This creepy gathering of stories creates buzz and possibility but in the end falls short.
Rumors abound that the Blatchford Arms is haunted—just the kind of place where a quirky babysitter like Carolina Giddle can brew her ghost tales for a cauldron of young apartment dwellers.
This middle-grade spookfest from Governor General Award winner Huser (Stitches, 2003) promises goose bumps and chills but comes up a bit unseasoned. Carolina Giddle arrives at the Blatchford Arms with a bang. She drives a knickknack-laden VW Bug (aptly named Trinket), carries around her companion tarantula, Chiquita, in his cage, and holds heartwarming conversations with her beloved aunt Beulah and her friend Grace, who both happen to be ghosts. The apartment building overflows with young trick-or-treaters in need of attention and supervision. With her gift for storytelling and setting the right mood, Carolina Giddle enchants them with eerie stories they can’t resist. Each tale mirrors the children’s woes or flaws, such as Hubert’s fear of the dark or Galina’s habit of ruining her artist father’s canvasses. Although the tales are well-told, entertaining stand-alone stories, they offer predictability (the children become more well-behaved after listening) instead of a sense of memorable wit and enlightenment. The ending may leave readers wondering if they’ve missed something.
This creepy gathering of stories creates buzz and possibility but in the end falls short. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-55498-425-1
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Tenderly resonant and memorable.
Ferris finds herself in the midst of several love stories during the summer before fifth grade.
Emma Phineas Wilkey’s moniker comes from the circumstances of her birth: under the Ferris wheel at the fairground. Her contained world, centered around her family and best friend, is filled with kindness, humor, and singular personalities, while the indeterminate late-20th-century small-town setting feels like a safe place from which to observe heartbreak and loss. Ferris’ architect father and her pragmatic mother, on break from teaching high school math, anchor her home life, along with Pinky, her hilariously ferocious 6-year-old sister, and Charisse, her grandmother, who claims to have seen an unhappy ghost in their big old house. Ferris’ best friend, Billy Jackson, whom she’s loved since kindergarten, hears the music of the world: “The whole world is singing all the time.” Ferris, serious and sensitive, is attuned to the ways that the vocabulary words they learned in Mrs. Mielk’s fourth grade class describe moments in her life. DiCamillo’s gift for conveying an entire person and world in a few brushstrokes of storytelling provides depth and quiet magic to this account of an eventful summer in which a ghost is appeased, an outlaw (Pinky) is somewhat reformed, and an uncle and aunt are reconciled. Ferris experiences two surprising moments of transcendence and becomes aware of the ways love suffuses everything. Characters are cued white.
Tenderly resonant and memorable. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781536231052
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
Supernatural mystery meets generational drama with hopeful endings for all.
Eleven-year-old Frank must solve a supernatural mystery to save his new home.
As fifth grade comes to an end, Frank Fernández is looking forward to finally staying put in Alabama for a second year, as promised, after a childhood spent following his parents’ home renovation work all across the country. Frequent relocation has made Frank wary of forming friendships or making plans, but his hopes for more stability are temporarily dashed when his parents announce plans to renovate a lighthouse in the Florida Keys, near where his mother grew up and his father’s home country of Cuba. Papi promises this will be their last move, though: The lighthouse will be theirs. But from their first day on Spectacle Key, things seem to go wrong: Tensions rise between his parents, and Frank’s hopes of a forever home are under threat from seemingly supernatural forces. In order to put down roots, Frank and new ghostly friend Connie, a White girl with freckles, must discover what secrets the island is hiding, uncovering Frank’s own family roots along the way. Frank is a fan of horror—he names his new Great Dane puppy Mary Shelley. But though there is some mild peril to be found, rather than a ghostly thriller, this is an appealing, lightly spooky family drama with valuable lessons for those who would hide from a difficult past instead of confronting and healing generational trauma.
Supernatural mystery meets generational drama with hopeful endings for all. (Supernatural. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-313481-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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