Skip to main content

Review: Ghost Book

By Remy Lai
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2023. Comic. 313 pages.

It's Hungry Ghost Month, which means that the Gates of the Underworld are open and ghosts are traveling through the mortal realm in search of food. Which also means that July Chen has to spend the next month pretending that she can't see all of the ghosts floating around, just like she has every other Hungry Ghost Month of her entire life. But when she saves William, a boy ghost, from being eaten by one of the Hungry Ghosts, he won't let her pretend that she can't see them. And as it turns out, William is not a ghost at all, he's somewhere in between life and death, as his body resides in a local hospital. For the first time in her life, July finally has a friend (you see, July has always been very forgettable, sometimes even her dad forgets that she exists.) Will they be able to find a way to reunite William with his body? Will they be able to figure out why July can see ghosts when no one else can? You'll just have to read to find out.

Comments

Ms. Yingling said…
There aren't as many horror type graphic novels, so this will make a lot of readers happy. I display this along with the P.J. Night and Mary Downing Hahn graphic novel titles. Happy holidays, and thanks for your great book reviews!

Popular posts from this blog

Review: A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall By Jasmine Warga New York: Harper, 2024. Fiction. 211 pages. A painting has been stolen from the Penelope L. Brooks Museum and sixth-grader Rami Ahmed is worried he's the main suspect. His mother works at the museum as the lead custodian and Rami spends a lot of time hanging out at the museum while she works. On the day the painting went missing, the only people there were the security guard Ed, the cleaning crew, and Rami. Then, a mysterious girl appears in the museum. She floats around from room to room and only Rami can see her -- and she looks exactly like the girl from the missing painting. To prove his innocence and help figure out who the floating girl is, Rami partners up with an aspiring sleuth at school named Veda and the two dive into unexpected situations as they try to solve the mystery. This is a cozy mystery that is focused mostly on characters and ambiance and only a little on the mystery itself. Don't read this book if yo...

Review: The Factory

The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...

Review: Alice with a Why

Alice with a Why By Anna James New York: Penguin, 2026. Fiction. 240 pgs. In 1919, in the aftermath of the first World War, Alyce is living with her grandmother in the English countryside. Her grandmother, also named Alice, tells Alyce (with a y) stories from her childhood adventures in a wonderful land filled with white rabbits and mad hatters. Alyce doesn't really believe the silly stories, she just misses her father who was killed in the war. One day, Alyce receives a mysterious invitation to tea, and subsequently falls into a pond where she is transported to Wonderland. Her grandmother, of course, is that Alice. Alyce is prompted by the Mad Hatter, Dormouse, and March Hare to seek out the Time Being and put an end to the war between the Sun King and the Queen of the Moon. Thus begins Alyce's adventure through Wonderland. I have a certain soft spot for the original story of Alice in Wonderland. It is one of my particular favorites and I often have a hard time reading new int...