REVIEW - GHOST GIRL

This book is for 3 of my reading challenges.
Outdo Yourself Challenge(56/200)
Color Coded Challenge(Blue)
Young Readers Challenge



"Ghost Story: a blue ridge mountain story" by Delia Ray
Product Description(Amazon.com)
Eleven-year-old April Sloane has never set foot in a school before, and now that President Hoover and his wife are building a one-room schoolhouse in the hollow of the Blue Ridge Mountains where April lives, she is eager to attend it. But these are the Depression years, and Mama, who has been grieving ever since the accidental death of her seven-year-old son, wants April to stay home and do the chores around their dilapidated farm. With her grandmother's intercession, April is grudgingly allowed to go. The kind teacher encourages her apt pupil, who finds a new world opening up to her. But at home, April cannot repair the relationship with her mother, and worse, her mother overhears the dark secret April confesses to her teacher regarding the true cause of her brother's death, for which April feels responsible. The author has used her own experience growing up in a rural area of northern Virginia to create the vivid characters and authentic dialogue and background detail that characterize this finely honed debut novel. She has based the one-room schoolhouse on papers in the Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa, which include letters between the White House and the young teacher who taught at the school.
Reading level: Ages 9-12
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Clarion Books (September 22, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0618333770
ISBN-13: 978-0618333776

MY THOUGHTS: As I was searching for color books, this one popped up. I know it's an easy book. But it is so well told and easy to read. The author takes you on trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains and you feel like your there. I just wanted to give April a big hug and tell her she was beautiful. April has a very rocky relationship with her mother, she doesn't feel like she's loved or wanted. The the big secret April has been keeping gets out and her mother tells her to leave. So April moves in with the Miss Vest, the school teacher. Does April get the relationship with her mother fixed? Does she learn to read and write? You'll have to read the book to find out.

MY RATING: 8-12