The Books: The Diamond in the Window (Jane Langton)

Daily Book Excerpt: Children’s books:

Next book on the shelf is The Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton.

Maybe not as well known as some of the other children’s classics – this was one of my absolute FAVORITES when I was a kid. It was a toss-up between Harriet the Spy and Diamond in the window. I still read it on occasion! My cousin Susan got me into Jane Langton’s stuff. She read another book of Langton’s called Her Majesty Grace Jones (a terrific book) – which I loved so much that I went home to my local library to see what other books by that author were there. This was how I came across Diamond in the Window. So Susan, I will be forever grateful that you introduced me to Her Majesty Jane Langton!!

Eleanor and Edward Hall are brother and sister. They live in Concord, Massachusetts – in a big old rambling house – with their spinster aunt and bachelor uncle (who are also brother and sister). I can’t remember what happened to their parents. Eleanor and Eddy both have bright orange hair. The book opens with a threat from outside: their big rambling house may be sold. It has all kinds of historical significance for Concord, yadda yadda, and they all might have to move. Eleanor and Eddy are horrified at this. Move?? They LOVE this old house, with its crystal gazing ball in the garden, its stuffed peacock in the hall, its busts of Thoreau, Emerson, and Louisa May Alcott – its nooks and crannies. In the first chapter, they stare up at the house – realizing that they may have to say good-bye to it – and suddenly – after living there all their lives – they notice a tiny little dormer window sticking out of the roof – and the glass of the window is shaped like a keyhole. They are baffled. Where is that window? They’ve never seen it before. Is there a secret room in the house? They go off to explore.

What they discover leads them on a tremendous journey which will change their lives. They find the secret room – and it has 2 little beds in it, perfectly made, a toy chest full of toys, and in the center of the keyhole window is what looks like an enormous shimmering diamond. Scratched on the pane of glass is a long poem. Which Eleanor and Edward, fascinated, try to decipher.

The deciphering process takes the entire book. They end up both having these intense dreams at night – dreams that are hard to say are not real – For example, in one, Eleanor plummets out of a tall oak tree, scratching her leg. When she wakes up in the morning, the scratch is still there.

The dreams lead them through the poem scratched on the window. Thoreau shows up. Louisa May Alcott shows up. The Concord heroes.

It’s a literate book. It’s sometimes very very scary. There’s a sentient jack-in-the-box which, frankly, freaks me out terribly. But it’s very moving and also – unlike a lot of kids books – there is really excellent character development here. Edward is his own person. You can’t put him in a little box – he reveals himself over the course of the book. He is tremendously smart, which alienates him from kids his own age. He’s 9 years old. He has one goal in life: to be the President of the United States. He also talks fluently in backwards language, and has a whole alter ego that he daydreams about named; Trebor Nosnibor. Aunt Lily and Uncle Freddy, bachelor brother and sister, are interesting complex characters as well. Freddy was once considered a genius. He was a scholar, and author – and his topic was the Transcendentalist movement in the 1800s (Uhm – what? This was my introduction to the concepts of that movement. At age 10). And something happened to him, some disappointment, something – which has made him lose it, mentally. He lives in a world of complete fantasy – where his only true companions are the twin busts of Thoreau and Emerson, his heroes. He talks to the busts. He yells at the Louisa May Alcott bust, because what is that little strumpet doing even breathing the same AIR as the intellectual giants who must ALWAYS be male!!! He’s a tragic character. Everyone loves Freddy so much, but they wish he would be back to his old self. This is one of the payoffs of the book – the Freddy character. It is unclear, at first, why Lily is a spinster – she’s beautiful, she has long red hair, she teaches piano to the kids in Concord … but something sad happened to her once, too – and she never really recovered. So now Lily and Freddy raise Edward and Eddy … in a house with a secret room … where there is a diamond in the window.

GREAT BOOK!!!!!!

From The Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton.

They all wore their new finery on the way to church. Even Aunt Lily’s single mitten adorned one hand (the other hand was in her pocket). Eleanor’s legs felt cold and beautiful in her new stockings. Uncle Freddy sported his muffler. Edward would have liked to stalk up the aisle in his new skates, but he had to be content to wear his nose-warmer.

The service in the big white church was crowded, sentimental and grand. Aunt Lily’s choir outdid themselves. Timothy Shaw, the tenor, simply soared. (After the service he gave Aunt Lily a new handkerchief, bashfully — it had a pink L in one corner.) Everybody sang The First Nowell. Eleanor, feeling silky wrinkles around her ankles, carolled happily,

They looked up and saw a star
Shining in the East beyond them far …

Benjamin Parks was standing in the next pew with his family. Eleanor pretended not to notice. But on the way out he gave her a gruff “hello.” She returned it with a lovely freckled smile and squeezed Uncle Freddy’s arm tight.

It had been a good day. Just before bedtime, Uncle Freddy took it into his head to go fishing with his new pole in the Mill Brook. “We’ll all go,” said Aunt Lily. They bundled up and walked across the brown field. Edward put on his new skates and skated up and down.

Uncle Freddy cut a hole in the ice and let his line down into it. Then he looked up at the sky. The stars were out in crowds.

Eleanor jumped up and down to keep warm. She had changed her new stockings for her wool ones, but it was very cold. “Which star do you suppose was the star in the East?” she asked.

Aunt Lily pointed at one with her new mitten. “Maybe it was Sirius,” she said, “the Dog Star, following Orion across the sky. See Orion up there?” Sirius was brilliant, rising low over Emerson’s house. Eleanor’s astigmatism made it look like a great teardrop, welling up in the eastern sky.

“Where’s the Big Dipper?” said Edward. “Oh, there it is.”

They all stood with their heads thrown back. Then suddenly, Uncle Freddy yanked his line out of the ice and started to whirl it around his head. He tossed it up at the stars. “Fish in the sky!” he cried. “Now, there’s a stream to fish in! Look at those bright pebbles at the bottom!” He flung his line up again and again. “If I could catch just one star, just one, to hitch my wagon to, then how I should fly!”

His hook became entangled in his muffler. “Fred, dear,” said Aunt Lily, “we’d best go in.”

But Uncle Freddy struggled with his tangled line and jabbed his thumb on the fishhook. “Now, there, I’ve gotten blood all over it!” He flapped his muffler and sucked his thumb.

On the way to bed Edward stumbled on a ripped place in the stair carpet, and almost fell down the whole flight. “If only that silly lady lighted up,” he said thickly, almost crying.

“Poor old Mrs. Truth,” said Aunt Lily, helping him to his feet. They looked up at the statue on the newel post, pathetically holding up her star with its burned-out bulb.

‘Poor old Eddy, you mean,” said Edward.

Eleanor climbed into her little bed, put her head down on the pillow, thought happily for a minute about Benjamin Parks, and then fell asleep. But Edward lay awake for a little while, looking out the window. He searched for the star Aunt Lily had called the Dog Star. What was its other name — Truth? No, no, that was the other star, the one with the burned-out bulb. He had them mixed up. There it was, the Dog Star. From where he lay he could just see it at the corner of one pane of colored glass. If he moved his head a little on the pillow, the light of the star shone right through the diamond. It was like catching the sun in a pocket mirror. The diamond, ignited, blazed forth, now blue, now red, now flashing white. It became the incandescent focus of Edward’s dream, and Eleanor’s.