Aviary Hall is an old, Victorian-era house in a small village in England. It doesn’t really have an aviary, although there are hummingbirds on display in a glass case in the drawing room. Like other houses of its type, it has greenhouses and a walled kitchen garden. Twelve-year-old Charlotte Makepeace and her younger sister, ten-year-old Emma, live there with their grandfather. Every morning, they walk to school, and they admire the birds in the area, wishing that they could fly like that themselves. One morning, they meet a strange boy on their way to school. Charlotte is cautious about meeting strangers, but Emma talks to the boy. Charlotte says that they should hurry, or they’ll be late for school. The boy says that he doesn’t go to school, so Emma invites him to come with them to their school. Charlotte isn’t sure what their teacher would think of the strange boy showing up, but they have to go or they will be late.
However, when they arrive at school, Charlotte gradually begins to realize that nobody seems to notice the new boy except for her and Emma. Other people just look past him, and nobody asks who he is. It’s like they can’t even see him. As the lessons at school continue, Charlotte’s attention wanders, and she finds the heat of the room uncomfortable. Then, the boy invites Charlotte to come away with him, promising that he will teach her more than she will learn in class.
At first, she thinks that people will notice if she leaves, but they don’t. She and the boy run away from the school, and Charlotte feels wonderfully free, like a bird. The boy asks Charlotte if she would like to fly like a bird. Charlotte doesn’t see how that’s possible, but they says that it is and shows her that he can fly. The boy teaches her some exercises to make sure she’s strong enough. Charlotte can’t fly at first, just falling to the ground when she tries, but when the boy urges her to continue trying, she gradually realizes that she is staying in the air longer and longer. They have a wonderful time on this adventure.
The boy is very mysterious about who he is although he asks many questions about Charlotte and her home and family. Charlotte asks the boy if the other kids from school can also learn to fly. The boy says that they have to learn one-by-one, but he will teach them individually, and it has to be a secret.
Then, suddenly, Charlotte finds herself back at school. No one has noticed that she was gone, not even Emma. At first, Charlotte wonders if it was all just a dream, but she discovers that she still has the ability to fly and has to be careful not to let other people see her feet leave the ground when she kicks her feet. Emma can tell that Charlotte has a secret, and she’s irritated when Charlotte refuses to tell her what it is. However, Charlotte knows that Emma will learn soon enough.
Emma learns to fly the next day, and gradually, other children at school also start to be able to see the boy and get their own flying lessons. Charlotte’s best friend, Maggot (a nickname, not her real name), seems particularly accepting of the strange boy and his strange powers of invisibility and flying. She seems to understand things about him, maybe even more than Charlotte does, saying that her uncle has told her about such things.
Their teacher discovers what they’re doing when she catches one of the children flying, and she questions them about it. The children don’t want to admit anything to her because they call swore an oath to keep it a secret, but the mysterious boy says that their teacher is all right and reveals himself to her. He explains that he taught the children to fly, and their teacher is surprisingly accepting of that. She asks if she can also learn, but the boy explains that he can only teach children. The teacher regretfully says that she suspected that might be the case, and the children begin to consider that their ability to fly might also fade with age. The teacher invites the boy to join their class for the rest of the term and seems to quietly support their flying adventures.
When school lets out for the summer, the children continue their flying adventures, still a secret from their parents. The boy, who has still not told anyone his name, is very strange, and not just because he can fly. Charlotte sees him eating insects, which he says he loves, and he doesn’t seem to understand things about school and ordinary houses. During an argument among the boys in the group, who don’t want to be bossed by the mysterious boy without reason, one of the boys, Totty, challenges the mysterious boy about who he really is, where he really comes from, and how he came by his flying magic. The other children are afraid to challenge the mysterious boy because they know that he is strange, they worry that there may be something evil about his magic (although they doubt it), and they fear losing the ability to fly.
The children decide to settle the conflict with a special challenge. If the mysterious boy wins the challenge, he wants to stay with them for the rest of the summer, being their leader and not explaining anything about himself. If Totty wins, the mysterious boy says he will explain who he really is and then leave, although he will let the children keep their ability to fly until the summer is over. The mysterious boy wins the challenge, but at the end of the summer, he makes them all an offer that could change their lives forever.
The book is the first book of the Aviary Hall Trilogy, although it isn’t as well-known as Charlotte Sometimes, which is the third book. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
My Reaction and Spoilers
Although Charlotte and Emma are sisters, this is the only book in this short series in which they both appear together. Each of the other books focuses on each of the girls separately. Charlotte Sometimes, the best-known book in the series, is set when Charlotte goes away to boarding school, and the second book in the series, Emma in Winter, takes place while Charlotte is away at school, focusing on Emma, who is left at home. All three books focus on growing up and issues of personal identity, although they do it in somewhat metaphysical terms and with fantasy elements.
Charlotte Sometimes focuses on personal identity as Charlotte finds herself traveling back and forth through time, trading places with another girl who attended her school in the past. At times, Charlotte feels like she’s losing her identity as Charlotte and becoming more like the other girl. One of the things I liked about The Summer Birds was getting a glimpse of Charlotte just being in her own identity all the way through the book. The beginning of the book makes it clear that the other children at school think that Charlotte is a prig (someone who is rigidly well-behaved to the point of being obnoxious), but it also clarifies that it’s because she feels compelled to look after Emma and set a good example for her.
The two girls live with their grandfather Elijah, who is obsessed with astrology, and an elderly, lazy housekeeper. The book never really explains what happened to their parents, but it seems that Charlotte and Emma are orphans. It is established in Charlotte Sometimes that their mother is dead, and this book mentions that their father was a sailor. Their grandfather likes girls to be well-behaved, and Emma is anything but, so Charlotte keeps trying to teach Emma how to act to keep their grandfather happy and trying to smooth things over with their grandfather when Emma misbehaves. In Emma in Winter, Emma has to face up to the realities of her personal behavior and other people’s reactions to her behavior without Charlotte running interference or taking responsibility on her behalf. That’s her coming-of-age moment, and it leads her to become more mature, personally responsible, and better-behaved herself and to appreciate what Charlotte was trying to do for her.
Although each of the books in this short series can be read independently of each other, I think reading all of them adds some depth and understanding to the characters. Charlotte was always a very responsible and cautious person in Charlotte Sometimes, showing that there is continuity to her character, but knowing the history of why is that way makes her more understandable. Although the other children sometimes consider Charlotte a drag for pointing out things that they shouldn’t be doing, it’s Charlotte’s serious nature that causes the other children to question the offer that the mysterious boy makes them at the end of the summer.
We also get to meet Charlotte’s best friend in her home town in this book, a girl called Maggot, who never appears and is never even mentioned in Charlotte Sometimes. The reason why she doesn’t appear in later book is that she is the only one who decides to accept the mysterious boy’s offer at the end of the book, leaving with him to be forever young as a bird. Charlotte is tempted by the offer, but she realizes that accepting it would mean giving up everything else and everyone else in their lives. The children would be happy for a while in their freedom as birds, but they would eventually miss their parents, and their parents would grieve for them because they would never be able to return. Although the other children don’t always listen to her, she is able to persuade them that this is really a serious matter that is about their very lives, forever, not just a brief summer lark. In the end, Maggot is the only one who can accept the offer because she is the only one who has no one left in the village to miss. She is an orphan and lives with an uncle who pays little attention to her. It is implied that he would hardly notice if she left, whereas Charlotte and Emma’s grandfather really would miss them, even if he sometimes doesn’t like their behavior. Maggot was also always the most birdlike, and she probably knew that the boy was really a bird before the others did because her uncle is a gamekeeper.
There are still some questions left unanswered at the end of book, but that is typical of this series. Readers might have guessed that the boy was really a bird all along, but we still don’t really understand his magic or see what happens in the village after Maggot leaves with him. We don’t know for sure that Maggot’s uncle doesn’t miss her or try to look for her, what the other villagers decide happened to Maggot, or if the teacher ever tells anyone what she knows about the children flying or if she understands what happened to Maggot herself.
Overall, it’s a pretty slow-paced book. Most of the story feels like pretty low stakes until the part at the very end, where the boy offers to let the other children come with him to be young birds forever. Then, it becomes a serious question of whether they are willing to continue with their normal lives, growing up and losing their flying magic, or if they’re willing to give up everything and everyone they know and love forever to keep it. Even though most of the story is peaceful, I had the feeling from the beginning that there might be a sinister turn somewhere because the boy’s behavior didn’t always seem straight-forward and friendly, and he was definitely keeping secrets. I had the feeling that the mysterious bird boy wanted something from them or was going to try to get them to do something they shouldn’t eventually. It’s an interesting premise, although I still think that Charlotte Sometimes is the best in the series. Events in this book are also mentioned in Emma in Winter, when characters in the story discuss them with each other, showing that all of the local children still remember their flying adventures together and that the events in this book didn’t just happen in their imagination.
The Mystery of the Gulls by Phyllis Whitney, 1949.
Taffy Saunders and her mother are heading to Mackinac Island for the summer while Taffy’s father is in the hospital, recovering from a car accident. Taffy’s mother’s Aunt Martha has recently passed away, and she left the hotel she owned to Taffy’s mother. It’s a strange bequest because Aunt Martha hadn’t gotten along with her niece for years because she had disapproved of her marriage. There is also a condition on the inheritance. In order to retain ownership of the hotel, Taffy’s mother has to run it herself for a summer. Taffy thinks that it all sounds strange and mysterious, but her mother says that her aunt was an eccentric, and it was often difficult to understand why she did some of the things she did.
Taffy’s mother worries that something will go wrong over the summer that will prevent her from owning the hotel. It isn’t really that Taffy’s mother wants to be a hotel keeper, but since Taffy’s father’s accident, they’ve spent most of their money on medical bills. When he gets out of the hospital, he won’t be able to do his old job, which involved a lot of travel, so they’re going to have to settle down in a new city. Taffy is happy about living a more settled life than they used to live, but they’re going to need all the money they can get to buy a new home. Taffy’s mother is hoping to sell the hotel to pay their bills and buy a new home, but she can’t do that unless she can prove that she can manage the hotel first. Mrs. Saunders is hoping that her aunt’s long-time housekeeper, Mrs. Tuckerman, will help her make this summer a success, while Taffy is hoping that Mrs. Tuckerman’s daughter, Donna, will be a friend for her. Because their family has moved a lot, Taffy hasn’t had many opportunities to make and keep friends.
On the boat ride to Mackinac (which they point out is pronounced “Mackinaw” by locals), Taffy meets a boy about her age, David Marsh, who is going to Mackinac to visit his grandmother, and they talk about the sights to see on the island. There is an old fort on the island that is now a historic site for tourists, and David offers to show Taffy around. He tells her where his grandmother’s house is and says that she can come see him there, or he’ll come to the hotel, Sunset House, to see her.
When Taffy sees Sunset House, she thinks it’s charming. The hotel is a large, old house with turrets, cupolas, and a widow’s walk. Mackinac Island in general seems charming. Cars are not allowed on the island, so people get around with horses, carriages, and bicycles. Taffy’s mother talks about wanting to “wake this place up”, but Taffy thinks that the calm, sleepy atmosphere is right for the house and doesn’t want to disturb it. Since Taffy has moved a great deal with her parents because of her dad’s job, she has lived in many hotels and apartments, and she finds the old-fashioned and comfortable furniture at Sunset House to be homey. Taffy thinks that the home-like atmosphere of Sunset House is a nice change and that she will like it there. The room she shares with her mother is beautiful, also filled with old-fashioned furniture and a charming alcove with a lovely view.
It seems like Aunt Martha’s usual guests prefer the place quiet, too. The first guests that they meet are the Twig sisters, a pair of elderly ladies who are at first concerned about a new child in the house. Until Taffy arrived, the only child at Sunset House was Donna, who is described as a quiet child. Aunt Martha only rented rooms to adults with no children. Taffy learns that Donna, who is about her age, is usually never even allowed to bring other children to visit her. Taffy feels sorry for Donna and hopes that she will want to be friends as much as she does.
Besides Mrs. Tuckerman, the housekeeper, there is also a cook named Celeste. When Taffy and her mother first arrive, they are told that Celeste hasn’t prepared lunch because she’s been seeing “omens.” Apparently, this is something that she does periodically, and Mrs. Tuckerman thinks that, this time, it’s just because she’s upset about Mrs. Saunders arriving. There are three other people who also work in the kitchen, but they all seem pretty useless without Celeste’s direction. Fortunately, Mrs. Saunders is a woman of action, so she immediately takes charge of making sandwiches for lunch. To speed things up, she even offers to let guests come to the kitchen to make their own sandwiches, any kind they want, if they wish to. Although Mrs. Tuckerman isn’t sure that will work, lunch turns out fine. However, Taffy has a strange encounter with Celeste in the garden.
In the garden, Celeste asks Taffy what word the gulls are saying. Taffy did have the feeling before that the gulls are saying a word, and it sounds like the word “help” to her. Celeste says that’s what she thought, and she says that’s a sign that a storm is coming. Her fear of the bad storm coming is why she feels like she can’t cook, and it bothers her that nobody else seems to understand, implying that there is impending doom. Taffy shows Celeste a map that David drew to his grandmother’s house, which she is having trouble understanding. Celeste explains to her how to get to the house, and she also mentions a shortcut, but she warns Taffy not to take the shortcut after dark because it goes through a “goblin wood.”
Taffy meets Donna for the first time at lunch. Donna is a shy girl, but she is glad that Taffy is there because she has spent much of her time alone since children are not usually allowed at Sunset House. Taffy asks Donna about Celeste and what she means about the “goblin wood.” Donna explains that Celeste and her family have lived on Mackinac for a long time because they are descended from fur traders (this is why Celeste has a French name, although the book doesn’t mention it directly) and Native Americans (the book uses the word “Indians”). Because of this heritage, Celeste has a lot of superstitions about the island and the spirits that supposedly inhabit it. Taffy doesn’t believe in spirits, but she can’t resist taking the shortcut to David’s grandmother’s house, just to see what it’s like. She has an odd encounter in the woods with a Native American boy (called an “Indian”) wearing overalls, who refuses to speak to her and seems hostile toward her.
When Taffy sees David, she tells him everything about Celeste and her encounter in the “goblin wood.” David says that he’s taken the shortcut through the woods many times without a problem, and he never had any reason to think that it might be haunted. Taffy is a little insulted at his comment that maybe girls get scared easier than boys, and David explains that the boy might not have been as unfriendly as she thought because her imagination might just have been fueled by Celeste’s stories, so she was primed for something scary or sinister to happen. They reconsider that theory when the two of them walk back through the “goblin wood” and find a note left on a tree, telling her that she’s not wanted on the island and that her presence makes the “manito” angry. David says that the “manito” is one of the Native American gods or spirits who supposedly inhabit the island. (This is a real concept in Native American lore, but I’ve seen it spelled “manitou.”) Whoever wrote the note was trying to scare Taffy, but why?
David is intrigued by what Taffy has told him about Celeste and her “omens” and the “goblin wood”, the note left for Taffy, and the unfriendly boy in the overalls (who Taffy sees again, talking to Donna, when she and David try out his grandfather’s binoculars), and he says he is willing to help her investigate further. The two of them work out a code, where Taffy can hang things of different colors in the window of her bedroom to send him messages.
The mystery deepens when Taffy’s mother tells her that there are two vacancies in the hotel after Taffy heard Mrs. Tuckerman turn away a man who wanted a room. There is also a locked room off of Aunt Martha’s old office that Donna says no one is supposed to enter. She says that they can’t even find the key, that no one has seen it since Aunt Martha died. When Taffy talks to her mother, she says that the locked room is a library and that the boy in overalls she’s been seeing is named Henry and that he does odd jobs for the hotel. Taffy tells her mother that it seems like people don’t want them on the island, including Henry, Celeste, and Mrs. Tuckerman. Even Donna has been acting strangely. Even though she said that she was glad Taffy was there, she’s been strangely unfriendly, and she’s been telling her mother that Taffy is the unfriendly one! Taffy thinks that’s really unfair, but her mother thinks that it’s just because everyone is adjusting to the changes since Aunt Martha died. Donna isn’t used to being with other children, and Celeste and Mrs. Tuckerman may be worried about their jobs since the ownership of the hotel depends on how well Mrs. Saunders manages it this summer and what she plans to do with it when she takes full ownership. Taffy and her mother don’t even know what will happen to the hotel if Mrs. Saunders can’t prove that she can manage it well enough. Aunt Martha’s will deliberately keeps the alternate heir secret until the end of the summer.
This is only the beginning of the mysteries and puzzles. Taffy learns that the man Mrs. Tuckerman turned away from the hotel was actually an old friend of Aunt Martha who has worked in hotels in Asia and says he would like to own a hotel of his own. The storm that Celeste predicted comes, and a baby seagull crashes into the window of the Twigs’ room. Celeste thinks that’s another bad omen and that Taffy and her mother should leave. Then, someone leaves a bat skeleton in Miss Twig’s bed. Donna says that Aunt Martha used to collect things like that and that maybe her spirit put the skeleton in the bed because she’s not happy. Of course, Taffy doesn’t believe that. Too many living humans seem unhappy that she and her mother are there. Donna admits that Aunt Martha was originally going to leave the hotel to her mother before the two of them had a quarrel, and Aunt Martha changed her will. Whether Mrs. Tuckerman might still be the alternate heir to the hotel is still unknown. Donna thinks the alternate heir might be some bird society because Aunt Martha was an amateur naturalist with a fondness for birds. Could there be another heir who is hoping to drive Taffy and her mother away so they can have the hotel? Could Donna and her mother still be hoping that the hotel will come to them? Could Celeste or Henry be trying to drive them away for their own purposes?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. Like other Phyllis Whitney books, this book is something of a collector’s item now, and copies are not cheap through Amazon.
My Reaction and Spoilers
I’ve been to Mackinac Island before, when I was in my teens, and I didn’t know about the pronunciation until I read this book. I had even forgotten about the horses and carriages since I’ve been there (which might seem odd, but I only spent one day there and I was obsessed with the fudge), but Mackinac Island is still car-free today. Reading this book revived some old memories for me, and it makes me want to go back and spend more time there! I didn’t stay overnight while I was there last time, but there are plenty of hotels there, including ones that resemble the one in the story, with turrets, cupolas, and widow’s walks.
Culture and Folklore
The book mentions that there are many Native Americans living on Mackinac Island, but it doesn’t mention a specific tribe. Even though some of the spooky and ominous things that happen in the story appear to have their roots in Native American folklore and superstition, I’m not completely sure how accurate the descriptions of the folklore aspects are. From what I’ve read, it seems that manitous (or manitos) really are a part of Native American folklore in that region, but there are a couple of aspects of it in the story that I haven’t been able to verify. As a slight spoiler, we eventually learn that Aunt Martha used to collect not only animal skeletons but dead birds, which she would turn into taxidermy. Celeste didn’t think that this was fully respectful to the spirits of the creatures, although she did seem to think that Aunt Martha had some kind of special connection to the spirits of birds because she was so good with them, living, injured, or dead. Because the author, Phyllis A. Whitney spent her youth in Asia because of her father’s job, she also has a habit of introducing Asian elements to most of the books she wrote at some point. In this one, although the main focus is on aspects of Native American folklore, there is also an Asia folklore story about a Chinese gong in the hotel, which seems to have a connection to birds or winged creatures, and that complicates the situation. The effect is that Taffy sometimes feels like she is dealing with forces that she doesn’t understand, which adds some suspense, although she is also sure that there’s a person behind it all because she doesn’t really believe in all the folkloric superstitions and physical objects are being used for the strange things that are happening.
One thing that I like about Phyllis A. Whitney’s juvenile mysteries is that they do frequently include history and folklore of different places and people around the world, and they do seem generally well-researched and presented with empathy. This book and other she wrote were published in the middle of the 20th century, around the same time that other books I’ve read were also published. Some mid-20th century books for kids lean into racial or cultural stereotypes, but Whitney’s book often subvert that or show characters rethinking some of their preconceived notions. The book does use the word “Indian” instead of Native American, which isn’t preferred, but apart from that, Taffy’s attitudes and ability to look at things from someone else’s point of view are good. Taffy is characterized as a very imaginative girl, and one of the ways she uses her imagination is to picture what other people think or how they would feel about different things. At one point, David says that Celeste is crazy for all of her superstitious talk, but Taffy defends her, saying that she’s not crazy. Taffy doesn’t believe in Celeste’s superstitions, but she recognizes that Celeste believes and acts the way she does because she has spent her whole life being steeped in stories of the history of spirits. These stories don’t make sense to Taffy and David, but Taffy recognizes that they make sense to Celeste. Celeste is wrong about the spirits being responsible for everything weird that’s happening, but being wrong about something isn’t the same as being crazy.
Later in the story, the kids form a club for exploring the island and giving hotel guests tours of some of the scenic spots. Taffy, David, and Donna ask Henry to be their “Indian guide” for the tours, and Henry sarcastically asks if they’re expecting him to wear feathers. The others quickly reassure him that they’re not asking him to be the guide because they want him to put on a kitschy show for the tourists or anything embarrassing like that. They just think he would make the best guide because he knows the island better than the rest of them and all the history and stories of the island. They want to call him an “Indian guide” to emphasize his Native American heritage and provide a credential for his knowledge for the sake of the tourists, but they say they would still want him to be part of the tours even without that, just because they want to be friends and include him. This explanation satisfies Henry, and he joins their tour club. For those who would like to learn more about the history of real Native American life on Mackinac, I recommend the Biddle House Native American Museum.
Time Period and Atmosphere
This book is set contemporary to when it was written, the in late 1940s. Readers will notice that Taffy periodically mentions whether or not women are wearing slacks instead of skirts, and that’s because that was a modern fashion trend in her time. Taffy’s mother is very much a modern woman, and she wears slacks from the beginning. However, Taffy can see that many women who stay at Sunset House (although not all) are older and more old-fashioned women, who wear skirts, like the Twig sisters. At first Taffy worries about whether her mother is dressing appropriately for her new job, managing the hotel, but it works out fine.
Taffy and her mother have different views on the hotel from the beginning. Taffy thinks that the old-fashioned hotel is charming and that the quiet atmosphere really suits the place. However, Taffy’s mother thinks that the place seems depressing and wants to “wake it up” a little. Taffy worries that her mother’s attempts to “wake it up” might ruin the quietness and quaintness that appeals to their customers. This is one of the reasons why people who work at Sunset House are concerned about what Taffy’s mother plans to do with the hotel. On the one hand, they didn’t always like the way Aunt Martha did things, but Taffy’s mother is a newcomer, who might not understand which parts of the hotel’s atmosphere should be preserved.
It’s true that people often visit places like this hotel specifically for their atmosphere, and the kind of people who choose to stay at Sunset House are looking for exactly that quiet and quaint atmosphere. When she was alive, Aunt Martha cultivated that time of atmosphere and a client base who likes that. With Aunt Martha’s death, Sunset House is at a transition point, where the new ownership will set the tone for its future. I think Taffy is right that the old-fashioned charm of the house should remain because even modern people like to visit quaint and charming places that are very different from the places where they live the rest of the time, but at the time time, Aunt Martha’s ways were unnecessarily strict, and there is some room for relaxing the atmosphere without ruining the quaintness. Allowing families with children wouldn’t be bad, and when Taffy’s mother learns that Donna’s passion in life is dancing (something that Aunt Martha disapproved of), she arranges for Donna to do an evening show for the guests, which Donna and the guests love. A little live music and dancing is a way of adding some life to the old house without ruining the charm because Donna’s ballet and tap dance are also charming and tasteful.
For some context between Taffy’s mother and her Aunt Martha, I’d like to point out that, because this book takes place in the late 1940s, Taffy’s mother’s youthful visits to her aunt’s Mackinac Island hotel took place before her marriage, which was probably in the mid-1930s, given Taffy’s age. That means that she was there as a kid during the 1920s or early 1930s. Culturally, the 1920s and 1930s, post-WWI, was the beginning of the modern era, with flappers pushing the boundaries of women’s dress and behavior, and women needing to take on greater roles in working and supporting their families during the Great Depression and WWII. Taffy’s mother would have been growing up, coming of age, and marrying and having a child of her own during all of these changes, and I think this helps explain her practical, modern outlook on life and personal habits. (Remember, she wears slacks. Other women don’t, especially the older and more traditional ones.) As a member of the previous generation, Aunt Martha would have been a product of the late 19th century and early 20th century, which I think helps explain the Victorian/Edwardian style of her home and her apparent attitude that children should be seen and not heard, an attitude which seems to be shared by the Twig sisters. Not all Victorian era adults felt this way, and many parents genuinely loved and indulged their children whenever they could, but it seems like Aunt Martha clung to the strict aspects of Victorian upbringing. In fact, her resistance to listening to the needs of the young people is a central part of the mystery. In fact, it is the reason for the mystery, and we learn that Aunt Martha’s behavior wasn’t solely a matter of her upbringing but her own mercurial personality and moods.
Aunt Martha (Spoilers)
Understanding Aunt Martha is key to understanding the entire mystery because she is literally the one who set everything up. Although she is dead before the story begins, we actually do get more explanations of her thinking in her own words than almost anyone else, except for Celeste, because she left behind journals that explain everything. I got angry with Aunt Martha when I realized that her manipulation of everyone was deliberate and planned. Aunt Martha wasn’t just strict; she was controlling and vindictive. She expected everyone to consult her about everything going on in their lives and to do everything she said, just based on her say-so. Whenever anybody resisted that control because their lives were their business and not hers, she would get angry, and that’s when she would withdraw affection and support and renege on promises she had made, seeking to punish them for their resistance. As Taffy later observes, Aunt Martha was not a nice person, and in her journals, she even said that she distrusted people who were too nice and too liked by other people because she never was herself. Her hotel was charming, but she wasn’t.
The terms of Aunt Martha’s will were not so much designed to benefit someone as to punish them all. She didn’t leave the hotel to Mrs. Tuckerman, as she had originally planned, to punish her for not following her orders on how to raise Donna, even though Mrs. Tuckerman had previously let her control things for both her and Donna. Leaving the hotel to her niece wasn’t meant as a nice gesture, either. She thought her niece was an idiot whose decision to marry a man she didn’t approve of was a sign of ingratitude for all that she had done for her (whatever that was – apart from letting her visit during summer, we don’t know of anything else she did), so she expected that she would fail at managing the hotel and would be publicly embarrassed by the failure. Aunt Martha purposely set up a situation where some people would have to ensure that others would lose in order to “win” something because she liked the thought of them fighting among each other and having problems because of her.
While understanding other people’s thinking is important, I also think that it’s important to recognize that understanding does not equal approval. We can understand that Celeste’s superstitions make sense to her without believing that everything has a supernatural cause, and we can also understand why and how Aunt Martha decided to use her will to get back at everyone for defying her in some way while recognizing that everything she did was toxic and done out of malice. What eventually stops it all is the revelation of Aunt Martha’s thinking and the understanding of the motives of the people doing all the strange things at the hotel. Taffy and one other person realize that, in spite of Aunt Martha’s manipulation, there is still a way for everything to work out well for everyone, with no “losers” in the situation. Once they figure that out, they are able to explain things to the others and get them to cooperate.
There is a theme in the story about good people who do bad things, but that applies more to the people Aunt Martha manipulated than Aunt Martha herself. Aunt Martha was good to birds and helped them heal when they were injured, but she wasn’t so kind to her fellow human beings. Some of the characters in the story think that they have no choice but to do what they’re doing because of the way Aunt Martha set things up, and it’s very hurtful to Taffy because she thought they liked her and she liked them, yet they were plotting against her and her mother the whole time. Taffy’s mother says that they did like them and feel badly about what they did, that they just felt trapped. I was bothered by some of the characters talking about how likeable these characters were because I don’t like people letting others off the hook for doing harmful things just because they can be pleasant and charming sometimes. There are serious abusers who too frequently get off the hook for those reasons. Heck, people let Aunt Martha get away with many of the things she did because she was nice to birds and could be charming and helpful sometimes, but her journals explain detail how little she thought of other people and how she schemed to manipulate and control them. Her last act was to do something she knew would hurt and embarrass the people close to her and cause them problems with each other.
Fortunately, even though the offenders are otherwise nice and likable, the book doesn’t let them off the hook for their behavior. I was gratified that Taffy’s mother and other characters say that people need to take responsibility for their choices, even if they’re “all mixed up inside”, and that doing things that harm others can’t be excused. Even the miscreants just saying that they understand now that they were wrong about what they were thinking and doing doesn’t get them completely off the hook. Instead, the characters make the offenders each pick a way to punish themselves and make amends for the trouble they’ve caused, to show everyone that they’re genuinely sorry and really mean to make things right. I like it because, as Taffy points out, their behavior makes her wonder about their entire relationship. How much of their previous likeability was just an act while they were scheming against them behind their backs, and what is their relationship going to be now? Can they still be friends, or is that all over because they were plotting harm the entire time? The punishments they give themselves are a gesture to show that they really do regret what they did and that they are going to follow through on that regret and change for the better. Nobody gets away with causing problems just because they put on an outward show and come across as likeable. In the end, they’re not trying to insist on everyone letting them go because that’s what they want, and they’re not acting as though they’re entitled to anything or deserving of being treated as special exceptions. It’s just them, taking responsibility for themselves and owning their feelings and motivations, as Aunt Martha never fully did outside of her journals. As Mrs. Saunders says, “like anyone who does wrong, they’ll have to take their punishment.” Their willingness to do that and to admit that they were wrong and make amends is what paves the way to repairing their relationships with the others.
I was disappointed, though, that we don’t really get to see the miscreants explain themselves. The Taffy’s mother and others talk to them without Taffy being present, saying that they want to handle the matter privately, even though Taffy is the main character and the one who was investigating the mystery all along. It’s sort of weird that the main character was shut out of the final discussion. Because she’s not there, readers don’t get to “see” exactly what happened or hear the miscreants’ explanations in their own words. Taffy’s mother just tells her about it afterward, and that feels like a cheat. “Show” is generally better than “tell.”
A Touch of Cottagecore
I think this mystery story about a summer spent in an enchanting place, with an old-fashioned hotel and an island with horse-drawn carriages, might appeal to fans of the Cottagecore aesthetic. The kids in the story have some independence in where they go and what they do. Taffy is allowed to spend some time exploring the island with David, seeing the sights and enjoying the beauty of the island. The garden around the hotel has pretty flowers, and Taffy starts learning some of their names. She never had the opportunity before to learn much about flowers because she’s been living in hotels and apartments. She thinks that, when her family finally has their own house, she also wants her own garden with flowers.
Some characters in books make up their own special words which are only used in their story, and the word for this book is “exasper-maddening”, which Taffy and her father use to describe her mother’s behavior at times. The mother is a woman of action, which can be good when someone needs to take charge of the situation. However, she is also impulsive and stubborn, given to doing things as soon as she gets the notion to do them and sweeping everyone else along with her, and she also has a tendency to focus on whatever seizes her attention in the moment instead of what’s concerning someone else.
A farmer in the Balabadur Hills (the book doesn’t explicitly say that this story takes place in India, but it’s implied) has a good farm, but he also has a problem with the crows who live nearby. Whenever his wheat is ripe and about ready to harvest, the crows come and eat it.
Chasing the crows away doesn’t work because they always come back. The farmer decides to try building a scarecrow instead. It does frighten the crows, but with an unexpected result.
The crows decide that they must make their own scare-person, a kite that looks like a big, fierce bird, to scare away the scarecrow. When they fly over the field with their scare-person kite, the farmer gets scared and decides that he needs a bigger, scarier scarecrow.
The situation escalates, with the birds building an even bigger and scarier bird kite to scare the farmer.
Meanwhile, an owl who has been watching all of this unfold decides that it’s gone far enough and goes to talk to the farmer and the crows about the situation. The owl persuades both sides to speak to each other and work things out.
When they talk, the farmer and the crows realize that they don’t want to fight with each other. The crows depend on the farmer’s wheat for food, and the farmer realizes that he actually enjoys having the birds around. The owl fixes the mean-looking scarecrow to have a happy and friendly look.
I’m not sure that this is really a traditional fable because the book doesn’t provide any background information on the story and the author isn’t credited as doing a “retelling”, but the story is told in a folktale or fable format about conflict resolution. When the farmer and the crows are feuding, they continually escalate the situation with bigger and scarier “weapons” until the owl convinces them that the only way out of the situation is to talk it out and come to an agreement.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).
Philip Mannering is spending part of his summer holidays at the home of one of his teachers, doing some extra studying, which is a bit depressing. He has fallen behind in school because he recently suffered from Scarlet Fever and Measles, and he is trying to catch up. He’s not the only boy studying at the teacher’s home, but he isn’t really friends with the others.
One day, he’s doing some studying on the hillside and hears a strange voice telling him to shut the door and not whistle. There is no door on the hillside, and he wasn’t whistling. Philip is very confused until he realizes that the voice is coming from a big, white parrot sitting in a tree. Then, he hears a child’s voice calling the parrot from the garden of the teacher’s house. Philip is happy, thinking that another boy has joined the study group, but it turns out that he’s only half right.
The voice in the garden belongs to Lucy-Ann Trent, who isn’t a student and isn’t there to study. Her brother, Jack, is the one who needs to catch up in school because he never focuses on his studies. Jack has only one interest in life, and that’s birds. Jack owns the parrot, Kiki, and wants to be an ornithologist when he grows up. He is bright but disinterested in anything that isn’t related to his chosen field. Lucy-Ann is only there to spend time with him and keep him company while he gets extra tutoring. The two of them are orphans. They don’t remember their parents because they died in a plane crash when the children were very small. Most of the time, they live at boarding school, which is why they don’t spend as much time together as they like. Usually, during their holidays, they live with a fussy uncle, which is why the parrot is always barking orders at the children.
Philip also usually lives with an aunt and uncle when he’s not at school. His father is dead. His mother is still alive, but she spends most of the time working at her art agency. He also has a sister named Dinah, but they don’t usually get along. Philip is surprised at how well Jack and Lucy-Ann get along with each other because he’s always fighting with his sister, who has a temper. (Although, admittedly, he does push Dinah to lose her temper.) Strangely, Philip finds himself wishing that Dinah were also there because, when he becomes friends with Jack and Lucy-Ann, it occurs to him that she would nicely round out the group.
Philip, Jack, and Lucy-Ann become friends by bonding over their shared love of animals. Philip likes the parrot and tells Jack and Lucy-Ann that they would probably like his aunt and uncle’s house because they live by the sea, and there are many sea birds in the area. Philip doesn’t know much about birds in general, but he likes collecting various small pets, including mice and caterpillars. The teacher isn’t too happy about these animals because they disrupt study sessions.
Then, Jack and Lucy-Ann get a letter saying that they’re going to have to continue staying with the teacher through the rest of the summer because their uncle has broken his leg and can’t take them back. The children aren’t happy about that and neither is the teacher because he had other plans after the summer tutoring session ended, even though the uncle has provided a generous check for the children’s care.
Then, Philip has a wonderful idea: maybe Jack and Lucy-Ann can come visit him and his sister at his aunt and uncle’s house. Dinah has written to him that she’s bored and lonely and misses him, even though they usually fight. She would like the company, and Philip knows that his aunt and uncle could use the money the children’s uncle is willing to offer for their boarding. Jack and Lucy-Ann like that idea, but they’re not sure that their uncle and teacher would agree to let them go because they don’t know Philip’s aunt and uncle, and they think maybe Philip’s aunt and uncle wouldn’t want two strange children staying with them. The children know their plan would be best for everyone, but since they’re not sure that they can persuade the adults, they take the attitude that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission and plot for Jack and Lucy-Ann to run away and join Philip on the train home. Jack and Lucy-Ann secretly send their trunks to the train station along with Philip’s and tell the teacher that they’re just going down to the station to say goodbye to Philip when he goes. Then, they quietly buy their train tickets and leave.
When the children arrive at Philip’s home, Aunt Polly is irritated because she isn’t prepared for unexpected guests. There are no rooms or beds for them, and she says that they can’t stay. However, she is surprisingly won over by Kiki, who says, “Poor Polly!” over and over in a sad tone. Not knowing that Kiki is also sometimes called Polly, Aunt Polly thinks that the bird knows her name. She often feels overworked and rarely gets any sympathy, so she appreciates this gesture from Kiki, who repeats the phrase more often, seeing that it pleases Aunt Polly. Aunt Polly is also charmed that Polly tells people to get a handkerchief when they sniffle or sneeze because she’s always saying that to Dinah. When she telephones the children’s teacher to discuss the situation and learns about the fee the children’s uncle is willing to pay for caring for the children, she decides that maybe the children can stay after all. The relieved teacher promises to endorse the check over to her.
Aunt Polly is relieved to get the extra money, and she reveals to the children that she’s been very worried about expenses because Philip and Dinah’s mother has been ill and hasn’t been able to send the money she usually sends from her job. Her doctor says that she’s run-down and needs a rest, but her job is an important source of money to the whole family. Everyone is relying on her, but since she hasn’t been able to send her usual support money for the children, Aunt Polly is worried about how she will afford the children’s school fees. Philip bravely says that he’s willing to quit school and get a job instead to help out the family, but Aunt Polly says he’s still too young. Philip has wished before that he was old enough to be the man of the family and provide for his mother. His uncle isn’t much help with money and doesn’t pay attention to family expenses, too absorbed in his academic work. Aunt Polly says that the money she’ll get from boarding the Trent children will help out.
Philip says that part of the trouble is that the house where they live is really too large. About half the house is crumbling into ruins from neglect, and the other half is really too big for Aunt Polly to maintain. Aunt Polly agrees but says that moving would be difficult because few people would want a house like this one, crumbling and located in a rather lonely spot along the coast. Besides, the children’s uncle loves it because he knows all the history of the area, and he wouldn’t want to leave. Philip thinks the only thing that will really help is when he and Dinah are old enough to get jobs. Then, the two of them will be able to help their mother afford a place for three of them.
Philip’s aunt and uncle have a gloomy man named Joe working for them, and he tells the children that the tower room where the boys will sleep on an old mattress (a prospect that seems adventurous to them instead of an inconvenience) isn’t a good room because it’s the only room where they can see the Isle of Gloom. He says that bad things are associated with the Isle of Gloom because bad people who did terrible things lived there. Jack asks Philip about the Isle of Gloom. Philip says that it’s difficult to see, even from the tower room, and it’s always covered in mist. Nobody lives there now. Jack thinks it sounds great because the birds on the island have probably never seen people before and won’t be afraid of them, so he could get some amazing pictures. He thinks maybe he’ll even find some rare birds. Philip says that he and Dinah have never been there before themselves, and he’s not sure whether there are birds there or not.
Staying at the house by the sea isn’t easy. All of the children are expected to help with the chores. There is no electricity, and they use oil lamps that need to be cleaned. The water has to be pumped from a well. Still, Jack and Lucy-Ann think that it’s just part of the adventure. They enjoy going swimming and fishing with Philip and Dinah, and Jack has fun bird-watching, but Joe the handyman is always spying on them and acting creepy. He keeps telling the children spooky stories about things lurking in the dark. For some reason, Joe tries to discourage the children from exploring the area or going out in a boat, but they soon make an interesting discovery.
While the children are exploring a cave, Philip teases Dinah, and she hits him. He stumbles back and ends up in a hidden tunnel. Philip and Jack explore the tunnel and discover that it leads to some carved stone steps and trapdoor that leads up to a storeroom that’s part of the cellars at the house. Philip says that he never knew this part of the cellar existed. The boys discover that the door to the storeroom is usually hidden by boxes, but Joe has the key and comes in. Kiki, who is with Jack as usual, makes some sounds that terrify Joe, who thinks that there are strange and spooky things in the cellar. The boys think that it’s hilarious that Joe got scared when he’s always trying to scare them. They steal the key that Joe left in the door so they can come and go whenever they like, but they wonder why Joe even hides the door to the storeroom in the first place. Philip is sure that even his aunt doesn’t know about that storeroom, or she would have mentioned it before.
Joe is definitely doing something suspicious, going out at night in a boat, fearful that the children will find out what he’s doing. The children make friends with a nice man named Bill, who is staying in an old shack nearby. Bill says that he’s there for bird-watching, but he doesn’t seem to know that much about birds or talk about them as much as Jack does. Bill has a boat and takes the children out sailing, but he doesn’t want to take them to the island and warns them to be careful of Joe. Does Bill know something the children don’t, or does he have some dangerous secrets of his own?
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It was first published in Britain, and some US copies use the title Mystery Island instead. The book was made into a movie in the 1980s, and you can see it on YouTube. The movie has John Rhys-Davies as one of the villains.
My Reaction
First, I’d like to get it off my chest that I didn’t like many of the family relationships throughout the book. Aunt Polly’s marriage is a little disturbing because she doesn’t have enough money to run the household, but her husband not only says that he has none to give her and wouldn’t give her any even if he did have money. He doesn’t seem to care about the welfare of either Polly, who is eventually revealed to have a heart condition, or the children in his care. He buries himself in his study most of the time and has almost no idea of what’s going on in the rest of the house or even who’s there. He’s not just obsessed with his studies, but at times, it seems like he’s deliberately hostile toward everyone else, including his wife, like their existence in the house is a terrible inconvenience to him.
I didn’t like the way Philip and Dinah were portrayed as always fighting physically in the book. Admittedly, my brother and I got into physical fights when we were little, but Dinah is twelve years old, and Philip is older than she is. Both of them seem to be too old to be acting the way they do in the story. Dinah is very emotional and has a hair-trigger temper, and Philip, knowing this, intentionally baits her into losing his temper. He likes to put creepy-crawly creatures on her or act like he’s going to, knowing she doesn’t like it and that she’ll react, and then he’s not happy when she lashes out and hits him. While Dinah shouldn’t react by hurting people physically, I could sort of understand it if she constantly has to put up with this from Philip. Living with someone who is always baiting you and escalating his behavior until you break would probably leave anyone broken in the end, and I can’t help but think that Dinah’s emotions would stabilize more if she didn’t have to deal with someone always trying to throw her off balance. Maybe she’d still be an emotional person, but I notice that it’s particularly Philip who gets her to fight physically while nobody else does because they don’t bait her into it. I found that sibling relationship kind of disturbing because Philip seems to know exactly what he’s doing, and as I said, he’s too old to be doing this stuff innocently.
Jack and Lucy-Ann seem to have a more fond sibling relationship. Lucy-Ann sometimes seems a little clingy with Jack, but I think that might be because the children are orphans and are not fond of their stern uncle, so they don’t really have anybody else to be close to except each other.
My copy of the book is one of the later editions that had some of the names and language changed to remove racially-problematic aspects of the story. In the original version of the book, the sinister handyman was a black man called Jo-Jo, and his race was unduly emphasized. I prefer the version where he’s just a weird guy named Joe.
The mystery isn’t bad. I knew right away that Joe was suspicious because he kept acting suspiciously, but the mystery is one of those type where it’s not so much about “whodunnit” as about “What is this person doing?” Readers know that Joe is up to something, but it isn’t clear for much of the book what it is. I had a couple of ideas early in the story, but neither was right.
Bill is also an interesting addition to the story. For part of the book, he looks a little suspicious because readers can tell that he’s not the bird-watcher he pretends to be, but he doesn’t seem to be allied with Joe. Bill is actually a good character, although he’s not what he appears to be, and he becomes one of the important characters in other books in the series.
Usborne First Book of Nature designed by David Bennett, 1980.
I remember getting this book as a present from my grandmother as a child because my grandmother was an amateur naturalist. Although it’s a nonfiction book, I’m sentimental about it for that reason.
The book is divided into four sections covering different types of plants and creatures (each of which has its own book in the Usborne collection, but this book is a compilation):
Birds
This chapter explains about the parts of birds, like the different shapes of beaks and feet different birds have, aspects of birds lives and behavior, and how birds fly.
Trees
This chapter explains the parts of trees, like how roots and twigs grow and the differences between different types of leaves, tree flowers, and seeds.
Flowers
This chapter explains the parts of flowers and about pollen and seeds. It also points out the creatures that like to visit flowers, like bees and hummingbirds.
Butterflies and Moths
This chapter explains the similarities and differences between butterflies and moths and what their life cycles are like.
One of the best parts of this book is that it is designed to be interactive as well as informative. Some of the activities are explained at the beginning of each chapter, and there’s a puzzle or game at the end of each chapter. The upper right corners of each chapter have images that are meant to be used as a flip book. In the bird section, readers can quickly flip the pages to watch a bird fly. In the tree section, a leaf bud opens. In the flower section, a flower opens. In the butterfly and moth section, a butterfly opens and closes its wings.
Each chapter also has a game where you hunt for different creatures within the pages of that chapter and see how many you can find, and then, there’s another game or puzzle at the end. At the end of the bird chapter, there’s a picture puzzle where you have to find all the birds hidden in a black-and-white picture. At the end of the tree section, you have to find how many products are made from or come from trees in a busy market scene. At the end of the flower chapter, you have to match up different types of fruits with their flowers. The butterfly and moth section doesn’t have a game at the end.
This book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
Bird Wise by Pamela M. Hickman, illustrations by Judie Shore, 1988.
This is a beginning guide to birds and bird watching for kids. I thought that the guide was very helpful with nice, detailed illustrations. The book explains the appearance, biology, and lives of birds and offers activities to help readers understand and interact with birds.
The first section in the book is about the appearance and body parts of birds. It explains how different birds have differently-shaped beaks and feet and different types of feathers and how the differences help each type of bird eat the foods they like and live in the places where they live. One of the activities for this section is about how to start a feather collection. The book also explains that different birds have different styles of flying.
The section about how birds live explain about different types of bird nests and how they migrate and raise their young. The book explains different methods for making bird feeders and bird houses.
The book profiles certain specific types of birds, including owls (there is an activity about dissecting owl pellets, which I had to do when I was in elementary school), gulls, hummingbirds, and woodpeckers.
In the section about bird watching, the book offers tips for what to look for to identify a bird’s type. It also explains how to make bird blinds to avoid being seen and how to recognize types of bird songs.
The book also contains other helpful information, like how to care for injured birds and how to plant a garden that will attract birds. It also includes a board game that emphasizes some of the lessons about birds in the book.
Overall, I was pleased with the range of information in the book. It was interesting and well-presented.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
The title of the book tells you what it’s about; this is a children’s picture book about starlings. That sounds pretty straight-forward and even a little dull, but there is more to learn about starlings than I imagined, and the author of this book has an imaginative way of explaining information. I love books that cover odd topics in detail, and I enjoyed the whimsical quality of this book. The pictures are detailed black-and-white drawings, some with captions like comics. Most of them explain the anatomy of the birds or their habits, but they have some unique ways of expressing educational information.
The book begins by describing the singing of starlings and then explains how farmers view starlings. Starlings can be a pest to farmers when they eat their fruit or the seeds the farmers are trying to plant, but they can also be helpful when they eat weed seeds and prevent weeds from coming up in the farmers’ fields. Of course, the birds don’t know when they’re helping or hindering because, as far as they’re concerned, they’re just there to eat any food that happens to be available at the moment. I like the little picture of the bird reading a mystery book, trying to figure out why farmers don’t mind when they eat some seeds and try to scare them away from others. That’s an example of the whimsy I was talking about.
The book continues describing what starlings eat and places where they like to roost, and it explains how they affect people living in cities (mainly, messing up their cars). There were times when people in cities considered them such a nuisance that they would shoot them, and some poor people hunted them for food. Actually, the entire reason why we have starlings in the US is that people over-hunted other types of birds (there is a disturbing picture of hunters with piles of dead birds at one point in the book), and birds are an important part of the ecosystem. Even though they can annoy farmers when they eat seeds and fruit, they also eat bugs that are pests to crops.
I was really struck by the passage that explained how starlings were first brought to the United States and why they were brought here:
“Some people think that starlings have no right to food or nesting-places because they are not ‘American birds.’ Yet all the starlings you see were born in America. So were their parents and grandparents and great-great-grandparents and all their relatives clear back to 1890. In that year their ancestors were caught in Europe and brought in cages to America. So many American birds had been killed at that time by our own ancestors that our crops were growing wormier and wormier each year, while insect pests grew worse and worse. So starlings were imported to help us fight the insects. They were freed in Central Park in New York City and left to look out for themselves.”
This explanation uses simplified language for children, and it also oddly evokes imagery of human beings. We don’t normally refer to animals as “foreigners” because animals don’t speak different human languages or have allegiances to foreign governments like people from other countries do. When we talk about new species that have been introduced to an environment where they did not originally belong and quickly spread out and multiple, we usually call them “invasive species.” In that case, the ecological concern is that the new invasive species will disrupt the balance of the natural environment and crowd out native species, but the author is trying to point out that the situation with the starlings was different. The starlings were introduced to the environment in the US on purpose, not by accident, and it was done specifically because they were meant to a solution to a problem. The environment had already been disrupted by humans who had moved into areas where they had not lived previously and where they killed too many of the native species themselves without regard to what that would do to the natural environment and their own farming. The introduction of the starlings was meant to restore a balance that had been lost. However, the people who had originally caused the problem didn’t see it that way, seeing the starlings as pests because they were “foreign.” While birds in general may occasionally be a nuisance because they don’t understand human priorities, they still perform useful functions for human beings as they go about their lives, just being the birds they are – eating annoying weed seeds and bugs and scavenging food from what humans throw out.
“People who think that starlings should be starvelings because they are ‘foreigners’ should remember that these American-born birds save much of what they themselves throw away and are still helping us to fight insects as they did in 1890.”
I understand what the author is trying to explain about balance in the ecological system, but I was struck by the human imagery that the passage evokes: “Foreigners” who came to New York City, not unlike immigrants fresh off the boat from Ellis Island during the 19th century, set free to make their way in a strange environment among people who often regarded them as worthless pests, disliking them while still using the useful services they provided. The comparison still fascinates me. At first, I wasn’t sure that the author meant to make that broader comparison here. I thought he probably used that language just to simply the ecological concepts for children’s understanding, but the author does make another comparison a little further on:
“So let’s be fair. If American-born starlings are foreigners, then so are all people in America except the Indians (Native Americans). So are many kinds of birds, animals, and plants. Our ancestors brought them here from other countries. But if all these creatures, and ourselves, are American now, then so are the starlings. Yes indeed!”
So get off your high horse, starling-haters.
At several points in the book, the author compares birds to airplanes, explaining their muscles and flying mechanisms like machinery. I liked the page where the author compares different planes and helicopters to types of birds (cruisers being like gliding eagles and albatrosses, fast-turning speed planes like starlings and swallows, and hovering helicopters like humming birds). The parts that describe how birds cling to branches as they sleep and how their wings move look accurate and helpful. The part about how a bird creates eggs is hilarious. The text about the formation of the egg inside the bird isn’t bad. It completely skips over the subject of the fertilization of eggs (understandably), and the picture show the bird as a kind of egg-making factory with little men assembling the parts of the egg in stages instead of showing a bird’s reproductive anatomy.
In the upper right corners of this section of the book, there are little squares with a flying bird because part of the book is meant to be uses as a flip book to see a bird flying. The page shown above with the boy flipping through the book shows how to use the flip book portion.
There is a section of the book that explains how baby birds develop in the egg and eventually hatch.
There is also a section in the book that shows how adult starlings will prepare a nest for their eggs and how they raise their babies.
As I was reading the book, I wondered who the author, Wilfred S. Bronson, was. Bronson was an artist specializing in natural history, and he wrote and illustrated other books for children about animals and natural history. In the years before he wrote this particular book, he served in the US Army during World War I and painted murals for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression. He also participated in expeditions to gather specimens and create illustrations of wildlife for botanical gardens and museums.
I haven’t found a copy of this particular book to read online, but it was republished in 2008 and is still available from Amazon.
Stellaluna is a baby fruit bat. Every night, her mother carries her along while she goes looking for food.
One night, they are attacked by an owl, and Stellaluna falls into the trees below. First, she is caught by some tree branches, and then, she falls into a bird’s nest. Stellaluna doesn’t really like the bugs that the mother bird brings her babies to eat, but she eats them anyway because she gets hungry.
Gradually, Stellaluna adopts the habits of the birds, staying awake during the day and sleeping at night. She tries to sleep upside down, hanging from the nest, but the mother bird stops her because the baby birds try to imitate her, and she’s afraid that they’re going to break their necks. The mother bird continues to care for Stellaluna, but insists that she obey the rules of their nest, which means that Stellaluna has to act like a bird.
Eventually, both Stellaluna and the little birds learn how to fly. However, Stellaluna has trouble landing on branches like the birds do. One day, she flies farther than the birds do and doesn’t return to the nest at night. She falls asleep in a tree, hanging by her thumbs because the mother bird told her not to hang by her feet, and she is found by another bat.
The other bat explains to Stellaluna that she is a bat, not a bird, and tells her that hanging by her feet is normal bat behavior. Soon, other bats come to look at Stellaluna, and Stellaluna’s mother recognizes her as her child.
Stellaluna is overjoyed to learn that her mother escaped from the owl, and her mother is glad to finally have her child back. Her mother begins teaching her what it means to be a bat, how to eat fruit instead of bugs, and how to see in the dark.
Stellaluna returns to the birds to introduce them to her bat family. The birds try to go on a night flight with Stellaluna, but they can’t because they can’t see at night like Stellaluna. Stellaluna helps them find a safe branch, and they talk about all the ways they are alike but yet very different. They decide that they will remain friends even though they have to live different types of lives.
This is a nice story about how people can love each other even though they are very different. The mother bird cares for Stellaluna like she is one of her children, even though Stellaluna is not a bird and has strange habits. Her insistence that Stellaluna act like a bird is because it is necessary for her to do so in order to live in the birds’ nest, and the birds are not able to live like bats and teach her how to be a bat. Eventually, Stellaluna has to return to the bats and live like the bat she is, but she still loves the birds who raised her and were like her brothers and sisters. It’s a little like human foster families. A foster family isn’t quite like a person’s birth family, and foster children have to adapt to new ways of doing things, but foster families can offer the affection of a birth family and help the children grow and reach the places where they really need to be in life.
The book ends with a section of non-fiction information about bats.
The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It is a Reading Rainbow book.
Johnny and the Birds by Ian Munn, illustrated by Elizabeth Webbe, 1950.
This cute little picture book is a collection of short stories about a little boy named Johnny and his adventures with wild birds. The stories are very short and are meant to teach children about wild birds.
Johnny and the Catbird – Johnny thinks that he hears a kitten while looking for strawberries, but it’s actually the sound made by a catbird.
The Blue Jays – Father Blue Jay scares a hawk away from his nest.
The Robins – Johnny knows that the Robin eggs have hatched when he sees the bits of blue eggshell under the tree where they live.
The Chickadees – The Chickadees don’t fly south during the winter like other birds, but Johnny’s family helps them when it’s snowing and they need something to eat.
The Crows – Johnny finds a baby Crow out of its nest. Apparently, it’s an orphan, and Johnny fears that it might get eaten by a hawk, so he takes it home and takes care of it. It becomes a pet, and he names it Blackey.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
When Jennie’s aunt tells her that she’s going to send her a new hat as a present, Jennie is excited. She imagines that her new hat is going to be big and fancy and covered with flowers. However, when the hat arrives, it’s just a very plain, ordinary hat with a single ribbon.
Even though her mother thinks the new hat is nice, Jennie wishes for something fancier, more unusual. She tries on various other things, like a basket, a lampshade, and a pot to see how they would be as hats. Of course, none of them really work.
Jennie has a habit of feeding the birds, and while she’s coming home after feeding them one day, she wishes out loud that her hat could be fancier.
Her bird friends, hearing her wish, decide to help her. The next day, as she is leaving church, they bring her the things she’s been wishing for so that she can have the hat of her dreams!
The best part of the story is Jennie’s friendship with the birds and how they repay her for feeding them. The pictures of all the amazing things they give her for her hat are fun, too!
I also liked the unusual artwork style. Jennie’s clothes are often a cutout of a patterned piece of paper, while the rest of her body is drawn in.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 