The Witch's Guide to Cooking with Children: A Modern-Day Retelling of Hansel and Gretel
192
The Witch's Guide to Cooking with Children: A Modern-Day Retelling of Hansel and Gretel
192eBookFirst Edition (First Edition)
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Overview
When Sol and Connie Blink move to Grand Creek, one of the first people to welcome them is an odd older woman, Fay Holaderry, and her friendly dog, Swift, who carries a very strange bone in his mouth. Sol knows a lot more than the average eleven-year-old, so when he identifies the bone as human, he and Connie begin to wonder if their new neighbor is up to no good.
In a spine-tingling adventure that makes them think twice about who they can trust, Sol and Connie discover that solving mysteries can be a dangerous game—even for skilled junior sleuths.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429927475 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2009 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Lexile: | 710L (what's this?) |
| File size: | 3 MB |
| Age Range: | 9 - 12 Years |
About the Author
KEITH MCGOWAN has worked most of his life as an educator. He helped run an elementary after school program and day camp, taught mathematics and science, volunteered for a year as a teacher in Haiti, and tutored students who were unable to attend school full time. An avid traveler, Keith began writing The Witch's Guide to Cooking with Children, in Himachal Pradesh, India, staring at the Himalayan mountains, and continued working on it in Boston, New Orleans, and Chicago, and Vienna, Austria, where he now lives with his wife. The Witch's Guide to Cooking with Children is his first novel for children.
YOKO TANAKA is the illustrator of several books, including Sparrow Girl. She lives in Thailand.
Keith McGowan is the author of The Witch’s Guide to Cooking with Children, which received glowing reviews and honors. A former teacher, he currently lives in the third district of Vienna, Austria.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
SOL AND CONNIE
Monday
SOLOMON AND CONSTANCE Blink — Sol and Connie for short — moved into the town of Grand Creek one hot day in the middle of August. Sol was eleven and Connie was eight.
The late afternoon sun streamed over the mountains into Sol's new bedroom as he unpacked. He'd already taken out a telescope and a microscope. These allowed him to peer into other worlds, large and small, that sometimes seemed more appealing than this one.
He examined the instruments, his hand at his chin, his long hair falling in front of his shoulders.
He unpacked a box of science books next, checking their titles as he ordered and stacked them. Most of the books looked advanced, almost like what scientists might have had on their own shelves. Sol, you see, was a very smart boy.
His intelligence, however, hadn't helped to make him the number one most popular boy at his old school. Popular slots two to one hundred had also been taken.
Sol may have been remembering his old school just then, because his lips twisted into a grimace. Maybe he was even remembering his worst day ever. Last spring.
The Terrible Day ...
He didn't know that an even more terrible day lay ahead for him.
The next box Sol opened held a curious device, which he removed carefully. The device was something he had made himself. It had a CPU — central processing unit — at center and an octopus of wires attaching the CPU to meters and a screen. That screen displayed, in order, the temperature, barometric pressure, time, and, based on all of that information, a guess at the current weather. The screen showed, "82°, 855 MB, 4:02PM," and "SUNNY," which were all correct.
Sol smiled and breathed a quiet snort. He set the device gently on the windowsill, then turned to his other boxes.
In one, he found his mother's old scientific treatise, yellowed and tattered. A talented scientist, Sol and Connie's mother had traveled many years before to study warming in the Antarctic. There she'd made a discovery of great importance: The ice shelf was melting at an alarming rate. Unfortunately, she discovered this while standing on the ice shelf, which, as predicted, melted and fell into the ocean. She was never heard from again. Though her results, radioed in, did survive and were hailed by the scientific world.
Sol spent a few minutes paging through his mother's work, then his eyes fell on the thing that lay below it, a plaque that his sister, Connie, had given him last spring. The plaque read: MANY OF LIFE'S FAILURES ARE PEOPLE WHO DID NOT REALIZE HOW CLOSE THEY WERE TO SUCCESS WHEN THEY GAVE UP — THOMAS EDISON. He turned the plaque facedown and placed it in a spare box with some old books.
After some time he confronted one unlabeled box, all taped up, which he didn't open. Instead, he pushed it into the farthest reaches of his new closet, as if he never wanted to see it again.
Then he went out of the bedroom to see how the rest of the moving was going and what his younger sister was up to.
Connie was very different from her brother. She was outside the two-story apartment building at that moment beside the moving truck. She'd climbed onto her family's sofa as it was being picked up by two of the movers. So that the movers carried both the sofa and Connie across the lawn and into the small building, with Connie sitting up very queenlike and slowly waving, first left and then right, to an imaginary audience of onlookers. Those onlookers were, in her mind, watching her brilliant and important entrance being carried into her new home. In the hallway outside the apartment, one neighbor did open her door to look out. Connie honored the neighbor with a wave and an elegant nod.
To look at Connie enjoying herself that day, you would never have known that she was keeping a guilty secret from her brother. But then, you couldn't tell how much she missed her old cat, Quantum, either, and she missed Quantum very much. It wasn't that Connie didn't feel sad about her cat, or guilty about the secret she kept from her brother. It's just that she wasn't one to mope.
As to what she looked like, Connie was spry and flexible. She had very short hair and big ears that stuck out on either side of her small head, possibly made like that to let certain comments pass quickly into one and out the other, spending as little time as possible in between. Comments, for instance, like her father's outburst when the movers carried not just the sofa into the apartment but Connie too.
"Connie! Get off that couch this instant!" Mr. Blink said. Mrs. Blink — who had married Sol and Connie's father just before the move — looked up from unpacking and shook her head in amazement.
Connie was the tiniest bit slow in responding to her father's order, though. So that she slid off the sofa just after the movers put it down, completing her grand ride in style.
Sol was coming out of the bedroom then and saw that his father and stepmother were upset. He ducked into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of ice water — it was very hot that Monday — then came out and said, "Connie, want to go to the park?"
Connie nodded.
"Dad, can we go?" he asked.
"Anything that gets you out of here," Mr. Blink answered, "is fine with me."
Sol and Connie found a Frisbee and a tennis ball in one of the boxes lying in the living room. Before they left, Sol saw his glass of ice water, now mostly ice, on the counter and had the idea to teach Connie something.
"Come look at this." He took her into the kitchen, poured some more water into the glass, and added a couple more ice cubes. "I'm going to mark the level of the water." He found some masking tape and used that to do it. "Now, when we get back and the ice has melted, will the water be higher than it is now, or lower?"
"Higher," Connie said.
"Why?"
"Because when the ice melts, there'll be more water, so the water will go up."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Are you willing to bet on it? Do you have any money?"
Connie checked. "Three dollars."
"Will you bet the three dollars?"
"Sure, I'll bet you three dollars the water'll be higher," she said stubbornly. "What do you say? You say it'll be lower?"
"Nope. I say it will be in exactly the same place after the ice melts. Want to take back your bet?"
"No!" Connie said, not one to give in. Connie also wasn't one to lose a bet, though, especially if it involved her own money. So she made sure to sneak back, as she and her brother were leaving, to pour just a little more water into the glass. Then she caught up with Sol. She suspected that he knew more about this scientific matter than she did. But he didn't know enough to win three dollars from her. Of that she was certain.
CHAPTER 2SCIENTIFIC CURIOSITY
SOL AND CONNIE'S new block was a street of houses with their own small apartment building at one end — a two-story building that held six apartments. As the children stepped outside, the movers were still working. The men would disappear into the moving truck, parked halfway on the sidewalk, and reappear with some small part of Sol and Connie's life. Their father's night table was coming out as they left.
When the two children passed the first house next to their new home, a dog bounded out of the house with something in its mouth. The screen door must have been open. The dog was chocolate brown, smallish, with long hair and floppy ears. It ran fast. Sol and Connie didn't have a chance to move before it was upon them. Luckily it was a friendly dog. It ran circles around them, wagging its tail and barking from the throat, while at the same time trying to keep whatever it had in its mouth from falling. This turned out to be a bone.
A woman walked out of the house — Fay Holaderry, the witch of this story. She was wrapped in a too-big dress that she held up at one shoulder as she crossed the lawn, so that she looked a little like a girl playing dress-up.
"Swift! Swift!" she called to the dog. "Leave the children alone." She came up to them. "I'm sorry about my dog. He got out somehow."
"It's okay, we love dogs," Connie said.
"Yes, but still he shouldn't do that. Down, Swift," she called.
The dog had started jumping up with its front paws on Sol. Sol played with him by pulling on the bone in a tug-of-war. Swift took this very seriously. He dug his paws in and pulled back, growling, but in a friendly way.
"That one loves his lunch." Holaderry laughed. Then she looked at the sister and brother. "But I don't think I've seen you two around here before."
"We're just moving in today," Connie said.
Holaderry glanced at the truck parked up on the sidewalk. "Oh yes, I see. I've been indoors all morning." A smile spread across her face. "You have a big family?"
"Just us and our parents," Sol answered, glancing up while still playing tug-of-war with the dog. He tugged on the bone. The dog tugged back. Sometime during this game, a puzzled expression crept onto Sol's face. There was something strange about that bone.
"Well, let me be the first to welcome you to the neighborhood," the woman said, holding out her hand. "My name's Fay. Fay Holaderry. And this is my dog, Swift."
Sol let go of the bone, wiped his hands on his pants, and shook Holaderry's hand. Connie shook Holaderry's hand too, looking into the woman's eyes as she did. She could usually tell a lot from a person's eyes. But Holaderry's were shut like a gate, so Connie could only see what was on the outside of the woman. Bright tomato red hair. Crow's-feet wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.
"It's so nice to have kids around," Holaderry went on. "There are none left on this block. They've all ... they've all gone." She glanced at the apartment building as if she could see through it into their new home. She smiled. "I'll have to have you over for dinner, one of these days."
"That's very nice of you, Mrs. Holaderry, thanks for the invitation," Sol said politely. "Come on, Connie, let's go to the park. It's been nice to meet you," he said to the woman.
Holaderry glanced curiously at Sol. "Yes, very nice to meet you too," she said. "Swift and I should get back to what we were doing. Come on, Swift boy."
Connie scratched Swift on the head. "Goodbye, Swift," she said. "Goodbye," she said to Holaderry.
As they walked down the block, past driveways and gardens, Sol asked, "Did you notice anything strange about that woman, Connie?"
"I think so. There was something strange."
Sol felt as if Holaderry was still watching them. But when he looked back, no one was there.
No one, that is, but a wood thrush that eyed them carefully from the grass, then took off and flew over an eave in the direction of the town center. That thrush had gone to report on Sol and Connie's arrival. You see, Holaderry wasn't the only woman from the old forest who had stayed after the trees had been cut down. Another had stayed, and she was of a different kind, the woman with this thrush.
But Sol didn't pay any attention to the bird. He turned and saw, across the street, a low building with double doors. A sign in front read GRAND CREEK LIBRARY. Steps led to the main entrance.
"How about we go in there," he said to Connie, "just for a little while. There's something I want to look up."
"I thought we were going to the park, like normal kids."
"I am normal," Sol said. And, to prove his point, he did exactly what Connie wanted. He went with her to the park.
It looked like any town park, a lawn of summer-dry grass, a path offering benches for the occasional walker to sit on. Except that, far in the distance over the houses of the town, mountains loomed. Sol and Connie weren't used to seeing mountains from their home. In fact, they had never seen mountains like that in real life at all.
"They look so close," Connie said. "Do you think we could walk there?"
"They're much farther than they look," Sol answered. "You'd have to drive a long time to reach them."
Sol and Connie spent more than an hour in the park, throwing the ball and the Frisbee. The air was heavy with humidity. When Connie threw the Frisbee, it glided straight and slow through that air, right to Sol. But Sol could never throw a Frisbee straight. When he threw it, it tilted, shot off to the side, and landed on its edge, rolling like a wheel across the grass.
A couple of years ago, if he'd thrown a Frisbee wrong like that while playing with other kids, he would have immediately launched into an explanation of how a Frisbee flew. He'd talk about air pressure and the shape of a Frisbee's edges. By explaining how it flew, Sol showed that he knew something the others didn't, even if he was a lousy thrower.
But at age eleven he'd outgrown having to prove himself to other kids. He knew it wasn't important if he could throw a Frisbee straight. He couldn't be good at everything. That was life.
Connie chased after the Frisbee as it rolled away. She grabbed it, ran back, swung her arm forward, and the Frisbee took flight, gliding perfectly to him.
That was the way a Frisbee should fly.
"Let's throw the ball," Sol said. They were both good at that. So they switched to the ball and threw it back and forth, thoroughly enjoying themselves — for the first and last time in Grand Creek — as the sun dipped behind the mountains and a breeze rose.
When they finished and were headed back, Sol said, "Let's go to the library now. There's something I want to check." He crossed the street and walked up the library steps. Connie stayed close behind.
Sol had a new mission that afternoon, forming in his mind since they'd left their neighbor and her dog. He wanted to find out exactly what kind of bone the dog had been playing with. There was something strange about it, that much he was sure of. Sol knew a lot about the anatomy of animals. Most dog bones came from cows, he thought, or maybe also sheep. If that bone had been a cow or sheep bone, though, something was totally wrong about its size and shape.
Inside the library, the computers in the children's section had a sign on them: TEMPORARILY DOWN.
Sol told Connie, "I'll meet you here in a minute."
He walked to the main Internet computers, but they were all being used. Checking the sign-in list, he saw it would be more than an hour before he could get online. So he went to the catalog computer instead to search for books on the library shelves.
Sol typed in animal anatomy, his fingers tap-tapping on the keyboard. Books came up with names like Bovine Anatomy and Guide to Animal Anatomy and Physiology.
He went into the stacks to find those and similar ones. Most of the books he pulled off the shelf were too complicated even for many adults, but Sol wasn't daunted. One book on display with a bright blue cover caught his eye. Human Anatomy. He took that one too.
He carried everything to a table in the children's section and quickly grew absorbed in his books.
Connie, meanwhile, was wandering the aisles and starting to amuse herself with a new game. She crouched hidden in one aisle and peered over the books on the shelf into the next aisle. Then she reached in carefully and pushed books facing that aisle off the shelf. For someone in that aisle, those books fell off very mysteriously.
A small boy walking there saw two books fall out, on their own, next to him. He hadn't touched them. He turned and walked the other way, but books flew off the shelf near wherever he stood. He ran away to his mother, frightened.
Connie was readying to target her next victim when a librarian appeared behind her. Connie jumped.
"I'm going to have to ask you to behave, young lady," the librarian said. She had a square jaw, bright rosy cheeks, and an all-knowing look in her eyes. "Now, can I help you find a book?"
"Sure." Connie put a finger to her chin, rather like her brother did when he was thinking. "War and Peace," she said.
The librarian did not look amused. "I'm afraid that book might not be right for you."
"Are you saying I'm dumb?" Connie challenged the librarian.
"No. It's just that Tolstoy goes on and on about history and the individual's place in history. It does get a bit tiresome."
"Okay, then. Wuthering Heights."
The woman studied Connie. "What are you doing in the library on such a beautiful day?"
"My brother and I just moved here, and he wanted to look stuff up." She pointed at Sol, who was sitting at the table in the children's section, a stack of books in front of him.
"Where?" The librarian looked at Sol's table, but she must not have realized Connie meant Sol, because, with his long hair below his shoulders, he looked for all the world like a girl.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Witch's Guide to Cooking with Children"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Keith McGowan.
Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Reading Group Guide
Questions for Discussion
1. Like most brothers and sisters, Sol and Connie differ in personality and interests. How do their differences lead them to the discovery of who Fay Holaderry is? How do their differences ultimately save their lives? Why are they so close and dependent on each other?
2. Mrs. Alma, Sol's science teacher, believes in Sol, and she encourages him to pursue his talent and interest. How does her support help Sol? Why does he feel like he lets her down on the Terrible Day?
3. In what ways does Connie feel inferior to Sol? How do her feelings negatively affect Sol on the Terrible Day? How does that day affect Sol's opinion of himself?
4. Sol's suspicions of Fay Holaderry increase when he discovers that Swift is chewing on a human femur. What other conversations and events cause him to be concerned about her motivation to be nice to Connie and him?
5. How does Mrs. Blink use Mr. Blink's family lineage and hers as justifi cation for turning Sol and Connie over to the witch? What finally clinches the deal for Mr. Blink? Why is he easily manipulated?
6. It is no mistake that the good woman from All Creatures Great and Small has survived the centuries just as the evil Fay Holaderry has survived. How do the two women counteract each other in the story? Does the woman from the shop have any helpers that the readers know about?
7. The librarian is just one of the helpers Fay Holaderry has employed in the town. How does the witch find her helpers? What do they receive for helping the old witch? Why would they help her?
8. Does the reader know how old the various helpers are? Does the author introduce any young characters in his story? What could this mean about the town of Grand Creek?
9. What do Sol and Connie think happened to their father and his wife? Do they ever discover the truth about their father? How does the reader know?
10. Why is Sol unwilling to forgive Connie for sabotaging his science fair project? How will this affect their relationship? Does Connie intentionally sabotage Sol's invention? Why is the witch willing to forgive Swift for helping Sol and Connie escape? How do the two incidents relate?