#12 The Mystery of the Laughing Shadow by William Arden, 1969.
The mystery begins when Bob and Pete are bicycling by the old Sandow estate and they hear a call for help. Although it’s dark they can’t see who yelled for help, they can tell that the person threw something small that lands near them. They pick it up and discover that it is a small gold amulet. Then, Bob and Pete have to hide when a dark, shadowy figure comes looking for the amulet. The figure appears humpbacked and has a weird laugh that Bob and Pete have trouble describing.
They tell Jupiter what happened, and he joins them in searching for the person who called for help and figuring out the significance of the amulet. Someone steals the amulet from Jupiter, although Jupiter manages to save a message that was hidden inside the amulet. Then, they consult an expert in Native American languages and antiquities and learn that the amulet may be part of the Chumash treasure hoard, a treasure stolen from the Spanish settlers of the area many years ago by Chumash Indians (Native Americans) who once lived in the area. People have searched for the treasure for many years, but no one has found it. However, the message that was hidden inside the amulet is written in a language that belongs to the Yaquali Indians of Mexico (this is a fictional group, not the Yaqui), a remote tribe mostly living in isolation but known for their climbing skills. The expert is puzzled because he can’t figure out what the connection can be between the Chumash and the Yaqualis. The two group don’t live in the same area, their languages aren’t related, and the Yaqualis had nothing to do with the lost Chumash treasure hoard.
Jupiter says that their next move should be to investigate the Sandow estate. At first, they plan to make an excuse that they’re researching the Sandow estate for a school project, but to their surprise, Ted Sandow, grandnephew of Sarah Sandow, who owns the Sandow estate, shows up at Jupiter’s uncle salvage yard. Ted is just a few years older than the Three Investigators, and he explains that he came from England to visit his Great-Aunt Sarah after his father died. He says that his aunt wants to clean out a bunch of old things that have been in storage on the estate and that someone recommended the salvage yard to him. He invites the boys to the estate so he can show them some antiques that Jupiter’s uncle might want to buy. It seems like quite a coincidence that Ted Sandow would just come looking for them and give them an invitation to the Sandow estate just when they were planning to investigate the place, but the boys can’t pass up the invitation.
At the Sandow estate, the boys are amazed at the antiques that Sarah Sandow is offering to sell, and they’re sure that Jupiter’s uncle will be interested. They spend some time chatting with Ted, Great-Aunt Sarah, and Mr. Harris, a friend of the Sandows who has started a Vegetarian League with the help of Sarah Sandow. Sarah tells the boys that the reason she wants to clean out some of the clutter around the estate is that they recently had a burglary. They all explain to the boys that a small gold statue (the amulet) was stolen from the estate by an unknown boy. It was one of a pair that used to belong to Sarah’s brother, who was Ted’s grandfather. The boys explain that they are investigators and that they would be happy to help them recover the little statue, without telling them that they had it in their possession at one point or about the message they found with it. The Sandows hire boys to find it, promising them a reward if they’re successful, but some things about their offer don’t ring true.
For one thing, Ted Sandow asks the boys about the meaning of the question marks on their business card before he even looks at the card, indicating that he already knew about their investigation business and that he sought them out for that purpose rather than just to sell things to the salvage yard. It’s also strange that he stresses that they will reward the boys for the return of the amulet with “no questions asked” about how they found it. What are the Sandows hiding, and what is the meaning of the message that was with the amulet? Do they know the location of the Chumash hoard, or do they have it themselves? Who was the mysterious shadow with the weird laugh? Lives may hang in the balance as the boys struggle to learn the identity of the laughing shadow.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction
I like books that reference history, but this book bothers me a little because of the introduction of the Yaquali. The Chumash are real, but the Yaquali are a fictional group, and it just feels strange to have the book start with a real group of Native Americans and then incorporate a fictional group. It also makes the story feel a little contrived that the villain needs the Yaquali for their excellent climbing skills to reach the treasure when it doesn’t seem like the Yaquali had anything to do with placing the treasure where it’s hidden.
The explanation behind the laughing shadow also feels a little contrived. There’s a logical explanation but at the same time, it depends on the villain having a pet that makes a sound that sounds like a laugh, and this pet’s origins point to the villain’s origins.
The part of the story that I thought was most interesting was that, while the Three Investigators are suspicious of the Sandows, it’s implied that the suspicious is mutual. The Sandows offer the Three Investigators the job of finding the amulet with “no questions asked” about how they found it, and there is an implication that they suspect that the boys stole it. The implication that the “no questions asked” is actually an invitation to the boys to return what they took with a promised reward and no repercussions. However, at the same time as the boys accept the job from the Sandows, they have their own suspicions about what the Sandows are doing and what the meaning of the message in the amulet is. They see the investigation job as a way to learn more about what’s going on. The interesting part is that, while each of them has some reason to suspect each other, the real culprit in this situation isn’t either of them.
Spoilers
Although the boys suspect Ted at first, the real villain is Harris. Years ago, Sarah Sandow’s brother, Ted’s grandfather, learned that the Chumash hoard was located on their property, but for reasons that no one seems to know, he killed the only person who could tell him where it was and had to leave the country. Ted was born in England, and he has been visiting his Great-Aunt Sarah. He met Mr. Harris on the way here, and Harris introduced himself to Sarah on the pretext of getting a donation to help set up a society for vegetarians in the area. He had already figured out where the hoard was located on her property, and he had convinced some young Yaqualis from Mexico to come to the United States to help him get it.
The treasure is hidden in a cave which can only be reached by experienced climbers, and the Yaqualis are known for their climbing skills. One of the Yaqualis realized that what Harris wanted them to do was illegal and that he was planning to do away with them when it was all over. He managed to get word to his family, and he put the message in the amulet in the hopes that someone would find it later and help him and the others.
Jupiter figures out that Harris is the villain when he realizes that the mysterious laugh isn’t human; it was caused by a kookaburra, a pet of Harris’s from Australia. His shadow only looked humpbacked because the bird was sitting on him at the time. Jupiter gets the police to check with the Australian authorities, and they learn about Harris’s criminal past. By then Harris has taken Bob and Pete hostage, and they must stage a daring rescue to save them. For a while, Bob and the young Yaqualis are trapped in the cave with the treasure, but a couple of other Yaqualis who have been searching for them help to rescue them. At the end of the book, the ownership of the treasure still has to be determined, but many museums are hoping to acquire pieces for their collections.
The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit, 1899.
This story (the first in a series) is told by one of the six Bastable children: Dora, Oswald (who won the Latin prize at his school), Dicky, the twins Alice and Noel, and Horace Octavius (called H.O. for short). The narrator initially refuses to identify which of the Bastable children he is, saying that he might admit it at the end, but his constant self-praise (which begins immediately) and the way he refers to his siblings kind of gives it away. At various points in the story, he forgets that he’s trying to be mysterious about his identity and just refers to himself in the first person, although he goes back to the third person when he remembers. The children live with their father, but their mother is dead. The narrator says, “and if you think we don’t care because I don’t tell you much about her you only show that you do not understand people at all.” The story isn’t about missing their mother, but about their search for treasure. (“It was Oswald who first thought of looking for treasure. Oswald often thinks of very interesting things.”)
The Bastables are in need of money. After their mother died, their father was ill for a time. Then, his business partner went to Spain, and his business hasn’t been very good since. The children can tell that their father is economizing on household goods. He’s sold some things from the house, there doesn’t seem to be money to have broken things fixed or replaced, and he’s let the gardener and other servants go. He’s not even sending the children to school right now because he can’t afford the school fees, and people have been coming to the house about unpaid bills. Oswald thinks that the best thing to do is to look for treasure to restore their family’s fortunes.
The children all think of ways that they can look for treasure. Oswald wants to become a highwayman and hold people up, but Dora, as the eldest, rejects that idea as wrong. His next suggestion is that they rescue a rich old gentleman and get a reward, but that’s a long shot. Alice thinks they should try using a divining rod. H.O. is in favor of the idea of being bandits. Noel likes books, and he wants to either write poetry and publish it or possibly marry a princess. Dicky is more practical with things like math and money, and he tells the others about an advertisement in the newspaper about a way to earn money in your spare time. Since the children aren’t going to school and have plenty of time, he thinks they should try it. He also has another idea, but he refuses to explain to the others exactly what the scheme is. Dora, as the eldest, decides that they should just try digging for treasure, not even bothering with a divining rod, because it seems like people always find treasure by digging. Since that’s the most straight-forward method any of them have thought of yet, they decide to go with that.
They recruit Albert, the boy from next door, to help with the digging. They don’t always get along with Albert because Albert doesn’t like reading and isn’t good at games of pretend. (The children seem to know that this treasure hunt is a game, although they’re still half-way hopeful that they’ll actually find something.) Still, they manage to persuade Albert, and the children begin digging a tunnel. It’s Albert’s turn to dig when the tunnel collapses, half-burying the unlucky Albert, who screams and keeps on screaming while Dicky runs to get Albert’s uncle. Albert’s father is dead, so he lives with his mother and his uncle, who used to be a sailor and now writes books. The children all like Albert’s uncle because they like his books, and he seems to know a lot. Albert’s uncle matter-of-factly digs Albert out of the hole and asks the children how he came to be buried. The Bastable children explain about their search for treasure. Albert’s uncle says that he doubts they’ll find any treasure in the area, but as he unearths Albert, he seems to find a couple of coins, which he gives to the children to divide among themselves and Albert. (It’s hinted that Albert’s uncle is just giving the children pocket money that he pretends to find.) It’s an uneven amount, so they agree that Albert can have the larger share because he got buried.
The Bastable children could have used their new pocket money as stake money for the venture Dicky saw in the newspaper, but there are some other things they want to buy, so they spend it all and have to try something else. One of the children (they disagree later about who it was) brings up the subject of detectives, like Sherlock Holmes. They think that detectives must earn a lot of money, so some of them think they ought to try being detectives. Alice says that she doesn’t want anything to do with murders because that would be dangerous, and even if they did kill someone, she would feel bad if she had to be the one to get them hanged for it. After all, surely nobody would want to kill someone more than once anyway, so there’s probably little risk that they’d do it again. (Oh, boy. Alice has apparently never heard of serial killers. Jack the Ripper had already committed his murders by the time this book was written and published.) The others tell her that detectives probably don’t get to choose which crimes they investigate. They just have to look into any mysterious situations they encounter and see what they turn out to be. That reminds Alice that she did see something mysterious herself. She got up during the night because she suddenly remembered that she’d forgotten to feed her pet rabbits, and she saw a light in a nearby house, where the entire family is supposedly away at the seaside. The children think that some criminals may be hiding in the empty house and decide to investigate. It turns out that there is an innocent explanation. Oswald accidentally falls and gets knocked unconscious during the investigation, so Albert’s uncle is again recruited to carry him home, and the uncle lectures them about spying on people.
Since another money-making scheme has failed, they decide to move on to the next idea, publishing Noel’s poetry. He doesn’t have enough poems for a book, but they remember that they’ve seen poetry published in a newspaper, so they decide to talk to the newspaper editor. Oswald and Noel go to see the editor together. Along the way, they meet a woman who also writes poetry. She reads Noel’s poems and says that she likes them, giving the boys a little stake money to get Noel’s literary career started. At first, Oswald refuses the money because he remembers that he’s not supposed to accept gifts from strangers, but the woman insists that the gift is that from a fellow writer, not a stranger, and she gives them her card. The children’s father later says that she’s famous for her poetry, although the boys had never heard of her before.
When they see the newspaper editor, he seems amused by Noel’s poetry (which includes an elegy to a dead beetle) and very interested in how and why he came to write poetry. He invites the boys to join him for tea, and they explain about how they’re trying to restore their family’s fortunes. The editor says that he’s willing to buy Noel’s poems and publish them, and he asks what Noel thinks would be a fair price. Noel isn’t sure because he originally just wrote the poems because he likes poetry, not to sell. The editor offers him a guinea, which is more money than they’ve ever had before, and the boys are impressed and accept it. The editor says that his paper doesn’t normally publish poetry, but he can arrange for it to be published in a different paper. They later see a story in a magazine about them, written by the editor, with all of Noel’s poems with it. Oswald isn’t happy at how the story describes them, but Noel is pleased that he’s been published.
The book continues from the summer through the fall, and the children continue trying various money-making schemes, with varying degrees of disaster and success. Noel finds a princess to marry, but they only get a few chocolates out of that adventure. While Dora is away, visiting her godmother, the other children turn bandits on Guy Fawkes Day. The only person they can find to kidnap and ransom as bandits is Albert, who doesn’t like this game at all. (The children again seem to realize that this is only a game, but at the same time, they hope for a little money out of it.) They write the ransom note for Albert using H.O.’s blood because this adventure was his idea (although they also have to use red ink to finish it because they don’t get enough blood from H.O.’s finger). Albert’s uncle, who enjoys a good game of pretend, comes to ransom Albert, although he can’t pay the enormous sum mentioned in the ransom note. He tells the children that he knows it’s all a game, and he thinks a little more pretend play would do Albert good (Albert doesn’t have much imagination), and the rough play is also punishment for Albert sneaking out of the house while he should have been inside, nursing his cold. However, the uncle says they should have realized how scary that ransom note could have been for Albert’s mother if he hadn’t seen Albert with the children and knew where he was and what was really happening. The children apologize and admit that they don’t think much about people’s mothers since they lost their own. (Although the book is mostly funny, there are sentimental bits, too.)
Albert’s uncle suggests a more harmless money-making scheme to the children – starting a newspaper, and they let Albert join them. Their newspaper contains a couple of serial stories (that don’t entirely make sense, and some of the children can’t think what to contribute to them), some poetry by Noel, some “Curious Facts” (that aren’t entirely factual but are very curious), and an editorial piece on the subject of education by Alice, who says that if she had a school, nobody would learn anything they didn’t want to learn, but there would be cats, and the students would sometimes dress up like cats and practice purring. The newspaper turns out to be not very lucrative, and the children run out of things to write about, so they give that up and return to more hair-brained schemes.
Oswald tries to rescue an elderly gentleman so that the wealthy old gentleman will richly reward him, just like in books, but not finding any danger to save him from, he sets their dog on him, so he can easily save him. The gentleman, a local lord and politician, figures out pretty quickly that this was a scheme and that the dog belongs to the children, and he demands an explanation. The children explain to him about trying to restore their family’s fortunes by doing the things that seem to work for people in books, only nothing they’ve tried works like it does it books. The old gentlemen gives the a lecture about honesty and honor and consideration for other people, and the children make their apologies to him.
From there, they try the part-time job advertised in the newspaper, which turns out to be getting people to place orders for wine by giving them free samples. The children try a little of the wine themselves, but they don’t like it, so they add a bunch of sugar to try to improve the taste. You can imagine how well a group of children trying to give various strangers free wine goes. Eventually, someone confiscates the bottle and tells their father what they’ve been up to.
Although they promise their father that they won’t attempt to go into business again without talking to him about it, they start thinking that they could make a lot of money if they invented a wonderful medicine that would cure something. After arguing about what they’re going to cure, they decide they’re going to cure the common cold. The only way they can think of inventing the medicine is for one of them to get a cold and then for all the others to try various things to cure it. Noel is the one who catches cold, and the others try to cure him. When they can’t cure Noel’s cold, they worry that he’s going to die from it, but fortunately, he does recover.
However, there are times when the children do things that are helpful, typically by accident. The best thing they do is to be extra friendly to a man who comes to see their father. The children come to the conclusion that he’s a poor man and that their father is being kind to him, but they’re not satisfied with the level of hospitality that their father offers. The children decide to invite him to their kind of dinner, and the fun they have together encourages him to give their father the help he needs. The children come to the conclusion that, sometimes, life can be like books.
The book is now public domain, so it is available to read online through Project Gutenberg (also in audio format) and Internet Archive (multiple copies, including audiobooks). There is also a LibriVox Audiobook on YouTube. It’s the first in a series of books about the same children. The story has also been made into movies multiple times. The original book contains some inappropriate racial stereotypes and language, which I discuss below. However, recent reprintings of the book have changed some of the inappropriate language, so the book would probably be okay for modern children, if you pick a book with a recent printing date.
My Reaction
I really enjoyed this story, even though there are some problematic racial issues, which I’m also going to describe and discuss. The descriptions of the children’s schemes and escapades are very funny, and I laughed out loud at some parts. The story reminds me of some of the MacDonald Hall books where the boys do some bizarre fund-raising efforts or try to get publicity for their school. The children’s efforts to find or earn money in this book are based on books that were popular with children in the late Victorian era and money-making schemes that existed at that time. Not all of them would be as familiar to modern children as they would have been to children of the late Victorian era, but I think modern children could understand most of them, with the possible exception of the man who I think was supposed to be a money lender.
If this book was set in modern times, in the early 21st century, I think that their bizarre money-making schemes would be a little more like those in the MacDonald Hall books, although I can think of a few more. Alice’s description of the ideal school, with cats who teach students how to purr, makes me think that, if she were a modern girl, she would want to start a cat cafe out of their house using a bunch of stray cats (or maybe some borrowed from neighbors without permission), which would also be hilarious. I would like to see a book with someone doing something like that because the opportunities for things to go wrong would be both boundless and guaranteed to happen. (Corralling the cats, possibly abducting cats from neighbors, messing up the tea and food, health violations, lack of business license, cats biting and clawing people and messing up the house and trying desperately to escape, etc.)
One thing that I like about the Bastable Children series in general is that there are many references to books that children from the late Victorian era would have known and enjoyed. This book references things that I think came from the Arabian Nights, and the children refer directly to Sherlock Holmes, The Jungle Books, and The Children of the New Forest, which was a 19th century historical novel.
Reality vs Pretend
Much of the book is about the difference between reality and pretend, and the Bastable children often end up about halfway between the two with most of their schemes. They draw much of their inspiration from books they’ve read, and they seem to be aware that much of what they do is a game of pretend, although they also seem to halfway hope that their schemes will work out for them the way they would if they were children from the books they’ve read.
The children’s innocence and naivete about the way the world works is a major reason why they don’t understand how things work differently between the real world and the world in stories. It’s also the reason why they only seem to halfway grasp their father’s money troubles and the reasons for them. Adults often find the innocence of children to be charming, and the adults in the story are often charmed by the children for that reason. It works in their favor in the end because they receive kindness from adults for being charming, innocent children, who know how to have fun. However, the adults in the story also understand the children’s family situation, seemingly even better than they do, and they frequently humor them and help them out of pity. It’s both funny and also a little sad and touching at times for adults reading this book. It’s funny because you can see what the children are really doing and follow their logic as they map out their plans, while at the same time spotting how it’s all going to go wrong before the children see it themselves. It’s also a little sad and worrying because you can also see how little the children are being supervised and how much they turn to the kindly uncle who lives next door for help when they’re in real trouble because their mother is dead and their father is wrapped up in his own troubles.
The subject of the children’s deceased mother comes up periodically throughout the book, as the children think about how things have changed for the family since she died. Dora admits to Oswald that, before their mother died, she asked Dora to look after the younger children. That’s why Dora has been trying to be responsible and to stop the other children from doing things she knows are wrong (like turning into bandits to rob people for money). The other children often get irritated with her for stopping them from doing things they want to do, and they frequently do the wrong thing anyway, even if they have to go behind her back to do it. Oswald develops some sympathy for Dora when he realizes that she’s been trying to do a difficult job that she doesn’t really know how to do, and he talks to some of the other children about going easy on her.
Racial Issues and Gender Stereotypes
This book has been reprinted many times since its original publication, and modern editions have been edited to remove inappropriate racial language. The original book has multiple places where there are racial issues and gender stereotypes, although they mostly come from two very specific sources. The gender stereotypes, which are found in other books in this series as well, come from our narrator, Oswald. Oswald has noticed that his sisters and other girls have different standards from him and his brothers, and it sometimes irritates him. Like other boys in vintage children’s books, he also has a tendency to try to show that boys are better than girls, sometimes saying things like, “Girls think too much of themselves if you let them do everything the same as men.” I partly think that the author, who was a woman, put things like that in her stories to show how boys of her time behaved, but maybe also to poke fun at men who felt threatened by women doing things that were considered for men only, like they’re little boys, feeling threatened by sisters who can do what they do.
Much of the racial issues in the story come from the children’s playacting, which is again based on the books they’ve read. They frequently refer to “Red Indians”, by which they mean Native Americans. Based on what they’ve read from books, American Indians are fascinating and exciting but also savage, and they love all of that. Actually, now that I think of it, that stereotype isn’t a bad description of the Bastable children themselves. They are somewhat savage or semi-feral in their behavior at times, although they would probably hate being called that. They’re certainly not tame children. I don’t entirely blame the children in the story for having misconceptions about other people because children can get misconceptions from things they read, see, or are told by adults. I don’t entirely blame the author for depicting the kind of misconceptions children have, either, especially because the Bastable children’s misconceptions make up a large part of the story and its humor. What is more concerning to me is the original sources of these misconceptions, the things that children get from people who should know better, who might even actually know better but who spread misconceptions anyway for their own purposes.
Whether the author of this book could be considered a source of misconceptions, or at least for perpetuating them, is a matter for debate. The references to other pieces of real literature and how the children use them for inspiration for what they do point to earlier books that sparked these misconceptions and racial stereotypes. I’ve always thought that the things children read early in life set them up for many of their attitudes as adults, and that’s why I think it’s unfair to expose children to literature that creates these misconceptions without an accompanying explanation about why certain attitudes are wrong or harmful and how spreading them causes problems. As adults, we often forgive children for things they do and think because we know they’re young and still learning, but children don’t stay little forever, and they need to know what is expected of them as they grow older. When they’re no longer little kids, people expect them to have a certain level of understanding about the world, the people in it, and how to treat others and speak respectfully about them. If they don’t demonstrate that kind of understanding by a certain age, many people will not take it that they’re still in the learning phase but will think that they’re being deliberately insulting or trying to provoke others when they speak inappropriately. In many cases, those people will be correct because there are people of all ages who like to push other people’s buttons to get a reaction, but I think it’s doing a great disservice to set children up for that type of conflict by trying to keep them “innocent” for too long. I’ve seen that even kids who know that there are certain words they shouldn’t use don’t always seem to understand why they’re not supposed to use them, and that half knowledge is part of the reason why they sometimes throw around nasty terms like they don’t know what they mean. The truth is, some of them really don’t. Kids like that don’t sound charmingly innocent in the 21st century. They sound dumb and clueless because they are these things. The things they don’t know are painfully obvious, and people, even possibly other kids their own age, will definitely notice and openly comment on it. The reason why they’re so clueless is that the adults in their lives who knew enough to tell them, at some point, that these were bad or shocking words to use around other people apparently didn’t explain to them why or make it clear what the social consequences for using these words would be. What I’m trying to say is not that reading this book or others of this vintage is bad, but if you’re going to share books like this with kids, with the original wording, you can’t do it properly without talking to the kids and being very direct about certain subjects. If you’re not, it could lead to problems, and it will be no favor to the child to set them up for that. The things people don’t know will almost certainly hurt them eventually and probably damage their relationships with others along the way.
The Bastable children don’t end up with damaged relationships or social consequences for the things they do because they are still young enough to be considered charmingly innocent and naive in their antics, although at least some of them would be considered old enough to know better about some things by their age. The children don’t even seem to understand the difference between Native American Indians and Indians from India until it is explained to them toward the book, when their “Indian uncle” comes to see them. The Indian uncle is the source of another racial issue in the language he uses. He’s one of the adults who says things he shouldn’t, and I need to talk about what he says and why he says it.
Readers should be aware that the original printing of this book contains the n-word. There is one use of the n-word by an adult character, toward the end of the book. It happens just once in the story, although it threw me when I reached that point because there wasn’t really anything leading up to it, so its use seemed rather sudden. It’s a shame because, up to that point, I was prepared to make some allowances for what the children say about “Red Indians” as part of their innocent ignorance, but as I said, we make allowances for the things children do that we don’t for people who are old enough to know better. The “Indian uncle” just throws out the n-word in a casual expression he uses, like “If Oswald isn’t a man, then I’m a monkey’s uncle,” except he uses the n-word instead of “monkey’s uncle.” A more recent edition of the book I’ve seen replaces the n-word with the word “fool.” I could forgive the children some of the racial stereotypes they use in some of their games because the entire premise of the story is that the Bastable children are naive and somewhat clueless, getting most of their sense of how the world works from storybooks instead of guiding adults, but things that adults say and do are different. To say that this was simply part of the way people talked during this period of history would be taking the easy way out and providing an apparent excuse for the behavior. Everyone has reasons for the things we say and do, and I’m not letting either the author or this “Indian uncle” off the hook that easily without prodding deeper into both of their motives.
The n-word isn’t something that appears in many of the children’s books I’ve read, even the vintage and antique books, because it’s a crude term. Technically, the n-word isn’t even really a word by itself but a slang corruption of a word, and it’s been considered a crudity and an insult since much earlier in the 19th century. By the early 20th century, its use was associated primarily with uneducated and unrefined “poor white trash” in the United States, and whatever their personal racial attitudes, people who wanted to be seen as educated would avoid its use. Those who did use it tended to use it in a derogatory and hostile way. Even in children’s books as old as this one, the use of crude racial terms (when they appear) are often used to establish the personality and background of the character who uses them. They appear as hints of crudeness, lack of good upbringing and moral character, and even violence and criminal tendencies (see books in the Rover Boys series for examples). Even when other characters use racial stereotypes in these stories, the use of the n-word in particular tends to signal something crude and nasty in the user’s character, something that goes beyond the other characters’ level of acceptability, especially when it comes from a character who is portrayed as being old enough and educated enough to know better. A contrast would be the Little House on the Prairie series, where characters sometimes use crude racial terms without being the villains of the story. However, the characters in the Little House on the Prairie books can still fall under the description of uneducated and unrefined. They are a poor farming family who lives much of their lives in the backwoods and on relatively isolated farms. When they associate with other people, it is most often people who are very similar to themselves, so they’re rarely in a position to get feedback from a wider society. The while the Ingalls family does try to better themselves and seek out educational opportunities later in the series, characters in those books could be considered “innocent” about certain things in much the same sense as the Bastable children are. That is, none of them know any better. The term “innocent” implies a lack of knowledge and experience as well as a lack of guilt. The Bastable children are, once again, proof that what you don’t know is obvious to others who do know, and it can hurt your image.
With that in mind, when I have seen the n-word or similar words in print, my main approach is to use it as a clue about the personality of the character who says it or about the author who wrote the dialog or both. One of the difficulties that I encountered with this particular book, compared to others, is that the author sets up the “Indian uncle” who uses the n-word to be one of the “good” characters, a rich and kindly relative who saves them all from poverty. He would seem to be in the position of someone who should know better than to use the n-word, but he does so anyway, in a casual and thoughtless way. That makes this book different from other books, where the n-word is used by characters who are definitely villains and whose use of crude language is portrayed as part of their rough and ill-mannered character. The uncle’s age and position in society wouldn’t seem to put him in the position of an ignorant innocent, and yet, he’s not portrayed as a rough villain. However, there is something else at play in this situation that I think explains who this “Indian uncle” really is and what his deal is, and that’s Victorian British colonialism.
In this series of books, adults are not always referred to by name but by their relationship to the children or the role they play in the children’s lives. In this case, the “Indian uncle” (who is never called anything else by the children, not even by his personal name) is not an “Indian” of any kind. This is just another of the children’s misconceptions because of what their father told them about him. He is apparently really an uncle of the children, and he has recently returned to England from India, but he is white and British, like the rest of their family. This is revealed in hints that go over the children’s heads at first, but which are explained more toward the end of the book.
First, the children listen in on some of the things their father and uncle say to each other when they’re having dinner, and they hear them talking about “native races” and “imperial something-or-other.” The children don’t understand what they’re talking about. Because of the books that they’ve been reading, they’re still under the impression that “Indian” means that this uncle of theirs is a Native American, but adults will put together the bits and pieces and realize that, since this story is late Victorian, the uncle has just come from India, which is under British imperial rule, and like an imperialist, he’s probably not saying many complimentary things about the “native races” there. 19th century British racial concepts were shaped by their colonization and quest for empire and were frequently expressed in a pseudo-scientific form of social Darwinism, that some races of people on Earth had evolved to be more successful than others, with the British at the top of the heap because they had successfully conquered other people and took over their land for their own use. (By this definition, I note that highwaymen and robbers should also be considered vastly superior to the people they rob because they successfully took something away from someone else. I’m sure that the Victorians would be insulted by that comparison, but I think it accurately shows the problems with this type of thinking.)
Second, when the uncle’s house is described, it’s full of taxidermy animals, most of which he killed himself (this is discussed further in the second book in the series) during his travels. That’s when it is revealed that the uncle has actually come from India and is not Native American at all, as the children had supposed. He is a wealthy man who has traveled as an adventurer, which is exciting for the children to hear about, but this is also another clue to the uncle’s personality. I noticed that the author made it a point to say that the uncle’s study was very different from the children’s father’s study because it didn’t have books in it but had those taxidermy animals. I took this as an indication that the uncle is not as much of a man of learning or business as the children’s father. He doesn’t use his study for reading and studying anything. He has money, but I’m guessing that he didn’t get it from having a profession. The children mention that their father went to Balliol College, and they meet a friend of his from his student days. Their father spends most of his time working, even though his business is suffering, and his old friend is also a family man with job (he is described as a sub-editor in the next book in the series). However, the “Indian uncle” is not described as having any profession. We don’t know if he ever attended college, but if he did, it probably wasn’t to be educated for a career. He is a man of leisure or relative leisure, who has apparently spent a good part of his life traveling around the world, shooting things and having them stuffed, and has little interest in books and studying. He’s had the money to live this kind of life, so he does it, fully confident in his superiority and ability to go where he wants and do what he likes. What I’m thinking is that this man is probably their father’s elder brother, who probably inherited money and indulged himself, while his brother studied and worked. Travel can broaden a person’s perspective, but the uncle seems to have traveled for self-indulgent adventure and excitement rather than learning about the world and the people in it. He’s got enough money that he probably doesn’t have to learn anything he doesn’t want to, and as the man who pays the bills and hires people to do things for him, he’s probably not held accountable for much. He can say and do what he likes, so he does that, without giving it a second thought, and maybe not even a first one. This isn’t explained in the course of the book, and I can’t point to much more than I already have to support it, but I think this man is meant to represent a type of wealthy British imperial adventurer.
Ultimately, what I’m saying is that the children think their uncle is a great man because he brings the family to live with him in his big house and helps their father with his business (probably by providing financial backing), so the family’s circumstances improve. He can invest money in their father’s business (the nature of which isn’t specified), and he showers the children with presents, which they love. However, as an adult, I’m noting his apparent relative lack of interest in books, intellectualism, and refinement of manners. I’m sure that the children will find him exciting to be around, but he doesn’t strike me as a learned man, a well-read one, or even a very well-behaved one. He has a lot of money, which can be used to fund the children’s education, but I don’t really trust his guidance or ability to be a role model. I also wonder if the children, who are being given an education and were definitely raised to love books, will continue to see their uncle in a romanticized way as they grow older. Few people can spend their lives traveling around, shooting things, and hiring “native races” to carry their baggage along the way. If that’s most of the uncle’s experience of life, it’s not really going to prepare the children for the future. At the time E. Nesbit wrote this book, she couldn’t have known that, about 15 year later, Europe would erupt into World War I, and boys who were children around this time, like Oswald, Dicky, Noel, and H.O., may very well have ended up being soldiers and had many of their illusions about life shattered. (I have more to say about that when I cover the next book, The Wouldbegoods.) People talk about past people being a product of their times, and in this case, the uncle and his racial attitudes are both a product of this time of imperial Britain and his own wealth, and nobody outside that bubble would see either the way he does.
That brings up the question of what the author, E. Nesbit, really thinks about these things. Does she also share the uncle’s view’s of British imperialism and other races, or is she just portraying the uncle as a type of person she observed around her in society? It’s not entirely clear because everything in the story is presented from young Oswald’s point-of-view, and he is uncritical of these things and seems to have little idea of the larger picture of things. But, there are things in The Wouldbegoods that I think help clarify some aspects of that, some possibly intentionally and others possibly not.
That was a long rant/explanation, but I thought it was important to delve into the issues a little deeper. The tl;dr of it is that, while people were the products of their times, they were also the ones who made their times what they were for their own purposes, even if they didn’t think as deeply about it at the time as we do today, and what we observe about them and their behavior are clues to their personality, life circumstances, and motivations. Overall, I found the racial issues with this story to be aggravating distractions from what is otherwise a fun and funny story, and their removal from modern printings actually improves the story by removing these distractions from the plot. The modern printings are fine for kids to read.
The Movie Version
I watched the 1996 version of the movie, which emphasized the more serious portions of the book and included the character of a female doctor, who helped the family in place of the uncle from India. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as funny as the original book. I’m not sure about other movie versions.
Punch (real name Philip) Wagner and his family are spending the summer by the sea in North Carolina, and his parents have let his friend Tom Ellis come with them. The 12-year-old boys are looking forward to exploring the area by themselves, but Punch’s father has arranged for the son of a friend of his to be their guide. At first, Punch isn’t thrilled about his father arranging for them to be led around by a boy they don’t know. Punch’s father has a very different personality from Punch. His father is a professor, very academic, so Punch doesn’t feel like he can take his father’s word that they’ll get along with this new boy. Punch and Tom particularly wanted their independence and a chance to make some plans of their own.
However, Punch is surprised to discover that his father’s old friend is a laid-back, jovial man who calls his father “old crawdad.” His son, Skeeter Grace, is a little younger than Punch and Tom, which makes Punch even less enthusiastic about having him as a guide. Skeeter Grace doesn’t seem to be any more excited about hanging out with Punch and Tom as they are with him, but the adults suggest that Skeeter take the other boys for a boat ride. Punch’s pretty older sister, Lila, says that she’d like to go with them. Punch warms up to Skeeter when he finds out that he participates in dolphin watches run by Duke University because he loves dolphins, although he considers Skeeter a bit of a know-it-all.
When Punch tries to ask Skeeter if he plans to work with the dolphin researchers when he grows up, Skeeter becomes oddly touchy. Punch mentions it to his father, and his father explains that nobody in Skeeter’s family has been to college before. His father is a carpenter, and it isn’t expected that Skeeter will attend college, either. Punch’s father points out that it must be difficult for Skeeter to want something that he doubts he’ll ever be able to get.
Punch is particularly interested in an old house nearby where Blackbeard once lived. He tries to persuade Skeeter to come with him and Tom to check it out, but Skeeter warns them not to go there. For one thing, that house is owned by somebody who wouldn’t like them trespassing, and for another, Skeeter is firmly convinced that the house is haunted by the ghost of Blackbeard. Lila says she doesn’t know why the boys are so interested in Blackbeard because he was a horrible person who killed people and “used women” (no details given, but you get the idea). Punch’s main interest is the stories about Blackbeard’s hidden treasure. He wants to be the one to find it.
The boys go by Blackbeard’s old house, now called Hammock House, and they’re started by the sound of something hitting the roof and dropping down to the ground. When Punch picks up the small object, he discovers that it’s a small plastic skull with glittering red eyes. It’s startling, but it doesn’t seem likely that a real pirate ghost would toss them a plastic skull. Tom thinks maybe it’s some kind of warning, but Punch thinks that Skeeter probably tossed the little toy skull in the air when they weren’t looking, just to scare them.
Punch eventually persuades Skeeter to help him and Tom search for the treasure by pointing out to him that he would be able to afford college if they found Blackbeard’s treasure. He sees how badly Skeeter wants to go to college when Skeeter jumps on the project, bringing along a metal detector and helping the other boys dig and do research. At first, Punch just thought of the project as a fun summer adventure, but when he realizes what a big difference it would make to Skeeter to really find the treasure, the hunt becomes much more serious. Punch knows that searching for the treasure is a long shot, and it would be disappointing if they never found anything. Since it will be several more years before Skeeter will be old enough for college, they don’t have to succeed this summer, and the boys discuss making it an annual project every summer.
To make the most of this summer, they want to spend some time camping out and searching for treasure. Punch’s mother is reluctant to let the boys do that until Lila says that she’ll go with them. Lila knows that the boys are searching for treasure, and she encourages them to get into the mindset of being pirates as much as possible.
While the boys are using a metal detector, they find an old metal box. The contents don’t look like pirate treasure, but they appear to be someone’s treasure. There’s an old Bible, some jewelry, and a couple of tarnished silver baby spoons. On one hand, the boys are pleased to have found something, but on the other, it’s not as grand as what they had hoped to find. Lila says that the jewelry could be valuable, and the boys think that the local historical society might be interested in the old Bible. Skeeter explains that there used to be an old whaling community in the area they’re searching, but it was often damaged by storms. He says people sometimes buried valuables, knowing that their homes could be damaged or destroyed by storms. He figures that the owner of this particular box could have been killed in one of the storms, which is why he never returned for his box. They find some other boxes that appear to have been lost in a shipwreck, including one with spices and one with bottles of alcohol, but none of them are what they’re really looking for.
More and more, Punch becomes convinced that the only place where they should be looking for Blackbeard’s treasure is around his old house. He finally persuades Tom and Skeeter to come with him and have a look.
However, the house doesn’t seem as empty as the boys assumed it would be. Punch’s dog seems afraid of the house, and they still don’t know where the little plastic skull came from. Then, the boys hear a frightening scream, like the screams of a girl who was supposedly murdered by Blackbeard years ago. Is the house really haunted?
My Reaction and Spoilers
For most of the book, the boys are doing things like watching the dolphins, camping out, and digging for treasure in various places. The question of whether or not Blackbeard’s old house is haunted is the main mystery of the story, but the story doesn’t really become about that until almost the end of the book. Punch has the little skull to puzzle over before that, but it isn’t until the boys return to Hammock House to look for buried treasure that they become truly concerned with the ghosts that seem to be haunting the place.
There is a logical explanation behind the hauntings, at least some of them, making this the kind of Scooby-Doo Pseudo-Ghost Story that I always liked as a kid. In a way, this story is also a kind of MacGuffin story. It’s not so much what the kids find as the adventures that they have during the search that are important. The boys’ fathers understand because they later confess that they also hunted for Blackbeard’s treasure when they were young. It seems that, even though Punch thinks of his professorial father as being very different from him, when he was young, he was much the same sort of boy that Punch is now. Skeeter’s dreams of studying marine biology also do not depend on finding Blackbeard’s treasure. When his father finds out that’s what Skeeter really wants to do, he’s supportive, and Punch’s father, as a professor, offers some useful advice about scholarships.
There is some alcohol use in the book. There is a part of the story where the boys find a box with old liquor bottles and drink the contents, pretending like they’re pirates drinking rum. The boys get drunk and make themselves sick, and when Lila catches them, she lectures them about how they could have died. My first thought was that only an idiot drinks from random bottles that they just find. Even though they thought they were probably whiskey bottles, “probably” doesn’t seem good enough to just start drinking it. Also, Lila is right that they could have killed themselves from drinking too much. It is possible to die from alcohol poisoning by drinking way too much liquor of any kind all in one sitting, as kids they would be hit much harder than full-sized adults, and not having any prior experience with alcohol, they have no sense of their own limits. I’ve heard of college parties where people have died from alcohol overdose because they were new to drinking, didn’t know when they were going too far, and were in an environment where people were encouraging drinking to excess rather than learning restraint. What I’m saying is that the boys were in real danger because they were too young and inexperienced to understand the danger they were in. Fortunately, the boys learn their lesson without any lasting harm, and making themselves sick means that they’re unlikely to make the same mistake again.
Uncle Quentin and Aunt Fanny are expecting their daughter George and her three cousins and dog to come for a visit because their parents are going away on a cruise when Uncle Quentin hears from a friend of his, a professor, who also wants to come for a visit to discuss his latest invention. Aunt Fanny says that they won’t be able to accommodate the children and the professor at the same time, and Uncle Quentin had better tell the professor not to come. However, Professor Haling is already on his way, and he’s bringing his son with him. The children have also already left home, so there’s nothing for them to do but try to accommodate their guests as well as they can.
It’s not going to be an easy visit. Uncle Quentin and Professor Haling both want quiet to discuss their work, but the professor’s nine-year-old son, Tinker, is obsessed with cars and keeps making noises to imitate them. Tinker has also brought his pet monkey, Mischief, with him. At first, Mischief and George’s dog, Timmy, don’t get along with each other. The animals eventually make peace with each other, but Uncle Quentin and Professor Haling decide that they can’t put up with the children’s noise. Uncle Quentin insists that Aunt Fanny send the children away somewhere so they can continue their important work.
Aunt Fanny doesn’t like it that such important men, who are admittedly working on things that will help people, don’t seem as interested in making their families happy, and George points out the hypocrisy that Uncle Quentin can’t stand their noise when he often slams doors that interrupt her studies and that he wants to push her out of the home where she lives, too. Aunt Fanny says that part of the problem is that George and her father are too much alike, but the noise issue and overcrowding in the house are still problems that have to be solved.
The children ask if they can go camping, but Aunt Fanny says that it’s too cold for that. Tinker suggests that they could all go to his lighthouse. They ask him what he means by “his” lighthouse, and Tinker happily explains that he owns a lighthouse. Actually, his father bought it when he was working on an important project and wanted a quiet place to stay where he wouldn’t be interrupted by phone calls or visitors or other distractions. When his project was finished, he no longer cared about the lighthouse, but Tinker love it, so his father gave him the key and told him that it could be his lighthouse now. The other children are amazed at the idea of a private lighthouse, and they agree to go there. Aunt Fanny agrees to let them go, and they begin planning for the trip. It’s at a place called Demon’s Rocks.
On the way to the lighthouse, their taxi driver, who was born at Demon’s Rocks tells them a little about the history and legends of the place. He says that it’s called Demon’s Rocks because there are formidable rocks there that people say could only have been placed by demons. The old lighthouse was meant to steer ships away from the rocks, but one time, some wreckers captured the lighthouse keeper and turned off the light to intentionally wreck a ship so they could raid the wreck for its cargo. The driver says that his great-grandfather still lives in the area, and if they ask him, he can tell them more stories about the place and maybe show them the cave where the wreckers used to hide out.
When the children meet the taxi driver’s great-grandfather, Jeremiah, he is an eccentric old man, but he likes children and even knows how to get along with Mischief the monkey. The children ask him about the wreckers, and he tells them the story about how One-Ear Bill and his wreckers put out the light in the lighthouse and used a lamp to misdirect a ship to make it crash. Jeremiah says he witnessed what they did and reported them, sending One-Ear Bill to prison. But, he says that One-Ear Bill didn’t care that much about going to prison because he hid the treasure that he took from the wrecked ship and expected to be rich when he got out. However, he died in prison, and nobody ever found the hidden treasure. The relatives of the other wreckers have tried to find it, but nobody has ever succeeded. The children are fascinated by the story and ask Jeremiah if he will show them the wreckers’ cave, and he agrees to show them sometime.
A local shopkeeper says that there is a kind of rivalry between Jeremiah and the descendants of the wreckers because the wreckers’ descendants make a marginal living by giving paid tours of the wreckers’ cave. The children don’t really expect that there’s still a treasure hidden in or around the cave. They think that, probably, someone found the treasure years ago and didn’t tell anyone or that the treasure might have been in some insecure spot and got washed out to sea.
However, strange things soon start happening. Someone steals the key to the lighthouse when Tinker leaves it in the lock and some other things from the lighthouse. The local police discover one of the wreckers’ descendants, Jacob, stole the things from the lighthouse, and the children get them back, but they can’t find the key on Jacob.
Then, when Jeremiah gives the children a tour of the cave, Mischief gets lost and finds a gold coin. The children aren’t sure where Mischief found the coin or if there are any others, but they begin to think that maybe the treasure is still in the cave after all. They also begin to consider that there may be a tunnel that leads from the lighthouse to the cave. However, someone else seems to have the same idea, and they’re trying to stop the children from finding the treasure before they do!
My Reaction
Part of the concept of the Famous Five series is that the children are very independent and have adventures that are unsupervised by adults. Children like stories about independent kids, but as an adult, I’m still struck by the family relationships the children have. I’ve noticed that the adults in Enid Blyton’s stories often have personal issues or dysfunctional relationships.
The reason why the children are having their independent adventure in this story is that the children’s fathers are too absorbed in their work and bothered by the presence of the children, so they just want them out of the house. Although George likes having adventures with her cousins, she does feel a little resentful that her father is basically pushing her and the others out of the house. I particularly noticed the part where Aunt Fanny reflects that important men who are working on things that will help people, don’t seem as interested in making their families happy. Uncle Quentin seems oblivious about the effect he has on his family, and when the children are getting ready to go to the lighthouse, he seems confused about where they are going, apparently having even forgotten that they were going anywhere. I keep getting the feeling that part of the reason why the children are so independent is that the adults in their family aren’t particularly nurturing and don’t make their home lives very pleasant.
Tinker’s home life isn’t terribly happy, either. His father is very permissive, letting him have a pet monkey and even giving him the lighthouse, but he also seems pretty oblivious to the things Tinker does. The other children find out that Tinker’s mother died giving birth to him, and with his father so utterly absorbed in his work, Tinker hasn’t had much supervision or guidance in how to behave, which is why he’s so wild. Tinker’s father takes him places and lets him have things or do things that other children can’t, but he doesn’t seem to get much personal attention or affection from his father. At one point, the other children are sending post cards home, and Tinker says there’s no point in sending one to his father because he won’t read it. That says a lot, and the other children feel sorry for him.
What I’m saying is, while I like the adventure and would have loved that sense of freedom as a kid, as an adult, I recognize that behind the children’s independence in many of the stories are some unresolved family issues and self-absorbed adults. The adults don’t worry as much about the children as most parents would, not only because they trust them on their own, but because they seem too absorbed in their own issues to think that much about what the children are doing and what could happen to them. The children go to boarding school much of the time, but their parents don’t seem too eager to spend time with them and bond as a family during their breaks, content to let them go off by themselves so they can get back to what they were doing. This also seems to be the case in other series by Blyton, like the Adventure series, which starts off with a pair of siblings going to stay with an aunt and uncle who seem to have a dysfunctional marriage and a pair of orphans who live with a strict uncle who seems to see them as a nuisance. Since the kids are fictional and the children’s circumstances are only there to set up their adventures, it’s not that big of an issue to enjoying the adventure, but yet, as an adult, these things do jump out at me.
Kay Harker is an orphan, the ward of Sir Theopompus, usually in the care of his governess, Miss Sylvia Daisy. One day, Sir Theopompus asks Kay if he has any idea what he wants to do when he grows up. Kay says that he likes the idea of being a jockey, but Sir Theopompus says that he could be a sea captain, like his great-grandfather. According to the stories about him, Kay’s great-grandfather sailed around the world and stole a treasure from the priests of Santa Barbara worth about a million pounds (British money). The stories differ about what happened to the treasure, though. In some versions, his crew mutinied and took the treasure for themselves, but other stories say that he brought the treasure home with him and hid it somewhere in his family home, the home where Kay now lives.
Sir Theopompus asks Kay if he’s ever come across the treasure, but Kay says he hasn’t. Sir Theopompus suggests that if Kay finds the treasure, the two them could split it between them. Kay says that wouldn’t be fair, if he had to do all the work of finding it by himself, and also the treasure is stolen property, so it would rightly belong to the priests of Santa Barbara. Still, Sir Theopompus encourages Kay to search for the treasure. Kay doesn’t believe that the treasure is really in the house or that his great-grandfather would be a thief, and he doesn’t think it’s fair to tell such stories about him when he isn’t there to defend himself. His governess tells him that he has been impertinent and sends him to bed early.
Kay is later woken by someone calling to him to open the door, and he sees a door in his room that he has never noticed before. The voice he hears belongs to the black cat called Nibbins, who tells Kay to come with him and not make any noise. Most of the house is asleep, and Nibbins refers to the ones who are awake as the “midnight folk.” He leads Kay down a secret passage that was once used by smugglers.
There, Kay learns that his old toys were his “guards.” He doesn’t know where his old toys are because his governess packed them away when she came, saying that they would just remind him of the past. Nibbins says that his old toys had stumbled onto a clue about the hidden treasure and went in search of it. They didn’t think it would take them long to find it, but he hasn’t heard from them since. Kay sadly fears that his old toys may actually be dead. (A horrifying thought.)
Then, there’s an even more shocking revelation. Nibbins shows him that there are spy hole where Kay can see what’s happening in various rooms in the house, and in the dining room, he witnesses a meeting of witches! Nibbins shows Kay where the witches keep their brooms, and they take a couple of the brooms on a ride to the woods, where Nibbins introduces Kay to a poacher called Bitem. They witness the witches having a bonfire and a magical ritual at Wicked Hill. Nibbins says that he used to be a witches’ cat and helped with rituals like that. Sometimes, he still feels the call of magic.
The leader of the magical group is a wizard called Abner Brown, and they overhear him saying to the witches that they are going to hunt for the Harker Treasure. Abner has learned that the treasure is not actually in the Harker house, but it’s somewhere close by. Abner reveals previously-unknown details of the treasure’s history, including the fact that his own grandfather had once been in possession of it and hid it until someone called Benito Trigger found it. Abner has found evidence that his grandfather tracked down Trigger and confronted him in this very area and that Trigger may have killed him. Abner believes that the treasure is still hidden somewhere near to where his grandfather died. Nibbins leads Kay back to his bedroom through another secret passage before anyone discovers that he is gone.
Kay knows that what he witnessed the night before wasn’t a dream because, in the morning, he sees the remains of the leftover goose that the witches were eating the night before, picked to the bones. The servants think that the cats got at the goose and ate the leftovers, but Kay knows better.
Then, the portrait of Kay’s great-grandfather comes to life, and his great-grandfather invites Kay into the portrait, showing him the house as it was in the past. His great-grandfather denies having stolen the treasure years ago, but he says that it was entrusted to him and that he lost it. He was in Santa Barbara when the territory was breaking away from Spain, and the archbishop gave him the treasure to guard from the revolutionaries. However, his crew did mutiny and turn pirate. The crew took the treasure, and they abandoned Kay’s great-grandfather ashore, far from any European colony. For a time, he says that he was a slave of a tribe of Indians (Native Americans), but he eventually escaped and made it home to England. He heard that his old ship may have sunk, but he doesn’t know for sure. Even he doesn’t know where the treasure is now, thinking that it must have either sunk with the ship or been scattered by the crew. It’s always bothered him that he was unable to fulfill his promise to keep the treasure safe. He wants Kay to learn what happened to the treasure and, if possible, restore it to its rightful owners.
Through Kay’s midnight adventures and the ghosts of the past stirred up by the magic of the witches, Kay begins to learn the full sequence of events that led to the treasure being lost, and eventually, what happened to it. Along the way, Kay also makes the startling discovery that his governess is actually one of the witches!
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Spoilers
There were some parts of the story that I found difficult to follow because the story kind of jumps around, people start talking about things as if we should already know about them, and some things that Kay encounters are not fully explained. Many of them seem like dream sequences or imaginings, except they have lasting consequences. Then, there are times when people go into lengthy explanations that seem to meander, and there are people who go by multiple names. For awhile, Kay almost seems to forget about seeking his great-grandfather’s treasure and starts looking for the treasure of an old highwayman instead, and there is a strange interlude with King Arthur and his knights.
Still, this story is a children’s classic, and it’s almost like a collection of all the features that are found in classic children’s literature: an orphan, talking animals, witches, pirates, ghosts, mermaids, a highwayman, King Arthur and his knights, hidden treasure, etc.
For awhile, I thought that the story might end with the implication that much of it was in Kay’s imagination. Kay is a lonely boy who doesn’t see his guardian very often and lives with a strict governess and no other children for company. I thought maybe he was spinning dreams or imagined stories to explain other events happening around him. I spent part of the story working out how a child might interpret a strict governess who took away his old toys as a witch, and I thought maybe she was in a romantic relationships with Abner Brown, which would be why Kay would see him as a wizard. Then, maybe these young people had parties in the house with their friends after Kay was put to bed, so he imagined that they were having witches’ meetings. They could also be hunting for the legendary treasure, so all the parts related to treasure-hunting could be true. However, the book implies that the magical parts of the story are real. Even the magical things Kay experiences have real world consequences, which help both him and readers to realize that what he has seen has really happened.
I thought that the story became a little more cohesive after Kay makes the discovery that his governess is actually one of the witches. He eventually learns the full truth of what happened to the treasure years ago and meets up with his old toys/guards, who are still alive and have been seeking the treasure the entire time. Kay’s toys/guards bring the treasure from its hiding place to a secret hiding place in Kay’s room and help him to alert the proper authorities and restore the treasure to its rightful owner. Kay’s governess is arrested when she and her friends are caught trespassing in pursuit of the treasure and in possession of smuggled goods. The governess is released when Abner Brown pays the fines for their activities, but she leaves the area instead of returning to Kay. Kay’s home life changes for the better because a friend of his mother comes to live with him and look after him.
Mystery of the Empty House by Dorothy Sterling, 1960.
Patricia Harrison’s family has recently moved from their apartment in New York to a house in Haven. Her father used to live in Haven when he was a boy. His mother still lives in town, and he still knows some of the other people who live there. Patricia, called Pat, is still unpacking her belongings when a boy from across the street, Jim Gray, calls to invite her to play ball with him and some of his friends in the field behind her house because his mother used to know his father when they were kids. Pat isn’t very used to playing with boys because she went to an all-girls school when she was in New York, but she agrees to go play ball with the boys.
When she goes to meet the boys, some of the other boys, the Paine brothers, don’t want her to play with them. When Jim said they were meeting “Pat”, they assumed that “Pat” was another boy. Jim says he doesn’t care if Pat is a girl or not because they could really use another player. Pat thinks they’re rude, and since they don’t seem to want her, she starts to leave, but Jim stops her and persuades her to stay. Even though Pat is usually good at baseball at school, she finds herself making clumsy mistakes when she plays with the boys, probably because she feels uncomfortable with them. Finally, she hits a home run, which is great, but there’s a problem. She accidentally hit the ball into the window of an old, abandoned house nearby that looks haunted.
The boys are mad because it’s the only baseball they have. Pat says they could just go get the ball, but the boys say they can’t. When she asks them if they’re scared, they say that’s not the problem; they’ve just promised that they won’t go near the old house. Pat says that, since she didn’t promise, she can just go get the ball, but Jim stops her from going into the house. He tells her that they can just buy a new ball. When Pat asks him why he doesn’t want her to go in, Jim says that it’s a secret having to do with the Paines. Pat says that she’s sick of the Paines and insists on going into the old house.
The old house is dark and spooky. When she climbs in through the window, Pat is startled when she runs into another person inside. At first, she can’t see the other person too clearly because it’s dark, but when she asks the girl who she is, the girl tells her that she’s Patricia Harrison. Pat is shocked and tells her that she can’t be Patricia Harrison because that’s her name. The girl finally laughs and admits that her real name is Barbara Thomas. Barbara lives next door to Pat’s grandmother and decided to stop by and meet her. When she saw Pat playing with the boys, she decided to go explore the old house instead.
Barbara is the one who explains the history of the house and the Paines’ attitude to Pat. The Paine family used to live in the old house. It’s the oldest house in town, dating back to the Colonial era. Nat Paine, the oldest of the Paine boys, was always proud of his family’s old home and used to brag about how George Washington and Lafayette visited the house during the Revolutionary War. It was even occupied by British soldiers at one time. Unfortunately, the father of the Paine boys was killed during the Korean War several years earlier (dating this story to the late 1950s or 1960, the year it was published). Since then, the family has fallen on hard times, and they’ve been unable to pay the taxes on the house. Now, because of the unpaid taxes, the town council is threatening to sell the old house to pay the unpaid taxes. The Paines have been forced to move out of the house and into a much smaller place, and Nat is very upset about it. Plus, he’s been going through this phase where he’s decided that he hates girls because he’s just getting into middle school, where all the boys either start developing crushes or decide that they hate girls. His younger brothers are being pests because they’re following his lead.
Barbara says that her father felt bad about what happened to the family and tried to convince other people in town to help the Paines pay the taxes on the old place. They could have helped, but they’ve made it plain that they just don’t want to. As Barbara’s father put it, “people in Haven are a bunch of rock-ribbed, rugged individualists who wouldn’t help their own grandmas.” (I have strong feelings about that, and I’ll explain them in the reaction section.) Barbara reveals right away that the secret Jim is keeping for the Paine brothers is that Nat made his brothers take a vow with him that they wouldn’t enter that house again “until it was rightfully theirs.” Barbara says that Nat’s sense of pride talking, and “You know how boys are.” She thinks Nat’s being overly dramatic, although she sympathizes with the family’s plight. When Pat suggests that maybe they shouldn’t be in the house, either, Barbara says that she comes there all the time to explore. Barbara thinks the old house is fascinating and that there might be a secret passage somewhere. She invites Pat to help her look for it sometime.
At dinner that night, Pat finds out that her parents already know about the death of the boys’ father and the trouble that the family is having over their old house. Pat’s mother says that the old house is a good example of the saltbox style of house that was popular in Colonial New England. (I remember my old high school history teacher explaining how the slope of the roof was meant to help snow slide off during the winter, but the uneven slope also allows more living space to be added onto an existing house.) However, Pat’s mother says that there probably aren’t any secret passages in the house because houses from that time were built pretty simply and didn’t even have closets or bathrooms. She doesn’t think that there’s any place in the old house to conceal a secret passage.
Now that Pat knows the issues with the Paine family, she begins to feel better about them, and they start being nicer to her. As Pat begins settling in, she becomes better friends with Barbara and is happy that she has another girl as a friend. They ride their bikes downtown together, and Barbara sleeps over at Pat’s house. As the girls are getting ready for bed, Pat looks out the window and sees a light in the old Paine house when no one is supposed to be there. Barbara says that whoever’s in the house is probably looking for the secret passage and the treasure. When Pat asks what she means by “treasure”, Barbara says that there’s a rumor that there’s treasure hidden in the house from Revolutionary times. The family used to be rich, but after the American Revolution, when the children of the family returned to the house after their parents were killed, the family fortune had vanished. People think that the ancestors of the Paines hid their fortune somewhere during the war and that it’s still waiting to be found. (I already had some misgivings about the people of Haven and their intentions in kicking the Paines out of their house, and now, suddenly, my suspicions are even worse.)
Barbara says that they can’t just let this mystery sneak steal what should rightfully belong to the Paines and ruin the only chance they have left of regaining their house. The girls sneak over to the house to spy on the intruder, and they end up frightening him away. The girls tell the boys about what they witnessed the next day, and they persuade the Paine brothers to come into the house with them in spite of their “vow” to look around and see what the intruder was searching for. As they inspect the kitchen fireplace, where the man was searching, and look at the flashlight he dropped, the man shows up again. It turns out that he’s a college student doing research on the Paine family.
Back in Revolutionary times, the family that lived in the house was the Woodruff family. (A Paine ancestor married into the Woodruff family, changing the family name, but the Woodruffs are also ancestors of the current Paines. It’s the same family.) The college student, Robert Popham, found some old papers that indicate that the head of the Woodruff family, the first Nathaniel Woodruff, was a Tory. Nat, who was named for this ancestor (full name Nathaniel Woodruff Paine IV), angrily denies it, saying that his family was known to associate with George Washington and Lafayette, hosting them at their house. Robert explains more about the papers he found, but he also says that the last letter Nathaniel Woodruff wrote to his wife before he was killed indicates that he feared for his life and left something hidden in an old post box to pass on to his young son. However, as Nat points out, the date on this final letter was shortly after Nathaniel Woodruff’s wife was murdered by unknown assailants. (She was found scalped, so people blamed her death on American Indians, but it’s also possible that she was killed by someone else who just wanted to make it look that way to cover up the real reason for her murder.) Nathaniel Woodruff didn’t know his wife was already dead, and since she never got the letter and he was also killed soon after, the box is probably still hidden somewhere. Robert thinks that what Nathaniel hid was proof that he was actually a spy for the Patriots and that he feared for his life because he suspected that the British knew he was a spy. He says that he wants to find this hidden box and the information it holds because it would make a fantastic historical research paper.
The kids are completely on board with the search for the hidden box, both because the Paines want to preserve the reputation of their ancestors and because there may be valuables hidden in the box that will help the Paines pay their taxes and keep their home. However, they only have until August 15, the date that the town council has set for selling the Paine house. They only have until the end of summer to figure it out!
To begin with, I didn’t like the people of Haven right from Barbara’s description of them as “rugged individuals who wouldn’t help their own grandmas.” It is pretty cold to turn out a war widow who is working as an underpaid nurse in the community and her children after their father was killed serving his country. I completely agreed with Barbara’s father’s assessment of the townspeople’s levels of generosity from the first. I suppose at least some of the townspeople of Haven probably thought they were actually being kind, giving Mrs. Paine several years after her husband’s death to come up with the mounting tax money, while doing nothing to help her and not actually paying her enough to manage and letting her family sink deeper into the hole until there was no way for them to escape, but in realistic terms, that’s not really kind at all.
We don’t actually hear the townspeople express their own feelings because the children don’t talk to the adults about their search and discoveries until they’re sure of what they found. When Barbara explained how her father felt about the townspeople’s unwillingness to help the Paines, I was also a little suspicious of their motives, and when Barbara mentioned that there’s been a popular rumor about hidden treasure in the Paine household for years and everyone has heard of it, I got really suspicious. Basically, I started looking for thieves among the townspeople. I immediately suspected that the “rugged individuals”, or at least some influential ones in the community, wanted to steal some historical treasure from a veteran’s widow and orphans because people who would would kick the widow and orphans out of their home might as well be out to steal their legacy, too.
If that was part of their plan, they weren’t very good at it, and they never even show up in the story. Perhaps I’m judging them a bit harshly, although in a way, I’m a little disappointed because that kind of Machiavellian plot would have made the story much more exciting. From the way the story goes, the townspeople might just not believe that there’s any treasure to be found because that rumor has been going around for so long and nothing has come of it. Still, I was suspicious of them for a good part of the book because it looked like the author was setting them up to be suspicious.
I was also annoyed by the townspeople because I found them ineffectual and uncreative in their approach to a community problem. They miss opportunities, and worse, they deny opportunities to others because they’re apparently stuck in their “rugged individual” mindset and won’t even entertain ideas that might help themselves as well as others when people like Barbara Thomas’s father suggest them. I often think that high-and-mighty rugged individualistic attitude cuts out so many genuinely fun, creative, and amazing possibilities that can make a community rich in character as well as money. It’s maddening to a person who thrives on creativity and likes to consider possibilities.
When I started getting really irritated at the townspeople, I guessed that, before the end of the story, they would do something to redeem themselves that would simultaneously leave me unsatisfied. I figured that the point where the townspeople finally come together would probably result in something that I thought they should have been working on from the beginning, and then, they’d act like it was such an amazing idea that they’d never thought of before and I’d be really irritated with them all over again because I thought of something like it very early in the story. Actually, that’s not how the story goes, and it’s still irritating to me.
So, what would I want them to do in this situation? Basically, the community wants its tax money, and the family wants to keep their house with a living wage that can support them. Fine. So, I asked myself, why not make this historic house, which is known to be the oldest house in town, into a community project which would actually contribute to the common good of the community (I don’t think “common good” is a dirty word, although I’m aware that some “rugged individualists” think so) and provide the Paine family with an additional source of income? If the town council invested in fixing up the house, which is also known to contain some very interesting Colonial antiques as well as fascinating architectural details and a unique history, the house could be turned into either a museum or a period bed-and-breakfast to encourage local tourism. (Sleep where George Washington and Lafayette slept!) Since it does have original furnishings and actual bedrooms, it probably wouldn’t take a lot to make the conversion for either of those projects.
The town and its business owners would benefit from the tourism, giving them an actual monetary return on their investment, and the Paine family could stay on with the house as its caretakers, receiving additional wages from visitors. People couldn’t say that the Paines simply received a handout because they would be doing valuable community work to support the town’s image and industry. It would satisfy Nat Paine’s family pride because he could talk to tour groups on the weekends and during the summer about his family’s great legacy to the history of his town. The whole community could even expand on the idea to further attract visitors, setting up a sort of local living history center, where people can learn Colonial crafts and recipes (something like what the Townsends demo on their YouTube channel), and schools from neighboring towns and cities could book field trips. Local business owners could support it with a themed restaurant and shops selling Colonial-era replicas and memorabilia and books about the time period. The town could hold special celebrations a few times a year to draw in more visitors, like a big Fourth of July parade or a Colonial Christmas celebration (although I known not all of the American colonies actually celebrated Christmas) or a re-creation of old harvest parties (more historically accurate) with plays by the local theater group (if they don’t have one, they could form one) or dramatic readings from Washington Irving at the local library or a themed fair with people selling local artisan crafts. They wouldn’t have to do all of this at once, but they could start with the matter of the house and build up from there. It’s an idea that has the potential for future expansion. This story is even set pre-Bicentenniel, so imagine what the town could do if they already had everything up and running by July 4th, 1776! Doesn’t anybody plan ahead? That’s creative use of resources. That’s community action. That’s job creation. Even if it’s not as big as Plimoth Plantation (now called Plimoth Patuxet to better incorporate the Native Americans) or Colonial Williamsburg (which both already existed by the time this story was written and could have provided inspiration), it’s still a money-making industry that is inherently built into the town’s very nature and won’t disappear tomorrow because some outside business decides to move or close a job-providing factory or something. Even if they didn’t get national or international attention, they would probably still be a destination for people from around their state and neighboring ones, and there’s potential for continued development. The project just need to be supported and promoted by the community.
Unfortunately, that’s not what they do. My griping aside, I guess if the solution was really that simple and the townspeople were more thoughtful and pro-active, we would lose the source of tension and the obstacle that our heroes have to overcome. The August 15th deadline is what pressures the kids to hurry up and find the treasure, so as irritating as it is to me, I have to put up with it.
The treasure hunt part is a lot of fun, and I liked the children’s logical, methodical approach to their search. When the children eventually find the hidden box, the story isn’t over. There are coded messages in the box that they have to decode to learn the full truth about Nathaniel Woodruff. Part of the story explains how they figure out how to decode the substitution code and the book code that compose parts of the message. The story they learn about Nathaniel Woodruff is better than anything the Paines had originally thought.
So, did they save the old house and do anything cool, like start a unique museum? Yes, and no. Although they don’t find any jewels, gold, or traditional sort of treasure, the letters that they find in the box are worth quite a bit. They sell them to a wealthy local business owner, and he donates them to a local university library. (So, you know, the wealthy business owner who never makes an actual appearance in this story and who wouldn’t have helped a war widow and her orphans for their sake can buy their family legacy and present it as his magnanimous gift to the university. I can’t say that he’s terrible for doing this because it does help, but I still think my idea was better.) The Paine family has enough money to keep their house and fix it up. It’s a pretty good ending, but I still prefer my vision. The story points out that it’s not a matter of everyone living happily ever after because they’re all their imperfect selves and still have some problems, but one lesson that they all learned from this experience is how to create their own book code to use for passing notes in class. It’s not profound, but codes are fun.
Mystery of the Black Diamonds by Phyllis A. Whitney, 1954, 1974.
Twelve-year-old Angie (Angela) Wetheral and her eleven-year-old brother Mark are visiting the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. They’re from New York, but their father is a mystery novelist, and he’s doing some research over the summer for a book that will take place in Colorado. As the kids explore the area and speculate about the murder that’s going to happen in their father’s new book, they meet Benjamin Ellington, an old timer who talks to them about the days when the gold and silver mines in the area were active. He tells the kids to call him Uncle Ben, and they talk about whether or not there’s any treasure still to be found in the area. They also meet Sam Springer, the park ranger, who worries about Uncle Ben exploring and digging in the hills by himself because he could get hurt and people wouldn’t know where to find him and help him. Uncle Ben says that Sam worries too much and that he knows the area well because he’s been digging out there for years.
Sam later tells the kids that Uncle Ben came to the area in 1889, when he was 15 years old. That means that Uncle Ben was born in 1874, and Angie says that means that he’s almost 70 years old now, which puts the date of this story in the early 1940s, during WWII, but they don’t talk about the war. Sam says that Uncle Ben actually struck it rich while he was in his teens and owned three or four mines. Apparently, Ben blew through most of his money pretty quickly, so he’s not that rich anymore. However, the kids are fascinated by the idea of finding gold or silver and striking it rich.
The reason why the family lives in New York is that it’s helpful for their father’s work. Besides writing mystery novels, he also writes shorter stories for magazines and does book reviews for various publishers, so it’s important for him to live close to the New York book publishers. Angie misses their old home in New Hampshire, where they had a view of the mountains. Colorado reminds her of her old home, and she wishes that they could stay there, so she could enjoy the beauties of nature and the outdoor life. Their father says that someday, when he’s saved enough money, they’ll be able to live anywhere they want, and he’ll take time away from his regular projects to work on a serious novel that he’s been thinking about writing for some time. Mark suggests to Angie that if they could strike it rich in the mountains, the family would have all the money they needed, they could live where they want, and their dad would have the time to write anything he wants.
The kids ask Uncle Ben about searching for treasure, and he gives them a piece of paper with a strange coded message that is supposed to be the map to the treasure. He tells the kids that if they want the treasure, they’ll have to work for it by figuring out how to read the message. Mark wonders why Uncle Ben would give them the key to a treasure when he could just go after it himself, but Uncle Ben says, “I’ve got all I need. I’ve had enough of treasure and the way it can ruin men’s lives.” Uncle Ben says that maybe the kids would do better with a treasure than most people, but he insists that the kids will have to work for whatever they find and refuses to give them any hints about what the message means.
Uncle Ben continues helping the children’s father with background for his mystery story. He suggests that Mr. Wetheral have a look at a nearby ghost town. Unfortunately, Uncle Ben is killed in a fall soon after. The children are nearby when he falls and call for help, but there is little that anyone can to for him. Just before he dies, he whispers to the children, “Black diamonds. Right where Abednego used to be.” It’s a reference to the coded message that he gave the children, one final hint at the treasure. His death leaves it entirely up to the children whether or not to go after it.
To the Wetherals’ surprise, they soon learn that Uncle Ben recently added Mark and Angie to his will, leaving them a house and some land in Colorado. The catch is that the house is in the old ghost town. Angie is hopeful that if they own a house in Colorado they might be able to stay there instead of going back to New York, but the question is whether or not they’d be willing to live in a ghost town.
The Wetheral family decides to go to the ghost town and camp out in their new house and see what it’s like. Mr. Wetheral thinks the ghost town would make a good setting for his book, and staying there will give him a chance to do some research and soak up the atmosphere. Plus, the family is going to have to decide exactly what they’re going to do with the house the kids have inherited.
Most of the ghost town is crumbling, but the house they’ve inherited appears to be in better condition than most. They even find some furniture they can use in a back room. As they explore the town, the kids have their mind on the treasure that Uncle Ben talked about. Most people think that was just a story he made up because he gave copies of the same treasure map message to other friends of his, and nobody has ever figured out what it’s supposed to mean. Mark and Angie think that there is more to the message than most people believe, and they’re determined to find the answers.
It turns out that the ghost town isn’t completely uninhabited, though. The Koblers and their granddaughter Juanita, who is nicknamed Jinx, also live there with their pet skunk. Grandpa Kobler is an old friend Uncle Ben’s, and he talks to the children about him and the old says of the ghost town, Blossom. He used to own the general store there, and his wife was once the schoolteacher, and they didn’t move away from Blossom when the others did. He’s aware of Uncle Ben’s “maps” and hints of treasure, but has no interest in treasure-hunting himself because he likes the life that he and his family are living and doesn’t want it to change. However, Angie can tell that Juanita/Jinx is unhappy and can’t understand why she doesn’t want to talk about her parents and where they are. Then, someone else shows up in Blossom, looking for the clues to Uncle Ben’s treasure. If there really is a treasure to find, can Mark and Angie find it first?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
Themes, Spoilers, and My Reaction
It isn’t easy for the kids to get to know Juanita/Jinx because she has a prickly and defensive personality and doesn’t like to talk about her past. However, she gradually starts to bond with Mark and Angie because of their shared love of the town of Blossom. Eventually, she tells Angie that her parents died when she was very young. Her father was killed in a mining accident. He thought that there was still treasure worth finding in the old mine outside of town and tried to get at it even though Grandpa Kobler told him that it was dangerous and that there was probably nothing worth finding anyway. Juanita’s mother died of pneumonia soon after her husband’s death, leaving little Juanita to be raised by her grandparents. Juanita has a warm relationship with her grandfather, the only person who calls her by her real name. However, Juanita is convinced that her grandmother doesn’t love her and is only raising her out of a sense of duty. Juanita’s grandmother never approved of her mother, partly because her son’s early marriage is what stopped him from going to college. Juanita also thinks that her grandmother didn’t like her mother because she was Mexican, which is why Juanita has a Hispanic name. Her grandmother was the one who gave her the nickname “Jinx” because that’s what she would call her when she was chiding her for something, which seems to have happened all too often. Jinx often calls herself Jinx instead of Juanita because she’s trying to get away from her Mexican-sounding name and seem more American.
For part of the book, Jinx actively tries to sabotage the Mark and Angie in their treasure-hunting activities because she’s afraid that if they find treasure, everything in Blossom will change. She worries that other people will come to Blossom seeking treasure. If that happens, the town will be built up again, but that means destroying what’s already there. Also, Jinx fears the way other people will treat her. She doesn’t want other people to come into Blossom or to be sent away to school if her grandparents suddenly have the money to do it because she thinks that outsiders will always treat her badly and look down on her. Her grandmother has repeatedly told her that people look down on Mexicans, and Jinx thinks it’s true because some kids she met in Boulder were also mean to her and called her names. Angie tells her that it isn’t true that everyone hates Mexicans. The Wetheral family lived in Mexico one summer while her father was researching another book, and they liked it, and Angie still has a friend there. Angie realizes that the reason why Jinx’s behavior and attitude are so poisonous is that her grandmother has poisoned her mind because of her own twisted feelings. Angie declares that she’s going to have a word with Jinx’s grandmother about it, but Jinx stops her because she says that will just make her grandmother mad. She says that sometimes, when she’s especially well-behaved, her grandmother forgets that she’s half Mexican, and if anyone reminds her, she’ll just get angry all over again. It’s a pretty sick way to raise a vulnerable child who is isolated from other people who could give her a more balanced view of life and people’s feelings. Grandpa Kobler seems to realize this, which is why he wants Angie to be friends with Juanita and show her that there are different people in the world, including people who are willing to be friends. As Angie points out to Juanita, her grandparents are getting older, and someday, she will be an adult and they’ll be gone. Juanita is going to have to learn to get along in the wider world without them, and actually, dealing with strangers in the outside world might not be as bad as living full-time with her grandmother’s nasty attitude.
Some of Juanita’s feelings are resolved when Angie’s mother has a heart-to-heart talk with her about the things her grandmother has been telling her and her own opinions about herself. I agreed with Angie that some of the things her mother said to Juanita while challenging her attitudes were rather harsh, and I wouldn’t have said things like that, but Juanita does take what Mrs. Wetheral says to heart and realizes that she has as much reason to take some pride in herself and her background as anyone else. I didn’t like the part where Angie’s mother says that Juanita’s grandmother can’t help her opinions about Mexicans because that’s just the way she was raised and there’s nothing that can be done about it now. It seems to me that they’re discounting the idea of personal accountability. If Juanita’s grandmother can’t be responsible for her own mind and behavior, what can she be responsible for?
I know people can cling pretty hard to some weird ideas. One night, we took my grandmother out to dinner at a nice restaurant for a family celebration. My grandmother was actually really upset that the restaurant had given her so much food that she couldn’t eat it all, and she said that she was worried because her parents would never have approved of her not clearing her plate. She was genuinely upset about it, not just making an idle comment. It really bothered her. Now, I know that part of my grandmother’s youth took place during the Great Depression, when wasting anything was a sin, but at the time this incident took place, she was a widow who was over 80 years old. The Great Depression had been over for more than 60 years. I was her youngest grandchild, and I was an adult at this time. Her parents had been dead for longer than I had been alive. She was not only a parent herself, but she was also a grandparent and a great-grandparent. She was literally the oldest living member of our family, and nobody would have said a word about what she wanted to eat or not eat for dinner, but my grandmother just couldn’t get past the idea of what her parents told her years ago about always clearing her plate. It’s an odd thing to cling to, but admittedly, there are far more harmful ideas that people can’t bring themselves to give up because of stuff their parents said back in the day.
Mrs. Kobler has had years of living her own life and ample opportunity to work out her feelings, but I think that part of the reason she hasn’t is because there’s something else that’s preventing her. This theory is conjecture on my part because there’s never a point when Mrs. Kobler explicitly explains her thought processes, but although the book doesn’t really explain it, I think that her son’s death is probably the reason why Mrs. Kobler has been harboring so many negative attitudes and taking them out on Jinx. Although nobody actually says it, I suspect that Mrs. Kobler assigned blame to Jinx’s mother for her son’s death. If he hadn’t gotten married at a young age and went looking for a fabulous discovery to raise a fortune for his young family, he might have gone to college, gotten a good career, and still been alive. Even though the characters don’t explicitly say it, I think it’s logical. I further suspect that the really problematic part for Mrs. Kobler is that she needs to blame Jinx’s mother for what happened because, if she can’t, some part of her might blame herself for not stopping her son from doing what he did, and she can’t handle that. As long as she can tell herself (and Jinx) that her daughter-in-law was awful because she was Mexican and caused the downfall of her son, she won’t have to question why she wasn’t able to stop her son from dying. In her mind, I think Mrs. Kobler thinks that her son’s marriage was a terrible mistake that led to his early death, and by extension, her granddaughter really was a “jinx” because she came from that unlucky marriage. Some of Mrs. Kobler’s feelings get resolved later, when they discover that her son was right about the type of treasure he was seeking, even though he got killed pursuing it. A sudden disaster also makes Mrs. Kobler realize that there are many things that a person can’t control in life and that God’s will is taking her family in a direction she never anticipated. This book doesn’t really lecture about the subject of God and religion, but there are some Christian themes in the story.
All through the story, there is the theme of treasure – what is treasure, what do people do with treasure when they get it, and what are they willing to risk to get it? Early in the story, Uncle Ben talks about having lost his taste for treasure-hunting because he’s seen the way it ruins lives. It isn’t until the Wetheral family gets to Blossom and the children talk to Grandpa Kobler that they get the rest of the story about why Uncle Ben felt like that. After Uncle Ben dies, he is buried in the old cemetery in Blossom because that’s where his wife and young daughter are buried. They both died of diphtheria, and he blamed himself for them contracting the disease because they went to live in the big city after he got rich. Grandpa Kobler, who knew Uncle Ben back then tried to console him by saying that they could have caught that disease anywhere, not just in the city, but Uncle Ben still felt responsible. (Diphtheria is now a very rare disease in the US, thanks to the development of a vaccine to prevent it. It’s often given in a combination vaccine that also protects against tetanus and whooping cough, which is how I’ve received it. I was first given the vaccine when I was very young, and I still get my booster shots. I’d recommend it to anyone capable of receiving vaccines. I have never actually seen a person with any of those illnesses in my entire life, and I’m in my late 30s now.) The point is that money doesn’t buy love and happiness, and Uncle Ben came to the conclusion that the lifestyle his family lived when they were rich was unhealthy. He would rather have had his family back than the money from his mines.
Grandpa Kobler understands how Uncle Ben felt because, when Uncle Ben once asked him if he wanted a treasure, he said no. He was happy with the life he was living in Blossom, and he had enough money for his family to live comfortably. If he suddenly got rich, people would expect him to move to a bigger house in the city and start living a completely different life, and he realized that he wouldn’t be as happy doing that. In his youth, he saw the lives that other people lived after they got rich, and he didn’t like what he saw. Later, his son got killed while chasing a dream of treasure, which further emphasizes that there is a price for treasure-hunting, and sometimes, that price is too high. In the Wetheral family, Mark is the one who thinks that their lives would be better if they could find a fortune, but Angie points out that they don’t really need a fortune; they just need enough for their dad to feel comfortable taking the time to write the book that he wants to write and for them to have a home away from the big city, which is what they really want. There is the idea that having enough money is good, but having too much or trying too hard to acquire more can cause problems and complicate a person’s life.
Spoilers
Things are about to change in Blossom, in spite of what the people there want, and as Grandma Kobler concludes, it might be the will of God that they do. In the most dramatic part of the book, much of the town of Blossom is destroyed in a flash flood. Fortunately, all of the people and animals in the town survive, although the Koblers have a close brush with death. Juanita is in less danger because she’s on a picnic with Angie and her mother when the flood startes, and she is the first to realize the danger. At first, everyone is afraid that the Koblers drowned, but they eventually find Mrs. Kobler, just barely keeping her own head and her husband’s out of the water. During this time when they were almost killed, Mrs. Kobler admits that she had some revelations about many things, especially when she realized that she could depend on Juanita to come and help them. In spite of all of her nagging at Juanita, Juanita is bright and dependable and cares about her grandparents, even the grandmother who’s been making her life miserable. Mrs. Kobler never completely changes her mind about Mexicans, but she does change her mind about Juanita, giving her more respect than she did before. The book explains that she comes to realize that, while Mrs. Kobler disparaged Juanita as her mother’s daughter, she came to remember that she was her son’s daughter, too. It’s not as much as could be hoped for, but it’s a start. Mrs. Kobler also realizes that everything that’s happened is the will of God, there is nothing anyone could have done that would have changed the outcome, and God is leading her family in the direction He wants them to go, so she is just going to have to go with the flow (not exactly her words, but I think you catch my drift – ha, ha).
The secret of Uncle Ben’s treasure is also revealed. What he found wasn’t really “black diamonds” but something else that’s very valuable, the same mineral that Juanita’s father was looking for at the time he died. However, Juanita’s father was looking in the wrong part of the mine, which was why he got killed instead of finding what he was looking for. (Maybe he should have gone for his geology degree before going for the “treasure.” Just saying.) Uncle Ben was more experienced with mining and figured out the right place to look himself. It wasn’t until after Juanita’s father died that he came to realize the full value of what he had found, though. (It’s important that this story is set after WWII.) Uncle Ben’s lawyer reveals that, since samples of this mineral were sent to be analyzed, it has activated a part of Uncle Ben’s will that leaves the mine to Juanita Kobler, making her an heiress. Since the town of Blossom was destroyed in the flood, there’s nothing left to preserve that would prevent mining. Now that Juanita is an heiress, she’s going to have a much higher standing in the community, which might take care of some of the bullying she received at school in Boulder. The Wetherals also benefit from the discovery, as the mysterious stranger who came to town informs them that there’s a government finder’s fee for locating valuable mineral deposits.
The Mansion of Secrets by Frances K. Judd, 1951, 1980.
Kay’s cousin, Bill, is relieved when he finds a buyer for the old Greeley mansion. The former owner, Manuel Greeley, was an elderly man who passed away without leaving a will. As a lawyer, Bill was put in charge of trying to find the nearest Greeley relative as heir, who turned out to be a distant nephew of Manuel’s. The nephew isn’t interested in keeping the house for himself because he’s an airplane pilot and spends most of his time traveling, so he asked Bill to sell it on his behalf. It’s not a particularly desirable property because it’s a few miles outside of town and rather isolated. There’s also a local rumor that the place is haunted and that there’s a treasure hidden somewhere on the property, earning it the nickname “Mansion of Secrets.” The man who says he wants to buy the mansion, Clarence Cody, is from another state, Wyoming, and he doesn’t care about the isolated nature of the house because he wants to turn the place into a resort and riding school. The mansion would be an idea location because it already has stables and pastures on the property.
Kay is still fascinated by the stories of ghosts and treasure she’s heard about the house and asks Bill if she and some friends could take a look around the place before he completes the sale. She’s always wondered what it was like inside, and she thinks this might be her last chance to find out. Bill decides that the request is harmless enough, lends her the key to the house, and tells Kay that she and her friends can go out to the property and take down the “For Sale” sign for him. He doesn’t expect that Kay and her friends are really going to find any ghosts or treasure.
However, when Kay and her friends go out to the old mansion, they spot a strange woman on the property. This strange woman uses some tools to pry up one of the boards of the stairway and seems to find something hidden under the step, but she becomes frightened and runs away when she realizes that Kay and her friends are there. When the girls try to run after her, she gets away from them.
Then, a man shows up and introduces himself as Peter Greeley, Manuel’s grandnephew. He says that he just came to take some of the pictures from the walls of the house. The girls ask him if the stories about treasure in the house are true, but Peter says he doesn’t think so. He admits that he’s searched the house himself to see if he could find anything, but he never has, so he thinks that it’s just a story.
The girls investigate the steps where the mysterious woman was searching and discover another step with something hidden inside. The papers they find turn out to be blueprints of the house, and there are several spots marked with red ‘X’s and labeled “IMPORTANT.” Two of the ‘X’s represent the step where the woman was searching and the step where the girls found the blueprints, so the girls figure out that the other ‘X’s are also secret hiding places. The girls decide to try checking another one to see what they find, and they discover a hidden panel that holds diamond jewelry! The girls realize that they need to tell Bill and Peter immediately because this treasure and anything else hidden in the house legally belong to Peter, and he should claim it before moving forward with selling the house.
When they show the diamond jewelry to Bill, he takes it to the bank for safe keeping, and he goes out to the house with the girls to check out the other hiding places marked on the blueprints. They split up to search different spots, and Kay’s friends discover some antique Bibles that are valuable collectors’ items. Kay decides to consult the blueprints again, but someone stole them while everyone was looking at the Bible! Realizing that the thief could be hiding somewhere in the house, Bill decides to search, but the thief knocks him down and runs away. They don’t know who it was except that it was a man wearing a mask. Bill decides that the only thing to do is to call Peter Greeley and arrange for someone to guard the house.
They don’t know who either the man or the woman sneaking around the house are, but somehow, both of them seem to know something about what Manuel Greeley was hiding in his house and even where some of it was hidden. With Clarence Cody pressing to finalize the sale of the property, Bill, Kay, and their friends try to find the other stashes of hidden treasures in the house before anyone else can steal them.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. That copy is one of the older versions, where Kay’s friend “Wendy” is still called “Wilma”, and her nemesis at school is called “Ethel” instead of “Chris.” Those names changed in later printings of the stories. It also shows the girls with their true hair colors on the cover, something which most other books in the series don’t do. Kay is supposed to have brown hair, Betty is blonde, and Wendy/Wilma has dark hair (I think they usually just say “dark”, implying dark brown or black hair).
My Reaction and Spoilers
Spooky old houses with secret hiding places and hidden rooms are classics in children’s literature, and it’s fun in this book to see them find various kinds of valuable objects hidden in this house by its eccentric former owner. I have to admit that the hidden room of animal trophies was more creepy for me than it was for the characters in the story. I’m an animal lover, and I would not be happy to find myself in a room with deceased animals staring at me reproachfully from the walls. The last thing on my mind at that point would be figuring out how much they were worth. It’s also a bit coincidental that one of Manuel’s “treasures” turns out to be a valuable jar of ambergris, a key ingredient in perfumes, when Kay accidentally broke a jar of the stuff on a class trip to a perfume factory.
Of course, Kay breaking the jar wasn’t actually her fault but that of her school nemesis, who bumped into her on purpose and made her drop it. Kay is one of those characters who seems a little too perfect at everything she does, and even her missteps are often someone else’s fault. I don’t hate Kay, but I have to admit that I’d prefer her being a little more realistic as a human character. Minor klutziness that wasn’t someone else’s fault wouldn’t be a bad characteristic for her to have. There is only one minor flaw that I’ve seen in Kay, which is occasional impatience. Her impatience is only very minor and never enough to seriously interfere with her investigations, but it does appear in this book, toward the end.
Even though they mention rumors of the house being haunted early in the story, there was never a point where the characters really thought that there were ghosts in the house or had to come to the realization that strange things happening were caused by humans instead of ghosts. They knew right from the beginning that there were real humans lurking around the house, looking for hidden treasures. Between the two people initially caught sneaking around the old house, looking for things, the man is more sinister than the woman, and he becomes the repeat visitor. It turns out that the woman used to work for Manuel Greeley and she was searching under one of the steps because Manuel told her to do that if her wages weren’t completely paid by the time he died. When Kay learns the reason why she was searching in the house, her situation is easily resolved.
In many Kay Tracey books, the mystery is less about who the villains are than where they’re hiding and how to catch them. What I mean is that the Kay Tracey mysteries are generally not the kind of mystery book where you have maybe five or six main suspects for committing a crime and the story is about figuring out which of them did it. Instead, the villains and criminals are typically people Kay and her friends have never met or seen before in their lives. In this case, they figure out that they’ve seen the man sneaking around the old mansion before in advertisements because his main career is being a model. It doesn’t take too long to find out his name (at least his professional name) by tracing the advertisements back to an agency, but tracking him down is harder. They eventually catch him when he returns to the mansion but the more mysterious part is how he knew about the mansion’s treasures and the secret hiding places marked on the blueprints. Kay eventually realizes that the man doesn’t have a connection to old Manuel Greeley but to the architect who designed his house. In a rare display of imperfection, Kay almost misses the key clue to the relationship because she gets impatient with the woman who is telling her about the architect and his family.
The Hidden Treasure of Glaston by Eleanore M. Jewett, 1946.
The
year is 1171. Twelve-year-old Hugh, a
somewhat frail boy with a lame leg, arrives at the abbey of Glastonbury with
his father on a stormy night. Hugh’s
father is a knight, and in his conversation with Abbot Robert on their arrival,
he makes it known that, although he loves his son, he is disappointed in the
boy’s frail condition because he can never be a fighter, like a knight’s son
should be. The abbot rebukes him, saying
that there is more to life than war and that he, himself, is also of noble
blood. The knight apologizes, and says
that, although it is not really the life that he would wish for his son, he asks
that the abbey take him in and educate him.
Although the knight (who refuses to give his name, only his son’s first
name) says that he cannot explain his circumstances, the abbot senses that the
knight is in trouble and is fleeing the area, perhaps the country of England
entirely.
It is
true that the knight is in trouble, and he is fleeing. Since Hugh’s health is delicate, his father
cannot take him along in his flight.
Realizing that the abbey will provide him with a safer life, Hugh’s
father wants to see him settled there before he leaves and gives the abbey a
handsome gift of expensive, well-crafted books as payment for his son’s
education. The abbot is thrilled by the
gift, although he says that they would have accepted Hugh even without it. Then, the knight leaves, and the monks begin
helping Hugh to get settled in the abbey.
Hugh is upset at his father’s leaving and the upheaval to the life he has always known, although he knows that it is for the best because of his family’s circumstances. Although the story doesn’t explicitly say it at first, Hugh’s father is one of the knights who killed Thomas Becket, believing that by doing so, they were following the king’s wishes. Hugh’s father did not actually kill Beckett himself, but he did help to hold back the crowd that tried to save Beckett while others struck the blows, so he shares in the guilt of the group. Although Hugh loves his father, he knows that his father is an impulsive hothead. Now, because of the murder, Hugh’s father is a hunted man. By extension, every member of his household is also considered a criminal. Their family home was burned by an angry mob, their supporters have fled, and there is no way that Hugh’s father can stay in England. However, the prospect of life at the abbey, even under these bleak circumstances, has some appeal for Hugh.
Hugh has felt his father’s disappointment in him for a long time because his leg has been bad since he was small, and he was never able to participate in the rough training in the martial arts that a knight should have. Even though part of Hugh wishes that he could be tough and strong and become the prestigious and admired knight that his father wishes he could be, deep down, Hugh knows that it isn’t really his nature and that his damaged leg would make it impossible. Hugh really prefers the reading lessons he had with his mother’s clerk before his mother died. His father always scorned book learning because he thought that it was unmanly, something only for weak people, and Hugh’s weakness troubles him. Hugh’s father thinks that the real business of men is war, fighting, and being tough. However, at the abbey, there are plenty of men who spend their lives loving books, reading, art, music, and peace, and no one looks on them scornfully. For the first time in Hugh’s life, he has the chance to live as he really wants to, doing something that he loves where the weakness of his bad leg won’t interfere.
The abbot is pleased that Hugh has been taught to read and arranges for him to be trained as a scribe under the supervision of Brother John. Hugh enjoys his training, although parts are a little dull and repetitive. Hugh confides something of his troubles in Brother John, who listens to the boy with patience and understanding. Although he does not initially know what Hugh’s father has done, Hugh tells his about the burning of his family’s home, how they struggled to save the books that they have now gifted to the abbey, and how there were more in their library that they were unable to save. Hugh tells Brother John how much he hates the people who burned their home and how much he hates the king, who caused the whole problem in the first place. His father would never have done what he did if the king hadn’t said what he said about Thomas Becket, leading his knights to believe that they were obeying an order from their king. Brother John warns Hugh not to say too much about hating the king because that is too close to treason and tells him that, even though he has justification for hating those who destroyed his home, he will not find comfort in harboring hate in his heart. He also says that not all that Hugh has lost is gone forever. People who have left Hugh’s life, like his father, may return, and there are also many other people and things to love in the world that will fill Hugh’s life. Brother John urges Hugh to forget the past and enjoy what he has now. When Hugh says how he loves books but also wishes that he was able to go adventuring, Brother John says that adventures have a way of finding people, even when they do not go looking for them.
One
day, when Brother John sends Hugh out to fish for eels, Hugh meets another boy
who also belongs to the abbey, Dickon.
Dickon is an oblate. He is the
son of a poor man who gave him to the abbey when he was still an infant because
he was spared from the plague and wanted to give thanks to God for it. Dickon really wishes that he could go
adventuring, like Hugh sometimes wishes, although he doesn’t really mind life
at the abbey. Because Dickon is not good
at reading or singing, he helps with the animals on the abbey’s farm. Although he is sometimes treated strictly and
punished physically, he also has a fair amount of freedom on the farm,
sometimes sneaking off to go hunting or fishing. He also goes hunting for holy relics. Dickon tells Hugh about the saints who have
lived or stayed at the abbey and how the place is now known for miracles. He is sure that the miracles of Glaston will
help heal Hugh’s leg, and he offers to take him hunting for holy relics. Hugh wants to be friends with Dickon, but at
first, Dickon is offended that Hugh will not tell him what his last name
is. Dickon soon realizes the reason for
Hugh’s secrecy when a servant from Hugh’s home, Jacques, comes to the abbey to
seek sanctuary from an angry mob that knows of his association with Hugh’s
father.
The abbot
grants Jacques temporary sanctuary but tells him that he should leave the country
soon. When Dickon witnesses Jacques’s
explanation of why the mob was after him, comes to understand his connection to
Hugh. Although the mob does not know
that Hugh is actually connected to Jacques, Dickon spots the connection and
tells Hugh that he forgives his earlier secrecy. Dickon even helps Jacques to leave the abbey
the next day, in secret.
Now
that Dickon knows Hugh’s secret, he lets Hugh in on his secrets and the secrets
of the abbey itself. He shows Hugh a
secret tunnel that he has discovered.
There is an underground chamber between the abbey and the sea where more
parchments and some other precious objects are hidden. Dickon doesn’t know the significance of all
of the objects, although there appear to be holy relics among them. Dickon’s theory was that monks in the past
created this room and tunnel to store their most precious treasures and get
them away to safety in case the abbey was attacked and raided. At some point, part of the tunnel must have
collapsed, blocking the part of the tunnel leading to the abbey. The boys are frightened away when they hear
the ringing of a bell and can’t tell where it’s coming from. Could there have been someone in a part of
the tunnel that is now blocked off from the part where they entered?
Since Hugh is sworn to secrecy concerning Dickon’s discovery, he can’t ask Brother John about it directly, but he gets the chance to learn a little more when Brother John asks him to help clean some old parchments so they can reuse them. Most of them are just old accounting sheets for the abbey that they no longer need. Brother John said that they were stored in an old room under the abbey. Hugh asks Brother John about the room and whether there are other such storage rooms underground. Brother John says that there are rumors about a hidden chamber somewhere between the abbey and the sea where they used to store important objects for safety, but as far as he knows, no living person knows where it is or even if it still exists. Hugh asks Brother John about treasures, but as far as Brother John is concerned, the real treasures of the abbey are spiritual. However, when Hugh notices some strange writing on one of the parchment pieces that doesn’t look like accounting reports and calls it to Brother John’s attention, Brother John becomes very excited and orders him to stop cleaning the parchments so that he can check for more of the same writing. Among the other scrap parchments, they have found pieces that refer to Joseph of Arimathea, who provided the tomb for Jesus after his crucifixion. According to legend, Joseph of Arimathea also took possession of the Holy Grail, the cup that Jesus used at the Last Supper, which was supposed to have special powers, and that he left the Middle East and brought the Holy Grail to Glaston, where it still remains hidden. This story is connected to the legends of King Arthur, who also supposedly sought the Holy Grail. The parchments may contain clues to the truth of the story and where the Holy Grail may be hidden.
This story combines history and legend as Hugh and Dickon unravel the mysteries of Glastonbury and change their lives and destinies forever. Although Hugh and Dickon both talk about how exciting it would be to travel and go on adventures, between them, Hugh is the one whose father would most want and expect his son to follow him on adventures and Dickon is the one who is promised to the abbey. However, Hugh loves the life of the abbey and serious study, and Dickon is a healthy boy who is often restless. Their friendship and shared adventures at the abbey help both Dickon and Hugh to realize more about who they are, the kind of men they want to be, and where they belong. Wherever their lives lead them from this point, they will always be brothers.
There are notes in the back of the book about the historical basis for the story. In the book, the monks find the tomb of King Arthur and Guinevere. Although the story in the book is fictional, the real life monks of Glastonbury also claimed to find the tomb of King Arthur. The bones they claimed to find were lost when the abbey was destroyed later on the orders of Henry VIII, but this documentary (link repaired 2-27-23) explains more about the legends and history of King Arthur. The part about Glastonbury is near the end.
The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton, 1968.
Thomas Small, a thirteen-year-old African American boy, is moving from North Carolina to Ohio with his family in order to live in an old house with an unusual history. His father is a history professor and has rented a house for them that was once owned by an abolitionist named Dies Drear. Dies Drear was part of the Underground Railroad that smuggled escaping slaves out of the South around the time of the Civil War, and his old house still has secret passages from that time. The local people believe that Dies Drear still haunts the house along with the ghosts of a couple of slaves who never made it to freedom.
The caretaker of this strange old house is a strange old man called Mr. Pluto. He lives on the property in a cave that he has made into a house. Mr. Pluto frightens Thomas, and Thomas is sure that he’s hiding something.
The Smalls’ new town is a close-knit community that doesn’t welcome outsiders. The people seem unfriendly and suspicious of the Smalls, especially the Darrow family. They know something about the secret passages at the house, but Thomas’s parents don’t want him poking around the passages anymore after he is briefly lost in them. However, that is where the real secret of the house lies.
Thomas comes to believe that someone is sneaking into the house at night, using the old secret passages. One night, this person leaves three small metal triangles at the bedroom doors. These mysterious triangles seem to fit together, but there also seems to be a missing piece. The Smalls have no idea what these pieces mean or who put them there. Mr. Pluto holds many of the answers, and he is going to need their help to protect the secret that he has kept safe for many years.
The book is currently available on Internet Archive (multiple copies). The book won the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery in 1969. There is also a made-for-tv movie version of the book. Sometimes, you can find it or clips of it on YouTube.
There is a sequel to this book called The Mystery of Drear House. There are only two books in this short series.
My Reaction and Spoilers
I love how the Smalls help Mr. Pluto deal with the Darrows in the end, using the ghost stories about the house to their advantage. There are hints that besting the Darrows, although it hurt their pride, may actually lead to a better relationship with them in the future.
Thomas and Pesty (a nickname for the young adopted daughter of the Darrow family, her real name is Sarah) are also memorable characters. Pesty is brave for learning the secret that her family has tried to learn but choosing to protect it instead of reveal it. Thomas is a thoughtful boy who, because of his earlier upbringing, actually feels more comfortable around older adults than around people his own age.
If you’re wondering about why the abolitionist had a strange name like “Dies Drear”, it isn’t exactly explained. At one point, the story says that he was from New England. A possible explanation that I found online is that Dies might actually be another form of the Germanic surname Diess, which may be related to the Biblical name Matthias. Perhaps Dies Drear might have some Germanic ancestry. Some people use the mother’s maiden name as a first or middle name for a child. But, that’s just a theory.
Some teachers use this book to introduce students to the concept of the Underground Railroad. While I was researching the book online, I also found this pdf of classroom worksheets related to the story. (I had a link to a different set of worksheets before, but those were removed, and I found a different set.) If you’re looking for additional lesson plans, I suggest looking at Teachers Pay Teachers, where teachers can buy lesson plans from other teachers. (I’m not sponsored by them, I just know about them from a friend who is a teacher and think it’s a useful resource.)
One final point that I would like to make is that there are no white characters in the story. Dies Drear was a white man, but he doesn’t actually appear in the book, having died over 100 years before. Every character who does appear in the book is black. The funny thing is that I can’t remember any point where the book explicitly describes the characters as black. It might be my memory playing tricks on me, but I seem to remember knowing that they were all black as I read the book, but I can’t think now why I knew it, and I don’t remember a point where the book actually described anyone’s appearance. I think I probably knew it partly from context, perhaps subtle hints in the story, but it might also be that I knew what the book was about before I read it because someone told me. I might even have seen the movie version at some point before reading the book, although I’m not sure now because it’s been years since I first read this story, and I can’t remember if I read the book or saw the movie first. The movie or clips of it sometimes appear on YouTube. It’s also available on dvd, although I haven’t seen many copies available.
The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton, 1968.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 