Thread by @Delafina777

It's a cold, dark wintry night in Seattle with a big old full moon, so gather round while I livetweet my readthrough of one of my childhood favorite spookybooks, John Bellairs' Curse of the Blue Figurine

I first discovered this book when I was in elementary school, tucked away in a back corner of the school library. It wasn't like anything I'd read before. It was atmospheric and spooky and smart.

It's the first book in a loose series about my favorite of Bellairs' protagonists.

So it opens up with Johnny Dixon, our hero, sitting and listening to a spooky radio show in 1951.

My great-aunt always used to tell me about listening to the Shadow and I thought there was something immensely cozy about *listening* to a story in the dark instead of reading it. Maybe it's because it's like having your parents read to you when you're little.

Anyway, there's something wonderfully atmospheric about the description of the snow outside and the dark room, and the light from the radio.

Nowadays I can cuddle up in bed with a podcast, of course, but when I was a kid this seemed like a lost pleasure from a bygone age.

The radio show he's listened to hasn't aged as well, but we'll skate past that because it's not important to the story.

Johnny's grandmother calls him down to dinner and we get what I think is one of the coolest touches in these books (both the Johnny Dixon series and another Bellairs series, the Anthony Monday books):

These books *love* elderly people, which I find touching, given how many books for kids are all about "adults don't know anything, don't listen to kids, kids have to save the day."

Growing up my best friend was my great-aunt, so it made perfect sense to me that the middle- or high-school protagonists of these books have elderly best friends, but it's so much rarer than it should be.

One of the things I think we lose as we get older and more exposed to our society's youth-and-beauty-obsessed culture is the fascination so many kids have with elderly people's faces.

Like, remember being little and looking at how elderly people's skin was soft, at their wrinkles, and finding it really *cool*? Before you realized that it wasn't "beautiful", that you were supposed to be afraid of aging?

He doesn't necessarily describe his elderly characters in ways they'd find flattering, but he does describe them as if he's spent a lot of time looking at them without judgment. I think it's a very relatable thing for a kid.

Anyway, if you didn't read the passages I screenshotted, Johnny lives with his grandparents because his mother died and his dad is a pilot in the Korean War.

There IS a bit of implicit judgment there--Johnny's father was a pilot in WWII and could have refused to go back, since he's a single parent. But being a fighter pilot means more to him than being a dad.

All of this helps set Johnny up as kind of a lonely, vulnerable figure before we even see him interact with other kids. He's got these really loving grandparents, and what seems like kind of an idyllic home, but it's because one parent died and the other doesn't really want him.

The doorbell rings, and we meet the other main character of these books, Prof. Roderick Childermass, Ph.D., Johnny's soon-to-be best friend. It's not exactly a confidence-inducing introduction.

"“So you wanta murder somebody?" said Grampa, still grinning. "Are you gonna start with the two of us and then work your way down the block? From the way things look," he added, pointing to the shovel, "you've already got started. Who was it? Mrs. Kovacs? Or didja get a cop?”"

One of the things I found so alluring about these books was the humor. Like, I remember giggling and not being able to stop at this nice old man being like, "ooh, did you get a cop?"

So anyway, Prof. Childermass's car is stuck in the snow (as someone who grew up in Wisconsin: relatable), and he is defined at this point as being grumpy, but--and this is really important--in a way that's very clearly explained to be safe.

Johnny's described as initially being a little afraid of the professor because of his bad temper, but his grandfather is friends with him, and the professor, throughout the books, gets mad either humorously, or on *behalf* of people.

The professor and Johnny hit it off when the professor notices that Johnny has a stack of archaeology books checked out from the library, and proceeds to tell him about a ghost that haunts the church Johnny goes to.

We'll come back to how this is an Extremely Catholic Series Of Horror Books (Catholics have the BEST horror, and Bellairs books embody why) in a bit.

But anyway, the professor tells Johnny an absolutely spot-on American folktale right out of Washington Irving. In the 1880s, Father Remigius Baart has the church built, and hires a mysterious woodcarver named Nemo to do the altarpiece.

The professor mentions in an offhand way that Nemo is Latin for "no one," and that the woodcarver was said to practice The Dark Arts, and that after he finished the altarpiece, he gave Father Baart some sort of talisman and then vanished.

The professor tells Johnny that the older people in town, like Gramma, will swear up and down that the talisman gave Father Baart the power to do nasty things to people he didn't like, and may have caused his own destruction.

And then he does this, which is such a hilarious dick move and totally the sort of thing I still occasionally indulge in when telling a suspenseful story:

So anyway, the talisman seemed to give Father Baart the power to cause fatal accidents to people he didn't like.

The *language* here, the way the characters talk, is also just fun:

So anyway, one day, Father Baart disappears, with only a cryptic quotation left as a clue.

But his ghost still haunts the church ooOOoooOOOOoo

So then comes a bit that explains how Catholic a universe we're operating in--and the Johnny Dixon books are VERY VERY Catholic, but, like, not in a bad way. Not in a *superior* way--it's just, the characters are Catholic, they use Catholic spells and charms, and those work.

Like, sometimes the good guys are priests, but the bad guys are also priests, and in some ways, non-Catholics don't exist (the professor is, IIRC, an atheist, but he's very much a CATHOLIC atheist).

Johnny goes to Catholic school, where he gets bullied by another kid named Eddie.

Johnny is also a very anxious kid who's kind of paranoid about some things, which I also found highly relatable.

I really like that Johnny's not a brave kid, and he knows it. He's scared of pretty much everything, he's going to be a damsel in distress repeatedly throughout the series, and that's ok. The narrative doesn't treat him with any contempt for it.

Like I don't want to say Johnny's feminine, or queer, but as they once said on You're Wrong About in relationship to Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates, "He plays it a bit... bookish. He looks like wants to sit quietly under a tree and read, and that's a very suspect type."

I can't remember whether he ever gets a girlfriend in the series, but girls are pretty absent from his world, and I appreciate that there's nothing strongly masculine about him.

It might be why I related so well to him when generally I had trouble staying interested in books with male protagonists.

Anyway, so, Johnny, who's both afraid of getting beaten up AND very Catholic, decides to take refuge in the nearby church until Eddie gets bored and goes away.

The church is described as being gloomy as if that's a positive, which I understood perfectly as a kid.

So Johnny spends some time examining the altarpiece commissioned by Father Baart and carved by the mysterious stranger, and when he peeks out and sees Eddie still lingering, so he decides to sneak into the church basement and explore.

Down in the basement, he finds the sort of thing we all dream of finding: A HOLLOWED OUT BOOK WITH SOMETHING INSIDE.

And what's inside is a tiny blue mummy.

Also an ominous note.

Johnny hears a noise, gets scared, and runs out of the church, then realizes he's brought the book with him. So he hides it in his closet, worries he's tripped the curse implied by the note, and decides, with perfect kid-logic, to talk to the professor about it.

So when he has a free evening, he goes over to the professor's house, discovers a broken pickle jar in the kitchen, and eventually finds the professor in his Fuss Closet, which is something I want for myself.

There's something really pure about this--like, I feel like you couldn't write a book like this today, in which a middle-school boy spends all kinds of time alone with an old-man, who frequently tells him not to tell his (grand)parents things, and no one is suspicious.

Like, in the 21st century, it's unthinkable that anyone would let their kid spend time alone at the neighborhood kinda-weird-guy's house, but that innocence is just really nice.

So, anyway, Johnny tells the professor he's found Father Baart's talisman, and the professor takes a look, but when he turns over the figurine, it's got a label that says SOUVENIR OF CAIRO, ILLINOIS on the bottom.

Johnny's deeply disappointed, and the professor cheers him up a little by saying it's a good replica of an Egyptian ushabti, and explains what an ushabti is.

He's sorry to have put a damper on Johnny's excitement, so he invites him over for chess and homemade cake another night, and behold, they are friends.

The professor--kind of hilariously--advises him not to try to put it back in the church, but instead to write to a hobby magazine and find out if it's worth anything.

I guess in addition to locked doors and hanging out with the neighborhood weirdo, concepts of ownership were also a lot looser in the 1950s.

As Johnny heads home, he sees an ominous figure watching him from down the street.

He also starts having ominous dreams.

He goes over to talk to the professor again, and finds him re-enacting a famous naval battle in his bathtub with toy ships. The professor again reassures him that the figurine is just a souvenir and not Father Baart's talisman.

At school, Eddie bullies Johnny some more and squeezes his finger with a scissors. Johnny cries and is embarrassed, and goes home, takes out the blue figurine without knowing why, and wishes that Eddie would break his neck.

Gramma has Eddie's number.

At school the next day, Eddie does not have a broken neck, but DOES have a broken arm.

This scares the shit out of Johnny, and he wants to talk to the professor about it, but finds himself headed to the church instead.

In church he meets a mysterious man.

The man, who introduces himself as Mr. Beard, has an odd suggestion when Johnny spills his guts to him--that Johnny PRETEND the figurine is magic, and pray to the gods of Egypt, and that will make him feel braver.

He also gives him a "family heirloom" which isn't weird at all.

anyway, that's where I'm going to call it for the night.

Thanks for sharing storytime with me.