Loretta Mason Potts by Mary Chase

I selected this book for our October book club as one of my favorite books from childhood.  Mary Chase, the author, is best known for her famous play "Harvey".  I love how the book begins, "Colin Mason was ten years old before he learned he had an older sister. And he never forgot this day because things were never the same again." The book is about a bad girl who leaves her family to live with a farmer and his family so that she can visit a magical world over the hill where a Countess lives in a castle with a General. The Countess loves everything that Loretta says or does. Loretta finally comes back to live with her family and gradually, her brothers and sister discover Loretta's magical world through her bedroom closet and eventually they destroy the secret of the magical world as Loretta becomes close to her mother again.

"Loretta said nothing. She had walked across the bridge this afternoon, a girl named Loretta Mason Potts.  But that girl had dropped into the stream and vanished.  Now as she looked around the forest she didn't say anything out loud.  But she asked the trees a question, "Isn't there anything, anyone, anywhere, for me just for me and no one else?" p. 116

I realized that I related to this book because I identified with Loretta who left her family in part because her mother was too busy for her because she was taking care of younger children. She found a magical world where she was adored. I have always liked closets with mysterious passageways that lead into magical worlds (shades of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). And somehow the fact that Loretta took on a different last name and that she acted badly toward all who were around her, I must have felt were daring and cool things at the age of nine years old.

It was fun to reread this book and realize why I liked it as a kid. We had a really fun book group at my house that night (see photo below) and it was fun to see the kinds of books we all liked as kids. The books people chose really reflected the personalities of our book clubbers!