Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales.
Hahn breaks the spell of girlhood frivolity to reveal a dark cycle of pain, fear, and casual cruelty with supernatural consequences.Ĭhainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.Įvery four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. For those looking to delight in the mirth of the macabre, look elsewhere. Compelled to say and do terrible things as part of Elsie’s vengeful plan, Annie is sent away due to a “precarious state of mind,” and if Elsie has her way, Annie will never return. When Elsie dies without warning in the 1918 outbreak of Spanish influenza, Annie is shaken by shock, guilt, and, eventually, fear when, after a sledding accident and concussion, Elsie’s ghost appears to reclaim Annie’s friendship and enact revenge. After a short while of dealing with Elsie’s unpredictable moods, jealousy, and aggressive manipulation, Annie agrees with them and falls into the ranks of the more popular girls as they ruthlessly tease Elsie. Uncomfortably thrust into the limelight as the new girl at the Pearce Academy for Girls in the fall of 1918, white, 12-year-old Annie Browne is nervous about making friends when she is approached by Elsie Schneider (also white), the schoolroom pariah who is shunned by the other girls as an obnoxious (and German) liar and tattletale. It seems as though things can’t get any worse-but they do.Hahn’s latest middle-grade ghost story brings the supernatural to the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic with all the disturbing force readers have come to love and dread.
But Molly isn't so certain, especially when Heather threatens that Helen is going to come for them and make them sorry.
Michael doesn't believe in ghosts and thinks their new little sister is just looking for more attention. She claims she can talk to a ghost named Helen, and her behavior gets even stranger. Then, Heather starts playing in the graveyard behind their new house. They know she’s trying to drive a wedge between her father and their mother so she can have her father all to herself-and it seems to be working. She lies and tattles and misbehaves, and somehow they always get the blame. But Heather only wants to make trouble for them. When their mom remarries, Molly and her brother, Michael, try to make friends with their new stepsister, Heather. In this graphic novel adaptation of master horror storyteller Mary Downing Hahn's spookiest and most popular tale, two siblings must save their stepsister from the clutches of a vengeful ghost.
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