The Island of Monsters by Ellen Oh
- The follow up to 2017’s Spirit Hunters, The Island of Monsters takes Harper and her multiracial family on a Halloween vacation to a tropical island with a gruesome past. Harper must use her newly developed skills in Korean shamanism to resolve the island’s mysteries and protect her little brother. New friends – ghosts and humans alike – help her with this task.
- I prefer Spirit Hunters over this book. The titles really says it all – this is more monsters than ghosts. Less bone chilling than Spirit Hunters, The Island of Monsters has some pretty vivid violence for middle grade. The words gouge and gore make me shudder.
- The plot has repeats elements of the first book. I couldn’t get invested in worrying about Michael – been there, done that. The new characters feel less interesting and developed than Dayo, Rose, and the other ghosts Harper befriended in Spirit Hunters. However, the simple prose and uncomplicated plot make this book accessible to readers of various abilities.
- The Island of Monsters takes place right at Halloween. Recommended for young readers who enjoy gruesome, scary tales.
They say it was a satanic cult, because the thirteen bodies were found in a circle around the trees, and their insides had been pulled out of their bodies.
Pg. 77
A Festival of Ghosts by William Alexander
- After allowing ghosts back into Ingot in A Properly Unhaunted Place, Rosa (Latinx) and Jasper (African-American) now have to navigate the consequences of living in a newly haunted town as they return to school in A Festival of Ghosts. The ghosts here aren’t too frightening – appeasement librarians like Rosa and her mother know how to keep them satisfied. Yet some ghosts at school are stealing students’ voices, which might be related to the mystery of whether Rosa is being haunted by her father’s ghost.
- Rosa’s confident personality shines while Jasper grows as he learns the art of appeasement. Instead of having Rosa rehash the rules of appeasement for the reader, we have Jasper showing us what he’s learned. Rosa’s bold attitude and witty comments had me wishing I was more like her at times. She’s not without fears and concerns, though. What I love about Rosa is that she doesn’t let those stop her. She acknowledges the challenges and works through them.
- I also enjoyed that we get to dive into the family mystery hinted at in the first book. I don’t want to give anything way, so suffice to say A Festival of Ghosts digs deeper into the characters and family dynamics.
- In contrast to The Island of Monsters, I think may actually have enjoyed this more than the first book! I preferred the plot in this book (more than a few things I didn’t seem coming – I gasped once or twice), I adored Rosa even more, and I think the prose has improved – there were some great lines and little stories that said a lot with few words.
Speak to danger in its own language, or offer it your own. That was a quote from Catalina de Erauso, Rosa’s patron librarian and a great duelist of the sixteenth century. She killed so many of her enemies that she took up the arts of appeasement to calm their vengeful ghosts.
Pg. 9
Okay, so maybe these books don’t fit the strictest definition of spooky…but they both have a lot of ghosts so that works for me! What spooky books are you reading this season?
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