A Book You Can Buy From Me
Book Title: The Haunted Birdhouse
Author: Flora Gill Jacobs
Date: 1970
Publisher: Coward McCann & Geoghegan
ISBN: none
Length: 74 pages
Illustrations: drawings by Reisie Louette
Quote: "It's a martin house. Martins, you know, are very fond of nesting together in birdhouses that are almost like little apartment houses."
Five-year-old Jamie thinks the elaborate antique martin house looks haunted. Nine-year-old Polly feels "all the scorn of a nine-year-old sister" for this idea...but there is something spooky and strange about the birdhouse! The cat thinks so too!
The mystery stretches out to tantalize readers between ages five and nine. Possibly some nine-year-olds know the perfectly rational solution, but let's not spoil it for them.
This is a nice, cheerful, friendly, spooky but occult-free mystery for primary school readers. If it inspires them to build their own stark, modern-style martin house, all to the good. Even the "ghost" in this story is a fairly nice creature to have around.
Fair disclosure: my copy of this book is not in good condition. It has not spent forty years in an antique birdhouse, but the children's room in a well-used public library is almost equally hard on books. Then it was stored in a shed, where it was found and greatly appreciated by my frequently annoying cat Bisquit...Bisquit has not expressed much interest in the grown-up mystery series by Sneaky Pie Brown (yet), but she thoroughly enjoyed a more juvenile mystery with cat pictures in it. I've never seen a cat show so much interest in a book before. Her stamp of approval is on almost every page!
Right...so this copy is recommended to anyone looking for something to read in a tree house or share with a cat. A clean copy, which I'd be delighted to send you, is recommended to any primary school reader who would like to know what really might haunt an old abandoned birdhouse.
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