A chilling ghost story and an affirming tale about believing in yourself when no one else does.
Eva Mauberry thought boarding school was going to be hard, but she didn’t expect it to be haunted.
After her beloved MawMaw Septine passes away, 12-year-old Eva’s parents need to leave Tennessee and travel to Louisiana to settle her affairs, so they ask Eva to enroll in Blythe Academy, the boarding school in Mississippi that her father went to. Leaving family is always hard, but it’s especially challenging for Eva, who has anxiety and is autistic; she struggles when people aren’t understanding of her needs. But Eva, who’s Black, lucks out in rooming with kind and welcoming Afro-Latina Vee, and she’s quickly invited into her friend group, which includes chatty Ami, who’s Black and Thai and uses they/them pronouns. When strange things start happening around school, Eva realizes that Blythe is haunted by vengeful spirits. But nobody believes Eva sees ghosts, especially the resident mean girls. Fifty years ago, a building collapse killed a classroom full of students and their teacher. With Blythe’s centennial approaching, might tragedy strike again? The solid mystery at the heart of this story, which contains enough spooky elements for middle-grade horror lovers, reveals racist historical displacement practices. The author delivers a haunting read that’s enhanced by thoughtful representation of autism and anxiety.
A chilling ghost story and an affirming tale about believing in yourself when no one else does. (Horror. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781338825121
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions.
An isolated class of misfits and a teacher on the edge of retirement are paired together for a year of (supposed) failure.
Zachary Kermit, a 55-year-old teacher, has been haunted for the last 27 years by a student cheating scandal that has earned him the derision of his colleagues and killed his teaching spirit. So when he is assigned to teach the Self-Contained Special Eighth-Grade Class—a dumping ground for “the Unteachables,” students with “behavior issues, learning problems, juvenile delinquents”—he is unfazed, as he is only a year away from early retirement. His relationship with his seven students—diverse in temperament, circumstance, and ability—will be one of “uncomfortable roommates” until June. But when Mr. Kermit unexpectedly stands up for a student, the kids of SCS-8 notice his sense of “justice and fairness.” Mr. Kermit finds he may even care a little about them, and they start to care back in their own way, turning a corner and bringing along a few ghosts from Mr. Kermit’s past. Writing in the alternating voices of Mr. Kermit, most of his students, and two administrators, Korman spins a narrative of redemption and belief in exceeding self-expectations. Naming conventions indicate characters of different ethnic backgrounds, but the book subscribes to a white default. The two students who do not narrate may be students of color, and their characterizations subtly—though arguably inadequately—demonstrate the danger of preconceptions.
Funny and endearing, though incomplete characterizations provoke questions. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256388-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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