Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Cupboard

The Mystery of the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks, 1993.

This is the fourth book in the Indian in the Cupboard series. It’s also the longest book in the series and the one that reveals the most about the history of the magical key and cupboard and how their secrets tie into the secrets in Omri’s own family. It was my favorite book in the series when I was a kid!

Omri’s parents have surprised him by telling him that they’re planning on moving to a new house again. Omri wasn’t exactly happy with their last move, and his room and other parts of their new house were damaged after his last adventure with time travel, when his friend Patrick brought back a tornado with him. However, now that the house has been repaired and he’s settled in, Omri doesn’t like the idea of having to pack up and leave and get used to a new place again. His parents want to move to the country, but it’s not even the area where Patrick now lives. Instead, they’re planning to move to a house that his mother has just inherited.

The house Omri’s mother has inherited belonged to an older cousin of hers she never actually knew. He didn’t leave his house specifically to her; it’s just that he died and left no will, and Omri’s mother happens to be the nearest living relative his lawyers could find. When they finally see the house and find out how much land is attached to it, it turns out to be much better than Omri expected.

There are just two things that concern Omri. The first is the package that he asked his father to store at a bank for him – the magical cupboard and key. Although Omri asked his father to put them in a bank deposit box to keep them safe and prevent himself from being tempted to use them again because it’s too dangerous, he doesn’t like the idea of them being too far away from where he’s living. His father promises to have them transferred to a bank near their new home. The second thing that worries him is that his cat mysteriously disappears soon after they move into the new house. (The cat is okay, she just sneaked away to have kittens.) His parents say that she’s just roaming her new territory and might be a little angry for being moved from her old home and that she’ll come back to Omri once she’s settled in, he still worries about her.

One night, he think he hears his cat crying and goes looking for her. He doesn’t see her, but he stumbles on something that was hidden in some old thatch that fell of the roof of the house. It turns out to be a metal box and a notebook belonging to someone named Jessica Charlotte Driscoll, written in 1950. Omri doesn’t know who she is, but the notebook is a story of her life, in which she describes incredible things happening to her which her family doesn’t believe. Omri wonders if she could be a relative of his, and the name Charlotte reminds him of his grandmother, Lottie. He never knew his grandmother and his mother doesn’t even remember her mother because she died in a bombing during WWII, when she was very young. The woman who wrote the notebook couldn’t have actually been his grandmother because she would have been dead for several years by 1950, but perhaps it was a family name.

Omri questions his mother about the cousin who owned the house and her family’s history. Jessica Charlotte turns out to be the sister of Omri’s great-grandmother, his mother’s great-aunt. Great Aunt Jessica Charlotte was the younger sister of his mother’s grandmother. After her mother was killed in the war, Omri’s mother was raised by her grandmother. Omri’s mother had asked her about her younger sister when she was a girl, but her grandmother didn’t like to talk about her. Apparently, Jessica Charlotte had been an actress with a somewhat scandalous past. However, the cousin who used to own this house was Jessica Charlotte’s son, Frederick. Frederick never married, and although Omri’s mother thought that Jessica Charlotte had lived abroad somewhere, it’s possible that she lived at this house for a time.

Much of the story is told through entries in Jessica Charlotte’s notebook. When Omri begins to read the notebook, written toward the end of Jessica Charlotte’s life, he learns, to his shock, that Jessica Charlotte was the original owner of the magic cupboard and that she had her own Little People who visited her from other times and were her friends. After Omri reads that, he questions Gillon, the brother who gave him the cupboard, and he admits that he didn’t really find it in an alley, like he said. He actually found it in the basement of their old house with a bunch of other junk. He just didn’t have the money to buy Omri a birthday present at the time, and Omri had kind of a fascination for secret drawers and boxes, so Gillon thought that he might have some fun with the old cupboard, and he made up the story about mysteriously finding it to make it more interesting. (I suspect that the author was just retconning this part to make it agree with the idea that the cupboard was passed down through Omri’s family, but I like the way this comes out, so I’m okay with that.)

The notebook further explains that Jessica Charlotte had been envious of her older sister because she was prettier, luckier, and often seemed favored by everyone. However, in mocking the young men who came to court her older sister, Jessica Charlotte discovered that she had a talent for mimicry, which led her to become an actress, although her family thought that it was a disreputable profession and disapproved. Jessica Charlotte also discovered that she was psychic and sometimes had visions of the future. She eventually left home and became an actress. Her sister, Maria, still visited her secretly sometimes, against their parents’ wishes.

After awhile, Jessica Charlotte became pregnant with Frederick, which was when she first came to the old house where Omri’s family now lives. She didn’t have any money and couldn’t work while pregnant, and because she was unmarried, she would have been considered shameful if people knew. At that time, the house was a farmhouse belonging to a relative of Frederick’s father. By that point, Jessica Charlotte realized that her boyfriend wasn’t a good person and wasn’t going to be a good father to their son, but he did arrange for this relative of his to help her through her pregnancy. Frederick was born in the house, and because he was illegitimate and sensed his mother’s complicated feelings about him and the circumstances of his birth, he and his mother were never as close as they really should have been.

Meanwhile, Maria got married and had a daughter, Lottie, who was Omri’s grandmother, the one who was killed in the war. Jessica Charlotte says that she did something that wronged Maria and Lottie, and Omri stops reading the diary for a time, but he decides that he really has to continue and know the full story.

Over the years, Jessica Charlotte lived a hard life, supporting Frederick through a mixture of acting and other odd jobs, including fortune telling because of her psychic abilities (although she never used her gift to see into the future for herself or anyone close to her because she was afraid she might see something bad happen to them and be unable to stop it). Meanwhile, Maria was living a very comfortable life with her husband and daughter. Even after their parents died, Maria still had Jessica Charlotte visit secretly because of her tainted reputation, and she never wanted to meet Frederick or talk about him because his birth was the cause of her sister’s scandal. Still, Jessica Charlotte continued to see her sister and became fond of Lottie.

However, Maria was basically a pampered snob who didn’t understand her sister’s life and hardships and also had a streak of self-centeredness. One day, when Lottie was a young child, Maria said that when Lottie was older, she didn’t want her to see so much of her aunt, implying that Jessica Charlotte would be a bad influence on her. Jessica Charlotte was deeply offended by that, but she was also fearful about losing the last family members who were still speaking to her. She had lost so many of her other relationships that she still felt the need to be close to Maria and Lottie as much as she could and visit their pampered and comfortable little world, enjoying occasional tastes of their happier and more comfortable lives.

Yet, Jessica Charlotte’s jealousy for Maria’s pampered life and anger at her callousness continued to eat at her. One day, when Maria was showing her all of her nice jewelry, Jessica Charlotte got the urge to steal a beautiful pair of earrings. First, Maria was being, at the very least, thoughtless and callous for showing off all of her nice jewelry to her much poorer sister, who could never have things like that herself. Maria not only had no concept about what her sister’s life was like outside of her occasional visits, but she purposely never asked her about how she was doing, how her son was doing, or even where they were living, how they were getting by, if they needed anything, or if she could help them in any way. She didn’t know because she didn’t want to know any of these things, and the fact that she didn’t want to know any of that indicates that she knew enough to understand that their circumstances weren’t pleasant. To show off all of her pretty things like that just seems like rubbing it in. Second, Jessica Charlotte had been in need for so long that she saw all of the pretty jewels as symbols of Maria’s comfortable life, something she hungered for herself. The pair of earrings weren’t something that Jessica Charlotte wanted just for the sake of having them but because of what they represented to her, the life that she couldn’t share in and which she knew that Maria would soon shut her out of when she declared that her visits with her young niece would have to stop soon.

Jessica Charlotte planned out the theft in advance, making a duplicate key for her sister’s jewelry box and thinking that her sister would just assume that she’d mislaid that one pair of earrings somewhere. Unfortunately, when Maria noticed that the earrings were gone, she thought Lottie had done something with them, and when she kept insisting that Lottie tell her where they were, Lottie got upset and ran out of the house into the street. Matt, Maria’s husband and Lottie’s father, chased after her and was hit by a cab and killed. Jessica Charlotte felt terrible when she heard the news because she hadn’t meant for anyone to get hurt, but there was nothing she could do to take it all back.

Omri knows how Maria and Lottie’s lives went after that point because of what his mother told him about their family history. After Matt died, Maria and Lottie didn’t have very much money to live on, just a little pension, and then their house was burgled, and many of Maria’s nice things were stolen, including the rest of her jewelry, so she couldn’t sell them for extra money. Maria had to move to smaller, cheaper lodgings and get a job for the first time in her life in order to support herself and her daughter, living a life closer to what her sister had been doing. When Lottie was grown and married, she and her husband helped to support her mother, but after they were killed in WWII, Maria took in Lottie’s daughter (Omri’s mother) and had to keep working in order to raise her. Although they were now living in more equal circumstances, the two sisters did not become close again because of Jessica Charlotte’s guilt about what she’d done. Jessica Charlotte ended up buying the old house in the country where her son had been born and told her sister that she was going to live abroad, never telling her exactly where. She had not expected to see Maria again anyway since Maria was planning to cut her out of her daughter’s life before Jessica Charlotte stole the earrings, and after Matt died, Jessica Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to face Maria. Jessica Charlotte lived in the country house until her death in 1950.

When Jessica Charlotte became too weak to write any longer, shortly before her death, she had Frederick finish the story in the notebook. Aside from the difficult feelings between Frederick and his mother because of the circumstances of his birth and the rough and poor childhood he endured, Frederick also says that the two of them don’t really get along because they are very different types of people. When he was grown, Frederick went into business as a metal smith, eventually owning his own factory that made toy soldiers and other metal toys. During WWII, the government had him convert his toy factory to manufacture munitions. He wasn’t happy about it, but it did make him fairly well-off. After the war, Frederick had hoped to go back to making metal toys, but plastic was coming into vogue as the material of choice for toys, and Frederick couldn’t stand the stuff. He thought that the newer plastic toys were cheap and shoddy compared to his detailed works of art in metal. (It was kind of true.) There were basically two choices before Frederick: convert to making the cheap plastic toys he hated or switch to making different types of metal products. He switched to making metal boxes and cabinets.

Frederick never really believed in his mother’s supposed psychic powers, but when he was upset about plastic ruining his metal toy business, he admits that he let his mother talk him into participating in a silly ritual. He was so angry and upset that his emotions were ruining his health, so his mother told him to build something to put his feelings into and shut them away. Frederick built Omri’s magical metal cupboard. When he was finished making it, his mother had him visualize cleansing himself of all of his anger and hatred of plastic and shutting that feeling away in the cupboard. To his surprise, his mother shut and locked the cupboard with a different key from the one that he’d made to put in the cupboard’s lock (her key to her sister’s jewelry box). He thought that this ritual was kind of crazy at first, but he did feel better after he did it. He felt weak for a time, but then he recovered. He still didn’t like plastic, but not to the point where it harmed his health anymore.

Jessica Charlotte had said her son had also inherited her psychic “gift”, even though he didn’t believe in it. Apparently, his strong feelings about plastic produced a kind of magic spell or curse that affected the key and the cupboard and created the effect of bringing plastic toys to life. Jessica Charlotte discovered this herself because her son had given her a set of plastic figures in order to demonstrate to her how these little figures were inferior to his metal ones. Jessica Charlotte put them in the cupboard and brought them to life, and these little friends of hers brought her some happiness in her final days. Frederick thought that her mother was imagining that she was talking to fairies or something and never found out about his mother’s little friends or the magic of the cupboard.

When Jessica Charlotte realized that she was dying, she used the cupboard to send her little friends back to their own time periods, except for one little maid named Jenny, who refused to go back because she’d had a terrible life in her own time. Instead of making her go back, Jessica Charlotte confided in one of the workmen fixing the thatch on her roof and gave Jenny to him. This man, Tom, was lonely because his wife left him for someone else, so Jenny was good company for him for many years, until one day, she simply turned back to plastic suddenly. When Omri finds Tom as an old man and introduces himself as Jessica Charlotte’s distant nephew, Tom explains all of this to him, saying that all he can think of is that Jenny’s physical body must have died in her own time after having been in an apparent coma for years. He buried her little plastic figure respectfully. Tom is also the one who sent the cupboard and key to Maria after Jessica Charlotte died along with a note dictated to him by Jessica Charlotte, hinting at the nature of the cupboard and key and tacitly admitting to the theft of the earrings, so Maria knew the truth of the theft before her own death.

Omri comes to realize that the metal box that Jessica Charlotte left behind, and which was sealed with wax, must contain her collection of little figures. When his friend, Patrick, comes to visit him at his new house, Omri explains the whole situation to him, and Patrick suggests that Omri’s magic key will probably open this metal box, too. Of course, he also points out that if Omri opens the box with that special key, it will bring the figures inside to life, just as it has with the cupboard and Omri’s old trunk. Omri sees Jessica Charlotte’s old figurines as a way of finishing her story and feels compelled to bring them back to life one last time, although he knows that bringing figures to life always comes with complications, and he will have no way of knowing who or what the figures are until the box is open.

When Omri gets the chance to talk to Jessica Charlotte’s little friends, he not only learns more about his great-great-aunt’s past and the history of the cupboard but also sees an opportunity to change the past of his mother and great-grandmother by preventing the robbery that made them poor. But, if he meddles in the past, what will that mean for his future?

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

My Reaction:

This is my favorite book in the Indian in the Cupboard series. I suspect that the author of the series didn’t originally have an explanation for why the cupboard and key were magic, but that’s just a guess on my part. The explanation behind the magic in this book makes sense, and those parts that didn’t quite mesh with the earlier books (like Omri’s brother’s original explanation of finding the cupboard in an alley) were briefly explained. Sometimes, when book or movie series try to explain something magical or a mysterious secret they’ve left hanging, it turns into a let-down because the explanation feels rushed or implausible or fits clumsily into the earlier parts of the story, but this one was pretty smooth, intriguing, and also opened up some new story possibilities.

In previous books, Omri and Patrick both did impulsive things with the cupboard that put their small friends, themselves, and other people in danger, but in this book, both of the boys seem to have matured. Although Patrick thinks of Jessica Charlotte as a bad person and a thief for stealing her sister’s earrings, Omri tries to explain to him that she was a much more complex and conflicted person than that. Yes, Jessica Charlotte was a thief, but her motives were beyond mere greed, and it wasn’t long before she regretted what she’d done and the lasting hurt that she’d caused her family. In considering Jessica Charlotte’s theft and the theft that the burglar who was one of Jessica Charlotte’s little friends later committed against Maria, partly out of personal greed and partly as retribution against Maria on Jessica Charlotte’s behalf, Omri and his mother both come to terms with their family’s history. Patrick, who in previous books had been the more impulsive one when he and Omri interacted with the little people from the past, acts as a restraining influence in this book when Omri is tempted to change his family’s past for the better by preventing the thefts that left his great-grandmother without money. Patrick is the one who makes it clear to Omri that, just as Jessica Charlotte’s theft of a single pair of earrings radically changed the lives of her sister and niece, if Omri tries to stop those events from happening, he might change his family’s past so much that he might accidentally prevent himself or even his own mother from being born in the first place. After Omri tells the thief to give back the jewel box he stole, Omri worries that he’s gone too far, but it turns out that one request was actually fated to happen, just as it turns out that Jessica Charlotte later realized that she had met Omri briefly in what she thought was a dream when he brought her plastic figure to life. Not all of Omri’s “meddling” with the past was really meddling but was actually part of what was fated to happen and has already had an effect on the past even before he knew it.

At the end of this book, something that Omri has alternately dreaded and wanted to happen: his father discovers the secret of the cupboard and meets Omri’s small friends. In books, there is usually this assumption that if parents ever find out about their children’s magical adventures, they will end because the parents will put a stop to them or somehow, the magic will be ruined. However, in this case, the magic is not ruined, and there is one more book in this series where both Omri and his father take part in the magic.

Posted on by TracyC

The Return of the Indian

The Return of the Indian by Lynne Reid Banks, 1986.

This is the second book in the Indian in the Cupboard series.

Omri’s family has moved to a new house, but Omri doesn’t like it. The new house is bigger than the old one, but the neighborhood around it is a bit run-down and shabby. Most of the kids in the area go to the state school (public school in the US), but Omri attends a private school, and his school uniform makes him stand out from the other kids. The other kids in the neighborhood view him as an outsider and like to push him around, especially the group of bigger boys who like to hang out near the arcade. Omri is a little afraid of the local bullies, but he doesn’t like to show it. Instead, he remembers how brave his small American Indian friend, the one who came to life from his plastic figurine, was with him, even though Omri was many times bigger than he was. Still, Little Bear was a real warrior, who knew how to fight. Ormi wishes that he could fight like an American Indian or maybe a cowboy, like Boone. If he could do that, he wouldn’t have any reason to fear the local bullies.

Patrick, Omri’s best friend, is also living in a new house in the country and is now going to a different school because his parents have divorced. (The story indicates that Patrick’s father was abusive, hitting his wife and children.) When the two of them meet again, Patrick denies remembering their plastic figures that came to life. That bothers Omri, although he thinks that Patrick really does remember but doesn’t want to admit it because talking about things like that would make him seem weird when he’s trying to fit in with his new home.

Then, Omri wins a writing contest for a story that he wrote about his plastic Indian. He’s thrilled, although he also feels a little guilty because the contest was supposed to be for fiction, and his magical adventures with Little Bear were real. Although, his story is his own work, even if he didn’t exactly make up Little Bear.

Ever since his adventures with Little Bear the previous year, Omri has asked his mother to keep the key to the cupboard “safe” for him. Really, he has wanted to remove the temptation to bring Little Bear to life again. After their previous adventures, they had all decided that it would be better for Little Bear and Boone to remain in their own lives in the past. Yet, having won this contest, Omri has the sudden desire to see Little Bear again and tell him all about it. His mother usually wears the key as a pendant around her neck, and one day, when she takes it off, Omri decides that he’s going to use it.

However, when he brings Little Bear and his wife, Bright Stars, back to life from plastic, he finds that time has moved forward for Little Bear, just has it has for him. Little Bear is badly injured, having been shot by a soldier. Bright Stars begs Omri for help. Since Omri once brought a WWI medic to life to help with a wound before, he tries it again. Unfortunately, this time, all Omri gets is an empty pile of the medic’s clothes. Shocked, Omri realizes that this is a sign that the medic was killed in action. Time moved forward for him since their last encounter, and the medic, Tommy, who was a real person in the past, was killed during the war.

Still desperate to help Little Bear, Omri rushes to see Patrick at his aunt’s house and explains the situation. At first Patrick tries to pretend that the figures coming to life was just their imaginations, but when Omri impresses on him that Little Bear is in trouble and needs help, Patrick takes him seriously and comes up with a solution. One of his cousins got a set of plastic figures for her birthday, and they all have different professions. Among them, there is a nurse and two doctors. If they borrow one of those figures, they will have medical help. The cousin finds them messing with her toys and fights with them, so they have to rush off in a hurry, taking the nurse figure instead of one of the doctors, but she’s better than nothing.

After the nurse, known only as Matron, gets over the shock of finding herself very small, Omri explains Little Bear’s condition to her. She’s reluctant to try to operate on him herself because she’s not a surgeon, but since there is no one else to help, she does so anyway. Omri gives her Tommy’s medical bag so she’ll have the implements she needs. She manages to help Little Bear, and Little Bear recovers.

Although Patrick says that his mother got rid of most of his plastic figures when he stopped playing with them, he still has the cowboy, Boone, because he was special. Patrick uses the cupboard to bring him back to life, and they explain to him about Little Bear. When Little Bear is well enough to talk, he explains that his village was attacked by French soldiers, and many of his people are dead. Boone spots Omri’s collection of plastic figures, with soldiers from different periods and suggests sending them back with Little Bear to fight the French. Patrick is all for it, but Omri points out that there are problems with that. All of those figures aren’t just toy soldiers; they represent real people from history. They all come from different periods of history, and they all have their own goals and personalities. They would all be shocked at finding themselves in an unexpected place and a completely different time period than their own, and there’s no telling how these armed people might react. What would a Medieval knight, who might be on his way to the Crusades, understand about American Indians from the 18th century, and why would he be willing to fight on their behalf? Which side would a member of the French Legion pick? They wouldn’t be able to even speak to all of Omri soldiers because they come from different countries and speak different languages, and even if they choose modern British soldiers using modern weaponry, what would that mean for history? They don’t belong in the 18th century, and because they’re real people, they would be killing other real people and might get killed themselves.

Patrick thinks that Omri thinks too much, but Ormi knows that Patrick is too impulsive. Patrick does impulsively bring some modern soldiers to life, and they almost shoot everyone because they’re in the middle of a battle. Patrick quickly turns them back to toys and apologizes. Then Omri has another idea: they can’t explain to people from other time periods that Little Bear needs their help to fight in the French and Indian Wars, but they could appeal to other American Indians. Finding allies for Little Bear is fine, as long as they’re the kind of allies who could reasonably appear in Little Bear’s time and understand and be willing to aid him.

There are complications in this plan when Little Bear says that he wants modern weapons his people can use and a modern soldier to teach them how to use them. Omri has misgivings about this but gives in to Little Bear’s request. While Little Bear goes back to his time with his new allies and weapons, the boys worry about what’s happening in the battle and Bright Stars, who is still in their care, gives birth to Little Bear’s son. Boone suggests to Omri that, if he’s concerned about how the battle is going, there might be a way to go back in time and see it.

Ormi has an old wooden chest in his room, and Boone suggests that he could see if the key fits the box and use it to send himself back to Little Bear’s time. Not only does Omri help Little Bear and the others, but this odd army also helps Omri when the local bullies try to rob his house in the middle of the night.

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

My Reaction:

I read the first book in this series when I was in elementary school as part of a class assignment. There are parts of this series I like, but parts I don’t.

I like the way Omri thinks about the little people from his cupboard. He remembers that all of the plastic figures are only plastic when they’re toys, but as soon as they come to life, they are real people, pulled out of their own lives and into his, and they have a responsibility to them. He feels terrible when he realizes that his old friend, the WWI medic called Tommy, died during the war because he wasn’t just a toy, he was a real person who helped them when they needed him, and Omri realizes that he probably died not long after they returned him to his own time. Patrick is less thoughtful, but he does wonder if their interaction with him played a part in his death, and Omri thinks it probably didn’t because his full-sized body must have remained in the past and would have died anyway. When they last talked to him, Tommy said that he’d heard the sounds of an attack, and that could have been the attack that killed him. When Omri sends Little Bear back with his new allies and weapons, Omri feels guilty because he realizes that he’s basically playing God, sending real people to kill other real people in past, but he goes through with it because he feels committed to it at that point, having assembled and armed this fighting force and promised it to Little Bear.

I didn’t like some of the stereotypical stuff about cowboys and American Indians. This is one of those books where they try to write characters speaking with an accent, and that always feels awkward to read, and I’m not sure that everything Omri says about American Indians is true. At first, Omri says that American Indians gave birth alone, so he’s not too worried about Bright Stars. When I read that, I wasn’t sure if any American Indian tribes had that as a custom, so I looked it up. Apparently, there is some basis for that happening, although sometimes women would also help each other, and since most of the white people who said that Native Americans gave birth alone were men and wouldn’t have been involved in assisting the birth anyway, they may not have been fully aware of who else would have been involved. When Bright Stars starts giving birth, Omri remembers hearing that, when women give birth for the first time, it can take a long time for the baby to arrive, and he wonders if that’s true of American Indians as well as white women. That question made me cringe a little. As an adult white woman, I would assume it probably is because there many aspects of the human condition that are just universal, but again, Omri’s a boy who doesn’t have any relevant life experience experience, and even I can’t swear what Native American births are like, so I suppose I can’t fault him for wondering.

This is the book that establishes that the key used with the cupboard is magic by itself. It seems to fit in any lock and can send people back in time. When they’re sent back from the present day, Omri observes that the person sent to the past is cold and motionless in the chest, which scares him. Also, the boys observe that when they go to the past, they seem to be part of the scenery, part of the paintings on the side of Little Bear’s teepee, unable to speech or move by themselves, just watching what happens. It’s odd, but in stories where there’s magic, there are still rules, and as the boys experiment more with the key, part of the rules start becoming more clear to the readers.

Posted on by TracyC

Knight’s Castle

Knight's Castle

Knight’s Castle by Edward Eager, 1956.

Roger and Ann are the children of Martha from the previous two books in the series. Like their mother’s family when they were growing up, they live in Toledo, Ohio. Their Aunt Katharine (one of Martha’s older sisters) used to live close to them in the Midwest but now lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Roger and Ann don’t particularly get along with Aunt Katharine’s children, Eliza and Jack, because Eliza is bossy and Jack is only interested in photography. However, the four children end up spending the summer together when Roger and Ann’s father needs to have an operation at a hospital in Baltimore.

Like their mother and her siblings when they were young, Roger and Ann also like fantasy stories, which their father likes to read to them. Roger starts to believe in real magic when it seems like one of his toy soldiers comes to life at night. Roger collects toy soldiers, and he has over 200 of them, but this one is special because his father says that its been handed down in their family for generations. Roger calls it the Old One. It’s rather worn, so it isn’t obvious at first, but the Old One is actually a knight. Worried about his father’s illness, Roger takes the Old One to bed with him (which he thinks is more manly than taking a teddy bear to bed), and then feels it wriggling in his hand.

Knight's Castle Roger

Realizing that the Old One is magic and is coming to life when he holds him, Roger asks him if it’s part of his magic to grant wishes. If it is, then he wishes for his father to get well, and if possible, for him and his sister to have an adventure in Baltimore over the summer. The Old One doesn’t answer him immediately, but over time, he makes it clear to Roger that wishes have to be earned, and that will be the source of his summer adventure.

When the children arrive in Baltimore to stay with wealthy Aunt Katharine while their father is in the hospital, Aunt Katharine gives them presents. Ann gets a new dollhouse, and there is a toy castle for Roger. Since Aunt Katharine has also just taken all the children to the movies to see Ivanhoe, all of them become immediately interested in playing with the castle.

That night, Roger has a strange dream that he finds himself within the story of Ivanhoe, which is being acted out in his toy castle. The Old One is there as well, although he is mainly watching the action as Roger begins to take part in the story. When Roger comes face-to-face with the villain, he accidentally lets Ivanhoe’s plans slip to him. Things are looking pretty bleak when Roger suddenly realizes that the castle is still a toy and everyone around him is just a lead soldier. This revelation ends the magical adventure and brings him back to reality. However, Roger is disappointed that he ended the adventure so early when perhaps he could have done something really heroic.

Seeing the toy soldiers scattered around instead of poised for the battle they were planning the night before, Eliza and Ann think that Roger was just playing with the castle without them, but he explains to them what happened. The girls were just reading The Magic City by E. Nesbit, and they start building their own “magic city” out of random things from around the house, surrounding the toy castle. Roger is upset about the city because he says that it doesn’t fit in with the Ivanhoe story, and he’s sure that it will ruin everything, maybe from preventing the magic from working again at all. The Old One tells Roger that magic works by threes, so the next opportunity for magic will be in three days.

Knight's Castle Magic City

As it turns out, the city does end up becoming part of the story when the magic brings it all to life on the third night. Roger, Ann, and Eliza find themselves in the middle of the city, surrounded by knights attempting to drive modern cars. Ivanhoe has become a fan of science fiction books, via the public library in the city that the girls built. Although Ivanhoe has turned into something of a geek, the children persuade him to come on a mission to rescue the captive Rebecca, and they end up traveling in a flying saucer (made from a real saucer) to the Dolorous Tower, where the adventure ends as soon as Eliza remembers that the villain threatening them is still just a lead soldier.

Knight's Castle Flying Saucer

It was an even weirder adventure than Roger’s first one, but by now, the children are starting to understand the rules that go along with the magic. Jack, who says he doesn’t really believe in magic, accompanies the other children on the next adventure, as they try to prove to him that it’s real. They end up having to rescue some of the others from the “giant’s lair”, which turns out to be Ann’s new dollhouse. The dolls are angry that Ann has been neglecting them, only paying attention to the dollhouse when she and Eliza needed to borrow things for their magic city. They manage to escape again by remembering that the dolls are just dolls.

However, Roger is still worried about their father, who is about to undergo his operation. The Old One had told him that wishes needed to be earned, and he doesn’t think that they’ve managed to accomplish much in their adventures. Roger thinks that they need to do something really heroic so that his wish for his father to get better will come true. The Old One gives Roger a rhyme, hinting at what the children need to do on their next adventure, but Roger doesn’t understand what it means, and he doesn’t know if he can figure it out in time.

Actually, it is Ann who eventually realizes what the rhyme means and provides Roger with the “wisdom” that he needs to earn his wish. All throughout the story, Roger was criticizing his little sister for things she did wrong, saying that she was too little and only a girl. Because Roger thinks of her as being just his little sister, he overlooks what she has to contribute to the adventure. Roger’s acquired wisdom is to value the contributions of others and not underestimate their ability to contribute. Ann, being young and shy, frequently doubts herself, but she also learns confidence when she realizes that she has the answer to the riddle. Jack and Eliza learn lessons as well. Doubting Jack learns to believe in magic, and Eliza learns that she can’t always be the boss, that sometimes it is better to let someone else take the lead when they’re the right person for the job. (Although, she does say at the end of story, “If that wouldn’t be just like that magic’s impudence! Trying to teach me moral lessons!”)

Like other books in this series, there are a lot of references to popular pieces of children’s literature and jokes about things that happen in children’s stories.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Knight's Castle Feast