Giving Up the Ghost

by Sheri Sinykin

Overview

"That's the first step, you know. Admitting you're afraid. But when there's love, there can be no fear."

Davia is afraid of many things, and everything about her elderly great-aunt Mari and her spooky-looking plantation home terrifies her. When she encounters Emilie, the tortured ghost of a well-to-do adolescent girl from the nineteenth century, she is even more frightened. Davia gradually begins to learn from Aunt Mari secrets about Emilie and about her own family's past—stories of premature endings and regrets. As Aunt Mari's health deteriorates, she and Davia become closer. Together, they hope to release Emilie's spirit from the mansion and the world of the living.

Author Sheri Sinykin has written a provocative tale of a young girl who learns to accept uncertainty and to come to terms with her fears. Readers will be mesmerized by the intriguing supernatural mystery that lies at the heart of the story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781561456802
Publisher:	Holiday House
Publication date:	03/06/2012
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	737 KB
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

Sheri Sinykin was born in Chicago and grew up in Sacramento, California. She wanted to write children's books ever since third grade, but first she worked as a newspaper reporter, a hospital public relations director, and as the assistant executive director of a convention and visitors bureau. She holds degrees from Stanford University and Vermont College, where she received an MFA in writing for children. The author of picture books and middle grade and young adult novels, she lives in Massachusetts and Arizona.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 5-8- Thirteen-year-old Davia and her parents arrive at a once-grand Louisiana plantation to spend the summer caring for her crotchety and terminally ill great-aunt Mari. While the elderly woman has worked hard to restore the "Big House" to rights, she has not been as successful at bringing the ghost of a mid-19th-century relative to peace. Emilie, the shade of a 13-year-old Creole girl, continues to haunt the plantation's inhabitants, sometimes spitefully and other times playfully. From her deathbed, Aunt Mari entrusts the release of Emilie's spirit to Davia, who overcomes her fear of a great many things to learn how to honor the living, the dying, and the dead. The novel lacks a unifying focus. It manages some spooky episodes but doesn't truly evoke the atmosphere of a horror tale. It involves family dynamics, such as fears surrounding Davia's asthma and the possibility that her mother's cancer, now in remission, may reoccur, but the characters never seem to connect. Though Davia unravels the mysterious circumstances of Emilie's death, the story isn't suspenseful, and the girl's encounters with the ghost often seem dreamlike. Still, the book will draw some readers through its subject matter and will thereby connect them with a character seeking to understand her family, her place in a larger scheme of things, and her glimpse beyond the natural world. This offering will appeal to youngsters who feel that supernaturally themed books need not be riveting to be consumed.-Suzanne Gordon, Peachtree Ridge High School, Suwanee, GA

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School Library Journal

Equal parts psychological realism and supernatural thriller, this story about living in the present and conquering fear has teen appeal in spades. Thirteen-year-old Davia Peters and her family travel to a plantation home in South Louisiana to care for Davia's great-aunt Mari as she dies of cancer. The family's task is even more difficult than one might expect given the fact that Davia's mother has recently come through her own harrowing battle with the disease. To make the situation even tougher, Aunt Mari asks Davia to befriend the plantation's ghost, a girl Davia's age named Emilie. Davia somehow finds the courage to get to know Emilie, and ultimately, the exchange of their most painful secrets proves to be exactly what each girl needs most. Sinykin's simple, straightforward prose can be read by those as young as nine, but the subject matter-disease, death, arranged marriage and suicide-makes this title more appropriate for older readers. A good choice for reluctant teens. (Fiction. YA)

Kirkus Reviews