Sunday, September 29, 2019

Ginny Gordon and the Mystery of the Old Barn


    The Hustlers' new project is the Snack Barn. It's essentially a teenage club house where they serve sandwiches, burgers, ice cream, soda, etc. On their first night in business a mysterious man appears and requests Ginny to hang onto an envelope. Soon another man appears and demands Ginny hand it over. On top of that food has been inexplicably disappearing.

- It's early October at the start of the book. That places the other books in September since the school year was already started. The events of the last two books were over the course of two weeks. These books were released years apart (1947, 1950, and 1954), I think if I was reading them at the time they came out I'd be a little annoyed with 7 years passing when only a few weeks passed in the books.

- Not long into the book Ginny has a confrontation with Henderson, a menacing man who threatens to harm her if she doesn't hand over the envelope she'd been given. Ginny keeps her cool the whole time even while she makes a run for it. Since Ginny has had two encounters with villains in the previous books this seems pretty possible. I like that Ginny's experience has kind of shaped her character.

- The illustrations in this book are hideous! The first three books in the series were released with dust jackets and had artwork that was very 1940s-ish. Not quite sure how to describe it, it was pretty average for these Whitman book with a few pretty exceptional illustrations. The books were then re-done as cellophane covers and the artwork got updated and way worse. The original illustrator was Margaret Jarvis and the new illustrator was Margaret Wesley. Anyways all the illustrations feature an up-close shot of a characters face with other characters in the background. They're absolutely horrifying.

- Ginny has twin beds in her room which is very convenient for when Lucy spends the night. These old books always have girls with twin beds in their room so when their friends spend the night they don't have to share a bed. It's so weird to me, just have the characters share a bed or sleep on a couch.

- The man living in the woods and stealing food is obviously Henderson, everything pointed to it but Ginny blindly believes its Chadwell for absolutely no reason other than Julie Campbell hoping it would throw the reader off a bit. However it just makes Ginny look extremely dumb.

    Overall this book is alright. It doesn't have as much action as the other books, which has been one of my favorite things about this series. This book contained a lot of standing around an empty Snack Barn talking, and lots of Ginny thinking over the mystery to herself.