The Vine: May 3, 2013
This isn’t so much a query for a lost book as it is a chance to hopefully wallow in childhood book nostalgia with a few (or more) of you.
Do you guys remember the Meg Duncan mystery series? Meg lived in a small town outside of Washington, D.C. and she was basically a pint-sized Nancy Drew. She solved local crimes with the help of her friend Kerry Carmody and her huge Siamese cat Thunder.
The book that sticks out most for me is Meg and the Disappearing Diamonds, primarily because it taught me the word “snood,” which I still think sounds like something involving your nose.
Sadly, my local library doesn’t have them to check out, but I did find at least one of them scanned in and readable on Open Library.
Any of you guys remember these books and the local constable who was hilariously named “Hosey”?
Cheers,
Keckler
*****
Dear Sars,
The Nation was so valuable in identifying a very obscure film for me a couple of years ago. I’m eternally grateful. Now I’m back with another one to test their super-powers.
When I was young (it was probably mid- to late eighties), I saw a special on network TV that was basically a run-of-the mill fantasy story.
Details I’m sure of:
–A young girl eats candy in her bedroom from a candy dish that has a pedestal or stem — almost like a cake plate or large martini glass.
–The candy winds up being magical and opens the door to a fantasy world that she can enter by stepping through the frame of her full length bedroom mirror.
–She steps through into this world and disappears, leaving the candy behind and the mirror turns back into a mirror.
Details I’m not as sure about:
–I think she was sent to her room as a punishment for being rude.
–The family may have had company that brought the candy with them…possibly an aunt or grandma or something.
–When she goes missing, they think she ran away, but eventually the brother puts 2 and 2 together and eats a piece of the candy himself and opens the portal/door to the other world.
–The magical world definitely seems beautiful and captivating to her at first — I cannot conjure up any part of what happens while she’s there though, so I don’t remember if it gets menacing, or if she just gets lonely.
I am pretty sure that someone brings the candy dish along into the other world (the brother?) and it’s a good thing they do because that is the only way they are able to get back.
There’s probably a lesson at the end about the girl realizing how much she really loves and misses her family…blah blah blah. I don’t think it was part of a series, though I guess it could have been a series of short stories, but this particular story was very self-contained. It seemed pretty made-for-TV even to me as a youngster, so I don’t think it was a movie from that era.
I know the details are kind of paltry, but I figure the Nation has done more with less in the past, so it is worth a shot!
Signed,
Don’t eat that fancy candy!
Tags: Ask The Readers Keckler popcult
That movie sounds like Hugga Bunch??? Except in that, the candy/dish was the evil queen’s “eternal berries” or something. I don’t remember all the details, but it’s broken up into several chunks on YouTube. Hope this helps!
HA HA HA ew, “eternal berries.”
@Keckler,
Funny you should mention the Meg Duncan mysteries. I was (trying to) clean(ing) off a bookcase at my mom’s last weekend and found one of them. That book didn’t go into the donate pile. We had The Mytstery in Williamsburg, and the Disappearing Diamonds (I remember that one!)/ The stories were good, I think our library had several more of them, or at least I remember reading others…
My poor daughter isn’t going to know a thing about Twilight (or whatever is popular when she starts to read, since she’s only 1 now), but she’ll consider Nancy Drew (old-school yellow hardbacks, which I have almost a complete set of), Trixie Belden, the Hardy Boys (also hardbacks, in blue), and the Bobbsey Twins (lavender) good friends. Maybe I’ll start reading those to her now, since I think Harry Potter might be a little bit too scary for her yet…
I first saw the word “snood” while reading Anne of Green Gables. I too, thought it had something to do with nose/smelling. I never bothered to look it up, though, heh.
I lovedlovedLOVED the Meg books!!! I think I read them all but, like you, the one that I always think of first is Disappearing Diamonds. I wanted a Siamese SO BAD. I used to make my little brother and younger cousins follow me around while I “investigated” all the mysteries on our dead-end dirt road. (So, really, we wandered around a lot looking for… Footprints? Bags of gems? Who knows…)
Anyway, I’m right there with ya! LOVE Meg!
Holy crap. I think that’s it!
I’m the movie-seeker and I’m at work, so I can’t watch enough of it to be 100% sure (super pysched that it is on youtube, though). I’ll confirm tonight, but the basic elements are all spot on: family structure, era, her bedroom, etc. And the quest for berries is pinging something in the deep recesses of my memory.
As a vehicle designed to sell me stuffed animals, it clearly didn’t work…I don’t remember those “hugga bunch” dolls in the least!
I almost don’t want to take the fun out of everyone’s Friday sleuthing by saying this already, but I think we have a winner. :)
Thank you! Thank you!
I was OBSESSED with the Meg Duncan books. So much so that a few years ago I tracked down a used copy of The Secret of the Witch’s Stairway. I remember when I first saw a Duesenberg in a museum I almost peed my pants because it was the car Uncle Hal drove!
I don’t remember Meg Duncan but it sounds similar to books I was obsessed with in middle school – Trixie Beldin. (@Liz mentions them above). I loved Trixie because she was a mid-teen with strawberry blond hair – just like me! I had at least 20 of them and read them over and over. That’s where I learned the word “shamus”, meaning private detective. I still trot that one out at parties.
Huh – I may have to search up those books again and see if they still hold a fascination for me 20 years later!
Snood! I first saw that word in “Alexander and the Magic Mouse,” which is illustrated, so I was able to figure out that the snood was the thing the Old Lady was tying on her head.
Uncle Hal was THE SHIT, right? He worked for some “government agency” or something? Or was that the dad or both?
@MP, I totally also “investigated” mysteries in our neighborhood! I was completely convinced all kinds of vice and stuff existed in all our neighbors’ houses. Even my own. We found some pipes that had newspapers stuffed around them for insulation and I was convinced those newspapers MEANT SOMETHING. I also hid an antique watch in a ceiling access panel and let my friends find it.
I don’t think they were convinced it was an accidental find.
Another Meg lover here! I remember the one where she found an old clothespin doll that belonged to George Washington or something like that. The details are vague but I read them all. OH, and the one where she faked being sick to get some “wonder drug”(which I guess was penicillin?) for someone else. She colored her face with chalk or pastels or something to make herself look feverish. I was really confused about the wonder drug part and I remember wondering what the heck it was, since as a kid I got fevers all the time and they were no big deal.
Thank you thank you for jogging my memory – I had totally forgotten about the Meg series. I loved them (and pretty much every other book) as a child. I had to google to find the book covers to take me down memory lane – and I recognized them right away. Now I’ll have to track them down to share with my own kids – who don’t seem to have quite captured my love of reading. Darned iPods.
@Keckler, That’s great! I would have LOVED having you as a detecting partner! My little brother and cousins NEVER encouraged my investigations. They couldn’t figure out WHY I was trying to unravel The Case of the Dead Possum.
*Hint – Possums are sssllloooowwww and cars are fast. And big.
I loved Meg and her Siamese! I might be confusing it with another series, but was there one book in which she finds a clue in a tree?
Wallowing!
I remember Kerry Carmody and the Siamese cat, but not poor Meg, go figure. And I read all 57 of the yellow-cover Nancy Drews (at one point I in fact prided myself on being able to recite some large subset of the titles, in order, but now I can’t get past The Bungalow Mystery at #3 — which may be a good thing?).
But my truest love was definitely Trixie Belden. I belonged to the fan club! There were newsletters that came in the postal mail! One of them (yes, I still remember this) had a list of how the character names came out in foreign-language translations of the books. But here’s the best part: a year or so ago, I was cleaning out old papers at my parents’ house, and I found what can only be described as Trixie Belden fanfiction. By me, age 8, in 1979. It’s…marvelously dreadful. Hee.
Harriet the Spy had me wanting to peek in all the neighbors windows and keep a journal, but I think common sense or maybe my parents won out, thankfully.
Melissa, I thought that “wonder drug” plot was from Trixie Belden, not Meg. I’ve been getting that backwards all these years, huh? Sneaky memory! In any case, I apparently can’t remember exact plots, but I definitely remember the whole general Meg thing and I didn’t before reading this, so big thanks to Keckler for the reminder. I know what my eight-year-old niece is getting for Christmas!
…Or, on further research, apparently she WON’T bet getting them. Danged out-of-print!
@Liz, I wish you good luck with your daughter and the books, but I have to say that my daughter loved the Hardy Boys that I had sitting on my shelf, but I quickly found myself uncomfortable.
There are any number of no longer acceptable terms used casually in the books. The particular one I noticed had someone from China in it and used “chink” and “chinaman” repeatedly as the default term for that person. Suddenly I have to pay a great deal of attention and have lots of conversations so she doesn’t automatically start using the terms she sees without realizing how hurtful that would be.
Is it just me, or do those Hugga Bunch dolls have Village-of-the-Damned eyes? Shudder.
I don’t remember the Meg books specifically, though the “make yourself look pasty and ill with chalk” sounds familiar. But yes, I loved both detecting and spying, as a kid. We could’ve all had our own little agency, like Encyclopedia Brown. (Which…I never solved his cases. NEVER. I would have to be the detective-agency receptionist, I think.)
My sis and I were once digging in the yard and found the business end of one of those cut-glass antique doorknobs–the metal had rusted away. Oh my god, we thought we had the Hope Frigging Diamond. My poor dear dad, having to break it to us gently…oy. :)
@bristlesage: Try http://www.abebooks.com
I’m so old that I read many of the Nancy Drew books in the originals from the 30s – they were my mom’s old books. I read the yellow-cover ones, too, of course, since they were being published when I was at the age for Nancy. It was very interesting to compare the stories. I’ve still got those old books packed away somewhere.
Kim, I never could figure out the Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, either.
my first thought after reading the Meg post was “was that the one with the fishing net and the ‘castanet’ clue?”
Then i clicked on the link to the book. I didn’t remember it by the book cover on that post but when I scrolled down and saw the yellow covers with the pic of the girl and the cat, I TOTALLY remembered getting them from my elementary school library in the late 70s early 80s.
I am still not sure if Meg and the disappearing diamonds book is the one with the fishing net and the castanet clue, but it did bring back fond memories, so thanks!
@ferretrick: Harriet was my girl! I loved her so much I wanted to BE her. I even asked for a brown leather notebook for Christmas; I got a black vinyl one (heh), but that did not deter me! I “spied” after school every day (just like Harriet!) and I took notes on what I “spied” (just like Harriet!). I drew the line at tomato and mayo sandwiches, though – blech.
I was, however, too much of a goody-two-shoes to do any *actual* spying — it was more “observing kids on the monkey bars during the after school program”. Which made me the Worst Spy Ever, as an 8 year old.
I don’t know Meg or that particular book series, but given my love of Encyclopedia Brown I would have loved it! I probably would have loved it more since the girl got to do the crime solving! Did the Meg books give you time to figure it out yourself by “hiding” the answer in the back of the book?
I was *so* into Trixie Belden and the Bobbsey Twins. Also? Cherry Ames. Cherry was single-handedly responsible for convincing my 8 year old self that I wanted to be a nurse even though that would be a hilariously inappropriate career for me. (Case in point: I took biology in summer school so I could get it over with in only 6 weeks instead of having to spend a whole year on it. Also because there was no dissection in summer school bio.)
I don’t own any of the books (they were all my mom’s) and I don’t think she still has them. :(
@Stephanie, you are my soul mate. I desperately wanted to be Cherry Ames, although I would have sucked as a nurse. Trixie Belden was awesome as were the Bobbsey Twins, the Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys. And Stephanie, if you ever read the Sue Barton nurse books, I really adore you.
Wow, Cherry Ames. I haven’t thought of those books in ages! I need to look those up.
Also, if you’re looking for out-of-print books, try searching on Etsy. I just got a set of vintage (1953) Betsy-Tacy books for cheap.
Check it out: Disappearing Diamonds for $5 (even though Meg totally looks like a brunette original Bad Seed). And a set of six for $50 (these are the paperbacks I grew up with): http://www.etsy.com/listing/76223249/the-meg-duncan-collection-on-sale?ref=sr_gallery_2&ga_search_query=meg+duncan&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_search_type=all