A Room Made of Windows

Julia Redfern #1

by Eleanor Cameron

A young girl with ambitions to be a writer tries to adjust to her widowed mother's remarriage.

Genres: Fiction, Childrens, Young Adult, Middle Grade, Historical, Historical Fiction, Writing

288 pages, Paperback

First published March 30, 1971

About the author

Eleanor Frances Butler Cameron (1912 - 1996) was a Canadian children's author who spent most of her life in California. Born in Winnipeg, Canada in 1912, her family then moved to South Charleston, Ohio when she was 3 years old. Her father farmed and her mother ran a hotel. After three years, they moved to Berkeley, California. Her parents divorced a few years later. At 16, she moved with her mother and stepfather to Los Angeles. She credits her English mother's love of story telling for her inspiration to write and make up stories.

She attended UCLA and the Art Center School of Los Angeles. In 1930, she started working at the Los Angeles Public Library and later worked as a research librarian for the Los Angeles Board of Education and two different advertising companies. She married Ian Cameron, a printmaker and publisher, in 1934 and the couple had a son, David, in 1944.

Her first book came out in 1950, based on her experience as a librarian. It was well received by critics, but didn't sell well. She did not start writing children's books until her son asked him to write one starring him as a character. this resulted in her popular series The Mushroom Planet.

With the success of the Mushroom Planet books, Cameron focused on writing for children. Between 1959 and 1988 she produced 12 additional children's novels, including The Court of the Stone Children (1973) and the semi-autobiographical five book Julia Redfern series (1971–1988). She won the National Book Award for Court of the Stone Children in 1973, and was a runner up for To The Green Mountains in 1979.

In addition to her fiction work, Cameron wrote two books of criticism and reflection on children's literature. The first, The Green and Burning Tree, was released in 1969 and led an increased profile for Cameron in the world of children's literature. Throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s Cameron worked as a traveling speaker and contributor to publications such as The Horn Book Magazine, Wilson Library Bulletin, and Children's Literature in Education. She was also a member of the founding editorial board for the children's magazine Cricket, which debuted in 1973. In 1972 she and Roald Dahl exchanged barbs across three issues of The Horn Book, a magazine devoted to critical discussions of children's and young adult fiction. Her second book of essays, The Seed and the Vision: On the Writing and Appreciation of Children's Books, came out in 1993. It is her final published book.

From late 1967 until her death Cameron made her home in Pebble Beach, California. She died in hospice in Monterey, California on October 11, 1996 at the age of 84.[

Reviews

[Left Coast Justin]

As if any further evidence of my total nerdosity were needed, I offer this 1971 classic for early-teen girls. Back around fifth or sixth grade, when I started sporting coke-bottle glasses and a fluffy (natural) afro, Napolean Dynamite style, I carelessly plucked this off the school library shelves. The librarian, used to me grabbing random handfuls of books each week, seemed a little concerned and asked if I really wanted to read this book?

Well, sure, it had some sort of cool black-and-white line drawing on the front. I can't remember what I thought the drawing was, but I like windows as much as the next guy. I apparently failed to comprehend that it showed a wistful-looking girl gazing out the window through her own thick glasses, lips curled in a sad moue, gripping a pencil or something.

I only figured that out later, when maybe halfway through the book our hero Julia had her first period. What the heck,? thought I, what kind of book is this? Only then did I look at the cover more carefully and realize its true double-x-chromosomal nature. But I finished it anyway, and kinda fell in love with Julia, in a pre-sexual sort of way I couldn't quite understand and sure as hell didn't mention to anybody, least of all my obnoxious brothers.

Books do indeed expose us to worlds beyond our imaginations.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a remarkable sensation to go back to a book that meant a lot to you as a child and wonder if the story and characters helped shape you in some way, or if you were already that way and it simply resonated with who you were then. I'm not sure which it was, but I know I read this several times, and as many of the other Julia Redfern books as I could get my hands on. The Private Worlds of Julia Redfern was another favorite - probably because these two are about the adolescent Julia, and I seem to remember finding her during middle school.

Cameron's style is a combination of details and impressions - the mood of the moment, with delicious descriptions of things like meals or homes alongside the descriptions of impressions and thoughts and characters. Definitely not for the reader who likes action and drama, but perfectly suited to the more introspective, character-driven reader. This time around I loved Julia for her imperfections, the ways in which she's blind to other people's feelings, as well as her enthusiasms. Like L.M. Montgomery's books, Cameron's stories make me want a lovely house to live and write in, with a view of something natural and beautiful.

[Lisa Vegan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book many years ago when it was first published but I remember loving it. I enjoyed reading about Julia and her family. It’s a great coming of age story about a 12 year old girl and the upheavals going on in her life. I could really put myself in her place. The characters of Julia and others in the book are developed beautifully and I remember envying Julia’s life, despite some of the challenges she faced. A great read!

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another weeding candidate: I can't believe I never read this, because I liked several of Eleanor Cameron's other books as a tween, especially A Spell Is Cast and The Mysterious Christmas Shell--I was a young mystery buff--and the Mushroom Planet books. This is Cameron's first of five books about aspiring writer Julia Redfern, and it is wonderful. (It's not the sequel to Julia and the Hand of God, as several bibliographic databases contend. It comes first.)

Julia's mother and "Uncle" Phil (her mother's business partner and possibly (at this point) her boyfriend) have refused to bring her to a play that is too mature for her. "'You have my utmost despision,' she'd yelled after them from the front door, 'and I'll never forgive you--never--never--never--' the last "never" ending in a sob of rage, which was the blackest defeat of all."

I love the made up word, the desperate sense of betrayal and fury. Julia feels everything intensely, observes and thinks about everything. She is an aspiring writer who actually writes, and she is just at the age when she is reluctantly beginning to think about other people and the effect her actions might have on them.

There's plenty going on in her neighborhood, and even more in her head: her best friend Addie has an alcoholic father and a trouble-making older brother Ken; Addie's dreamy cousin Paul is coming from Canada to visit; Julia's older brother Greg is a fanatic about Egypt and is writing an Egyptian history; her housemates (the house has been divided into various sections, including Julia's sunroom/bedroom) include an older couple and an elderly man, Daddy Chandler, who is writing his memoirs and loves to share pranks with Julia. Julia's neighbor, Rhiannon Moore, is a talented pianist, whose son is a world renowned talent. Meanwhile, Julia has submitted a story to be published--she meets various people (the magazine publisher, and Leslie, a young aspiring poet) about that.

So these are some of Julia's questions: How can her mother consider remarrying, when her father was so perfect (or was he?) Why is Mrs. Moore so sad? Can Julia make a new friend without betraying Addie? Just how delinquent is Addie's brother -- is he a thief? Will Julia's story be published? And can she survive without her "Room Made of Windows" her special bedroom, just off her mother's, where all her best thinking and writing takes place? Does an artist have to sacrifice her whole life to her art? Do parents have dreams, too? Lots going on, even if it's not physical, I was caught up in all of their stories. It's unusual to find a book in which music and writing are such important forces. Give this to any aspiring writers you know!
A Spell Is CastThe Mysterious Christmas Shell

[Sophia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read and reread this as a child and still adore it. Julia is an interesting, intense, complicated girl on the cusp of adolescence and trying to catch up with the people around her while finding her own way as a writer. The book is set in Berkeley and the setting is like another character; the time period is actually just post-WWI but I always thought it was the '70s (the year it was published) and you can read it that way too because it feels quite modern (except for the fact that no one living in the '70s was a childhood friend of Yeats, haha, but my 12 year old self did not know this). The cast of supporting characters (Julia's friends, family, and neighbors) is excellent, and I always enjoy revisiting this world

[Michael Fitzgerald · Rating 4 out of 5]

For quite a while I was confused about when this book was set. A specific date is never named. It seems to be the 1920s (based on the mention that Edna St. Vincent Millay had four books of poetry books published by that time). I was probably thrown off by the Trina Schart Hyman illustrations which seem more modern.

This is a fascinating and unusual book that deals mostly (but not exclusively) with the interactions between the pre-teenage protagonist and the adults in her life. There is a lot of ambiguity and there are partially-told stories that we never fully grasp.

I'm eager to learn more about this book and to read the sequel.

[Lucy Silbaugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it definitely feels dated, I can say that I definitely enjoyed "A Room Made of Windows". I think every reader can find a bit of themselves in Julia Redfern, who loves reading, desperately wants to be a writer (and really, what avid reader doesn't want to, just a teeny bit?) and who really really really does not want her mother to get remarried. Over the course of the story, Julia accumulates an eclectic collection of friends: Mrs. Moore, the elderly pianist next door, Leslie, a fellow writer, and Addy, the 'babyish' friend from her childhood, who turns out to be not half as 'babyish' as Julia thought. I'd recommend this to anyone who likes good description, the word "eucalyptus", and is okay with "quaint" books (published before 1970).

[Amy Flink · Rating 5 out of 5]

My aunt got me this book for my 15th birthday and I loved it!! I misplaced it though and could only remember part of the title but did a search and found it here after many years of searching. Thank you, Amazon!! I love how the girl in the story talked about her cats and her life.

[Mary Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book, of the same caliber as Irene Hunts "Up a Road Slowly," although very different. It is clearly set in the years following World War I and the flu epidemic when people traveled by train more than by car or airplane and Oakland was less populated than it is today.

[Amy Layton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, so I just read on a GoodReads review that this book takes place post-WWI, though this book distinctly felt like the 70s to me.  Maybe I'm bad at placing time, maybe I don't know my history, but that just goes to show just how more relatable and contemporary this novel is.  

Julia loves to write, and she hates her mother's boyfriend, and she admires Rhiannon Moore.  She's an observer, a listener, a tender person at heart.  Yet her world seems to be crumbling as her mother continues to date a new man after the death of her husband who served in the war, as she lies to her best friend, as she struggles to be accepted as a writer.  

Cameron does a distinctly fantastic job of characterizing all of her players, of individualizing them and making them wistful and longing for various wants.  I loved the friendship that blossoms between Julia and Rhiannon--it reminded me of so many friendships I've had, of other books I've read and adored.  There's something to be said about tweens and elderly neighbors, though I'm not quite sure what.  It's nostalgic.  Hopeful.  And that's what this book is for me.  If not a coming of age story, it's a coming of understanding, and I'd highly recommend this to those who want to read books from a different time.

Review cross-listed here!

[Rob Hopwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Room Made of Windows by Eleanor Cameron

A Room Made of Windows plunges us into the somewhat confused life of Julia Caroline Redfern, who lives in Berkeley, California, in the 1920s.

This is Cameron's first of five books about Julia, who is an aspiring writer with a lot going on inside her twelve-year-old head.

Julia’s life constantly bubbles with intensity, whether she is crashing a bike into a telegraph pole, searching for lost cats, planning her next story, rescuing an injured rabbit, or stubbornly refusing to accept her mother's plans to remarry. Preoccupied with her own thoughts and view of the world, she records her observations in her Book of Strangenesses. Above all, she longs to become a professional writer, considering it her natural destiny, and she despises the prospect of an ‘ordinary’ life involving marriage and the raising of children. As the book progresses, Julia becomes more open-minded and able to empathize with others.

Evidently, Julia’s struggle to accept her mother’s engagement to Uncle Phil is a direct reference Cameron's own situation when her mother remarried in 1924. Her stepfather, William Earle Warren, was apparently a much more amiable man than her father had been, but it took Eleanor a long time to appreciate this and concede that her mother deserved to be happy and ‘was not created solely for her own convenience and pleasure’.

Cameron did an excellent job of individualizing all of her characters and showing how they all yearn for different things. Julia's meaningful friendships with her elderly neighbors are especially poignant. It is not really a coming-of-age story, because the timescale is confined to around one year in the life of Julia. It is more a series of impressions and describes the process of her increasing in understanding and empathy. Furthermore, the story is redolent of literature from a past era, evoking feelings of nostalgia and hope.

Younger readers of a more introspective nature will likely enjoy this story and sympathize with Julia, who is always able to discern the extraordinary in the ordinary, whereas more mature readers with life experience will see beyond Julia's restricted view of the world and empathize with the other well-drawn characters in the book. A Room Made of Windows is therefore a book which skillfully bridges the divide between children's and adult literature and incorporates different levels of meaning along with powerful imagery.


Below are some quoteworthy passages from the book:

"You have my utmost despision,” she’d yelled after them from the front door, "and I’ll never forgive you — never — never — never—” the last "never” ending in a sob of rage, which was the blackest defeat of all.

From the central drawer she drew out her Book of Strangenesses and turned to the front to her lists of most beautiful and most detested words. Under the beautiful words, which began with "Mediterranean” and "quiver” and "undulating” and "lapis lazuli” and "empyrean,” she added "mellifluous,” which she copied from a piece of paper Mrs. Gray had given her at school.

"Good! I should say you have the stuff of a professional writer in you, quite by instinct, apparently. It’s far better to write an awkward ending than a false one.”

I wonder if I’ll ever have a pain like Mrs. Moore’s. I don’t want to but I’m pretty sure I ought to have all kinds of feelings and pains if I’m going to be a writer.”

But how quickly a day, a mood of happiness, can change. It takes only a few seconds, a word or two, a single, unreflecting gesture.

. "Now, that’s a funny thing. Listen, everybody. When you apprehend something, you know it. In other words, you catch on, you have a piece of knowledge. And when you apprehend a villain, you catch him. So you know him better, because you have him.” "That’s right,” said Uncle Phil. "But if you’re apprehensive, it’s because you don’t have knowledge you should have. You’re scared in an anxious way because you don’t know all you should know. It’s the very opposite.

"I only want to tell you that just to live with all your senses to the fullest extent, to have a family —” "To be ordinary, you mean!” cried Julia. "Well, I’m not going to be ordinary. That’s disgusting —” Mrs. Moore suddenly sank into a chair and laughed until the tears came to her eyes while Julia stared at her in bewilderment, not knowing what to think. "Oh, Julia — 'disgusting’! That’s marvelous. It’s such a funny word to use, a ridiculous word, and yet I know what you mean. I used to feel that, centuries ago.

The almost unbelievable fact about Greg was this. On another occasion Uncle Phil had taken them to the Egyptian Museum in San Jose, and Mrs. Redfern, turning from a jewel case, let out a cry when she saw Greg standing under the elbow of the big statue of the Pharaoh Ikhnaton. She went to him and took off his glasses, leaving his face, Julia thought, naked and almost frighteningly unfamiliar. And when you looked back and forth at those two, you would have sworn that Greg and Ikhnaton were twin ' brothers.

"That’s what a poem is,” Leslie said, "a feeling about some special time or place or happening, pressed into as few lines as it will go.”

"Do you mean that that,” exclaimed Paul, "is exactly the way this pharaoh looked?”
"Because when you see the painting, and then Greg, you know everything isn’t just ordinary after all. I mean, there really are mysteries.”
"Strangenesses,” said Julia. "Of course!” Some days there were so many she couldn’t put them all down, yet here was Paul, who lived in Canada and who’d gone camping in the Canadian Rockies where there were glaciers that had been lying in the clefts of peaks for maybe a thousand years, he had told them, and who’d seen with his own eyes bear and elk and moose and mountain lions, saying maybe everything wasn’t ordinary after all, just as if he thought everything was.

"I see what you’re thinking. It seems Mrs. Moore and I believe that nobody’s to blame for anything, because who knows what the parents did. But there’s no point in being alive, it seems to me, if a person never changes. Somehow he has to see himself from the outside —”

"If you have to, you will. If there’s something you must do, you do it — it’s as if it’s handed to you.”

[deborah o'carroll · Rating 5 out of 5]

I might think differently of it now if I reread it, I don’t know, but this is another favorite from when I was younger… it just really resonated with me at the time. It was really PERSONAL for me and felt like it was FOR ME. It’s hard to describe the plot since there isn’t a lot of one… It’s just a historical fiction about a girl in I think the early 190os (could be wrong… I don’t remember) and her family and the strange people who live in their neighborhood, and she’s a bit of a writer and very accident prone and… I don’t know. I just loved it. Plus it’s illustrated by my favorite illustrator, Trina Schart Hyman. Which is cool. I discovered this book because I loved the author’s Mushroom Planet books, which are fabulous by the way.

[Catherine Mustread · Rating 3 out of 5]

A serious book in the Julia Redfern series after the previus funny ones.

[Orsolya Könyvtáros (formerly Memp) · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have ever wanted to be a writer -- if you wanted to be a writer, as a child -- go read this book now.

Julia Redfern wants to write. So do plenty of young female protagonists -- but Cameron explores an angle that I have never seen examined in juvenile literature. Countless books present dreamy-eyed, imaginative storytellers enamored of faery and melodrama, who go through awkward phases of hilarious attempts and finally hone their craft by coming of age and reaching a deeper understanding of life.

Julia does not follow this model. She has uncanny talent and at the opening of the book has written a story which is preternaturally good: and she is average in absolutely every other way. She doesn't act like an adult and isn't particularly winsome, which makes her gift stand out all the more; she is immature and uninhibited, and honestly a pretty irritating kid. For every moment of sudden perception there's an equal and opposite moment of headlong blundering, and she's very wobbly on the concept of boundaries. Cameron has drawn a painfully accurate psychological portrait of a child just beginning to grow out of the heartless stage, in which everything is the beginning or end of the world, in which what she wants to be true becomes true, and in which suggestions are taken as outright promises while ordinary failures are complete betrayals. To Julia, writing is a way of capturing and processing and conveying the "strangenesses" of life at 12.

I found the themes of giftedness intriguing. Too many books in the past have portrayed gifted characters as set-apart and other, and a trend nowadays is to cast artistic inclination as a comorbidity of or even synonym for neurodivergence and/or mental health issues. It was refreshing to read a character who was not being put on a pedestal or "coded as" something to explain her talent. Even better, Mrs. Redfern gives a swift, sharp defense of a neighbor-girl to whom Julia slyly compares herself, fishing for some affirmation of superiority. There is no Rebecca vs. Emma Jane, here.

A vivid cast of adult characters influences young Julia: failed concert pianist Rhiannon Moore, who knows what it's like to lose human relationships in the quest for one's art; Daddy Chandler, grandpa-figure, who works on his memoirs every single day only for his handwriting to be found completely illegible; the Penhallows, who warn Julia that she must not become discouraged if it takes a long time and a lot of practice to write anything to equal her powerful first attempt; the memory of her dead father, who was killed in the war before ever being published. As in Cameron's other books, most of the adults fit no "role" or archetype in Julia's life -- sometimes even when they ought to. It's an unsettling perspective to read.

Julia's peers are well-drawn, too, and her talent is contrasted against that of her older brother Greg (an aspiring Egyptologist and already middle-aged at 14) and Leslie (who self-describes as an "aged cynic" and might be just a bit warped by having parents among the intelligentsia of UC Berkeley). Cameron doesn't sentimentalize childhood and openly portrays the challenges children face -- including some that no child should ever experience.

Julia ultimately has to decide why she wants to write and how to accept the possibility of failure: that it is the discipline and the process, not the finished product and any adulation she receives, that she has to love: the actual sitting-down-and-writing, night after night, the introspection and brutal honesty and vulnerability of it all.

I don't often give books five stars, but I haven't been able to get this one off my mind. Just a few notes, in closing, since I could easily turn this into a dissertation --

1) Cameron gives some of the best, most-observant cat behavior descriptions I have ever read.
2) Cameron is the only person who has ever made me want to visit California: a place I can't say I've ever wanted to see (aside from the redwood forests). Her California book settings are heavily atmospheric in an otherworldly way.
3) I deeply appreciated the absence of any twee eccentricity that one might expect in a story for children about being talented.
4) Julia reads Yeats, and Elinor Wylie is quoted towards the beginning, but there is no further name-dropping, no gushing over favorite authors, no rhapsodies about how amazing books and libraries and people-who-read are. What a relief.
5) The reviewer above who describes Julia as wearing thick glasses and getting her first period is remembering a different book. Julia does not wear glasses and there is no mention or hint of bodily functions whatsoever.
6) I firmly believe that this book is set after WWII: because it makes the most sense of the best parts of the story, and I maintain that Cameron's attempts in subsequently-written Julia books to ret-con it into the 1920s destroyed everything that was meaningful.

I wish I had read this 25 years ago.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because a good friend said that it was one of the most memorable and influential books of her youth. It is a book that has a lot going on, an aspiring writer learning about herself, marriage, death, child abuse, all somehow held together in an interesting story that makes sense.

There are quite a few characters, which I think could make it a little bit harder to follow for some readers. The main character was very well portrayed, a fallible human, interesting, intelligent, creative, selfish and self-absorbed. Her growth and feelings through the novel are believable and easy to relate to. Some of the other characters are flatter and less well developed, but that may be inevitable when a book of this length has so many characters.

There are certainly aspects of the story which are quite dated. One thing that struck me was that there is child abuse going on in this story, and everyone knows it, and no one even considers the possibility that something should be done about it.

[Ramona · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting story about a young girl, Julia, along with her family, best friend, neighbors, and her cats, who reveal all the intricacies of growing up, growing old, moving on. Julia wants to be a writer; Daddy Chandler has been working on a book he will never finish. She sees the world in a different way, than most of us. The introduction of her Book of Strangeness gives us a clue into her world.
The story also delves into the problems of bringing in a step-parent.

[Lautaro Lobo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book very much. It was tough to read. Not because the narrative or something, but because I always find it difficult to read about childs struggling.

Julia goes trough many things. In one year her life changes abruptly. She grows and learns.

Illustrations on this book are lovely too.

[Becca Vasquez · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was very slow at the beginning, and for a bit, Julia was hard to like. By the middle, though, it picked up and Julia won me over. The imagery was beautiful, and I learned a LOT of new words.

Moral of the story: Be like Mrs. Moore and NOT like Mr. Kellerman. Also RIP Daddy Chandler #DaddyCForever

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

First time re-reading this since childhood, and I’m impressed. I don’t know why my libraries don’t have any Eleanor Cameron any more, given how well-known her books used to be and how good this one is. The only problem I could find in it was some fat-shaming. I appreciated that the main character, Julia Redfern, was a realistic child with flaws. Some heroines in literature are too perfect to believe. Julia has her good traits, such as her love of animals, her ability to befriend elderly neighbors, her imagination, and interest in writing. She also has flaws, including self-absorption and stubbornness. This book was good and I look forward to re-reading the rest of the series.

To read the Julia Redfern books chronologically, the order is:
Julia's Magic
That Julia Redfern
Julia and the Hand of G-d
A Room Made of Windows
The Private Worlds of Julia Redfern

[Eavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although little else about this book stuck with me, the phrase "utmost despision" is now part of my (silent) vocabulary forever.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sweet but dated story of a very real girl who longs to be a writer.

[Liaken · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a strange and unexpected read this was. The protagonist is fully human, making all manner of strongly felt choices that often make the reader cringe, but cringe with understanding. I was amazed at how expertly the author revealed the world as a dangerous and uncertain place without displacing the childhood space of the protagonist. This is an honest book in ways that don't often happen in fiction. I enjoyed the exploration of words and writing, description and imagery. It was a memorable read.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Held up under a second (third? more?) adult reading. Julia is a young aspiring writer, perhaps age 14, and I couldn't guess the year, since her father died "in the war" (which war?) and it seemed like easily a 1960s story, set in Berkeley, but then there's a "rag and bones man" who comes around the neighborhood, which completely confused me.

At any rate, it's a great story full of many interesting characters (at least as many adults as kids), quite well written, and it kept my interest throughout.

[Lynne]

not a fan. funny because i loved her mushroom planet books so much. this one is about reality and it bites. date listed is a second reading as an adult just to make sure that i didn't miss something wonderful. i didn't

[Partridge Public]

Cameron, Eleanor

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kathleen, have you read this? It's about an aspiring writer. And it's set in Berkeley.

[Miranda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this rather dull and rambling. I couldn't relate to any of the characters. I only bought it because I love the illustrator.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book as a child and later rediscovered as an adult. Atmospheric, nuanced writing.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Library book from the '80s. I remember liking it, but I have forgotten details.