Sammy and the Headless Horseman

by Rona Arato

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

9781554552696

156 pp.

Ages 9-11

May/September 2016

Yes, I know summer is almost over but here's one last summer hurrah for readers to enjoy a 1920s Catskill Mountains resort and solve a mystery with 11-year-old Sammy Levin and his cohort of young sleuths.

Sammy has been invited by his Aunt Pearl to travel with her and his cousins, Joshua and Leah, to the Liebman’s summer resort to get him away from his gang in New York City and to give Sammy’s father some time with his new wife Martha.  But upon his arrival Sammy learns she has arranged for him to work at the resort while she and her family enjoy the benefits of being guests.  Although initially chagrined at this turn of events–as are his Uncle Milton and his father when they visit–Sammy realizes soon enough that he enjoys the work and palling around with other teens who work at the hotel, especially fourteen-year-olds Adam Van Dorn and the owner’s daughter Shayna Liebman, and even performing with the hotel’s entertainer, Moishe.

It was exhilirating and nerve-wracking, but Sammy never felt more like he belonged. (pg. 80)

But there seem to be ghostly forces at work creating havoc at the Liebman’s hotel and on the property of the nearby Hermit, a former slave, including broken dishware, a trampled vegetable garden, a ceiling light falling, and a fire at the Hermit’s chicken coop.  Mrs. Leibman is convinced it’s her dead grandmother expressing her annoyance at the hotel owner’s use of her recipes, but that doesn’t explain the headless horseman (“Some fool hidin’ his head in a black cape and ridin’ a horse”; pg. 44) whom the Hermit witnesses and who later makes appearances at the hotel.  Sammy, who recalls the terrorizing of his Polish village by soldiers, is determined to stop good people like the Hermit and the Liebmans from experiencing further distress and damage.  Together with Adam and Shayna and the annoying Joshua–who always makes sure to clarify to others that “I’m a guest” (pg. 43)–Sammy pursues the mystery of the headless horseman and does a little ghost-busting.

There’s a mystery to be solved and Rona Arato, award-winning writer of The Last Train (Owlkids, 2013), sets up all the clues for the kids to discover the solution and make things right.  Sammy and the Headless Horseman is a Jewish Hardy Boys for the middle-grade set.  But it’s the setting and atmosphere with which Rona Arato infuses her plot that makes the story all the better (and she provides historical notes and photographs to enhance her story).  Sammy and Headless Horseman takes you back to a time when a mountain resort and swimming in a pool and a lake and playing cards and hanging with your peers was summertime bliss.  But by saturating the story with the foods, vocabulary and culture of a Jewish community of the 1920s, many of whom recall their emigration from the old country to the States, Rona Arato has ensured that Sammy and the Headless Horseman is seasoned with a distinctive flavour and ambiance that leaves the reader and the characters feeling good.

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If you're in the Toronto area, don't miss the opportunity to get a signed copy from Rona Arato this Sunday, August 28, 2016 at Indigo Yorkdale.  Details here. 

Small Bones

Written by Vicki Grant
Orca Book Publishers
978-1-45980-653-5
256 pp.
Ages 12+
September 29, 2015
Reviewed from audiobook
978-1-4598-1098-3

We’ve probably all wanted to reinvent ourselves but Dorothy (Dot) Blythe probably has more reasons than most.  With the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girl burned down and the eldest seven girls being sent away, with only a few scraps to help them determine their heritage, Dot doesn’t have that much to hold onto.  So it’s not surprising that when, dressed in a fine suit donated by the wealthy Mrs. Welsh, Dot does not reveal her orphan background to the young man, Eddie Nicholson, whom she meets on the train.  Eddie helps get her to the Dunbrae Arms, a lodge where she needs to get a job, after having been robbed of her money and finding her destination, a men’s clothing store named Howell’s of Buckminster, closed.  Seems the town of Buckminster is her go-to place for answers, being the name on the cashmere overcoat in which she had been swaddled when deposited at the Home.  Other than a few barely legible initials and a tiny silver spoon with a crest, Dot doesn’t have much to go on.  So with no money and Howell’s closed, she gets a job a a seamstress at the Dunbrae Arms.  And there she pursues her history, asking questions of the snarly Mrs. Smees, who runs the housekeeping for the lodge, and Bas Simmonds, the laundry man, as well as Eddie who seems to know everyone and begins to spend time with Dot.

But, it is evident that Dot’s small frame and face remind others of someone but the confusion  or even anger her presence evokes is never clear to her.   And then she is invited to a summer party to commemorate ByeBye Baby, the unexplained discovery of a tiny baby in the woods seventeen years earlier.  A baby that was seen but disappeared before help arrived.  Knowing she must have been that baby, Dot encourages Eddie to pursue the story–he is a summer reporter for the Buckminster Gleaner–so that she too might learn everything she can about that baby and the mystery surrounding it.  And I haven’t even mentioned the small bones that begin to appear around the seamstress’ cabin where Dot rooms.  Fragile, incomplete, and mysterious bones, probably those of birds.

Vicki Grant weaves a loaded story about a pregnancy that was kept hidden and a birth that was obscured from small-town gossip and yet so important as Dot’s seemingly insignificant origins.  The cover up about her birth may have been haphazard but it was effective in keeping the truth concealed.  And yet many individuals knew a little something about the event.  Some knew better than to talk about it, afraid of ruffling feathers, but others just didn’t realize that they knew anything important.  With astute questioning and biding her time, Dot is able to piece her story together from a patchwork of details, and though her story may have been a tad frayed around the edges–she does jump to a few incorrect assumptions–it is heart-warmingly trimmed with a happy ending or two.  In fact, Vicki Grant, with her light-touch and say-it-straight writing manner, makes sure that it’s “Better than any fantasy” (pg. 239) that Dot could ever have imagined.

Summer Days, Starry Nights

by Vikki VanSickle
Scholastic Canada
978-1-4431-1991-7
219 pp.
Ages 10-14
June 2013

What a perfect time for Vikki VanSickle to launch her newest book, Summer Days, Starry Nights which takes middle grade readers to the lake, cabins and beach of Sandy Shores, the Starr family summer resort outside of Orillia, Ontario. The narrator of this 1962 coming-of-age story is the middle Starr child, Reenie, 13, who adores her home, the resort, but still doesn’t always feel like she belongs.  After all, her six-year-old sister, Scarlett, is so much like their mother, affectionately called Mimi, who likes pretty things and getting attention. Her brother Bo is 16 and, although he is obsessed with music and his band, the Wide Mouth Bass, he is still more likely to be asked to do work with his dad around the resort and will probably inherit it. But Reenie loves Sandy Shores. She can’t think of a better place to live or grow up.

So it’s perplexing to Reenie that Mimi becomes so melancholy about her past as a dancer and actress before she married and moved to the boondocks. And more surprising that Dad allows Mimi to implement a variety of ideas she has to bring a little class and hopefully more guests to the resort. In the summer of 1962, her idea is to bring in some entertainment and dancing, asking Gwendolyn, the daughter of her friend Grace Cates, to work for them. Gwen, almost 18, has grown up drastically from the lovely, ethereal girl attending ballet school who Reenie remembers; now she’s brash and more interested in singing than dance, especially not ballet, spending lots of time alone in her room when not teaching.

Reenie is determined to reacquaint herself with Gwen, hanging around her, taking dance lessons, talking about being a teenager. So it's not surprising that Reenie notices that, after Gwen gets letters from someone whose name begins with J or G, she is more grumpy and that there are times when it’s obvious she’s been crying. When Reenie is working in the office and answers a call from a rock and roller called Johnny Skins, looking to speak with Gwen, Reenie begins to hatch a plan that would bring some much-needed attention to Sandy Shores and lift her mother's mood; give her brother a chance to showcase his band and his music; and take away Gwen's blahs.  Reenie is convinced that she can pull together a special concert/dance and amaze everyone, especially Gwen, with a surprise appearance by Johnny Skins. But even plans laid upon the best of intentions will go awry when secrets are being kept by everyone.

The plot of Summer Days, Starry Nights draws attention to the sparkling promise of summer: new relationships, freedom, opportunities, spending time outdoors. But sometimes, like stars, that promise can be overwhelming, brighter than justified, blinding to the eyes. When the stars align, however, they paint a picture of a fragile family, held together by shimmering connections that waver, weakening and strengthening with different circumstances. With Gwen added to the big picture, all the Starrs begin to see themselves relative to her, moving within her pull, positive or negative, rather than as a stable system irrespective of her. But those pesky secrets shake the foundation of the Starrs forcing them to re-examine their ideas about themselves and each other so that they may rebuild those connections.

Characteristically, Vikki VanSickle pens a story that is like a classic rock-and-roll song: there is a familiarity to its melody, of a family working together, with harmonies and some dissonance (especially feared in the 1950s and 1960s music!) but together it is a pleasing sound that resonates with all.  Summer Days, Starry Nights is sure to be a summer hit on the youngCanLit charts.