Everything about Midnight Magic

A book about a magi­cian who does­n’t believe in mag­ic? A ghost sto­ry about char­ac­ters who don’t believe in ghosts? A mys­tery in which the ser­vant may know more than the mas­ter? All of these are true about Mid­night Mag­ic!

Behind the story

Some­times writ­ers write just for the fun of it. Mid­night Mag­ic is me hav­ing fun with the idea of a ghost sto­ry. I had been read­ing some ghost sto­ries, (I don’t recall which) and thought I’d play with some of the clas­sic ghost sto­ry notions: A haunt­ing, a magi­cian, an ancient city. As for the ancient city, I had recent­ly vis­it­ed the fas­ci­nat­ing city of Naples (the Ital­ian one) and used its unusu­al placement—a steep hill—for the set­ting of the book. read more

Resources

Dis­cus­sion guide

Lis­ten to Jeff Wood­man read Chap­ter 11 (Spo­ti­fy).

Read Me a Sto­ry, Ink fea­tures 95 ghost sto­ries that are suit­able for ele­men­tary and mid­dle school read­ers and lis­ten­ers. (Select the cat­e­go­ry “ghosts” on this page.) Or if its mag­ic you’re look­ing for, search the same page for “mag­ic” for 33 sto­ries in that category.

Arti­cles to inspire discussion

“Do You Believe in Mag­ic?” Bene­dict Carey, The New York Times, 23 Jan­u­ary 2007

“The Ghost Sto­ry Per­sists in Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture. Why?” Parul Seh­gal, The New York Times, 22 Octo­ber 2018.