#106 The Vanishing Passenger by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 2006.
The Alden children have been working on a project at their public library to invite the author of one of their favorite book series to visit as a guest speaker. However, when they go to meet his train, the author isn’t there. He’s completely disappeared!
The Aldens know that he got on the train because they spoke to him on the phone earlier. When they interview some of the passengers, they discover that the train trip was somewhat chaotic. The train passed through a harsh storm. A small dog disappeared, and his heart-broken family is searching for him as well. The evidence seems to point to the author jumping off the train, but why would he do that? Where is he now, and why hasn’t he tried to get in touch with them?
Carefully, the Aldens have to work backward through the train journey, piecing together the author’s movements to put together the whole story.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
I really appreciated the premise of this story. A mysterious disappearance makes a more unusual kind of mystery than the more typical crimes that appear in mystery stories, like theft. This is a story of a trip in which quite a lot of things went wrong. The kids do manage to track down their missing author with some surprising help from the author’s rival, who is also apparently his friend, showing the children that not all competition has to be unfriendly.
Aria Volume 6 by Kozue Amano, 2005, English Translation 2011.
This is the sixth volume of the second part of a fascinating manga series that combines sci-fi, fantasy, and slice of life. The series takes place about 300 years in the future, when Mars has been terraformed and renamed Aqua (because of all the water on its surface). The human colonies on Aqua are designed to resemble old-fashioned cities on Earth (called Manhome here). The people of Aqua prefer a much slower pace of life than people on Manhome, and aspects of life on Aqua more closely resemble Earth’s past.
The series is divided into two parts. The first two books are the Aqua volumes and introduce Akari Mizunashi, the main character, a young girl who came to Aqua to learn to become a gondolier in the city of Neo Venezia (which resembles Venice). Female gondoliers, called Undines, give tours of the city, giving Akari plenty of time to admire the beauty of her new home and meet interesting people. The two Aqua books are the prequel to the main series, Aria. Aqua covers Akari’s arrival on the planet, her introduction to life on Aqua, and the beginning of her training. The main Aria series show Akari’s continuing training, her progression to becoming a full Undine, her evolving relationships with her friends, and as always, her delight in learning more about her new home and admiring its beauty.
The series has received some criticism for being slow and lacking danger and adventure, but that is not really the point of the series. The main purpose is to show people how to appreciate the small pleasures of life. The sci-fi and fantasy elements (the spaceships, advanced environmental controls, intelligent Martian cats, and even the occasional appearances of the legendary Cait Sith) are mainly background to the stories about the magic of friendship and simple pleasures. Each volume contains a few short stories about Akari and her friends and the little adventures they have on a daily basis and the life lessons they learn. It’s a great series for relaxing when you’re stressed out.
Unfortunately, although this book is only about halfway through the series, this is the last book of the series that I actually own because the others haven’t been printed in English yet, although I think that additional volumes will be published in English.
The stories included in this volume are:
Orange Days
Athena comes to visit Alicia at Aria Company, and the trainees’ mentors reminisce about how they first met when they were trainees.
Akira was just as prickly and competitive when she was young as she is as an adult. Although trainee Akira said that she was just observing the “losers” at Aria Company, she kept coming around and became friends with Alicia. When she heard about a new trainee at Orange Company with an amazing singing voice, Akira wanted to seek her out, worried about the competition.
While she was telling Alicia about it, the two of them accidentally had a collision with young Athena’s gondola, which is the first time either of them had seen her. Athena was knocked over by the collision, so the other two girls treated her to lunch, partly to make it up to her and partly because Akira wanted to pump her for information about the new trainee at Orange Company, not knowing that Athena herself was the new trainee.
However, Athena didn’t answer their questions about the new trainee. Even back then, she was a person of few words, and she just made a drinking straw crawly snake to amuse President Aria. Still, Athena became friends with Alicia and Akira, joining them in their practice sessions, like Akari, Aika, and Alice share their practices together. Alicia and Akira only discovered that Athena was the trainee with the amazing voice when they decided to practice singing canzones one day.
The mentors end their reminiscences by saying that it seems hard to believe that, now that their training is over, they are so busy that they hardly have time to see each other. When they were trainees, it felt like they would always practice together every day, but now, their lives are different. These comments make the present trainees uncomfortable because they realize that the same thing is likely to happen to them when their training is complete. Alice, Aika, and Akari have come to value each other’s friendship and companionship, and they find it difficult to imagine being without each other.
However, Alicia and Athena tell the girls to not worry too much about it. Time is always moving forward, and it’s true that things will change for them, but that’s not entirely a bad thing. Even though they sometimes miss their training days when they spent so much of their time together, they are also happy with their current lives. They enjoy their careers, and they like helping to train new Undines. In fact, helping to train the next generation of Undines helps them to connect to their own pasts because the young Undines remind them of their own training days. Alicia’s advice is to enjoy where you are and what’s currently happening around you as much as you can. Life will eventually move on, and things will change, so you might as well make the most of where you are now and enjoy it to the fullest, so you will be ready to move on to the next stage of your life and enjoy that as well. Athena says, “Fun times really aren’t meant to be compared. Just enjoyed.”
The young trainees are still affected by the story of their mentors’ friendships and the changes in their lives. Aika points out to Akari that their lives aren’t changing just yet, but the girls have come to a greater realization that their lives will eventually change.
It’s just like how, when people are young and in school, surrounded by the same other students every day, it can be hard to imagine that there will come a day after you graduate when you won’t all be working at the same place and you won’t all be eating lunch together every day. As you get busy building careers and families, it will be harder to see each other and keep in touch. However, that’s not entirely a bad thing. As some people like to say, “You can’t begin the next chapter of your life if you keep rereading the last one.” There are many things in life to enjoy and accomplishments to be made, and like Alicia and Athena explain, you might as well enjoy where you are right now and make the most of it so you won’t look back with regret when it’s time to move on.
Venetian Glass
Akatsuki’s elder brother comes to Aria Company to hire Akari to transport some delicate Venetian glass. Akari is excited because this is the first time that anyone has specifically hired her, although, because she isn’t a full Undine yet, Alicia will have to accompany her on her errand.
When they go to pick up the glass, Akari sees glass-blowing and Venetian glass for the first time.
One of the workers from the glass factory seems kind of surly, but he accompanies them while they transport the glass and explains the history of Venetian glass and what makes it so special.
The reason why the glass worker is so surly is that he feels like a lot of people don’t appreciate his craft. He and his master put their heart and soul into their work, but people say that their “Venentian glass” is fake because it’s made in Neo-Venezia, not in the real Venice, which sank beneath the ocean years ago. The worker laments that the craftsmen who left the sinking city were scattered across Earth before making their way to Neo-Venezia and that details of their craft have been lost over time. Neo-Venezian glass will never be quite the same as the original Venetian glass, and people will never look at it the same way, which the worker finds depressing.
However, one of Akari’s great strengths is finding the beauty in everything and bringing it out for other people to see. She tells the worker that the glass is kind of like Neo-Venezia itself. It’s true, it’s not the original Venice, only re-created in its image. Some aspects of it are the same, but it’s also a different place, on another planet. To some people, that might make it seem like a fake city, just an imitation of the original, but Akari doesn’t think that the real vs. fake concept matters because she loves the city for the beautiful treasure it is. Similarly, Akari thinks that Neo-Venezian glass is a treasure by itself and likes it for what it is, regardless of what the original was or what others say about it.
The worker finds Akari’s viewpoint inspirational and is enchanted by Akari herself, remarking that she’s also a unique treasure. Akatsuki’s brother jokes that Akatsuki might have a rival now for his affection for Akari. Akari knows that Akatsuki has had an unrequited crush on Alicia, so she doesn’t think too much about it. Although it’s true that Akatsuki has a crush on Alicia, Akatsuki’s brother is also correct that Akari inspires greater feelings in others than she realizes and Akatsuki values Akari more than he lets on, maybe more than even he realizes himself. Akari is unique because of her unusual way of looking at things, and her optimistic point of view influences others.
Snow White
One day, while they’re practicing together, Akari asks Aika what kind of adult she wanted to be when she was a kid. Aika, who has admired and even hero-worshipped Alicia ever since Alicia was kind to her when she was a young child, says that she’s always wanted to be an elegant woman like Alicia. Akari says that she wants to be like Alicia, too, but Aika criticizes her for wanting to copy her ambition and says that it’s not likely that Akari would ever be as elegant as Alicia because she still does kid-like things, like collecting stuffed animals.
Their discussion causes Akari to wonder what sort of adult Alicia wanted to be when she was a little kid, and she asks Alicia about it while they’re out walking one day. Instead of answering her directly at first, Alicia demonstrates by starting to build a snowman and pointing out how the people around them react to it.
Each time Alicia and Akari start to make a large snowball for the base of the snowman, different adults stop and help them to make it a bit bigger.
Alicia says that she noticed people like this when she was a child. There are always adults who, when seeing a young girl making a snowman, feel compelled to help her because she can make a much bigger snowball with their help. That’s the type of adult Alicia always wanted to be.
Alicia genuinely enjoys not only her career as an Undine but her role as a teacher and mentor in Akari’s life and in the lives of her friends, helping them to develop in their trade and to become better Undines because of her influence.
Stray Cat
Alice finds a tiny stray Martian cat one day while waiting for Akari and Aika to meet her for practice. The cat’s mother doesn’t seem to be around, and Alice doesn’t know whether the little cat is lost, orphaned, or abandoned. When Aika arrives for practice, she finds both Alice and Akari lying on the ground next to the cat because it looks so happy lying in the sun that Alice thinks they should also try it.
Although Aika warns Alice that she won’t be able to keep the cat because she lives in a dorm at Orange Company and isn’t allowed to keep pets, Alice becomes attached to the cat, names it Maa, and hides it in her room.
At first, she is afraid that her mentor, Athena, will be angry with her, and Aika scares her by saying that Athena will probably kill the cat because she doesn’t like cats. However, Alice loves Maa because she misses the previous president cat of Orange Company, who recently passed away, and Maa reminds her a little of him.
When the secret gets out, and Alice is confronted by Athena about the cat, Alice is scared because Athena is holding a knife for slicing fruit and runs away to leave the tiny Maa where she found him, thinking that it might be the only way to save his life. However, she finds herself unable to abandon Maa and returns to get him, only to find him missing from the box where she left him. In a panic, she spends all night searching the city with her friends to try to find Maa.
However, when they finally give up the search, they discover that Athena has Maa. When she had tried to talk to Alice before, she wasn’t angry. She followed Alice to the place where she left Maa and retrieved him and has been waiting for Alice to return to Orange Company. In Alice’s absence, Athena has persuaded Orange Company to keep Maa as their new company president. Like the other cats used as the presidents/mascots of gondola companies, Maa also has blue eyes.
Aika has a more practical explanation for what it is, that the sounds of freight trains are more noticeable at night, when everything is quiet, but Akari discovers the truth when President Aria gives her a special train ticket.
It turns out that the mysterious train is a train of cats. (Guess who the conductor is?) Akari could use the ticket from President Aria to ride the train, but instead, she gives it to a sad little kitten who lost his ticket.
Because Akari doesn’t board the train, she never finds out where the train was going. The next morning, it all seems like a strange dream, except both Akari and President Aria have the stamps on their foreheads that Cait Sith gave them.
A Parallel World
President Aria accidentally finds a parallel world in which all the people he knows who are girls are boys and vice versa. Frightening!
President Aria has always wanted to find a gateway to another world, but everything seems so strange that all he wants to do is get back to his world.
He ends up returning to the world he knows when someone tosses him too high in the air while playing with him. Did any of it really happen, or was he just dazed from when he fell?
This one isn’t one of my favorite stories in this series because I think that the premise is kind of goofy. The characters don’t really look all that different when their genders are switched. Most of the difference is in hair styles, and the uniforms of the Undines have pants when they’re normally just long dresses.
Anna, Grandpa, and the Big Storm by Carla Stevens, 1982.
The story takes place during the Great Blizzard of 1888. Anna’s Grandpa is visiting her family in New York City, but he thinks the city is boring. He says that there isn’t much there for him to do. One day, Anna is worried about getting to school because it is starting to snow heavily. Anna’s mother says that she can stay home, but Anna is supposed to be in a spelling bee, and she doesn’t want to miss out. Grandpa volunteers to take Anna to school on the elevated train.
As the two set out, Anna begins to get scared because the storm is getting worse. Grandpa urges her on, and the two make it onto the train. Before they can go very far, the tracks freeze over, and the train gets stuck. Anna and her Grandpa are trapped in the train with a bunch of strangers, waiting for rescue.
Anna and Grandpa make friends with the other people on the train, finding ways to keep themselves moving and warm while they wait for help to arrive, like playing “Simon Says.” Even though Anna doesn’t make it to school for the spelling bee, their adventures turn out to be good for the people they are able to help and the new friends they make. Grandpa sees a different side of life in the city and decides to stay for awhile longer so he can spend time with some new friends.
The story is based upon actual accounts of the famous blizzard when many other people were trapped on the elevated trains around the city. The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
One Christmas Eve, a young boy is lying awake in bed when he hears strange sounds. When he looks out of his window, he is astonished to see a train outside of his house, where there aren’t any train tracks. He goes outside to investigate, and the train conductor tells him that the train is heading to the North Pole and asks the boy if he wants to come.
The boy (who is never named) believes in Santa Claus even though some of his friends no longer do, and he gets on board the train. The train is filled with other children, singing Christmas songs, eating candy, and drinking hot cocoa.
After a long trip over mountains and through forests, they arrive at Santa’s city at the North Pole, where they get to take part in a ceremony to give the first gift of Christmas. Out of all the children from the train, the boy who narrates the story is chosen to receive the first gift. He can ask for anything he wants for Christmas, but he asks for a bell from Santa’s sleigh as proof of his adventures and Santa’s existence.
When the children get on the train to go back home, the boy seems to have lost the bell because of a hole in his pocket, and he is sad. However, the bell reappears on Christmas morning as a mysterious extra present under the tree. The boy’s parents can’t hear the bell ring, and they think it’s broken, but the boy and his sister, Sarah, can hear it. The boy says when he and his sister grew up, Sarah eventually reached the point where she could no longer hear the bell, but he still can because only people who believe in Santa can hear the bells on his sleigh.
The book is a Caldecott Medal winner, and it has become a Christmas classic! Some places that have trains hold special Polar Express train rides where they decorate the trains with Christmas decorations and try to re-create the ride from the book. There is also a movie version of the book, although the story in the movie includes incidents which weren’t in the book to make the movie longer and more dramatic. The original story was very calm and low-key, although still magical, the kind of thing that you could easily read to a child in bed on Christmas Eve.
Most of what Internet Archive has about The Polar Express is related to the movie, but there is also an audio version of the original book. For the benefit of teachers and homeschooling parents, there is also A Guide for Using The Polar Express in the Classroom on Internet Archive.
Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner, translated by May Massee, 1929, 1930.
This book was originally written in German. It was written in Germany during the period between the two World Wars. The date of the story itself is never specified, but it may actually be earlier than when it was written, prior to World War I. There is a sequel to the book that I haven’t read where Emil’s vacation ends early because he hears that war has broken out, an incident based on the author’s own boyhood experiences at the start of World War I.
The Emil books have an interesting history because of the time period when they were written. This video explains how the book came to be written, the time period when it was written, and its cultural impact. By the time the Nazis came to power, Emil and the Detectives had become popular and, as a harmless children’s book, was saved from Nazi book burnings. The sequel story, Emil and the Three Twins, wasn’t so lucky, which is why it isn’t as well-known as the first Emil book, although it is available today. The author, Erich Kastner, was known to be a pacifist and opposed to the Nazi government, which was why many of his works were burned during the Nazi regime and publishers were forbidden to publish new books from him. (This video explains more about the book burnings and Kastner’s burned works.) Although his political stance interfered with his writing, and he was questioned by the Gestapo several times, he chose to remain in Germany for the duration of the war. Another of his children’s books, Lisa and Lottie, which was the basis for the Parent Trap movies by Disney, was written after World War II ended.
At the beginning of this story, it explains that Emil Tischbein’s father died when he was very young and that his mother works hard as a hairdresser to support the two of them. When she can, she saves a little money for Emil’s grandmother as well. When the story begins, Emil is preparing for a train trip to Berlin to visit his relatives. Emil will be traveling by himself and will meet his relatives near the station when he arrives. His mother gives him some money to take to his grandmother and warns him to be careful. Emil pins the money inside his pocket for security.
On the train, Emil talks to the people who share his train compartment. One of them, who calls himself Herr Grundeis, tells him tall tales about what Berlin is like and gives him a piece of chocolate, which is apparently drugged. Emil falls asleep on the train, and when he wakes up, he realizes that he’s been robbed!
Determined to get the money for his grandmother back, Emil searches for Herr Grundeis and spots him getting off the train. It’s too soon for Emil’s stop, but he follows Grundeis off the train anyway, tracking him to a café.
While Emil is trying to decide how to handle the situation, another boy who carries a horn that he likes to honk, Gustav, spots him watching Grundeis. Gustav asks Emil what he’s doing, and Emil explains the situation. Emil isn’t sure how to get the money back from Grundeis. At first, he’s afraid to tell the police what happened because of a prank he and some friends pulled at home. He worries that perhaps the police have found out about the prank and that they won’t take him seriously. Gustav is sympathetic to Emil and tells him that he can get together some friends to help.
Gustav recruits a bunch of other boys from the neighborhood, and they continue tailing Grundeis through the city to his hotel. The boys call another friend at home, who keeps track of their progress and gives them reports about what others have said. Emil gets one of the other boys to tell his relatives that he has been delayed on important business, causing his cousin, Pony Hutchen, to come and tell him that everyone is worried and that he’s going to be in big trouble with his relatives if he doesn’t show up soon. However, they still have the problem of deciding how to confront Grundeis and get him to return the money. In this case, the detectives don’t need to solve the mystery of who the thief is. The real problem is how to prove it.
This book is known around the world and has been made into movies several times, including a Disney version in 1964. The Disney version still takes place in Germany, but for some reason, Emil’s train trip is changed to a bus trip, and the criminal’s plot is much more elaborate. It’s available on dvd, and you can see the trailer on YouTube.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Spoilers
Overall, I liked the story, although I found the book difficult to read because the wording sounded strange and awkward in many places. I think this is probably because of the translation between German and English. I have the feeling that the translator was trying to be too literal in the translation instead of focusing on translating for meaning and tone. Unfortunately, I can’t read German, so I can’t say what the original version was like.
There was a note in the beginning of my copy of the book that says that many of the character names in the book are actually jokes on the part of the author. It’s not as obvious in English because the forms of the names sound reasonable for German names, but anyone who knows German would spot that they aren’t real names. For example, Emil’s last name is Tischbein, which means “table-leg,” and the thief’s alias, Grundeis, means “ground-ice.”
In the end, the boys use their numbers (they have about a hundred child detective recruits by the end of the story) to corner the thief in a bank, and when they confront him in front of the bank personnel, they manage to prove that Emil is the owner of the money using the pin holes in the bills, where Emil had pinned it to his jacket. The author of the book also appears briefly in the story as a journalist who interviews Emil and his friends for a newspaper story about how they caught the thief. (I think he’s the one standing at the back of the group of reporters in the picture because the man’s hair looks like Kastner’s, combed back.)
Like in another of Kastner’s books, Lisa and Lottie, there is the theme of a child who behaves well because of the family’s poor circumstances. Emil, like Lottie, is being raised by a single mother who has to work hard to support the two of them. Both Emil and Lottie understand that if they behave badly and get into trouble, it would create more hardships for their mothers. They basically live hand-to-mouth, and the children understand that their mothers cannot take time away from work to deal with their discipline problems. Each of them has had to shoulder some of the household burdens from an early age, and it has made them more serious and also a little closer to their mothers than many of the other children from more affluent families. Aside from Emil’s prank at home (which causes him some worry), he is obedient to his mother and also very concerned about her welfare.
Four-year-old Charlotte May lives in a small town in Idaho in 1914. May, as her family calls her, wants to visit her grandmother in another town, but travel during this time is difficult and expensive. With a lack of roads that are easy to travel, the only comfortable way to get to May’s grandmother’s town is by train. Unfortunately, May’s family can’t afford to buy a train ticket for her.
May wants so badly to go see her grandmother that she even asks at the local general store if the owner can hire her, but he doesn’t have any work that a little girl could do. Then, May’s mother’s cousin helps the family to find a more affordable alternative. If May can’t travel as a passenger, is it possible for her to travel as . . . mail?
It turns out that the rate for mailing a live package the size of May is much cheaper than the fee for a passenger ticket. Because May’s mother’s cousin works in the mail car on the train, he could take responsibility for her during the trip. So, with a label on her clothes, declaring her to be “baby chicks” and the proper postage stuck to her jacket, May undertakes the journey to her unsuspecting grandmother’s house.
This story was based on a real incident. In fact, May wasn’t the only child to be sent through the mail when their parents couldn’t afford to send them as passengers. I also like the book for its glimpse at travel and mail services over 100 years ago.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
This book is unusual because there are four stories inside, being told at once, but there is one continuous storyline that joins all four of them together. Two of the stories don’t have many words, but if you pay close attention to the pictures, the connection to the other stories becomes obvious. The title of the book is also kind of a hint, although those colors apply to more than one aspect of the overall story.
The picture at the right is from the title page, and the title page has the message that explains the concepts behind the stories. One of the fun things about this book is reading it multiple times. You can read the stories and look at the pictures of all four stories as you go through the book the first time, but if you look at each story in isolation, you can experience the continuity of each thread of the bigger stories and notice additional details.
The four stories are:
Seeing Things — A young boy takes a train trip by himself, going home to his parents. He sleeps through most of his long journey, but during the night, he wakes up to some strange happenings.
A Waiting Game — A group of commuters waiting for their train, which has been unexpectedly delayed, find amusing ways to entertain themselves.
Problem Parents — A girl and her brother are convinced that their parents are crazy when they arrive home from their offices in the city wearing weird outfits made of newspapers and singing.
Udder Chaos — An escaped convict hides among a herd of cows.
You might be able to get some of the connections between these stories from what I’ve said and the pictures I’ve shown, but it gets funnier if you keep going through the stories, seeing where each of them lines up with the others.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
#3 Mandie and the Ghost Bandits by Lois Gladys Leppard, 1984.
Mandie and her family are going to proceed with the plan to create a hospital for the Cherokees with the gold that they found in the cave. To do that, they need to take the gold to a bank in Asheville. They decide to take the gold secretly on a train. Uncle Ned stays in the baggage car to watch the gold as they set out on their journey.
When the kids decide to leave their car to go visit him, strange things begin to happen. They see riders dressed as ghosts out the window. Then, the car with Uncle Ned and the gold inside is disconnected from the rest of the train, crashing into a ravine. The train comes to a stop, and the kids jump off to see if they can help Uncle Ned.
Before they can find him, the train starts up again, leaving them behind, and they are taken prisoner by the mysterious ghost bandits. They are after the gold in the baggage car, but how did they know it was there when Mandie’s family tried so hard to keep it a secret? Mandie and her friends must escape and find the others before it is too late!
In some respects, I would call this more of an adventure story than a mystery, although there is still the question of how the bandits knew where the gold was in order to steal it.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
This book was originally written in German. It was written in Germany during the 
At the beginning of this story, it explains that Emil Tischbein’s father died when he was very young and that his mother works hard as a hairdresser to support the two of them. When she can, she saves a little money for Emil’s grandmother as well. When the story begins, Emil is preparing for a train trip to Berlin to visit his relatives. Emil will be traveling by himself and will meet his relatives near the station when he arrives. His mother gives him some money to take to his grandmother and warns him to be careful. Emil pins the money inside his pocket for security.
Determined to get the money for his grandmother back, Emil searches for Herr Grundeis and spots him getting off the train. It’s too soon for Emil’s stop, but he follows Grundeis off the train anyway, tracking him to a café.
Gustav recruits a bunch of other boys from the neighborhood, and they continue tailing Grundeis through the city to his hotel. The boys call another friend at home, who keeps track of their progress and gives them reports about what others have said. Emil gets one of the other boys to tell his relatives that he has been delayed on important business, causing his cousin, Pony Hutchen, to come and tell him that everyone is worried and that he’s going to be in big trouble with his relatives if he doesn’t show up soon. However, they still have the problem of deciding how to confront Grundeis and get him to return the money. In this case, the detectives don’t need to solve the mystery of who the thief is. The real problem is how to prove it.
There was a note in the beginning of my copy of the book that says that many of the character names in the book are actually jokes on the part of the author. It’s not as obvious in English because the forms of the names sound reasonable for German names, but anyone who knows German would spot that they aren’t real names. For example, Emil’s last name is Tischbein, which means “table-leg,” and the thief’s alias, Grundeis, means “ground-ice.”
#3 Mandie and the Ghost Bandits by Lois Gladys Leppard, 1984.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 
