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

Faces of the Moon by Bob Crelin

Faces of the Moon by Bob Crelin Illustrated by Leslie Evans Charlesburg; 2009; unpaged Faces of the Moon is a short nonfiction book that describes the different phases of the moon and why the moon appears like it does on certain nights. This book is short and sweet so even the youngest of moon lovers will enjoy it. The layout is simplistic and easy to follow. I don’t know much about the moon so I found it very interesting.

Review: The New Girl

The New Girl By Cassandra Calin New York: Graphix, 2024. Comic. 261 pages. 12-year-old Lia and her family have just moved from Romania to Montreal, and she's doing her best to keep up with the changes. But, she's homesick. She misses the rest of her family, her friends, and her favorite Romanian treats. She doesn't speak French and her English is shaky, which makes it hard to make friends, even in her international immersion class. And she's dealing with super painful menstrual cramps every month. But before long, Lia starts to hit her stride. She befriends the other bilingual girls in her class, she gets a spot as the artist for her school's magazine, and even has a new crush -- Julien. Though she may be the new girl, Lia is starting to fit in. This slice of life graphic novel is an adorable choice for middle grade readers and young teens. Lia is a likable protagonist and readers will have little difficulty relating to her adjustment to school. The text speaks to a...

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...