Emily Butler (1)

It is the year 1784 and Josephine Drollery is writing to a publisher because someone else has written an account of her adventures full of errors and she will now set the record straight. Thirty years ago, her life was a pretty good one – that is, until her parent’s dinner party where everyone including Josephine were murdered. Now, Josephine is a ghost with a mission – she is determined to discover the murderer(s) and bring them to justice. With the aid of two orphaned African show more American cousins, a Harvard Professor who, though dead, continues to teach, and a fraudulent spiritualist known as The Great Montesquieu who is a bit disconcerted to discover a real ghost contacting him. But before she can solve the murders, she must first learn the skills of being a ghost.

The Drollery Letters Number one: The Devil’s Interval by author Emily Butler is aimed at a Middle Grade audience and is definitely not your typical ghost story. It is more historical mystery with ghost and just a touch of steam punk thrown in so don’t expect any frights or chills. It is, however, a fun fast read – Josephine is spunky, her friends are an interesting lot and there’s plenty of humour to keep the reader engaged. show less

I don’t know if it’s always been the case, but I feel as if I’ve seen a lot of books lately published as “volume one” in a series, which leaves me curious. Was the novel so good that the publisher immediately contracted for more? Was the author expressing a sort of writer’s optimism? Whatever the reason, I’ve just finished a book for grade school-aged (more or less) readers that I’m glad to see is presented as volume one in a series: Emily H. Butler’s The Case of the show more Devil’s Interval, the first volume in The Drollery Letters.

The central character here is Josephine Drollery and the novel is set in 1784, in the newly independent U.S.—but if you’re expecting something American Girl-ish, you’re in for a surprise. The book is a sort of historical, humor, paranormal, slightly steam punk mash-up. Josephine is a brand-new ghost trying to solve her own murder with the help of a fraudulent spiritualist, who styles himself as “The Great Montesquieu,” a pair of orphaned African-American cousins, who trade odd jobs in a tavern for the privilege of sleeping in the stables, and a dead-but-still-teaching Harvard professor in the Study of Every Known Scientific Principle.

Josephine is livid because the great Montesquieu has begun publishing the cases they’ve worked on—without giving her any credit! So she’s penning her version of the story and sending it Montequieu’s publisher, with whom she is equally miffed: “I do not wish to mince words, you great nitwit. But if stupidity were contagious, you would be the plague. If it were candy, you’d be a sugar-dusted nut ball.”

While Josephine is tracking her killer (and she’s not the only victim), she’s facing additional challenges. The first of these is learning to be a ghost. Even the lightest material objects, for example, are impossibly heavy for a ghost to lift: “A candle was a luxury in those days, one that my friends couldn’t afford and that I couldn’t carry.” The second is evading a pair of Harvard paranormal researchers who are the Revolutionary-era equivalent of ghost busters. (The equipment they use is where the steam punk comes in.)

Dead or alive, Josephine is a remarkable girl, full of imagination and gumption. She refers to the nursery where she sleeps as the crow’s nest, noting “(I suppose people of limited imagination would refer to it as the nursery.)” Whether or not you’re in grades 3-7, you’ll enjoy spending time in her company and, like me, will be looking forward to meeting up with her again. show less

Freya is a penguin who grew up in a comfortable home with loving parents. As an adult, she has lived alone on an island for years but craves adventure. Inspired by a favorite book on travel, she finally takes the daring step of stowing away on explorer Captain Andrée’s hot air balloon expedition to the North Pole. She discovers another stowaway, a scrappy, mouthy mouse named Zoose (for Zeus). Freya has no choice but to put up with him. As the trip has one disaster after another, Freya and show more Zoose must work together to survive and eventually become unlikely but affectionate friends. show less

Freya is a proper penguin and has been living on a remote island all by herself but she would love to see the world. She takes a chance and hides herself in the bottom of a hot air balloon basket with the destination of the North Pole. This is where she meets Zoos, a mouse who has been around places but annoys Freya from the beginning of their trip. They do stick together and after a rough landing on an ice floe their next lag is experienced while stowed away in a small boat. They both have show more near death experiences and save one another which turns their relationship into a friendship.
Black and gray illustrations accompany this adventurous travel story on multiple pages. Although the main storyline is about the animals, it is mixed with historic accurate facts including the failure of Salomon Andree’s expedition. The expressive language and innocent story is a good fit for advanced readers in lower grades.
Written
3rd - 5th grade
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