Book Nook: Doll Bones

Have you ever had that creepy feeling when something is suddenly not where you remember leaving it? Instead you find it sitting out in plain site right next to you. That's sort of the feeling that this book gives you while you're reading Doll Bones. Porcelain dolls are creepy enough without all the fiction written about them, but when you combine the ghost of a girl whose body was turned into a china doll with three unlikely adventurers you get a wonderfully creepy ghost story that is also a touching parable about growing up and leaving childhood behind. 

Zach, Alice, and Poppy are twelve year olds who are straddling the line between children and teenagers. In their free time they play a make believe game of fantasy adventures using a variety of action figures, broken dolls, and imagination. The make believe land is ruled over by The Queen, a porcelain doll Poppy's mom keeps in a china cabinet in her living room. Suddenly the three lives are thrown in chaos as Zach stops playing the game and Poppy starts having weird dreams about The Queen and the girl she claims she used to be. Zach, Alice and Poppy start out on a midnight quest to return The Queen to her grave in a neighboring town when weird things start happening. Will they make it to the right cemetery or will they be cursed forever by a vengeful ghost?

Holly Black neatly captures the angst of early adolescence, the creativity and cruelty of children, and chilling psychological response of a really good ghost story. The three main characters are all being pulled in different directions: Zach with basketball, Alice with the school plays, and Poppy as she retreats further into the game. These tensions all help to undermine the ghost story that is going on. Is Poppy just fooling everyone with really detailed lies, what is Zach hiding from everyone, is Alice just sabotaging the adventure so she doesn't get in trouble? As a reader you have a hard time believing if the ghost story is real or just in their heads, which I think makes it all the more creepy.

While its not outright horror, Black's book is definitely not something you want to read when the lights are all out. It really reminded me of Mary Downing Hahn's book Wait Till Helen Comes and The House with a Clock in its Walls by John Bellairs. These two writers were the masters of children's horror fiction when I was in elementary school, and while I'm sure there has been lots more written since I was in fifth grade I think they stand up to the test of time. Maybe the settings are a little out of date, but the emotions evoked by the writing are just as poignant. As an adult reading this, it also reminded me somewhat of Charles De Lint's The Onion Girl, about a little girl from a lower class family that escapes from the brutality of her brother's sexual abuse by making up a fantasy world she can escape to. 

This more than any other book I've read recently transported me back to my childhood and all the books and stories and games I shared with my friends and classmates. I would highly recommend it for any age reader. I think it would be a great story to read together with a younger child, alone as an adult, or just for pleasure for 10 years and up. Its not explicitly scary, so unless you REALLY don't like porcelain dolls I don't think parents would need to worry about their kids never sleeping again, but it does have frightening elements that tend to stay with you.

*This blog is part of a grant Medfield has been awarded through the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Library and Services Technology Act administered by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners.