Betty Gordon at Mystery Farm

I have finished reading Betty Gordon at Mystery Farm. The book did begin to redeem itself by around halfway through it. Overall, I ended up enjoying the book by the end. The "Kentucky mountain dialect" became more bearable the further into the book I read, and the story became more compelling. In one scene, I greatly enjoyed the dialect, simply because the entire scene was so ludicrous. From pages 100-101:

"Watch her!" jeered the old man bitterly. "Her kind needs watching. So clean and r'aring to get eddicated. My oldest sis wuz like that thirty years ago. Just as purty a gal! Just as—" he gulped and covered his unwilling emotion with a mutter. "But the eddication she got down civilization way ruined her and she turned agin her kin to marry a Stolling!" He spat out the word venomously. "And she dared to come and live with the varmint in these here mountains. I filled his arm full of shot once, but I could nevah reach his heart."

Betty looked at the man in horror, but he went on: "You'd bettah skip out and leave the farm to them as has a bettah right to it, for my dead sistah's spirit air roaming through the rooms a-crying for the sin she darst to do agin her own blood kin."

With this amazing statement, the big mountaineer started to stalk disdainfully away. But Bob restrained him.

"Look here!" cried the boy angrily. "It is you who should leave, not I. The farm belongs to me. What do you mean by talking in such a fashion? You're on my land right now, and I don't care for any of your insolence. Now go and don't let me catch you or your son hanging around here again or I will call the sheriff."

"You'd call the sheriff, huh? Ha! things have come to a purty pass when a feller cain't walk on his own land. This land should be mine, I tell you."

The mountaineer was working himself into a towering rage.

"Should be and being are two different things," said Bob coolly.

The man raised his gun to his shoulder, thought better of it, then, glowering, turned away, too full of rage for speech. But before the laurel bushes hid him from view he threw a parting shot: "My time air coming, youngster! And watch that woman! She and my sistah air made of the same tan bark!"

"Bogy-man! Bogy-man!" shrilled the boy, sticking his tongue at them before he, too, disappeared in the laurel.

"What disagreeable people!" cried Betty.

The sad thing is that I actually know a few people like that.

The first few chapters of the book were uninteresting and, at times, not very well-written. For instance, pages 13 and 14 contain this horrible paragraph:

It was fun to wander with Bob along the beautiful streets of Cleveland. It was fun to visit the different shops and ask Bob's opinion as to color and weight. It was fun to help select Bob's outfit. It was fun to pile their purchases into the car and hunt an ice-cream parlor. It was fun to linger over the tall parfait glasses and exchange confidences and plan for the trip into the Kentucky mountains, for Betty and Bob had had many good times together since they had first met at Bramble Farm.

Okay, I get it—it was fun. Now, can we move on?