The Vine: June 8, 2007
Hi there Sars —
As my kids are getting towards that age when the words begin to matter more than the pictures, I’ve started a collection of my favorite “chapter” books such as The Hobbit, A Wrinkle in Time, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, The Island of Blue Dolphins, et cetera.
However, some of the books I remember with great fondness elude me. I can’t remember the titles or even the names of the characters, only little glimmers of the plots. The three I’m stuck on at the moment all have supernatural/thriller/ghost story themes in them, and I’m hoping that you and/or your readers might recognize them:
1) Two children move to a new home and encounter two phantom-like children who appear to have come to ask them for help — apparently from the past? Can’t remember much more except something about a fire…
2) A young woman/girl has some kind of ghostly encounters the garden of a large home, and there’s something involving a reflecting sphere in the garden…
3) A “tween-age” girl (whose siblings are all exceptional in some way) feels utterly bland and unnoticed, then discovers she has precognition…
Any idea of the titles? I’d appreciate any help I can get!
Regards,
AKF
Dear A,
None of these sounds familiar to me, but the readers can usually help.
Readers, hit it — and please make sure to note the book you’re identifying by number in the comments. Thanks.
Tags: Ask The Readers kids popcult
I think (1) could be Wait Til Helen Comes. There is only one ghost child, though, but she’s from the past and there is a fire involved.
Don’t know the first two, but I’m pretty sure No. 3 is “And This is Laura” by Ellen Conford. Father’s a scientist, mother’s a novelist, older brother does something I forget, older sister’s a star actress and bowler, and the younger brother memorizes commercials and wears a pith helmet everywhere. Laura feels talentless and overlooked until she becomes a psychic.
I am nearly certain that 3) is The gift of Magic by Lois Duncan. It is funny, because I was thinking of that book just the other day. The children are Kirby the ballet dancer, Brendan is the musician, and Nancy is the one with ESP, or whatever you want to call it
I agree that the third one is “And This is Laura.” I LOVED Ellen Conford’s books when I was that age, but I think most of them are out of print. They’re worth it if you can get hold of them, though.
I totally remember the first one, but can’t remember the name! More details – the two ghost children live before the turn of the century, and the modern children need to save them from a fire. In one scene in the book, an older man is describing ‘time’ not as a straight line, but as a spiral, where some parts cross over each other making travel easy between time periods.
Book number three is A Gift of Magic – the girl’s older sister is a ballerina, the girl saves her younger brother from drowning in a boat that he built, because of their psychic connection. The girl keeps her gift to herself because she’s afraid of people’s reactions. The author is Lois Duncan.
The first also sounded a bit like Wait Til Helen Comes to me, but not quite. You might enjoy it regardless, though, given the descriptions of all these books. (It’s about a girl whose family moves to an old church house and her younger step-sister starts seeing the ghost of a little girl who died there years ago. I remember loving it but finding it almost too creepy to read around second grade.)
I believe the first two are actually by the same author – I have a sort of double-book at home (you flip it over to read the second one), and the descriptions of 1 and 2 sound like the ones included in the double-book. I’ll take a look at it when I get home, unless their being by the same author rings any bells with someone else.
I remember the first one as well (“time” as a spiral being a particularly mind-blowing revelation at the age at which I read it) but no recollection of the title or character names. If you’re looking to add to your list, along the same lines as these are Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s novels- The Headless Cupid was a favorite.
#1 sounds very similar to a book I read over and over when I was about 7 (I’m 27) called WAIT TIL HELEN COMES by Mary Downing Hahn. Except there was only one ghost child. A
And funny thing is, #2 reminds me of another Mary Downing Hahn book, THE DOLL IN THE GARDEN. Maybe you were a fan of hers too?
Number two sounds like “A Traveller in Time” by Alison Utely/Utley/Uttley (not sure on the spelling there). It’s about a girl who goes to stay with her siblings at their great aunt’s house in the English countryside and finds herself back in Elizabethan times trying to help Mary Queen of Scots escape. At least, that’s what it sounds like to me, and even if it isn’t, it’s a great book anyway.
The third one is definitely “And This Is Laura” which is really close in theme to “The Gift of Magic” but it’s Laura who is jealous that her other siblings are so extraordinary because she isn’t, until she figures out she has ESP (and, until she gets caught, sets up in a tent to tell people’s futures).
Stacy’s description of Magic is right but each kid has a talent that’s already established (the brother is a talent pianist and can play anything just by hearing it). In Magic, the girl tries to hide her ESP by “guessing” an entire deck of cards incorrectly. She gets called on it because it’s statistically unlikely that she’d guess every card the “opposite” of what it actually is.
Definitely get both. I’m 33 and I’m going to go dig both out right now and reread them. Oh, if your kid likes books in that vein (young girls with special powers), I’d suggest Firestarter by Stephen King.
Book number 3 sounds a bit like “Orchard of the Crescent Moon”… Nia is the middle child who feels talentless and ignored and then gets involved with some magical shenanigans where she has visions of the past/future and meets children from another planet… It’s set in Wales. Great book.
http://www.amazon.com/Orchard-Crescent-Moon-Troll-Book/dp/081672265X
The first one sounds like “Voices After Midnight” by Richard Peck which was published in 1989 but was a Rebecca Caudill book in 1994 (when I read it). The Rebecca Caudill list (a yearly thing in Illinois) is a really good place to find great chapter books. Here is the cumulative list: http://www.rcyrba.org/pdf/ultimatelist.pdf
To me, the first one made me think of Double Spell, by Janet Lunn, although it’s been a LONG time since I’ve read that book…
http://www.lunnflutes.com/janetlunn/titles.htm#h
The first one sounds a little bit like the Green Knowe series by Lucy M. Boston. It’s a series, with children who come to a house and encounter people from the past. The one you remember might be Enemy at Green Knowe, but the first book in the series is called The Children of Green Knowe.
I think #2 is Jane-Emily by Patricia Clapp. Scared the daylights out of me as a kid!
Ooo, I remember A Gift of Magic. I agree it doesn’t sound quite like what you’re describing in the first book; your description sounds more… antic? than I remember A Gift of Magic. But hey, more books are never bad.
In that spirit, I’d suggest another Richard Peck book that has similar themes: The Ghost Belonged To Me. I loved it because it refused to take itself too seriously while managing to not be silly. Plus, it was the first place I heard about Madame Tussaud’s.
The second one is probably Jane-Emily by Patricia Clapp (who I believe wrote several other “tween”-type books, but this was the only one I recall reading) — I loved this book, and remembered it recently — looked it up on the internet, and as it turns out, it’s being reissued after being out of print for awhile…
I agree that the first two sound like Mary Downing Hahn. Even if they turn out to be by someone else, you should still look into her work.
The first book is The Ghosts by Antonia Barber.
I agree that the 3rd one is probably The Gift of Magic.
If #1 was only one present-day child (a boy named Tolly) and the children from the past were a blind girl named Susan and a black boy named Jacob, that would be the second book in the Green Knowe series, The Treasure of Green Knowe, by L.M. Boston. There is a fire towards the end in the “past” house.
http://www.amazon.com/Treasure-Green-Knowe-L-Boston/dp/0152025952/ref=ed_oe_h/105-5913691-6460456?ie=UTF8&qid=1181319278&sr=1-1
I agree with Avis (which is so weird b/c my grandmother wanted my parents to name ME Avis b/c it’s a family name) that the first one is The Ghosts. I just recently ordered a copy from Amazon. That was one of my favorite books growing up.
#2 is definitely Jane-Emily by Patricia Clapp- I loved that book!
I am pretty sure #2 is Jane-Emily by Patricia Clapp (I think). What a scary and thrilling book. I always thought it should have been made into a movie.
BINGO! Thanks folks, I read all your suggestions and now I know that the books I’m looking for are:
1. The Ghosts
2. Jane-Emily
3. And this is Laura
Bonus! You all offered some great suggestions for other reading. Thanks everybody – and thank you Sars!
I thought of the Green Knowe books (by Lucy Boston) for #2, rather than #1. I only remember the one/ones with Tolly, but I suspect one of the others may have a girl as the main present-day child.
The books are:
The Children of Green Knowe
The Chimneys of Green Knowe
The River at Green Knowe
A Stranger at Green Knowe
An Enemy at Green Knowe
The Stones of Green Knowe
#2, I think is “Jane Emily” by Patricia Clapp. I loved that book when I was younger! I must have checked it out about 15 times between the ages of 11 and 14.
Second one is unquestionably _Jane-Emily_. Gave me nightmares for a week. Seconding _The Headless Cupid_ by Zilpha Keatly Snyder (of _Egypt Game_ fame) – it has a similar theme to #1, although I know it’s not the one you’re looking for… it’s a great book. If your kids like psychic-oriented stuff, see also _The Girl With The Silver Eyes_, which is really pretty cool.
I was also thinking Doll in the Garden for number 2. If I recall correctly it involves a tween girl and her newly divorced (or widowed?) mothing moving to an upstairs apartment in a house owned by a cantankerous older woman. In the garden she meets the ghost of a little girl that used to live in the big house next door but who died of tuberculosis, and it turned out that it was the old lady’s best friend from when she was a child.
Just as a sidenote to the Firestarter suggestion, before handing it to kids, due to some of the content, you might want to wait until the child is a little older (until at least after the tweens…). I LOVED the book at 14 (still on my list of top 10), but I remember some of the content had a little more adult content than I’d like my 12 year old to read.
AKF, I know you’ve already got your answers, but you might also want to check out Bruce Coville. I read a couple of his (The Ghost Wore Gray, The Ghost in the Third Row) because they were set in Syracuse NY and featured 12-year-old girl ghostbusters, which was a place I knew and stuff I could relate to at age 8. He’s got some others in a similar vein that I haven’t read, but if your kids are reasonably young, say 7 to 10, they aren’t bad.
Yes, #1 is definitely “The Ghosts” by Antonia Barber. I LOVED that book as a child and was so spooked by it. I still remember in the end where the old solicitor and one of the children are walking down the stairs, trying to get out of the burning house. The girl is amazed that when she touches the burning bannister, she doesn’t feel the heat from the fire. Then she looks at the old man and realizes that he is protecting her from the fire by allowing himself to be burned, in penance for not protecting the ghost children long ago. Awesome! Now I want to get this off Amazon to re-read!
The Ghosts was also made into the movie “The Amazing Mr. Blunden,” should anyone care about tie-ins. I actually prefer the movie to the book, which doesn’t often happen with me.
I loooooooved Mary Downing Hahn as a kid, especially Wait Till Helen Comes. The Doll in the Garden was also great but hard to read – the heroine’s father had recently died and the last few chapters made me cry!
In keeping with the spooky flavour of the books you were looking for, you may also want to check out Stonewords by Pam Conrad, which is one of the most beautifully written ghost stories I have ever read. I first ran into it at around 10 years old, and at last reading a few months ago it was as gorgeous and creepy as ever.
AKF, I, too, know that you’ve got your answers, but given the bent your choices reveal, I would HEARTILY recommend “Linnets and Valerians” by Elizabeth Goudge, a book I still re-read with pleasure almost 40 years after my first encounter.
If your kids like spooky time travel stuff, try Time at the Top by Edward Ormondroyd. Old but a great story.
I thought that The Ghosts sounded like The Amazing Mr. Blundon! I loved that movie. Several other books I loved along those lines were: The Haunting of Cassie Palmer and Half Way Down Paddy Lane – sorry I can’t remember who wrote them!
Another excellent book along the themes of number one is “Stonewords,” by Pam Conrad. It’s about a girl named Zoe whose mother leaves her to live with her grandparents when she is small, and she meets a ghost girl named Zoe Louise. Zoe grows up with Zoe Louise as her closest friend, always talking about an eleventh birthday party that never quite seems to happen. As Zoe grow to be older than Zoe Louise, Zoe Louise’s appearance starts to change for the worse, and Zoe must figure out how to save her friend. It was a favorite of mine in fifth grade, but if I’d found it earlier I would have loved it then, too.
There is a sequel, but don’t bother. It’s an okay story, but has no connection whatsoever to Zoe’s ordeal with Zoe Louise and would have been better off written as a standalone novel.
I umpteenth the “Wait Till Helen Comes” rec – that book captured my imagination at about the age you’re talking about. I used to spend hours “playing pretend” with it as a focal point for my game.
A great time travel book is Peni R Griffin’s “Switching Well,” and I am grateful to this post for somehow jostling the title loose in my memory, as I have wanted to reread it for years but always came up blank when trying to remember enough to track it down. It’s about a girl in the present time (“present time” being the nineties – I remember a reference to the Gulf War being either current or in the not-too-distant past) and a girl from one hundred years earlier switching places through a wishing well in the town they both grew up in. It’s a wonderful mix of time travel and social exploration, as each girl struggles to get along in her strange new surroundings while at the same time trying to figure out how to switch back. Your kids might get more out of it a couple years down the road, but then again they might like it now. I was a bit older when I read it, but again, I didn’t find it till I was older either.
Oh, and yay to the mention of “The Girl With Silver Eyes!” That was a secondhand book that was already old when I got it, and I’ve never seen it or heard it mentioned anywhere else. That was a good book, too, though I liked the ones I’ve already talked about better.
I hope your kids enjoy their books! I was a big reader when I was a kid, and I’ve always been glad of it. Parents who encourage their kids to read make me very happy, because I was a happy child with all my books.
I’d like to just add a plug for one of my favorite book-search websites, http://loganberrybooks.com/stump.html which includes reader-submitted requests similar to AKF’s, along with suggestions from other readers and the children’s-bookstore owner who runs the site. I found “Jane-Emily” there in the Solved section, but by then someone else had already posted that answer here.
Great books here. Anyone remember a book about a young girl with psychic/telekinetic powers? All I recall is that, I believe, she had grey or green eyes (this was somehow relevant to either her abilities or maybe the title?), had horn-rimmed glasses, and I believe she goes to live with her grandmother at some point, although I am fuzzy about that. Maybe something about falling down a flight of stairs and a jar of pickles? Sorry if this sounds like a Dustin Diamond rant or something. Any ideas?
I was going to say number 3 was “The Gift of Magic” until I saw people saying it was “And This is Laura,” which is totally right. I had forgotten about that one! But Lois Duncan is great in general, so look into her if you haven’t already.
Linnets & Valerians — recommended by Karen — I remember this book as well from when I was a tween… really loved it, although I haven’t read it in over 30 years, now — I think it was very beautifully written…
Liz, I think you’re thinking of The Girl With the Silver Eyes, which Dee mentioned upthread. She has an older woman for a neighbour across the hall who babysits her, and it turns out that there are other kids out there like her. I think they eventually band together to stop some nefarious thing or other, I can’t remember what. I do know that that book was the one that taught me what muumuus and slugs (as in, “slugs in vending machines”) were.
Liz, I’m 99% sure you’re thinking of Girl with the Silver Eyes, mentioned a couple times here already. She is telekinetic and I think lives in a senior community, which doesn’t help her loner status. Eventually she discovers that there are other kids with silver eyes and powers–doesn’t she, like, stalk them and bully them into revealing themselves? But then they all–five, perhaps?–bond over their shared experience and build a friendship, while investigating the cause of the eyes and powers. I LOVED that book and thinking about it just now made me remember how much I wanted to keep reading about those characters after the book was done.
Liz, I think the book you’re thinking about is one that has been mentioned here several times, “The Girl with the Silver Eyes”. I remember loving it at the same time as many of these other books…definitely second/third the Zilpha Keatley Snyder and Mary Downing Hahn recs as well.
Liz, you’re thinking of ‘The Girl with the Silver Eyes’ by Willow Davis Roberts. I read it when I was in grade 3 or 4 and loved it. Then a couple years ago when working as a school librarian I was thrilled to see it had been re-issued, and it seemed to still be popular with the kids; you should be able to find a copy of it if you want to read it again.
If I could also make a suggestion…I loved “The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House”. It’s sort of along the lines of the other books AKF was looking for, and I remember it giving me the heebie-jeebies as a kid.
Thanks everyone! I remember that was one of the first books I read and really really enjoyed, to the point that I felt bereft leaving the characters after I finished it. Silly, perhaps, but I would like to read it again and give it as a gift. Thanks again.
Also wanted to add The Giver to the list. That freaked me out when I first read it but it changed the way I thought at the time. I think I read it in 4th grade.
the first one could be “All On a Winters Night”. I don’t remember the author’s name.