The World of John Bellairs

This blog is a bit like a secretary desk into which bills and correspondence have been stuffed willy nilly…because of neglect I keep reaching into an overflowing pigeonhole and pulling stuff out only to go, yikes, I meant to deal with that months ago. Come to think of it, that kind of describes my brain.

Anyway.

One of the topics I see I meant to get to back last fall was the work of John Bellairs. I somehow missed these in my own adolescence, although I did give some to my nephew when he was in grade school (at least partly because of the oh-so-cool Edward Gorey covers). Last fall the Budza, then eight, and I started reading them as part of the evening story ritual, which involves about an hour of reading aloud with me, and telling stories out loud with my husband. So far we’ve read five mysteries about Johnny Dixon: The Chessmen of Doom (1989), The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt (1983), The Eyes of the Killer Robot (1986), The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull, and The Curse of the Blue Figurine (1983) as well as one mystery starring Anthony Monday, The Lamp from the Warlock’s Tomb (1988). We aren’t as enamoured by the Lewis Barnavelt ones. For my part, the Dixons are the best, and it’s completely because of the relationship between Johnny and his neighbor and mentor and best friend, Roderick Childermass.

Could anyone invent a character like Professor Childermass now, or a relationship like the one he has with teenaged Johnny? Imagine trying to pitch a novel for this age range (older middle-grade to YA) in which a kind of shy, lonely boy is allowed to go off for the weekend in the company of his somewhat elderly bachelor neighbor, who loves to have Johnny over to his house to play chess and who has hobby baking cakes. Can’t quite see it? It’s why these books are something of a miracle. Childermass throws tantrums. He smokes. He is socially awkward. And he loves Johnny dearly. All the family relationships and friendships are beautifully rendered, but not in a manner that ever gets in the way of the really good shivery gothic storytelling. They are not really mysteries and not really horror, but a category I think of as supernatural and psychological suspense. And no one, in my book, has done it quite as well as Bellairs, with the same humor and humanity. The portraits of flawed adults remind me of Louise Fitzhugh's sequel to Harriet the Spy, The Long Secret, which I think is a better book. It cast quite a spell on me when I was 10 or 11, because it showed adults I recognized from the rather odd hothouse childhood of embassy life in the tropics.

Some of the books remain in print, and can be found new, but this is one of those cases where I really like to find a not too worn copy and give it a home. Bellairs mysteries are something that are easy to find in a used bookstore just about anywhere, and he was prolific enough that you can almost always find one you haven’t read yet, and if you're lucky, two or even three. And the there are more being written all the time as Brad Strickland continues to write about the Bellairs characters. I have yet to read one of the new ones, to judge how well he pulls it off, but my hopes are high.

Bellairs has a fervent following online. A good place to start is www.Bellairsia.com.

The Old Man in the Corner

This might not seem to have much to do with children's literature, except that I am always interested in finding mysteries digestible by the newish reader that don't necessarily feature amateur teen detectives (fine as those junior detectives are--I'll be posting soon about John Bellairs). I'm thinking here of books suitable for boys and girls, which a young mystery addict is ready to dip into the adult mystery canon--the tantalizing books in the adult section of the public library with either Sherlock Holmes in profile or a skull on the spine, to signal that murderous mayhem is inside. A fourth grader who starts with "The Speckled Band" or "The Hound of the Baskervilles" may find enough thrills to be motivated to work her or his way through some of the challenging vocabulary of some of the other stories, or even the novellas.

But after that, what other books from the adult section work for kids--holding their interest, accessible enough in terms of plot and dialogue, and appropriate in their presentation of adult themes? The modern day mystery is a PG-13 or R rated experprise. Will the safer G and PG mysteries of the first 50 years of the 20th century yield some gems that can be enjoyed by the middle grade reader?

By the time I was ten, I was borrowing my father's paperback editions of Agatha Christie. The two I still own are The Labors of Hecrules (1947) and The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (1960), now in print as Hercule Poirot's Christmas. This was around 1971, were living in Southeast Asia at the time, and my father would be on the balcony or the veranda, on a chaise lounge, in Bermuda shorts, with a drink going in an old fashioned glass, reading another mystery or possibly a spy novel by John Le Carre. Every now and then I get out the yellowed, battered paperbacks and enjoy them again. I also keep in the bedside table one or the other of the two volume complete Sherlock Holmes.

So I've downloaded from Librivox Baroness Orczy's The Old Man in the Corner, about the unnamed protangonist of the title, who relates the solutions to unsolved crimes to the young female journalist he meets in a teashop. These are probably too challenging for Budza (going on nine) but I bet they would be great for the 11 year old mystery enthusiast. I am just into the second story of the collection, but they rely heavily on all the turns of plot that have since become mystery tropes, but that Orczy, author of The Scarlet Pimpernel, originated. The Old Man in the Corner is widely considered to the first armchair detective, and while he has a very low index in the swashbuckle department, the puzzles themselves are intricate and devious.

There is a huge collection of old mysteries over at Project Gaslight--mysteries written between 1800 (!) and 1909. Probably the more stilted sytle, leisurely pacing, and Victorian vocabulary will take careful parental vetting to find stories that will grab and hold the young reader, but I think the effort will be well rewarded.