Ghost story, African American girl.
Contemporary characters and a story within a story.
Poetry and a journal. Short and well done. ( )

FIRST holla to POC on the cover. Especially because it's a MIDDLE GRADES book man. And I tell you what, teaching at a school where the minority are the white kids, it means a lot to my kids to see POC on the books that I bring in. AND it's especially thumbs up in my book because THIS ONE isn't about gangs.*

Pemba is in high school. She's groovin' in the city, learning her step moves and listening to hip-hop when her mom decides that they need to move to someplace a bit more wholesome. Like a small town in CT where she swears she's got to be the only black person. Well, except for this goofy old man named Abraham.

As soon as she enters her new house though she begins to have this weird unexplainable moments of blackouts and headaches intermingled with what she concludes are odd daydreams. Finally the frequency of them leads her to confide in Abraham and together they unravel a mystery, and murder, and a an untold slavery story.

I LOVED this little book and read it in one quick setting. It's the perfect read for a kid who wants to get into a spooky spirit for Halloween. In fact, it didn't make it a day on my desk before one of my students picked it up. For any of you Read-A-Thoners who want to find a quick read, I would recommend this one for sure.

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* My students dig the gang books, mind you, but COME ON!!! Every black or Hispanic person is not in a gang. ( )

Kearsten says: This was a short yet interesting book about an African-American teen girl who moves with her mother from Brooklyn, NY to a small town in Connecticut. Angry at having to move and desperately missing her friends, Pemba initially brushes off her strange experiences in their new home, but when she seems to form a connection with the ghost of a slave, she delves deeper into the history of her house and the small town.

Pemba is an easy character to sympathize with - her father died several years before in the Iraq war, and she and her mother both miss him. Her mother moves them for a good job opportunity, but understandably, Pemba's resentful about leaving her friends and boyfriend, a feeling acerbated by the fact that her cell phone gets very little service in the small town. The ghost story is slight yet still creepy, and the glimpses into the ghost's life - in the late 1700s - are unsettling. Pemba writes about her feelings and impressions in a journal in verse, and I found those reflections the most interesting parts of the book.

This would be a great ghostly read for reluctant readers, or for those looking for high interest/low reading level books.

Recommended. ( )

This was a short yet interesting book about an African-American teen girl who moves with her mother from Brooklyn, NY to a small town in Connecticut. Angry at having to move and desperately missing her friends, Pemba initially brushes off her strange experiences in their new home, but when she seems to form a connection with the ghost of a slave, she delves deeper into the history of her house and the small town.

Pemba is an easy character to sympathize with - her father died several years before in the Iraq war, and she and her mother both miss him. Her mother moves them for a good job opportunity, but understandably, Pemba's resentful about leaving her friends and boyfriend, a feeling acerbated by the fact that her cell phone gets very little service in the small town. The ghost story is slight yet still creepy, and the glimpses into the ghost's life - in the late 1700s - are unsettling. Pemba writes about her feelings and impressions in a journal in verse, and I found those reflections the most interesting parts of the book.

This would be a great ghostly read for reluctant readers, or for those looking for high interest/low reading level books.

Recommended. ( )

The two narrators expressing thier views through poetry, definitely, [was most compelling]. It seemed to move too fast, and a lot of its parts were very generic; they gave me a sense of de ja vu. I feel like this book was just cobbled together, nothing explored, really. The biggest thing that threw me off as I was reading the book was that voice and dialogue seemed inconsistent - like the author(s) was/were switching back and forth between very articulated and educated and casual, raw, simpler styles. Abraham's dialogue did this a lot, and a few of Pemba's thoughts and things. AHS/ML