The Field Guide

Jared awakes to screaming. It’s Mallory; they find her lying in bed with her hair tied in sections to the brass headboard. She has a pattern of bruises on her arms. Jared’s mom accuses Jared of the deed—he’s always arguing with Mallory—but Jared and Simon realize it must be the wall creature.

Jared thinks of the riddle poem, with its challenge to go “up and up” to find the answer (34). He ascends the rickety stairs to the attic, a large room adorned with birdhouses in the rafters and garment bags hanging from a long clothesline. A spiral staircase leads upward. He climbs it to a small tower room with lots of windows and a view of the roof and grounds.

A few items—fabric rolls, a Victrola, a dusty trunk—lie discarded on the floor. Jared opens the trunk: Inside are old clothes, a pocket watch, and a satchel filled with pencils. The riddle mentions a “man’s torso,” and Jared realizes the word trunk also means “chest.” Also, it could be both “false and true” if the trunk has a false bottom. He feels around the outside of the trunk until his fingers cause a compartment to pop open.

Inside, wrapped in soiled cloth, is a leather-bound notebook. Embossed on the cover are the words: “Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You” (55). The book is filled with handwritten notes and watercolor drawings. The subject is faeries.

Jared finds Mallory and Simon on the lawn, where Mallory, her hair somewhat shorter, is blowing off steam by defeating Simon at fencing. Jared shows them the faerie notebook. Mallory glances at its contents and quickly dismisses the book as “baby stuff.” Jared points out that it’s a field guide, like for identifying birds. Mallory scoffs at the idea that faeries tied back her hair, but she admits that Jared wouldn’t dare do it and risk her wrath.

Dinner is quiet except for Simon going on about some tadpoles he found. Jared asks his mom if their family is related to a Spiderwick, and she says Aunt Lucinda’s last name is Spiderwick. Jared says he found things belonging to an Arthur Spiderwick in the attic. His mom berates him for visiting the dangerously rotted upper floors; she forbids all of them from going there.

In his room, Jared stays up, perusing the field guide. Simon notes that his brother doesn’t like to read; Jared sniffs that he can if he wants. He shows Simon a drawing of a very small man, a “brownie,” who’s supposed to be helpful. Next to the brownie is another tiny person but hunched over; it’s a boggart, a brownie who, angered by humans, becomes destructive. Jared believes that’s what’s in the walls.

Simon wonders if the drawing shows the very same boggart. Jared says the field guide contains instructions for finding or catching one, but Simon warns him against angering their mom by venturing through the house late at night.

Simon goes to sleep, but Jared stays up and finishes the field guide. The notebook suggests placing flour or sugar on the floor to capture footprints; Jared thinks such prints would convince Mallory and his mom, so he sneaks down to the kitchen and pours out some flour on the floor. In the process, he gets his own footprints into the flour. His mom catches him and shoos him back upstairs to bed.