Celebrated author Lois Gladys Leppard went home to the Lord on October 5th, 2008. Leppard’s Mandie series – consisting of 40 titles, with over 6 million copies sold – has brought joy and adventure into the lives of many Christian children and their families.

Over the past few years Bethany House publishers have been compiling the Mandie series into thick volumes, with five Mandie stories in each book. Our family has had the pleasure of reading The Mandie Collection, Volume 1 – containing the first five chapter books – for our bedtime reading over the past several months. The end of each story segues seamlessly into the next, creating a non-stop “Mandie-a-thon” for fans of Leppard’s work.

Included in the first volume are: Mandie and the Secret Tunnel, Mandie and the Cherokee Legend, Mandie and the Ghost Bandits, Mandie and the Forbidden Attic and Mandie and the Trunk’s Secret. New readers can collect the series at a very affordable price, and parents who fell in love with Mandie at the beginning of her literary adventures in 1983 can now conveniently share her with their children.

The story is set at the turn of the nineteenth century, and Mandie is a polite 12-year-old girl with a fierce streak of curiosity. This inquisitiveness leads her into many mysteries, adventures and learning experiences, along with her growing crew of friends. In some ways the Mandie series is similar to that of The Boxcar Children, a lengthy series in which the children solve mysteries and embark upon adventures with little parental oversight. However, I’m pleased to say that the Mandie books are written to gently stretch children’s vocabulary. They are not aimed at the lowest common denominator, but rather feature prose that is readable without sacrificing quality and challenge.

Young readers are introduced to Mandie and her unique family circumstances in Mandie and the Secret Tunnel. The book opens with Mandie attending her father’s funeral and unfortunately being subjected to a doctrinally unsound warning pertaining to the after-life. Sadly the only appearance of a pastor in this first collection of stories is of a man who preaches salvation by works, keeping the Ten Commandments, staying away from sin, living a “good” life with the threat of hell fire spilling into his words. This is terribly inaccurate – the only salvation any of us can receive is through the spilled blood of Jesus Christ, not through our own efforts.

In fact, I can’t recall any mention of Jesus throughout the first five books in the series, though God is often called upon and discussed. I took this opportunity to reiterate the basic concepts of the gospel message with my children to avoid any possible confusion. Thankfully this scene was brief, and we quickly moved on, establishing the foundation for the rest of the series – introductions to key characters and settling Mandie into her new role in life.

A Bible verse is included at the beginning of each story, hinting at the theme to be developed throughout the upcoming pages. In the first book, Mandie and the Secret Tunnel the provided verse is, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” from Psalm 23:1, and while Mandie doubts God’s love and provision for her at times, she comes to know His love and personal care for her by book’s end.

While polite and respectful, Mandie is far from perfect. She has flaws, she stumbles, she makes mistakes, and she asks God for His forgiveness and help to do better. Mandie is a teachable young girl, and learns from her errors. She apologizes when she is untruthful or behaves inappropriately, and is quick to turn to prayer when encountering dangerous situations. Mandie is concerned when she learns that others do not know God and seeks to share His goodness and provision with them. Her humble example provides a sweet example for young girls.

One area of concern that parents may want to exercise discernment in is the matter of Mandie’s friend Joe. While their relationship is chaste, at the end of the first title Joe and Mandie become engaged, without parental input. As mentioned previously, Mandie is 12 at the time of this event, Joe slightly older. I chose to avoid reading the passages dealing with their romantic relationship, as our family believes that until a child is ready to marry these types of interactions are inappropriate.

Jealousy and strife also create sub-themes throughout future stories as minor characters develop an interest in either Joe or Mandie. Joe and Mandie both take their turns in feeling angry, jealous and even speaking poorly of their “competitors”. If as parents you seek to guard your child’s heart from romantic involvement until they are prepared to marry this is a component of the series to keep in mind.

The children also spend long periods of time separated from adult care in the course of their adventures, and while nothing importune occurs you may not wish to encourage this behaviour in your children.

While some readers have misinterpreted Leppard’s work in this series as racist, they seem to be missing some key points. Mandie herself is one-quarter-Cherokee and suffers from persecution both from Native Americans and Caucasian’s due to her mixed background. Leppard herself has some Cherokee blood in her background, which is why she chose this people group to focus upon for the First Nations components of her stories.

This spunky little girl makes friends across all social spectrums, the African American household help, her Native American relatives and her upper-class schoolmates at a finishing school for girls. She extends her love towards all of these characters equally while encouraging them to pursue God. The stories are set at the turn of the nineteenth century and the terms currently in use for these groups are not employed. Rather some historically accurate terms are used, though not in a derogatory way.

I found Leppard’s work quite enjoyable to read aloud. While some find the stereotypical accents confining and perhaps derogatory, I had so much fun reading a variety of accents. From mountain hillbilly, to black servants and first generation English speaking native’s, Leppard easily conveys the appropriate pronunciation through her use of the written word. Just read along and you’ll find yourself sounding like the Indian in any Western movie, or a black kitchen worker. I felt that these ways of speech were historically accurate, though I was somewhat frustrated with Uncle Ned’s (Mandie’s watchful guardian) never-ending use of the terms squaw, papoose and brave, not once using the word woman, child or young man, when this is clearly what he was indicating. Characters in the book who have received an English education speak just as Mandie does.

Written for the 8 – 12 year old market, my five-year-old also found these stories intensely exciting when read aloud. Leppard successfully builds tension time and again until my daughter was squealing, “Mommy, look ahead and see what happens! Are they going to be all right?” There are aspects of Leppard’s writing that would be hard to distinguish as a parent without reading her work aloud.

Reading these stories with my daughter pointed out that Leppard has a gift for creating questions in the young readers mind, then following through with the answer. Whenever my daughter asked a question, Leppard would answer her within the next few sentence.

My little girl was so entranced with the ongoing plot and mystery of these stories that every family member – both immediate and extended – was treated to ongoing narrations of the tales by phone and in person while we read through the collection. I have never heard her relate a story so enthusiastically in the past, and in such detail. Our family has read over 40 chapter books together with our children over the past few years, and I believe the “Mandie stories” are amongst the favourites of both my daughters, my two year old included.

While our family greatly enjoyed the stories, the collection itself is very simple, allowing perhaps for the affordable cost of this edition. A table of contents is provided for each story, but no overall table of contents listing the page number for the beginning of each included book is provided, making orientation somewhat more challenging. With 541 pages it would be wonderful to know where each story ends and begins.

One illustration graces the books cover, from the third included title, Mandie and the Ghost Bandits, no interior illustrations are present. I also would have loved to see the appropriate cover included at the beginning each of the chapter books in the volume. In addition it’s easy to form the conclusion that this collection of stories missed the final edit. Simple punctuation and spelling errors occur in a number of the stories, and the Bible verse for the final story – Mandie and the Trunk’s Secret – is missing entirely. Having read a number of Bethany House titles, these oversights are very out of character for their high quality books.

At the end of the day, when pros and cons have been examined and analyzed, the ultimate question is – have my children been entertained? Have their reading horizons been expanded? Have they been encouraged to turn to God with their needs, both physical and for forgiveness?

I know that meeting Mandie and her friends has made an impact on our family’s day-to-day existence. Our orange and white tabby kitten has been renamed Snowball after Mandie’s white cat. When I finished reading the first five books in this volume to my children they both exclaimed, “More Mandie Mamma!” When my five-year-old catches sight of the book she asks, “Can we read Mandie again Mommy?” In conclusion I quote my eldest child once more, “Mommy, isn’t Mandie the bestest bedtime story book ever?”

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Publisher Info:

Title: The Mandie Collection, Volume One
Author: Lois Gladys Leppard
Format: Paperback, 544 pages
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers (September 1, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0764204467
ISBN-13: 978-0764204463