STORM

A girl becomes a ghost who is tethered to her family home.

Twelve-year-old Frances Frida Ripley—ruddy-cheeked, with a mass of curly hair and strong, black eyebrows—just wants to have lunch with her best friend at the new seaside restaurant in town. It isn’t her fault she was, as her parents say, “born raging” like the winter storm that welcomed her arrival. After she loses her temper yet again, her parents, who recognize that she’s trying to do better, take her there as an early birthday present. Unfortunately, an earthquake in France causes a devastating tsunami that is heading their way across the English Channel. Coming to soaking wet with sand in her mouth, Frankie realizes she’s dead, well, “dead-ish” and that she’s alone. After a death chaperone gives her a sleeping potion, Frankie awakens 102 years later to find her home restored and opened as a tourist attraction. Annoyed by the tourists, poltergeist Frankie wreaks havoc only to grab the attention of someone sinister. Using her intense emotions, Frankie must kick up a storm to save herself and move on. Told from Frankie’s first-person point of view, this is an entertaining read full of wit mixed with honest, intense feelings. Centered around the theme of allowing oneself to feel and experience anger, sadness, and pain rather than shoving them down, it challenges societal norms of adults “tidying up” kids’ feelings.

A hauntingly memorable mixture of humor and honest emotion.