited and is sometimes tempted to do things that she probably shouldn’t do at her age, like climbing trees. Because John and Susan feel like they have to look after their grandmother, it’s sometimes difficult for them to get out and do some of the things that other children their age are doing, like going to parties. They’re glad when Barnaby and his sisters move to a house nearby because they make life more exciting.
Barnaby and his sisters, Abigail (called Abbie) and Fredericka, become friends with John and Susan. Their father is a singer in advertisements, and their mother is a realtor. Because their parents work a lot to make ends meet, the children are often left to their own devices. Barnaby is opinionated, stubborn, and sometimes hot-tempered, which causes him to get into fights at school, but John likes him because he’s imaginative and full of interesting ideas.
Barnaby wants to be a writer. He’s secretly writing a story of his own, and he encourages the others to read more. Before meeting Barnaby, John hardly read anything at all, and Susan was mostly into the Sue Barton books, about a young woman who becomes a nurse (a real series that was popular in the mid-20th century, realistic fiction). Barnaby introduces them to a whole new world of fantasy stories, full of adventure. One day, while visiting the library together, the children talk about the kinds of stories that they like and wish that they could find a really good book full of magic and kids that are like themselves. Their wish comes true in a peculiar way.
On impulse, Susan checks out a rather worn-looking book with a red cover, not really knowing what it’s about but thinking that it just looked kind of interesting. The librarian seems a little uneasy when she takes it and warns her that she can only keep that particular book for seven days, which is surprising because that’s the limit usually imposed on new books, not old ones.
On the way home, the children show each other what they got and read parts of their books aloud to each other. When Susan opens the red book, they are all startled to find out that the book is about them. It starts out just like the real life book and tells about their lives and backgrounds and has their conversation about books they like, word-for-word. The children can tell that this is a magic book, but even while the idea is thrilling, it makes them uneasy. There is nothing written beyond their conversation about books, and the book won’t let them turn pages to see what might come next or how their story will end.
As much as the children like the idea of being the stars of their own magical book, it’s worrying. They don’t know what they’re in store for, and they even worry briefly that maybe their entire lives are fictional, that they might just exist in someone’s imagination, although they don’t really believe that because they can remember their lives before the story began. Barnaby points out that the book specifically mentions that he and his sisters recently moved to the area, but he remembers having lived elsewhere before that.
The children carefully consider everything they had originally wished for in a book: that children, just like themselves, would be walking home from somewhere and a magical adventure would start before they even realized that it was happening and that they would have to figure out the rules of the magic in order to use it for their own purposes. Since the first part of their wish has literally (very literally) come true, they decide that they’re going to have to figure out what the rules of this magic are before they decide what to do next. Since looking ahead in the book seems to be against the rules, they decide that they will have to be very careful about anything they wish for next because their wishes seem to be what writes the story, and they need to discuss it first and come to an agreement about it.
Unfortunately, little Fredericka (the youngest of the children) is too impatient for discussion and immediately wishes for an adventure with wizards, witches, and magic, and she wants it to start right away so that they’ll know that the magic is really working. A minute later, a dragon suddenly appears and scoops up Fredericka, flying away with her!
The others try to figure out where the dragon came from, and it turns out that a stage magician who lives nearby was practicing his act at the time that Fredericka made her wish. When she wished for a magical adventure, the rabbit that the magician was supposed to pull out of his hat turned out to be a dragon. The magician, The Great Oswaldo, is mystified, but he’s destined to play the part of Fredericka’s requested wizard. The children ask him to help them, and he says he’ll try, although he’s not sure how.
As Oswaldo tries various tricks in his magic supplies, they don’t work in the way they usually do. Finally, he is able to make his landlady’s house fly after the dragon, much to the landlady’s horror (she’s cast in the role of the witch in Fredericka’s story). In the magical land where the dragon lives, the peasants inform them that the dragon is always carrying off girls and young women to eat them, and they have to think of something fast before Fredericka becomes his next meal!
This is where the children discover that the contents of the magical book change depending on who reads it. When the magician reads it, it’s full of magic spells. When the landlady, Mrs. Funkhouser, takes it from him, it has household hints. For the dragon, it’s all about dragons. Surprisingly, it’s Mrs. Funkhouser’s household hints that save the day, although it’s Oswaldo who gets most of the credit because one of his pet cats eats the dragon after Mrs. Funkhouser shrinks it.
Oswaldo and Mrs. Funkhouser decide to stay in the magic land (which the children think might actually be Oz, in its early days), where they are hailed as heroes, sending the children home by themselves with the help of Mrs. Funkhouser’s vanishing cream. As expected, this adventure is now written in the magic book when the children have another look at it (although Fredericka argues that the illustrations don’t really do her justice).
Susan, as the borrower of the book, says that she wants their next adventure to be calmer, the kind of everyday magic that just creeps up on you. This is the part of the story where it crosses over with the events in Half Magic (another book in the same series as this one). In these children’s world, Half Magic is a fictional book that they’ve read and liked. Susan’s requested adventure picks up where Half Magic left off, explaining what happened after the other four children (Jane, Mark, Katharine, and Martha) left their magic coin to be discovered by a new owner. Susan and her friends delight in explaining to the young girl who found the coin what it does. The girl says that she had thought that the coin might be magic, but was confused because she didn’t get her wish to go into the future and meet some other children. Because the coin only grants wishes by halves (interpreting that pretty liberally), Susan and her friends (who live in the future), came to meet her instead.
Once again (as is common in this series), it leaves the matter of what is fiction and what is reality open to question. Was it the girl’s wish that brought the other children to her, or their wish that took them into her story? Or Both? Was that fantasy story secretly real, or are Susan and her friends more fictional than they like to think? The author likes posing questions like this, but of course, you never completely know the answers, and in some ways, it hardly matters because the adventure doesn’t require anyone’s understanding for them to take place, which is something that, ironically, it has in common with real life – things frequently happen regardless of whether or not you understand the reasons why. Sometimes, figuring out how things work and to deal with them is about all you can do, never getting the complete “why” behind everything. That’s pretty much how all the stories in this series go.
After the children explain to the girl what the coin is and how it’s supposed to work, she makes a more careful, doubled wish to go to the future with the other children. Unfortunately, when they get there, she panics when she realizes that she forgot to bring her one-year-old baby brother with her and makes a hurried half-wish for him to be there, too. Because she didn’t wish right, what she gets is her brother at the age he would be in the other children’s time (about age 37) but still mentally the baby he was back in 1924 (the girl’s time). The “baby” is amazed when he realizes that suddenly he can walk and talk much better than he could before and that he’s suddenly much bigger and stronger than he used to be. He gets hold of the coin and refuses to give it back, telling his little “big” sister that he can do what he wants now, not what she tells him to do. Noting that he can even pick her up and carry her around now, he does that, with the others chasing after him to get the charm and bring him under control. (A somewhat similar incident, where a baby grows up too fast and is dangerously immature, happens in E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It – another instance of Edward Eager playing off her books.)
It’s chaos for awhile because a 37-year-old man who acts like a 1-year-old can’t help but attract attention, especially when he gets it into his head that he wants to drive a train. Eventually, they get the “baby” back under control and to his proper age, allowing his sister to take him back to their own time and plan her future adventures with the coin.
Then, Susan and John’s grandmother gets hold of the book, and it takes her and her grandchildren back in time, to when the grandmother was a young woman working as a prairie schoolteacher. Susan makes a wish for the other children to join them, and they help their grandmother and her students to survive a sudden blizzard. They come to appreciate their grandmother’s youthful personality and formidable spirit even more from the experience. They even get to meet their grandfather, who died before they were born, seeing him rescue their grandmother and her students when he was a young man.
Then, Abbie decides that she wants to try to help her father’s singing career. He typically has to work long hours and never makes very much money, just being part of the chorus on advertisements. She thinks things will be so much better if they can help him to be discovered as a great talent. The others are kind of doubtful about her plan because the book seems to send them on rather “bookish” adventures, related to other stories they’ve read or people’s memories, like in their grandmother’s case because her early life actually did somewhat resemble things from the Little House on the Prairie series (a series which the grandmother enjoys reading for that reason). The other children just don’t know what would happen if Abbie tries to use the book for something more modern and everyday, like their father’s career. She tries it anyway, with some unpredictable results.
During a recording at a television studio (which the children are present to witness), the magic makes their father sing wonderfully but he also does his singing part out of sync with the other singers. He’s sure that he is singing his part at the right time, but for some reason, the other members of the chorus are silent when he sings. The director gets mad at him for singing out of sync and messing up the performance, and the singer who was supposed to be the star gets mad about being upstaged, but the reviewers end up loving the performance. So, while at first it looks like the father is going to be fired, he ends up with more singing parts because of the episode. The only problem is that all the singing parts are silly jingles, like the typical advertising jingles he gets. While he’d welcome more money, he always dreamed of being able to get better parts. However, the magic isn’t quite done, yet. When Abbie meets a playwright who is looking for a new talent to sing in his play, it turns out that he has seen Abbie’s father on tv and likes his voice.
Abbie’s wish is so great and does so much for their family that the kids start thinking that it might be the end of the magic. The seven days are really up, and the book has to go back to the library the next day. However, John and Barnaby haven’t had their chance to wish yet, and each of them wants to have a turn before the book goes back. Barnaby even suggests that perhaps they can keep the book an extra day, turning it in late. Surely a little late fee isn’t too much to ask for an extra day of magic, is it? Abbie is afraid, though, that keeping the book overdue would be breaking the rules and that the magic might go all wrong. She’s right.
Even with the idea of keeping the book for extra time, John and Barnaby argue over which of them will get to go first. The book’s magic, angry about not being returned to the library, turns sour on them, causing them to fight. John angrily tells Barnaby that just because he’s usually the group’s idea man doesn’t mean that he’s the only one who’s allowed to have ideas. (Which, in a way, is something that Barnaby needs to hear because that’s part of the reason why he often gets into fights – he always thinks he knows best.) John and Barnaby fight over the book, and the book gets torn. John ends up with a few pages, and Barnaby gets most of the book, which he uses to make a wish that he refuses to tell to the others. Barnaby disappears, and the others realize that the pages that Barnaby is holding are the last few pages from the end of the book, still blank. Without them, the book can’t end, and Barnaby could end up stuck in the book forever! Can the others find him and get him (and the book) back before it’s too late?
Before the end of the book, John does prove that, although he might not be as quick to come up with ideas as Barnaby is, he does get good ones. After he and the others find Barnaby, John uses his wish to get them back home and to return the book to the library in a most unusual way. (Actually two unusual ways because he couldn’t quite make up his mind about which was best. Both of them are homages to incidents in E. Nesbit’s books.)
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
About a year after the events in the previous book in the series, Roger and Ann are excited when their father writes a play and announces that it will be performed in England. Unfortunately, their parents aren’t planning to take the children to England with them because the trip there will be just business, focusing on getting the play together. If the play is a success, they plan to send for the children so they can do some sightseeing in England, but until then, the children will need to stay somewhere else during summer vacation. Their mother, Martha, calls her sister Katharine to see if the children can come visit their cousins, but it turns out the Katharine is also looking for a place where Eliza and Jack can spend the summer. By coincidence, Katharine and her husband are also planning a business trip to Europe.
The adults talk it over and end up arranging for all four children to stay with Katharine’s husband’s great aunt, Mrs. Whiton, who lives in a house by the sea, not far from Boston. The children don’t find this prospect very exciting. Then the adults tell them that Mrs. Whiton writes children’s books, Eliza is sure that she’ll be trying to analyze them for inspiration for her stories, but Mrs. Whiton turns out to be better than they thought. She is unsentimental, something that Eliza appreciates, and her house is very nice. There is a pretty garden there, and a staircase that leads right down to the beach.
One day, when Mrs. Whiton sends them out to play in the garden, they find an old sundial that has a motto written on it: “Anything Can Happen When You’ve All the Time in the World!” The children have had experience with magic before, so they begin to suspect that this garden isn’t quite what it appears . . . and they’re right. A strange, toad-like creature call the Natterjack introduces himself to the children and tells them that the thyme garden, where there are many varieties of thyme growing, is also a time garden. He explains that he and his family have helped this garden grow since his grandfather’s grandfather was brought there from England along with a shipment of primroses and that they’ve put all of their magic into the garden and its plants. If the children would like to visit another time, all they have to do is to pluck a sprig of thyme and smell it.
Jack, who has decided that he’s too old for magic and is now only interested in girls, refuses to try it at first, denying the existence of magic, even in spite of the talking toad. The other children try it and find themselves at the same house during the time of the American Revolution. Everyone who sees them seems to think that they are the Whiton children of that time, and they end up participating in a ride very much like Paul Revere’s, riding through the countryside to alert people that the British are coming. At first, their ride is thrilling and successful, but if you know the other books in this series, you can guess that things are going to go wrong at some point.
When the kids reach a tavern, they try to tell the drunken men inside that the British will be at Lexington soon, and they say that they don’t care. As far as they’re concerned, if the British are going to Lexington, let the guys in Lexington deal with it. The children are offended that they don’t want to help and try to appeal to their patriotism and fellowship with other Americans. It turns out that they don’t have much patriotism (the United States isn’t a separate country yet, so there is that) or feelings of fellowship because their plan for if the British are defeated is basically “every man for himself.” (I understand this scene so much more now as an adult than I did when I read this as a kid. I think I’ve met their descendants.) The children are angered at this mercenary attitude, and Ann accuses them of being pro-British. One of them insists that they’re not because, “We ain’t pro-anything.” (Yep, this is familiar. Some people just want to be contrary until there’s something in it for them to gain.)
It gets worse when the anti-British talk causes the Natterjack, in a surge of British patriotism, to cry, “Rule, Britannia!” The drunks in the tavern then decide that the kids were trying to deceive them about the British coming because they’re actually on the side of the British, trying to distract them from the British army’s real plans. When they discover that the voice actually came from a talking toad, they declare that it’s witchcraft and decide to throw the children into the pond to see if they will float (an old test in witchcraft trials).
In a bizarre twist, they are saved by a band of attacking American Indians. (Native Americans ex Machina?) There’s no real reason for a tribe of American Indians to be attacking at this particular moment, and the kids in the story seem to realize that. This incident, like many others in this series, is partly based on other books in classic children’s literature, especially the works of E. Nesbit, the author’s favorite children’s author. A similar incident occurs to the children in E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It, although under different circumstances. The author of this story frequently pokes fun at tropes of classic children’s literature in his books and makes pop culture references from the 1950s, so the more old books you’re familiar with, the more you see the jokes, although I admit that, even knowing the background, this scene still bothers me. In the grand tradition of cheesy 1950s westerns, there’s a vague description of the carnage of the attack with the requisite scalping and tomahawking (yes, they use it as verb). Ann is upset about the attack and covers her eyes, although Roger says that he doesn’t think that this attack could really have occurred in real life because they would have heard about it if it were a real, historical event. Ann worries that they somehow caused it by messing with history. When the tribe is done tomahawking their attackers, the children are worried that they’ll be next, but the Natterjack tells the children that they can escape by smelling the thyme again.
Before we move on, I should point out here that, in different books in this series, it’s never entirely clear how much of the children’s adventures occur in the real world or in some kind of magical, alternate reality or maybe in their own minds, and this is actually intentional. The idea of sniffing a magical herb and being transported through time sounds kind of trippy. The whole “savage painted Indians” (their words, not mine) trope was a staple of old western shows, the kind that kids growing in the 1950s might have watched because that genre was popular, particularly in the late 1950s, when the book was published, so the children’s experiences may be partly patterned after what a 1950s kid might have imagined after watching those shows. (Sort of like the Arabian fantasies that their mothers had in previous books in the series, probably inspired by The Sheik.) So, this incident in the book is partly a take-off on similar ones in other children’s books, but it might also be the author’s commentary on the types of shows that were popular and children’s expectations. Perhaps some of the implication is that the children’s expectations, based on things they’ve read or seen on tv are what caused this weird, otherwise inexplicable attack in the first place. (It’s like on tv, kiddos, and now you can see it in full color! You expected it, so you got it. Still think this stuff is fun?) Part of the problem with this scene for me is that it’s difficult to tell exactly how the author means it. I can guess a little, given the author’s taste for making literary references and parodying tropes of children’s stories, but even as a parody, it’s uncomfortable by modern standards and still makes very little sense why it’s even happening at all. This scene is just plain needless and cringe-worthy in my opinion, but you sometimes run into things like that with older children’s books. It’s some consolation that this is the worst scene in the entire book, so it’s good to get it out of the way early.
Before we return to the main plot again, I’d also like to say that the children themselves don’t seem to understand exactly how the magic works (like other children in this series) or whether what happened to them was completely real or not. They debate about it periodically and wonder about the children that they replaced on this adventure (and on later ones as well). They never quite know if those children went somewhere else while they took their place or if both sets of children were just living out the same adventure at the same time, just seeing it in slightly different ways. These time travel questions are fun to ponder, but are never really explained, just theorized.
When the children get back to their own time from the Revolutionary War period, the Natterjack apologizes for getting them into trouble and asks them to put the plant sprig back in the ground, where it grows again (no “wasting thyme”, ha, ha). He also further explains that the name of the particular variety of thyme they pick in the garden is important because it has some bearing on where in time they will go. The thyme they had chosen was “wild thyme”, and they had to admit that their time was pretty wild. Ann borrows a gardening catalog from Mrs. Whiton’s old gardener and begins studying the different varieties of thyme. When they ask the Natterjack about the massacre at the tavern, he tells them that the mistakes they make or bad consequences of their interference will be erased by the good deeds they do, so their timely warnings about the British coming will have an effect, but that massacre has been erased from history. (Too bad it’s still in the book. There’s still no real reason for it to be there, dang western trope.) Good deeds performed during their adventures will earn them more adventures, so they have to remember to do some good in every time they visit.
So, while Jack spends most of his time getting to know the local teenage girls and doing normal teenage things and trying to ignore his sister and cousins when they talk about magic, the others get to spend their summer having magical time adventures. The next variety of thyme they pick is “splendid thyme.” Once again, they are taken back in the history of the house, where they are again mistaken for past Whiton children. The time period is around the Civil War, and the house is being used as a station on the Underground Railroad. The children help some escaping slaves to flee to Canada. (Their sentiments are strongly anti-slavery, which is a relief after that massacre scene. The escaping slaves aren’t portrayed too badly, although mostly, they’re in hiding during the adventure and are oddly unquestioning of how the kids managed to use magic to get them to Canada so fast, just embarrassingly grateful for it.)
After that, Eliza wants to know if they’re restricted to historical adventures only or if they can visit times that are fictional as well, referencing their adventures with Ivanhoe in the previous book. It turns out that the time garden is very accommodating, and they are able to go back in fictional time to visit the characters in Little Women (which, fortunately, took place not far from where they are staying), especially since Louisa May Alcott based the characters on herself and her sisters, giving the book a sense of semi-reality. Jack, who has been denying the magic all along, comes with them on this adventure, and spends all of his time fawning over the teenage Meg and Jo. The children help to reform an ungrateful family that has been taking advantage of the girls’ generosity (and, as Jo says, reforming “is punishment enough”).
Sharing in this adventure with the other children is enough to get Jack to admit that they’re having adventures, although he still refuses to look at it as being magic, preferring more scientific terms. At one point, he describes a theory of time as looking down on the world from an airplane. From high above, you can see many different places at once, but it would take a person on the ground a long time to get from one place to another. Similarly, Jack thinks that everything in history is happening all at once, but it just takes people a long time to get from one event to another because of their vantage point.
Then, the children get the idea to go visit their mothers in England. However, when they use Common Thyme with their wish, they end up seeing their mothers in the past, not the present. This is the point in the story where it crosses over with their mothers’ magical adventures as children in Magic By the Lake.
Eliza then gets the idea of using thyme seeds to travel through time instead of using a full-grown plant. She and Jack end up traveling to England. However, they end up in the wrong period of history, and because the magical rules are broken, everyone sees them as the modern children they really are and not as people from the appropriate time period. When Eliza manages to offend Queen Elizabeth I and ends up in the Tower of London, they need the help of Ann, Roger, and the Natterjack to straighten things out!
I think my favorite part of the story is really the thyme/time garden itself. Not only is it a fun pun, but I thought that it was clever how the titles of particular varieties of thyme relate to the times and places where the children end up. Different varieties of thyme plants really do have some incredible names in real life. At the end of the book, after the children go to England to join their parents because the play was successful, the Natterjack waits in the garden for the next set of children who will go on adventures, and after looking up other varieties of thyme that the book never mentioned, the possibilities for new adventures are tantalizing: Leprechaun Thyme (for adventures with leprechauns), Elfin Thyme (either for adventures with elves or maybe becoming smaller?), and Woolly Thyme (Want to go see a woolly mammoth? On the other hand, maybe it just goes to a sheep farm. This magic stuff never works like you think it will).
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
Molly McIntire misses her father, who is a doctor stationed in England during World War II. Things haven’t been the same in her family since he left. Treats are more rare because of the sugar rationing, and she now has to eat yucky vegetables from her family’s victory garden all the time, under the watchful eyes of the family’s housekeeper. Her mother, while generally understanding, is frequently occupied with her work with the Red Cross. Molly’s older sister, Jill, tries to act grown-up, and Molly thinks that her brothers are pests, especially Ricky, who is fond of teasing. However, when Molly and her friends tease Ricky about his crush on a friend of Jill’s, it touches off a war of practical jokes in their house.
Halloween is coming, and she wants to come up with great costume ideas for herself and her two best friends, Linda and Susan. Her first thought is that she’d like to be Cinderella, but her friends are understandably reluctant to be the “ugly” stepsisters, and Molly has to admit that she wouldn’t really like that role, either. Also, Molly doesn’t have a fancy dress, and her mother is too busy to make one and also doesn’t think that they should waste rationed cloth on costumes. Instead, she suggests that the girls make grass skirts out of paper and go as hula dancers. The girls like the idea, but Halloween doesn’t go as planned.
Because he laughed at the girls, saying that he could see their underwear after he sprayed them with water and ruined their skirts, the girls decide to play a trick that will give Ricky his just desserts. The next time that Jill’s friend comes to visit, the girls arrange to have Jill and her friend standing underneath Ricky’s bedroom window when they start throwing all of his underwear out the window, right in front of Ricky. Ricky screams at the girls that “this is war!” just as their mother arrives home.
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume, 1972.
Bed-Knob and Broomstick by Mary Norton, 1943, 1947.
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