School of the Dead

“The first time Uncle Char­lie came to live with us, he was alive. The sec­ond time, he was dead.” So begins Tony’s sto­ry, one filled with mys­tery and dan­ger, and one where the dead come to prey on the liv­ing. His great-uncle Char­lie is old, infirm, and a bit odd, so Charlie’s par­ents decide that he’ll move in with them. Though at first cau­tious, Tony and Uncle Char­lie become fast friends, bond­ing over junk food and a shared appre­ci­a­tion for scary sto­ries and the para­nor­mal. When Uncle Char­lie dies, Tony is devastated—and he soon starts see­ing his uncle’s ghost every­where. While he finds the pres­ence com­fort­ing, his par­ents are con­cerned and con­tin­u­al­ly pres­sure Tony to move on and let go of the past. Soon, the moody sev­enth grad­er learns that he’s been accept­ed at his great uncle’s alma mater, the Pen­da School in San Fran­cis­co. On his first day in the posh new school, he sees anoth­er ghost. As Tony learns more about the school and its check­ered past, he fears that there is nobody whom he can trust. Things come to a head on Hal­loween, when Tony dis­cov­ers some of the dark secrets har­bored by the school and his con­nec­tion to a miss­ing stu­dent. Avi takes read­ers on a wild ride where the dead do far more than haunt the liv­ing. VERDICT Hand this spine-tin­gling and occa­sion­al­ly grotesque work to read­ers who have embraced Ran­som Riggs’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Pecu­liar Chil­dren and Cor­nelia Funke’s Ghost Knight. (Wayne R. Cher­ry Jr., First Bap­tist Acad­e­my Library, Hous­ton, School Library Jour­nal)