The Phantom Isles

January 29, 2007
Once you've seen a ghost, everything around you looks a little bit different." Readers will feel like they have in fact seen ghosts thanks to a clever design trick that helps to elevate Alter's memorable ghost story, his first book for young people. Three middle-school friends, Courtney, Orion and Ming, poke around the restricted section of the town library, digging for a book called "The Compleat Necromancer" by a Prof. Hezekiah T. Osgood. They learn of the nation of Prithvideep, six islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean where Osgood, a scholar selected to study its people, and his family went in 1914. Shortly thereafter, the three friends discovers the ghosts of Prithvideep's long-dead residents, staring out at them from the pages of various volumes (pictures of the ghosts also stare out at readers, faintly printed on the appropriate pages of this very book). Together with the town librarian they set out to free the ghosts of Prithvideep—and in the process, they learn that Dr. Osgood was not the benevolent man he appeared to be. The author devotes entire chapters to the history of Prithvideep, and excerpts from faux–magazine articles tracing the story of the Osgood expedition plus footnotes give the tale an authentic feel. Action-starved readers may grow a bit impatient with all the background material, but lovers of atmospheric chills will embrace this tasteful bit of haunting. Ages 10-14.