I don't remember the last time that I read some Magic Attic Club books, but I know they were the first books I ever realized I could sit down and read entirely in one day. I think reading one in a single sitting made me think that they were probably "below your reading level" and that I shouldn't be reading them. As a kid, I tested in the top tier of reading comprehension (accelerated reader program) back in like 6th grade, and it proceeded to ruin my entire middle school and high school private reading. This was because books I was interested in, and books that were "complex" or "challenging" enough for me were not the same books. I think that any program that lets a weird little neuroatypical kid max out their system when they're 12 years old is probably pretty flawed. This system also had a really horrible setup where I was expected to read a lot of books where my ability to understand the words and the scenes was okay, but my emotional ability to process the scenes was not ready. 6th grade me was not ready for The Outsiders, even though it was "below my reading level" based on vocabulary. For those of you who haven't read The Outsiders in a while, a lot of that vocabulary is used for the main character to describe the changes that happen on his friend's face when his friend dies after being rescued from a fire, a fire that the narrator escaped, and the guilt that he feels for staying alive. FOR KIDS! Thank fuck that my parents were close to me and what I was reading, because my 6th grade teacher didn't do too much monitoring as long as the books were the correct level in the AR program. This is important because, when 12-year-old me was told, "Yeah, it's fine, you're ready for this book," and the book was The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin, my dad was able to sit down with me and talk about specific words starting with N, the history of these words, and how a book might use those words and that doesn't make it a bad book, and it doesn't mean the book should be changed, but it also is a word that you never ever ever all your white little ass to say. This was a program that said that Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry was below my reading level. I think about that book a lot, so I'm glad that I read it, even when I didn't get any credit for reading it.
I think that the Accelerated Reader program also probably taught me to write in horrible run-on sentences. I'm sure that the program would have been good if the teachers were informed about it and didn't use it to just wipe their hands of teaching students adequate reading. It probably worked really well for the kids who tested below like 9.0 in 6th grade. But all it did was give me guilt that I was doing something wrong when I read books that I wanted to read.
Anyway, archive.org, a service we don't deserve, a service too good for this world, has eight of the books available to read. They're scans of library books, and one had an AR reading level of 4.2 on it, making it "below my reading level" by 8 levels. But them being online saves me, an adult, the trouble of buying a bunch of children's books and then figuring out where to keep them.
Sidebar, any time I talk about finding out where to keep something, I need you to read it with the desperation that Jonathan Coulton sings "you just get what you want and we'll find some place to keep it," in Alone At Home. As someone who now owns all the Magic Attic Club dolls plus one custom, I have a chronic place of "where does this go when it's put away?"
Anyway, I told myself that I wasn't going to sit down and read all of them at once. So, I showed some restraint, and only read three of them.
Something that I didn't fully process, because I was a child when I was reading these before,
So here's a book report, since all books follow a nice formula:
Rose's Magic Touch
Real-world problem: Rose wants to be in the choir, but has stage fright. She doesn't know how to tell her friends that she is afraid of trying out, so she lies and says she doesn't want to join.
Elaborate costume: Pink sequined tuxedo with a top hat. Rose wears jeans at one point too. I don't know, story wise, where she gets the jeans.
Adventure: Rose is an assistant at a big televised magic show rehearsal. She and the adult assistant of the magician have lunch. Rose learns that magic is about knowing the secret that makes it work and putting on a good show. Assistant has to leave very suddenly to see her grandfather, and Rose has to be the assistant at the show. The magician thinks that she can't do the big final trick, but she jumps in to do it anyway, because actions are louder than words. The magician appreciates her and that when she said she could do it, he should have trusted her. Rose goes home and tells her friends that she is afraid to audition.
My thoughts: I was thinking that a lot of this wasn't really dated, and then Karla pulls a stunt with an ashtray on a outdoor cafe table. That's a little bit dated. I'd also forgotten that trips through the mirror actually made a space in their worlds for the people. How does this work? In The Secret of the Attic, they go back in time to Ellie's actual childhood. Ellie's mother, however, knew who Keisha and Heather and Alison and Megan were. How does this work? From the point of view of Ellie's mom, was there always people in that role, and they were overwritten by the Attic Four when they went through the mirror? Or did the role not exist until they went through the mirror? What happened after they left? Did Ellie's mom ever go, "oh hey what happened to the four girls that went into the attic and vanished?"?
Moving on, I decided to go to Jewel of the Sea Cruise, because it was the last book that was actually written for the series.
The Jewel of the Sea Cruise:
Real world problem: It's Ellie's birthday, and the kiddos can't find a good way to surprise her. They craft an elaborate party and then remember that they only have like $90 between the five of them. I mean, this was 1999 dollars, which is like $160 when we account for inflation. Pretty nice for a group of five 12-year-olds. When I was 12 years old I was too busy being mentally scarred by the books that an infant computer system expected me to read and without adult oversight to keep the robots in check. I sure didn't have $100.
The outfits: There was only one outfit set for this, which was the party dresses. However, the story also describes a pajama set and a series of clothes that they'd wear when they go on a touristy Jamaica island excursion. This includes all of them getting their hair braided and with beads. Now, all of the MAC girls have quite long hair, and according to Dr Google, it takes like 4 hours to braid all of everyone's head, so I'm guessing that this is just a couple of braids? I'm just thinking about this from a merchandising point of view, items they could sell with this set. It's pretty normal for a MAC book to fully and firmly describe the costumes and outfits, since that's their jobs, but this book had the descriptions get in the way of the plot.
Uh. Plot. Okay. "Plot": The girls find themselves on a fancy cruise. They meet two other girls who are chronic pranksters. There's another girl who's an asshole. The girls go on a few disconnected adventures about OoH Boat Cool Let's Be on a Boat. They come back and the asshole girl is crying because her dad forgot her birthday every year since she was five years old. They throw her a birthday party and realize that what mattered to her was having someoen remember it. The girls go back home and realize that the perfect party to throw Ellie was to have them there and spend the time with her.
This book took me about 20 minutes to read and it was a freaking slog. I was going to sit down and read one, and then go have a normal evening, but I had to sit and read another book because this one was so uneventful. If you took this book and took out all the descriptions of costumes, the plot gets really thin. There's not a strong sort of narrative going on. Back in Rose's Magic Touch, we have a constantly moving story. As soon as she goes through the mirror, the eventual closing of the story is established. We know from the first beat of the adventure that they're going to have the show on live TV, and she needs to be ready for it. As the book develops, she starts to feel more confident in her ability to do that, and then things change that force her to test herself and push herself out of her comfort zone. From the start, we're going to a point.
Meanwhile, on the Jewel of the Sea, uh,
*googles if you italicize boat names*, uh,
Meanwhile, on the Jewel of the Sea, the plot has no drive. They show up. A bunch of stuff happens. In the third act, they establish the conflict. Two pages later, they resolve the conflict. You wouldn't think that a book that's not even 100 pages of large text and pictures would be able to slog and drag, but it does. They don't come in with a goal in mind. That kind of could make sense in terms of the world of the play, but it doesn't make for a compelling tale. This was just a description of things people did. Remember when I said that these books were probably outlined, and then written at the same time as the collections were being built? That means that, at some point in the concept, they had built the collection they wanted to have, and had to put them into the story. This feels like no work was put into anything beyond describing the collection.
Much like the Magic Attic (Club) doll line, the Magic Attic Club books really tapered off with a whimper. We never get the books promised to us of Alison in a medieval time with two fun outfits for one book. We don't get Heather at Fashion Week. We get Rose and Megan's stories from that last collection, but we don't get a last group story, introduction of the new character we'd been promised, or any of that. This book as a last group adventure was a real disappointment. If this was the first book in this series that I'd read as a child, I would have been so disappointed, and probably written off the whole series. I think the biggest insult that I can give to a book series is "this book would have made me never want to read the rest," so I don't say that lightly.
Okay, so, let's go back to where we started! I had to read a third book to just get the Jewel of the Sea Cruise, which, hang on. I think I'm still punctuating that wrong. The Jewel of the Sea Cruise. Italics within italics are underlined. Great. So, I wanted to see if the first books were as pandering to the doll line as Jewel was.
The Secret of the Attic.
Real world problem: Okay, since this book needs to establish the world, it does deviate a little bit from the formatting. There's a few things, like Heather being unsure how to tell her friends that she doesn't celebrate Christmas. But a lot of the real world scenes aren't as much problems as they are setup. A lady moves in across the street, but it's a family home, so she had lived there before, probably for many years. She knows Megan and Heather's parents. The kids find a key that's hers, and their parents encourage them to return it. The parents know what the key is, but don't tell the kids. This real world scene establishes what the attic is, who is in charge of it, what the rules are for using it, and why the whole scene seems to be okay with the family. It establishes rules like "time within the adventure doesn't map out to time in the world they left" and also establishes that the things they did in the adventure can directly impact the world they left. If they travel in time, things they did in the past can travel forward wiht them.
BTW this book also establishes that if they're wearing the wrong shoes for an adventure, the mirror will provide the proper ones. Shout out to the mirror not making Heather channel Models Doing Ballet for the whole adventure. Good job, Mirror. Oh, this is a book report. Hang on.
So here's the thing about this book: it makes sense on its own. It stands up on its own. It's got some engaging bits, and everything that happens either leads into another thing happening, or resolves something that previously happened. Nothing just happens. It's a story.
I know that, in the beginning, doing things like donating these books to libraries was a marketing move. The books in the back have information about how to get catalogues that feature dolls of the girls. In order for that to work, they really needed books that sold the story. If people love the story, they'll love the dolls.
That's part of what this series means to me. From the very beginning of owning the doll, I wanted to make stories for her. That's what a doll is, to a kid. It's a thing to make stories with, or for, or about. The costumes were always part of the story, made real.
Anyway, there's some weird diversity message when Megan says that she's different because she's got red hair. I don't remember if Heather being Jewish ever comes back.
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In doll world, I stopped by the craft store and got some Testors Dullcote and we're going to spray the shiny spots on Keisha that were left by someone using solvents on her. Hopefully, that works out okay.
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Update: I just realized that searching "Magic Attic" instead of "Magic Attic Club" on archive.org really opens the results up. There's like 28 of the 38 books up there. So, I know what I"m doing on my lunch break for the next month.
Sleep well, kiddos. Remember that just because Great Aunt Pink says the fuck word that it doesn't mean you're allowed to.
EDIT: I can't believe that I forgot to mention this, but I'd totally never realized as a kid that all the art in the books is paintings! I love looking at the brush strokes and how they rendered everything. I love when I can see a canvas texture through it, or look at how they did washes of color. I think child me went "obviously that's an illustration" and left it at that. So many book illustrations now are done digitally, that I think in my head that was just how these were. I love digital art, and might be posting some on this blog, but it's so cool to me to be able to tell that it's a painting.
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