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In my ongoing efforts to review ALL the books I read, and which I invite you to join in on, I present to you The Mysterious Shrinking House (original title: Mindy’s Mysterious Minature), by Jane Louise Curry, a Scholastic children's book from 1970.
Mindy, whose parents run an antique shop in which they also live, bids ninety cents and a crate of pop bottles at an auction to win a filthy and decrepit dollhouse. But when she cleans it, she finds that it’s beautiful and incredibly intricate. Then her father uses SCIENCE to figure out that it was a regular house that got shrunk. (Upon microscope examination, he finds that the cells of the wood in a table are way tinier than normal wood cells, and reasons that rather than being a small thing carved from normal wood, the wood itself has been shrunk.)
Mindy’s elderly neighbor Mrs. Bright recognizes the house as her own childhood home which mysteriously disappeared. (Literally, it just vanished into thin air. This was so weird that nobody wanted to discuss it ever.) When she and Mindy examine it, there is an explosion, and then they are shrunk and end up in the dollhouse!
The first part of this book (up to this point) is delightful. I have a weakness for tiny things, being tiny, and normal things being huge, and was hoping for life in a dollhouse, facing down giant chipmunks, etc. That is not how the story goes.
And then there is an unexpected amount of plot. ( Read more... )
Also, needed more giant chipmunks. A giant chipmunk is briefly glimpsed, but that's all.
The Mysterious Shrinking House ( mindy's mysterious miniature)
Mindy, whose parents run an antique shop in which they also live, bids ninety cents and a crate of pop bottles at an auction to win a filthy and decrepit dollhouse. But when she cleans it, she finds that it’s beautiful and incredibly intricate. Then her father uses SCIENCE to figure out that it was a regular house that got shrunk. (Upon microscope examination, he finds that the cells of the wood in a table are way tinier than normal wood cells, and reasons that rather than being a small thing carved from normal wood, the wood itself has been shrunk.)
Mindy’s elderly neighbor Mrs. Bright recognizes the house as her own childhood home which mysteriously disappeared. (Literally, it just vanished into thin air. This was so weird that nobody wanted to discuss it ever.) When she and Mindy examine it, there is an explosion, and then they are shrunk and end up in the dollhouse!
The first part of this book (up to this point) is delightful. I have a weakness for tiny things, being tiny, and normal things being huge, and was hoping for life in a dollhouse, facing down giant chipmunks, etc. That is not how the story goes.
And then there is an unexpected amount of plot. ( Read more... )
Also, needed more giant chipmunks. A giant chipmunk is briefly glimpsed, but that's all.
The Mysterious Shrinking House ( mindy's mysterious miniature)
