Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Missing Treasure

The Mystery of the Missing Treasure by Janet Lorimer, 1987.

Pete’s family has moved from the city to a small town because his father has taken a new job, and the move hasn’t been easy for him. Besides leaving his friends and his school, he’s had to give up roller skating because there’s no roller rink and judo because there’s nowhere to take lessons. So far, there are really only two things that Pete likes about his new town: his new friend Danny and the local legend of Captain Scalawag and his treasure.

When Pete asks Danny for details about Captain Scalawag and his treasure, Danny explains that Captain Scalawag (real name Seth Delaney) had been a captain the Confederate army during the Civil War. He was injured and invalided out of the service, so he became a traveling peddler, although he didn’t have much luck with that. Eventually, he came to their small town in California and took a handyman job with the woman who once owned the house where Pete’s family now lives. Many of the people who had settled the town had come from the South, and Captain Scalawag (as he came to be known later) told them stories about the suffering in the South because of the war. Sympathetic townspeople gave Captain Scalawag their jewelry and raised money for him to take back to the South to set up relief efforts. However, Captain Scalawag was a conman and had no intention of using any of that money for its intended purpose. When the townspeople confronted him about it, he refused to return the money and refused to tell anybody where he hid it. The angry townspeople hanged Captain Scalawag for his theft and deception, but they never figured out what he did with their money and jewelry.

Pete is intrigued by the story and says that he wants to find the treasure, but Danny doesn’t think he has much of a chance. Over the years, many people have searched for the treasure, and they’ve never found anything.

Danny takes Pete swimming in the nearby river with some other boys from the town. Pete gets irritated because one boy, Duffy, teases him about being from the city, and the two of them have a diving contest near some dangerous rocks to prove which of them is the best. They both succeed in making their dives, but although the are declared equals, Pete has the feeling that their problems with each other aren’t over.

After the swim, Danny suggests that they go into town and watch people setting up for the play that they have every Fourth of July, which is a reenactment of the story of Captain Scalawag. Pete is interested, but he feels strange and passes out.

When he wakes up, people are fussing over him, and he seems to be in some kind of old-fashioned general store. A woman in old-fashioned clothing, who calls herself his mother is worried about him, and for some reason she calls him Zeb. Then, Pete wakes up again and finds himself in the local doctor’s office. The doctor said that he had heat exhaustion from being out in the sun too long while swimming. Pete’s father is there, and Pete tries to tell him about his vision of being in the general store in the past. Pete’s father thinks he just had a strange dream, although the doctor says that his office is on the site of the town’s old general store, which burned down years ago.

Pete continues to have trouble fitting in with the local kids. One evening, Duffy and Danny take him on a “snipe hunt“, abandoning him in the woods. (This is an old prank, often played at summer camps, but I think this book was actually the first place I heard of it as a kid.) When Pete realizes that he’s been the victim of a joke, he tries to walk home, but gets lost and falls in the mud. Finally, dirty and disheveled, he makes his way to the road and hitches a ride from Bob, the local deputy his older sister is dating.

When Pete explains to Bob what happened, Bob offends him by laughing. Bob explains that it’s an old prank, and he’s amused that anybody is still doing that. Seeing how angry Pete is, he tries to tell him not to be too angry over the prank and to reassure him that the local boys aren’t so bad, in spite of the prank. He says that the boys are just trying to have fun. It’s almost like a kind of hazing or initiation, and although Bob doesn’t quite explain it this way, he seems to think that if Pete accepts it with good grace, it will put him on a better footing with the other boys. Bob thinks that, given time, Pete will start to see the humor in it, and the next time some other new kid moves to town, Pete might well be the first to suggest taking the newbie on a snipe hunt himself, having become one of the initiated.

In spite of Bob’s apparent indulgence for youthful pranks, he does seriously ask Pete who was involved because, as a responsible adult, he can see that there are more serious issues involved in the prank. It was bad enough that Pete ended up dirty and humiliated, but if he had gotten more seriously lost or had fallen in the river, trying to find his way home after dark, none of it would be funny at all. Bob thinks that he should have a word with the other boys about the the consequences of their actions and give them a warning against pulling pranks where people could get hurt. Pete refuses to say who exactly was involved because he thinks that would just make him a snitch and make everything worse for him socially than it already is. Bob decides to let it go for now, just taking Pete home.

That night, Pete has another dream, where he seems to be seeing things through the eyes of Zeb. He sees the house where he’s living now as it used to be in the past, and he sees the man called Captain Scalawag, persuading the people who live there to contribute to relief efforts in the South due to the war. Then, Pete feels ill and seems to pass out in the dream, waking up in modern times in his own bed. He could just shrug it off as a dream, brought on by the stories he’s been hearing about Captain Scalawag and the old things his parents have discovered around the house and the barn that hind at events in the past. However, when his mother shows him more old photographs she’s found, Pete realizes that the details in his dream were far too accurate for him to have simply imagined them, from the details of the house in the past to the faces of the people he saw talking to Captain Scalawag.

More and more, Pete comes to realize that his dreams are no ordinary dreams. For some reason, he is able to see the past through the eyes of Zeb, a boy who died young around the time that Captain Scalawag conned the local people out of their money and treasures and hid the loot somewhere. Is Zeb himself trying to tell him something or show him something that everyone else has missed?

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

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

I remember reading this book as a kid, although I had forgotten many of the details. I remembered Captain Scalawag stealing/scamming people out of valuables and then hiding them, but I had forgotten that the basis of his scheme was convincing people to donate to support the Confederacy during the Civil War. That was surprising because the story is set in California, and the concept of supporting the Confederacy is never appealing to me. I think I forgot that part because, as a kid, the important idea is that Captain Scalawag was a conman with a hidden treasure, and that’s all I cared to remember.

I remember finding it spooky that Pete was seeing things through the eyes of a dying/dead boy. Pete in the story does worry about getting stuck in Zeb’s body in the past, knowing that Zeb doesn’t have much time left to live. However, Zeb is trying to tell Pete something that he realized that indicates what Captain Scalawag did with the treasures he took from the townspeople. Zeb tried to tell people before he died, but because he was severely ill and delirious, nobody understood what he was really trying to say. It turns out that the treasures have been in the barn the entire time, but Captain Scalawag changed their appearance, so the townspeople have overlooked them the entire time. It’s a case of hiding in plain sight.

Pete’s confrontations with the local bully add a subplot to the story. Danny apologizes to Pete about joining in Duffy’s prank against him, and Danny admits that Duffy scares him, too. Eventually, Pete has to fight Duffy physically, but Duffy doesn’t know that Pete took judo lessons in the city, so he’s not as defenseless as Duffy thinks. During the course of their fight, Pete also saves Duffy from being bitten by a snake, so Duffy has to admit that he has some gratitude toward Pete. He’s also impressed by Pete’s fighting techniques. The two of them end up working out a compromise with each other, with Pete agreeing to teach Duffy some judo and Duffy agreeing to teach him some of the knowledge he has from living in the country, like how to kill a snake. (Pete warned Duffy about the snake, but Duffy is the one who killed it.) Because they were fighting out behind the barn, Duffy is also on hand when Pete has his final revelation from Zeb, so he gets to be part of the discovery of the treasure, along with Pete and Danny.

I wasn’t happy when Bob laughed off the kids’ snipe hunt prank against Pete at first. I don’t like pranks, and I think it should be more understandable that some people just don’t want to be part of them, especially when Bob has directly seen the aftermath of the prank. He did redeem himself a little for me when he realizes that the prank could have had much more serious consequences and that, as a responsible adult, he really should point that out to the boys involved. The potentially serious consequences of pranks is part of the reason why I don’t like them. There’s just too much potential with many of them to go horribly wrong. The way Bob seems to be looking at the snipe hunt is like it’s some kind of local initiation stunt for newcomers, although he doesn’t exactly use those words to describe it. However, the idea of it being a kind of initiation doesn’t really redeem it for me. Fraternity initiations and hazing often go wrong, and that’s why universities often crack down on them.

As I recall, this book was the first place I heard about the concept of a snipe hunt. Years later, I was on a church retreat in college, and someone joked about taking someone else on a snipe hunt. I’ll admit that I was briefly gleeful about knowing what that was when the other person didn’t. I almost did go along with it, but I just didn’t have the heart to let someone else in for a prank like that. I would have felt bad if something happened to that person in the woods at night, and I figured they would at least be upset. Since the person did seem worried and asked directly what a snipe hunt is, I told them, so I spoiled the joke before it really happened. I think I made the right decision, though.

Posted on by TracyC

The Ghost of Dibble Hollow

The Ghost of Dibble Hollow by May Nickerson Wallace, 1965.

Elisha Nathanael Dibble Allen, called Pug, is excited to be spending the summer at the old family house called Dibble Hollow that his mother inherited! The summer starts out awkwardly when he gets on the wrong side of old Mr. Smith because his dog, Ricky, chases Mr. Smith’s chickens. When people find out that his family are Dibbles and that they’ll be staying in Dibble Hollow, Pug and his sister Helen learn that the locals in the area are afraid of Dibble Hollow. There are rumors that the house is haunted.

Pug thinks that the house is charming. It was built in 1730, and Pug immediately claims a room for himself with a picture of a boy in old-fashioned clothes who looks a lot like him. It does seem odd, though, that Ricky is afraid to enter that room, no matter how much Pug tries to persuade him.

Then, it seems like the family won’t be able to stay at the house after all because the well is dry, and they can’t get water. Pug is upset about having to leave the house and abandon their summer plans, but things change during the night, when Pug meets the ghost who haunts his room. The ghost is Miles Dibble, the older brother of Nathanael, Pug’s grandfather. Miles died young and still haunts the room that he once shared with Nathanael.

The ghostly Miles explains to Pug that he’s been responsible for the rumors that Dibble Hollow is haunted. He does things to scare strangers away from the house. However, he really wants his relatives to stay at Dibble Hollow, so he explains to Pug that there is actually a second well at Dibble Hollow, and it is connected to the house with pipes, but Pug’s grandfather’s eldest brother, Ezra, turned off the water on purpose to fool people into thinking that there was no water at the house, so he could have the house all to himself. Miles explains to Pug how to find the right pipe in the basement and turn the water back on.

The next morning, Pug follows Miles’s instructions and finds the pipe so the plumber can turn the water back on. His family is amazed how he knew where to look, but Pug is vague about how he knew. He can’t tell them about Miles because Miles tells him that only boys under the age of 15 in the Dibble family can see him, and also one other person who is special to Miles, although Miles doesn’t explain who that is.

Pug is happy that his family will be able to stay at Dibble Hollow for the summer, but he also begins hearing about a feud between the Smith family and the Dibble family. People are unsure exactly how the feud started. The plumber, Mr. Potter, says that there are only a few people who really knew the beginning of it. One of them is Miles, who has been dead for more than 50 years at that point. Another is Eb Smith, who was once Miles’s best friend, and is now the elderly Mr. Smith who was angry that Ricky chased his chickens. Pug is interested in being friends with Eb Smith’s granddaughter, Priscilla, but he thinks that he needs to understand the feud between their families before he can do that.

Since Eb Smith doesn’t want to talk to the Dibbles, Pug and Helen go to see Miss Fanny Woodman, the other person Mr. Potter says would know what happened to start the feud. Miss Woodman explains that the feud started when she was 13 years old, after both the Dibble and Smith families made a lot of money at a fair by winning some prizes and selling livestock. The elder boys in the Dibble and Smith families were supposed to take the money home, but they paid Eb and Miles to do it for them because they wanted to stay longer at the fair. However, Eb thought some suspicious men were following them home, thinking that the younger boys would be easier to rob. To evade the thieves, the two younger boys split up. Eb was supposed to lead the thieves on a wild goose chase while Miles got the money safely home. Eb did manage to lose their followers, but Miles never turned up with the money. The Smiths suspected Miles of running away with the money, but the Dibbles suspected the Smiths of having done something to Miles to get all the money for themselves.

At first, Eb didn’t think the Miles stole the money. He thought maybe Miles was playing some kind of trick on him because the two of them had a rivalry over Miss Woodman. Both boys had a crush on her when they were all kids. Miles was a teaser and a prankster, so it would have been in character for him to pull a trick. However, nobody ever saw the thieves who were supposedly following the boys, and the more Eb thought about it over the years, the more he became convinced that Miles was the one who thought he saw them and was the one who suggested that the two of them split up. Nobody ever found Miles’s body, so there was no proof that he ever died. His family eventually decided that’s what must have happened, so they had a memorial service for him and put a marker for him in the local cemetery, but the Smiths still suspected that Miles just stole the money and ran away.

Eb’s feelings for Miles turned to bitterness when he came to believe that Miles took advantage of their friendship to steal from him and his family, and those feelings only got worse when he suffered a series of misfortunes in his life. Eb’s wife died young, leaving him to raise their son alone. Then, his son and his wife also died, leaving him to care for his granddaughter Priscilla alone. Eb has been struggling for money to help raise Priscilla, and the money that his family lost would have made a difference to him. In fact, it still would make a difference to Eb because he’s in danger of losing his family’s old home because he can’t pay the mortgage. Miss Woodman doesn’t believe that Miles was a thief, but without the town knowing what really happened to Miles, it would be difficult to prove that to Eb Smith.

Pug knows that he has access to a source of information that nobody else does – he’s the only one who can talk to Miles himself about what happened! When Pug sees Miles again, Miles confirms what Miss Woodman said. He says that the thieves followed him instead of Eb that night. Miles tried to get away from them by crossing an old bridge, but he fell into the river and was killed. The thieves were alarmed that he was dead, so after searching him for the money, they pushed his body into the river again and got out of town as fast as they could. Miles says that a man called Mr. Miller later found his body down river and had him buried, but Mr. Miller didn’t know the boy’s identity, so he couldn’t notify his family. Instead, Mr. Miller buried Miles under the name of his own son, who died at sea as a cabin boy and whose body was never recovered. Mr. Miller felt that giving the nameless boy his son’s name and a resting place among his family was a kindness to the drowned boy and a fitting memorial to his own son, who was unable to return to rest with his family. People in the town where the Millers lived and live today know the story about the nameless boy buried with the Millers and Miles’s tombstone recounts it, but so far, nobody has made the connection between that nameless boy and Miles. (Except for one other person, who can’t explain how he knows where Miles is buried for the same reason why Pug can’t tell his family how he knew where the water pipe was.)

Pug asks Miles what happened to the money, and Miles says that he successfully managed to hide it from the thieves before he fell in the river. The problem is that he’s not exactly sure where he hid it. He knows he put it in a tree, but it was night, he was confused and in a hurry, his sense of direction was never good, and then, he died a sudden death. He’s been looking for the tree where he hid the money ever since, but he still can’t find it. He just knows that it’s somewhere around the old Smith place, Twin Maples … where Dibbles aren’t really welcome these days. Miles needs Pug’s help to find that hidden money and repair the relationship between the Smiths and the Dibbles!

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

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

Part of the theme of the story is about old grudges. Miss Woodman and Priscilla, among others, tell Eb Smith that the grudge that he’s been holding against Miles and the other Dibbles is only hurting him and that it’s time to let it go, but at the same time, they also understand why he has trouble letting the issue go. The money that Miles was carrying when he disappeared would make a major difference to Eb Smith because he’s been struggling for years to take care of his old family home and his orphaned granddaughter. With the mortgage coming due, the holder of the mortgage, Mr. Pratt, is planning for foreclose and have Eb Smith sent to a retirement home, but that would leave Priscilla without a home. Mr. Pratt says he and his wife would take Priscilla in as a nanny for their four children, but that’s a nightmare job! The Pratts have had trouble keeping a nanny because the children are so badly behaved. Priscilla would be little more than a captive domestic slave to the Pratts. With that much depending on the lost money that would secure the Smiths’ home and future, it’s understandable why Eb Smith has trouble letting the matter go.

Eb doesn’t know that Miles is definitely dead and that he died the night of the fair, when they were chased by thieves. If Miles’s body had been identified and returned to his family shortly after his death, Eb would have accepted years ago that Miles was just the unfortunate victim of the thieves. He would have mourned the loss of his friend and reconciled himself to the loss of the money as something that couldn’t be helped. It was not knowing the truth for years that caused Eb to doubt his old friend and convince himself that Miles was the one responsible for the loss of the money. The restoration of the money is key to helping the Smiths and settling the feud, but knowing the real truth of Miles’s death is also important. As long as Eb doesn’t know the truth, his family’s suspicions, his own suspicions and imagination, and the rumors of the local people are all that Eb has had to fill in the space of what he doesn’t know.

The inability of people to communicate with each other hampers the truth. Pug’s attempts to help the Smiths are hampered because he can’t let Eb Smith know that he’s helping at first. If he did, Eb Smith’s pride and the grudge he holds would probably cause him to refuse the help, even if it hurt him and his granddaughter. Miles refuses to say at first who else besides Pug can see him as a ghost, but Miles later learns that (spoiler) it’s the man who found his body and buried him. Gideon Miller is now a very old man, and he only saw Miles’s ghost once when he was seriously ill, about a year after he buried Miles. That’s the only way that Mr. Miller knows his name and that he is the boy he buried. However, Mr. Miller can’t go to Miles’s family or the Smiths and tell them the truth about Miles because he knows nobody would be likely to believe him. Everyone would just think that he was hallucinating. Mr. Miller and Pug can talk to each other about it because they’ve both experienced Miles and can understand each other’s experiences, but neither of them can convincingly tell anyone else. Pug can’t tell his sister or Priscilla about the things he’s doing to try to help the Smiths, so they think he isn’t really doing much, if anything, although Helen is suspicious that Pug knows things he shouldn’t know and seems to have a hidden source of information. Fortunately, Pug eventually finds a way to show his parents that the unidentified boy buried with the Miller family is Miles.

When Pug has problems with the eldest Pratt boy, Ernie, his father talks to him about grudges and expectations, bringing the story back around to the main theme. People have prejudices against the Dibbles because of what they’ve suspected for years about Miles and the missing money. Pug’s father points out that, while the Pratts definitely have some negative traits, people’s habits of expecting the worst of them just because their family has that reputation, can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people have the sense that nobody expects anything good about them, they won’t even try to do better. Pug and Ernie do end up getting into a fight, but once they’ve got their feelings out and impressed each other with their fighting ability, they make up and become friends. Ernie helps Pug to understand Mr. Pratt better. Mr. Pratt actually thinks he would be helping Eb Smith by sending him to the county old folks’ home because he genuinely thinks Eb Smith can’t manage his house by himself. It’s not just a ploy to get the property and make a personal profit.

When the truth is revealed and the money found, the adults in the story are mature enough to admit that they were wrong about things, and I thought that was a really good example to present to kids. Eb Smith apologizes to the Dibbles, particularly Pug, about how he treated them when they were only trying to help. He also expresses regret that he came to doubt his best friend, not understanding that something truly tragic happened to him all those years ago. Mr. Pratt, rather than being upset that he won’t get the Smiths’ property after all, is actually relieved that things have worked out well for the Smiths. He tells Mr. Smith that he didn’t mean to make things hard on him, that he really did think that what he was doing was best for him and Priscilla, but Ernie has been talking to him about their situation, and he’s changed his mind.

The time period of the story is dated. Miles’s tombstone and an old diary of his that Pug finds date the year of Miles’s death to 1900. Since he’s been dead for more than 50 years or almost 60 years, the story is set c. 1960, just a few years before the book was published.

Posted on by TracyC

Meg Mackintosh and The Mystery in the Locked Library

Meg Mackintosh Mysteries

Meg Mackintosh and The Mystery in the Locked Library by Lucinda Landon, 1993.

Meg, her brother Peter, and their grandfather are visiting their grandfather’s cousin, Alice, who was introduced in the first book of the series as the one who created the treasure hunt to find his missing Babe Ruth baseball when they were young. Grown up Alice is now a librarian, and she has created another treasure hunt for them.

One morning, she leaves them a note saying that she has a dentist appointment, but she wants them to go to the library and find something valuable that she’s hidden there before the library opens at noon. Readers follow along with the clues that Alice has left for them to solve and the pictures in the book, seeing if they can solve each part of the mystery along with Meg. In keeping with the library and book theme of the story, the clues are based around books, particularly Sherlock Holmes books.

When Meg and her family arrive at the library and begin following the clues, they discover that there are other people in the library, even though the library isn’t officially open yet. Caroline is the assistant librarian, and Gerry also works there. Then, a man named Horace Plotnik shows up, saying that he’s an antiques expert and that Alice asked him to come to appraise something.

They discover that Alice didn’t make it to her dentist appointment because someone locked her in the library’s book repair room. It turns out that the valuable item that Alice hid was a first edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that recently came to the library in a donation of books, but when Meg and Peter finish the treasure hunt and go to the place where Alice did the book, it’s gone! Was it stolen by the person who locked Alice in the book repair room, and if so, who was it?

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

My Reaction

I always enjoy treasure hunt stories, and like other Meg Mackintosh mysteries, this story gives readers the opportunity to figure out the clues and puzzles along with Meg. The information readers need is in the pictures of the story. When I was a kid, I particularly liked puzzles based around solving a secret code, and there is a secret code puzzle in this book that readers can solve themselves.

This treasure hunt is fun because it’s based around library and book themes, particularly focusing on Sherlock Holmes. The idea of hunting for a lost copy of a first edition Sherlock Holmes book was timely for when the book was originally written because, as the story indicates at the end, the book was written around the 100th anniversary of the character of Sherlock Holmes!

Posted on by TracyC

Meg Mackintosh and The Mystery at Camp Creepy

Meg Mackintosh Mysteries

Meg Mackintosh and The Mystery at Camp Creepy by Lucinda Landon, 1987.

Meg Mackintosh is at a summer camp in Maine! The camp is called Camp Crescent, but it soon gets the name Camp Creepy because there’s a ghost story about the camp. The story says that an old man named Stuart once lived in the building that the camp uses for a boathouse and that he still haunts the camp. When people start hearing strange noises at night, the campers start thinking maybe the ghost story is true.

To celebrate the Fourth of July, the camp decides to hold a treasure hunt with puzzles for the campers to solve. Everyone is excited about the treasure hunt, but Meg is especially excited because she’s solved treasure hunts before. However, in her excitement to start the treasure hunt, she accidentally drops the first clue on the camp fire, and much of it burns.

Everyone is angry with Meg for messing up the treasure hunt because they’re supposed to solve it before nightfall to enjoy the prize. Although they don’t know what the prize is supposed to be, they’re told that it won’t be any good if they find it too late. While the others go on a hike, Meg fakes a stomach ache because she just can’t face the other campers again.

At the camp’s infirmary, Meg meets two other campers who are staying behind. Russell has a bad case of poison ivy, and Tina has been dealing with homesickness. They ask to see what’s left of the first clue, and Meg shows them. Something in the clue reminds Meg of something she saw at camp earlier, and the three of them begin thinking that they might be able to solve the after all. If they can just get past that first burned clue, they can continue the treasure hunt like normal.

Can the three of them manage to solve the treasure hunt and save the prize for all the other campers? Will they meet Stuart’s ghost along the way?

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

My Reaction

I always enjoy treasure hunt stories, and like other Meg Mackintosh mysteries, this story gives readers the opportunity to figure out the clues and puzzles along with Meg. The information readers need is in the pictures of the story.

Most of the focus of the story is on the treasure hunt, and the ghost is kind of a side plot. Maybe the ghost would seem a little spookier to young readers, but I have to admit that I found it difficult to think of anybody named Stuart as sounding very sinister. The legend of Stuart doesn’t even seem to carry any consequences for people who see him other than it just being spooky, so I didn’t think the story was that creepy.

Posted on by TracyC

Garbage Juice for Breakfast

Polka Dot Private Eye

Garbage Juice for Breakfast by Patricia Reilly Giff, illustrated by Blanche Sims, 1989.

This book follows an earlier book in the series, The Case of the Cool-Itch Kid, while Dawn is staying at her summer camp, Camp Wild-In-The-Woods. Her friend from school, Jill Simon, is at camp with her, and they’ve made friends with another character from the earlier book, Lizzie Lee, who started out as a rival/antagonist for Dawn. Both Dawn and Lizzie like mysteries and being private detectives, and they’ve bonded over that. There is still an element of rivalry between them, but it’s a friendlier rivalry than when they first met each other.

When their camp counselor announces that she has set up a treasure hunt for the campers to solve, Dawn is excited. As the Polka Dot Private Eye, she’s sure that she’ll be the first to solve the mystery! However, Lizzie is the Cool Cat Detective. (Each of them take their names from the detective kits that each of them own.) Dawn knows that Lizzie will be tough competition.

Because the kids in their cabin are from different schools and some were friends with each other before they came to camp, the campers in the cabin have favorites between the two girl detectives. Jill thinks that Dawn is the best detective and will solve the treasure hunt before Lizzie will, while Lizzie’s friends think that she’s going to be the one to solve the mystery. They decide to turn the treasure hunt into a contest to show which of the girls is the best detective.

The first clue is in the form of a rhyme. It seems to have something to do with horses, and the girls are starting to learn horseback riding. There is also a hint about taking a particular trail. It’s tough for both Dawn and Lizzie to investigate the same mystery without getting in each other’s way, following one another or being suspicious that they’re following each other, or accidentally giving each other hints. Is the competition between them really a good idea, or is teamwork what they really need?

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

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

I remember reading this book when I was a kid, and I loved it because I always loved treasure hunt books! There are parts of the treasure hunt that readers can solve along with the characters in the story, although it’s not one of those stories that pauses to ask readers if they’ve solved parts before the characters have. It’s just that the information necessary to solve each part of the treasure hunt is given in the story and shown in the pictures, so readers have the opportunity to think what the next step should be along with the characters or before the characters announce what they’ve figured out. Some of the clues point to features of the camp itself, like the names of the trails around the camp, but the story does provide that information to the readers, so there’s nothing that the characters know that the readers don’t. Other clues use pop culture references, like Donald Duck, because their camp counselor is a Disney fan and has items with Disney characters on them.

Dawn and Lizzie do compete with each other to solve the treasure hunt, until they solve the final clue. All through the book, Dawn struggles with the horse lessons because she’s actually afraid of horses. When reaching the prize means going through an area with a lot bugs, Dawn suddenly feels sorry for Lizzie, who is following her but struggling because she’s afraid of bugs. Understanding what it’s like to struggle with something that scares her, she feels some empathy for Lizzie and realizes that she can’t use Lizzie’s fear to get ahead of her and reach the treasure first. She tells Lizzie that they can go together to reach the treasure, so they are able to share the glory. The experience helps the girls a little with their respective fears, and they share the final prize.

The name of this book comes from a kind of mixed fruit juice that the camp serves in the dining hall. None of the campers know exactly what’s in it, nobody really likes it, and the camp rumor is that it’s just strained out of the garbage. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the mystery in the story, but it’s there for background color, the kind of stories that kids tell about food at camps and schools that they don’t like.

Aside from the mystery, the story has some fun camp atmosphere for beginning chapter book readers: horses and barns, the camp dining hall, a picnic with books, and a cozy, rainy night in their cabin with cookies.

Posted on by TracyC

Spiderweb for Two

The Melendy Family Series

Spiderweb for two by Elizabeth Enright, 1951.

Randy Melendy is feeling morose because the three older Melendy siblings (Mona, Rush, and their adopted brother Mark) have all gone away to school. Rather than attending the local school as they used to, Rush and Mark have gone away to boarding school for the first time this year, and Mona is attending a school in New York City, where they used to live. Since Mona has started acting professionally on the radio, she’s been commuting back and forth from the family’s house in the country to her acting job in the city. This year, her father decided that, rather than continuing to commute back and forth, it would be best for her to remain in the city and go to school there, staying with a family friend, the wealthy Mrs. Oliphant, who is fond of the children. That leaves only Randy and her younger brother, Oliver, at the big Melendy house in the country, known as the Four-Story Mistake.

Since Randy is accustomed to having her very active siblings around her, always doing something interesting, Randy thinks that life is going to be boring and lonely from now on. She recognizes that the older siblings going away to school is just the first step in growing up and moving away from the family. She knows the next likely steps for them are college and marriage, and they will likely never really live all together again, at least not all the time. The housekeeper, Cuffy, tries to reassure Randy that she still has Oliver for company, but Randy isn’t reassured. Oliver is a few years younger than she is, and she doesn’t think they have much in common or much that they would like to do together. However, the two of them are about to be involved in a special shared adventure.

Cuffy sends Randy and Oliver to get the mail, and they are surprised to find an envelope addressed to the both of them in handwriting they don’t recognize. Inside the envelope is a poem that seems to be some kind of puzzle or riddle – the first clue to a treasure hunt! The mysterious letter writer tells them to keep it a secret, and the clue seems to point to a place where the shadow of a tree falls.

It takes Randy and Oliver a little time to decide which tree is supposed to cast the shadow, and their treasure-hunting is delayed by rain. However, when they dig in the correct spot, they find a tin box. Inside the box, there is a little golden walnut box with another clue. This time, the clue indicates that the next clue is being held by someone who loves them, although they don’t know it. It takes some effort for Randy and Oliver to solve this one. At first, they think it’s probably Cuffy or Willy, and searching their pockets or getting them to reveal what’s in their pockets without the kids explaining why they need to know is tricky. Eventually, it turns out that the next clue is hidden on the collar of Isaac the dog.

The treasure hunt continues in this way for the whole rest of the school year. The clues are written as poems on blue paper and send them various places around their own house, the houses of people they know, and various other landmarks, including a grave yard! Randy and Oliver figure out that this treasure hunt must be something their older siblings have created to keep them busy and entertained during their absence. The treasure hunt breaks off periodically when their siblings are home from school for Christmas before resuming after Christmas with another letter.

In between solving the riddles of the treasure hunt, Randy and Oliver do get to spend some time with their siblings. Over Christmas, the family decides to go caroling and visiting friends. For Easter, the girls make Easter bonnets, and Rush makes a special one for their horse. Randy and Oliver never discuss the treasure hunt with their siblings, though, because secrecy is part of the game.

Sometimes, Randy and Oliver get into trouble following clues, and sometimes, they accidentally make the hunt tougher than it has to be because they misinterpret where they’re supposed to go next. Eventually, the hunt leads them to a special surprise from an old family friend, and everyone shares in the surprise!

My Reaction and Spoilers

I liked the treasure hunt in this book because I always like books with treasure hunts that have riddles to solve and clues to follow. I’ve read other reviews of this book online, and other people remember this book fondly for the treasure hunt, although it does have a different feel from the other books in the Melendy Quartet, for several reasons. It’s partly because only two of the Melendy siblings are present for most of the story, although the others do appear sometimes and make their presence felt, even when they’re away. Readers will probably figure out before Randy and Oliver that their absent siblings have set up this treasure hunt for them to keep them busy and give them something to think about so they won’t be too lonely without the others.

This is also the only book in the series that doesn’t make references to WWII because it’s the only book in the series written after the war ends. The war wasn’t a main part of the plot of the other books, but it was always present in the other stories, with the children taking part in activities to help the war effort. The war also affected the attitudes of the children, making them want to do their parts for their family as well as their country. This book never mentions it once, and the focus is on how the children are growing up.

Randy knows that seeing her siblings go away to school is just the first step to them all growing up and moving away. When the older siblings come home for Christmas, they’re already showing signs that they’ve been doing more growing up during the few months they’ve been away from home. When Mona comes home for Christmas, she has a new haircut and is wearing lipstick, and Rush’s voice is starting to change. Eventually, Randy and Oliver will do these things, too, but for now, they’re the ones left behind as kids at home. Through their shared adventures with each other without their siblings, they grow closer to each other than they were before. Oliver was too young to join Randy and the older siblings on some of their previous adventures, but he is growing up, too, and he’s now able to join Randy in shared activities. During the course of their treasure hunt, they have adventures in the countryside, like the siblings did in other books.

Like other books in this series, there are also stories within stories. Sometimes, the main story departs from Randy and Oliver when other people tell them stories about exciting or interesting episodes from their own lives. This books has stories about how Cuffy saved a boy from drowning when she was young, their father’s search for a lost dog, and Mrs. Bishop remembering when she first noticed the patterns of snowflakes.

There’s only one full page picture in the book. The other illustrations are smaller ink drawings at the beginnings of chapters.

Posted on by TracyC

The Mystery of the Runaway Scarecrow

Three Cousins Detective Club

#26 The Mystery of the Runaway Scarecrow by Elspeth Campbell Murphy, 1999.

Sarah-Jane astonishes her cousins when she tells them that Buster, the scarecrow her mother made, which has been sitting outside of a local restaurant, has gone “on vacation. Scarecrows don’t just get up and go on vacation, and when they say that, Sarah-Jane says that Buster left a note saying that he had gone on vacation. The boys don’t believe scarecrows can write notes any more than they can go on vacation. Sarah-Jane admits that scarecrows don’t write notes, but someone else wrote a note on Buster’s behalf and left it behind when Buster disappeared. The note says that Buster is going on vacation and will be back when someone figures out where he’s gone. That’s weird enough, but Sarah-Jane says that Mr. Wesley, who owns the restaurant where Buster was, has been receiving pictures of Buster on his trip in the mail since he disappeared.

It seems like someone is playing a bizarre prank or maybe setting up some kind of treasure hunt involving the scarecrow. The town mayor says that Buster’s “vacation” has created more publicity for the town’s upcoming Fall Festival, so it could even be a publicity stunt. However, it’s been a few days since the last pictures of Buster arrived, and Mr. Wesley is inviting Sarah-Jane and her cousins to investigate Buster’s disappearance and find him because he knows that they like to solve mysteries.

The kids study the pictures for clues to Buster’s whereabouts, but the pictures are pretty generic. They show him outside a motel, at a gift shop, and at a gas station, but the locations aren’t very distinctive and could be found in any number of cities. The postmarks on the envelopes that pictures came in are all still in the area, so it seems like Buster didn’t go very far. They need to hurry if they’re going to find Buster in time for the town’s parade because the parade is tomorrow!

Then, Sarah-Jane reveals that something else mysterious has happened in the area recently. Someone stole a rare coin from Mr. Clark. This is also an intriguing mystery, but they don’t have many clues to start. Mr. Clark isn’t exactly sure when the coin disappeared because he doesn’t get out his coin collection very often.

For some strange reason, an older boy in Sarah-Jane’s neighborhood, Billy, seems very concerned about whether Sarah-Jane and her cousins have made any progress in finding Buster. Could Buster’s disappearance also have something to do with the missing coin?

Theme of the Story:

“The land has produced its harvest; God, our God, has blessed us.”

Psalm 67:6

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

My Reaction and Spoilers

I liked the way the person who took the scarecrow used the pictures to provide clues to their treasure hunt. Readers won’t be able to figure it out right away without explanation from the characters because the book doesn’t show all the pictures, but I liked the concept for how the culprit worked a series of clues into the pictures. There’s also a fun backstory behind the scheme. The prankster doesn’t have a sinister motive. The scarecrow caper is meant as a kind of prank/game/harmless publicity stunt.

I guessed pretty quickly who had taken the scarecrow, based on motive, but I liked the addition of Billy and the coin because it complicated the story and provided a second mystery on top of the first. There is a genuine crime in the story, but it’s not the one that the kids start out investigating.

The story takes place during October, but it’s not on Halloween. The town’s Fall Festival just seems to kick off the fall season in general.

Posted on by TracyC

The Puzzling World of Winston Breen

The Puzzling World of Winston Breen by Eric Berlin, 2007.

Twelve-year-old Winston Breen loves puzzles! He looks for puzzles to solve everywhere, and he also loves to make to give puzzles to other people to solve. Usually, on his sister’s birthday, he likes to set up some kind of puzzle or treasure hunt to lead her to her present. However, the year his sister Katie turns ten years old, Winston almost forgot about her upcoming birthday party, so he didn’t have anything planned. In fact, he was lucky to find a nice present in time for the party, buying a pretty box that he saw in a curio shop at the last minute.

When Katie opens his present at the party and sees an empty box, she’s sure that the empty box must be another of his puzzle tricks. Winston tries to explain to her that it’s just a nice box, and there’s no puzzle this time, but to his surprise, Katie finds a puzzle in the box that Winston didn’t make or put there. It turns out that there’s a secret compartment in the box that contains thin strips of wood with letters on them. It looks like the kind of puzzle Winston loves and one he might have made if he had planned better this year, but as Winston explains to everyone, this isn’t his work. So, whose puzzle is it, and what does it mean?

Everyone at the party tries to guess what the puzzle means, and Winston has to reassure everyone multiple times that it’s really not one of his puzzles. In the end, they all decide to let Winston try to solve the puzzle and tell them the answer. However, Winston can’t seem to solve the puzzle! When he’s unable to solve it, his relatives really begin to believe him that he didn’t make it. Winston’s cousin, Henry, questions him about who had access to the box and where he got it in the first place. When Winston says that it got it at the curio shop, Henry points out that the curio shop owner also likes puzzles and has shared puzzles with Winston before. It seems logical that he’s the original source of this particular puzzle.

When Winston talks to the owner of the curio shop, he says that he had no idea that there was a puzzle in the box that Winston bought. The box was part of a larger set of items that came from the estate of a woman who died recently. The lady was one of the daughters of a wealthy inventor who was one of the founding members of their town, Walter Fredericks. One of Winston’s friends is doing a report about Walter Fredericks for school. The owner of the curio shop says that the last living member of the deceased lady’s family is her sister, who is the town’s librarian, and that maybe Winston should ask her about the puzzle. Winston’s friend needs some information about the inventor for his report anyway, so they decide to go to the library and talk to the librarian. However, when the boys try to talk to the librarian, she suddenly becomes upset when she sees Winston holding the pieces of the puzzle. She starts to cry, asks why “you people” can’t leave her alone, and yells at them to leave the library!

The boys have no idea what made the librarian react like that. Later, they are approached by a strange man who introduces himself as David North. He says that he saw what happened in the library, and he thinks that he can help. He calls himself a treasure hunter and explains that the reason why Winston hasn’t been able to solve the puzzle is that he’s missing some of the pieces. David North shows the boys that he has more of the pieces to the puzzle, and he suggests that they become partners, sharing their pieces with each other to solve the puzzle.

Before talking to Mr. North, the boys didn’t even know that the puzzle was the key to a treasure. They don’t know exactly what this treasure is or how Mr. North knew about it, and they’re not sure that they can trust him. Soon after meeting Mr. North, they are also approached by a man who calls himself Mickey Glowacka. This man explains that he’s also looking for the treasure. The boys ask him what treasure that is, and Glowacka says that the inventor hid a large sum of money. Glowacka also has a set of puzzle pieces, and he says that there is also a fourth set, the set that belongs to the local librarian.

Although Glowacka is more forthcoming than North was, Winston isn’t sure that he’s trustworthy, either. Then, the town librarian comes to see Winston to apologize for her fit at the library, and she explains the rest of the situation to Winston and his family. Walter Fredericks had four children. Except for the librarian, Mrs. Lewis, who was the youngest of his children, the others are all deceased. Their father was a fun-loving man who enjoyed games and puzzles, but the siblings never got along with each other. Mrs. Lewis says that her entire childhood was full of petty squabbles that she and her siblings never knew how to resolve with each other, so they just increased over the years. Before their wealthy father even died, she and her siblings argued over their eventual inheritance. There was one item in particular that all four of them wanted: a valuable ring that was given to their father by a prince to thank him for one of his inventions. After their father died, the four siblings went to claim their shares of the estate, but the lawyer informed them that the ring was not included with the rest of the estate. Instead, their father arranged one last puzzle for his four children to solve together. Each of his four children received a set of puzzle pieces, and they were told that they would have to work together to solve the puzzle and claim the ring. Mrs. Lewis realizes that her father was making one last effort to get his children to stop arguing and join forces, but a single puzzle would never be enough to resolve years of arguments and fighting. Instead, the siblings turned their backs on each other and on the puzzle, so it has gone unsolved for more than 20 years, and the ring is still hidden somewhere.

Since her other siblings died, one by one, their shares of the puzzle pieces have been purchased by other people as their estates have been sold off. That is how North and Glowacka acquired their sets of puzzle pieces from the estates of Mrs. Lewis’s brothers, similar to the way Winston accidentally bought the set that once belonged to Mrs. Lewis’s sister, Livia. Since Livia’s death, someone has become desperate to get as many of the remaining puzzle pieces as possible. Someone broke into Livia’s house soon after her death, before items from her estate were auctioned off, but this person was unable to find Livia’s set of puzzle pieces because they were hidden in the secret compartment in her box. Someone has also broken into Mrs. Lewis’s house to find her set of pieces, leaving her a threatening message. She has also received threatening phone calls and demands for her puzzle pieces, which is why she was so upset when she saw Winston approaching her with puzzle pieces. It seems logical that either North or Glowacka could be the one breaking into houses and threatening Mrs. Lewis, or it could even be both of them.

Mrs. Lewis has decided that the most sensible way to resolve this situation is to do what she and her siblings should have done years ago with each other: arrange for all the interested parties to work together to solve the puzzle and find the ring, then sell the ring and split the money. Winston’s father points out that doing this would mean including whoever it was who’s been threatening her for a share in the treasure, and it doesn’t seem right to reward that person. Mrs. Lewis decides that she’s willing to do that just to settle the matter and remove the reason for the person to keep harassing her. To keep everyone in line and ensure that everyone plays fair with each other, she has recruited a friend of hers who is a retired police officer to act as her representative and a referee for this game. North and Glowacka grudgingly agree to abide by the rules of the game.

Winston’s sister, Katie, declares that the puzzle pieces that were in the box are hers since they were part of her birthday present, and Winston reluctantly agrees, even though he’s the main puzzle person in the family and feels a little possessive of the puzzle because he’s driven to solve it. Of course, he is included in the game, both as his younger sister’s chaperon at group meetings and the family puzzle expert. At first, Katie is reluctant to split her share of the treasure with Winston because of his participation, but their father points out that she will be relying on his help in this game. As the owner of the puzzle pieces, she has the right to decide what Winston’s help is worth to her, so she will control how much of her share Winston will receive, but it’s only right that she let him have something in exchange for his help.

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

My Reaction

I enjoyed this book both for the mystery story and for the puzzles that appear throughout the book. Because Winston loves puzzles so much, he creates little puzzles and brain teasers for readers to solve throughout the book, and some people also give him puzzles and brain teasers of their own. Readers have the opportunity to solve these puzzles themselves, and the answers are in the back of the book.

The main mystery of this book was good. It has a particular set of suspects, everyone who is participating in the search for the ring and the solution to the puzzles. They must work together at the same time as they look at each other suspiciously. However, there is a twist to this story because there are more people involved with this series of puzzles than the obvious ones. There are people who are on the scene and have access to at least some of the clues who are not immediately obvious suspects, and I admit that I didn’t suspect these people at first.

There is a point where Winston himself becomes a suspect for a break-in at Mrs. Lewis’s house. I think the author meant this accusation against Winston to ramp up the suspense in the story, but it just irritated me because Winston is still a kid. He’s not old enough to have a driver’s license, and he’s still in that age where his movements are still limited and monitored by parents. It would have been more credible if he had been a teenager, with more ability to get around on his own, unsupervised and with less accountability.

Posted on by TracyC

Mystery Behind the Wall

The Boxcar Children

Mystery Behind the Wall by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1973.

It’s summer vacation, and Benny doesn’t know what to do with himself because his friends have gone away for the summer. Mrs. MacGregor, the housekeeper, suggests that they invite a guest to the house to cure Benny’s loneliness. Her sister in Canada knows a boy who lives on a farm and is often lonely because they live a long way away from other people. The boy, called Rory (short for Roderick), is very lively and full of ideas, and he could use some company as much as Benny does. The kids are all eager to meet Rory and have him visit, so their grandfather calls Rory’s family and arranges for the visit.

The Alden kids are excited about Rory’s visit and start preparing the spare bedroom. They wonder if Rory will like it or not because the room seems old-fashioned and a little sad to them. The walls are covered with a wallpaper with roses, so the kids think that it must have been a girl’s room at one time. They notice an old photograph on the wall of a girl with her parents in front of the house, but the house looked different and smaller when the photograph was taken. There’s also a poster that says “Coolidge for President” in the window, dating the photograph to the 1920s, meaning that the picture is decades old. (The Aldens refer to that as being about 40 years yearly, dating the story to the 1960s.) Mrs. MacGregor puts a bright red bedspread on the bed to brighten the room up a bit, and the Aldens hope that Rory won’t mind that it still seems a bit old-fashioned.

Rory doesn’t mind the room at all. In fact, he is a bright and curious boy, who is interested in everything and notices little details. He notices the photograph in the room when he arrives, and he asks Grandfather Alden about it. Grandfather Alden explains that the people in the photograph are the Shaw family and that they owned the house before he bought it. The girl is named Stephanie, and she was the Shaws’ daughter. The Shaw family sold the house to Grandfather Alden when they moved to France, and Grandfather Alden built an addition onto the house, which is why it looks different now. The children wonder what happened to the Shaw family and to Stephanie, but Grandfather Alden says that he doesn’t know. They never wrote to him after they moved to France.

Another thing that Rory notices about the guest room is that it looks like the closet should be bigger than it actually is. Benny has the room next to Rory’s, and he has the idea making a hole in the backs of their closets so they can have a secret communication system between their rooms. Grandfather Alden doesn’t mind the project, so they cut holes in the backs of their closets. That’s when they discover that there is a secret, hidden space between the closets, and there’s something hidden in the space. They pull it out, and it’s a piece of cloth. They wonder what it’s for and why someone would hide it.

Grandfather Alden identifies the cloth as a coin case. He tells the kids a little more about Stephanie Shaw. He knows that Stephanie’s father was a very strict man. Her mother went to France ahead of the rest of the family, and her father was in charge of her in her mother’s absence. He had her tutored at home and didn’t let her play with other children, so she was often lonely. However, he allowed her to indulge in their shared hobby, which was coin collecting. The kids wonder what happened to the coins when Stephanie left for France. There are no coins in the coin case now. Professor Nichols, a coin collector who specialized in rare nickels, also helped Stephanie with her collection. He thought that Stephanie might have left her coin collection behind when she went to France, thinking that she might return one day, but Stephanie never did return. Professor Nichols would have asked Stephanie about it, but he didn’t have their address in France.

When the kids explore the hiding place in the closet further, they find an old notebook that turns out to be Stephanie’s journal from when she was 10 years old. Stephanie explains about her loneliness, and her coin collection. She talks about a puzzle that she created that will fool even her father, but the journal ends, so they don’t know what sort of puzzle Stephanie was talking about.

As the children explore Stephanie’s old room further, they find a clue that shows that Stephanie created a treasure hunt before she left for France, a treasure hunt that nobody has ever solved. The Boxcar Children and their new friend, Rory, begin playing along with Stephanie’s old treasure hunt, hoping that it will eventually lead to her missing coin collection.

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

My Reaction

This is one of the early Boxcar Children books, written by the original author. Because the book was written decades ago, a child who was 10 years old in the 1920s would have been about 50 years old at the time the story is set, but the children are sad to learn that Shaw family, including young Stephanie, was killed in a railway accident in Europe, which is why none of them ever returned to solve the treasure hunt and reclaim the coin collection.

The Boxcar Children run into multiple dead-ends in the treasure hunt because things have changed in the decades since Stephanie created her treasure hunt, and clues have been lost. They almost give up, but Benny and Rory realize something that helps them solve the final riddle.

When they finally find the coin collection, they call Professor Nichols to come and look at it, and he tells them about some of the rare coins in the collection, like a 20 cent piece and an Indian head penny. He explains some general principles of coin collecting to the kids, like the fact that the oldest coins aren’t always the most valuable pieces in a collection. There are some very old and even ancient coins that are not quite as rare as some newer coins, and the rarity is what makes them valuable. He helps the children to start their own coin collections. This book could be a fun mystery to help get kids interested in a new hobby!

Posted on by TracyC

A Ghost of a Chance

A Ghost of a Chance by Joan Carris, 1992.

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.