Midnight at the Barclay Hotel, by Fleur Bradley

I'm happy to be part of the blog tour today for Midnight at the Barclay Hotel, by Fleur Bradley, illustrated by Xavier Bonet (middle grade, Viking, August 25 2020).  I'm always up for a good mysterious hotel story, and this one delivers very nicely!

JJ Jacobson is a young ghost hunter, but hasn't yet found any good ghosts to hunt.  So when his mother gets a surprising invitation for a weekend at the famous, and supposedly haunted,  Barclay Hotel.  She's always awfully busy and preoccupied with her peanut butter and jelly business, but he convinces her to go, and to take him with her.

She isn't the only one to get a mysterious invitation; a handful of other guest have been carefully selected as well.  And when they arrive, they find out why--all but one of them is a suspect in the death of the hotel's owner!  And then the snow begins to fall, trapping them....with a murderer.

As well as hunting ghosts, JJ has to hunt for the answers to the mysteries in which his mom has been entangled.  Fortunately there are two other kids at the hotel--Penny (grand-daughter of another guest) and Emma, who lives there.    They join forces, exploring the hotel together, discovering the secrets of the other guests, and hunting for ghosts (because yes, the hotel is haunted!).

The hotel is a fascinating place, and the kids are entertaining company! They make a great team-- Penny (who is black) loves books, and puts that to good use, JJ loves  his ghost hunting, and there's lots of detail about his technology.  Emma knows the hotel, so she's their guide.  There are plenty of twists, and nothing is quite as it seems, making the pages turn quickly.  The solution wasn't what I was expecting at all (though I did guess a few things)!

For kids who like mysteries, ghosts, and weird hotels and playing Clue, this is a perfect book, especially for those on the younger side of middle grade (the 9 and 10 year olds).  And it's lots of fun for everyone else too!

Here are all the other tour stops:

Aug. 3^rd: Book review at Always in the Middle

Aug. 11^th: An interview at MG Bookvillage

Aug. 16^th: Guest post: Fleur talks about reaching reluctant readers at Unleashing Readers

Aug. 17^th: Review at Secret Files of Fairday Morrow blog

Aug. 18^th: Review and giveaway at MG Mojo

Aug. 19th.: Interview and giveaway at From the Mixed-Up Files

Aug. 21^st: Book review at Our Thoughts Precisely.

Aug. 23^rd: Interview and giveaway at Spooky MG

Aug. 24^th: Interview at YA Booknerd

Facebook Live Book Launch on Aug. 25th!

Aug. 25^th: Writer's Digest Author Spotlight

Sept. 4^th : Fleur talks about getting out of your comfort zone on Kirby Larson’s blog

Sept. 8^th: Fleur outlines how to develop a compelling MG concept at Writer's Digest

disclaimer: review copy received, with great pleasure, from the author!

Mysterious Messenger, by Gilbert Ford

If you think a treasure hunt in New York City with a ghost providing the clues sounds like fun for you and/or your kids, pick up Mysterious Messenger, written and illustrated by Gilbert Ford (July 2020, middle grade,  Henry Holt) right away!

Maria's life is constrained by her mother's profession as a fake psychic.  "Madame Destine" makes a living conning the gullible out of valuable possessions, and it's Maria's job to hid in a closet and make sound effects during the seances.  Mr. Fox, the apartment superintendent and more than friend to her mother, makes more sounds from the basement.  Maria doesn't go to school, she's not allowed friends, and her mother is manipulative and controlling (and just terrible at providing healthy meals, nurturing, support, etc.).   Maria's only escape is at the public library, and her only friend (a secret from her mother) is a ghost, Eddy, who can communicate by controlling her writing hand.

When Mrs. Fisher, an elderly widow who isn't well off, is conned out of her wedding ring, Eddy takes action.  Apparently there's a treasure hidden in Mrs. Fisher's apartment, and he starts giving Maria clues about how to find it.  The library's her first starting place, and there she meets a boy named Sebastian, who lives in her appartment building.  Though she's forbidden to talk to him, she can't shake him, and when he finds out that she's on a hunt for treasure, he becomes her comrade. Mrs. Fisher becomes a friend to Maria too, and over the next few weeks Eddy's messages bring all three closer, though no closer to the treasure....

But the librarian is concerned about Maria, and gets the neighborhood police officer to look into her living situation.  Madame Destine and Mr. Fox decide it's time to head out of town, but when they discover the treasure hunt, they want a piece of that action, and Maria, Sebastian, and Mrs. Fisher find themselves in danger.

The clues Eddy provides make this a rather unusual treasure hunt, sending the kids delving into the history of the Beat poets, artists, and musicians with whom Mrs. Fisher and her husband were friends  (a visit to the archives of the NY public library, for instance, and to one of the clubs where poets hung out).   This was fascinating to me, and I assume that smart kids, the sort that are used to picking up all sorts of random information online, will appreciate it too.

I did get frustrated that Eddy didn't provide clearer directions to the treasure, but then I (and Maria as well) realized the treasure wasn't everything.  Eddy turns out to have good reasons for wanting Maria to escape her horrible mother and find friends who can help her, and the journey toward the treasure is what makes this happen....that being said, there is a wonderful, bibliophile's dream of a treasure!

There's also a happy ending for Maria, but I was a little grumpy that once she found out who her father was, and found out Madame Destine was only her stepmother, no one made any effort to find her relatives.  Her dad's family is Puerto Rican, and possibly her mother's too, so it would have perhaps been challenging, but not impossible.

But in any event, this one's a winner for kids who enjoy found families, treasure hunts, books, ghosts, and kids with psychic  powers!  I also appreciated the educational side of things, and in fact have more appreciation for Jackson Pollock than I did last week...though I still am not interested in reading the Beat poets.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Ghost Squad, by Claribel A. Ortega

Happy Book Birthday to Ghost Squad, by Claribel A. Ortega, an exciting story about two girls racing to set to rest a plague of evil spirits (that they might have helped awaken).

On paper, 12-year-old Dominican-American Lucely and her father, who makes a living running ghosts tours, live alone.  In actuality, their home is full of the family ghosts, living on as fireflies, but to her eyes appearing as the people they once were.  But something bad is happening to her ghost family...they are starting to fade.  So she and her best friend, Syd, try to find a magical solution to the problem in the old, forbidden spell book owned by Syd's witchy grandmother.

But maybe their spell casting attempt has made things worse.  Now dark magic is afoot in her town, and the mayor himself is spearheading an attempt to wake angry ghosts.  On a class field trip to the town hall, Lucely overhears the mayor and his henchmen are planning a ritual to take absolute control over the town by overrunning it with spirits.  The firefly tree of Lucely's family is a defender of the town, but with her family spirits weakening, how much longer will it be able stand against the new supernatural enemies?

So Syd and Lucely set to work to thwart the mayor's plan.  When their home made attempts at ghostcatchers fail, they set out to find the missing pages from the spellbook they used before...pages that were intered with the dead....who are now waking up!

It's a fun, spook filled race to settle the dead.  The pages, many filled with ghosts, some malignant and creepy, others warm and loving, turn quickly!  Lucely and Syd make a great team; their different strengths complement each other nicely.  And Lucely's extended family adds warmth and interest, although also a sadness, because many died too soon.

There are quite a few ghost hunting books out there (like Victoria Schwab's City of Ghosts series), but this one stands out because of its roots in Dominican culture, and because many of the ghost are family, which  makes the contact between the living and the dead more immediate and personal.

The Thief Knot, by Kate Milford

The Thief Knot, by Kate Milford, is the third of the Greenglass House series (though there are other books set in the fictional town of Nagspeake). The first, Greenglass House, will always have a special place in my heart, because not only did I myself love it, but it was the last book I read out loud to my little one (now 16), and he loved it too....So it was a treat to anticipate returning to Nagspeake with The Thief Knot (it's a real pleasure to keep a book you really want to read out for a few days, so that every time it catches your eye you get a happy zest moment), and a treat to actually do so (because it was really good)!

The Thief Knot is essentially the story of a group of kids coming together to solve a mystery--in this case, the kidnapping of a politician's little girl, Peony.  Best friends Marzana and Nialla had been wanting excitement, and despite all the curious and dubious things about their home in the Liberty district of Nagspeake (full of shifty characters with pasts not talked about, magical "old iron" that transforms itself, and lots of secrets), they hadn't found a good adventure.  When Peony is kidnapped, and Marzana's parents (who fall in the "pasts not talked about" category) are asked to use their connections to help find her, Marzana and Nialla decide that they will help too.  They are joined by four other kids, each with their own unique attributes and abilities, and set to work to hunt for clues, starting in their own school....

And a delightful tangle of clues they are too, with false leads and improbable connections taking the kids into places in the own neighborhoods that blow their minds!  It's not just the place that was familiar being made extraordinary to the kids; the stories they learn about each other and their families do the same. Along the way, the kids themselves are changed. For instance, Marzana doesn't exactly overcome her crippling self-doubt once and for all, but she is able to trust her new friends and her ability to make decisions as leader of the group, and able to make mistakes, realize she has, and set things right.

I myself have no yearning to solve mysteries, but if ever there was a group of kid detectives that I could join, it would be this one.  I feel they might value my skills as historian/archaeologist/person able to draw to scale underwater (although no drawing to scale underwater was needed to crack this particular mystery).  My lack of innate detecting ability makes me unable to comment on the manner in which the mystery was solved--when I read, I almost never see clues and if I do I assume the writer has failed somehow and made things too obvious.  In this case, I went into the book with a bit of bird knowledge that let me make a connection before it was pointed out in the book, but that being said, I found this mystery satisfying (although the group dynamic was really what I enjoyed, and the really truly fabulous architecture. Nagspeake's always had great fabulous architecture, but it went up a notch here).

So if you enjoy kid detectives in fantastical settings (with a bit of actually magic and fantasy elements to it), you will love The Thief Knot!  It would probably be pretty confusing to read this one before any other Nagspeake books, and part of the pleasure is seeing old friends from the first two books, but as a story it stands on its own just fine.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Brown (My Alter Ego is a Superhero, book 1)

One of the joys of being a first round Cybils Awards panelist is getting to read charming books that weren't on your radar at all.  A case in point, for those of us reading for Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction, was Brown, by Håkon Øvreås, illustrated by Øyvind Torseter (American edition 2019, Enchanted Lion). This is the first book in the best-selling, award winning, and much beloved My Alter Ego is a Superhero series, and it's a great one to offer the elementary school aged kid who's past early chapter books, but for whom the generously illustrated, fewer words per page books are just right.

Rusty's beloved grandfather has died, and to make things worse, bullies are wrecking the fort he's built out in the woods with his best friend, Jack. What Rusty needs is a superhero to save the day, and so he becomes one himself! With his brown clothes and cape, and armed with cans of brown paint and advice from his grandfather's ghost, he gets revenge as the superhero Brown. Things escalate, though, and so Brown is joined by two other heroes--Jack as Black, and Lou, a neighbor girl who isn't quite as good a friend yet, as Blue. Together they target the bullies with their paint...and though there's plenty of trouble for them to get into, at last they are victorious.

Although the kids have no actual super-powers, the ghost of Rusty's grandfather is an important character in the story, adding magic, good counsel, and love to the shenanigans. It would make a lovely one to offer a kid going through a similar grieving process. The many charming illustrations and the audacity of the kids' "superhero" antics help make this kid friendly, and they'll finish this one looking for the next book (at the Enchanted Lion website, I was pleased to see that Black is apparently "coming soon").

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Forgotten Girl, by India Hill Brown

It hasn't actually been particularly snowy or cold here in southern New England yet this winter, but if you are looking for chills, and lots of snow, try The Forgotten Girl, by India  Hill Brown (Scholastic, November 2019), a middle- grade story of friendship in the present, and remembering the past.

Iris is feeling a bit fed up at her school in small town North Carolina.  She's having trouble getting her Step Team, and herself, the recognition they deserve (part of nasty pattern of racism at the school).   She has her best friend Daniel, though; they have been inseparable for years, in and out of each other's houses, having each other's backs.

One cold winter night, Iris can't resist the lure of the freshly fallen snow, and signals to Daniel (they can see each other's windows) to convince him to sneak outside with her. Daniel's superstitions grandmother is terrified of snow, and its spirits who can capture children, so snow play is forbidden to him, and they aren't allowed to go play outside at night in any weather.  But having broken these rules, they break another, going farther into the woods behind their houses than they ever have before.  There in a clearing Iris makes a beautiful snow angel, only to find she's made it on top of the grave of  Avery Moore, who died in the 1950s when she was just about Iris's age.

Avery's cemetery has been abandoned.  But now Avery is awake, and is tired of being forgotten.  Iris finds her window wide open, letting the snow inside.  She has vivid nightmares, and feels pulled back to the cemetery.

For a social studies project, Iris and Daniel set out to find out the history of the forgotten cemetery and the girl buried there.  They learn it was a black cemetery, one of many reminders of the segregation that meant separation even in death, and they learn that Avery was one of the first black kids to integrate their school.  And they challenge the golden girl, Heather (whose own social studies project involves Confederate history), who wants the school's clean up club to spruce up the basketball court--instead, they organize a cemetery cleanup, to bring the forgotten back into living memory.

Still the creepiness in Iris's life is getting worse, and there are hint that her little sister is being pulled into Avery's spooky orbit too.  Avery's been able to pull Iris out of the house and down to her clearing, and one snowy night, Avery plans to make Iris her best friend...forever.

But the history the two kids have dug up about the cemetery isn't all that long ago, and the person who can give Avery peace is right there, if she can confront her memories of what happened on a winter night fifty or so years earlier....Avery was never forgotten at all.

The spookiness of the ghost story brings the history of mid-twentieth century racism to the forefront, gently (though creepily); the supernatural never takes over the story, but kind of pushes the way toward the difficult process of confronting the past.  This might mean that those who like really creepy ghost stories will be disappointed by the chill factor, but I think it makes it a better book.

It's one that hit home for me personally, because part of my professional life is being one of the people that looks after the forgotten cemeteries of Rhode Island, making sure that the poor and forgotten people buried here get respect in death.

Dead Voices, by Katherine Arden

Dead Voices, by Katherine Arden (middle grade, G.P. Putnam's Sons, August 2019), is a delightfully spooky sequel to Small Spaces, perfect for a chilling read as winter draws closer!

Ollie, Coco, and Brian became close friends under somewhat trying circumstances last fall--the evil Smiling Man trying to turn them into scarecrows--and now winter has come, they're on their way to a fun weekend at a new ski lodge with Ollie's dad and Coco's mom.  They almost don't make it through the intense snowstorm, and when they arrive, they find themselves the only visitors.  The snow keeps falling, trapping them inside, and the power goes out.  And there are ghosts.

The day after they arrive another visiter makes it through the snow, a young reporter for a ghost hunting magazine.  The owners of the hotel aren't sure that publicity about the hotel's previous incarnation of an orphanage with a dark, sad, history is what they want, but the young man is keen to get ghost hunting, and can't leave in any event because of the snow.

Which keeps falling, as things inside the hotel get scarier and scarier, with the ghost of a frostbitten girl begging Ollie for help, and the reporter urging the kids to join in his hunt.  And there is a lot of matieral for him to work with.  There are forces of evil at play inside the hotel that might trap the kids forever with the dead orphans and their cruel caretaker, but the most deadly danger comes from outside....

It's a story full of lots and lots of details that add beautifully to the growing tension, from the many taxidermied animals that great the kids when they arrive to the  claustrophobia of being snowbound. There are multiple plot twists too, that I didn't see coming, but which make sense.   The kids rise to he occasion beautifully, working together really well, and Ollie's own reflections about the loss of her mother are a strong counterpoint to the tragedies of the hotel's past.

Apparently there will be two more books in the series, one in spring, and one in summer, and then I hope the kids get a rest from hair-raising horrible-ness!

The Island of Monsters, by Ellen Oh

Not my greatest blogging week, but at least I'm getting one post up!

The Island of Monsters, by Ellen Oh (HarperCollins, middle grade, July 2018), is the sequel to last year's fantastic horror story, Spirit Hunters.  In that book, Harper Raine learns to use her gift for communicating with spirits, with the help of her Korean grandmother, and saves her little brother from a horrible ghost.  Now she's off to a family vacation on a remote Caribbean island, and has a bad feeling about it.  With justification, as it turns out to be demon infested.  Some years ago, 13 people were found horrible killed, and the mystery of their deaths was never solved.  It quickly becomes clear to Harper that supernatural forces were to blame, and when she experiences visions of what happened back then, she learns that it's not ghosts she's dealing with; it's demons.  And the demons are determined to claim more victims so that they can use their life force to break into our world and run amok.

Her grandmother can't come to island to help her, so Harper must take the lead on freeing the trapped spirits inside the demons, and sending them away from our world before they can kill again.  Fortunately her best friend, Dayo, has come along for the trip too, and she's a stalwart ally, but it is all very touch and go, and the horrible death of her little brother, and other young people,  is only a whisker away!

Spirit Hunters is a stronger book, because it deals more deeply with mundane concerns of middle school kids--moving to a new town, family tensions, friendship worries, wondering if the fact that you see ghosts makes you weird.  Here the story is almost entirely focused on the immediate threat, and that's certainly enough to keep the pages turning, but though the supporting characters are all clearly drawn and there's a mystery to solve about the past deaths, it's not quite so emotionally interesting to me story-wise.

That being said, kids who love horror (and it's pretty horrible, with some nasty disemboweling) will eat it up!

My Plain Jane, by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows

I never liked Jane Eyre, the character--I thought she was a bit of a drip.  I bravely re-read the book several times though as a teenager (at least it was better than Wuthering Heights....).  So the idea of a reinvention of Jane's story with ghosts and humor, both of which were lacking in the original, appealed.  My Plain Jane, by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows (Harper Teen, June 2018), improves on the original by adding those elements, and also by not making Jane the central heroine.  

Instead, the honor goes to a girl equally small, plain, and susceptible to romance--Charlotte Bronte, a school friend of Jane Eyre.  The destinies of the two school friends become entangled when Jane choose to become a governess in Mr. Rochester's household instead of a professional ghost hunter, and Charlotte, who'd love to hunt ghosts but can't see them, follows her there.  She's determined to persuade Jane to change her mind at the behest of the book's hero, the young and attractive (though neither tall, dark, or conventionally handsome) Mr. Blackwood.   Charlotte is busily writing Jane Eyre, the gothic romance, in scattered moments of peace between alarms and excursions, while Jane is falling hard for Mr. Rochester....and in the meantime there's a Sinister Plot afoot that involves the safety of the whole kingdom....

It is a lot more fun than the original, but fans of that book won't, I think, mind the gentle fun poked at it.  And it stands alone rather nicely as historical fiction with ghosts and authorial asides to liven things up.  Charlotte is a strong enough character that the book is able to power through its (slightly one note) premise, and this Jane is less of a drip than the original.  The ghosts are good plot elements, and the evil plan that must be foiled is a perfectly adequate plot point.

So basically, I didn't personally love it, but I did enjoy it lots; it diverted me very nicely!

City of Ghosts, by Victoria Schwab

City of Ghosts, by Victoria Schwab (Scholastic, August 2018) is a fun middle grade ghost hunting story, not desperately original but full of spooky atmosphere with an engaging heroine.

Cassidy Blake's parents are famous ghost hunters, and they've been offered a TV show that will take them around the world searching out hauntings.  What they don't know is that ever since her nearly fatal drowning, Cassidy herself can see ghost, and in fact her best friend, Jacob, who saved her life that day, is a ghost himself.

When the Blake's arrive in Edinburgh to film the first episode of the show, Cassidy is overwhelmed.  She can cross the veil that separates the living from the dead, in in Edinburgh, there are lots and lots of ghosts, dragging her into the supernatural realm.  In her experience, ghosts are uninterested in the living, but here in Scotland she meets a formidable ghost, who is very interested in the living indeed--dragging living children into her supernatural realm.  And she also meets another girl who can cross the veil, and who does so in order to put ghosts down, which Cassidy finds disturbing, because of her loyalty to ghostly Jacob.  But the immediate threat of the murdering ghost takes precedence, and Cassidy, with help from Jacob, must find a way to put this evil ghost to rest, or loose her own life, for real.

The spooky atmosphere of Edinburgh is wonderfully done, and the ghost stories are interesting and deliciously macabre.  There's nothing particularly fresh about it, but it's a fine fast read for kids who like ghosts!

(I myself was a little creeped out by Jacob; I wouldn't want my own adolescent daughter being constantly haunted by an adolescent boy who isn't great at privacy boundaries).

minor note--the family brings their cat from the US to Scotland, and I was all "but what about rabies quarantine?" and felt distrust towards the whole book as a result, until I looked up current law and found the quarantine regulations have been relaxed.  So don't worry about that!

If this is the sort of story you like, try the Suddenly Supernatural books by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel (daughter of a medium starts seeing ghosts and lays them to rest) and Michelle Schusterman's Kat Sinclair series (dad has ghost hunting tv series, daughter gets involved in spooky mysteries).  And if you like your ghost hunting really spooky, try Ellen Oh's Spirit Hunter books.

A Festival of Ghosts, by William Alexander

In A Properly Unhanted Place, by William Alexander, link goes to my review)  young Rosa Diaz was instrumental in dismantling the dangerous barrier that that had been constructed around the town of Ingot to keep the dead away.  But now that the town is properly haunted again, will the living be able to cope?

A Festival of Ghosts (Margaret K. McElderry Books, August 2018)  picks up right after the first book ends.  Rosa is forced to go to the local school, where she must act as a semi-official ghost appeaser; and her role in the whole ghost business has not made her wildly popular with many of the other kids, so there's social as well as spooky tension!

The school is not the only supernatural hot-spot--Ingot is in danger of being overwhelmed by the influx of unsettled spirits, and its inhabitants have lived without having to deal with the dead for so long that they don't know how to cope.  Rosa herself is troubled by the possibility that she herself is being haunted by the ghost of her dead father, and her best friend Jasper and his family are troubled by the haunting that's taken over the grounds of the town's Renaissance festival--spirits of Renaissance re-enactors and the minors of Ingot's past are at war over the site.  And the haunting of the school proves not to be a case of ordinary restless dead, but part of the tragedy at the heart of Ingot's troubled past....

So basically, there's a lot on Rosa's plate!  She and Jasper continue to be a great team, and the details of ghost appeasement make for entertaining reading.  The larger struggle of recognizing history and past wrongs, and making places for those wrongs to be remembered in the landscape of the living, adds a profound and thoughtful depth.

The first book was great spooky fun, this book is perhaps less fun, but possibly even better.

Note--illustrations by Kelly Murphy, one of my favorite middle grade fantasy illustrators, add lots....for those who are better than I am at noticing that there are pictures.  I have to go back and look at the them once I finish the book, because I get so fixed on the reading that I don't even see pictures.  I had not even realized that there were pictures until I started writing this.  This blindness, and my sadness that I have this failing, is why I have organized a panel on "illustrated middle grade" for Kidlitcon 2019, with Kelly Murphy as one of the panelists.  I would like to be able to think more intelligently about the pictures!

The Turnkey of Highgate Cemetery, by Allison Rushby

"A middle grade book about ghostly spying in WW II England?  Sign me up!" sums up my reaction to The Turnkey of Highgate Cemetery, by Allison Rushby (Candlewick, July 24,2018), and I was (for the most part) not disappointed, and enjoyed the book lots.

When Flossie died, from complications of rheumatic fever when she was just 12, she found herself with a job to do.  She became the Turnkey of Highgate Cemetery in London, responsible for keep all the dead in her care at peace.  But the peace of London has been shattered by the blitz, and when Flossie sees the ghost of a Nazi officer snooping around St. Paul's, her suspicions are aroused.  Quite rightly, too--as the story unfolds, she finds that he is indeed the mastermind of a sinister plot to use his ghostly state to pass on top secret information back to Germany.

Flossie has no particular powers of her own, outside her own cemetery, but she's still determined to stop him.  But how?  Her path takes her to Germany, where she meets a ghost girl with secrets of her own, and requires her to work with the other Turnkeys of London, including one who seems almost hostile.

The story unfolds very nicely, building up the tension gradually as the bombs fall on London.  Flossie is a heroine to cheer for, as she navigates her various responsibilities to both the dead and the living.  An element of pathos such as pathos loving mg readers will appreciate is provided by a girl torn between living and dying after loosing her family in the Blitz, who Flossie tries to convince to choose life. If you are a fan of WW II stories for kids, this is a very interesting twist on the usual plots, that I appreciated lots!  My only disappointment was that at the end of the story, Flossie decides that her responsibilities are to the dead, not the living, and so she has no plans to go on to become a spy herself to help win the war.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.

The Empty Grave, by Jonathan Stroud

Way back in September of 2013, a few days before it was released, I finished The Screaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud, the first book in the Lockwood and Co. series about an alternate Britain plagued by malevolent spirits and a pluck team of young ghost hunters who fight against them (here's my review).  I wrote: 

"great characters, great premise, exciting ghosts and I Cannot Wait till the next book, when more about the very charming Anthony Lockwood, and more about the geekily appealing George, might be revealed! We already know Lucy pretty well, but I'm curious about how her relationships with the boys might change..."

And now I have just finished the fifth and presumably final book in the series, The Empty Grave (Disney-Hyperion, Sept. 2017), and I have all the answers, and an ending has being reached, and all is well (though "the Problem" of the ghost is still troublesome).  So from that point of view, The Empty Grave is a very satisfying book, and I was delighted to read it.  Unusually for me, I find the exciting bits of these books more interesting than the character building bits, perhaps because the exciting bits (hunting ghosts), contain mysteries and team dynamics as well as just the adventures. 

From a more critical point of view, it's not the best in the series--it's a bit bogged down by the gang siting around trying to figure out what to do, as opposed to actually doing things.  It wasn't until about 2/3 of the way through that it became the page turner I was expecting it to be.  And I got really fed up with George's overweight physique being presented as something to laugh at; it's the sort of body shaming that makes me not want to recommend the books to any plumpish geeky boys, because it will make them (I imagine) feel bad.  It is also not a diverse bunch of characters, although it is strongly suggested by the end that one of the main characters is gay.   But though it's not perfect, I continue to recommend the series with  conviction--give these books to the 11-13 year old "reluctant reader" and they will be read.  I speak from personal experience here; my own son, who is now 17, is getting this for Christmas and will be very happy.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher for Cybils Awards consideration

The Painting, by Charis Cotter, for Timeslip Tuesday

I very much enjoyed Charis Cotter's first book, The Swallow (which I helped shortlist for the Cybils Awards back in 2014), and so was very pleased indeed that her new book, The Painting (Tundra Books, middle grade, 2017) , was a Cybils nominee in the Elementary/Middle Grade Fiction category this year and that a review copy came my way for my consideration as a Cybils panelist.  I was even more pleased to find it a time slip book, because my Timeslip Tuesday posting has been a bit spotty of late....and then, most importantly, I was pleased to be reading and enjoying it!  Though it is sad...

Little Annie was only four when she dashed across the street to see a little dog, and was hit and killed by a car.  Her big sister Claire has blamed herself ever since for not holding Annie back, and she feels their mother blames her as well, and would rather she had died instead of the vivacious and talented Annie.  When Claire's artist mother takes them to live in a Newfoundland lighthouse, the two of them pull farther apart, instead of finding peace and common ground.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, another Annie finds a painting of the lighthouse in the attic of her home, and brings it down to her bedroom.  When Annie's mother is in a bad car accident of her own, Annie  slips through time and space to visit the lighthouse, and meets Claire there.. who thinks her little sister has come back to her.  Though the painting of the lighthouse only works once as a portal, Annie finds more of the artist's paintings, which take her back on brief visits to Claire. The visits become increasingly urgent as Annie's mother, gravely injured and in a coma, worsens, and Claire and her mother's relationship moves toward a breaking point of no return.

The reader quickly guesses, and Annie just a bit later realizes, that Claire is her mother.  Seeing Claire struggling with her own difficult relationship with her mother helps Annie better understand Claire not just as another girl but as her own mother (not always warm and sympathetic).  The time slipping leads all three characters to a happy ending where the sadness of the past is soothed and healing can happen.  Though the connections between the characters are predictable, they are moving, and given a nicely magical twist by allusions to Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass.  Is Annie dreaming Claire, or Claire dreaming Annie?  Actually, neither, because Annie has a physical presence in Claire's world, though no one but Claire can actually see her.

I loved the idea of time slipping through paintings that connect two characters in different times, and it serves as an especially pleasing mechanism here (I just with I could see the paintings myself!).  Both girls are sympathetic narrators, taking turns to tell the story.  Because Claire in the past is now linked to the danger that Claire is in as an adult, there's a tension at work in the story as well.  As Claire's life in the past darkens, Claire in Annie's present worsens, and Annie (both back in time and in her own time) is the only hope of relieving the stress that is at play and that is about to snap.

So in short-- if you like atmospheric books with beautiful paintings and scenery, and plots that depend on strained relationships between sad (though sympathetic) protagonists, with a lovely magical time travel element, and a hint of ghost, do try this one. Giving Kirkus credit where credit is due, we are in agreement-- "Full of emotional truth and connection."

Musing about the book as I looked for a picture of it, I found myself wondering about the bulky socks of the girl on the cover, which made me realize that the little dog responsible for Annie's death is on the cover too.  So the girl must be Annie of the 1970s, which at first seems odd, because she's not a protagonist, but which actually works very well....

Journey's End, by Rachel Hawkins

The moment I hear of Journey's End, by Rachel Hawkins (G.P. Putnam, MG, October 2016) back in the early fall of 2016, I knew I wanted to read it--what with time travel, Scotland, magical fog, and written by an author whose YA books I have found extremely entertaining.  But it just missed the cutoff for the Cybils Awards that year, and as an Elementary/Middle Grade speculative fiction panelist, I had to focus on what was nominated.  But read it I did, eventually, and so when the Cybils rolled around again, I made sure that it made it onto the list.

Here's why I like it--

I find the set-up very relatable.  An American girl, Nolie, is spending the summer with her scientist father in an isolated coastal village in Scotland, Journey's End.  He's there to study the mysterious fog bank, know as the Boundary, that hovers just off shore.  Nolie is faced with that all too real tension of "will I make a friend," and happily she does, with a local girl, Bel, who is facing the all too real tension of "my best friend ditched me when a cool new girl moved to town."

The mysterious fog bank is cool as all get out.  It has its origins in a great wrong done to a young woman centuries ago.  It swallows people up.  And has started to creep closer to land....

Not only is the fog spooky, but is has also just spit out a boy it swallowed up back in the early 20th century, a boy who Nolie and Bel find and try to help.  The future is strange to young Albert, and it's fun to see how his abrupt transition plays out.

The two girls solve the mystery of the fog, and thwart its advance, in a believably way, with plenty of good emotional tension.  The Boundary is kept at bay when the lighthouse on the island it enshourds is lit.  Arthur was lost when he tried to relight it back in 1918, and now it has gone out again.  If it isn't relight, the danger is very real for Journey's End and it's people.  But the only way to relight it is to go inside....

So it's both a fun friendship story and a creepy adventure mystery, with a bonus helping of an entertaining time travel plot, and another bonus of a ghost-hunting plot (ghost hunting being Nolie's hobby, and the circumstances giving her plenty to work with).  I found it tremendously appealing, and others who like their fantasy rooted in reality but richly magical will probably agree!

Kirkus agrees with me, and goes into more detail about the plot (thank you Kirkus.)

Ghosts of Greenglass House, by Kate Milford

Ghosts of Greenglass House, by Kate Milford (2017, middle grade, Clarion Books), was my most anticipated book of 2017 (I loved the first book, Greenglass House, very much, and if you haven't read it first, do so before reading this because spoilers).  It was released 2 days ago, so I'm later than I wanted to be getting a review up, but it was for a good reason--my 9th grade made friends this year with an 8th grade girl who also loved Greenglass House, and so I passed on my ARC to him to lend to her, which made me (and her) both happy--it has always been my dream that my boys' friends would be happy recipients of my ARCs and this hasn't happened as much as I had anticipated....

So Ghosts of Greenglass house takes place a year after the last book.  Once again it is Christmas, and it has been a year since Meddy, the ghost girl who once lived there has turned up.  It is slowish to start; Milo, whose parents run Greenglass House as a hotel, is disgruntled and cranky (partly because he is a Chinese adoptee, and has just had to deal with an insensitive teacher), and there's no snow yet.  There's only one guest in residence--a young art student in love with the stained glass windows.  But then guests arrive.  The first to come are dear characters from the first book--Clem and Georgie, professional thieves.  Their most recent job, liberating an extraordinary map, went sour, and they need to lie low.  Then the Waits ( mummers and carol singers) arrive, and the peace of Greenglass House is shattered when one of them is poisoned, and the treasures that Clem and Georgie have brought with them are stolen.

Milo is of course eager to solve this mystery, and happily Meddie turns up to assist, and once more they fall into the role-playing game that helped them out last time.  And once more storytelling brings clarity to the puzzle, and lots of hot chocolate is drunk, and more of the strange history of Nagspeake is revealed. And there's another ghost involved...  So of course I loved reading all this!

Because the oddball collection of individuals who make up the Waits are not actual guests, the story takes place in basically a day and a half, which made it somewhat more frantic than book 1; there was less time for Christmassy peace, and things felt a tad squashed. I was also slightly disappointed that Meddie didn't do more; Milo has to do almost all the figuring out himself.  But still it was a great read!   I look forward to reading it again, out loud closer to December, to the 9th grader referenced above, who has already asked me to do so.  Knowing how things unfold, and the slower pace of reading out loud, will let me enjoy it even more!

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

A Properly Unhaunted Place, by William Alexander

A Properly Unhaunted Place, by William Alexander (Margaret K. McElderry Books, August 2017)  is a properly good book that's a great pick for the 9-11 year old readers still firmly in middle grade territory, that entertains with its surface adventures while holding emotional depths for the perceptive reader.

Rosa Ramona Díaz's mom is a librarian who specializes in ghost-appeasement--a valuable skill in a world where ghosts are ubiquitous, and libraries are dense with spirits.  But her mom has taken a job in the small town of  Ingot, the only town in the world that's utterly unhaunted, and she absolutely does not want to be there.  For one thing, she'll have no chance to practice her own ghost appeasement efforts.  Given the choice about being sad about her father's recent death (he was also a ghost appeaser, but bad at it) and being angry about being stuck in a basement apartment below an unhaunted library, she choses to be angry.

Then she meets Jasper, who's always lived in Ingot, and whose father is a knight at the local Renaissance Festival, where his mother plays the queen.  Jasper, his father's squire, has never seen a ghost, but this changes suddenly when the Renaissance Festival is attached by angry spirits.   Rosa's ghost-appeasing and containing skills come in handy, but she can't cope with the sudden influx of ghostly mayhem.  Even her mother is not strong enough to face the onslaught, and  a ferociously powerful ghost steals her voice.

Now Rosa and Jasper must race to find out why there is a barrier around Ingot that keeps the ghosts away, and why it starting to fail.  If the ghosts break through all the way, it will be a catastrophe.  But if the balance between the living and the dead can be restored before that happens, Ingot will be properly haunted, just like the rest of the world, and disaster will be averted.  The mystery lies deep in Ingot's past (and its "passed"--pun intended), and will require all Rosa and Jasper's courage and perseverance to solve it and to lay a dark past to rest.

It is a short book, by the doorstopper standards of much middle grade fantasy (adding to its suitability for the younger middle grade set), and it is a book that doesn't spell everything out.  For instance, there's an environmental disaster entwined with ghost problem (copper mining), that's alluded to but not underlined.  Rosa's grief for her father is a key part of her character and her choices, but again (partly because Rosa tries to squash it), isn't made a focus of the story.  Her grief ties to the larger message that underlies the whole story that the past, with its sadness, should be accepted, and that desperate efforts to banish ghosts and memories bring more harm than good.  That being said, some things are made obvious to the reader, and add lots to texture of the story, like Jasper's black father being a Moorish knight, bringing diversity to the Renaissance portrayed in the town's festival.

In short: a gripping, engaging mystery/fantasy with diverse characters set in a fascinating alternate reality.

And now I treat myself to reading the Kirkus review (starred) and find I am in total agreement:

"Though it’s a perfectly enjoyable tale on a purely superficial level, readers who choose to dig deeper will find an engrossing exploration of complicated grief and what damage may be wrought when negative emotions are barricaded away rather than addressed.  A fun and fast-paced supernatural mystery with secret depths for those who dare explore them."

Final thought-- a special yay for a book that gives black kids the chance to see themselves as part of medieval pageantry!

Spirit Hunters, by Ellen Oh

Spirit Hunters, by Ellen Oh (HarperCollins, July 2017), will be one of my top go-to books from now on if I am ever asked for recommendations of middle grade horror that is scary but not scarring for life scary.

Harper's family has just moved from NY city to a big old house in Washington D.C., bought cheaply because it needs work.  And also, though they don't know it, because it is a house where horrible tragedies have happened over the years.  Even before she knows about its past, Harper doesn't like it. Though she's not aware of the extent of her gifts, Harper can communicate with ghosts, and she is about to have ample opportunity to exercise that ability when her little brother becomes possessed by an evil spirit of another little boy who lived, and died, in the house, and who turns out to be only a cat's paw for a much more powerful and malevolent being.

The evil possession of her little brother is creepy, and builds nicely to full on horror as the story progresses, and the final confrontation with the more powerful spirit was full of bloody ectoplasmy ickiness such as horror fans enjoy (at least I think they do, and I think it was; I tend to skim descriptions of ick because otherwise they will revisit me forever.  But what I grasped didn't seem too unbearable.*)  And there's more horror here than just what's happening in the new house.  Harper has had troubles with ghosts before, that have left her badly injured and unable to remember what happen, and as current events unfold, so do her memories of these past traumas. So for kids who want horror, there's plenty of it.

What made this one I personally enjoyed so much, though, is the fact that it is also a family and friendship story.  Harper makes a new friend, Dayo, a lovely and helpful companion in adversity, and that was nice.   Less nice are family tensions, with her mother's mother shut out of the family (Harper inherited her gifts from her grandmother, who is a shamanic Spirit Hunter, and her mother can't stand this "superstitions nonsense"), and her mother isn't able to accept that Harper might really be seeing ghosts.  Her big sister blames Harper for the move to D.C. and is not the friend she once was, which happens to many seventh-graders with big sisters...So there are personal, character development things happening alongside the story that makes Harper real and someone to care about.

In some middle grade books, the kids are so wonderful and Chosen that they are able to defeat the Evil by themselves, but I like books like this one better.  It is up to Harper to find the strength in herself to win the final confrontation, but she's not entirely alone.  Her grandmother has helped get her to that point, and the ghost of an African American medium and Dayo  are their to provide support.  Even her little brother has to be an agent in his own escape from possession.  This to me is much more satisfying than extreme kid heroics.

It's also satisfying to see the diversity here, diversity that's central to who the characters are without defining them as just that--Harper's mother is Korean American, and Dayo's family is Jamaican.

One final thing that struck me--it was driven home to me that I really truly am no longer the target audience, because the thing I found most relatable is that Dayo's mom makes the same type of cookie as me--cranberry white chocolate oatmeal.

In short, I highly recommend both the book and cranberry white chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.

*for instance, I have Jonathan Stroud to thank for the fact that every time I go up the stairs, I think of the dark greasy smear left by the cannibal killer of the last Lockwood and Co. book.

In Darkling Wood, by Emma Carroll

In Darkling Wood, by Emma Carroll (Delacorte, March, 2017) is a UK import that has just hit the middle grade shelves here in the US.   If you are a fan of "kids being sent to live with relatives in the countryside who they have never met" and "kids having magical experiences in said countryside" you should definitely look for it!

Alice's little brother needs a heart transplant, and when a heart is available, there is no one to look after Alice but her father's mother, who Alice has never met.  Her father bailed on his family and now has a new partner and new baby, and he has been no support to Alice's mother during this time of medical crisis.  So Alice is sent off with her grandmother, Nell, to stay in Nell's old dark house shadowed by Darkling Wood.  No internet, great anxiety, and nothing in the way of supportive, loving sympathy from Nell. 

Nell has preoccupations of her own; she is determined to cut down Darkling Wood, whose roots are undermining her house.  She is also sick of living in the darkness of its shade.  But the local community is outraged by this idea, as the old woods are a beautiful and have always been there.  This makes it hard for Alice to make friends when her grandmother packs her off to the local school. And there are others who are outraged as well.

In Darkling Wood, Alice meets a girl who she never sees at school, perhaps, Alice thinks, the child of the local Travelers.  Flo is passionate about saving the woods too, but for the most extraordinary reason--she tries to convince Alice it is home to fairies, who will actively work against any effort to cut their home down.  Alice is not an immediate convert to this idea.  But as the difficulties Nell faces in carrying out her plan mount, becoming more than just coincidence, and as Alice begins to see and feel the magic in the woods, her mind opens to the possibility.  The fairies are tied, in her own mind at least, to her little brother's struggle for life after the heart transplant--will the fairies include him in their animus against her family? 

Alice is roiled by the magic, the heartache, and the loneliness of her situation.  And then, on top of all that, her father and her grandmother finally confront each other, and the mystery of their troubled past helps Alice put the pieces together of what really is going on in Darkling Woods (Flo is an important piece of this, tied to Alice's family history, which includes an episode of post WW I fairie photography, which I found interesting), and she realizes that the fairies are in fact real. 

If you are looking for actual interaction with the fairies in standard middle grade style, you won't find it here; there's no direct interaction with them.  They are sort of like magical chipmunks or other forest creatures, to be seen and appreciated from a distance, though they do affect things in the real world.  So not the most numinously wonderful fairies in the world.   But on the other hand, if you are looking for family mystery with an element of magic, this is the book for you!  Alice's emotional turmoil is really well done, and even unsympathetic characters are shown to be simply human in the end. 

Note to those who are sick of sad books--the little brother is fine in the end.  And the father becomes much less of an ass.

The Ghosts in the Castle, by Zetta Elliott

The Ghosts in the Castle, by Zetta Elliott (2017), is the author's latest book giving black city kids a place in both fantasy and history.  It's the story of a Brooklyn girl, Zaria, who goes to London with her mother when her grandpa suffers a stroke.  Zaria is thrilled to be in England, and she's pleased that Winston, a cousin she's never met before, shares her love of fantasy.  When she and Winston visit Windsor Castle together, they find a fantasy adventure of their own when they meet two 19th century African ghosts (who were real people).

One of the ghosts is Prince Alemayehu of Abyssina (Ethiopia), and the other is a young woman named Sally (aka Sarah Forbes Bonetta Davies) daughter of a chief in Nigeria.  Both were taken from Africa when they were children, and ended up living in England during the reign of Queen Victoria (I'd assumed they lived at Windsor Castle, but the author has clarified that this wasn't the case).  In a series of encounters with the ghosts, Zaria learns bits of their stories--both were taken to England as colonial possessions.  Alemayehu died when he was 18, and was buried at Windsor Castle.  Sally had a longer happier life, and can come and go between Windsor Castle and other places from her life, but Alemayehu is stuck, and cannot visit the one place he wants most to see again--his home in Africa.  With a bit of help from Sally, Zaria and Winston find a way to free Alemayehu's ghost.

It's good story for any young (nine or tenish, I'd say) fantasy reader who loves ghosts and mysteries and castles.  What makes it special is that Zetta Elliott is unapologetic about directly positioning both modern and historic characters of the African diaspora in a fantasy novel.  She raises issues of colonialism, both its past and its present reverberations (including Zaria's own family history), while keeping Zaria's particular story going at a nice pace, so that the message doesn't overwhelm the reading experience (in large part because Zaria is utterly relatable to any young Anglophile fantasy reader, and also in large part because it's a neat ghost story).

The result is a fascinating, moving story that not only adds diversity to the genre but makes for good reading.  It's just the right length for older elementary grade readers; if you are older than that, you might be left wanting more (which isn't a bad thing....)

There are discussion questions at the end; it would have been icing on the cake to have had more historical information about the two ghosts included in the backmatter as well, but if you go to the links above, you can see pictures of both Alemayhu and Sally and learn more about them.