Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The usual taut narrative, intriguing puzzle, interesting types-but risky in that Johnny's psyche comes to seem part of the pattern.Ī collection of parental wishes for a child. Then, tucking in the personal loose ends, Bellairs has Johnny get the reward anyhow-and has his father appear unheralded at the door. where, in a fiery finale, the Professor and Fergie find him, and the will is destroyed.
Woodley, old man Glomus' sister and now the Guardian's keeper. But the $10,000 reward for finding the will would pay for the best brain surgeon so, aware that he's not rational, he heads back alone to New Hampshire, and into the clutches of Mrs.
A crazy joke? Or for real? Home again, Johnny learns that his father is missing in Korea-and panics: if his grandmother dies, his grandfather will die too, and he'll be all alone. Blagwell" warns of a malevolent Guardian at loose and, with "long, loud, hideous yells and shrieks," vanishes. Faced down, he tells them he's Chad Glomus, grandson of "good old H. Woodley and when he and Fergie, a fellow odd-fact collector and a welcome friend, sneak out to the estate at night, the young man is waiting for them-with a gun. Johnny hasn't time to puzzle it out before he finds his grandmother acting strange, the victim of a brain tumor, and his own worries mount: his mother is dead, his father is a pilot in Korea, and now? To distract him, the Professor arranges a week's stay in the White Mountains with the Boy Scouts next to the camp, unsuspected, is the derelict Glomus estate calling to tell the Professor, Johnny is eyed darkly by a young man and hotel-keeper Mrs. Blagwell Glomus, cereal tycoon and demonology adept-who may have left three odd objects as a clue, or may have left the objects merely to annoy his relatives. The new old mystery the Professor lays before Johnny concerns the missing will of H. J-112), last season's spooky debut of young Johnny Dixon and his eccentric old neighbor Professor Childermass but a letdown only on that score. In vital respects, very like The Curse of the Blue Figurine (p.
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