NO GHOSTS WANTED! Leo: A Ghost Story by Mac Barnett

Not everyone is open to living with a ghost.

But Leo was a solitary spirit, a lonely ghost.

He'd always lived in an empty house, but with a lot of familiar toys inside. He was a happy house ghost.

One day in spring, a family moved in.

Leo was excited. He tried to be friendly, making the family a welcoming tray of hot tea and toast.

They didn't see it that way.

Leo became a homeless roaming ghost. No one he met on the street could even see Leo.

They walked right through him.

But one day when he stopped to watch a girl drawing with chalk on the sidewalk, she gave him a long look.

She says her name is Jane and introduces him to her invisible pets, Sir Mews, Sir Ruffs, and Sir Squawks, a hamster, and invites him to play Knights of the Round Table. Jane knights him as Sir Leo and even invites him into her house to play Knights and Dragons, until her mother calls her to come to dinner.

"My mom doesn't think my imaginary friends are worthwhile," she said.

Leo felt awful.

Leo was afraid to tell her that he wasn't imaginary; he was real, but a ghost.

But that night, when a thief climbs in through the window and walks right through him, Leo knows what he has to do. He grabs a bed sheet to cover himself and scares the robber into a closet, where the police find him and take him away.

Leo is a hero, and all's well that ends with hot tea and toast, in Mac Barnett's off-beat story of a special friendship, Leo: A Ghost Story (Chronicle Books). Caldecott-winning illustrator Christian Robinson adds the charming blue-tinged ghostly illustrations in a spirited story of an unusual friendship found. "This gentle tale of friendship and acceptance is feather-light, yet enchanting," says the Washington Post.