And then there was The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring which focused almost entirely on Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmerman's adventures over the summer while Lewis was at Boy Scout Camp. (So why then is this often referred to as The Lewis Barnavelt Series?) Rose Rita is a full-fledged tomboy and is dissatisfied with being a girl. She wants a chance to prove herself and she gets the perfect opportunity when Mrs. Zimmerman becomes afflicted by dark magic and then mysteriously vanishes. [A/N: Richard Egielski is the illustrator of this volume and has a much different style.] If you haven't picked up on this by now it seems as if Bellairs sticks to the same narrative with only slight variations which is the main reason why this series got so stale by the second book. I don't have a lot of hope for the fourth but maybe with a different author at the helm (books up until 2008 and they began in the early 70s) there will be an uptick in excitement and narrative diversity. 3/10

 

What I'm Currently Reading: Founding Mothers: The Women who Raised our Nation by Cokie Roberts

Rose Rita faces a summer alone after Lewis goes to Boy Scout camp. It gets worse when her mother suggests they have a "little talk" about boys and girls soon, and Rose Rita thinks about how she's 13 now and about to enter Junior High where there's even less room for a tomboy like her as well as dances and dating.

Thankfully Mrs. Zimmerman invites her along on a road trip to see the sights of Upper Michigan and take care of some inherited property. But there's something amiss. When they arrive a ring that may be magical has been stolen and it feels to Rose Rita that her and Mrs. Zimmerman aren't alone either in the new Plymouth Cranbrook on lonely backroads or in the bedrooms of the tourist homes they stop in at. Bellairs really creates a claustrophobic mood that's offset by Rose Rita's inner struggle about what the future will hold for her and Lewis' friendship.

What I really love, more and more, about Bellairs' books, particularly these early ones, is his grey shading of his characters and villains. The evil here isn't faceless. In Clocks Jonathan theorizes that Isaac and Selena Izzard weren't treated so well in the present world and so took drastic steps to begin a new one, the Figure in 'The Figure in the Shadows' came to be after he was burned alive in his house, but in 'The Letter' the villain is unnervingly sympathetic. Gert Bigger blames Mrs. Zimmerman for her eventual fate of being married to a wife-beater after Mrs. Zimmerman won away the affection of a boy in their youth. Lewis found acceptance in 'The House with a Clock in its Walls' and faced down his inner demons in 'The Figure in the Shadows' but we didn't know much about his best friend.

Rose Rita becomes a fully fleshed out character and her outsider status, as a tomboy and otherwise peculiar girl in 1950, is explored. This was the last Lewis/Rose Rita book completely written by Bellairs, he wrote two different similarly themed series after this, which disappoints me still, but I see why he left them behind, now. Bellairs had moved Rose Rita and Lewis forward to the point where, almost inevitably, their friendship would turn towards romance or break apart when all Rose Rita wants is for things to remain the same. That awareness of Rose Rita's about the changes approaching because of their ages and because of societal expectations dominates the book and elevates it above some of Bellairs' later output and all of Brad Strickland's completions and original "John Bellairs Mysteries".

 

Lewis & Rose Rita

 

Next: 'The Ghost in the Mirror'

 

Previous: 'The Figure in the Shadows'

if there's one typical thing that the resolutely atypical magical series by John Bellairs subscribes to, it is the cliché that outsiders band together. but of course it is more than a cliché, it is a reality, and it is something that helps the less-than-perfect kids of the world survive childhood with at least some of their self-esteem intact. the kids in this series are outsiders, but not the beautiful kind - they are the fat kids, the awkwardly aggressive tomboys, and the adults who are those children grown. in this third novel of the series, sidekick rose rita gets her own adventure, and it is just as grey-toned and real and disturbingly ambiguous as the adventures of her friend lewis.

in junior high i had michelle by my side, an aggressive black girl rejected by both blacks and girls, bigger and stronger than any guy, bottle-thick glasses taped together, playing basketball and dreaming of being a marine. in high school i had marcy, just as tough and even more aggressive, also a basketball player, happy to lose her temper and eager to show off her strength. every kid who sees himself as an outsider should have a resourceful tomboy as their best friend. michelle and marcy were my rose rita and it was gratifying to see rose off on her own and to see her as someone who didn't exist simply to protect lewis, constantly by his side.

and yet i felt a sadness in lewis missing out on such an important and dangerous escapade. i bet the mystery could have been solved faster if there were two minds working on it, right? plus rose would have had lewis to share her adventure! i wonder what adventures michelle had. wouldn't marcy's life be even better with me by her side? there is something so wistful, so ineffable about contemplating journeys that move people away from each other.

eek! scared the crap out of me when i was ten years old.

This is a rare Bellairs with a female protagonist. Lewis is away at summer camp, and his best friend Rose Rita goes to Michigan with Mrs Zimmerman to dispose of some property Mrs Z's cousin Oley left her. Gertie is an angry, unhappy old woman who still carries a grudge against Mrs Z from a fight over a boy when they were girls. She steals Oley's magic ring to use for revenge and Rose Rita is left on her own to save both herself and her friend. Bellairs deals sensitively with issues of gender discrimination and the emotional difficulties of junior high.