Ghostlight

June 1, 2015
A preteen girl and her newfound friend investigate paranormal activity on her grandmother's farm. For Avery, summers on her grandmother's backwater farm have always meant long days filled with make-believe and storytelling. When her older brother, Blake, starts this summer break refusing to play with her, Avery wanders off to pout. She bumps into Julian, a city boy whose famous dad is staying in one of her grandmother's cabins. Julian's zeal for filmmaking catches Avery's fancy, and soon they develop a short film centering around the haunted Hillard Mansion, which Avery is forbidden to enter. The ensuing frights are a delight for readers aging out of junior horror and looking for some thematic meat in their reading. Gensler neatly captures a setting that has real history behind it instead of a stage-bound backdrop. Also well-developed is Avery's tween-ness, a tricky age when the world seems so big and so open that real terrors are replacing the figures of nightmares. The author's primary interest is in Avery's relationships with her mother and grandmother. This component is refreshing, but unfortunately it throws less well-developed relationships into relief. Julian and his family in particular feel like something of an afterthought. A late-in-the-game reveal works well enough when thematically linked to the novel's supernatural element, but it's not enough to make these characters spring to life. Better handled are the novel's terror sequences, which are spaced out a bit but still satisfyingly unnerving. Frightening and engrossing. (Horror. 10-14)

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July 1, 2015

Gr 4-6-Twelve-year-old Avery and her older brother, Blake, always spend summers on their grandmother's sprawling Tennessee farm. When Blake decides he is too old for Avery's favorite pretend game, Avery is furious and wounded. Then Avery meets a boy named Julian, an aspiring filmmaker. Julian is fascinated by a spooky old house on her grandmother's property-a house that Avery's grandmother has forbidden her to enter. Yet Avery can't resist when Julian invites her to help with his latest project: filming a ghost story. The new friends encounter some bizarre, downright alarming phenomena in the old house, and Julian sees the location as a perfect cinematic opportunity. Avery begins to research the history of the house and her ancestors who lived there. She hates disobeying her grandmother, but the more research she does, the more certain she becomes that the truth about the house's reclusive last resident needs to be discovered. Gensler conveys Avery's "left behind younger sibling" feelings in an authentic, relatable way. She also gently addresses the frustrations of children in unconventional family situations, and the awkwardness of cultural/religious disagreements between parents and grandparents. Supernatural elements are "real," but not exaggerated to the point of being hokey. The true beauty here is the story's inspiration to budding journalists, historians, and genealogists. Readers are in for a good ghost story, but also for encouragement to learn more about their own local histories and family trees.VERDICT Ghostlight is well paced and suspenseful with a sensitive, endearing protagonist.-Sara White, Seminole County Public Library, Casselberry, FL

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