by Holly Black
Amazon rating: 4.6/5.0, ages 10-14
Good Reads: 3.67/5
Common Sense Media: 4/5, age 10+
4Rbooks: 3/6, Grades 6+
Synopsis:
Poppy, Zach and Alice are three friends with vivid imaginations who have been playing a fantasy game of their own creation for years. Part of their game includes a creepy doll made of bone china. Now in middle school, Zach’s dad forces him to quit the game. Zach doesn’t want to tell the girls why he has to quit, leaving them very confused.
Then, Poppy has a dream about the doll which forces her to ask herself, is it just a doll, or does it carry the spirit of a little girl who wants to be brought back home? Poppy convinces Zach and Alice to rejoin their fantasy game, but this time on a real-life quest to bring the china doll back to where she was made and give her a proper burial.
By, bus, foot, sailboat, and bike they travel to East Liverpool, Ohio to bring the doll her final resting place. Along the way their friendship undergoes many trials and secrets are revealed. They also face the question, “Are they changing too much to still be the friends they have always been?”
Parental Guidance: medium-high
The three families are all dysfunctional and the parents are rarely good role
models.
The use of bones to make bone china is shared.
The back story of the doll includes a little girl dying and the father using her
bones to make the doll, and putting some of her ashes and bone
fragments inside the doll.
The children go on a quest which means leaving their home without letting
anybody know, and traveling miles away on their own.
During their quest, the children encounter a creepy man on the bus who
makes them feel uncomfortable.
On their quest the children steal a sailboat, break into a library, and steal
two bicycles.
Children have dreams seemingly initiated and controlled by the doll.
Recommendation: Low for elementary school children, medium for middle
school students
Essentially, this is a ghost story for children so there are scary and creepy factors woven throughout. It’s a tough book to recommend for any grade level based on the choices of the characters: secretly leaving home in the middle of the night, riding a bus across state lines, sleeping alone in a park, stealing a boat, breaking into a library, and stealing bicycles. In real life, these would all be dangerous decisions. It’s especially difficult to recommend for elementary students or sensitive readers because of the doll’s back story (dead girl, father uses bones to create doll, girl’s ashes found inside the doll) and the ghostly themes.
The best feature of the story is the three friends and how their relationship evolves over the course of events. Friendships change as children move from elementary to secondary school, but true friends can stay together with a little understanding and effort by all involved.
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