Magic Elizabeth

One sweet small gift came this summer that meant the world to me. A soft cover book from the Scholastic Book Services called Magic Elizabeth. Thanks to a new friend I met while on the Mad Art Farm tour at Alambria Springs Farm out in the green rolling fields of Lebanon. Her name is Beverly Cholco-Devins, a wonderful writer and librarian from Hamilton NY.
All these years later the one happy thing that I remember about school was coming home with the weekly edition of the Weekly Reader. Each week I would scour over each thin almost transparent newspaper edition looking at the covers of the books for sale and reading the paragraph about them before I would make my choices. My cousin Andrea who lived across the road and I would read and read and swap books. She owned Magic Elizabeth and let me borrow the book but was adamant that I return it. I loved this book and did return it. Now after all these years, I thought the book would probably be gone forever.
After reading a story in the Sherburne Pictorial, written by a local Sherburne woman from the early 1900's named Elizabeth Gladwin Bouton I became enthralled again with all the local history. Elizabeth wrote about writing and publishing a book called Grandmother's Doll! Just the author's name Elizabeth refreshed my memory of the book I read so many years ago.
Over the past ten years or so every time I went to book sales or garage sales I would subconsciously look for Magic Elizabeth but never found it. Just like looking for a needle in a haystack. Well thanks to Facebook! I somehow put it out there that I would love to have this book and Beverly did a inter library search and found it. I couldn’t believe it!
Bev’s path and mine were going in totally different directions so she kindly put the book in a manilla envelope and dropped it off in the Hamilton Library. On my rounds one sunny day not to many weeks ago, I finally got the book I loved so dearly as a young girl. As I slipped the book out of the envelope a tear came to my eyes as the cover was just as I remembered it. On a sticky note Beverly left me with this message stuck to the book in very neat cursive writing ”Hi Pamme, Please enjoy this reunion with your lost friend Magic Elizabeth! Best Beverly”.
My heart simply swelled with joy having a new friend and who was able to take the time to find this book for me. Free of charge even.
I got the book home and read it in several hours and the story was just a lovely and magical as it was when I read it all those years ago. Magic Elizabeth was written by Norma Kassirer and tells the story of an only child named Sally who goes to stay with an old Aunt whom she’s never met. Creepy old Aunt Sarah lives in an old house which is the last old home from a time forgotten left in a growing suburbia o apartment houses and skyscrapers. This grand old house is filled with beaded curtains, tea sets, grand father clocks, a cat named Shadow and an attic where trunks over flow with stories of a generation past. Elizabeth was the doll of a little girl who once lived in this very house and amazingly looked exactly like Sally. The last time Elizabeth was seen was a snowy Christmas Eve many years ago atop of a Christmas tree in place of a star. She simply disappeared much to the other Sal’s dismay. Now all these years later it became this Sally’s mission to find the doll and in doing so her friendship with her old Aunt Sarah bloomed and uncovered the secrete that Aunt Sarah was the little girl who lived in this very house and was nick named Sal.
Norma Kassirer was a genius to be able to take a young reader and put her in the now of the past and the now of the present. On a sea shelled lined garden path of the past to the overgrown weedy apartment enclosed forgotten yard of today.
Magic Elizabeth was written for young readers but the way this story is told would appeal to anyone of any age who loves family and history and has concern for preserving their family’s story.