In Which My Bookseller Sister Explains The Boxcar Children to a Parent

I don’t work in retail because I generally dislike people. Or at least shoppers. No, probably just people.

My sister, on the other hand, is much nicer than I am. She manages a Barnes & Noble, and not once has she punched someone in the face for asking for “that book I saw here last time; the one with the red cover.” I think this says a lot about her character.

This isn’t a story about customer stupidity. I thought you should know that right now in case you were getting all excited about hearing about the woman who couldn’t find the shelves with the Nook books.*

No, this is about a mother searching for a good book for her young child. It’s also about how difficult it can be to pitch a book off the cuff.

This happened a while ago, but I was reminded of it recently when I was describing trying to describe my WIP.

The woman was in her late 30s, early 40s. She was on the hunt for a book series her elementary school–age kid would enjoy. “What did you read at that age?” 

My sister rattled off a list of chapter book series, like the The Babysitters Club, Ramona Quimby, and Encyclopedia Brown. “And The Boxcar Children,” she said. 

“I’ve never heard of that one.” 

“Oh. We used to get them from the library all the time when we were little.” 

Libraries are like bookstores, but instead of buying the books, you borrow them for a short time. When I was young, pretty much everything we read came from the library. (This was in the prehistoric era, when there was no such thing as Amazon Prime and free two-day delivery.) 

“What’s it about?” The woman was interested now. My sister didn’t mean the mention of the series as a recommendation, but for some reason, this customer was hooked on The Boxcar Children. “Well, in the first book it’s this family of homeless kids—” 

“Homeless?” 

“Well, not really. The boxcar was their home. See, their parents died so they lived in empty train cars. They went on all these adventures. And I think they had to, like, steal food and bedding and stuff.** Or maybe they begged people for money to buy food. I can’t remember.” 

“So, hobo beggars?” 

“Yeah. They were real independent.” 

“And this is a children’s book?” 

By this point, my sister was wishing she never mentioned The Boxcar Children or at the very least had read it again at some point during the past two decades. “Yeah, but maybe there’s something else—” 

“That sounds horrible,” the customer said. 

“It’s really not. I just don’t remember it well.” 

“Child hobos.” 

“I think I explained it poorly. There are four kids and … Let me show you what else we have.”

The moral of this story is: Succinctly explaining the plot of a book is hard. Succinctly explaining the plot of a book you read 25 years ago is really, really hard.

This reminds me of those hilarious movie loglines that twist the plot but are surprisingly accurate. (Like this.) Leave yours in the comments.

* They’re on the Nook, in case you’re curious. Or online.

** As it turns out, this isn’t the case. Like the examples of moral excellence that they are, the children always ask before taking. (That knowledge thanks to this review.)

A Scary Story

Happy Halloween, friends. Imagine me typing away in truly gruesome zombie makeup and a skimpy zombie getup (because rotting flesh is always sexy on October 31). I love Halloween. I love being scared.

I love being scared because I’m generally not scared when it comes to horror movies and books. I have yet to find one that truly frightens me.*

When I tried to consider the scariest book I’ve read, I drew a blank. So I’ve decided to share a book that is in no way horror but includes one of the scariest scenes I’ve ever read. I’m talking nightmare scary. It’s been years since I read this book and I still remember in vivid detail The Scene.

Yes, 1984. Didn’t see that coming, did you? (Or maybe you did because, you know, that video is gigantic.) I still have nightmares of a certain scene in which our protagonist, who like me is terrified of rodents, is tied up and locked in room with rats intent on devouring him. WORST EXPERIENCE EVER. 

And because I’m not recommending any other horror novels, how about a true ghost story? Or a true story from my middle school days that quite possibly involved a paranormal creature?

***

There might have been a ghost and there might not have been. You can decide which option is scarier.

It was a warm autumn day that started with a cold morning. I’d woken too early, as I did every weekday because the school district was determined to singlehandedly ruin my life. It was still early when I finished getting dressed, scowling at the cute outfit that wouldn’t distract from my full mouth of metal. Though I was only in middle school and technically expected to trash my room with discarded clothing and whatever else middle schoolers can’t be bothered to put away, my bedroom was spotless. I am and was and will always be a neat freak.

This is important. As I left my room, shutting off the light before I traipsed downstairs to catch the bus, everything was in its place. Clothes in the closet. Full-length mirror against the wall. Rocking chair in the corner. And a collection of framed photos arranged in a pattern beneath the circular mirror that hung over my vanity.

My father left for work first. Maybe long before the bus came or maybe minutes. It doesn’t matter. My sister and I went next. My mother, who didn’t have a job but was somehow always busy, did something unmemorable that day. The what isn’t the point. It’s the when.

She left the house some time in the morning and didn’t come home until minutes before my sister and I got out of school. It had been hot that afternoon, too hot for the long pants and shirt I’d worn that morning. I went up to my room to change into something cooler, something that wouldn’t have me sweating through hours of homework.

That’s when I saw them.

Four pictures that used to hang on the wall above my vanity lay in the middle of my room. They were too far to have fallen from the wall and tumbled down the furniture. But that didn’t matter. Even if their fall had somehow catapulted them across the room, they would never have arranged themselves, face up, in the exact pattern they appeared on my wall just that morning.

Straight lines, even spaces between frames. The precision with which the photos had been arranged was amazing. It had to be my mother.

Only it wasn’t. Nor was it my father or sister.

For years I thought they had all played a trick on me. I didn’t freak out and I didn’t lose sleep over the practical joke. But I never forgot it. A week ago, I asked my family again who had arranged my photos in the middle of my room. They all denied it. My mom even admitted to real fear over the mystery. My parents changed the locks on our house that week even though there was no sign of forced entry. They too often think about the mystery of the picture frames. It’s impossible to forget.

Because it could have been a ghost, if you believe in that sort of thing. Or it could be someone else. Someone living.

Anyone else have close encounters of a paranormal kind to share? If not, share something scary that’s happened to you!

Here’s what other Bookanistas find frightening:

Tracy Banghart gives us her favorite scary reads
Christine Fonseca brings her top 5 creeptastic reads and her fab 5 creepy authors

*Though I admit to avoiding bug and rodent movies like Arachnophobia that will undoubtedly give me nightmares for the rest of my life and possibly cause a mental breakdown.

A Secret Trick For You

Oh look, it’s Tuesday. Which means, according to the blogfest’s bylaws and constitution and instruction manual, I’m supposed to tell you about myself today. Something you don’t already know, which means no talk of my grace and charm. (Ha!) Hmmm…

Call me wicked, but there’s really nothing like watching someone’s face as your practical joke plays out with them. It’s not that I like laughing at helpless people … but, yeah, in this case it’s like I love laughing at helpless people. But all in good fun, I swear.

(Oh look, none of you want to be friends anymore. I wonder why…)

Half the fun is thinking up crazy jokes, but because I love you and would never laugh at you without a very good reason, I’m going to share an easy practical joke that doesn’t take much time or effort to pull.

Here’s what you’ll need:

A loved one’s toothbrush

Anbesol

Really, this is the simplest joke ever. Squeeze a decent amount of Anbesol onto the toothbrush, rubbing it in until traces of the brownish gel disappear into the bristles. Make sure you’re in the room when you’re friend/family member/sworn enemy brushes his or her teeth…

…and then starts to freak out when their mouth goes numb.

No humans are harmed in the making of this prank. The numbness wears off pretty quickly.

So there you have it. Okay, go ahead: Tell me I’m morally corrupt. But only do that if you’ve completed the prank and didn’t laugh so hard you cried.

What’s the best practical joke you’ve played (or had played on you)? 

In Which Teen Tracey Thinks She's Dying

Today marks the start of the month-long Blog Me MAYbe blogfest, in which you blog more often, have more fun, and never run out of blog post ideas. Four out of five doctors surveyed said the blogfest reduces weight by 87 perecent.* If you want to join in, click here for details.

Let’s kick this baby off with the Tuesday topic: May I tell you something about myself? Because I write for teens, I thought it’d be fun to use Tuesdays to tell you things about Teen Tracey. I can’t promise that will always be the case—I’m pretty set on dedicating a future post to my new writing space—but just go with it. (Thanks and I love you.)

Okay, yep, this is totally what I looked like in high school. Did I forget to mention I was a part-time woman of ill repute?*

I was pretty sure I was dying.

I’d felt fine all morning—no headache or nausea or little signs of my body slowly shutting down. It wasn’t until after lunch, when I was sitting in Chemistry, that I became aware of my imminent demise.

There I was, gagging at the scent of chalk mixed with pencil shavings and some bitter chemical we’d just boiled over a Bunsen burner. My classmates scribbled lab notes while our teacher erased the blackboard. I rubbed my hands harder, on my new black jeans to improve my circulation. My thighs warmed, but the friction wasn’t doing anything for my blue hands.

I was no medical genius, but blue hands seemed … wrong. And let’s be serious, wrong = fatal. It was a fact.*

I walked up to my teacher, hands clenched into fists. Sure, a chemistry teacher isn’t a good substitute for a doctor, but gimme a break; I was working with what I had. He stared at my hands, the blue fingers and palms. I waited for him to laugh at me, to tell me the chemicals we’d just mixed could turn you into Violet Beauregarde’s twin, but he didn’t. Because he had no idea what was wrong with me.

So, right. Back to the whole dying thing.

Me, melodramatic? Psh.

I spent the rest of the day furiously rubbing my hands together and on my legs to warm them up, but no matter what I did, they stayed freakishly blue. By the time the last bell had rang, I’d pretty much resigned myself to creating a last will and testament instead of doing homework that night.**

My mom’s car waited for me when I left the building and I threw myself into the back seat.

“How was your day?” she asked. I told her everything: how I felt fine all day, how my hands suddenly turned blue, how I was pretty much going to die and I really didn’t want my sister to have my favorite sweater.

And then she laughed. SHE LAUGHED AT HER DYING DAUGHTER.

And passed me a wet wipe while laughing. While wiping her laugh-tears away.

I cleaned my hands with the wipe, which left them pink and healthy looking. But the wet wipe? Bluish black.

Because my unwashed black jeans were bleeding on my hands. My hands that rubbed on my jeans THE ENTIRE DAY. The jeans that sopped up extra water after I washed my hands and dried them on those scratchy brown paper towels that smelled like sour leaves.

I’m not ashamed to reveal this to you. To let you know that:

1. We didn’t have cell phones with Internet access when I was in school.
2. WebMD had not been created. (But, yes, funny guy, the Internet had.)
3. I was a complete hypochondriac and apparently lacked all sorts of street smarts.

Make me feel better: When have you completely overreacted in health matters?

*But not really.

**Who am I kidding? Even if I were dying, I’d have done my homework. Just in case.