Tom Slade’s Double Dare

There’s a particular kind of plot, particularly common in adventure novels, where the hero, after having done something particularly heroic, is thought to have done something bad instead and is shunned by everyone until he is vindicated at the end.

I suspect that this was the only plot Percy Keese Fitzhugh knew how to write. His Tom Slade series is a paean to it. But if he only did one thing, he did it well. The Tom Slade series is my favorite boys’ series. None of the several companion series have the same self-righteous (but not sulky) angst that the Tom Slade books do.

The Otterbury Incident

Because home is in New York and School is in Pennsylvania, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time on trains lately. And I should probably use that time for work, but somehow I fond it difficult to do anything at all when on trains. I’m perfectly happy to stare out the window for an hour at a time. So the books that I’ve been bringing with me for my train rides have been very frivolous: The Westing Game, Slippy McGee (Marie Conway Oemler’s books continue to fill me with glee), The Otterbury Incident…

The Otterbury Incident is the one I really wanted to talk about. It’s been one of my favorite books for years — I’m not really sure how long, exactly. For people who haven’t read the book, the most interesting thing about it will be that it was written by Cecil Day-Lewis, who was the Poet Laureate of England from 1968 to 1972, and who also happened to be the father of Daniel Day-Lewis. For those who have read the book, all that is kind of irrelevant. It’s just too good for any outside factors to be very important.

Elsie’s Womanhood

Elsie’s Womanhood is kind of bizarre and segmented. First there’s the bit where Elsie and Mr. Travilla tell everyone that they’re engaged, and the reactions are an entertaining mix of not at all surprised and disturbed by the age difference. Which, you know, was pretty much my reaction too. This bit also includes Elsie’s uncle Arthur — you know, the one who set Tom Jackson on her — telling her that he wouldn’t mind marrying her himself. It’s as if the fact that her father has allowed her to become engaged has left a vaguely incestuous blank that desperately needed to be filled. And now that’s been done, so let’s move on.

Elsie’s Girlhood

When Elsie’s Girlhood begins, Elsie and her father are traveling with Rose Allison and her brother Edward. Rose had paid a visit to the Dinsmores at Roselands before Mr. Dinsmore returned from Europe, and because they were the only two serious Christians in the house — not counting the slaves, of course — they became very good friends. And since Mr. Dinsmore is now an avid Christian too, and because Rose is very attractive, and because something needs to be done to save him from the designing Miss Stevens, they fall in love and get engaged. Elsie is very pleased, and gladly promises to call Rose “mamma”.

So Mr. Dinsmore and Rose get married and go back to The Oaks, and they and Elsie live very happily together. One day Elsie comes downstairs for breakfast or something and finds her father sitting there alone.

Elsie: Where is mamma?

Mr. D: Oh, upstairs. But look at what I’ve got here!

Elsie: A baby! But where did it come from?

Mr. D: It’s your brother!

Elsie Dinsmore and Holidays at Roselands

Okay, I should really be working on this week’s assignment for my thesis class, but first I need to talk a little about Elsie Dinsmore.

It should come as a surprise to no one that I’m writing my thesis on old children’s books — girls’ series, mostly from the early 20th century — and this week I’ve been reading the first couple of Elsie Dinsmore books. The Elsie books were written my Martha Finley and ran from 1867 to 1905. There are 28 books, but Elsie is a grandmother by book eight. Actually a grandmother, as opposed to behaving like a grandmother, which she does right from the beginning.

The Little Colonel Series: the first four books

So, it’s been a while, huh? But I plan on updating more often now.

It’s hard to know where to start, because I’ve read kind of a lot of stuff since I last updated regularly. Why don’t we start with The Little Colonel series, and how I never knew that it existed, or that it’s really awesome?

I think “The Little Colonel” probably means “Shirley Temple” to most people, but I haven’t seen the movie in years, and all I really remember is the bit with Bojangles dancing on the stairs, so I came to the books with few expectations.

The Little Colonel is sort of the basic children’s story, a shorter, girls’ version of Little Lord Fauntleroy minus some sophistication and plus a basis in fact. Apparently Annie Fellows Johnston actually knew a girl — Hattie Cochran — who, like Lloyd Sherman, shared the mannerisms of her one-armed Confederate veteran grandfather. You can read more about it at the Little Colonel website, but I wouldn’t. Knowing that most of the characters are thinly disguised portraits of people who later married the wrong people or committed suicide is kind of upsetting.

What do you think might be the best book title ever?

I’m pretty sure I’ve never come across one better than Shirley Temple and the Screaming Specter.

Grace Harlowe

I’m kind of surprised to realize that I haven’t posted anything in nearly a month. But although I haven’t been writing, I’ve definitely still been reading. Last week, for example, I raced through The High School Girls Series and The College Girls Series, which were published under the name Jessie Graham Flower, the pseudonym of a woman named Josephine Chase. These are the first two of four series about a girl called Grace Harlowe. In the first series she’s the ideal type of high school girl, and in the second she’s the ideal type of college girl. I can only assume that in the third she’s the ideal type of girl who hangs out with the American army in Europe during World War I — it’s called Grace Harlowe Overseas — and in the fourth, well, I’m not quite sure. What is an Overland Rider?

Deering of Deal

Deering of Deal, by Latta Griswold, is one of the most adorable books I’ve ever read, but I’m going to have a hard time talking about it, because I know I shouldn’t be devoting more time to Reggie Carroll than to Tony Deering, who is, after all, the main character.

Tony is a cheerful but sensitive southern boy, who, like all of the men in his family before him, has been sent north to attend a fictional boarding school called Deal. His father and grandfather, by the way, are named Victor and Basil, respectively. I mention this only because I think the names Basil, Victor and Anthony are sort of in harmony with each other in a way that pleases me.

Pee-Wee Harris and the Sunken Treasure

Pee-Wee Harris and the Sunken Treasure was pretty disappointing. But I shouldn’t have been expecting much — this is the first Pee-Wee Harris book I’ve read, but I’ve read a couple of the Roy Blakeley books, and it’s like Percy Keese Fitzhugh added a lot more jokes and thought no one would notice that he took out everything else. Oh well — at least the Pee-Wee Harris books have a third-person narrator.

Just David

Last week I was on an Eleanor Porter kick. I’d never realized how many books she wrote that weren’t, you know, Pollyanna. Her Wikipedia entry says she wrote mostly children’s lit, but I’m not sure how much I trust her Wikipedia entry, seeing as it calls the three Miss Billy books children’s lit (questionable) and Just David a novel for adults (untrue). I have no idea whether it’s right about the rest of her books, since those are the four I’ve just read.

Just David came first, and I think I’d have been able to tell that it was by the author of Pollyanna even if I hadn’t already known. Either that or I would have thought an unknown author was just copying Eleanor Porter.

Tom Slade on Mystery Trail

Usually when I read an old book I’ve bought, I think a little about what I’m going to write about it here. It’ a testament to how much I love the Tom Slade books that it wasn’t until I was practically done with Tom Slade on Mystery Trail that it occurred to me that I probably ought to post about it on my blog.

I first encountered Tom Slade and his author, Percy Keese Fitzhugh, in Tom Slade at Temple Camp, which was a gift from a friend, and he has since become my favorite boys’ series character. Fitzhugh wrote several other series about Tom’s boy scout friends, but Roy Blakeley, Pee-Wee Harris, and Westy Martin aren’t quite in Tom Slade’s league.

It’s hard to explain why Tom Slade is so cool. He’s sort of the strong, silent type, and he’s a little awkward with people sometimes. He’s the perfect boy scout, but he doesn’t always appear to be — like when he avoids saving a boy from drowning so that someone else can do it and get the badge awarded for saving someone’s life. He’s very low key, and I love that.

In Tom Slade on Mystery Trail, Tom isn’t the central character. He’s just helping out another boy, who, although he’s completely unlike Tom in personality, has that same selfless-boy-scout-honor thing going on. Hervey Willetts is one of those kids who obsesses over a project until it’s done and then forgets all about it. So his troop decides that he’s the ideal scot to win the Eagle badge — which, unlike today, simply involves winning 21 different other badges. But it’s just a few days until the Temple Camp awards ceremony, and Hervey is one badge short.

He almost got the tracking badge, but the tracks he was following were also being followed by Skinny McCord, the Bridgeboro troop’s newest — and weirdest — member. If Hervey claims the tracks, he gets the tracking badge and the Eagle badge. If Skinny does, he gets the tracking badge and becomes a second-class scout — pretty much the lowest honor there is, but Skinny’s really excited about it, so Hervey pretends he never saw the tracks and lets Skinny take the credit.

Hervey’s troop is really upset — they feel like he’s let them down, and they call him fickle because he says he doesn’t care about being an Eagle scout anymore. That’s because he’s been talking to Tom Slade, who understands that by the time a boy is a true Eagle scout, he doesn’t care about the honor anymore. It’s adorable, really. And then it turns out that Hervey has earned some kind of animal rescue badge without realizing it — because he never looks at his boy scout handbook — and is an Eagle scout after all, although no one would know if it weren’t for Tom Slade.

Also, there’s and oriole and a turtle who help Tom and Hervey rescue a kidnapped kid. But while that’s cute, the storyline about Hervey’s honor and self-sacrifice is even cuter.

Marjorie in Command

A few weeks ago I found Marjorie in Command at a tiny used book store where all hardcovers were a dollar each and paperbacks were fifty cents. (I also got a paperback of Paul Murray Kendall’s Richard III, and that’s part of why I haven’t been updating lately — it figures that I would use the time not taken up by my history classes to read a history book.) It’s by Carolyn Wells, and although I would have been happier to find a Patty Fairfield book, this is pretty good, too.

The Blue Envelope

I haven’t updated much lately because I’m taking a couple of classes up at Columbia and they provide me with lots of reading. I haven’t had much time to read things for fun, let alone write about them. But there’s always more time for reading than writing, and I’ve built up a backlog of books (which sounds nicely alliterative, don’t you think?).

One of them is The Blue Envelope, by Roy J. Snell. I have a hard time describing this book. It wasn’t at all what I expected from the title, or even what I expected after reading the introduction. Actually, it wasn’t what I expected after having read half the book, which was, you know, somewhat disconcerting.

Cormorant Crag

Cormorant Crag, by George Manville Fenn, is the story of two young morons named Vince and Mike. They remind me very much of two young morons named Tom and Steve. Vince, like Tom, is not quite so much of an idiot as his friend, and Mike, like Steve, eventually learns to shut up and listen to his smarter, less dithery companion. Although Vince does quite a lot of dithering, too.