Scare Compendium: In a Dark Dark Room and Other Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz

Everyone loves a scary story, even beginning readers, and for primary graders beginning to read independently, Alvin Schwartz' In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories: Reillustrated Edition (I Can Read Level 2) (Harper, 2017) is a collection of several oldies but goodies which don't lose much in the translation into easy readers.

"In A Dark, Dark Room" is one variation of the traditional folk "jump tale," a story which takes the reader into a darkened room, to an dark, dark chest, to a dark, dark shelf inside that chest where a dark, dark box waits. And inside that dark, dark box there is...

A GHOST!

"The Night It Rained" is a one variant of the venerable tale of "The Haunted Hitchhiker," in which a driver gives a pale young person named Joe a ride home on a dark and stormy night, kindly offering his shivering passenger the comfort of his jacket before he drops him off at his house. When on the next day the driver remembers his coat, he is told by grieving parents that Joe has long been dead and buried in the local graveyard. And when the curious driver goes to the grave, guess what he finds neatly draped over Joe's tombstone?

Another golden oldie included is "The Green Ribbon," in which a lovely woman refuses to explain to why she always wears a green ribbon tied around her neck, until her her husband discovers why at her death.

Along with these classic tales, Schwartz offers several other short and spooky anecdotes, and closes with a historical appendix titled "Where The Stories Came From." Newly independent readers will enjoy being able to read these scary tales to themselves, or, more likely, may find it more fun to read them to kids just a bit younger than themselves... on a dark and stormy night.

Solving the History Mystery: Ghosts of War: The Secret of Midway by Steve Watkins

"Going to get started on my homework!" I yelled, grabbing my sandwich and a glass of milk. I ducked down the hall and into my bedroom, kicking the door shut behind me.

Right away, I noticed something wasn't quite right. I'd tossed the Navy peacoat on my bed when I first came home, but now it wasn't there. The hair stood up on my neck, and I got goose bumps all over.

Of course there were no such things as ghosts.

But there was somebody in my room!

I yelped when I saw him, and sat straight up. He was leaning against my bedroom door, holding the navy peacoat. He pulled something out of the peacoat pocket--an envelope.

An encounter with a ghost from World War II was not on Anderson's mind when he promised to clean up a basement storage room underneath Uncle Dex's antiques shop as a practice room for his band. But the old trunk caught his attention, and after his friend Greg left, Anderson couldn't resist opening it. Inside he found an old Navy peacoat and other dusty old military stuff. Feeling suddenly chilly, he impulsively pulled on the coat. And then he could have sworn he heard someone softly saying, "That's mine." But there was no one there, and resolving to ask his history buff uncle about the old chest, Anderson couldn't help anxiously looking behind himself as he hurried up the stairs and out to his bike.

But Anderson knows, he just knows, that the filmy figure in old-fashioned denim shirt and bell-bottoms who appeared in his room is some sort of ghost. And it seems he is there for the letter inside that smudged envelope.

"I might have written this to Betty. Betty was my girl. Way back before everything happened. About all I remember is there was a war against the Japanese and Germans, and I was on a ship. Seems like I've been wandering a long time... kinda, well, limbo is what I guess you'd call it. Then you found that coat and put it on and that brought me here."

The ghost seems to falter and soon fades, but Anderson can't stop thinking about the mystery the ghost has handed to him. He decides to enlist his friends, Greg and Julie, and Julie is eager to trace the identity of the young sailor, beginning with the letter to Betty.

With the name on the envelope's address, Julie tracks Betty down. She is in her nineties, but clearly remembers her first love, William Foxwell, who was among the many seventeen-year-olds who signed up for military service immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

And with that clue, the three history detectives are off on their mission to find out William's fate, an investigation which leads them to the Battle of the Coral Sea and on to the pivotal Battle of Midway and William's subsequent capture by the Japanese. Julie's internet searches lead them to books and finally to an elderly Japanese eyewitness of William's capture who provides the final heroic ending to William's story and the release his ghost seeks.

Steve Watkins' Ghosts of War #1: The Secret of Midway (Scholastic Press, 2014) offers appealing and believable young history detectives and plenty of exciting historical details that will encourage young readers to follow in their footsteps into the many fascinating stories of that war and the personal memories that remain of that time. Watkins' characters are thoroughly modern kids who deal with eighth-grade bullies while experiencing the details of sacrifice and death in the larger world this "ghost of war" introduces to them.

Military history buffs won't want to miss Watkin's sequel, forthcoming March 31, Ghosts of War #2: Lost at Khe Sanh (Scholastic Press, 2015). Maturing fans of The Magic Tree House books will move easily into this series, and it also promises to offer the appeal of Dan Gutman's best-selling Baseball Card Adventures which take their baseball-loving character back into the real history of the sport with such greats as Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Roberto Clemente and Ted Williams.

You Go, Ghost! Ready, Steady, Ghost by Elizabeth Baguley

MIDNIGHT! IT WAS TIME FOR GILBERT TO GO HAUNTING.

READY, STEADY, GHOST!

It is midnight on Halloween, and it's showtime for all ghosts!

With BOOOOs and WHOOOs, all the big ghosts wisp away, heading for caves and castles, and tall haunted houses. But it's Gilbert's first haunting, and he feels very small as he floats off into the darkness. He knows that he's not supposed to be afraid of the creatures of the night--howling wolves and slithery snakes, and roaring, red dragons, Gobble-Mes and Sizzle-Mes all--but  he feels like he's not up to the job of scaring them!

"SHIVER-ME, SHAKE-ME!

I NEED TO FIND A HOMEY HOUSE TO HAUNT, A COZY HOUSE, A LITTLE HOUSE!"

Lonelier than lonely, Gilbert slips through the darkness, growing even more intimidated by the deserted mansions and looming tombs where the big ghosts are busy haunting. He drifts on through the scary shadows, until he comes to a castle. It is big, but there is a dog there, one who looks like he might want to play. Gilbert wafts inside and up and up the grand staircase, with the dog following, until he comes to a door. It has a small keyhole, but not too small for Gilbert.

And inside the castle's attic there is... a small castle, a homey castle, with its teeny tiny king and queen, and parapets just the size for a very small ghost to haunt!

Elizabeth Baguley's Ready, Steady, Ghost! (Hyperion Books, 2014) is a good fit for those would-be little spooks and monsters who are still a little leery of venturing out into a darkling Halloween night themselves.

Baguley's text has just the right mix of enticing rhyme and alliterations with just the right teeny tiny touch of scariness. Artist Marion Lindsay's enticing illustrations in deep shades of blues and blacks are warmed by accents of orange and yellow, with well-placed page turns that build suspense, and Gilbert is a most non-threatening little spirit on his first venture outside. A few Britishisms dot the text, including in the title, which is the equivalent of American English for "ready, set, go," but all are understandable in context. This story has great eye appeal and empathy for preschoolers in the run up to the scary season, with plenty of charm and a cozy, homey conclusion that is a perfect fit for youngsters.

Boo! The Ghosts Go Haunting by Helen Ketteman

The kids are back to school at Mt. Tombs Elementary, assignments are written on the board, and their books are open on their desks, but the kids are still haunted--haunted by the ghost of summers past. If only something fun could happen!

And then...

THE GHOSTS GO HAUNTING, ONE BY ONE.
THE PRINCIPAL LEAPS FROM HIS CHAIR AND RUNS.
AND THEY ALL GO SCREECHING ALL OVER THE SCHOOL. BOO!
FOR SOME HALLOWEEN FUN.

What is this? The principal and teachers are all aghast! But their students are thrilled with the diversion of a spooky intrusion into the day's deadly drill.

The scary invaders continue: There are witches flying two by two, and then goblins groaning, moaning WOE, WOE, WOE! three by three. They chase the librarian away from her circulation desk, but not without a fight, as she bravely stamps one OVERDUE.

A diversion was overdue, the kids giggle, as they watch bats flying down the hall, four by four, FLAP! FLAP! FLAP! FLAP! as the teachers exit through the front door.

Monsters come five by five, stomping and clomping, capturing the computer repairman alive. Black cats hiss, six by six, and the nurse goes down like a load of bricks.

Spiders creep, seven by seven, and mummies moan, eight by eight. Nine by nine, skeletons come rattling their chains, and then come the zombies, stumbling and mumbling

BRAINS! BRAINS! BRAINS!

No one is left, not the janitor, not the coach, not even the lovely lunch ladies, except for the kids, of course. And they declare it a holiday ...

AND THE WHOLE SCHOOL PARTIES FOR THE REST OF THE DAY.

Helen Ketteman's latest jolly Halloween fare, The Ghosts Go Haunting (Albert Whitman and Company, 2014) combines a counting lesson with some pre-holiday Halloween fun for the students at Mt. Tombs Elementary. To Ketteman's rhymes, borrowed from the familiar "The Ants Go Marching" nursery song, artist Adam Record adds some visual humor to the mix as the students make the most of his comic Halloween preview. Ketteman even appends diagrams of one by one to ten by ten for some early grade counting/multiplication practice to add to the counting fun in the text itself. For another Ketteman Halloween treat, pair this one with her At the Old Haunted House.

Only Connect: Greenglass House by Kate Milford

Milo grabbed his boots and ducked outside before anyone could ask him where he was going, passing his father busy stacking firewood, and sprinted down the path and into the woods.

He found the paperback right away, wedged between the Whilforber Whirlwind and the edge of the wooden floor. He must have dropped it when the tower of luggage had come tumbling down. He was just about to head back inside when he spotted something else on the steel tracks.

It looked like a blue leather wallet, only bigger. Milo climbed down onto the rails behind the car and picked it up.

And that's how he found the first map.

The paper was old and green-tinged. It was brittle and delicate. Milo held it up so that the light from the closest lamppost shone through, and he could just make out a watermark: it looked like a wrought-iron gate, but warped and wrenched out of its original shape.

It was then that Milo realized what he was looking at.

It is the beginning of Christmas break, and Milo Pine is looking forward to spending the snowy holidays quietly with his family in their inn. Known locally as the "smuggler's inn," the Pines' Greenglass House rarely had holiday guests, smugglers or otherwise, but just as Milo settles in to enjoy his vacation, the visitors' bell rings and two unusual guests arrive in the lift from the village below. The two elderly passengers. Mrs. Hereward and Mr. Vinge, commence shouting violently at each other over their mixed-up luggage. Hardly had Mrs. Pine soothed their ruffled feathers with cups of tea than more unexpected guests arrive, two young women, the blue-haired Georgie, who informs Milo, carrying her bags upstairs, that she is a thief, and the red-haired Clem, who flies effortlessly and  soundlessly up the always creaky old stairs and describes herself as a cat burglar. Then in short order, Mrs. Carraway, a village woman hired to help with the kitchen work, arrives with a young girl, who calls herself Meddy, and yet another guest, the fusty Dr. Gowerwine.

Milo falls asleep by the fire reading The Raconteur's Commonplace Book, loaned to him by Georgie, and wakens to find Meddy looking at him curiously and holding the blue wallet.

"So you're adopted, then?" she asked. "I heard you were."

Milo is annoyed. So, he's obviously Chinese and his parents are just ordinary locals. Nice of her to point it out. But then, as she opens the wallet and studies the fragile old map inside, she comes up with an intriguing idea.... a campaign, a role-playing game of Odd Trails, to discover the meaning of the map and the true mission of the person who lost it in the snow.

"We're stuck here, right? Might as well do something fun." she said.

Reluctantly, Milo agrees. But as Meddy explains that the two of them must take on a new personas, avatars, he as Negret, the escaladeur, and Meddy as Sirin, the scholiast, Milo finds himself intrigued with his new persona as lock picker, athletic burglar. and adventurer, and agrees to play the game.

And as events unfold, it seems that their guests are not what they seem either. Milo's map is stolen first from its hiding place beneath the carpet, and then each of the guests have something taken from their rooms, each object with a connection to the old inn. And as Milo and Meddy work together to discover everyone's purpose, they discover that each one of them as well is connected in the most odd ways with Greenglass House, and not just the oceanside inn it now is. Milo learns that the inn was the one-time mansion of the notorious smuggler, Doc Holystone, whose map leads to a sort of treasure after all, not a runner's hoard, but a bequest for his daughter, who herself died in a fall the night a customs officer chased Doc Holystone over the cliff.

Unleashing the tangle of connections between everyone there and their relation to the cypher hidden in the stained glass windows of the old house leads Milo to an insight into his own heritage and of Meddy's true identity, one that will reward readers with a last surprising revelation in the story's dramatic and satisfying conclusion.

Forthcoming today, Kate Milford's Greenglass House (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2014), set within the Gothic background of an old inn with its own secrets and a strange assortment of snowbound guests, all seeking some revelation hidden in the history of the old house, is a layered, slow-developing story that unwinds the connections between each character in fascinating fashion, saving the inn's deepest secret for last.

An atmospheric mystery and tale of the past in which the old mansion itself is almost a character, part role-playing game and part family story, with overlays of smuggling lore, Milford's engrossing story will appeal to fans of supernatural history mysteries such as Mary Downing Hahn's All the Lovely Bad Ones, and The Old Willis Place, Trenton Lee Stewart's The Mysterious Benedict Society and sequels,  the several books in series, written by a stable of famous authors, The 39 Clues, Pseudonymous Bosch's Secret series or Lissa Evans' Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms: Magic, Mystery,  and a Very Strange Adventure.

My Baby Wrote Me A Letter! Greetings from the Graveyard (43 Cemetery Road) by Kate Klise

ROSES ARE RED
VIOLETS ARE BLUE.
IF A GHOST CAN WRITE BOOKS,
WHY NOT GREETING CARDS, TOO?

Things are peaceful at the mansion at 43 Cemetery Road. Residential ghost-writer Olive C. Spence, and her co-author Ignatious B. Grumply are serenely working on their next haunted mystery, and their foster son, Seymour Hope, is happily illustrating a new line of interment-themed greeting cards, Greetings from the Graveyard, at the inspiration of Olive. But their restful writing is interrupted by a letter from Grumply's long-lost love, Nadia S. Richenov:

Dear Ignatius,

I hope you didn't have a heart attack when you opened this letter. I nearly had a heart attack last night when I was at a party and everyone was talking about a wonderful book called 43 Cemetery Road. "Nadia, you simply must read it," my friends said. "It's about a haunted mansion in Ghastly, Illinois." I pretended to be interested. "Who's the author?" I asked with a yawn. "Well," said my friends, it's co-written by a ghost named Olive C. Spence and the man who rented her mansion, Ignatius B. Grumply."

Ignatius B. Grumply? The man who asked me to marry him years ago? The man whose proposal I turned down like a bedspread?

I'm dying to see you, Iggy!

Love always,
Nadia

It seems Nadia's finances are failing, and her old fiance' Iggy is apparently rolling in royalties, plenty reason for Nadia to hotfoot it to Ghastly to try to re-ignite an old flame. Ignatius's heart, however, has grown stone cold after being jilted, and he rightly suspects that Richenov's ardor is purely pecuniary. He commissions a personal reply, via card, stating that their relationship should merely rest in peace.

Meanwhile, there are several mysterious coincidences arising in the vicinity of Cemetary Road. Celebrity art critic, Art Smart, arrives in town. Two escaped felons, Rob Z. Lott and Liza Lott, are rumored to be in the vicinity, just as new residents, Ben and Mia Bizzy, fortuitously open a business, installing home security systems, just in time, in seems, to ride the wave or recent robberies in the formerly peaceful town. While the local librarian, M. Balm, and constable, Mike Ondolences, busy themselves collecting clues around town, the rejected Nadia S. Richenov elects to pen a tell-all book about her affaire de coeur with the noted author, including his literary love letters, still in her possession, illustrated by none other than his son Seymour Hope.  Nadia's ruthless publisher, Paige Turner, also urges Nadia to purloin the famous portrait of the long-dead but still active writer, Olive C. Spence, from the mansion's dining room, while she is in town.

But there is another felonious pair in the neighborhood, the crooked Lott/Bizzy couple, with a sinister plan to swap the original Olive portrait for a skillful replica, and make a killing selling it to Art Smart.

It looks like partners Grumply and Spence will again have to dig up their Sherlock hats and foil some dastardly deeds, coming up with a plot for a new best-selling mystery in the process, in Kate Klise's clever latest sequel in her popular pun-filled series, 43 Cemetery Road, titled Greetings from the Graveyard (43 Old Cemetery Road) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).

For kids who like their mysteries well-laced with drop-dead funny funereal wordplay, there is no alternative to Kate Klise's dazzling display of deadly double entendres. With characters like robbery victim Shirley U. Jest, Dr. Izzy Dedyet, and Olive's recently, er, revived butler T. Leeves, there are puns aplenty to keep the pages turning as the mystery gets solved and conflicts duly laid to rest in this new installment for literary-leaning elementary readers. Sarah Klise's appropriately comic pen-and-ink pictures illustrate the text, told entirely in letters, making this both a masterful middle-reader mystery and an excellent example of the epistolary tale.

For more reviews of Kate Klise's craft, see my reviews here.

Last Quest: Doll Bones by Holly Black

Alice inhaled sharply, and Zach followed her gaze. She was staring at the doll. Its head was turned like it was looking out the window.

"Poppy!" he said. "Stop messing around."

"What?" She turned back to look at them, like she was oblivious. He hadn't seen her turn the Queen's head, but she must have. The doll didn't move on its own--had never left the case, needed them to bring it to the grave. It didn't move.

He really hoped it didn't move.

"You know where we're going, right? You know which cemetery we're going to, right?" He thought back to the moment they got on the bus back home and how he'd asked her almost the same thing.

"The grave is under a willow tree," said Poppy. "Eleanor will tell us the rest."

For years Zach and Alice had let Poppy direct them in the game. Zach contributed his action figures, William the pirate and his followers, and Alice added her two mermaid dolls. Poppy contributed the game's framework, based on a very old bone-china doll shut up for perhaps a century in a tall case in her house, the one they called the Queen, protected and served by her minions, William and Alice's figures. The game was the center of their friendship, and there was an unspoken pact that no one else must know what they played in their secret place.

But Zach is twelve, becoming a star on his middle school basketball team, understanding that he has to keep the game with two girls a secret from his friends. And when his dad, until recently estranged from the family, decides that he's too old to play with dolls and sends William and the rest of his action figures off in the trash, Zach can't bring himself to explain to Poppy and Alice what has happened and abruptly settles for telling them that he won't play the game anymore.

But then Poppy has a dream--a dream in which the porcelain doll comes to her as a murdered girl, Eleanor Kirchner, a girl whose bones were used to make the bone-china doll in the cabinet. The ghost in the dream implores Poppy to bury her in her family grave, one "under the willow tree," so that she can rest in peace. Pale and serious, Poppy begs her friends to go with her to find that grave and bury the doll. Alice and Zach find themselves drawn into the pact, protesting that they do not believe in ghosts, but somehow drawn by the bonds of friendship and by the intriguing idea of such a daring adventure, a quest.

But disturbing events begin as soon as they board a 2:30 A.M. bus for the nearby town where the doll was made. A crazy homeless man seems to see four of them, Zach, Poppy, Alice, and "the blonde." When they stop in a diner, the waitress tells them she has only one table for four left, and Zach begins to wonder if the ghost of Eleanor is visible to others, if not to them. And when the three hide out in the town library, Zach discovers an out-of-the-way gallery, exhibiting the work of the apparently deranged bone-china artist, Lukas Kirchner, whose daughter Eleanor had disappeared without a trace. Now Zach, too, believes that their Queen, the doll whose porcelain was made from clay and bones, contains the remains of Eleanor Kirchner, and that they have no choice but to finish their quest with her burial beneath her family's gravestone. There is only the hard-headed Alice to convince.

Alice rolled her eyes. "We're not zombies just because we like stuff you don't."

"No, you're right," said Poppy. "We had a story, and our story was important. I hate that both of you can just walk away and do what you're supposed to do ... and leave me behind. I hate that everyone calls it growing up, but it feels like dying."

But Alice goes along, unable to admit that she is drawn into this mysterious adventure as much as the others, and before the three friends find childhood's end together at the foot of a gravestone carved with a willow tree, they find something else that they will always share, in Holly Black's 2014 Newbery Honor Book, Doll Bones (Margaret K. Elderry Books, 2013). The Queen is dead and buried at last, but Holly Black's enthralling story will keep her story alive for many readers. As Zach says, "Quests are supposed to change us." And in Holly Black's cracking-good coming-of-age novel set on the knife's edge of reality and the supernatural, readers will find mystery and challenge; they will be changed, along with the three friends, perhaps perceiving that their reality is also a story that they are creating as well.

Black, the creator of the best-selling The Spiderwick Chronicles series, knows how to spin a supernatural-tinged tale with the best of them, a story that reminds us that there's another dimension just beyond real life in our own  imagination. Says the New York Times reviewer, "For the 10-12 year-old reader...Doll Bones may be perfect....It’s a deep, strange and compelling book, at times lovely, at times heartbreaking and deliciously weird.”

Glimmerings: The Ghost in the Glass House by Carey Wallace

"Hang on," Teddy said as Denby took his first step into the cave. Then Teddy struck a match. A terrible keening wail split the darkness. Denby staggered back into the girls.

Bridget clutched Teddy's arm. Laughter echoed through the cave. Bram emerged from the shadows.

"You sounded just like a ghost!" Bridget said. She touched Bram's arm. "I was so scared."

Not to be outdone, Denby pushed past him into the passage. In the stone gap, Teddy turned back. He held out his hand. "Clare," he said. She took it and followed him.

Bridget gamely picked her way along behind them. Clare tried to pull her hand from Teddy's, but he slid his arm around her waist. His lips found her face just under her eye.

Clare's skin crawled as if a spider has just run over it. She yanked free. But inside she had another feeling, as if warm caramel had just spilled in her rib cage.

Since her father's sudden death, Clare and her mother have lived as wealthy gypsies,  traveling from one rented house or fashionable resort to another through Europe and America. Now past her twelfth birthday, Clare longs to return to their own home, but keeps her feelings from her mother, energetic and sociable, but also somehow too fragile to meet anyone's needs but her own.

But as they summer in a house on the New England shore, Clare's emotional life seems strangely split, split between  death, always just on the other side of her mind, and glimmerings of romantic love which suddenly fill her consciousness as well. She notices what seems an innocent little flirtation between her mother and her friend Bridget's handsome father, and wonders at her own feelings of an unfamiliar attraction to young teenagers Bram, Denby, and Teddy.

A mysterious glass house on the edge of the woods behind the house draws her attention.  Inside she first feels an inkling of a spirit, one which soon speaks with her and seems to be a boy of her own age who claims his name is Jack. And when Jack touches her at last, his light touch affects her the same way that Teddy and Bram's touch had.

Clare felt a touch, light but undeniable.

"Could you feel that?" Jack asked. Clare nodded. "Don't be scared," Jack said.

She felt a faint pressure as he settled beside her on the divan. Then something like a shawl settled over her bare shoulders.

Another touch guided her head toward Jack's unseen shoulder. At first she held back, not certain it could support her. But it did. The faint weight of his hand covered her own again.

Both death and love seem near, frightening yet with a mysterious magnetism, almost like the mist that separates Jack from the house where he had lived and whatever lies beyond for him, in that summer when Clare was twelve and becoming aware of those things that had before existed outside her child's consciousness. There are changes to come for all of them, even the ghostly Jack, in Carey Wallace's fantasy novel, The Ghost in the Glass House (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).

Although set in the 1920s, the historical setting barely intrudes on this story, which seems to exist almost outside of time.  Wallace uses her settings, especially the deep cave on the edge of the sea and the glass house, furnished with rugs and sofa, yet somehow part of the leafy woods, to extend the atmosphere of this story of inside and outside, seen and unseen, past and future, set on the borderline of childhood and maturity.

Busted Blockbuster: Hollywood, Dead Ahead by Kate Klise

Dear Iggy and Olive,

I couldn't resist opening the letter from California. We HAVE to do this! Please????

Can you imagine the biggest producer in Hollywood making a movie about us? It would be the coolest thing ever.   Olive, I know you probably don't like movies. I bet they didn't even exist when you were alive. But trust me, they're GREAT! I made a ballot for this business decision. Please cast your vote!

Love, Seymour

P.S.: What's a femme fatale?


The household at 43 Cemetery Drive is in a media frenzy. With their next mystery going into publication, Iggy and his genuine ghost writer Olive C. Spence (deceased since 1911) and their adopted son and illustrator Seymour Hope suddenly receive a surprising epistle from movie maker Mo Block Busters, offering to turn their latest into a script for his next movie. Iggy (Ignatius B. Grumply) is dead set against putting their novel on celluloid, Olive, invisible but opinionated, longs to play the femme fatale lead, pointing out the obvious: who is more of a femme fatale than a woman who's been dead for over 100 years? Besides, she's got a trunk full of elegant vintage velvet gowns just right for the part, and they're not invisible!

Before the reluctant Grumply knows it, their sudden fame is front-page fare in The Ghastly Times, with a write-up by the editor himself, Cliff Hanger. Local librarian, M. Balm, is dubious about the conclusion of this book-to-movie deal, but self-confident handyman Hugh Briss is proud to be named caretaker of Spence Mansion while the family are in Tinseltown. Before they know it, Iggy and Seymour are winging their way to Hollywood to sign the contract. Olive has a little trouble booking a ticket for a ghost and follows, unwillingly forced to haunt the aisles of her red-eye flight.

Moe Block Busters rushes them through the contract signing before Olive arrives to scrutinize the details, and Iggy and Seymour are hurried off by Moe's administrative assistant Myra Manes for makeovers by personal stylist Luke Ahtmee and cosmetic dentist Miles Smyle. To Seymour's dismay, he discovers that director Phillip D. Rubbish has decided he's not right for the part of himself. Undeterred, however, Seymour disguises himself as a boy actor named Willie Shadow and shows up for the casting call, and winning the audition, finds himself in two roles, as Seymour playing Willie and Willie playing Seymour.

Meanwhile, Rubbish is not done with the casting changes. Olive C. Spence finds herself replaced as the femme star by 92-year-old actress, Ivana Oscar, who is thrilled to get the part until she discovers that her contract has a heart-stopping clause:

The undersigned hereby agrees to die of natural causes or otherwise while making the film to guarantee box-office success and cult status for the movie.

At first filled with a deadly envy of Ivana's role as herself, Olive changes her mind when she discovers a clause buried in their contract which signs over all the rights and royalties to their books to Moe Block Busters. Suddenly, Ivana and Olive find themselves dead serious, acting as one to bring the deadly plans of Moe Block Busters and Myra Manes to their final end.

If long-running classic television sitcoms can send their characters to Hollywood for a change of script, why not the comic residents of the happily haunted mansion at 43 Old Cemetery Road? The forthcoming fifth book in Kate and M. Sarah Klise's lively series, Hollywood, Dead Ahead (43 Old Cemetery Road) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) is another spoofy whistle-in-the-graveyard walk down Old Cemetary Road. As always, Klise christens her characters with drop-dead funny pun-filled names that suit their personas to a T, and Sarah Klise's drawings add to the giggle-evoking gallows humor. Told epistolary style (although she has a lot to say, the voiceless Olive has to communicate only in writing), Klise manages this unusual narrative style with deadpan elan. As Kirkus Reviews concludes, "Another winner for this inventive series."

Fortunately, this novel is no dead end, with book six, Greetings from the Graveyard, in which Olive C. Spence, mystery writer extraordinaire, sends for her own Watson, former butler, T. Leaves, to help her sleuth out the cause of the sudden crime wave in the town of Ghastly, Illinois, forthcoming soon. Earlier books in the series are Till Death Do Us Bark (43 Old Cemetery Road), The Phantom of the Post Office (43 Old Cemetery Road), Over My Dead Body (43 Old Cemetery Road), and Dying to Meet You (43 Old Cemetery Road).

Up And At Ya!: Silly Ghosts: A Haunted Pop-up Book by Janet Lawler

SILLY GHOSTS POP UP OUT OF THE NIGHT.

WHATEVER ARE THEY SEARCHING FOR?

Well, what all ghosts want on Halloween night! Midnight feasts, furry beasts to spook, a candle-lit party with lots of creepy games, and most of all, special kids to join them in Halloween treats and tricks.

And that's what these outrageous ghosts will get whenever any kid opens this book and activates the large and clever double-page pop-up spreads that designers Janet Lawler, Ana Chambers, and Yevgeniya Yeretskaya have dreamed up in their Silly Ghosts a Haunted Pop-up Book (Jumping Jack Press, 2011). There's also pull-tab fun which the creators have engineered into this charming little book., as the ghosts "blow" out the flickering candles on a candelabra, leaving wispy smoke trails behind, or a mischievous dog who turns over a treat bag to spill its candy all over the floor. There is also delightfully frightful wordplay in the funny, punny tombstones which abound in the illustrations, with such inscriptions as Rustin Peace, Moe R. Bid, Will B. Back, and I. M. Dead throughout.

More fun than a barrel of monkeys, this Halloween pop-up fills the trick-or-treat bag for holiday fun.

Boo Book: Never Kick a Ghost and Other Silly Chillers by Judy Sierra

HERE LIES THE BODY
OF ANNA, OUR SISTER.
SHE WAS JUST FINE
UNTIL A VAMPIRE KISSED HER.

.
Judy Sierra's newest I-Can-Read book, Never Kick a Ghost and Other Silly Chillers (I Can Read Book 2)(Harper, 2011) offers the early reader a a potpourri of funny/scary stories, a spooky clapping game, and some very funny graveyard inscriptions suitable for the scary season storytime, campouts, or sleepovers where tales of ghosts and goblins are required reading.

The stories include "The Skeleton Bride," an abridged version of the folktale in which a bridal party (in this case newlyweds Blackbeard the Pirate and South Sea Sue) inexplicably decide to play hide-and-seek aboard ship. Sue conceals herself inside a sea trunk which accidentally locks as she closes the lid. An attack from an enemy buccaneer ship begins and Sue and trunk sink overboard, only to be found long after by a treasure diver and opened to reveal a skeletal Sue still in bridal dress. Other stories are likewise recycled appropriately moldy oldies, "Never Kick A Ghost" and "The Big Slobbery Monster." Pasquale Constantin provides the illustrations of ghosts and skeletons in a not-too-spooky style and this inexpensive little paperback offers fun along with a bit of beginning reading practice.

Be sure to pair this one with Alvin Schwartz's classic In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories (I Can Read! Reading 2) for an incomparable collage of spooky lore for the youngest independent readers.

Best Friend - Always: Bone Dog by Eric Rohman

Elly has been Gus's dog and best friend as far back as he can remember. But, as Elly points out one beautiful autumn evening, dogs don't live forever.

"I'm an old dog and I won't be around much longer.

But no matter what happens, I'll always be with you."

They sat together in the moonlight. Then Elly said, "A promise made under a full moon cannot be broken."

And then Elly is gone, and as the leaves begin to fall, Gus is lost without her. Sadly he pulls on his old skeleton costume, grabs his treat bag, and heads out with the others for trick or treating. But Gus can't really get into the spirit of fun, and before long he finds himself with a candy-filled bag heading for home through the graveyard.

Just as Gus looks around and realizes that he'd rather be somewhere else, he is suddenly surrounded by a ring of dancing skeletons--and they are NOT kids in old Halloween costumes. They are the real deal, clacking bones and all.

"Come along now" said a skeleton. "It's Halloween, and you know what that means."

"But I'm not a skeleton. I'm a boy," said Gus.

"Numbskull!" said another skeleton. "You have got guts, boy. But not for long! Bone appetit!"

The skeletons begin to dance around Gus ominously. But then the moon breaks through the clouds.

WOOF!

"Elly!" cried Gus.

Elly barked and growled. It gave Gus an idea. He joined in, and boy and dog howled into the night.

The skeletons stopped dead in their tracks.

"Woof? Dogs? Real-life dogs?"

A gang of Elly's friends appear, and the skeletons exit, page left, with the dogs in full chase. Apparently, it doesn't go well for the bony ones. Dogs like nothing better than bones, and a proud little dachshund soon trots by, a giant bone happily in his mouth.

Gus and Elly once more sit together under the moon.

"Will I see you again," Gus asks.

"A promise made under the moon cannot be broken," says Elly. With that she disappeared into the night."

Caldecott winner Eric Rohman's newest, Bone Dog (Roaring Brook, 2011) is a funny-sad little ghost story illuminated by the idea that friendship never dies. With clever wordplay badinage from his bony bad guys and his trademark prints executed in somber but soothing palette, this little fantasy is less spooky than reassuring, a story for the scary season that will be remembered whenever the night is dark and the moon is full.

Secrets of the Dead: Ghost Dog Secrets by Peg Kehret

That night I awoke suddenly. The numbers on the clock beside my bed said 12:16.

It felt cold in my room.

Intending to walk across the room to check the window, I groggily swung my feet over the side of the bed. It was like sticking my legs into a tank of ice water.

Instantly wide awake, I looked beside my bed. The dog ghost stared back at me. The cold air that swirled around my feet came from her.

The dog ghost did not appear menacing. Instead she trotted to my bedroom door, which was closed. She turned back, as if to say, Let's go.

When Rusty notices a thin, dispirited German shepherd chained without food or water outside a dilapidated house in freezing rain, he feels called to try to do something for the dog. Despite his harried mom's warning to mind his own business, he buys dog chow and stealthily feeds the dog after school every day. As the weather worsens, he even secretly places a call to the county humane officer, who reminds him that he must have five days' photographic proof that the dog is being neglected before she can make an inquiry. Rusty begins to take snapshots of the dog every day, and when his best friend Andrew questions where he hurries off to every afternoon, he even enlists him in the mission.

At first he is afraid to tell Andrew about the ghost dog he sees lying with the German shepherd, a misty white collie who vanishes when anyone else approaches. But when the ghost dog summons him to the house late at night to find what he is beginning to think of as "his" dog obviously injured, he and Andrew decide that the dog can't wait for the county to take action. They take the dog to their treehouse hideout in the woods near Rusty's house to keep him safe from his cruel owner's beatings.

But still the ghost dog comes for Rusty at night, and following her to the house, Rusty finds what he needs to compel the officers to act quickly--clear evidence of a meth lab inside the ramshackle house and a new, obviously mistreated watchdog chained in the yard. Then, when Rusty persuades his mother to drive by the house to show her why he had to take the dog, the dog's owner spots Rusty in the car, notes the license plate number, and later follows them to their house with threats of violent retribution.

Peg Kehret's latest adventure novel for middle readers, Ghost Dog Secrets(Dutton, 2010) is more than just a page-turner of a ghost story, although it is indeed that. Her story, filled with realistically drawn characters, deals with several moral dilemmas--keeping secrets from parents, breaking family rules to save an abused animal's life, and the big question of whether removing such an animal is stealing or a brave act of mercy. The story is fast paced, and despite the element of fantasy, comes to a credible and suspenseful climax with the police at last on Rusty's side. Rusty is a believable and likable main character, and the element of fantasy is handled within the bounds of good storytelling in this latest novel from the award-winning Kehret.

Peg Kehret is also the noted author of many middle reader thrillers, including Stolen Children, Escaping the Giant Wave, and Abduction!

Ghost--Busted! I'm Gonna Get You (Ghost Detectors) by Dottie Enderle

Startled, Malcolm jumped. The man was wearing a powder-blue '70s leisure suit and was smiling at him. Malcolm thought about grabbing his ghost zapper, but this apparition didn't appear menacing at all. Malcolm then saw that there was a family resemblance.

"Grandpa Bertram, is that YOU?"

Grandpa Bertram nodded. Without a word he pointed to the kitchen table, then disappeared.

Malcolm looked down to see a small bag filled with jellybeans. He picked them up, careful not to mess up the lovely blue ribbon attached. He quietly crept to Grandma Eunice's room and placed them on her night table.

I must confess that I almost gave up on Ghost Detectors in the middle of Book 1, It Creeps! (Ghost Detectors). Main character Malcolm, a techno-geek would-be ghost hunter and his dim-bulb best friend Dandy are overjoyed at the arrival of a mail-order gismo--the Ecto-Handheld-Automatic-Heat-Sensitive-Laser-Enhanced-Specter Detector. This naive duo are comic enough characters, but what really turned me off was the portrayal of Malcolm's great-grandmother Eunice, who is shown, doty as a dodo bird, drooling and with spaghetti sauce dribbling down her chin, in the early chapters. But just as I was about to toss this one back in the discard pile, author Enderle redeemed herself with a revelation from Grandma herself:

Grandma Eunice laughed. "I act the way I'm treated. I tried to convince your mother a long time ago that I'm sane. But for some reason, she and everyone else wants to treat me like I'm one banana short of a bunch. I just go along to make them happy. Besides, it keeps me from having to take a turn doing the dishes."

Malcolm couldn't resist. He reached over and gave Grandma Eunice a hug.

"And Malcolm, honey," Grandma called out, "try not to talk about me while I'm in the room."

And the newly revealed Grandma Eunice even fills the would-be ghost hunters in on the backstory of the local haunted house, and with her help Malcolm and the clueless Dandy cut their ghostbusting teeth at the old McBleaky mansion.

Then, Book 2, I'm Gonna Get You! (Ghost Detectors) (Abdo, 2010), begins with the two ten-year-olds waiting eagerly for yet another device ordered from the back-page ads in Weird Worlds Magazine. Having discovered that finding ghosts can be hazardous to their health, Malcolm is sure his new Ecto-Handheld-Automatic-Heat-Sensitive-Laser-Enhanced Ghost Zapper will help them deal with any ghost they manage to summon, but when the two uncover an ill-tempered ghost in their vacationing neighbor's house, it takes all the boys' courage to brave the premises again on what they hope is their final ghostbusting mission.

Malcolm is considering resigning forever from ghostbusting when the Specter-Detector accidentally falls into the hands of Grandma Eunice. Lonely for her deceased husband, Grandma "borrows" the Detector to try to communicate with her beloved Bertram. "He always brought me jellybeans," she explains poignantly. And Malcolm's encounter with Grandpa Bertram restores his faith in the virtues of ghost hunting, just in time for the next book, Tell No One! (Ghost Detectors).

There's no Newbery Award in store for these quirky, tongue-in-cheek books, but the characters, even Malcolm's annoying green-lipsticked big sister Cocoa, humorously cartooned by illustrator Howard McWilliam, begin to grow on you as you read, and with the addition of Malcolm's newly-minted ghostly dog, Spooky, to the mix, this silly but sweet series will find its niche among the those readers who like their science fiction ghost stories a bit on the wacky side.