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The Ghosts of Ashbury High
This ambitious novel returns to the same school that was the setting for Jacqueline Moriarity’s The Year of Secret Assignments (U.S. edition: 2004) and The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie (U.S. edition: 2006), both published by Scholastic. At first only Em is intrigued by Riley and Amelia, two new scholarship students who arrive her senior year, but soon everyone wants to be around the multitalented, mysterious pair. It turns out there is more to their backgrounds than anyone—including the scholarship committee—knows. Events of the school year unfold through multiple voices and formats—from essays for a gothic fiction exam (with students writing in the gothic style), to blog entries for English, to minutes of the faculty scholarship committee meetings—in narratives that ranges from hilarious (Em shows uwitting mastery of malapropisms and unbridled enthusiasm for exclamation points) to spare and haunting (Amelia’s “Shadowgirl” blog). Moriarty does an excellent job of giving each of the many characters strong and distinctive voices. She also deftly blends humor with serious revelations about the lives of teens teetering on the brink of adulthood in a novel that explores friendship, class, privelege and more. All of the characters have so much more beneath the surface than is apparent at first, and these discoveries are not only a pleasure, but much of the point in this riff on Gothic fiction that isn’t afraid to be playful while still holding fast to deep emotional core. ©2010 Cooperative Children's Book Center
CCBC Age Recommendation: Age 14 and older
Age Range:
Grades 9-12 (Age 14 and older)
Format:
Novel
Subjects:
Class Issues
Economic Privilege
Friendship
Humor
Perspective/Point of View
School
Social Media
Writers and Writing
Publishers:
Arthur A. Levine Books, Scholastic
Publish Year: 2010
Pages: 480
ISBN: 9780545069724
CCBC Location: Fiction, Moriarity