Genre: Horror, Middle Grade, Mystery
Source: I purchased a copy
India Hill Brown has quickly become one of my favorite authors. I purchased this book after reading "The Girl In the Lake. I love a good ghost story. The difference between other ghost stories and the type that this author writes is the historical message. Her characters are African American. Her ghost stories came about because of an injustice. In the case of this story, Iris and her neighbor and best friend Daniel break the rules and go out the night of the first snow. To make matters worse they sneak into the forest across the street so their parents won't see them. What they end up finding while making snow angels is a grave of a young girl named Avery. Now Iris is being haunted. The grave is that of a young girl who was buried in a segregated cemetery. Avery doesn't want to be forgotten. That is why she is haunting Iris.
If you think this is a long gone issue think again. Iris knows what it is like to be forgotten. She is the captain of her middle school's step team. Her mom notices on the TV news her middle school and all the club captains being recognized. That is, all except her and her step team. It seems that they are always being forgotten. Emails just seem to get lost. I know for a lot of people who are white like me they often don't see the big deal in this. I do. I have never understood why people feel they should judge other's worth based on their skin color. I am aware there are many African American Cemeteries that have been run down, forgotten about, or evern worse. bulldozed away to make room for other buildings. I like the fact that this author isn't afraid to to address these issues. If there is one thing I hope her books do for the kids who read them is spur them into noticing these injustices and working toward a solution. I look forward to many more books by this author, and I look forward to putting them into the hands of my students. Awesome book!
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