Posted on by TracyC

The Ghost of Windy Hill

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The Ghost of Windy Hill by Clyde Robert Bulla, 1968.

GhostWindyHillFamilyIt’s 1851, and Professor Carver of Boston is living in an apartment above a candle shop with his wife and two children, his son Jamie and daughter Lorna.  One day, a man named Mr. Giddings comes to see Professor Carver to request his help.  For years, he has wanted to buy a particular farm with a beautiful house called Windy Hill.  However, when he finally succeeded in buying the house and he and his wife went to live there, his wife became very upset.  She said that she felt strange in the house and that she had seen a ghost.  Now, she is too upset to return to Windy Hill.  Mr. Giddings has heard that Professor Carver once helped a friend get rid of a ghost haunting his house, and he asks the professor if he would be willing to do the same for him.

At first, Professor Carver is reluctant to agree to help.  He doesn’t believe in ghosts, and when he helped his other friend, he didn’t get rid of any ghosts.  His friend had only believed that his house was haunted, and after the professor and his family had stayed there for awhile without experiencing anything unusual, his friend relaxed and was reassured that the house was alright.  Mr. Giddings asks if the professor and his family would be willing to stay at Windy Hill for the rest of summer and see if they see anything unusual.  If they don’t, perhaps Mrs. Giddings will feel better about the house and be willing to return there.  Although the professor is still not that interested in the house, his family is, so he agrees to spend the rest of the summer there, about a month.  His family can escape the summer heat in the city, and he can work on his painting while someone else teaches his class.

GhostWindyHillLadyJamie and Lorna are thrilled by the house, which is much bigger than their apartment in town.  They can each have their own room, and there is an old tower in the house that was built by a former owner, who was always paranoid about Indian (Native American) attacks (something which had never actually happened).  However, their new neighbors are kind of strange.  Stover, the handyman, warns them that the house is haunted and also tells them about another neighbor, Miss Miggie.  Miss Miggie is an old woman who wanders around, all dressed in white, and likes to spy on people.  There is also a boy named Bruno, who apparently can’t walk and often begs at the side of the road with his pet goat, and his father, Tench, who is often drunk and doesn’t want people to make friends with Bruno.

The kids make friends with both Bruno and Miss Miggie.  Bruno is unfriendly at first, but Lorna brings him cookies, and she and her brother tell him about life in the city.  Miss Miggie brings Lorna a bag of scrap cloth so that she can make a quilt.  Nothing strange has been happening in the house, so the family knows that they will be returning to the city soon, reassuring Mr. Giddings that the house isn’t haunted.

GhostWindyHillBoyThen, strange things do start happening in the house.  The quilt that Lorna has been making disappears and reappears in another room in the middle of the night.  At first, the family thinks maybe she was walking in her sleep because she had done it before, when she was younger.  However, there is someone who has been entering the house without the Carvers’ knowledge, and Jamie and Lorna set a trap that catches the mysterious “ghost.”

As Professor Carver suspected, there is no real ghost at Windy Hill, but this story has a double mystery.  First, there is the matter of the mysterious ghost, who is not there to scare the Carvers away but actually to make them stay.  Then, there is the question of what Mrs. Giddings saw that upset her so much, if anything.

The book is easy to read for younger readers and accompanied by black-and-white pictures.  My only complaint is that some of the pictures are a little dark, and the artistic style makes them a little difficult to interpret.

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

Posted on by TracyC

In the Kaiser’s Clutch

KaisersClutchIn the Kaiser’s Clutch by Kathleen Karr, 1995.

After their father’s death during World War I  (then called The Great War), the Dalton twins’ mother started supporting their family by writing.  It’s the summer of 1918, and Dorothy Dalton is now writing the scripts for a silent movie serial starring the fifteen-year-old twins, Nelly and Fitzhugh.  Times have been tough for them without their father’s support, but the serial means steady work and salaries for all three of them for the entire summer, enough to support them and buy school supplies for the fall, and maybe even enough to buy back some of the things that their mother pawned to keep their family going when they had to move out of New York to a less expensive town in New Jersey.

The movie serial, called In the Kaiser’s Clutch, is about a pair of wealthy American twins (played by Nelly and Fitz) who find themselves battling German spies.  The serial is part adventure story, part American war propaganda.  It’s also a subject that hits close to home.  The Dalton twins’ father wasn’t killed while fighting overseas.  He was in charge of the security force for the piers of Black Tom Island, just off the coast of New York, the port where most of the weaponry destined for the war in Europe was being shipped.  However, a massive explosion destroyed the port at Black Tom and killed Mr. Dalton.  Fitz wishes that he were old enough to fight directly in the war, but failing that, he wants to find the people who killed his father because he is sure that his father’s death was due to deliberate sabotage, not an accident.  However, it’s possible that the saboteur himself is looking for the Dalton family.

Strange things start to happen which the twins realize may have some bearing on their father’s death.  Someone has been spying on the family, listening by the window of their apartment.  Then, the director of their movie serial hires a new, part-time actor to play one of the villains, and this man is oddly similar to the fleeing figure of the man who was spying on them.  This new actor is German, and he seems to have some weird grudge against the twins, muttering insults in German and taking advantage of the stunts they have to perform in the movies to hurt and frighten them.  There are plenty of opportunities for the twins to get hurt on the movie set because each episode of the series has to end with a cliff-hanger scene, and there are no stunt doubles.  (Early silent movies in real life typically didn’t have stunt doubles, and the stunts were difficult and dangerous for the actors themselves.  This YouTube video explain how Buster Keaton, a famous silent film actor, performed his own stunts.)  From fist fights to car chases to quicksand to a cave-in to a giant pendulum with a mysteriously sharpened edge to sudden explosions, the Dalton twins are constantly teetering on the edge of disaster, not all of it planned by their writer mother.

Mrs. Dalton admits to the twins that, shortly before their father died, he told her that he was close to uncovering something that would be a much better story than anything she could make up.  Unfortunately, he never told her what it was.  He did tell her that he was making notes about it, but those notes were never found and may have also been destroyed in the explosion.  The only odd thing that Mrs. Dalton found after her husband’s death seemed like an ordinary shopping list: “cigars, eggs, dumplings, coal, pencils.”  However, Mrs. Dalton realized later that it has to mean something else because her husband didn’t smoke.

Could this somehow be the clue to what her husband was investigating before his death?  Are there real spies operating in the area?  Is there some other clue to their identity that they are now searching for, something that the Daltons still have in their possession?  Will the Dalton twins manage to find the spies before the spies eliminate them?  Will the family finish the serial and collect their salaries?  Find out in this exciting installment!  (There’s only one installment here because this is just a single book, not part of a series, but you get the idea.)

My Reaction

World War I books aren’t quite as common in children’s literature as World War II stories, so I found this interesting, and movie serials are also a fascinating thing of the past.  The movies that the kids are acting in are black-and-white silent films, so there are interesting discussions of the techniques they use to make things show up properly on black-and-white film (makeup, dyeing the water black for Nelly’s near-drowning scene, etc.) and conveying emotion when the actors’ voices will not actually be heard.  It’s a fun and fascinating story with spies, government agents, and the kind of movie stunts that I’m sure a lot of kids wish they could do for their summer jobs!

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

Harvey’s Hideout

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Harvey’s Hideout by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Lillian Hoban, 1969.

HarveysHideoutHouseSummer is difficult for the Muskrat kids this year.  Their friends are away for the summer, and Harvey and his older sister Mildred are getting on each other’s nerves.  But, there’s nothing that says they have to spend the whole summer with each other.

Harvey builds himself a raft and tells Mildred that he’s going off to meet with members of his secret club for a cookout where annoying big sisters aren’t welcome.  Mildred says that’s fine with her because she’s been invited to a party where there will be no annoying little brothers.  Harvey says that’s fine with him . . . except that it really isn’t.

The secret hideout where Harvey has been spending his time is empty except for him and the comic books he brought with him, and his cookout is for only one person.  He just made up the story about the secret club to make Mildred jealous and to have an excuse to spend time away from the house and her.  Harvey appreciates the freedom, but he’s also bored and lonely and envies Mildred, wondering who she knows who is still in town, inviting her to parties every day.

Then, when Harvey tries to make some improvements to his secret hideout, he discovers that he’s not the only one to dig a secret hideout for himself in the area.  Harvey’s unexpected discovery leads to a change in his relationship with his sister.

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The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive, and new copies are also available to buy through Plough.  If you try it and like it, consider buying a copy to own!

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My Reaction

This is a nice story about sibling rivalry and cooperation.  One of the parts I like best is early on in the story when Harvey and Mildred’s father lectures them for fighting and insulting each other. I hated that part when I was a kid, but I kind of like it now because I realize what the father is actually trying to say.  He points out that there is some truth in their insults, but they’re wrong about each other at the same time.  Part of the reason they fight is because they each have their faults (Harvey can be selfish and Mildred can be bossy), but they each unfairly assume that the other is a lost cause and that they can never be friends.  It’s only when they come to realize that they’re equally lonely (Mildred has been having tea parties with just her doll) and Harvey makes the first move in offering to share what he has with Mildred that they realize that they can each be the friends they both need this summer.

When I was a kid, I wished I had a hideout like theirs!  I also love the colorful illustrations in the story.

Posted on by TracyC

Egyptian Diary

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Egyptian Diary: The Journal of Nakht by Richard Platt, 2005.

A young boy in Ancient Egypt, Nakht, is excited because his family will soon move to Memphis because a distant relative has offered his father a job working as a scribe.  Memphis is a large, important city, with more opportunities than Esna, where the family currently lives.  Nakht is also training to be a scribe, so he begins writing an account of his family’s journey to Memphis and what they encounter when they arrive.

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The journey to Memphis includes a boat trip down the Nile, past the City of the Dead near Thebes, where pharaohs are buried.  When they arrive in Memphis, they make themselves at home in their new house, which is bigger than their old one.  For the first time, Nakht has a private bedroom of his own, and the wall is decorated with a hunting scene.  Nakht also has a bed to sleep in, although he is still more accustomed to sleeping on a mat on the floor, as he did back in Esna.

In Esna, Nakht’s father had taught him his lessons as a scribe, but in Memphis, Nakht begins attending a school with other boys.  There, he practices his writing as always, although he must also learn the older, more formal hieroglyphic form of writing used on the walls of temples and for public inscriptions as well as the less formal writing used more commonly.  Nakht also receives lessons in building and engineering, which includes calculating the weight of the building stones, how many people it would take to move them, and how much food and drink the workers would need during their time of service).  Sometimes, their teacher also takes the students places for lessons, like taking them to the fields near the river so they can see how to build canals and how farmers water their fields.

There are many exciting things going on in Memphis.  Ships come and go from many places.  When the Nile floods, Nakht describes how the Controller of Granaries sets the taxes on grain for the following year by measuring the highest height of the Nile during the flooding time, which is an indicator of how good the next year’s grain harvest will be.  Nakht and his sister Tamyt witness the funeral procession of a scribe, complete with dancers, paid mourners, and a procession of servants carrying all of the furniture and supplies to be loaded into the man’s tomb for him to use in the afterlife.

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Then, Nakht learns that his father and other scribes are investigating tomb robberies in Saqqara.  Nakht and Tamyt have never seen the tombs before, but their father refuses to let them come with him.  Instead, the two of them sneak over by themselves to have a look.  While they are there, they witness the robbing of a tomb!  They get a good look at an unusual ring on the finger of one of the robbers and are shocked to later see an identical ring on the finger of a very important person!

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At the end of the story, when Nakht and Tamyt are rewarded for their role in catching the thieves, it is revealed that the current king of Egypt is Hatshepsut, who is actually a woman.

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Among the other things that Nakht explains about his life are how the doctor treated him when he broke his arm, how grain is harvested, how different types of craftsman work, and how houses are built.  Nakht also undergoes a special hair-cutting ceremony as a coming-of-age ritual.

There is a section in the back that explains more about Ancient Egyptian history and society.  It also explains Egyptian writing, religion, mummies, and tombs.

The book is part of a series of historical picture books.  It is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

A Long Way from Chicago

LongWayChicagoA Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck, 1998.

Joey and Mary Alice live in Chicago during the Great Depression, but every summer, they go to stay with their grandmother in a small town in Illinois. At first, the kids think that staying with their grandmother will be boring, but they soon find out that Grandma is anything but. She’s an eccentric woman who doesn’t let anyone boss her around and doesn’t have much respect for any rules but her own. Although she’s pretty tough, Joe and Mary Alice learn that, deep down, Grandma really does care about other people and tries to help them, even though she often gets into a lot of trouble in the process. Each chapter is a short story from each of the summers that the kids spend with their grandmother, from 1929 to 1935:

Shotgun Cheatham’s Last Night Above Ground (1929): When a reporter comes looking for information about a recently deceased local character, Grandma volunteers to hold a wake for him in order to teach everyone a lesson about truth and gossip.

The Mouse in the Milk (1930): When a group of local pranksters needs to be punished, Grandma decides to play a little trick of her own to get even.

A One-Woman Crime Wave (1931): Grandma turns to trespassing and illegal fishing in her quest to feed the hungry.

The Day of Judgment (1932): Grandma enters a baking contest at the county fair for the glory of her home town and a chance to ride in an airplane.

The Phantom Brakeman (1933): Mary Alice tries to help a young woman escape from her abusive mother, and Grandma brings a ghost story to life for the sake of young love.

Things with Wings (1934): Effie Wilcox, a neighbor of Grandma’s, loses her house to the bank, but Grandma comes to the rescue by demonstrating the power of rumors.

Centennial Summer (1935): As Grandma’s town celebrates its centennial, Grandma decides that uppity Mrs. Weidenbach, the banker’s wife, needs to be taught a lesson.

The Troop Train (1942): Joe, now much older, has enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War II. As the train taking him to his basic training passes Grandma’s town, she’s there to wave to him.

During the course of the stories, the author includes details about how Prohibition and the Great Depression affected people and other details about life in the early 1930s. This book is a Newbery Honor Book.  There are multiple copies available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery in Old Quebec

mysteryoldquebecThe Mystery in Old Quebec by Mary C. Jane, 1955.

Mark and Kerry, a brother and sister, are visiting Quebec with their father, who is on a business trip. Their father allows them to explore the city on their own during the day while he works (something that would be unlikely to happen in modern times). The kids enjoy sight-seeing and learning French words and phrases.  They even make a new friend in the city, but they are troubled by events at the quaint little inn where they are staying.

On their first day there, Kerry’s coat mysteriously disappears and reappears with some strange messages in the pocket.  A boy wants them to take a message to someone in the city.  At night, Kerry hears someone crying in the next room. Is the boy being held prisoner at the inn? If so, why? Kerry and Mark are determined to help in any way they can, but time is running out.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

mysteryoldquebecpicThe solution to the mystery involves family quarrels, custody issues, and racial tensions. In spite of that, this is actually a very gentle story.  In the end, the kids are dependent on the people the mysterious message was intended for to help a troubled, lonely child.  It turns out that the boy is an orphan, and some of his relatives are white, and some are First Nations (Native American). There is a fight for the boy’s custody, but the boy knows where he really wants to be.

The author describes the atmosphere of Quebec in some detail. The famous landmarks probably haven’t changed much, although I don’t know if all the descriptions are accurate anymore. I also thought it was interesting how the author includes some French phrases and their pronunciations and translations as the kids learn to communicate with French-speaking people in the city.

Posted on by TracyC

Jumble Joan

jumblejoanJumble Joan by Rose Impey, 1989.

A boy and his friend, Mick, take his little sister upstairs to explore their grandmother’s attic one evening.  The boys are hoping to scare the girl by telling her all sorts of creepy stories about the stuff they find in the attic, but if they’re scaring anyone, it might just be themselves.

A rocking horse becomes one of the dreaded “Ten O’Clock Horses” that might drag a child off into the night if she isn’t in bed on time.  An old stuffed parrot in a cage becomes “The Deadly Vampire Bat”, waiting to suck their blood.  But, the most sinister creature of all might be “Jumble Joan”, who hides by pretending to be a pile of old clothes, ready to steal away any little girls who might want to play dress up in their grandmother’s attic!

Although the brother narrates the story, the pictures show that his little sister knows exactly what the boys are trying to do, and she does things to turn the situation around.

This is one of the books in the Creepies Series.  Kids under the age of seven might find stories in this series a little scary because they focus on how stories about monsters can build in the imagination, even if you know that you made them up yourself.  Still, all of the books have good endings, and this one is pretty funny.

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Haunted Hotel

The Haunted Hotel

The Haunted Hotel by Janet Adele Bloss, 1989.

Laura and Bill are visiting their Uncle Joe, who is the caretaker of a large hotel in New Hampshire. The hotel is closed for the winter because it is too old and poorly-insulated to heat. The children think that the big, old hotel is fascinating, especially when they begin hearing stories about the ghost of a princess who is said to haunt the hotel and put people under her spell to do her bidding.  It’s just the sort of thing that Laura reads about in her favorite series of mystery books, and she’d love the chance to investigate something like the heroine, Gwen Gilderstar.

Bill rolls his eyes at Laura’s melodramatic mystery obsession, but then the children begin noticing that their uncle is behaving strangely, and they start to wonder if he is under the princess’s spell.  When they first arrived, their uncle told them that his sister, their Aunt Gigi, had gone away to visit a sick friend.  Then, Laura overhears him talking to Gigi on the phone, saying that she and her brother and parents went out to dinner, so she can’t talk to them.  Later, Laura gets the chance to talk to Aunt Gigi and finds out that she only went to visit her friend because Joe insisted and that her friend isn’t sick.  What is going on?  Why would her uncle lie?  Is he under the princess’s spell?

Laura and Bill see mysterious lights and a shadowy figure in the windows of the closed hotel.  Could that be the ghost of the princess?  Even though their parents have forbidden them to go inside the old hotel, the kids go there to investigate.  They hear organ music and a woman laughing, and they find a red rose on the floor, just like the roses in the portrait of the princess.  Then, Bill catches a glimpse of the princess in the elevator, carrying a silver axe!  Laura is determined to solve the mystery, just like Gwen Gilderstar.  She’s afraid, but she knows that she has to do something for her uncle’s sake.

My Reaction

I loved this book when I was a kid because it’s a fun mystery. Laura is a girl after my own heart, who loves mystery stories in the classic girl detective style. “Gwen Gilderstar” seems to be a character similar to Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, or other girl detective characters. Because of her taste in books, Laura looks at everything that happens through the lens of a spooky mystery story, initially not seeing the more practical explanations for the things happening around her. Although the setting of the book, a seemingly haunted hotel that’s closed for the winter season, reminds me of The Shining, the actual plot reminds me more of Northanger Abbey, the classic book by Jane Austen about a girl with an active imagination and a taste for frightening stories.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery at Fire Island

mysteryfireislandThe Mystery at Fire Island by Hope Campbell, 1978.

Darcy Littlewood, called “Dash,” is appalled when her art teacher tells her not to draw anything over the summer.  Drawing comes almost as naturally as breathing to Dash, who wants to be a cartoonist when she grows up.  She’s always doing sketches and caricatures of people she sees, especially her younger brother, JC (James Colson Littlewood, also known as “Coleslaw”).  But, her art teacher thinks that her style has grown too strong and inflexible too early in her life.  He thinks that if she takes a break from drawing for the summer, she’ll be able to come back to it with a fresh approach that will allow her to try different styles as she grows older.

To Dash, the idea of not drawing at all is intolerable, especially since she broke her leg shortly before the start of summer vacation.  She can’t go much of anywhere or do much of anything while her family is staying at their beach house on Fire Island.  Without much to do, she doesn’t know how she’d entertain herself if she couldn’t draw.

Her older sister, Candace, isn’t happy about spending the summer on Fire Island, either.  She says that there’s never anything to do there, although their mother attributes part of her boredom to the fact that she’s the only one in the family who doesn’t have an outstanding talent or a particular goal in her life.  Everyone else in the family is artistically-inclined in some way.  Mrs. Littlewood is a writer, Mr. Littlewood teaches drama, JC has acting skills and a special talent for imitating people, and Dash has her art.  Mrs. Littlewood thinks that Candy’s attitude would improve if she found something that she was especially good at and truly cared about.

While Dash is brooding about her inability to stop drawing in spite of her art teacher’s request, she makes the acquaintance of Mrs. Guizot, an eccentric older woman who spots her drawing caricatures.  It turns out that Mrs. Guizot is an art lover, and she quickly becomes a fan of Dash’s work.  But, there is something mysterious about Mrs. Guizot, or at least the man they see her talking to.

Both Dash and JC notice that the man has a peculiar way of standing and walking.  Dash draws it, and JC imitates it.  So, when they see the same man on the beach later that night, looking different without his beard and wig, but still walking and standing the same way, they wonder why the man was in disguise.  Also, he seems to be going out surfing when there aren’t any waves for surfing.  Then, they discover that he’s bringing scuba tanks with him, and they aren’t real scuba tanks.  What is the man doing?

The kids try to investigate the mysterious man with JC doing much of the leg work at first because Dash can’t get around very well.  JC is worried about what they might learn because the man might turn out to be truly sinister and violent.  He even has suspicions about Mrs. Guizot.  Later, Dash’s leg improves and she’s able to take a more active role in the investigation, but the kids pretend like she’s still laid up as a cover for their activities.  The kids’ investigation doesn’t go as planned, but they do uncover a crime and also inadvertently help their sister to find her life’s vocation.

Part of the story has to do with seeing with depth.  Part of the reason why Dash’s art teacher wants her to observe more and draw less is so that her art will contain more depth.  Dash also learns to see the depths of people, the things they keep hidden behind their facades.  Her sister, Candy, also has hidden depths which even she doesn’t appreciate yet.

The story was later made into a tv movie by the same name, and the picture on the front cover of this edition of the book is from the movie.

Posted on by TracyC

The Treasure of Kilvarra

TreasureKilvarraThe Treasure of Kilvarra by Elizabeth Baldwin Hazelton, 1974.

Christie and Kevin MacAlistaire go to Ireland with their mother to visit a family friend, Padraic O’Flaherty, and their visit turns into a terrifying treasure hunt!  Christie is fascinated by the gypsies living nearby and asks to visit them.  It’s her birthday, and the oldest gypsy, Sorcha, tells her fortune.  She says that Christie is fated to discover a treasure during her visit to Ireland, but there will be great danger involved, and she will need her brother to protect her.  Sorcha also gives Christie an amulet filled with holy ashes to help keep her safe.

Christie is eager to find the treasure Sorcha spoke of, although she doesn’t know what kind of treasure she is supposed to find or what kind of danger she will face along the way.  Their new friends tell them the history of the region with stories of ancient kings, fairy folk, and haunted castles.  Christie and Kevin visit some of these supposedly haunted ruins with their new friend Colum (a gypsy boy) and his pet crow, Ben.  Colum tells them the history of the castle ruins and the legends associated with it, and they discover that Christie has the ability to see and hear things that the boys can’t: spirits of the past.  Unfortunately, Ben is fascinated by Christie’s amulet and takes it, losing it in a nearby river.

KilvarraWithout the amulet to protect her, Christie continues her search for the treasure.  An accidental injury takes her to the place where it is hidden, but it’s a dangerous place.  Caught in a terrible storm, the children explore an ancient stone tower.  There, Christie sees the ghost of a long-dead monk, gesturing to her, begging her to follow him to the treasure that she seeks.  The monk died protecting it, and it’s a very unexpected but wonderful treasure indeed.  But, getting out of the place is going to be even more dangerous than getting in.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

This is actually the second book in a series about Christie MacAlistaire and her brother Kevin.  Unfortunately, I don’t have the first one and haven’t read it.  I do know that the first book in the series is called The Haunted Cove.  Christie and Kevin spend the summer in a cottage by the sea in Oregon, where they investigate a cove haunted by the ghosts of sailors and a woman who may be a witch.