Madame Squidley and Beanie Book

The story of a girl whose mother has a chronic illness

Beanie's mom used to be a lot of fun. She still is, when she pretends to be the amazing fortune-teller, Madame Squidley. But Beanie knows it's a strain. Mrs. Kingsley has been sick for months, and doctors can't say exactly what's wrong. They don't seem to take the illness very seriously, though. Beanie does. She worries about her mom, and wonders what will happen to her and Jerm, her little brother, if their mother doesn't get well. Beanie's friend Charles Sprague has a problem, too — scoliosis, and divorced parents who fight about it. Beanie begins to long for a new mother and a whole new set of friends. Then she discovers that she already has the best family, and the best friend, and that there's plenty she can do to help them.

This is perhaps the most personal story written by Alice Mead, herself a mother with a chronic illness.

Claudia Mills - Children's Literature

"Madame Squidley" is what Beanie's mother calls herself when she is pretending to be a fortune teller, peering into the future by means of a "malodorous yet mysterious" magical onion. Her zany sense of humor is the wonderful thing about Beanie's mother. The terrible thing about Beanie's mother is her Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which prevents her from working and confines her to bed much of the day, leaving Beanie to care for her little brother, Jerm (Beanie's father died when she was a toddler). Beanie's best friend, Charles, has serious problems, too: his divorced parents bicker bitterly over whether or not he should wear a back brace for his scoliosis. Nor do a sick mother and a back brace make for popularity at school. Mead does a wonderful job of showing Beanie's rollercoaster of difficult emotions: love for her mother, fear for her mother, anger at her mother, loyalty toward Charles, embarrassment at Charles—and most of all, puzzlement at her own increasingly out-of-control and unpredictable behavior, culminating in the moment when she tells her new fifth-grade teacher that she hates her. Is Beanie just "a self-pitying slug, slithering along on her narrow trail of slime"? Or does she legitimately have a lot to pity herself for? Mead does not offer Beanie any pat answers. Her conclusion, movingly depicted, is that life just is hard for some kids, and that while self-pity does not help, determination, compassion, and laughter do. 2004, Farrar Straus and Giroux, Ages 8 to 12.