The Bell Bandit

Jessie, one of the protagonists of the text, is a problem-solver who is eager to solve puzzles. Throughout the text, Jessie tries to solve the mystery of the missing bell to preserve a meaningful community and family tradition. Jessie struggles with the changes occurring in her life that threaten to upend her sense of stability and familiarity stemming from her grandma’s memory loss: “[This] year, everything was upside down. [...] Not spend New Year’s Eve at Grandma’s house? Who would ring the bell?” (6). Throughout the text, Jessie struggles with change and seeks out the safe and familiar, such as when she goes to the tepee she and Evan built the summer before: “It made her feel safe and warm and hidden away from the world [...] This will never change, she thought with satisfaction” (37). In this quote, she finds comfort in the tepee’s sameness because she recognizes that important people and circumstances in her life are irreversibly changing.

This anxiety about change causes Jessie to apply her problem-solving skills to trying to prevent change. At nine years old, Jessie is still young, and this youthful naivete comes out when