Treasure of Green Knowe (Green Knowe Chronicles Series) Book

I enjoyed this Green Knowe book even more than the first one. Tolly is back again, spending his spring vacation with his great grandmother at Green Knowe out in the country but is somewhat upset to find that the portrait painting of the three ancestor children who he "met" as ghosts on his Christmas visit seem to have disappeared along with the portrait that his great grandmother lent to an art exhibit. He is further alarmed when she says that money is tight because the place must have repairs (it is an official heritage site and the law requires it be kept up properly)and she might sell it.

Great Grandmother Oldknow is such a treasure! I would love to have her for my own great grandma and I wouldn't mind being Tolly's mom (or sister).

L.M. Boston's descriptions of the house and grounds and especially of the animals and plants and the natural world make me want to step into the book and move in with Great Grandmother Oldknow and Tolly. Exquisite descriptions!!

Great Grandmother Oldknow gives Tolly an idea of a way to make the needed repairs on the property while saving the children's portraits. Tolly spent his evenings sitting with her as she worked on family quilts and she told him the story of one of their ancestors and his family and a lost treasure that Tolly decided to recover for her.

The story is intersperses with Tolly's own activities at Green Knowe and he actually becomes part of the story as he gets involved with events that happened long ago! The story is told of ancestors who lived around 150 years after the children did. Captain Oldknow is a sweet, kind, intelligent and fair man who is a sea captain and has to be away from Green Knowe for long periods of time. I can't even begin to imagine why he married his flighty social butterfly wife who is madly in love- with herself. Their elder child is a worthless son named Sefton who is full of himself, cruel, dishonest, and a "dandy". Their second child is sweet Susan who is born blind.

With the Captain away, poor Susan is at the mercy of a mother who is ashamed of her but who lets her come visit her room for a few minutes every night. She holds the child on her lap and lets her feel her face and jewelry. Maria openly makes hurtful remarks that she can't really dress Susan up and show her off because she is blind and complains that they can't marry her off and will be stuck with her for life. The woman who watches over her is way to protective to the point of smothering Susan. She will not allow the child to walk around unless someone holds her hand and ties her to a chair to keep her from touching anything. Susan is not allowed to have any normal experiences at all. The Captain's mother who is Susan's grandmother is a mean old religious fanatic who is cruel to the child and calls her "it".

All of this changes when the captain gets sick of it on a visit home. He hires a young man Jonathan to read to Susan and when the Captain visits an island where there has been an uprising of slaves, he is astonished when a young black boy begs him to buy him to save him from something worse. At first the captain resists. He hates slavery. In the end, he saves the sweet and charming little boy named Jacob and takes him home to be a companion to Susan.

You can probably imagine the racist uproar when he brings a "black skinned heathen", as the Captain's hateful mother refers to the child, home to live with them. Maria and Sefton are less than amused but Jonathan likes the boy and enjoys working with both children. Soon he is teaching them both to read which was an idea Jacob came up with. While Jacob can work with a slate, he had the clever idea that Susan could use bread dough to shape letters!

Sefton played cruel tricks on the boy such as having clothes made suitable for a hurdy gurdy man instead of what the Captain ordered and by forcing him to go up the chimney to find a bird Sefton lied and said he had shot. Susan and Jacob very quietly paid Sefton back by hiding one of anything he had two of (cuff links, slippers, etc) and in other ways.

Soon Tolly has met the ghost Susan back in her own time and Jacob as well and manages to be a hero then and in his own time. This is a very exciting story which I have enjoyed as an adult as much as any child would. I recommend it to all!