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Summary
Summary
From National Book Award-winning author William Alexander comes a wryly humorous story about two kids who try to save their town by bringing back its ghosts.
Rosa Ramona Díaz has just moved to the small, un-haunted town of Ingot--the only ghost-free town in the world. She doesn't want to be there. She doesn't understand how her mother--a librarian who specializes in ghost-appeasement--could possibly want to live in a place with no ghosts. Frankly, she doesn't understand why anyone would.
Jasper Chevalier has always lived in Ingot. His father plays a knight at the local Renaissance Festival, and his mother plays the queen. Jasper has never seen a ghost, and can't imagine his un-haunted town any other way. Then an apparition thunders into the festival grounds and turns the quiet town upside down.
Something otherworldly is about to be unleashed, and Rosa will need all her ghost appeasement tools--and a little help from Jasper--to rein in the angry spirits and restore peace to Ingot before it's too late.
Author Notes
William Alexander won the National Book Award for his debut novel, Goblin Secrets , and won the Earphones Award for his narration of the audiobook. His other novels include A Festival of Ghosts , A Properly Unhaunted Place , Ghoulish Song , Nomad , and Ambassador . William studied theater and folklore at Oberlin College, English at the University of Vermont, and creative writing at the Clarion workshop. He teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Like the protagonist of Nomad and Ambassador , William is the son of a Latino immigrant to the US. Visit him online at WillAlex.net and GoblinSecrets.com, and on Twitter via @WillieAlex.
Kelly Murphy is a New York Times bestselling author-illustrator and recipient of the E.B. White Award. She teaches illustration at her alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design. Kelly currently lives in her native New England, surrounded by the flora and fauna featured in Together We Grow. Find out more at KelMurphy.com.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Rosa Díaz is not happy about moving to the town of Ingot, "the only unhaunted place Rosa had ever heard of." As the daughter of a renowned "appeasement specialist," trained to calm supernatural entities, Rosa knows that it's downright unnatural that Ingot's library isn't haunted. Venturing out from her windowless apartment in the library's basement, Rosa meets Jasper Chavalier, the 11-year-old son of two actors at the local Renaissance fair. After a vengeful, possessed tree attacks the festival, Rosa realizes that something sinister is behind Ingot's lack of hauntings, leading her and Jasper to confront a surprising villain. National Book Award winner Alexander (Goblin Secrets) neatly inverts the typical ghost story, creating a supernatural landscape in which hauntings are part of the fabric of life and go hand in hand with respecting and honoring the departed. The friends' realization that they must rely on themselves, not their parents, is relatable and poignant: Rosa's efforts to accept her mother's shortcomings and Jasper's struggle to find his inner hero add depth to this charming mystery. Final art not seen by PW. Ages 8-12. Author's agent: Barry Goldblatt, Barry Goldblatt Literary. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
What happens when you try to exile ghosts? For starters, you might create a situation of otherworldly, explosive wrath. But that's where librarians come in: in Alexander's fantasy world, created for middle-grade readers, librarians can appease ghosts. Rosa Díaz's family specializes in extreme hauntings, which is why she's directionless when she and her mother relocate to Ingot, the only ghost-free town in the world, after her father dies in a spectral accident. While her mother rests and mourns, Rosa starts exploring why Ingot seems to repel the dead. But then she meets local boy Jasper Chevalier, and a monster interrupts the local Renaissance festival, throwing the unhaunted town into chaos. Rosa and Jasper both children of color dig into local history and find themselves plunged into danger. National Book Award winner Alexander (Goblin Secrets, 2012) displays strong writing chops. His latest is perfect for kids who like their creepy moments mixed with wildly imaginative elements (like a motorcycle-riding spirit who denies he's dead). This should see plenty of circulation.--Cruze, Karen Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THE NINTH HOUR, by Alice McDermott. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) In McDermott's novel, the cause of a young Irish widow and her daughter is taken up by the nuns of a Brooklyn convent. But as the years pass, this struggling pair can't banish worldly temptation, with possibly dire consequences for their faith. MANHATTAN BEACH, by Jennifer Egan. (Scribner, $28.) Egan's first novel since the Pulitzer-winning "A Visit From the Goon Squad" tells a more traditional story - about a woman who works in the Brooklyn Navy Yards during World War II, and the disappearance of her father years earlier - but offers many of the same pleasures of language and character. A FORCE SO SWIFT: Mao, Truman and the Birth of Modern China, 1949, by Kevin Peraino. (Crown, $28.) Peraino's absorbing study of the pivotal year in Chinese-American relations shows how decisions made then have continued to affect relations between the two countries down to the present day. NEW PEOPLE, by Danzy Senna. (Riverhead, $26.) Set in mid-1990s Brooklyn, Senna's novel centers on a light-skinned black woman who despite her engagement to a biracial man becomes infatuated with a dark-skinned poet; it explores both the dream and the impossibility of a "post-racial" world. A LOVING, FAITHFUL ANIMAL, by Josephine Rowe. (Catapult, paper, $16.95.) In Rowe's gorgeous and harrowing debut novel, an emotionally scarred Vietnam veteran disappears from a small Australian town, leaving his family behind to struggle with intergenerational trauma. HALF-LIGHT: Collected Poems, 1965-2016, by Frank Bidart. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $40.) With its stylized spacing and typography, Bidart's work scores the speech inside his head. This career retrospective, a contender for a National Book Award this year, shows how he shed the masks of his early poems to create a kind of self-mythology. THE TWELVE-MILE STRAIGHT, by Eleanor Henderson. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $27.99.) A lynching and the legacy of Jim Crow haunt generations of a family in Henderson's second novel, which is ever alert to the proximity of oppressed and oppressor. Empathy for its troubled cast is one of the novel's great strengths. THE WOLF, THE DUCK & THE MOUSE, by Mac Barnett. Illustrated by Jon Klassen. (Candlewick, $17.99; ages 4 to 8.) In this darkly witty collaboration, a mouse is gobbled up by a wolf. Inside, he meets a duck who has set up housekeeping. A PROPERLY UNHAUNTED PLACE, by William Alexander. (Margaret K. McElderry, $16.99; ages 8 to 12.) A woman who specializes in "ghost appeasement" and her daughter move to a town that has banished all ghosts, but all is not as calm as it seems. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-6-Ghosts and spirits live everywhere, except in the town of Ingot. Eleven-year-old Rosa Diaz and her mother have relocated to the sleepy hamlet following the death of Rosa's father. Accustomed to the big city, Rosa questions why her mother would move them to such a dead place. Rosa's mother is an "appeasement librarian," endowed with the ability to comfort ghostly spirits. Libraries and books are usually brimming with ghostly energy but not, unfortunately, in the ghost-free Ingot library. Rosa feels her mother's particular talents are wasted until the girl attends Ingot's yearly Renaissance Festival. The festival is attacked by a dynamic evil spirit that renders her mother defenseless. It is up to Rosa to uncover the town's supernatural goings-on. She befriends a local boy named Jasper. United, they fight to bring justice to the living and the dead. Though the writing is clear and the narrative unfolds quickly, the characters are somewhat flat. The world-building is similarly wanting; the spells and objects used to manipulate the ghost come out of nowhere and don't feel believable. VERDICT While the cute cover and fast pace may attract fans of ghost stories, a lack of character development limits this title's appeal.-Sada Mozer, Los Angeles Public Library © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
In a world where hauntings are endemic, Rosa Daz finds herself in a town suspiciously devoid of ghostly activity in Alexander's (Nomad, 2016, etc.) latest. Latina protagonist Rosa is not your usual new-to-town middle school student. Rosa is an apprentice appeasement specialist. Her skills in placating restless souls are going to waste in the small town of Ingot, a place where people go to escape their hauntings, not to appease them. The placid lack of supernatural phenomena ends when an angry spirit gate-crashes opening day of the town Renaissance festival embodied in the carcass of a mountain lion. With the help of a new acquaintance, 11-year-old mixed-race (black/white) Jasper, Rosa sets out to solve the mysteries of where the phantom came from and why no others exist in this quaint town. Alexander does an excellent job of building a contemporary world in which the paranormal is nevertheless ubiquitous and expected. This haunted world begs for further exploration. Though it's a perfectly enjoyable tale on a purely superficial level, readers who choose to dig deeper will find an engrossing exploration of complicated grief and what damage may be wrought when negative emotions are barricaded away rather than addressed. A fun and fast-paced supernatural mystery with secret depths for those who dare explore them. (Paranormal adventure. 8-12) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
A Properly Unhaunted Place 1 ROSA AND HER MOTHER MOVED into a basement apartment underneath the Ingot Public Library. "This is nice," Mom said. "This will do fine." Rosa said nothing. She said it loudly. Rosa was not impressed with the basement apartment, or the library above it, or the town of Ingot. She missed their old place in the city. She missed having windows. She missed looking through those windows to see a place that was not Ingot. Her new bedroom was bigger than her old one, but without any outside view the room still seemed smaller. Someone had tried to fix this by installing a fake window frame and painting beautiful landscapes of forests and lakes on the plaster behind it. Rosa closed real curtains over the fake view. This was not home. She could unpack her stuff and spread it around, but that would not make it home. This was just an underground room she happened to be haunting. Rosa went back into the living room. She didn't find much life in there, either. Mom lay flopped across the couch, which was in an awkward place. It blocked the way to the kitchen. Rosa wanted to shove it into its proper place, but it properly belonged in the city, in their old apartment, directly adjacent to the huge central library. Rosa couldn't shove it that far. She couldn't even shove it away from the kitchen because her mother had fallen asleep on it. Mom looked defeated. She also looked content with her defeat, and that was worse. Rosa climbed over her mother, who stayed asleep--or at least pretended to sleep--and left the apartment. She didn't bring her tool belt. She didn't even know where it was. That didn't matter, though. Not here. She went upstairs to explore the Ingot Public Library. Nice old building. Rosa closed her eyes and smelled the familiar, musty, dusty smell of old books given time to think. Then she opened her eyes and let herself wander into odd corners and unusual nooks. That quickly brought her somewhere she wasn't supposed to be. "This is Special Collections, dear," said a woman with wispy hair, white gloves, and aggressive eyebrows. "This is where we keep very old books, maps, and historical records. You need permission to be here. You need to sign the form on the clipboard. And children aren't allowed at all, even if they do sign the form on the clipboard. Children's books are through that door, down the hall, and in the far corner. Please don't touch anything on your way there." Her voice tasted like honey dribbled over raw rhubarb. "I live here," Rosa said. She did not want this to be true, but it was, and she felt indignant to have to explain it. "We just moved in. My mother is the new appeasement specialist." Librarian appeasement specialists always lived inside their libraries, or at least next to their libraries. They had to be on call at all hours. "Ah," the other librarian said. She took the time to make eye contact now. "I see. Though I'm not at all sure why such an esteemed specialist has chosen to work here, in Ingot." "She just needed a change," Rosa said. Silence stretched thin between them. "Ah," the librarian finally said. "Well then. Hello. Welcome. I'm Mrs. Jillynip. Pleased to meet you. But please don't come and go through this part of the collection. Not without gloves." Mrs. Jillynip went away without bothering to learn Rosa's name. Then she watched Rosa sideways to make sure she didn't touch any of the maps. That made Rosa want to touch maps. She wanted to jump up and down on a big pile of maps. But she didn't. Instead she tried to leave by way of a spiral staircase in the corner of the room. "Not there!" Mrs. Jillynip snapped. Then she took a breath and tried to be more civil. "Please don't ever go up there." "Why not?" Rosa asked. "Because nothing's up there. And it isn't safe. The whole staircase might come down. Then the Historical Society would be angry with you. Plus you'll probably break both of your legs. Children's books are that way." Rosa turned around and went that way. She passed through the children's section. It had more dusty, creepy, glass-eyed stuffed animals than actual books, so she left to explore the rest of her new library. She noticed all the places where haints, ghosts, revenants, specters, the spirits of the living, and the spirits of the dead would collect themselves if this building stood anywhere other than Ingot. She spotted all the little things that would probably offend them, or enrage them, or send them howling in between the bookshelves in the very small hours of the night if this were any other library in any other town. Ingot was not haunted. Ingot was the only unhaunted place that Rosa had ever heard of. The Ingot Public Library did not need an appeasement specialist. It had nothing to appease--nothing but Rosa. She moved unappeased through the library stacks until she found the public bathroom. The sink fixtures inside were all copper, polished in some places and stained green in others. Each mirror had a small shelf underneath it, just like mirrors are always supposed to have, but the shelves stood empty. No coins. No pebbles. No candle stubs. A candle would have been especially helpful. Ghosts could use them to rest, or to pass between boundaries. Lit candles could also make nasty smells disappear, and would have been helpful in this particular bathroom. Rosa washed her hands. Then she took a pebble from her pocket and set it on the mirror shelf. This was a decent way to say thanks to a mirror--and to anything likely to lurk inside a mirror. It was also a way to greet lost relatives. "Hi Dad," she said, even though he wasn't there. A blonde girl pushed the bathroom door open. She gave Rosa a funny look. Rosa ignored her intensely and left the bathroom. She needed to leave the building. She hurried through the front lobby and half-ran beneath a portrait of a man with a long, elaborate mustache--Bartholomew Theosophras Barron, founder of Ingot Town. Mr. Barron's painted eyes looked into the distance in a self-important way. They didn't follow Rosa as she rushed outside. She went without her tool belt, without matches, chalk, or salt, without any proof of her family profession but another pebble in her pocket and a little copper medallion of Catalina de Erauso, Rosa's patron librarian, around her neck. The medallion showed de Erauso holding a sword above the Latin inscription MEMENTO MORTUIS. "Remember the dead." There was nothing special about the pebble. It felt wrong to leave the building without her tool belt. Rosa left anyway. She sat on the library steps and decided she was angry. She liked that decision, even though she knew it wasn't right. Sadness slowed her down. It made the air feel thick to move through and heavy to carry in her lungs. But anger was fuel she could use to move faster. She would rather be mad--at Mom for the move, and for taking a job that didn't really need her, and for needing such a clean and brutal break away from their proper work. She would rather be mad at Ingot for its odd, unnatural emptiness of everyone except for the living. So she decided that she was. The town stretched out in front of her. She could see most of it from here. Old houses clustered close together, some in good repair and others run-down and peeling. Mountains surrounded Ingot on all sides like the rim of a bowl or a bucket. Bright green light flashed briefly in the foothills. Rosa stared at the spot where that green flash wasn't anymore. Then a knight in full armor came striding down the sidewalk, and she stared at him instead. Excerpted from A Properly Unhaunted Place by William Alexander All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.