Challenging Reads for Tweens

This morning while I was drinking my coffee and reading the morning newspaper, I came across an interesting article about a professional photographer. You know, that kind that comes to your house and takes pictures of you and your family, your pets…. Have any of you ever had your picture taken by a professional photographer? Well, apparently this guy, this photographer, was adding a twist to the photos he was taking. He was adding ghostly images to the background of the people he was taking pictures of. Can you believe that? And people thought he was actually capturing images of their dead family members! Of course it was all a hoax, but how would that make you feel if someone did that to your family? But…what if someone could capture images of dead family members in photographs…pretty creepy!

Title: The Seer of Shadows
Author: Avi
Publisher: HarperCollins Children’s Books
Year: 2008

The Seer of Shadows by Avi is about a young boy named Horace who goes to work for just such a photographer named Mr. Middleditch. Horace is disappointed to find out part of his job is tricking people into believing ghosts are appearing in their family photos. Of course, Mr. Middleditch is making tons of money. Horace’s disappointment lengthens when he learns he won’t even be instructed on how to take photos or get to even use the camera. But he watches and learns, and one night when Mr. Middleditch is out, Horace sneaks into the office, takes out the camera, loads the slides, and takes a few photographs. Now this was around the time when cameras were just invented, so when Horace takes the slides out, he places them in a tub of solution for developing, and as he’s learning over watching the pictures take shape, his excitement turns to shock and horror as a ghostly image of a young girl appears! You’ll want to read this book with the lights on because Horace is The Seer of Shadows!

Title: The Graveyard Book
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: HarperCollins Children’s Books
Year: 2008

Now, if that’s a little too scary for you, you could read The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Bod (B-O-D), which is short for Nobody, is a perfectly normal little boy. So what if his parents were murdered when he was a baby? So what if the murderer is hunting him down to finish the job? So what if he wanders into a graveyard and the ghostly inhabitants take it upon themselves to protect him from the man called Jack? So what if a kindly, ghostly couple adopt Bod and raise him as their son? That’s normal, right? And so what if Bod’s guardian is a vampire, one of his protectors a werewolf, and Bod grows up between the two worlds of the living and the dead? I guess you could say “Nobody’s Perfect.”

Dawn

Children's Librarian

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