The Mystery of the Crimson Ghost
by Phyllis A. Whitney
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Description
While spending the summer in the country, a young girl falls in love with the neighbor's horse, but her attempts to befriend the mare are thwarted by mysterious events involving a crimson ghost-dog and the horse's "crazy" owner.Tags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
From the first page:
“My name is Janey Oakes, and I might as well tell you straight off that I have a very serious and painful disease. I call it ‘horse fever’. It can attack when you’re young, and I understand that it can last until you’re grown-up and so busy with other things that you feel only twinges now and then. It is incurable but not fatal. The painful part grows out of not owning a horse when that is what you want more than anything else in the world.”
Even though I’m many, many years removed from being a teenager, much less a teenage girl, that first paragraph hooked me. I can almost imagine what it must have been like for a young female to get ahold of this book when it came out, especially if she had “horse show more fever”. I’ve suffered from that ailment periodically myself, so I can understand a little of where young Janey is coming from, and could easily relate to her story.
This is a wonderful book that involves a nice little mystery and some life lessons for young (and not so young) readers. I found it to be a really fun story, and wish I had discovered it when I was a youngster.
I just love the observant and thoughtful Janey.
“Dad says my theme song is ‘I’m not down yet!’ I suppose it’s true. There is always some way to pull up and out of almost anything, it seems to me.”
“The most important thing for anyone is to have something to fight for. Something we care about and want. I don’t mean fight for with our fists, but something to try for, struggle for. Something we can do that uses whatever we are to win the fight.”
And, there’s the love of horses:
“When I’m on a horse, everything else falls away and stops bothering me. I mean everything that worries me, all the things I can’t solve, even the thought of things I don’t want to do--everything fades into the background. I’m free-- and that is a wonderful feeling. Besides, I have with me something that is alive and that responds to me--a horse I have an affection for and who likes me.”
Well said, Janey Oakes! show less
“My name is Janey Oakes, and I might as well tell you straight off that I have a very serious and painful disease. I call it ‘horse fever’. It can attack when you’re young, and I understand that it can last until you’re grown-up and so busy with other things that you feel only twinges now and then. It is incurable but not fatal. The painful part grows out of not owning a horse when that is what you want more than anything else in the world.”
Even though I’m many, many years removed from being a teenager, much less a teenage girl, that first paragraph hooked me. I can almost imagine what it must have been like for a young female to get ahold of this book when it came out, especially if she had “horse show more fever”. I’ve suffered from that ailment periodically myself, so I can understand a little of where young Janey is coming from, and could easily relate to her story.
This is a wonderful book that involves a nice little mystery and some life lessons for young (and not so young) readers. I found it to be a really fun story, and wish I had discovered it when I was a youngster.
I just love the observant and thoughtful Janey.
“Dad says my theme song is ‘I’m not down yet!’ I suppose it’s true. There is always some way to pull up and out of almost anything, it seems to me.”
“The most important thing for anyone is to have something to fight for. Something we care about and want. I don’t mean fight for with our fists, but something to try for, struggle for. Something we can do that uses whatever we are to win the fight.”
And, there’s the love of horses:
“When I’m on a horse, everything else falls away and stops bothering me. I mean everything that worries me, all the things I can’t solve, even the thought of things I don’t want to do--everything fades into the background. I’m free-- and that is a wonderful feeling. Besides, I have with me something that is alive and that responds to me--a horse I have an affection for and who likes me.”
Well said, Janey Oakes! show less
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Author Information
108+ Works 11,699 Members
Mystery author Phyllis A. Whitney was born in Yokohama, Japan to American parents on September 9, 1903. After her father's death in 1918, she and her mother traveled from Japan to San Francisco, California on an ocean liner. In 1924, she graduated from McKinley High School in Chicago and sold short stories to newspapers, church papers, and pulp show more magazines as well as worked in bookstores and libraries. She was a Children's Book Editor of the Chicago Sun's Book Week from 1942 to 1946 and the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1947 to 1948. She also taught juvenile fiction writing courses at Northwestern University in 1945 and at New York University from 1947 to 1958. She writes both juvenile and adult mysteries, many set in an exotic location. Her first juvenile book was published in 1941 and her first adult novel was published in 1943. Since then, she has written over 75 books. She has won numerous awards including the Edgar Allen Poe Award in 1961 and 1964, the Sequoyah Award of Oklahoma, and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1988. Phyllis A. Whitney passed away on February 8, 2008 at the age of 104. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
A Cat's Eye Mystery (Scholastic)
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1969
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 136
- Popularity
- 240,706
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.67)
- Languages
- English, Swedish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 6
