By Jacqueline Davies
4RBooks: 4/6, grades 4-7
Amazon rating: 4.8/5, grade level 3-7
Good Reads: 4.12/5
Common Sense Media: not yet reviewed
227 pages
Synopsis:
Alice is ten years old and longs for the day she will have one house to call home. She and her parents have moved every year of her life. Her mother works for a college, and is provided with housing, usually houses that need fixing. She has become great at fixing things because she loves helping her dad renovate their broken-down homes.
Their newest house is next door to a condemned property. When Alice learns her parents aren’t going to fix up their house, hoping to stay put for once, Alice decides to take on the house next door as a project. Once inside, she discovers there is more to the house than one would expect… three ghosts, Ivy, Mugwort, and Danny. There is also a force known as Fury, and the house itself seems to have life and the ability to interact with the world.
Alice sets out to help each of the spirits move from being “past due” to “settle” by learning of their unfinished business and finding solutions. She must get them settled before the house is finally demolished. The problems include unspoken love, damaged reputations, overdue library books, and betrayal. It will take initiative and creative thinking for Alice to solve all of the mysteries before the house is gone forever.
Parental Guidance: medium
*It’s a ghost story.
*Alice is “unschooled” meaning she is left home every day to learn whatever she wants in her own manner.
*Alice explores the old house next door, even though the sign says condemned.
*Alice begins to fix the house next door, without telling her parents.
*After she meets the ghosts, she continues to sneak into the house every day without telling her parents.
*Alice puts herself in danger several times within the house.
Recommendation:
This is a ghost story. If a parent is okay with ghost stories for their children, this is a good one, especially for October. The characters are interesting, the plot is intriguing, and there are good moral questions about love, responsibility, and duty.
Still, it is a ghost story which can be a challenge for Christian parents and teachers. I’m going to layer my recommendation based on the different types of readers who might be interested in the book.
Non-Christian public-school teacher: This would be a great book for your classroom library. Might be a tricky class read depending on your community and individual students/parents in your class.
Christian public-school teacher: If you feel comfortable having discussions with your students detailing both sides of an issue, this book would be okay to have in your classroom. You would just want to share the different views, secular and religious, about the spiritual world and the ability to communicate with it.
Non-Christian parents: Good book, good story, fun read.
Christian parents: This book could be a good starting point for sharing the Christian view of the afterlife and spiritual world, especially during the Halloween season; spirits hanging around versus being absent from the world and in the presence of Jesus.
Christian schools: check with your administration.
While I enjoyed this book as a story, it was a difficult recommendation. I just finished visiting Salem, Massachusetts and reading the book Killing the Witches. The book highlighted how the children in Salem, and the child who was the basis for the Exorcist movie were both introduced to the spirit world through games and stories. I think as Christian parents and leaders of children, we have to be careful what ideas are placed in our children’s heads, especially ones based on realistic story telling. I have less problems with the Harry Potter stories because they are so far-fetched and fantasy-based I believe they are easier to discount.
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