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Danny Dunn and the Swamp Monster

Danny Dunn

Danny Dunn and the Swamp Monster by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin, 1971.

Professor Bullfinch receives a cryptic message, which he says is written in the style of a telegram (he calls it “cablese” – a way of shortening messages because people pay for telegrams by the word). As Professor Bullfinch and Danny study the message further, they can draw more conclusions about the sender, who is not specified. They know it’s someone with money because the hotel it was sent from is expensive. From one of the terms used, they think the sender is a scientist, and because he sent a message written to be a telegram as a letter, he’s probably absent-minded. That description seems familiar to Professor Bullfinch.

Then, a strange man comes to the door who seems oddly distracted and confused. He greets Danny as if he were an old friend, but Danny has no idea who he is. He thinks the man is crazy, but Professor Bullfinch recognizes him as his old friend Dr. Benjamin Fenster. Of course, Dr. Fenster is the person who sent the confusing message. It turns out that Dr. Fenster meant to send that message to Dr. Ismail at the University of Khartoum, but he accidentally got it mixed up with the message he was going to send to Professor Bullfinch. Dr. Fenster is an absent-minded professor type, and he’s always doing things like that. Although, he does correct Danny when he mentions this, saying that he’s not actually a professor, and it’s not so much that he’s absent-minded so much as that he has a lot to think about and can’t think of everything at once.

Their conversation is interrupted when something goes wrong with the experiment that Professor Bullfinch and Danny were working on before Dr. Fenster arrived. A warning goes off, and Professor Bullfinch yells to Danny to shut off the machine. However, Danny can’t find the shut off switch, so he panics and pulls an electrical cord, sending an electrical current through the project before Professor Bullfinch turns off the switch. When they examine the results of the experiment, they’re surprised. Professor Bullfinch was trying to develop a new polymer, but the accident with the machine and the electrical current have turned the polymer into a superconductor and a very powerful ring magnet with a circular magnetic field.

While they’re examining the results of the experiment, Dr. Fenster wanders off, lost in thought. Danny worries if he’ll be okay, wandering around on his own, but Professor Bullfinch says that he’ll be fine. Dr. Fenster often does this when he’s thinking something through. Danny’s friends, Joe and Irene, arrive, commenting on seeing a man who was acting strangely and wondering if there’s something wrong with him. Danny explains to them who Dr. Fenster is and tells them about the ring magnet. Then, Dr. Fenster bursts back in, very excited, because he’s figured something out. He thinks the magnetic polymer ring might be the solution to a problem he’s been trying to solve.

Dr. Fenster is a zoologist, and one of his projects is to investigate accounts of legendary animals. Although many scientists tend to disregard stories of unknown animals as purely legendary, sometimes, they turn out to be previously unreported/undiscovered species. (“Undiscovered” in the scientific sense. Obviously, people have seen them, or they wouldn’t tell stories about them. These are species that haven’t been officially documented as having been discovered among the scientific community.) Investigating rare or possibly unknown species is what Dr. Fenster does.

Dr. Fenster is currently investigating reports of a creature called the lau, which apparently lives in swampy areas around the source of the Nile River in Uganda. The lau is supposed to be an enormous serpent with tentacles on its head. The legend around it says that if a person sees the lau first, the lau will die, but if the lau sees the person first, the person will die. When the others ask him if he thinks that’s real, Dr. Fenster says that he thinks that’s more metaphorical, like when someone says they felt petrified, it doesn’t mean that they literally turned to stone, or if someone says that their blood froze, it just means that they felt horrified. He thinks that the idea is that a serpent could kill a person, if they didn’t see it and disturbed it, but if the person saw the serpent first, they would kill it to avoid the threat.

The problem that Dr. Fenster has been trying to solve is how to move around the swamp and keep the area under observation during the night as well as the daytime, without possibly disturbing the creature he’s trying to find. It’s difficult to get around that swampy area in daylight, but it’s even more difficult at night, and he doesn’t want to use lights because that could frighten away the lau. He’s been thinking that he would like to mount some specialized cameras in certain strategic areas, but he couldn’t figure out how to mount them, and the cables he would have to use would be long and heavy. Having seen what the magnetic polymer can do, though, he thinks that could be the solution to the problem. It doesn’t weigh much itself, but when they test it, they discover it can support the weight of a grown man.

Dr. Fenster invites Professor Bullfinch and the children to join him on his expedition. He’s independently wealthy, and he can afford to pay for all them to come along. However, Danny’s mother has reservations about how safe this expedition is, and she can’t imagine that Joe or Irene’s parents will allow them to go on the trip, either. It takes time for Dr. Fenster to persuade the children’s families that the trip is safe enough for them. Eventually, they give in and allow the children to travel to Africa as a special Christmas present. Dr. Fenster doesn’t have any time limit on his own investigations, but the parents limit the children to only two weeks.

When they get to Africa, the first place that Dr. Fenster takes them is to Khartoum University in Sudan, where he introduces them to Professor Ismail, the Director of the Department of Zoology. Professor Ismail has helped Dr. Fenster with travel arrangements, equipment for the expedition, and the necessary government permits. Danny asks Professor Ismail what he thinks about the stories of the lau and whether it could be something like a dinosaur that has somehow survived. Professor Ismail says that many things are possible because there known oddities among animals, like the platypus, which lays eggs even though it’s a mammal. He shows them a fish called clarias lazera, which has the rare ability to leave water and live on land for a period of time.

The children get something to eat at a local cafe and talk excitedly about what the lau could really be and how its discovery could be “the most important discovery of the century.” Irene notices that a man in the cafe looks very interested in what they’re saying and follows them when they leave.

When the expedition reaches the site Dr. Fenster wants to investigate, they persuade some of the Nuer people who live there to show them where they’ve see the lau. They are initially reluctant and warn them that the lau is dangerous, but they do show them an area, and the members of the expedition start setting up cameras to watch it. As they begin exploring, they do find large trenches that are like the paths supposedly left by the giant serpents.

Dr. Fenster explains to the disappointed children that he won’t take them along to confront the lau directly, even if they do find it because of the possible danger. He and Professor Bullfinch will handle the creature, using the tranquilizer gun that Dr. Fenster brought along. They plan to have the children watch on the monitors and keep an eye on the base camp. However, the children see something unexpected when they’re looking at the monitors: the same strange man who was following them in Khartoum. Who is he and why has he followed their expedition?

When the children tell Professor Bullfinch and Dr. Fenster about him, they meet up with the man, and he introduces himself as a rare animal collector. He offers to join their expedition and help them, but Dr. Fenster refuses. One of the Nuer recognizes the man as a disreputable character who would do anything for money, and Dr. Fenster thinks he’s a poacher, who would try to capture rare animals and sell them, rather than simply study them scientifically. It seems that, aside from protecting themselves from the possibly dangerous lau while they study it, they might also have to protect the lau.

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

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

The lau is a cryptid in the real world as well as in the story, and the details Dr. Fenster offers about where it supposedly lives and historical mentions of the creature are accurate. Accounts of what the lau might actually be in real life vary. It could be a type of python or a very large fish, like a catfish. In the story, when they do find the lau, it turns out to be an enormous catfish, the kind that can live without water for a time and move on land, but it also turns out to be electrical, like an electric eel. Professor Bullfinch and Dr. Fenster decide that it’s related to the malapterurus, which is in keeping with real world theories about the lau.

The story makes some good points about known animals in the real world that are considered oddities because they have qualities that don’t normally apply to other animals of their type, like how the platypus is an egg-laying mammal. Just because something sounds unusual doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. There are wide variations among creatures in the animal kingdom. I thought it was interesting that they brought up the clarias lazera, which is a type of catfish that can live and move on land. A similar type of catfish that can live and move on land appeared in the children’s mystery book The Mystery of the Other Girl.

I’m not sure whether the accident that produced the magnetic polymer makes any reasonable scientific sense, but there a few interesting facts in the story. When they get to Africa, Dr. Fenster explains to them that there are actually two Nile rivers – the White Nile and the Blue Nile. They get their names because the soil they pass through gives them each a different color.

There are some words of another language included in the story when they reach Uganda, but I’m honestly not sure whether they’re real words or just made up to make it seem like Dr. Fenster can speak the local language. I tried putting them through Google translate to see if it could recognize them as anything, but it came out as nonsense. However, it’s supposed to be a language spoken by the Nuer people, so it might be something that Google translate doesn’t know.

Sometimes, I’m a little suspicious when I encounter obscure foreign words in old children’s books. I’ve read other old children’s books which use made-up words in place of an actual foreign language, probably because the writers didn’t know how to write something in a real foreign language but they wanted something that looked like it could be from another language. They were probably also acting with the assumption that kids wouldn’t know the difference, so it wouldn’t matter. I could be doing these authors a disservice by being a little suspicious here. Perhaps they did some extra research to learn a few phrases in a language that would be very obscure in the United States. It’s just that, having seen fakery elsewhere, it’s something I find myself looking for when I see instances of languages that would be difficult to fact-check.

Faking words in a real spoken language is less tolerated in the 21st century than it used to be, especially in a book that’s supposed to have educational qualities, so I hope they didn’t attempt to do that. Faking lesser details in a fiction book that’s supposed to have some real facts tends to cast suspicion on just how many of the other “facts” in the book are fake. This is an adventure story, not a textbook, so it’s true that some creative license is allowed. I still don’t know if their magnetic polymer concept is at all plausible, but the Danny Dunn stories are science fiction adventures, so some creative license there is allowed. However, readers like to feel that they can trust a certain amount of supporting detail to be correct. It’s also considered a cultural insult to use fake nonsense words in place of actual words from a language people really speak. Hopefully, that’s not the case here, but I wanted to point out the concept so readers can see how the use of real words strengths a story while faking them weakens it.

The story offers about the Nuer people, but I’m not sure how accurate they are. I don’t know where the authors got their information. They say that Nuer people don’t have chiefs and don’t follow orders from anybody, but according to the eHRAF World Cultures collection through Yale University, their clans do have headmen, and they also have sub-chiefs.

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Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine

Danny Dunn

Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin, 1958.

At the beginning of the book, Danny develops a device that allows him to do his homework and his friend Joe’s homework at the same time by using a system of pulleys and a board that holds two pens at once. (This seems like an unnecessarily complicated device, since he and his friend could accomplish the same thing just by sitting next to each other and talking over their answers as they both write them down at the same time, although Danny says that he plans to build a second pen board so Joe can work on their English homework at the same time as Danny does their math homework.) Danny thinks that it would save even more time if he could find a way to build a robot that will just do the homework for them, but Joe warns him to be careful because things often go wrong with his inventions.

Joe leaves to get more materials for their homework device, and suddenly, Danny is surprised by a tapping at the window, and he sees a girl’s face looking in at him. It’s surprising because Danny is on the second floor of his house. At first, he thinks that this girl who seems to be hovering in the air must be from outer space or something, but it turns out that she’s just an ordinary girl on a ladder.

The girl tells Danny that her name is Irene Miller and that her family just moved in next door. Her father, Dr. Miller, is an astronomer who will be working at Midston University. The reason why Irene is up on a ladder is that she’s built a weather balloon, and now, it’s stuck on the roof of Danny’s house. Unfortunately, she’s just discovered that her ladder isn’t quite long enough to reach the roof. Danny, who loves science, is intrigued by Irene’s weather balloon, and he helps Irene retrieve it by climbing out an attic window and onto the roof.

Danny shows Irene his device for doing homework, but Irene says it doesn’t seem quite honest because it’s basically like copying from someone else. Danny defends his idea, saying it’s not really cheating if the second person actually does know how to do the homework and would give the right answers anyway. He just sees it as a time-saving device. He also says that Professor Bullfinch, an inventor and physicist at the university, says that homework isn’t relevant to the learning kids do in the classroom. Danny’s father is dead, and his mother is Professor Bullfinch’s housekeeper, so Danny and his mother live with him.

Danny is surprised at how much Irene knows about science because he didn’t think girls would be into science. Irene says that there have always been female scientists, like Marie Curie, and she also wants to study physics. Although Danny has learned a lot from Professor Bullfinch, he’s a little intimidated that there are things that Irene knows that he doesn’t.

When Joe returns, he isn’t enthusiastic that Danny has made friends with a girl. When Joe is derisive about women and girls, Danny even defends Irene and how much she knows. Irene confesses to Danny that getting her weather balloon stuck on the roof wasn’t an accident. Her mother had already talked to Danny’s mother, so she knew Danny was interested in science. She purposely got the balloon stuck on the roof to get his attention and give them a reason for meeting. Joe uses that as part of his assertion that women are trouble.

Irene joins Danny and Joe’s class at school, and she starts making some other friends there. There is one boy in class, Eddie, who seems to have a crush on Irene. She’s a little flattered that he thinks she’s pretty, but she begins to feel uncomfortable with his attention because he keeps staring at her. Danny explains to Irene that people call Eddie “Snitcher” because he’s always telling on somebody for things they do, seemingly out of spite.

When Danny invites Irene to come to his house for cookies after school, Professor Bullfinch surprises them by telling them that he’s going on a business trip, and while he’s gone, he’s going to let Danny take care of his new computer. The computer is called Miniac, which is short for “miniature automatic computer.” It’s much smaller than most computers of its time. During the 1950s, computers could take up an entire room. The Miniac is about the side of a large sideboard.

Joe asks Professor Bullfinch how the Minaic works, and he explains that they can ask it questions through a microphone. The computer prints out answers with an electric typewriter. Irene asks if they can ask it a question to see how it works, and she asks the Miniac a question from their homework. Joe is amazed at how quickly the computer answers the question, and Professor Bullfinch explain a little more about how computer work, with a memory unit that stores information. He says that facts are stored on magnetic tape. (This was true at the time this book was written, although 21st century computers are constructed differently, in ways that allow them to be made much smaller than 1950s computers. What he says next about the nature of computer intelligence is still true, although I’m going to have some things to say about AI in my reaction section.)

Irene marvels at how the computer seems almost like something from science fiction (for her time) and how amazing it is to have a device that can give you the answers to everything. Professor Bullfinch explains to her that’s not quite true, and that there’s something more amazing: the human mind.

It is only a kind of supertool. Everything in this machine is inside the human head, in the much smaller space of the human brain. Just think of it — all the hundreds of thousands of switches, core memory planes, miles of wire, tubes — all that’s in that big case and in this console — are all huge and awkward compared to the delicate, tiny cells of the human brain which is capable of doing as much as, or more than, the best of these machines. It’s the human brain which can produce a mechanical brain like this one. … The computer can reason … It can do sums and give information and draw logical conclusions, but it can’t create anything. It could give you all the words that rhyme with moon, for instance, but it couldn’t put them together into a poem. … It’s a wonderful, complex tool, but it has no mind. It doesn’t know it exists.”

Danny’s assignment while the professor is away is to feed data to the computer. The professor has laid out the information and code tables that Danny will need, although the professor says that Danny can add some extra information if he comes across something new and interesting in Scientific American or one of the other science magazines he reads. Irene asks if she can help with this task because she finds it interesting, and the professor gives her permission. Before he leaves, he warns Danny not to get too carry away with his enthusiasm. He knows that Danny likes to experiment, and sometimes, he gets carried away when he has an idea, without stopping to think first. The computer is a tool, not a toy, and the professor wants him to treat it as such.

However, a few days after Professor Bullfinch leaves, Irene has a question about their homework that Danny and Joe can’t answer because they also don’t really understand the subject. Then, Danny gets the idea of asking the computer about it. Inspired by how easily the computer answers the question, Danny suggests to the others that they use the professor’s computer as a “homework machine.” After all, it can answer questions and supply them with information, and Danny thinks he could even program it to write short compositions. Irene is a bit dubious about it, but Danny amends his idea to say that the computer would “help” them with their homework.

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

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

Advancements in Computer Technology

One of the interesting things about reading a vintage book like this that focuses on the technology of its time is seeing how things have changed and how people’s perceptions of technology have changed. The kids in this book are amazed by the professor’s computer, which is cutting edge for their time, although 21st century children grow up accustomed to computers in their homes that they are allowed to use. Modern children do use computers as toys, playing computer games, and they are also tools for doing homework.

However, even though things have greatly changed in the decades since this book was written, some of the issues surrounding the ethical use of technology are still concerns in the modern world. This story brings up the issue of how much a reliance on technology to do homework borders on cheating and keeps students from gaining the skills they’re supposed to use. This has become a major issue in modern education in the 2020s, with the rise of AI technology. In the story, Professor Bullfinch says that a computer cannot write poetry, which might get a smirk from modern readers because AI has achieved compositional writing skills. What I’d like to point out, though, is that there are still limits on that. As of this writing, the ideal way to use AI in writing is as a starting point for writing and research but not as a replacement for human writers or the human mind to edit and control the content of the writing. AI also uses human writing as the basis for its compositions, not writing everything from scratch:

“… an AI writing tool will gather information based on what other people have said in response to a similar prompt. The bot will search the internet for information about what you’ve asked it to write, then compile that information into a response. While this used to come back as clunky and robotic, the algorithms and programming for AI writers have become much more advanced and can write human-like responses. … AI writers are, so far, limited in their abilities to create emotional and engaging content. Humans, by nature, are storytellers. We have been since the beginning. Robots, however, are not. They are limited by what they’re programmed to do, and AI bots are programmed to gather information and make an educated guess about what you want to hear.”

(AI Writing: What Is It And How Does It Work?, July 2023)

Computers, even those in the 21st century, which are both smaller and more efficient than the ones from the 1950s, still rely on input from human sources to do anything. AI work is not original, it only builds on what humans have given it to use. In spite of the word “intelligence” in the name “artificial intelligence”, it still “has no mind“, as Professor Bullfinch put it. It’s literally artificially intelligent. It knows nothing independently of human beings, and one of the current problems with AI is that, although it can write convincingly and sound almost human, it not only does so only because it’s basing its writing on human writing that has been supplied to it but also, it has no idea whether or not anything it says is true or not. As the Microsoft article points out, it’s only using predictive technology to guess at what you want to hear and just tell you what you want to hear. It still takes a human being to reason out how much sense AI writing actually makes or whether or not it’s accurate.

One of the current problems with AI in the 2020s is AI hallucinations. Sometimes, AI seems to make things up that aren’t true at all because the way it processes information sometimes produces errors, and by itself, AI has no way of knowing when this has occurred. It has no understanding of the subject its writing about. It’s only attempting to predict and supply what it thinks the human who supplied the prompt wants it to supply.

“AI hallucination is a phenomenon wherein a large language model (LLM)—often a generative AI chatbot or computer vision tool—perceives patterns or objects that are nonexistent or imperceptible to human observers, creating outputs that are nonsensical or altogether inaccurate.

Generally, if a user makes a request of a generative AI tool, they desire an output that appropriately addresses the prompt (that is, a correct answer to a question). However, sometimes AI algorithms produce outputs that are not based on training data, are incorrectly decoded by the transformer or do not follow any identifiable pattern. In other words, it “hallucinates” the response.”

There are currently problems with students relying too much on AI to do both their thinking and writing for them, and even professionals who rely too much on AI tools to get through their work faster sometimes fail to notice when the AI writing says things that don’t make sense or are just blatantly untrue. The AI doesn’t know what’s true or not, it’s just telling you what it thinks you want to hear, based on information given to it, put together, and rearranged in its logic programming. Because it doesn’t actually understand the information fed into it, it has no idea when it gets the story wrong. Computers are faster at processing data than a human, but actual understanding of information is still entirely a human quality. A computer cannot understand anything on behalf of a human mind because it “has no mind” of its own to do the understanding.

There have been cases where professional lawyers who have relied on AI writing instead of doing their writing themselves have been sanctioned when AI hallucinations included information that was not only inaccurate but actually fictitious, citing court cases that never actually existed. The lawyers who received disciplinary action about this did not proofread the writing produced by AI, just trusting it to do all of their writing and thinking for them. Yet, the errors jumped out immediately when actual humans read the writing.

The more complex the writing is, the more the limitations of AI become apparent. AI can sound convincing in a short article (especially if you’re not doing any fact checking to see whether it’s talking about something real or not), but it isn’t always consistent or coherent in longer writing. The drama department of one of the local colleges where I lived put on a performance of a play written entirely by AI as a kind of thought experiment, and the results were hilarious. It was a mystery play, and the script was confusingly written. The AI had trouble keeping track of which characters were currently on stage and which were not, so actors who were not actually present in particular scenes had dialogue. At one point, when the detective was questioning everybody, he even talked to the person who was murdered, and the corpse responded. The play didn’t make sense because the AI doing the writing didn’t really understand the story it was telling. It just told a story in the pattern that was requested of it. It was, technically, a complete play, and if you gave it a cursory glance, it would have looked like a fully written play. It’s just that it had absent people and dead people talking. Perhaps at some point in the future, AI can do its own proofreading and learn to catch these types of problems, but for it to do so with the accuracy of an actual human, it would have to have a human level of understanding about the world and the subject matter it writes about. That is, it would have to have real intelligence, not just artificial intelligence.

This video from Wired on YouTube features AI and machine learning professor Graham Morehead from Gonzaga University, answering common questions about the nature of AI. In the video, he explains some of the differences between how AI “thinks” and how a human brain thinks, which help explain why AI can do some things that a human being would find pretty stupid. AI often thinks in terms of two-dimensional images as opposed to the three-dimensional world we live in as humans, and it doesn’t always understand the consequences of actions because, to AI, everything comes down to simple numbers and data as opposed to a physical world where actions have context and consequences.

Overall, I think this story did a good job of evaluating the differences between the human brain and the electronic brain at a point in history where the technology was relatively new and evolving. It also did a surprisingly good job of anticipating some of the developments and problems associated with the use of artificial intelligence, although the form it takes in this story isn’t quite what we’ve seen in the 21st century, and the kids in this story encounter an issue that modern students attempting to use AI to do their homework aren’t likely to encounter.

At the end of this story (spoilers), Danny and his friends come to realize, to their surprise, that they’ve actually been doing more homework than their classmates in order to make their wonderful homework machine function. They had to teach the machine the subjects they’re studying in order to have it do the assignments because the machine doesn’t innately understand the subject matter. The kids have to supply the knowledge base for the machine learning to function, and that ultimately takes more work and study for them than simply understanding the subjects in their own minds and just doing the assignments themselves. Danny’s mother and his teacher allow the kids to continue using the machine once Danny’s mother explains to the teacher how the process works so the kids can experience how a seeming shortcut can actually take more effort.

This is a little different from the 21st century AI tools, where someone else has already done the basic programming work, and students don’t have to actually understand the subjects themselves to use the AI tools. Of course, if the student doesn’t understand the subject matter of the assignment, there’s less chance that they’ll even notice when the AI produces an AI hallucination and says something that isn’t true or doesn’t make sense. There is an incident in the book where the computer messes up and outputs something that makes no sense, and the kids have to figure out why it did that.

The kids also consider the issue of whether or not using the machine to do their homework is cheating or not. Irene has serious reservations about it at first, and their teacher and some classmates think it gives them an unfair advantage when they find out. Danny, on the other hand, defends it, thinking of the computer as just a time-saving tool, like a typewriter, although the computer is doing more for them than a typewriter does. Danny is only focused on the idea of saving time so he can do things other than homework because he’s confident in his own ability to understand the academic subjects and thinks that practicing his skills or proving his knowledge through homework is a waste of his time.

The only reason why the teacher agrees to let them continue using the computer is that Danny’s mother figures out before he does how much extra work he and his friends are doing to teach the computer how to do their homework. This becomes obvious after the teacher gives them a special assignment, beyond what was covered in class, so Danny and his friends have to work extra hard and spend far more time to understand the material themselves and then teach the computer to understand it well enough to do the work. The first assignments weren’t so hard for Danny and his friends to teach the computer how to complete because the kids are at the top of their class, and they do know the material. However, the more difficult the assignments get, and the less familiar they are with the subject matter, the harder it gets to program the computer to handle the assignments. This exposes the flaws in their system and highlights the need for them to understand the material themselves rather than depend on the computer to do their work for them or even necessarily do it more efficiently. The great use of computers is to do tasks more efficiently, but that depends on the task and whether or not the computer has accurate instructions and an efficient knowledge base to draw on to do it. Building the programming and the knowledge base takes the work of a human mind that knows what it’s doing and is willing to put in the effort to do it correctly and to troubleshoot errors.

School in the 1950s

In this book, we get a glimpse of school in the 1950s. Something that stood out to me was when the teacher mentions that the class sizes have grown considerably in recent years, meaning that she has less time to work with individual students than she used to. This was a real problem in the 1950s, due to the effects of the Baby Boom. This generation of children was much larger than previous generations, so there were shortages of teachers and class space, and teachers and students did complain that students got less individual attention. (This documentary on YouTube shows some of the overcrowding.)

The focus on science and technology in the Danny Dunn stories is also important to the 1950s because that was the beginning of the era of the Cold War technology race, exemplified by the Space Race. The capitalistic United States and its allies competed against the USSR and its allies for world supremacy following WWII, and one of the ways they did that was by trying to develop superior technology and technological skills. This need to compete in the areas of science and technology led to changes in the US public education system, emphasizing the skills that we would call “STEM” skills today (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Echoes of those changes still influence the way we think about education in the 21st century.

This technological and scientific focus also influenced children’s entertainment, as adults tried to encourage children to take an interest in science and technology. The Danny Dunn series is one example of this, showing children who are interested in science and new inventions and portraying them as fun and exciting. Another example was the educational tv show Watch Mr. Wizard, which was being broadcast at the time the Danny Dunn books were written and published. Watch Mr. Wizard featured the title character performing experiments in his laboratory and demonstrating scientific concepts to child visitors. It was very popular, and in the 1950s, there were science clubs for children based around this show. This show also helped inspired new generations of shows with a similar premise, such as Bill Nye, the Science Guy, which was popular when I was a kid.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Mystery of the Green Ghost

The Three Investigators

#4 The Mystery of the Green Ghost by Robert Arthur, 1965.

Bob and Pete are looking at an old, abandoned house that’s in the process of being torn down when they hear an unearthly scream from the house! There are stories that the old house is haunted, and the boys run away, only to be stopped by a group of local men, who ask them what’s going on. When the boys explain, the men talk about calling the police or going inside the house to investigate. The men decide to just go in and have a look around themselves, in case someone’s hurt and needs help right away. They tell the boys that they can leave because they will handle the situation, but the boys decide that they can’t leave without having a look themselves.

As they take a look around inside, they see the remains of the ornate wall paper and impressive features of the once-rich house, and the men talk about Mathias Green, who used to live in the house. At first, the searchers can’t find anything, but then, they spot a greenish figure on the stairs. Thinking that there’s some prankster in the house, the searchers go upstairs to confront the person, but they can’t find whoever it was. The boys suggest that they have a look at the dust on the floor and try to follow the person’s footprints, but the only footprints the searchers can find are their own. Could they have seen a ghost?

The searchers do notify the police about what they’ve seen in the house, but the police don’t take it too seriously … at first. However, they soon begin receiving other reports from various people around the city who claim to have seen a greenish, ghostly figure. Even then, the police might not have take the reports too seriously, except that a couple of officers on patrol witness a greenish, ghostly figure in the cemetery … at the burial site of Mathias Green, who died falling down the stairs in his house, 50 years before.

While Bob and Pete were at the house, Bob had his tape recorder with him, and he plays the recording of the scream they heard for their friend and fellow investigator, Jupiter. Jupiter is willing to believe it could be the scream of Mathias Green’s ghost, and the boys review the information they know about Mathias Green. Mathias Green was once the skipper of the ship, and he sailed to China. For reasons that nobody fully understands, he had to leave China suddenly, and the rumors were that Mathias’s wife was a Chinese princess and that Chinese nobles had a grudge against Mathias. Mathias brought his wife back to the United States with him, and they built their house in Rocky Beach after Mathias had a fight with his sister-in-law, and they moved away from San Francisco. They had some Chinese servants, but when Mathias was later found dead, apparently from an accidental fall down the stairs, the servants and his wife disappeared. People assumed that they left for fear that they would be blamed for Mathias’s death, and Mathias’s sister-in-law inherited the house. Recently, Mathias’s niece decided to sell the house to a developer, who is planning to tear it down and build more modern houses.

Local newspapers have picked up the stories about the green ghost and its apparent connection to the old Green mansion, and some of them have implied that the ghost is looking for a new place to haunt now that its house is being torn down. The Three Investigators have access to more information than most people because Bob’s father is one of the reporters covering the ghost incidents. The police chief tells them, off the record, that he witnessed the ghost himself, in the cemetery, and it looked like it disappeared by sinking down into Mathias’s grave. Then, the police chief learns that the workmen tearing down the house have discovered a hidden room. Bob’s father and the boys are allowed to come with him to see what the room contains.

The discovery is a shock. The hidden room contains an ornate coffin, holding the skeleton of Mathias’s Chinese bride, dressed in elaborate robes and with an unusual necklace of gray pearls, called ghost pearls. The story is that the reason why Mathias and his bride had to suddenly flee China was that Mathias reportedly stole the pearl necklace to give to his bride. When she died in Rocky Beach, he couldn’t bear to be parted from her, so he “buried” her secretly in his house, along with the necklace.

The discovery of Mathias’s wife’s hidden burial chamber doesn’t lay the ghost to rest, though. Bob and Pete get a phone call from Mathias’s niece, Lydia, asking them to visit her at the vineyard where she lives, to talk about what they witnessed at the house. She says that the ghost has actually appeared at her vineyard! Jupiter is not invited to the vineyard because he didn’t witness the appearance of the ghost with the others, but he couldn’t go anyway because he’s temporarily in charge of his uncle’s salvage yard while his uncle is out of town. He tells Bob and Pete to go ahead and meet with Lydia and let him know what they learn.

At the vineyard, Bob and Pete meet Lydia’s distant cousin, Harold, and Lydia’s great-nephew, Charles, who is actually the great-grandson of Mathias Green and the real heir to Mathias’s estate. Charles, who is called Chang, grew up in China, and they explain that he is descended from Mathias’s first wife, who died of an illness in China. After the death of his first wife, Mathias put his young son into an American missionary school in China and left him there as a boarding student. When he married his second wife and had to flee China, he left his son behind. His descendants remained in China since then, until it became unsafe for Americans or people of American descent in China. Then, Charles, who is an orphan and part Chinese (hence his nickname of Chang), was sent to live with Lydia in the United States. Until that point, he knew very little about his ancestors and his relatives in America. Technically, Mathias’s estate should have come to Chang’s side of the family when Mathias died, but they were living in China at that time and were not in touch with the rest of the family. Lydia says that Chang should even technically own the vineyard that she and Harold have built with the family’s money, but Chang doesn’t want to take it from them, so Lydia says that she is leaving it to Chang in her will. Chang is satisfied with this arrangement, but the family has debts, and if they don’t resolve them, they might lose the vineyard entirely.

Lydia believes that the green ghost is Mathias’s ghost, and he is haunting them because he’s angry with her for selling his old house to be torn down. The ghost has been scaring away workers at the vineyard, and if they can’t get the harvest processed, they won’t be able to keep the vineyard. However, Chang doesn’t believe that his great-grandfather would want to hurt his own family. Chang might be willing to believe that the ghost is an evil spirit, masquerading as his great-grandfather. That’s not the only possibility, though. There could be a human being with a motive for wanting to ruin the vineyard. Then again, there is the question of who really owns the ghost pearl necklace. If Mathias’s family owns the necklace, they could sell it to cover their debts, but it might really belong to the family of Mathias’s Chinese wife. Her family is more difficult to trace, but one person has stepped forward, claiming to be her heir. Then, someone attacks Harold and steals the necklace from him. Was the necklace always the ghost’s target, from the beginning? Meanwhile, back in Rocky Beach, Jupiter has a revelation. There was a dog present when Bob and Pete were searching the Green mansion with the men, and the dog … didn’t do anything. That might be the most important clue of all!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including some in other languages).

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

I enjoyed the mystery and the reference to Sherlock Holmes about the dog that did nothing in the nighttime. In this story, Jupiter takes the dog’s non-reaction as a sign that there was no supernatural presence in the house because animals are supposed to react to the presence of ghosts. There is definitely a human behind all the spooky happenings, and I was partly right about who it was. However, the author threw in a complication by inserting another mysterious villain who kind of usurped the original plotter’s plot for his own purposes and partly distracts the characters from the original villain for part of the story.

This added villain is a mysterious old man from China who claims that he’s 107 years old and that he wants the pearls because drinking dissolved ghost pearls is the key to immortality. This mysterious old man is wealthy, and he has bought up the family’s debts, meaning that he will get control of the vineyard, if they can’t pay their debts. However, he’s not really interested in the vineyard for its own sake. He just wants those pearls. Although he does some criminal things in the story, nothing much seems to happen to him at the end, and he works out a deal with Lydia, so she can keep the vineyard. It’s left open whether or not he truly ended up with the pearls or whether the pearls actually have properties for preserving someone’s life, but it seems that he truly believes it, and he has no other motivations for his part in the story.

This almost Fu Manchu style character, who uses hypnosis to control people, adds an element of exoticism to the story that I thought wasn’t really necessary. I liked the ghost mystery well enough with its original villain and without him, and I felt like the introduction of the extra villain sent the plot a little off the rails, but he does allow the story to end on a somewhat creepy and ambiguous note. We don’t entirely know who he is, and we never really find out what happens to him. We don’t know if he’s really as old as he says he is or if he continues much further in his quest to live forever. He just disappears after getting what he can of the pearls, presumably to go hunting for more elsewhere.

As far as I’ve been able to determine, the ghost pearls aren’t real, and the legend about them prolonging people’s lives isn’t real. However, there are legends and superstitions from around the world about pearls being associated with wisdom and longevity and having healing powers. Pearls can be dissolved in an acidic liquid and drunk by a human, as in the famous story about Cleopatra drinking a pearl in vinegar, which was supposed to be an aphrodisiac.

Getting back to the mystery, though, I did like the Scooby-Doo-like mystery, and I was satisfied by the original plot, and the villain’s methods and motives. I was looking at that character with suspicion for a number of reasons. Perhaps, if the part about the pearl necklace, the ancient man who drinks pearls, and Mathias’s bizarre room with his dead wife weren’t in the story, the solution would be too obvious, but overall, I enjoyed it. I also appreciated how Jupiter worked out some of the details of the first haunting by visiting the house and studying the scene while his friends were at the vineyard. He comes to some conclusions about how that first haunting occurred that Bob and Pete didn’t think about, and his solution also provides a reasonable answer to the question of why that group of men happened to show up outside the house on the evening the haunting happened, to witness it.

Posted on by TracyC

The Windy Hill

The original cover is public domain and available through Wikimedia Commons

The Windy Hill by Cornelia Meigs, 1921.

Oliver and Janet are spending the summer with their mother’s cousin, Jasper, who is a wealthier man than the rest of their family. Janet is enjoying the visit and Jasper’s grand house so far, but Oliver is very uneasy there. Oliver doesn’t like the vast, empty house, and he’s noticed that Jasper’s manner seems different from he remembers the last time they saw him. Oliver senses that something is troubling Jasper, something that he doesn’t want to discuss. Jasper is usually a cheerful person who enjoys his cousin’s children, but during this visit, he hardly pays attention to them and never smiles. Janet finds things to do to keep herself occupied, but Oliver is terribly bored and bothered by Jasper’s odd behavior.

Then, one evening, Jasper sees Oliver looking at a nearby house. He says that the people who live in that house are also cousins of theirs, but he’s been too busy lately to see much of them. Jasper apologizes for having neglected Janet and Oliver during their visit so far, and he says that he will invite Eleanor, the daughter of the cousin who lives in that house, to lunch the next day. Eleanor is close in age to Janet and Oliver, and Jasper thinks that they will be friends and that a visit from her will liven up the visit for them. Janet is pleased at the idea of another girl cousin visiting, but Oliver is at that phase where he doesn’t like girls. He can’t imagine that he would have anything in common with this unknown girl cousin, and he thinks he’ll be bored while Janet and Eleanor have fun together. He tries to tell Jasper as much, but Jasper is just amused by his attitude and tells him that, if he is afraid of girls, the sooner he gets over it, the better.

When Jasper orders his car and driver to take Janet and Oliver to see Eleanor, Oliver decides to rebel by going to the train station and trying to get a train home. However, while he is waiting at the train station, he becomes curious about the countryside around him and the nearby river he hasn’t yet investigated. He wanders off to explore a little and encounters a man and a girl at a nearby cottage. The man and the girl ask him to help them with their beehives. Oliver is a little nervous of the bees at first, but he follows the beekeeper’s directions and finds himself enjoying the work. The beekeeper and his daughter, Polly, invite him to join them for lunch afterward. After a lunch of biscuits, honey, and iced cocoa, Oliver feels much better about everything.

Polly thinks that she and her father have somewhere they need to be after lunch, but her father tells her not to worry about that. Instead, he entertains Oliver and Polly with a story about a Native American medicine man, a boy who is curious about what lies beyond the ocean, and their first encounter with white people. By the time the story is over, Oliver realizes that he has missed his train. He decides to return to Jasper’s house, where he is told that Janet didn’t go to see Eleanor because Eleanor was delayed somewhere. (Guess where.)

More and more, Jasper’s odd mood becomes apparent. His servants have also noticed how worried he’s been, and it seems like he’s always more upset after a mysterious and disagreeable man comes to see him. Nobody knows who he is or what his visits are about. Oliver knows how to drive, and Jasper has Oliver drive him out on a mysterious errand one evening to see someone. Oliver doesn’t know who Jasper talks to or what they say to each other, but the visit takes a long time, and it makes Jasper angry.

Oliver’s visit with Jasper gets better because Jasper allows him to use the car by himself from that point on. He takes Janet to visit the Beeman and Polly. Although Oliver is still not enthusiastic about girls, he likes Polly because she is very different from how he imagines that cousin Eleanor must be. The Beeman says that they have to pick up some new beehives that day, and Oliver volunteers to take the girls to get the hives from a man named John Massey. John Massey complains about his landlord, who hasn’t been maintaining the dikes. Massey has had to take it on himself, and the burden is becoming too great for him to bear.

It turns out that Massey’s landlord is Anthony Crawford, the unpleasant man who has been troubling Jasper. Crawford also seems more than happy to let Olive and Janet know that he is also a cousin of theirs. He seems to be under the impression that Jasper has cheated him in some way. Jasper says that he’s already given him what he’s entitled to have, but Crawford says that his share should be more than that. Crawford says that, if Jasper doesn’t give him what he really owes him, he can take everything Jasper has and destroy his reputation in the process. There are secrets in their family’s past that would cause a scandal if the public knew about them, and Crawford says that if people knew that there was one crook in their family, they would all be suspicious that Jasper is much the same way.

Oliver doesn’t know what to think of Crawford’s insinuations or his threats. Not knowing who else to turn to, Oliver explains the situation to the kindly Beeman and asks him what he should do to help Jasper. The Beeman knows far more about everything that’s been happening than Oliver knows, and he say that Crawford has unknowingly been laying a trap for himself. Crawford thinks he’s pretty sharp in his dealings with other people, but he’s been neglecting something very important. Actually, multiple things.

In a series of stories that the Beeman shares with the children, he indirectly tells the children the history of their family and quarrels that go back generations. He tells them about a family with a shipping business that restored their lost fortunes during the War of 1812 by turning to piracy. He tells them about siblings divided by quarrels over money during the Gold Rush. Although the Beeman doesn’t admit to the children that all of his stories are true in the beginning, they soon come to realize that they are and that they are directly connected to the them and the current situation.

Toward the end of the book, the Beeman ties all the pieces of the puzzle together before telling them the final story, the one about three cousins named Jasper, Anthony, and Thomas, who were all raised together and were very close, until they had a falling-out over Anthony’s scheming and his unethical dealings. There are reasons for everyone to resent Anthony for his meanness and greed, but the Beeman is correct that Anthony has set himself up for a fall. He really should have listened when everyone tried to tell him to fix the dike.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies) and Project Gutenberg. Because it is in the public domain, there is also a LibriVox Audiobook recording.

My Reaction and Spoilers

The Family’s Story

In some ways, the story of the family in the book is also a celebration of American stories. The short stories about different generations in their family are set at turning points in American history. Something that fascinated me about these stories was that they were not all glowing about these points in American history and their associated legends. There are parts of the stories that emphasize the bold American values of adventure and ingenuity, but there are also dark sides and downsides to the stories and flawed characters. The family fortunes were set partly by piracy, but one of the heroes of the family was the man who realized when it was time to stop. Members of their family have been consumed by greed and quarrels, although some have overcome their flaws and misconceptions to come together and be a family again. Again, the Gold Rush story resolves happily when the brothers involved also realize the folly of endlessly pursuing riches at the expense of relationships with the people they love. There is even a slight rebuke against the westward expansion of the United States – portrayed heroically but also as highly costly as people died and killed others over land and gold and promoting an endless, unhappy quest for more and more, with people living their whole lives never feeling satisfied. In short, the family, like the stories and American history itself, is a mixed bag, and they are at their best when they realize their wrongs and make the decision to change. For a book from the early 1920s, a period of heightened patriotism and prejudice after WWI, it seems remarkably insightful and self-aware.

It was Anthony’s decision to forge a relative’s name to get money to cover his unethical dealings that ruined his relationship with his family. It was only by their charity and intervention that he wasn’t charged with his crime and sent to prison. He’s fully aware of that, but he’s been resentful about it rather than grateful. Even from a young age, Anthony had always coveted what other people had. Even if he didn’t really want things for their own sake, he would go through elaborate schemes and bitter fights to get what someone else had, just because someone else had it. Out of greed and spite, he has resurrected old property quarrels in their family. He not only got the old house that was originally willed to Jasper, but he has been scheming to get Jasper’s new house. The Beeman (who is the third cousin in the last story and father of Eleanor, who is called Polly as a nickname) says that Anthony should have headed the lessons learned by their family during the Gold Rush, that always reaching and reaching for greater prizes means never being satisfied with what one has and risking its loss in pursuit of the unattainable.

In the end, when Anthony’s scheming and corner-cutting leave him with no one to turn to but the family members he has harassed and schemed against, he finally experiences a change of heart. I find stories where the villain has a sudden change of heart after long-term villainy to be unrealistic, but the crisis that Anthony realizes he caused is sudden and serious. Because he has neglected the dike and driven away the people who were helping to cover his negligence at their own expense, he suddenly realized that he has endangered many lives, and everyone knows that it’s all his fault. He schemed to get control of that land but didn’t take care of it when he had it. Everyone knows what he did, nobody’s going to cover for him, and while he’s unscrupulous enough to scheme to get others’ property, he doesn’t want to be responsible for killing people. It’s enough to make him swallow his pride and acknowledge the reality of the situation to his cousins. They help him for the sake of the people in danger, and in return, he decides to leave the area.

In the end, Anthony takes a hard look at himself and his life, and he realizes that he and his wife and children were better off when they lived in another community, where he was forced to work for a living instead of by his schemes. He now fully understands his weaknesses and temptations, and rather than continuing to resent the things and people in his life that stop him from furthering his schemes, he has come to welcome them as the guiding forces that keep him from making destructive decisions. The way he phrases it struck me as a little corny, almost like the end of a PSA, but I approved of the sentiment. His family members made him angry because they saw him for who and what he was, but the point is that he now understands who and what he is himself. Although the others are willing to allow him some leniency because of the way he handles the crisis, Anthony realizes that he must give himself the discipline he needs and be the changing force in his own life.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty good story, although there are a few issues with racial language related to Native Americans. I’m not sure if there is a modern revised version of this story or not. The version that I’m reviewing is the original from the 1920s.

Native Americans in the Story

I found the first story the Beeman tells, the one about the Native Americans, fascinating because the story contains the concept that Native Americans arrived in the Americas by crossing the Pacific Ocean and moving eastward across the continent. I know that’s the modern concept of the origins of Native Americans, but I was surprised to find the concept in a book from the early 1920s. I didn’t realize that people in the 1920s had that concept because I thought the older theory was that Native Americans crossed a land bridge.

During the story about the Native American medicine man, the book uses the term “squaw”, which is a controversial term because, although it apparently can mean just “woman” in some Native American languages, it can mean something vulgar in others. Modern books avoid the use of the word, but it appears in some older books, like this one, because white people weren’t always aware of the connotations the word could have. This is the danger of using words you don’t fully understand. It isn’t meant in an insulting way in this book, but be aware that the word appears here and that it isn’t a good word to use yourself. If you’re referring to a Native American woman, just say “Native American woman”, and leave it at that.

The book also uses the word “Indian” instead of Native American, something that also appears in older books. I’ve explained before that this hearkens back to a much earlier misunderstanding about who Native American peoples were, and the nickname has stuck to a certain degree. However, modern convention is just to say “Native Americans” because it’s both a more accurate description and less confusing than explaining American Indians vs. Indians from India. I don’t mind the use of that term too much because it isn’t insulting. However, the book also occasionally uses the term “Red Man” to refer to Native Americans. The characters saying that don’t seem to use it out of malice, but I still think it’s inappropriate. I think that sort of thing went over my head when I was a little kid because I knew people were referred to as “white people” and “black people”, but after I was old enough to understand that there were other connotations to the term it became one of those terms that I think of as “derailing terms.” Even if the characters use it in a non-hostile way or kind of thoughtless way, we (the readers) know that there are hostile or demeaning connotations to the term. It just derails the train of thought of readers like me because we stop to process whether or not the character is trying to be insulting or demeaning, and it just distracts from the rest of the sentence and the thread of the story. I’m generally in favor of reprintings of books like this, with the racial terms updated because, provided that the author and characters are not trying to be demeaning or insulting, a change in the language can clarify attitudes and put the readers’ attention back where it belongs – on the story itself.

Native Americans also appear in the story about the Gold Rush, as risks encountered by westward travelers. Their appearance in the story is minimal, if stereotypical.

Posted on by TracyC

Thimble Summer

Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright, 1938, 1966.

It’s summer, and Garnet is a 9-year-old girl living on a farm with her parents and brothers in a rural community in Wisconsin. The story is episodic, with each chapter describing things that happen to Garnet over the course of one magical summer when she found a silver thimble down by the river. Garnet thinks that the thimble itself is magic, but maybe the magic is just in the happy summer adventures that follow.

The book is a Newbery Medal winner. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including one in Chinese).

The chapters in the book are:

The Silver Thimble

It’s been hot and rainless, and the crops are in danger of being ruined if they don’t get some rain soon. It’s a real worry because, if the crops are bad, Garnet’s family won’t be able to pay their bills. When Garnet and her brother Jay go swimming in the nearby river, Garnet finds a silver thimble. It’s a lucky find, and Garnet becomes convinced that the thimble is magic and that something wonderful is about to happen. Jay thinks that’s silly, but that night, the rain they’ve so badly needed comes! Garnet and Jay are so overjoyed with the rain that they go out running in the rain in the middle of the night, until they are frightened by lightning striking something, and their mother calls them back.

The Coral Bracelet

Garnet’s best friend is a girl name Citronella, who lives nearby. Citronella’s great-grandmother lives with her, and she tells the girls stories about what it was like when she was young. She tells them about Indians (Native Americans) who would sneak into her family’s house in bad weather to get warm and leave them presents as thanks. (I don’t know if any Native Americans ever did this in real life, but she says it like it really happened.) Then, she tells the girls about a special coral bracelet that she wanted at the general store when she was young and some foolish risks she took to get it.

The lucky thing that happens in this chapter is that Garnet’s father gets a government loan to build a new barn.

The Lime Kiln

The family needs to make lime for building their new barn. The kiln needs to burn for three days straight, and they all need to take turns tending it, day and night. Jay and Garnet are allowed to stay up all night there with their father. Friends help them, and neighbors come to visit and talk with them. Garnet brings along a picnic with sandwiches and apple pie that they eat at midnight.

The Stranger

While they’re tending the kiln, a strange boy comes along and asks them for food. His name is Eric, and he’s a parentless boy who travels around and makes his living from odd jobs. He tells them about his life and travels, and Garnet’s father hires him to help the family build the new barn.

Locked In

Garnet likes having Eric at the farm, but she’s also a little jealous that Jay wants to spend more time with Eric now than with her. Garnet starts spending even more time with Citronella, and the two girls build a tree house together. The girls tell stories in their tree house, and because it’s going to rain again, Garnet suggests that they go to the library in town. They get so engrossed in their books that they lose track of time and get locked in the library. Garnet thinks this is a fabulous adventure until Citronella points out that it’s Saturday, and the library is closed on Sunday. If they can’t find a way out, they could be there for the rest of the weekend!

Journey

It’s harvest time, and everyone is occupied in picking crops and canning foods. Garnet helps, and she is temporarily put in charge of the threshing machine. Unfortunately, she falls asleep and lets the straw stack pile up until it falls over and makes a mess. Eric tells her not to worry about it, but Jay yells at her and tells her that she had no business helping out as a girl and that she should be at the house with the women. Garnet is so upset at the way Jay has been critical of her lately that she decides to run away and hitchhike around, like Eric used to do.

“As a Ragpicker’s Pocket”

Garnet is still running away, and she takes a bus to the next town. By the time she has explored the town and looked at all the store windows, she isn’t so upset and can see the funny side of what happened with the thresher, and she’s about ready to go home. She buys a few things for her family at the dime store and a hot dog to eat. Then, she has a horrible realization: she’s out of money. How is she going to get back home?

Fair Day

Garnet goes to the fair with her family and neighbors, and she enters her pig, Timmy, in a contest. Timmy was the runt of his litter, but Garnet has taken special care of him, and she thinks that he has a good chance of winning a prize.

Ice-Cream Cones and Blue Ribbons

Garnet and Citronella enjoy the wonders of the fair while Garnet is waiting for the pig contest. They spot the lady sword-swallower darning her socks, they ride the rides, and they have snacks. The girls get stuck on the Ferris wheel when it stops working, and Garnet worries about getting down in time for the judging of the pig contest.

The Silver Thimble

The silver thimble hasn’t been mentioned since the first chapter, but when Garnet looks back on all the good things that have happened this summer, she’s still sure that it’s magic. All the good things that have happened started right after she found it. She shows the thimble to Eric, and the kids talk about what they want to do with their futures.

My Reaction

This story is more like a collection of stories, some of which continue each other. The book is somewhat episodic, leading up to the fair at the end of the summer. The stories are pretty gentle, slice-of-life adventures. Eric has had a hard life, but he doesn’t want to dwell on it too much, and things improve for him when he decides to stay with Garnet’s family. There are hints that Eric might marry Garnet someday, and the two of them might stay on the family’s farm. Eric has had enough of traveling in his young life, and he wants to be a farmer and thinks that he would like to save up money and buy land near the family’s farm. Jay wants to be a sailor or something else that will let him travel and see the world, although he thinks that he might want to come back to the farm when he’s done traveling and farm it with his father and Eric.

The book fits with the Cottagecore genre, and it would make good bedtime reading. Foodies will enjoy the mentions of old-fashioned treats, like apple pie, griddle cakes, and vinegar candy. Garnet also imagines that each of the kitchen things have their own personalities.

I liked Garnet’s name, which is very unusual in the early 21st century. Citronella is an even more unusual name, but I prefer Garnet. I think it’s charming, and it’s one of the less-common gem names used for girls. In the story, Garnet mentions that the librarian frequently gets her name wrong because gemstone names are popular in her time and area. There are other girls in town named Ruby, Pearl, Opal, and Beryl, and the library usually calls her Ruby, the most popular of the gemstone names.

There are some stereotypical mentions of Native Americans in the story. They’re not derogatory, and they’re minor parts, but there were a couple of things that struck me as being a little stereotypical, like the kids saying that they’re Comanche Indians doing a rain dance when they’re running around in the rain. I also didn’t care for the way the characters kept pointing out which people were “fat” or “fleshy.” They’re not really shaming these characters, just sort of remarking, but I just felt like it was rude and unnecessary. You see this sometimes in older children’s books. Fortunately, none of the fat characters are considered bad characters in this story, as they sometimes are in other books. There aren’t really any bad characters in the story in general. Jay is annoying at times and says things that put down his sister and girls in general in a bratty, macho kind of way, but nobody in the story is a villain.

Posted on by TracyC

The Silver Nutmeg

The Silver Nutmeg by Palmer Brown, 1956.

It’s late summer, and it’s very hot. The well is dry, so Anna Lavinia has to go to the spring whenever they need water, and the paw-paws are falling off the trees even though they’re not ripe yet. Anna Lavinia is spending most of her time outside, singing songs from her favorite book Songs from Nowhere, because her mother is making the green paw-paws into preserves, and it’s a smelly process. Nothing seems like it’s going right, and even Anna Lavinia’s animal friends are grumpy because of the heat.

Anna Lavinia looks at Dew Pond Hill through the hole that her father recently made in the garden wall. He made it because he’s been thinking that Anna Lavinia has been too cooped up, and he wants to “broaden the horizon for her” and give her a new “point of view” in a very literal sense. Anna Lavinia thinks that she already has many points of views on many issues, but she does like the new vista that her father has opened up for her.

Things seem to improve on this very hot day when Uncle Jeffrey comes to visit. Uncle Jeffrey deals in spices, and he brings herbs and spices with him to replenish the family’s supply. Uncle Jeffrey also likes to collect samples of flowers and leaves, which he keeps pressed in a book with labels of their names (if he knows them) and the places where he found them. This time, Anna Lavinia notices a special purple flower in his book that she has never noticed before. There are no notes about it in the book, but she is sure that it is something special.

Then, she notices three men digging for something by the dew pond on the hill and decides to go see what they’re doing. Uncle Jeffrey warns her against going to the dew pond because he says that dew ponds are always bewitched. However, her mother thinks that’s nonsense and sees nothing wrong with Anna Lavinia going to look at the dew pond. When Anna Lavinia talks to the diggers, they joke with her at first that they’re digging a hole to go to exotic places on the other side of the world, but then, they admit that it’s just a ditch for water. They want to drain the dew pond! Anna Lavinia is upset about that, and they explain that they need the water to grow their parsnips. They say that this won’t be the end of the dew pond because they plan to fill in the ditch, and the pond will eventually fill up again. However, they really need the water now.

Anna Lavinia goes to look at the dew pond and enjoy it while she can, thinking how awful it is that it’s going to be drained just when her father created a new view of it for her. While she thinks about it, she tosses a few acorns in the water. Then, suddenly, one of them jumps back out of the water at her! Strangely, the acorn also seems completely dry. Curious, Anna Lavinia tosses in another acorn. This time, when it flies back at her, it has a note pinned to it that says, “Please don’t throw acorns at me.” When Anna Lavinia looks into the water, she doesn’t see her own face reflected back at her. Instead, she sees a blond boy in a green sweater. She looks around, but she doesn’t see anyone else by the dew pond but herself. When she calls out to the boy to ask where he is, he says that he’s on the other side of the pond – the underside!

The boy says his name is Tobias, and he’s playing with a boat on the pond. Anna Lavinia asks if he can come up to her through the pond, and he says he could but he promised his mother that he wouldn’t. However, she can come through the pond to him, if she likes. He says that, for her to get through, the water must be completely still, no ripples, and that she must jump in as hard as she can. Anna Lavinia asks what will happen if she doesn’t do it right, and Toby tells her that she’d probably just get all wet and get a scolding from her mother. Anna Lavinia debates about it because Toby is upside down compared to her, and she’s not sure how gravity will work on the underside of the pond. Toby says that the right side up depends on your point of view and there is no gravity where he is. He shows her a net in a tree where she can jump and teases her about being afraid. Deciding that it’s a small risk, Anna Lavinia jumps in along with her pet lizard, which she calls a thobby.

It works just like Toby said it would, and Anna Lavinia lands safely in the net. Once in Toby’s land, she experiences a strange sensation that they call “the tingle.” (It’s not a dirty thing, although I did raise an eyebrow at first.) This sensation is a kind of force that Toby says flows through the ground in his land, and it’s what keeps objects from just floating around all the time in the absence of gravity. If you lift an object off the ground, it will float around in the air because there is no gravity, but once it’s in contact with the ground or in contact with another object that’s in contact with the ground, it will stay where it is, held in place by this force, until someone or something else causes it to move. Toby describes it as being like a kind of magnetism.

With Toby’s help, Anna Lavinia experiments with this lack of gravity. Toby explains that people can’t fly in his land, although birds can fly through the air with their wings. People do lose contact with the ground if they skip or jump, but it’s usually not a big deal because they can sort of maneuver themselves in the air until they can get back down to the ground or grab hold of something that’s grounded. It’s impossible to fall.

All of Toby’s world is the underside of our world, and the ground they’re walking on is the inside of the ball that is the Earth. Because it’s the inside of the Earth, it’s dimmer than the outside world. The light that comes through comes through bodies of quiet water, like the dew pond. Toby says that, while people from this inside world can go to the surface area through any still pond, they typically don’t. For one thing, they find it difficult to deal with the gravity of the outside world, and it will turn them bandy-legged if they stay too long. For another, people who left used to be banished by their own people if they returned, so those who have gone to the outside world have often stayed. Toby’s Aunt Cornelia still misses the man she had planned to marry. After the two of them quarreled about his desire to see the world, he vanished, and Aunt Cornelia thinks that he probably went to the outside world, never to return. Things have changed now so that people who left are now allowed to return, so Aunt Cornelia hopes maybe her sweetheart will come back, but Toby doesn’t think there’s much hope of that.

When the children hear a baby crying, Anna Lavinia insists on finding the baby and seeing why nobody seems to be tending to him. It turns out that the donkey pulling a gypsy wagon has pulled the wagon over a cliff, which isn’t as dire as it sounds, since nothing in this land can fall. However, the wagon is now stuck sideways on the side of a cliff, and things from the wagon have been tossed around and are hanging in mid-air, including the baby in his basket. Toby and Anna Lavinia rescue the baby, and his grateful mother offers them a reward for their help. She gives Toby a tambourine, and she tells Anna Lavinia’s fortune. The fortune comes out strangely backward because Anna Lavinia is from the outside world, but from what they gypsy sees, it looks like Anna Lavinia is going to do something to make an old man happy.

Anna Lavinia has a lovely visit with Toby and Aunt Cornelia, but then, she suddenly remembers that the men are going to drain the dew pond today! By the time she and Toby return to the dew pond, it’s dry! With the pond dry on her side, Anna Lavinia can’t get home … unless still waters run deep.

This book is the sequel to an earlier book called Beyond the Pawpaw Trees, which first introduced the character of Anna Lavinia.

My Reaction

The book is sweet and would probably appeal to fans of Cottagecore. The characters sing songs and recite rhymes throughout the story, which might appeal to young children. I was a little divided over whether I liked having the story interrupted by the songs and rhymes, but the songs and rhymes really are a part of the story and add to its charm. It’s a little like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, where a girl goes to a magical land, where things don’t work as they do in the ordinary world.

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, there’s a lot of random nonsense, and that’s fun, but I liked that this particular story uses a kind of pseudo-scientific focus on magnetism and gravity. Neither the magnetism nor gravity works the way it does in the real world, and it adds a kind of science-fiction twist to the fantasy world in the story. Even with this almost science-fiction twist, we still have that old-fashioned, cottagecore style fantasy atmosphere that’s charming and whimsical rather than technical. I haven’t read the first book in this series, but I understand that it uses similar concepts. Nothing really stressful happens in the story, and it would make a nice bedtime story.

My one complaint is that there are some stereotypical gypsies and comments about gypsies in the book. They are always referred to as “gypsies” and not Romany or any other name, and for some reason, they make a point at the beginning of the story that gypsies always go barefoot. I’m not sure what the point to that was except to establish that gypsies have eccentric habits. It’s not unusual for children’s books from the mid-20th century to have stereotypical gypsies as characters, although it might rub people from the 21st century the wrong way.

Posted on by TracyC

The Enchanted Castle

The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit, 1907.

Boarding School Break

Two brothers and two sisters spend most of their time at boarding schools. The boys go to a school for boys, and the girls go to schools for girls, so the only times when they are together are when they are home for school holidays or visiting at the house of a kind, single lady who lives near to their schools. Although the children’s parents are grateful for their single friend for hosting the children as guests from time to time, the children find it difficult to play at her house because everything is so neat and proper, and they don’t feel quite at home. Then, during one school break, one of the sisters, the one who makes it home first, comes down with measles. With their sister sick, the other siblings can’t go home, which is a great disappointment, and their parents have to make other arrangements for them. When the children tell their parents that they don’t want to visit the single lady for the entire school holiday, the parents arrange for the boys, Gerald and James (called Jerry and Jimmy), to board at their sister Kathleen’s school. It will be fine for them to be there because Kathleen (called Cathy) is the only student remaining at the school during the holiday, and there will only be one teacher there to supervise them, the school’s French teacher.

This arrangement suits them better than going to the single lady’s house, although they think that they ought to find something special to do during the school holiday. Kathleen suggests that they write a book, but the boys aren’t thrilled by the idea. They would rather do something outdoors, like playing bandits. However, they are a little concerned about the French teacher’s supervision. Fortunately, Gerald is good at charming grownups, when he wants to. Through a combination of flattery and small, thoughtful favors to the teacher, he gets on her good side, and he manages to convince her that he and his siblings would like to have some time to themselves to play and explore outside, maybe in the woods. The French teacher understands that what they really want is some freedom from supervision, but she agrees to give them some time to themselves.

The children don’t actually know if there are any woods in the area, but they decide to do some exploring and see if they can find an adventure of some kind. They end up getting lost during their exploring, but they find it exciting. When they sit down to rest, they find a cave and decide to explore it. The cave turns out to be a tunnel that leads them to a beautiful garden with a lake with a decorative waterfall and swans. The children imagine that it’s the garden of a magical castle. Going a little further, they find a thimble with a crown on it and a thread tied to it. It looks like the kind of thimble that might belong to a princess.

Meeting the “Princess”

When they follow the thread, they find a young girl in a beautiful dress who looks like she might be a princess. She looks like she’s asleep, so she looks like an enchanted princess or Sleeping Beauty. Jimmy doesn’t really believe that she’s a princess, but the others aren’t so sure, and anyway, it makes a fun game to pretend that she is. Since Jerry is the eldest of the children, Cathy thinks that Jerry should kiss her to wake her up. Jerry refuses, so Cathy says Jimmy should do it. Although Jimmy is sure that she’s really just an ordinary girl dressed like a princess, he says he’ll kiss her to prove he’s braver than Jerry and that he should be the leader for the rest of the day.

When Jimmy kisses the girl’s cheek, she opens her eyes and says that she has been asleep for 100 years. She insists that she’s a real princess and asks them how they got past the dragons. Jimmy still doubts that, even though she shows them a mark where she pricked herself on a spindle, just like in the Sleeping Beauty story. She invites them to come back to the castle and see her beautiful things. The children say that they are hungry, so they go with her go get something to eat.

When they get to the “castle”, the princess brings them bread and cheese to eat with some water. This seem depressingly ordinary, and the princess apologizes, saying that was all she could find. However, she claims that the food in the castle is magical, so it can be whatever they want. The children imagine that it’s roast chicken and roast beef, but all they get is bread and cheese. Cathy doesn’t want to admit at first that it’s just bread and cheese because (like with the Emperor’s New Clothes), there is an implication that there is something wrong with her if the magic doesn’t work for her. Jimmy isn’t discouraged by that, so he asks the princess if it’s a game, but the princess denies it, insisting that the food is magical.

Then, the princess takes the children to a hidden door behind a tapestry. The room inside has paneled walls and blue ceiling with stars painted on it. The princess calls it her “treasure chamber”, but the room is completely empty. The princess acts surprised when the children say that they can’t see any treasure, and they refuse to believe it’s because they’re magical or invisible. The princess has the children close their eyes while she says some magic words. When they open their eyes, suddenly, there are shelves with jeweled objects on them. The children have no idea how the princess accomplished this trick, so they start to believe that maybe she can do magic.

The Invisibility Ring

The princess suggests that they all put on some of the jewels and be princes and princesses, too. It’s amusing for a while, but the boys start getting tired of dressing up, and they’re still a little skeptical about who the princess is. They suggest that they go play outside, but the princess insists that she’s actually grown up and doesn’t play children’s games, and she has the others help her put all the treasures back in their proper places. She tells the children that various pieces of jewelry have magical property. Jimmy asks her if that’s really true or if she’s kidding, but the princess insists that it’s true. Jimmy asks her to demonstrate how the magic works. The princess says that she will try on the magic ring that makes her invisible, but only if everyone closes their eyes and counts first.

When the children open their eyes, all of the shelves of jewels are gone and so is the princess. Jimmy says that it’s obvious that the princess just went out the door of the room. When they close their eyes and count again, Jimmy keeps his eyes open and sees the princess hiding behind a secret panel. When he tells the others, the princess says that he cheated. The weird thing is, even though they hear the princess say that he cheated, they still don’t see her. They tell her to stop hiding and come out, but she says that she already has. She says that if they want to pretend like they can’t see her, that’s fine, but the children seriously can’t see her. When the princess realizes that they’re serious that she’s actually invisible, the princess suddenly gets scared. She tries to shake the boys and get them to say that she’s not invisible, and Jerry catches hold of her, still unable to see her. She tells them that it’s time for them to go because she’s tired of playing with them.

Jerry makes the princess look in a mirror to prove that she’s invisible, and the princess gets very upset. Cathy sensibly tells her to just take the ring off, but the princess says it’s stuck. She admits that the whole thing, up to this point, was just a game of pretend. She says that the treasure shelves were hidden behind some paneling, and she just moved it with a hidden spring. She never expected that any of it was actually magical. The truth is that the girl’s aunt works at the house as a housekeeper and that her name is Mabel. She was just playing at being an enchanted princess because the rest of the household is away at the fair, and she happened to hear the other children coming through the hedge maze, so she roped them into her game.

Since one of the objects that Mabel claimed was magical was a buckle that would undo magical spells, Cathy suggests that she try the buckle. Mabel says that’s no good because she only made up that it was magical, but Cathy points out that she also made up the part about the ring being magical, and it turned out to be true, so she might as well try the buckle. Mabel would, but they accidentally locked the key inside the room and can’t get in now.

The children sit down to think about the situation. Since they can’t think what to do, the other children think maybe they should leave and go get their tea, but Mabel insists that they can’t just leave her invisible like this. Instead, she suggests that she go with them to tea and leave her her aunt a note. While they have tea, maybe they can think of something else to help Mabel. In her note, Mabel says that she’s been adopted by a lady in a motorcar and is going away to sea. The others say that’s lying, but Mabel says that it’s fancy instead of lying and that her aunt wouldn’t believe her if she said that she was invisible.

When they return to Kathleen’s school, they have tea and supper. They let Mabel have one of the three plates laid out for them, and Jerry and Cathy share one between them. Fortunately, the French teacher isn’t eating with them and doesn’t see an invisible person eating, but the children don’t know how they’re going to handle breakfast the next morning. They say that Mabel can stay the night with them, sharing Cathy’s bed and borrowing a nightgown. Mabel says that she can get some of her own clothes from the house tomorrow because no one will be able to see her and that she’s starting to see some possibilities for being invisible.

In the morning, the maid who comes to wake Kathleen sees Mabel’s discarded princess dress on the floor and asks Kathleen where it came from. Kathleen makes an excuse that it’s for playacting, which means that she and her brothers will have to figure out some kind of play to put on with it. Mabel thinks that acting sounds exciting, but Kathleen reminds her that she’s still invisible, so no one can see her perform anything.

The children feel bad about Mabel’s lies in the note to her aunt, and they insist that they should go and tell her the truth. Mabel doesn’t think this is a good idea because her aunt won’t believe her, but she reluctantly agrees. When they try to talk to her, the aunt doesn’t really want to listen to them, thinking that it’s just another one of Mabel’s pranks. She says that maybe Mabel was changed at birth and that her rich relatives have finally claimed her. They try to tell her that Mabel is with them, only invisible, and the aunt tells them not to lie to her. They ask about Mabel’s parents, and the aunt says that she’s an orphan. The children think that Mabel’s aunt is crazy because she doesn’t seem concerned about her and doesn’t want to hear anything they have to say, but Mabel says that she thought that her aunt might act that way because she spends so much time reading novels and can imagine anything.

In the meantime, Mabel has had some thoughts about what she can do. She says that she might be able to continue living in the house where her aunt works because the place is supposed to be haunted, so she can play ghost herself. However, the others think that she should stay with them. They just need a way to get some money to buy extra food for her.

Sine the fair is still going on, Mabel suggests that Jerry put on a magic show at the fair to get some money. The others say that Jerry doesn’t know any magic tricks, but Mable points out that it doesn’t matter when he has an invisible friend who can move things around, unseen, and make things disappear. Jerry dresses up as a conjurer from India (in a way that would be considered equal parts cheesy and offensive by modern standards because it involves black face), and he puts on the magic show with Mabel’s help. It’s incredibly successful, and toward the end of it, Mabel feels the ring coming loose. She takes it off and gives it to Jerry, who ends the act by vanishing himself.

Jerry’s and Eliza’s Invisibility

Now, Mabel is visible again, and it seems like they’ve solved their problem, but now, they have a new one. The ring is now stuck on Jerry’s finger, and he is the one who’s stuck being invisible. Although Mabel can now go home, she insists on staying with the other children and taking part in their next invisible adventure.

Jimmy says that, if he was invisible, he would turn burglar. The girls point out that would be unethical, so Jerry decides that he will be a detective. There are advantages to a detective being invisible. Then, Mabel remembers that the treasure room is still locked from the inside, and they have to do something about it. Jerry says that, as an invisible person, he can sneak in easily enough through a window. When he does this, he ends up foiling a robbery by actual burglars, although he also ends up letting them escape from the police because he knows that conditions in prisons are horrible and can’t bring himself to send anyone there.

After his adventure, the ring comes loose from his finger while he’s in bed, and the maid at the school, Eliza, finds it and decides to “borrow” it for an outing with her fiance. When her fiance can hear Eliza’s voice but not see her, he thinks that he’s taken some kind of strange turn or fit, possibly because he’s been in the sun too long. The children convince him to go home and lie down while they deal with Eliza. They take Eliza on a little adventure of her own because they’re beginning to see that the ring doesn’t come off someone’s finger until its purpose is fulfilled. Afterward, they manage to convince Eliza that it was all a strange dream that she had because she felt guilty about taking the ring without permission. The children also think that the ring’s power might be diminishing and could be completely spent because it seems like its effect has been lasting shorter and shorter amounts of time every time it’s used. However, this is really just the beginning of the ring’s magic, and it can do much more than they think it can.

The Living Dummies

At this point, they feel a little guilty that they haven’t spent much time with the French teacher, who is supposed to be looking after them, so the buy her some flowers. She is pleased with the gift, and they have a little party with Mabel as their guest. They find out that the French teacher has artistic abilities, although she rarely has time to draw these days because she’s so busy teaching. Mabel also tells them more about the man who owns the house where her aunt works. Although the house is grand, the man who owns it doesn’t really have enough money to support it and live there full time with a full staff because his uncle wrote him out of his will for falling in love with a girl he didn’t approve of. It’s sad because he also never married the girl because she was sent away to a convent, and although he did try to find her, he never did. Mabel, whose knowledge of convents comes from the scandalous gothic novels that she and her aunt read (much like the kind the main character reads in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey), speculates that the girl might be bricked up in a wall by now because that’s the kind of wicked thing that happens in books. The French teacher tells her that real convents aren’t like that and that the women who live there are good and take care of girls without parents, although they can also be strict, and the girls aren’t allowed to leave. She says it in a way that implies that she was one of those girls raised in a convent.

Since the children had claimed earlier that they were going to put on a show of some kind with the princess outfit, they decide to go ahead and perform for the French teacher and Eliza. To fill out the audience for their performance, they make a bunch of stuffed dummies, which the French teacher finds amusing. The children use the ring as a prop in their play, although none of them put it on, and Kathleen wishes that the dummies were alive so they could have better applause from the audience. To the children’s amazement and the French teacher’s and Eliza’s terror, the dummies (which the children think of as “Ugly-Wugglies”) do come to life and start clapping. In a panic, the children debate what to do. Jerry realizes that the ring is actually a wishing ring and is responding to the children’s wishes, so he wishes on the ring that the dummies were not alive, to undo Kathleen’s wish, but it doesn’t work.

To Jerry’s surprise, the dummies begin speaking to him, although their speech isn’t clear because they don’t really have proper mouths. They ask him for a recommendation to a good hotel or suitable lodgings. The dummies don’t seem to know what they are, and they are behaving like respectable, aristocratic people. Jerry tells them that he can show them to some lodgings, if they will wait for him a little. He makes some excuses to give himself time to reassure the French teacher and Eliza that the effect with the dummies was just a trick pulled by the children with string, and he recruits Mabel to help him find a place for the dummies. He does this in an insulting and condescending way, and Mabel tells him off for that, but she agrees to help him. They decide to hide the dummies somewhere on the grounds of the big house where Mabel and her aunt live, thinking that the magic will wear off eventually and that the dummies will turn into dummies again by morning. The dummies turn nasty when Jerry and Mabel try to shut them away, and they are helped by a strange man.

The strange man demands an explanation from the children about the angry people they’ve shut away, but the children don’t want to explain. The man says, if they won’t tell him what’s going on, he’ll simply have to let the people out and ask them, but the children are afraid of what the dummies will do if they’re released. The man assumes that the imprisoned people are other children and this is all some children’s game, so Jerry and Mabel decide that they have to tell him the truth, even though they know it all sounds crazy. They can tell that the man doesn’t really believe him. The man thinks maybe Jerry has a fever or something, and he says that he’ll see the children home. Jerry can tell that the man plans to open the door after the children are gone, and he warns him not to do that. He insists that the man wait until tomorrow to open that door and to wait for them to meet him to see it opened because, by then, they’re sure that the dummies will just be dummies again. The man reluctantly agrees.

When the children arrive the next day, they discover that the man didn’t wait for them to open the door, and he is now lying unconscious and injured, apparently attacked by the dummies. The dummies are gone except for the most respectable dummy, who seems concerned about the unfortunate man on the ground. Mabel runs for smelling salts to revive the unconscious man, and Jerry looks around to see where the other dummies are. They find that the other dummies have turned back into piles of old clothes, and only the one living dummy is left. He seems to be becoming far more real. The children revive the unconscious man, who turns out to be the new bailiff. The bailiff assumes that the strange visions he had were because he was injured accidentally. After the children are sure that he’s all right and send him on his way, they try to figure out what to do with the remaining living dummy.

The remaining dummy seems to have developed a life of his own and is quite a wealthy man, although the children aren’t sure that this will last because the ring’s magic never seems to last very long. Jimmy says that he wishes he was wealthy, and the other children are horrified to see him age quickly, turning into an elderly, wealthy man. Jimmy doesn’t seem to remember who they are, and he refuses to turn the ring over to them when they ask for it, trying to stop his wish. He acts like the dummy is an old acquaintance of his, and he just wants to go to the nearest railway station with his dummy acquaintance.

Jerry sends the girls home to make some excuses for his and Jimmy’s absence, and he follows the now-elderly and wealthy Jimmy on the train to London. There, he learns that Jimmy and the living dummy have somehow acquired business offices, staff, and backstories. Other people seem to have somehow known the two of them for years (a warping of reality that makes Jerry’s head swim because neither of them existed in their current state before) and say that they are business rivals. Jerry pumps a boy who works at one of the offices for information, claiming that he’s a detective and is trying to reunite the elderly Jimmy with grieving relatives. The boy’s advice is that it will be difficult to get through to elderly Jimmy but that he might use the living dummy’s rivalry with elderly Jimmy to arrange things. The living dummy (now known as U. W. Ugli) helps Jerry to get control of the ring, and he wishes himself and Jimmy back to the house where Mabel lives.

The Ring’s True Power

Jimmy is restored to his younger self, and the children debate about what to do with the ring. They can see that it has some dangers. Mabel says that she ought to put it back in the treasure room, where she found it. However, while they’re in the treasure room, they begin to wonder if any of the other pieces of jewelry are magical, since the ring became an invisibility ring after Mabel pretended it was. Mabel can’t remember exactly what she said any of the other pieces of jewelry did because, at the time, she was just playing pretend and making things up. Then, something occurs to Mabel. She realizes that the ring only became an invisibility ring because she said it was one, and it turned into a wishing ring when they started calling it that. She says that proves that the ring does whatever they tell it to do, changing its powers to match whatever they say. To prove the point, she declares that the ring will now make people tall, and when she puts it on her finger, she is suddenly unnaturally tall.

Mabel’s experiment did prove the point, but they now have to hide Mabel until the effects wear off. The children get a picnic from Mabel’s aunt and go to hide out in the woods overnight. However, Mabel complicates things when she turns the ring into a wishing ring, and then, she accidentally turns herself into a statue. The children have a nighttime adventure with some living statues, learning that all statues apparently have the ability to come to life at night. They can also swim, so they have a nice swim and a feast. The statue of Hermes tells the children that “‘The ring is the heart of the magic … Ask at the moonrise on the fourteenth day, and you shall know all.'”

Then, the children learn that Lord Yalding, the man who owns the big house, is planning to come, and that he is thinking of renting the house to a wealthy American. Mabel’s aunt is busy, getting the house ready for Lord Yalding and the American. However, it turns out that the children have already met Lord Yalding without realizing it, and with the ring and the treasures in the hidden treasure room, they have the power to secure his future and reunite him with his lost love … if only they can figure out how to manage the ring’s power without causing any more chaos.

The book is now public domain and available to borrow and read for free online through Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive (multiple copies), including an audio recording from Librivox. The story was made into a BBC television miniseries in 1979, but it’s difficult to find a copy these days. As of this writing (April 2024), the only dvd release was in Australia in 2013. Sometimes, clips of it appear on YouTube.

My Reaction and Some Spoilers

For the first part of the book, it isn’t obvious that there will be any real magic in the story. At first, the children are all just playing pretend with each other, and even when Mabel turns invisible, it’s possible to believe that the children might still be playing pretend and letting their imaginations run away with them. Because the adults don’t seem that concerned about Mabel, I thought that they might have been humoring the children in their game, but the children later realize that the ring has the effect of muting people’s concerns for the one wearing it, even if they’re doing something bizarre or dangerous. That ends when the person takes off the ring, and people become more concerned about them and where they’ve been. The magic in the story is real, and as the story continues it involves too many other people, even adults and various bystanders, for it to just be a game.

Throughout the book, various adults experience the effects of the magic ring and witness things that the children do with it. They come up with various explanations for what they’ve witnessed, so they can disregard it, but they unquestionably experience magical events along with the children and have some consequences from the children’s adventures. While Jerry retrieves Jimmy from London when he accidentally turns himself old and wealthy, they never do retrieve the living dummy, so U. W. Ugli remains doing business there until his magic finally wears off. His employees don’t seem to know what he is and have memories of having worked for him for years, so they report him missing when he finally disappears, and the notice appears in the newspaper.

There’s a lot of humor in the story as the children experiment with the magic, deal with the consequences of their adventures, and try to invent excuses to explain away the inexplicable. There are times when they do try to tell adults the truth about what they’ve been doing and what’s happening, but most of the time, the adults don’t believe them. Sometimes, they feel a little bad about lying to adults and making up stories, but they have to resort to that because nobody really believes the incredible truth.

When the children start telling Lord Yalding the stories of their magical adventures and about the treasures they’ve found in the house, they are unable to prove what they say at first. Lord Yalding gets a chance to experience the magic himself, he thinks that he’s going crazy. At the proper time, the ring’s magic reveals itself to Lord Yalding, his love, and the children so they can all see the true magic and learn the ring’s history, which is a story of magic and tragic love. Lord Yalding comes to understand that he is not crazy and that the magic is real. His lover makes one final wish that turns the wishing ring into a wedding ring. The magic ends, and the castle and grounds are changed because of it, becoming less grand and more ordinary, but Lord Yalding and his bride are able to have their happy-ever-after.

I thought it was interesting that the author provided a backstory for the magic ring, explaining where it came from and its effect on the house and its grounds. I didn’t think there were many clues to that backstory provided along the way, and some buildup to the explanation would have been nice. However, I recognize that the author didn’t have to provide any explanation for the magic at all. Many other fantasy stories don’t offer explanations for magical objects, leaving that up to readers’ imaginations, because the focus is more on the effects of the magic rather than its origins.

As far as we know, the children’s other sister, the one who was sick with measles in the beginning, never finds out what her siblings have been doing during this particular school break. The children remain close to Lord Yalding and his wife, and they host them at their house during school breaks afterward. In fact, it sounds like they spend more time with Lord and Lady Yalding than they do with their parents.

Overall, I enjoyed the story. E. Nesbit’s fantasy stories are children’s classics, and they have influenced other children’s fantasy books that came after them, especially Edward Eager’s Tales of Magic series.

Problem Points

Although the original story is now public domain, there are different versions of this book because there are simplified forms of the story for younger children, and some newer editions have removed some of the problematic parts of the story. Some of E. Nesbit’s books contain problematic racial language or stereotypes or have children doing things that would be unacceptable by modern standards. In this book, such incidents are relatively mild, and their absence wouldn’t materially change the character of the story.

For example, when Jerry dresses up an conjurer from India, he uses black face as part of his costume. In the 21st century, use of black face is considered derogatory toward people with dark skin. In a way, Jerry’s costume is played for comedy because it’s made from pieces of his school uniform, and someone points out that he’s left out spots in his skin makeup. Nobody believes that he’s a real conjurer from India, although they are impressed by his act because they can’t figure out how he accomplishes his tricks.

There is also some anti-Catholic sentiment, although the children seem to say certain things because they’ve gleaned them from sensational novels or things other people have said, and the author does correct for it. The first instance of this comes from Mabel’s concept of the dark deeds done in convents, which she has apparently learned by reading gothic novels. I’ve read some old gothic novels myself, and the idea that sinister things happen in secrecy in convents and abbeys was a popular concept from 18th and 19th century literature. It’s partly due to anti-Catholic sentiment and, probably, because the idea of a closed society that isn’t open to the general public makes for a compelling setting for dark secrets, somewhat like the way secret societies and boarding schools have become the setting for sinister happenings and dark deeds in Dark Academia literature. However, the other does have the character of the French teacher contradict this view of convents with a more benevolent and realistic one, that the people in them are caring but strict. There is one other comment that Jimmy makes in the story when he’s arguing with Mabel, when he seems to be implying something about Jesuits, a branch of Catholic priesthood:

“If you’d been a man,” said Jimmy witheringly, “you’d have been a beastly Jesuit, and hid up chimneys.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what this comment meant, although I think it might be a reference to the ways Catholics hid priests in priest holes, little hidden rooms, when they were at risk for arrest, torture, and even execution in Elizabethan England. Some of these little hiding places were in fireplaces, which I think is what the reference to hiding in chimneys means. At the time, the children were arguing about bravery, so I think Jimmy is implying that Mabel is the type to run and hide in the face of danger. (That might actually be the best option when there’s real danger. Just saying.) If I’ve understood his meaning, that makes Jimmy’s comment more of a slur against Mabel’s bravery than against Jesuits, although he does still call the Jesuits “beastly”, and he’s implying that’s a bad thing to be.

When you read public domain versions of the story online, they will have these elements in the story because they were part of the original book. However, if you find a physical copy in a library, it may or may not have these elements, depending on the printing. If it was printed during the late 20th century or any time during the 21st century, there is a good chance (although not completely guaranteed) that it’s a revised version and may have these parts written out or at least toned down.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Secret of Grey Walls

Lone Pine Series

The Secret of Grey Walls by Malcolm Saville, 1947.

It’s shortly after Christmas, and Petronella (called “Peter” by her friends) is home from boarding school for the holidays. She has a strange dream about running through the woods with an unfamiliar girl and finding a house with gray walls, but she’s not sure where it is or what the dream means. She wakes up when there’s a fire in her dream.

Petronella and her father live by themselves in the countryside because her mother died when she was a baby. Her father misses her when she goes away to school, but he knows that it’s important for her to go, and although he would like to spend all of their holidays together, he also knows that it’s important for her to spend time with her friends.

When Petronella goes to visit her friends, the Mortons, Mr. and Mrs. Morton and their housekeeper, Agnes all receive news that changes the children’s plans for the remainder of their vacation. (This is after Mr. Morton is home from the war after serving in the RAF.) Mr. and Mrs. Morton have to go to London to see a lawyer about some business, although they’re vague about the reasons why. Agnes’s news is that her sister is sick and in the hospital. With all of the adults leaving the Mortons’ house at Witchend, Mr. and Mrs. Morton wonder who they can have looking after David and the twins until they return. They consider different people they can ask, but Agnes says that all of the children can come to the village of Clun with her. Her sister has a very big house, and she’s been worried about not having anyone to look after the house while she’s in the hospital. There will be plenty of room for all of them, and Agnes says that she would appreciate the company in that big, old place. The children can even invite the other members of the Lone Pine Club to join them.

At this point in the series, not all members of the Lone Pine Club have actually met each other. David invited Jon and Penny, a pair of cousins, to join the club while visiting the hotel that Jon’s mother, who is Penny’s aunt, owns in another town. This trip will be an opportunity for the whole club to get together and get to know each other. Jon and Penny are very excited about the trip, especially Penny, who is a talkative girl who enjoys meeting new people.

On the train to meet the others, Penny strikes up a conversation with a man named Alan Denton, who brought a dog onto the train. Denton recently left the Navy and is heading home to manage his family’s sheep farm near Clun. He is very surprised when Penny says that they are also going to Clun because it’s a very small town, and few people visit there during the winter. The old house where they will be staying is usually run as a boarding house for summer visitors, but there won’t be anyone else there during the winter. The old house is called Keep View because it has a view of a crumbling old castle. There isn’t much else left of the castle other than the old keep. The children are fascinated as Denton describes the castle and other points of interest in the area, like a circle of standing stones. He says that visitors sometimes dig for old flint arrowheads.

The other kids are going to Clun by bicycle, except for Peter, who is riding her pony, Sally. Along the way, the kids meet up with a caravan of gypsies they know from a previous book. (Yes, this is a mid-20th century British children’s mystery adventure story, so of course, there are gypsies. The book spells it “gipsies,” and they also call themselves “Romany.” In the case of this series, the Romany are friends of the kids, not suspicious characters, as in many other children’s books from around this time.) The kids tell the Romany where they are heading, and they say that they’ve just left Clun. Ordinarily, they like the area, but there’s been some trouble there lately. Someone is stealing sheep from some of the sheep farms. The Romany know that people are often suspicious of Romany, so they thought that they’d better leave the area before someone accuses them of being involved with the thefts. Before the kids leave the Romany, the Romany remind them about the special whistle that they gave to Peter, saying that if she blows it, any Romany who hears it will come to help.

Peter, meanwhile, has a disturbing encounter on her trip to meet the others. She meets some men whose truck has broken down. The men behave oddly, and although the truck says that it’s a furniture truck, Peter is sure that she hears the baaing of sheep inside.

The kids don’t start to put together pieces of what’s going on until they reunite in Clun. While they are getting to know each other and exploring the area, they suddenly meet up with Alan Denton, who is distraught because his sheep farm has been the latest victim of the sheep thefts. Peter mentions to the others about the strange truck with the sheep sounds, although Denton dismisses the idea that Peter might have encountered the sheep thieves on her way to Clun because he doesn’t think that the thieves would have been able to load all the sheep onto a truck without being noticed.

Meanwhile, a strange man called Mr. Cantor rents a room at Keep View from Agnes. The boarding house doesn’t usually get boarders in the winter, and the children had counted on having the house to themselves during their stay. Mr. Cantor says that he’s recovering from an illness and needs some peace and quiet, which is disappointing to the children because that means that they’ll either have to spend most of their time outside or being very careful not to disturb Mr. Cantor. Although the children like being outdoors, it is cold, and they know they can’t be outdoors all the time, and a houseful of children isn’t usually quiet. Mr. Cantor seems a little strange, and some of the kids get the feeling that he isn’t quite what he seems to be, but he knows a great deal about the history and landmarks of the area. He entertains the children with stories about local history and ancient burials, and they begin feeling better about him.

However, something happens that causes them to becomes suspicious of Mr. Cantor. After a visit to Mr. Denton’s sheep farm, the children get lost. They find a strange grey house and try to ask directions there. Nobody answers their knocks or calls even though the children are sure that someone is watching them from inside the house. Then, they realize that someone is also watching them from the woods. They briefly see this person leaving, and this person has a bicycle that rattles badly. When the children get back to Keep View, they realize that the bicycle they heard belongs to Mr. Cantor because it makes that same distinctive rattle. Was Mr. Cantor spying on them? Who was in the house, and why didn’t they want anyone to see them. Does any of this have something to do with the sheep thefts?

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

My Reaction

I’m new to this series of mid-20th century British mystery adventure books. This is the first book I’ve read, so I’m really getting to know them as some of them are getting to know each other. I was a little disappointed that this particular book seems to be set after WWII is over because I knew that the series started during the war and that the war was part of the story, but that does put this book contemporary to the time when it was written.

This story and the series in general does have a similar feel to other British children’s mystery adventure stories and series written around the same time, especially the Enid Blyton books, such as Enid Blyton’s Adventure Series and The Famous Five Series. Like the characters in the Enid Blyton books, the members of this friendship club attend boarding schools and have outdoorsy adventures on school holidays. The Romany appearing in this book is also a common element found in Enid Blyton books and other children’s books written around the same time. In all such books, there are stereotypical elements surrounding the Romany characters, although I think the Romany in this book were treated more kindly than the ones in Enid Blyton books. The use of the word “Romany” as well as “gipsy” is one element of understanding, but also the Romany characters in this book are friendly and helpful characters, not suspicious ones. There are people who are suspicious that the Romany are involved in the sheep thefts, but our heroes know that isn’t the case, defend them publicly, and help to expose the real thieves.

I really liked the addition of Mr. Cantor in the story. Like other kids’ mystery books of this type, there is more adventure in the story than mystery, but the appearance of Mr. Cantor adds that needed element of mysterious. For much of the story, it’s difficult to say what Mr. Cantor’s motives are and whose side he’s on. The kids have the feeling from the beginning that he’s not quite what he seems to be, but they find themselves having mixed feelings and debating back-and-forth about him as the story continues. When he’s nice to them and telling them stories about the history of the area, they decide that they like him and that they were silly to be suspicious before. Then, when he seems eager to agree with the authorities that the Romany are responsible for the sheep thefts, they look at him suspiciously again. There are some funny moments when the youngest members of the group, the twins Dickie and Mary, make friends with Mr. Cantor and try to distract him and keep an eye on him while the others do some investigating. The twins are irritated at being left behind by the older kids, but they do throw themselves into the roles of spies and put a lot of effort into making Mr. Cantor their special friend, guilting him into spending time with them. Mary gets Mr. Cantor to entertain them by telling them fairy stories and acts sweetly enthralled, while Mr. Cantor struggles to come up with story ideas to keep the kids happy, and Dickie thinks that the whole thing is stupid and little-kiddish.

I was a little surprised at the way characters in the book talked to each other at times, both children and adults, although I suppose I really shouldn’t have been. They use words that sound rough and insulting, like “stupid” and “ass” in very casual ways, both in describing themselves and each other. I’ve heard that before in British movies and television shows, but it always surprises me because it sounds so ill-mannered. Nobody in the book or in any of the shows I’ve seen seems to mind it, though. It’s just surprising when you hear someone who seems like they’re from the upper classes or who is supposed to have some of the refinements of a boarding school education throwing around words that sound rude and insulting with no thought about it.

There is a foreword at the beginning of the book that says Clun is a real town, but the author took some creative liberties with the landmarks in the story.