The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring

I very much enjoyed the previous two books in this series, which chronicled the magical adventures of Lewis Barnavelt, but we get a bit of a change of pace with this third novel in the series. Bellairs shifts focus to put Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmerman in the spotlight for their very own magical escapade while Lewis is away at summer camp. The story begins when Mrs. Zimmerman inherits the estate of her crazy old cousin, which seems harmless enough until we add a magical ring into the mix. Mrs. Zummerman is, of course, a logical sceptic, even as a trained magician, so she assumes that the ring is another of her cousin's made up stories, but this proves to almost be her downfall as her childhood rival gets a hold of the ring and turns it show more against her. Bellairs has never shied away from having truely frightening and realistic villains, but Gert Bigger is a keen example of how jealousy and vindictiveness can make a person go bad. At the crux of the story Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmerman are in real danger and it seems like Gert will go through with her plans to kill them both, but thankfully her own greed and the tricky way that magic works ends up being her undoing and our protagonists escape unharmed. Will we ever know if the magic ring really belonged to King Solomon? Probably not, but it is definitely for the best that Mrs. Zimmerman melted it down and got rid of it for good, as the spirit in the ring was clearly a negative influence on its wearer. show less

Rose Rita's best friend, Lewis, is off to summer camp and she's left facing an entire summer of dullness and worry about starting junior high in the fall. But then Mrs. Zimmerman - a good friend who also happens to be a witch - invites her to tag along on a road trip through the Upper Peninsula and things start to look up. Mrs. Zimmerman's trip is brought on by a letter from her recently-deceased acquaintance, who has left her his farm and a particular magic ring, which ends up causing all sorts of trouble for both her and Rose Rita, including some hairy encounters with a nasty old witch, who also wants the ring and has it out for Mrs. Zimmerman.
I love Bellairs' books - great characters, fun stories, and just enough of the scary stuff show more to be creepy but not enough to keep a 10-year-old up at night. Perfect for bedtime reading with Charlie. show less

John Bellairs third book in the House with the Clock in Its Walls series, The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring, focuses on Rose Rita, Lewis' best friend, and Mrs. Zimmerman, Uncle Jonathan's best friend. Bellairs was innovative for his time because he made the best friends for each of the males from the original book female, but he went even further with this third book by barely even mentioning the series protagonist, Lewis, instead focusing on issues facing girls and women of post World War II America. The book begins with Rose Rita upset because she cannot go to the Boy Scout camp that Lewis is going to for the summer. Labeled a "tom boy," Rose Rita likes to do activities that, at the time, were believed only to attract boys, so she show more resents having to go to Girl Scout camp instead. Until Mrs. Zimmerman helps her see the situation from Lewis' point of view: "He wants to learn how to tie knots and paddle canoes and hike through the wilderness, and he wants to come back and tell you so you'll think he's a real boy and like him even more than you do" (11). Lewis, after all, doesn't have Rose Rita's self-confidence or skills, so she finally understands that he wants to live up to her abilities--a shocking revelation for 1967!

Mrs. Zimmerman invites Rose Rita to go with her to visit a farm up-state, which she recently inherited from an old friend, luring her with the promise of determining if an old ring the friend had has magical abilities. Rose Rita's growing sense for magic, though, becomes apparent as the story progresses. Once they discover the ring has been stolen, and proceed to explore another part of the state, Rose Rita begins to sense a malevolent presence. Mrs. Zimmerman dismisses her concerns at first, but then, after finding a photograph of her and her deceased husband at a shop in a small town where Mrs. Zimmerman had never been before, the older woman begins to take Rose Rita's concerns more seriously, realizing that someone is attempting to curse her.

The strength of the book comes from the believable way in which Bellairs has Rose Rita work out what she can and cannot do about Mrs. Zimmerman's disappearance as a seventh grade girl in a strange place. Some writers would have been tempted to have the girl suddenly be able to do magic; instead, Bellairs has her use her wits.

While not quite as magically oriented as the first two books in the series, The Letter is an excellent examination of negative issues facing girls and women in post-War America--with the biggest challenge being seen as mere females, with both proving that gender does not determine capabilities. show less

The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring is listed as being part of the Lewis Barnaveldt series, but Lewis plays an extremely minor part in the book, and doesn't affect the plot except that his absence drives the his best friend (and heroine of the story) Rose Rita to travel with the elderly Mrs. Zimmerman to her late cousin's farm.

The plot of the book is kicked off by a letter Mrs. Zimmerman receives from her late cousin bequeathing her his farm in upstate Michigan. The letter also mentions a magic ring that her cousin says he found on the property. Thirteen year old Rose Rita, feeling abandoned as her best friend Lewis Barnaveldt has decided to go to scout camp for the summer, decides to accompany Mrs. Zimmerman to settle the affairs show more related to the farm.

One of the elements of Bellairs' stories that seem to date them is the easy acceptance of these sorts of friendships between older adults and children. The friendship between Johnny Dixon and Professor Childermass in the Johnny Dixon novels and the close friendship between Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmerman in the Barnaveldt novels are associations I doubt parents would condone in more recent years. In Mrs. Zimmerman's case, it appears Rose Rita's parents don't even like her (unlike Johnny Dixon's grandparents, who are friends with Professor Childermass), but they let her spend the night at Mrs. Zimmerman's house and go away with her on long trips. Nowadays, such a close relationship between an older woman and an unrelated teenage girl would raise more than a few eyebrows, and probably be prohibited by the child's parents. I'm not sure all of Mrs. Zimmerman's influence on Rose Rita is good, but she means well, and if it were prohibited, Rose Rita would clearly suffer, so maybe we have become too sensitive about this sort of thing.

Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmerman travel to northern Michigan, find an old nemesis of Mrs. Zimmerman's, find the farm in disarray, and the allegedly magical ring missing. The two then spend a couple weeks in the area, surrounded by odd events and getting themselves into troubles of various sorts, until Mrs. Zimmerman vanishes one night. On her own now, Rose Rita springs into action, jumps to a couple conclusions, makes a new friend, stretches the truth a bit, and nearly gets herself killed trying to locate and rescue Mrs. Zimmerman. In the end, the villain does herself in, and all turns out well.

In some ways, the mystery, while fun, is merely a backdrop for the story of tomboyish Rose Rita coming to grips with becoming a teenage girl. She is conflicted, not wanting to give up the things she enjoys (and that make her a tomboy), but she also has started to think about what it would be like to be more "girlish" and whether she wants to do that. In the end, an enjoyable gothic mystery story, combined with engaging and well-written characters made this an enjoyable read, and a book I would certainly recommend to any young reader.

This review has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About other Worlds. show less

Rose Rita Pottinger is dreading summer. With her best friend, Lewis Barnavelt, away at Boy Scout camp, vacation threatens to be altogether boring. But when Mrs. Zimmermann, Lewis's next door neighbor and a genuine witch, receives a strange deathbed letter from an eccentric uncle, unexpected things start to happen.
Rose Rita and Mrs. Zimmermann set off on a trip to discover the meaning of the letter. A ransacked farmhouse, a missing ring, shadowy figures appearing in the night, and mysterious magic symbols are just the beginning as they are gradually drawn into a terrifying world of occult mysteries, where Mrs. Zimmermann's failing powers can't help them.

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 show more 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 show less

Not only do I remember this one fairly well, I really like it - good creepy parts and a good, interesting bad guy, and Rose Rita is wonderful in it. And Mrs. Zimmerman, of course, but Mrs. Zimmerman is always wonderful.