It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous.
Makes sense: aren’t parents and other close family members children’s first teachers? This duality suggests that the book might be best shared one-on-one between a nostalgic adult and a child who’s developed some self-confidence, having learned a thing or two from a parent, grandparent, older relative, or classroom instructor.Ī sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift.Ī collection of parental wishes for a child. Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. Exciting for children comfortable with the genre, but the ghost activity is serious and chilling, involving a sensitive, intelligent heroine who believes in ghosts and wonders about death and what happens after it.Ī paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere.
Helen's ghost finds peace only when her mother materializes and forgives her Helen, too, had set a fatal fire. Heather's health is thereby restored, and the stepfamily is healed, but not before the malevolent Helen does some damage. Then Molly discovers Heather's secret-she accidentally set the fire that killed her mother-and gets her to tell Dave. Molly decides to save Heather: Helen is trying to lure her into the pond where two other children have drowned. There is a graveyard on the property in a twinkling, Heather is possessed by the ghost of Helen, a child who, with her mother and stepfather, died in a fire in 1880. Twelve-year-old Molly, 10-year-old brother Michael, and their artist mother, Jean, move into an isolated renovated country-church with Jean's new husband, Dave, and his disturbed seven-year-old daughter, Heather, whose mother died four years earlier in a fire that almost claimed Heather, too. An unusually scary, well-crafted ghost fantasy.
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