The Doll Book of the Month Club: The Noble Doll

  Happy new year! This month's Doll Book of the Month Club entry is "The Noble Doll", by Newbery Award winning author, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and illustrated in black and white and colour by Leo Politti.

  I found this book recently at an antique store. It had interesting, colourful pictures, and was not expensive, so I decided to buy it and share it with all of you.

  The story begins with Doña Amalia, an elderly lady, living alone in her formerly grand house that is now run down. Doña Amalia's family had once been well to do. now, Doña Amalia is the only one left. She is very old, and her only means of income is the mending she does. Her eyesight is failing, and Doña Amalia wonders how long she will be able to earn a living with her mending.

  One day a lady appears at Doña Amalia's door with a little girl. The lady explains that she is the daughter of  Doña Amalia's former cook, and  Doña Amalia immediately recognizes her as the little girl who used to live in her house years ago. The lady explains that she was very happy living in Doña Amalia's house, and that she has brought her daughter Luisa to live with Doña Amalia, and serve her, as her own mother and grandmother served Doña Amalia's family.  She asks for no wages for Luisa, merely room and board, saying it would be an honour for Luisa to serve Doña Amalia.

  I was kind of disturbed by this. For one thing, the woman is just giving her daughter to this woman. Later in the story we find that Luisa goes home for visits when she can, but STILL! Also, Doña Amalia can barely feed herself. How can she care for the little girl? Her house is in disrepair. It would have made way more sense for Luisa's mother to have taken Doña Amalia into her home and cared for her in her final years. Whether or not Doña Amalia would have accepted the offer is another thing, but if she wasn't too proud to take this woman's daughter even when she couldn't properly provide for her, maybe she would have accepted. Just a point, but this book was originally published in 1961, and from what we learn in the ending, I don't think it was set in olden times. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

  Doña Amalia and Luisa come to care a great deal for each other. Luisa does the marketing, cleaning, and helps Doña Amalia by threading her needles. She loves to listen to Doña Amalia tell stories of the past while she sews. 

 

Luisa, at the bottom of the picture, does the marketing.

 Doña Amalia tells Luisa how she would love to take Luisa to see the large ranch that she owns, out in the country. The buildings were burned down long ago, but when Doña Amalia was growing up, her father owned the ranch. Now it belongs to  Doña Amalia. She has  a lawyer who has been trying to sell it for years, but no one wants the land because it is so far from town, and there is not enough water there. 

  At one point Doña Amalia fondly mentions someone named Rosita. She speaks of Rosita with such affection, that Luisa wonders who Rosita is, (Does she live somewhere in the huge house?), and if Rosita is more loved by Doña Amalia than herself.

  Doña Amalia loves having Luisa with her, but she wonders how she is going to provide for Luisa, and what will become of her crumbling mansion.

  As the Christmas season and Posada arrive, Luisa helps Doña Amalia set up the creche Nativity.

  Doña Amalia has been working on a large stack of mending for a wealthy client. She tells Luisa that when she is paid for the mending she and Luisa will have money to pay for the food for the coming year, and maybe Christmas treats. But when the wealthy lady arrives in her big car, she makes little Luisa carry it out for her, where she examines the clothing, and decides that the mending will not be good enough for her to pay the full agreed upon price. She gives Doña Amalia only a few coins, and tells her that most of the mending will need to be redone by someone else. Before she speeds off in her big car, she gives Luisa a few pesos out of guilt, to buy Christmas sweets.

  Doña Amalia is devastated. How will she buy food? What will happen to her, and to Luisa?

  Finally, Luisa meets Rosita. Rosita is a doll, and she and two other dolls are brought out for the holiday. Doña Amalia explains that the two other dolls were bought new for her, but Rosita has been passed down from Doña Amalia's mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. She is the most beautiful doll, grandly dressed and well cared for.

   All the dolls are tied in their chairs so they don't fall out and break. This was a relief, because I thought Rosita was going to get broken! I thought that was the big thing that was going to happen. I'm a pessimist, I guess!

  Rosita is displayed in the front window of Doña Amalia's home. Luisa suggests that Rosita be dressed as St. Francis, so that maybe St. Francis, being the patron saint of the poor, will look kindly on her. So Doña Amalia sews a plain brown robe for Rosita. 

  One day a gentleman appears, admiring Rosita, and offers Doña Amalia a great deal of money for Rosita. Doña Amalia turns him down, but feels inside that when he returns she must accept his offer, as there is no other way to buy food and take care of Luisa. She is heartbroken.

  If you're interested in reading the book, and don't want any spoilers, skip to my final thoughts on the book, below the second set of spoiler warning starts below. But if you want to know what happens to Doña Amalia, Luisa, and Rosita, read on.

**********************************The rest of the story************************************************

  Just when all seems lost, and Doña Amalia will have to sell Rosita, at the point in the Posada song where the door opens, she and Luisa get a sudden visit from the lawyer, who brings a huge swan Pinata and some really good news.

  The lawyer tells Doña Amalia and Luisa that the new airline company has bought her property for a new international airstrip, and they have offered such a good price that Doña Amalia will be comfortable for the rest of her life, and be able to give Luisa a very nice dowry. So everything ends happily, and Doña Amalia will NOT have to sell Rosita.

***********************************************************************************

 

  Author Elizabeth Coatsworth attended Vassar College, graduating in 1915, and got her Master of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1916. She won the 1931 Newbery medal for her book, "The Cat Who Went to Heaven". She was a great traveler who took interest in the cultures of the places she visited. She wrote many books of poetry, and over 90 books for children, including "Runaway Home", one of the series of  school readers known as The Alice and Jerry Books, and the 'Sally' series of historical fiction books. (You can see all the titles in the Sally series and read their synopsis' HERE.)

   My kids always tease me that a lot of the books I loved as a kid were about somebody having to save a house. (Some of them you may have read about here on the blog, like Sea View Secret, The Ghost of Dibble Hollow, Magic Elizabeth, and Ginnie and the Mystery Doll. So this book would have fit right in with a lot of my favourites. It is a nice warm book, with a Christmas theme and a happy ending. If you don't think your child would be upset by Luisa's mother basically giving her away, I think it could be enjoyed by small children. It's a short book of only 47 pages, and an easy read.

The Doll Book of the Month Club: Tammy, Adventure in Squaw Valley

   Talk about coming down to the wire! Our internet was off since Friday night, and only just got back on today. Just in time for the Doll Book of the Month Club entry for August. This post could have been better, but I finished the book last Friday, and was going to write the post that night before I forgot what I wanted to say. Thanks Frontier!)

  I seem to be finding a lot of Tammy stuff lately. (Not my stuff. It's all 'Tammy' stuff, and believe me, there's probably way too much of it.) I mean Ideal's Tammy. I've been finding things like the doll, and things associated with her. One of those things is this book, which I got at an antique mall during a recent Fun Day outing.

  "Tammy, Adventure in Squaw Valley" is one of those Whitman hardbacks from the 60's, and it resembles the Robin Kane or Donna Parker books in more ways than one. 

The writing is pretty par for the course, and so are the illustrations. 

That's not to say that that's a bad thing. I enjoyed those books as a kid. I can see where kids of the era probably enjoyed this Tammy book. 

And having said that, I do have to say that it's not perfect. The entire first chapter is character exposition. We learn all about how great Tammy is, what an annoying little sister Pepper is, how much Tammy's brother Ted is an all around great student and typically superior acting big brother. 

Tammy comes home to find that Mother has a secret.

  The 'Adventure' is mostly what happens to Tammy and Ted at the ski resort in Squaw Valley, which they are staying at for a family wedding. I don't think that's what the title is referring to, but it takes most of the book, with only a couple of only slightly out of the ordinary happenings in the meantime, to get to the actual adventure.  

  Tammy is described as being 16 years old. She plays baseball at school, and likes archery and tennis. Tammy, in her doll form, had an archery set, and a tennis set. This book contains a lot of Tammy trying to ski, and the doll also had a ski set, complete with skis and a skiing outfit that completely matches the ski outfit Tammy buys for the trip in the book. I am wondering how much the book was seen as a commercial for the doll and her clothing sets.

  If you collect Tammy dolls, the book is a nice addition to your collection. Not only that, but the book can sort of make the doll 'come alive' for you, since she's given a personality. Tammy is sensible, stubborn, and feisty. (Why thank you. Yes I am!) You even get to know her family and what they were supposed to be like.  As I said, the 'adventure' took a while showing up, and it was sort of like 'Lionel Twain' described some of the mystery writers' books in "Murder by Death", in that they made it impossible to solve the mystery, by leaving out clues, and introducing characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before. But the book was a nice leisurely 'adventure' anyway, and then got exciting at the end.

  If the illustrations look familiar to you, it may be because illustrator Haris Petie  was responsible for the illustrations in many books, including some mysteries featuring Trixie Belden, another heroine included in the 60's Whitman line up. Author Winifred E. Wise seems best known for another Whitman book about a teenaged girl, "Minnow" Vail.

  That's the book for the month. See you again soon!  

Doll Book of the Month Club: Missing Melinda

   The sort of second part of the Our Dolls, Ourselves post will have to wait a little longer. It's the first of the month, and time for the next entry in The Doll Book of the Month Club.
  This month's book is "Missing Melinda", by Jacqueline Jackson. It was first published in 1967. The illustrations in mine are by Irene Burns.

Mine is a somewhat grubby ex-library edition.

  This book has been sitting here waiting to be read for years. We bought it at the library sale, where the books are donated by the library and regular people, and sold to raise money for the library. I always meant to read it to Ivy, but never got around to it. We bought so many books at the book sale and from school order forms, as well as the book store. We couldn't read them all! So I finally got around to reading it myself a couple of weeks ago.
  At first I wasn't sure I was going to like this book. I didn't think much of the writing at the very beginning. It got better quickly, and I ended up enjoying it. Beware though! The very first few pages give away the endings of several doll based books, including "Miss Hickory",(which you can read my post on HERE.) and "The Dolls' House", by Rumer Godden,which I recently featured as The Doll Book of the Month. You can see that post HERE.

Edited for your protection.

  "Missing Melinda" involves a pair of twin girls who move into an old deceased relative's loaded house. They venture into the crowded attic the first day there, and find a very old and beautiful doll, who they name Melinda. 

Finding Melinda inspires them to write a book. "Missing Melinda" is actually the book they supposedly write about their adventure.

  The adventure really gets going when the girls take Melinda to the park, in a wagon. The girls decide to climb a tree, leaving Melinda below in the wagon, lest they break her. When they come back down they discover that Melinda has been stolen.

  As I said, the book is 'written' by the twins, who alternate chapters. They're a colourful couple of kids, who have developed the habit of quoting Shakespeare, and using his flowery speech, from their Shakespeare addicted father. (The girls are even named Cordelia and Ophelia.)
  The twins set out to find who stole Melinda, and get her back. Along the way they get help from the boy next door, Jimmy, who insists he doesn't want girl neighbours to play with,(but could they play with him, please?).
 

He helps the girls as they try to solve the mystery of Melinda's disappearance. Jimmy actually knows quite a lot about dolls himself, and introduces the girls to one of their suspects.

   They have a list of suspects to investigate. The suspect that Jimmy introduces them to is a lady who knows a lot about dolls. The author must have known quite a bit about dolls, because the character, Mrs. Otis, reels off loads of doll makers and names, as well as describing various dolls. She gives them a tour of her doll filled house and takes them to a doll hospital. Both trips are filled with descriptions of dolls, and doll mechanisms. There's so much to take in! You'll see many names you'll recognize if you know anything about dolls yourself. Mrs. Otis and the doll hospital 'doctor' even go into some history on dolls, and it's all quite interesting. So much so that I wonder if kids would enjoy this book as much as a grown doll collector! It's all enjoyable though, even if a child might feel somewhat  bogged down with 'boring' information at various times.
  That's not to say a child wouldn't enjoy the book. The twins are likeable. There's mystery and humour. The girls visit some interesting places and run into memorable characters.

The ending, especially, is exciting. It's a race to catch the culprit before Melinda disappears forever.

  The only age recommendation I could find said 7 to 10 year olds, but there was also a review by someone who said it was their favourite book in middle school. (I think middle schoolers read more mature things these days, which isn't to say some might not still enjoy the book.)
  I found that Jacqueline Jackson is a local lady! She was born in Washington, worked as a professor of English at the University of Illinois, but at the time "Missing Melinda" was written, she lived in Kent, Ohio, and taught Children's Literature at Kent State University. (Kent State was the site of the famous 1970 shooting, where the Ohio National Guard opened fire on students protesting the bombing of neutral Cambodia, killing four, and injuring nine, students. The incident was the inspiration for the song "Four Dead in Ohio" by Crosby,Stills,Nash,and Young.)
  Here's the inside of the "Missing Melinda" dust jacket.

 So her daughters reading interests, and actual requests, inspired "Missing Melinda". Other books by Jacqueline Jackson include "Julie's Secret Sloth", "The Paleface Redskins", "The Ghost Boat", and "The Taste of Spruce Gum".  According to Good Reads she considers "Stories From the Round Barn" and "More Stories From the Round Barn" to be her best works.

  Ms. Jackson is still writing! She writes a poem every week for the Illinois Times. She and her helper commented on this post, which you can see below, and I have been in contact through Messenger on the blog's Facebook page. Ms. Jackson has a webpage, for those who are interested. You can see it HERE. You can read an interview with her HERE.
  I enjoyed "Missing Melinda", and I recommend it for kids who like mysteries with a bit of humour, people who are interested in dolls, and kids who like a good, interesting read they can really get into. The book appears to be out of print, but a used copy can be found on Amazon or Ebay. Some of them can be quite expensive, so shop well!

Cozy Winter Reads: Magic Elizabeth by Norma Kassirer

    First of all I have to welcome our two newest followers,sara scales and Allenoel. I get an error page when I click on you sara. Any suggestions? Allenoel has three blogs you can check out,including For The Love Of Dolls  Thanks for joining us guys.
  If you live where the weather has been hitting you the way it has here, you're having plenty of extra time with your kids, as they celebrate some welcome snow days. When it's cold outside it's so nice to be cozy and warm inside, snuggled down with the kids and a good book. When my kids were little they all loved "Magic Elizabeth", by Norma Kassirer,another of my childhood favourites.

  "Magic Elizabeth" was a book I checked out of the school library several times when I was  a kid, before I managed to buy a copy of my own from the book orders they hand out at school. It was another of those classic Scholastic paper backs.  The book was originally published in 1966, but I know it has been reprinted as recently as 1999,(with a different cover from mine.).
The book opens on a rainy night,when Sally finds herself suddenly dropped off with an aunt she hasn't seen since she was a baby and remembers nothing about.

Sally's parents are away, and the lady looking after her has to leave to help her sick daughter. Sally is scared in her aunt's strange, old fashioned house, but she finds a friend in the house next door, and little by little, in Aunt Sarah.

Sally also finds herself caught up in a mystery. In the room she is staying hangs a painting of a little girl with a doll on her lap. Aunt Sarah tells Sally the portrait is of a little girl, also named Sally, who used to live in the house, and the girl's favourite doll, Elizabeth.Sally falls instantly in love with Elizabeth, and is saddened to learn that Elizabeth mysteriously disappeared from the top of the Christmas tree one Christmas Eve long ago. She has to still be in the house somewhere! Sally makes it her mission to find Elizabeth. Soon she must return home, and her aunt plans to sell the house.Elizabeth will be lost forever!
  The best parts of the book involve Sally 'becoming'  the other Sally and reliving moments from her life: does she really time travel, or was she dreaming?

 It's also fun following the clues with Sally as she tries to figure out what happened to Elizabeth.
  The illustrations will look familiar to readers of Mary Norton's Borrowers books,(More of my favourite kid's books.).They're by Joe Crush who,along with his wife Beth also illustrated that series.(An interesting note: He was also a courtroom sketch artist at the Nuremberg trials.)
 My kids always tease me about the fact that so many of the books I loved as a kid had to do with somebody having to 'save the house'. While Aunt Sarah isn't about to loose the house, the kids say her selling the house and Sally's race to find Elizabeth before she does counts as 'saving the house'!
  I would say this book would be entertaining to kids as young as kindergarten age, and as old as 10.There are a couple of copies of Magic Elizabeth on Ebay as I right this, but they are massively expensive, especially since I see from the 'sold' page that the paperback usually sells for normal prices. There is also the more recent edition, so you should be able to find a very affordable copy.(Try Amazon.) 

October Reading Assignment #2 The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House by Mary Chase

  My second scary suggestion for the month of October is The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House, by Mary Chase. When I was thinking about writing the review for this post, I realized I had already sort of written one, in my description for the extra copy we're selling on Ebay.

   This book has always been one of my favourites and the kids loved it too. (Except Ivy. She doesn't like anything creepier than The Ghost of Dibble Hollow.) It makes a great scary read for Halloween. Not horrifying, but chills up your back scary and somewhat mystical and with great heart. Maureen,a girl known for her bad temper, lies, and fighting, wishes and pretends to be one of the Messerman's, a rich family which lived in a huge old house, now deserted and ruined.One afternoon, trying to escape an angry neighbor, she slips into the garden of the old house. She comes across what she thinks at first is a garden gnome. But then he speaks to her. He's a leprechaun, and he knows the story of the house and it's inhabitants. But he unexpectedly disappears. The next day Maureen again finds herself inside the grounds. When she and a group of neighborhood kids enter the house, Maureen the liar is determined to impress them. She's not afraid.The upstairs hall is full of paintings of ladies in beautiful dresses. Maureen insults all the pictures but one, but then she notices something. Have the ladies in the paintings...moved? When Maureen finds a strange bracelet like the ones worn by the ladies in the paintings she takes it home. That night she finds herself being watched by a strange lady in old fashioned clothes who demands her bracelet. Frightened, Maureen decides to return the bracelet the next morning. But she forgets. Walking home in the pouring rain she suddenly comes across a scene straight out of the past and finds her own home no longer exists. She is stuck in the past and must find a way to get herself back. There's a sad story tucked in there too, a life lesson,and of course the  magical leprechaun in the garden.Longing to return to her own time and home, Maureen learns to appreciate her family and her life.
  The original title was The Wicked Pigeon Ladies in the Garden. (Good thing they changed it!Not that the other title is much better!), and the author, Mary Chase is more famous for having written (and winning a Pulitzer Prize for) the play "Harvey", and cowriting the screen play for the movie starring Jimmy Stewart.I always thought  "Wicked Ladies..." would make a great movie. I could see Disney making it in the early 70's. And Jodie Foster would have played Maureen!
  I'm not sure if the book is still in print, although it was reprinted in 2003. (It was originally published in 1967.)This one isn't expensive second hand though, and it's totally worth the search. It's sold occasionally online. In fact, as I said, I'm listing ours on Ebay as soon as I finish this post.
  Age recommendation is 7 to 10 years, but it might be a little too scary for 7 year olds.(You know your child, so be the judge.)I think 11 to 12 year olds could still enjoy it. 
  Mystery,time travel, magic, and a spooky story. What more could you want?!