Thoughts before reading:
This was one of my favorite BSC mysteries when I was a kid, but I don't remember anything about it anymore, even though I know I read it quite a few times back in the day. For awhile it was also part of my collection, although I did eventually trade it in for new titles. This book was just the kind of very mild spooky story I used to love, before I got into R. L. Stine and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
I like this cover too. It's simple, but looks like a good ghost story scene. Perfect fodder for a rainy weekend afternoon when you're eight years old.
The basics:
The Pike family receives the news that Mr. Pike's Uncle Joe is coming to stay with them for a month or so, until he moves into a new nursing home. He's been living in one for awhile, but is taking a little break in between to visit with the family. Everyone is excited, because their father has told them a lot of stories about how much fun he had with Uncle Joe when he was a boy. The kids help clean the house, prepare a room, and make a banner for his arrival. When he finally comes though, they are all quickly disappointed. He's very standoffish and seems uninterested in any of the kids, basically sitting around all day and ignoring everyone. When Claudia comes over to babysit, he's even mean to her, very at odds with the warm, funny man from Mr. Pike's stories.
Meanwhile, the BSC gets a call from some new clients who are friends with Kristy's mom, the Craines. They have three daughters, Margaret, Sophie, and Katie, who will be needing a temporary regular sitter. Mallory takes the job. She likes the girls and the first job goes smoothly, but she keeps hearing a cat meowing the whole time, even though the kids tell her they don't have any pets. Her second time there, they all hear the meowing and decide to search the house. After they don't end up finding anything, Margaret starts to worry that it's a ghost. Even Mal ends up spooked as the afternoon wears on, until Margaret mentions to her that they have an attic. They search it, and sure enough, there's a little white cat hiding inside. (It looks like he was able to get in the house by climbing a tree outside and slipping through the rafters.) The girls give him food and decide to place an ad in the paper to see if he has an owner.
Ghost Cat, as the girls take to calling him, is thriving, but still hides all over the house. During one such afternoon where Mal is helping them look for him again, they find a hat box of old letters in the attic. Mal starts reading them to the girls, and the gist of the story they contain is: a man named Kennedy Graham used to live in the Craine house, and he wrote the letters to his nephew, Samuel. In them he mentions finding and taking in a small white cat. He loved and pampered it, until its sudden death of a "wasting disease". Afterward, Kennedy was never the same, and for the rest of his life he was tormented by a meowing sound coming from the attic.
Mallory starts to wonder if the cat they found is actually the ghost of Kennedy's cat. She invites Dawn over to ghost hunt on her next babysitting job for the Craines. After running a bunch of "tests", Dawn determines that he's a real cat. Right after, a rude man calls the house and says the cat is his, but he's out of town for two more days, then he will come pick up his cat, Rasputin. On the day he's coming, Mal is sitting for the girls again, and they are playing around giving the cat an IQ test when they hear meowing coming from elsewhere in the house. Then Rasputin's owner promptly turns up, and Mal is shocked to see he looks just like the picture of Kennedy from one of the letters, right down to a scar under his eye.
The Craines end up getting a cat of their own from the shelter. This one is also white, with blue eyes, and is deaf. The girls tell Mal they've never heard any meowing from the attic since Rasputin left.
Back at the Pike house, Margo surprises Mal by feeling bad for Uncle Joe, because he seems so sad. Mallory realizes she hasn't even thought about his point of view on the situation. By this time she's also noticed that he roams around the house randomly a lot, and keeps collections of strange objects, like foil balls and pop tops. Once, he roams into a neighbor's house and falls asleep on their couch. He also forgets the time of day, and where things go.
It's confirmed that Uncle Joe has Alzheimer's, and he ends up having to return to the nursing home early. On his last day with them, Mal has her siblings each draw a picture of the family for a contest, so they can give the winning one to Uncle Joe. She notices only Nicky includes him in his drawing, and declares him the winner. When she goes to tell Nicky, she finds him sitting on Uncle Joe's lap, watching a magic trick. Mal's amazed by the sweet scene. Uncle Joe tells her he's sorry for being so quiet the past few weeks, but he has a hard time being around so many people.
After moving in to Stoneybrook Manor, the Pikes all go visit Uncle Joe. He seems much happier and at ease there.
Timeline:
Spans a few weeks, but the time of year isn't made clear. School is in session though.
My thoughts:
This book was fairly entertaining, and probably still one of the better mysteries (we'll see though...). I have mixed feelings about the ghost cat storyline, but at least it was something different, and the kind of mild ghost story kids definitely love. This was also the second time there has been unexplained supernatural events, the first being in #35, Stacey and the Mystery of Stoneybrook. So, I think it's safe to say that ghosts exist in the BSC-verse? Karen's not so crazy after all...
Mallory says in here that she takes care of her siblings so much that she feels like a mother. I 100% understand that feeling from my own childhood. I'm really surprised that she still likes babysitting, and wants to do it for fun. I don't think it will last very long though. She probably just likes the variety of watching other kids besides hers, and feeling like an adult. Those are the reasons I did other babysitting, although I was older than 11 when other people left their children with me, of course. I can also relate to her frustration at being given a lot of responsibilities, but otherwise treated like a kid. Even looking at it from an adult perspective now, I think that's a confusing double standard to give to a kid.
I was shocked to read that the first time Mal sits for the Craines, her dad gives her a ride and walks her up to the door so he can meet them, because they are new clients. Actual parenting! Where has this been for the last 50+ books?! It's mentioned in here that Kristy told them before that this is always a good idea, but it's never been done before or mentioned to the reader. Sounds like a big safety retcon to me, probably done in response to criticism from the parents of young readers. Either way, it was nice to see this finally done.
I also had a lot of sympathy for Uncle Joe, although I doubt I would have as a kid. He's old, tired, and not doing particularly well, then he gets dropped into a house with eight young kids. Since the Pike kids don't receive much supervision and are always running wild, this has to be even more jarring. It's not his job to entertain the kids, and he probably doesn't have a lot of energy either. I do think this was a good way to teach kids empathy for the elderly though, which is something very difficult to understand when you are young and bursting with energy all the time. The explanation of Alzheimer's was also a nice touch. All the topics in this storyline were well handled. Even though this was the side plot, it overshadowed the main, random ghost cat storyline.
Misc:
*Mallory's favorite vegetable is an artichoke. Jordan doesn't like waffles. (We get lots of Pike family meals in here.)
*In the early books, we were told that Mal had brown hair, but now she says it's red and the rest of her family has brown.
*Apparently sometimes Mal and Jessi pretend they're horses?! Wow, that's hilarious. I used to pretend to be a My Little Pony...when I was around 6-7. Could we please get a scene of them doing this, and being caught by another BSC member??
*Mal worries that the Craine girls' aunt is going to offer her a beer, just because she rides a motorcycle, LOL! Not only is this hilarious, I think it's also the first mention of alcohol in the series! Gotta cross that one off my list of things that I thought didn't exist in the BSC-verse.
*Kristy doesn't like cats. Is this because of Boo-Boo, haha?
*Since when does Mrs. Pike have a part-time job, and what is it? Or do they mean her temping?
*Dawn owns a meter that "tests for the presence of ectoplasm"! She sent away for it after seeing an ad in a Ghostly Tales comic. This is SO something I would have done as a kid!
*Ghostwritten by Ellen Miles
Books mentioned:
*Mal's reading A Wrinkle In Time
*Angelina Ballerina, by Katharine Holabird and Helen Craig
My rating:
3.5 stars, an entertaining read, and not bad for a mystery.
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