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Book Review: What We Saw by Mary Downing Hahn

Cover art for What We Saw by Mary Downing Hahn

 

What We Saw by Mary Downing Hahn

Clarion Books, 2022

ISBN-13: 978-0358414414

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook.

(  Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

 

Abbi and Skylar are best friends. Skylar has a way of talking Abbi into doing things she isn’t allowed to do. One day Skylar talks Abbi into riding their bikes to the town limits. They end up at a dead end, Marie Street, near the woods. They discover a treehouse there and claim it as theirs. Jason and Carter, two boys in their grade find, mock, and threaten them but they are determined to make it their hideout.

 

Abbi and Skylar notice that every Thursday afternoon a man and woman, disguising their identities, rendezvous at the end of Marie Street. At first they imagine the two are spies, but Skylar is convinced they are “cheaters”, with the man stepping out on his wife, similarly to what happened in her own family. Abbi takes photos on her phone as evidence.

 

One day the couple in the car have an argument and the woman runs off into the woods. Shortly after, their art teacher, Ms. Sullivan, is reported missing, and is later found dead in the woods. Skylar and Abbi want to turn their evidence over to the police, but don’t want their parents to know they broke rules about where they can go, so they decide to ask a teacher they trust, Abbi’s English teacher, Mr Boyce. Mr. Boyce borrows Abbi’s phone overnight, and when she comes back he tells her not to go to the police.

 

After Abbi discovers Mr. Boyce deleted the photos from her phone, Abbi and Skylar decide to go to the police after all, but without the photos as evidence, the police don’t take the girls seriously. The girls go back to the woods to look for more evidence, and run into Jason and Carter. Spoiler: Carter’s uncle Paul is a violent drug dealer who lives in the woods. Jason and Carter have been selling drugs to high school students for him and witnessed Ms. Sullivan’s murder.

 

Once Abbi and Skylar escape, the police move in, arrest Paul, and find help for the boys, who have been badly beaten. Abbi’s mom decides Skylar is a bad influence, and Skylar finds other friends. She can’t forgive Mr. Boyce for his role in Ms. Sullivan’s death. Abbi forgives Mr. Boyce, and begins looking forward.

 

This was not one of Hahn’s best, and she can really write. Abbi was really underdeveloped, her character overshadowed by Skylar, who wasn’t a sympathetic character. There were a lot of loose threads at the end, and I couldn’t tell what the ultimate aim of the story was, unless it was to demonstrate what a toxic friendship looks like. While the scene in the woods where Jason and Carter defend the girls is gripping, I don’t think this really succeeds as a thriller. Fans of Hahn’s other books may enjoy this, but there are better thrillers for this age range.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on January 19, 2023 by , Reply

Book List: Haunted Hotels

It’s summertime, which means vacations, and unless you’re staying with relatives or camping, you’ll probably stay in a hotel at some point. You might want to take care, though, because hotels are not always the safest or most relaxing places to stay; Lizzie Borden’s former house is now a bed-and-breakfast, and a boutique hotel, The Blackburn Inn, now stands where DeJarnette Sanitarium, the setting for David Simms’ Fear the Reaper, used to be. Below you’ll find a list of titles that take place in haunted hotels.

 

cover for The Sun Down Motel

 The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

The Sun Down Motel alternates between two points of view. Viv, in 1982, is a runaway headed to New York to become an actress who ends up unexpectedly left in the town of Fell, New York. With almost no money and nowhere to go, Viv takes a job as the night clerk at a seedy hotel on the highway, The Sun Down Motel, that she quickly discovers is haunted. Carly is taking a break from college to cope with her grief over her mother’s death and explore the mystery of her aunt Vivian’s disappearance, at age 20, thirty-five years earlier, in Fell. Following in Viv’s footsteps, Carly visits her apartment and befriends the current resident, Heather, who invites her to become her roommate. The two of them then visit the Sun Down Motel, where Carly takes the same night shift job Viv had.  Carly learns from Heather that Viv was not the only girl at the center of a mystery during the time she was in Fell; several girls and women of varying ages were murdered in the time just before Viv arrived in town. With hauntings, psychological disturbances, and a serial killer on the loose, the Sun Down Motel is a dangerous place to stay.

 

 

cover of The Shining

The Shining by Stephen King  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

I probably don’t have to go into detail about the horrifying events at the Overlook Hotel, which is based on a real hotel, The Stanley Hotel. Jack Torrance is hired to be the off-season caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel, where he will live in with his wife, Wendy, and his son Danny, who has psychic abilities, referred to as the Shining. As the hotel gets more and more cut off, Jack’s behavior becomes more and more erratic as the hotel reveals its secrets.

 

cover of The Silent Land

 The Silent Land by Graham Joyce  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

A couple on vacation at a ski resort surrounded by deep snow,  dig themselves out of a flash avalanche and discover they are completely alone and cut off from civilization. More than the characters, the atmosphere of complete isolation is what creates the suspense and creepiness of this book. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember a lot about the characters, but the world Joyce creates is one I haven’t forgotten.

 

cover of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

This collection contains two short stories that involve haunted hotels, “Number 13” and “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come To You My Lad”. The second one has been adapted for radio and television. “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come To You My Lad” is the story of a college professor who takes a room at a hotel for a golfing holiday, and while walking along the beach discovers a bronze whistle in the midst of a ruin. That night, when he blows on the whistle, he has a disturbing vision, and possibly supernatural events start to occur.

 

cover for Jacaranda

Jacaranda (The Clockwork Century #6) by Cherie Priest  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

The Jacaranda Hotel, on the island of Galveston, in southeast Texas, has seen two dozen deaths since it opened a year ago. A local nun, a disgraced priest, and a Texas Ranger, along with a handful of guests and hotel employees, are trapped at the hotel during a hurricane, with a hostile supernatural force inhabiting the building.  Gothic, creepy, and violent, Jacaranda is a gripping ghost story. When I read it, I didn’t realize it was part of a series, or part of a steampunk universe, and you really don’t have to have read any of the other books to visit this haunted hotel.

 

cover for All the Lovely Bad Ones

 

All The Lovely Bad Ones by Mary Downing Hahn  ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Maybe you’re looking for a book you can share with your kids? You can’t go wrong with Mary Downing Hahn.  Travis and Corey are visiting their grandmother for the summer. She runs a small Vermont inn that has a reputation for being haunted. The boys decide to pull some pranks to fool the guests into thinking there are ghosts in the inn, only to awaken actual ghosts. Travis and Corey must discover the story behind the hauntings in order to put the spirits to rest.

 

Posted on July 28, 2020 by , Reply

Book List: Grady Hendrix’s Summer Scares Recommendations (Middle Grade)

Well, we’re about halfway through summer now, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have time for more summer reading!

The HWA’s summer reading recommendation program, Summer Scares, is ongoing. Earlier this summer, I went over committee member Kiera Parrot’s middle grade suggestions, but she isn’t the only one on the committee to have made additional recommendations.  Grady Hendrix, author of a number of excellent books including the reference book Paperbacks from Hell, which covers paperback novels from the 1970s and 1980s, recommended a few older titles.

 

Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn

HarperCollins, 1987

ISBN-13: 978-0380704422

Available: Library binding, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, MP3 CD

 

You might remember that Kiera Parrot recommended a recent book by Mary Downing Hahn, The Girl in the Locked Room, in our previous booklist of middle-grade recommendations for Summer Scares. Mary Downing Hahn has been writing since the 1970s, and Wait Till Helen Comes is one of her earlier books.  Published in 1986, it has received multiple reader’s choice awards and was made into a movie. A reread of Wait Till Helen Comes shows that it is still seriously creepy. The story starts with narrator Molly’s mother remarrying to a man named Dave, whose daughter Heather is troubled and possessive of her father after her mother died in a fire. The new family moves to a converted church in the middle of nowhere, under Molly’s protest. Molly’s mother tells Molly that as the older child, it is her responsibility to take care of and get along with Heather, who is openly hostile to both of them, to Dave’s obliviousness.

Together, Molly and Heather discover a graveyard on the property, with a stone that has the initials H.E.H, the same as Heather’s. Heather becomes obsessed with discovering who it is, and Molly witnesses her having a conversation with a ghost girl called Helen. When Molly brings it up with their parents, Heather denies it and Dave and Molly’s mother dismiss it as superstition and imagination. When Heather and Molly are alone, though, Heather threatens Molly, and one day when the family is out of the house, they return to discover that Molly’s and her mother’s things have been destroyed. Once again, their parents accuse Molly of making things up to make things more difficult for Heather.

After learning that Helen drowned after escaping a fire where her parents died, and that a number of girls have drowned since then in a nearby pond, Molly decides she must break Helen’s hold over Heather before someone dies. The climactic scene between Helen, Heather, and Molly, will leave your heart pounding fast.  While far from perfect, the story is atmospheric, suspenseful, and compelling enough to overlook any flaws, especially if you’re 9 years old. The book does deal with death, grief, and suicide, so some people have raised objections to it in the past, but in the fantasy context I don’t think it’s likely to lead to more.

 

The House With a Clock in Its Walls (Lewis Barnavelt, #1) by John Bellairs, illustrated by Edward Gorey

Puffin, 2004 (reprint edition)

ISBN-13: 978-0451481283

Available: Library binding, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

First published in 1973, this is another classic, not just in middle-grade horror (or Gothic mystery, if you’d rather), but in children’s literature. It is 1948, and 10 year old Lewis Barnavelt’s parents have died, so he is sent to live with his eccentric Uncle Jonathan. Jonathan and his neighbor, Mrs. Zimmerman, are magicians, and Jonathan’s house previously belonged to Isaac Izzard, a warlock, or black magician, who has a clock with an unknown purpose ticking away in the walls. As a result, Jonathan has filled the house with clocks to cover over the sound. It’s enough to make a magician uneasy enough to stop the clocks in the middle of the night, and Lewis is just a kid.

If Lewis only had to interact with Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmerman, the book would be filled with oddities, quirky moments, minor wonders, and an illustration of what the friendship of long-term, close, and very different friends looks and feels like. And it does have those things. But when school starts, Lewis has to find a place among his peers, and as he’s not athletic, he’s soon left in the dust. One of the popular, athletic boys breaks a leg and starts spending time helping Lewis with athletic skills, and in hopes of continuing the friendship Lewis boasts of his uncle’s magical powers, first claiming that Jonathan can block the moon and then suggesting that the two boys use his spellbook to raise the dead. Sneaking out in the middle of the night, Lewis and his friend recite the spell in front of an unknown tomb and really do manage to raise the dead. Unsettled by his experiences with magic, Lewis’ friend abandons him, leaving him on his own, to deal with the person he has raised from what turns out to be Isaac Izzard’s crypt– a person who wants to find the clock in the walls of his uncle’s house.

This is a great book for so many reasons. Lewis himself is kind of an oddball kid, reading historical lectures late into the night and reciting Catholic prayers when he’s anxious. Awkward around his peers, he is interested in puzzles and spells, and brave enough to confront his fears. While he doesn’t want to admit his mistakes, in the end he takes responsibility for his actions and resolves what has become a terrifying situation in a creative way. In a strange environment, he adapts to becoming part of the rather odd friendship/family of Mrs. Zimmerman and Uncle Jonathan, who may bicker with each other but are loyal and stand up for each other when it counts. You might have to get today’s impatient kids to stick with the book through the first few pages of Lewis’ train ride and Latin recitations, but upon meeting Uncle Jonathan, they’ll want to know more. Even though the story has a slow build, it is interesting along the way, and once it speeds up, readers won’t want to stop.

I can’t not mention that Edward Gorey illustrated this book. His illustrations are what set the mood for the story, and the book wouldn’t be the same without them.

 

Gegege no Kitaro  (The Birth of Kitaro) by Shigeru Mizuki

Drawn & Quarterly, 2016

ISBN-13: 978-1770462281

Available: Paperback

 

Kitaro is a manga series by artist Shigeru Mizuki that dates back to the 1960s, described by David Merrill as ” the seminal yokai-busting horror-fantasy-folkore-adventure-comedy manga”. The titular character, Kitaro, is a young boy with one eye who serves as a diplomat between humans and yokai (Japanese folk monsters).  Originally a more adult title called Graveyard Kitaro, the series really took off when it was retooled as GeGeGe no Kitaro to be more of a funny-scary series for elementary-aged kids, and was even spun off into several different television shows.  While Kitaro is somewhat of a pop culture phenomenon in Japan, it hasn’t been well-known in the United States. The publisher Drawn & Quarterly has been releasing English-language volumes of Kitaro over the past several years. The first is out of print, but The Birth of Kitaro shares Kitaro’s origin story, so it might be a good place to start. I haven’t had the opportunity to examine these myself, but I saw and (briefly) blogged about Mizuki’s yokai art last year, and it is amazing. For some adult manga lovers, Kitaro may have more nostalgia or historic value than anything else, but it looks to be a great choice for middle-grade readers who love monsters.

 

Wait Till Helen Comes and The House With a Clock in Its Walls are pretty well known in the world of children’s literature, but Kitaro won’t be familiar to a lot of librarians or middle-grade readers. Summer Scares gives you the opportunity not only to introduce some old, familiar favorites, but to bring to light some lesser-known titles that deserve more of a spotlight and increase the breadth of kids’ exposure to manga as well as to creatures and stories from another country and culture. Enjoy!

 

Posted on July 10, 2019 by , Reply
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