Blog Tour: Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu

When Violet Hart's growing family moves into an old house for more space, she is less-than-thrilled when she discovers her new bedroom is in the attic and is plastered with a hideous yellow wallpaper. It isn't long after her family moves into the house that Violet falls ill from a mysterious virus -- that keeps her feeling sick for weeks afterwards, with no answers from her doctors. In fact, not only do her friends question whether Violet is really sick, but so do her doctors. Due to her malaise, Violet spends a lot of time in her creepy room... and she eventually starts to wonder if she's actually alone up there and also how much of her mysterious illness is related to whatever is living (or dead) in her room. 

Not Quite a Ghost is a book that any adult that has taken enough literature classes in college will immediately make the connection to the famous short story by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, "The Yellow Wallpaper." In that story, a woman is left alone to "recover" from her postpartum depression by being isolated alone up in a room where she eventually descends into madness. Instead of postpartum depression, the main character in Not Quite a Ghost is a young 6th grade girl who is being told by her friends and the medical community that there is nothing wrong with her and everything she is experiencing is in her head. So in that regard, it is a book about medical gaslighting and the very real damage it causes to real people, disguised as a ghost story. 

I  am generally not a fan of fantasy stories because so often they are hard to follow and lack fully realized and empathetic characters. But because Ursu writes characters that feel like real people, I find myself not being able to stop turning the pages of her books. Not only is Violet a protagonist you root for, but there are a lot of other wonderful characters in this book that you fall in love with, including Violet's mother and stepfather, which is unusual in children's literature to have supportive and competent parents. 

I look forward to recommending this book to readers, kids and adults alike, who are experiencing any sort of chronic illness that has resulted in being written off by their doctors, as they will most certainly see themselves in this story. 

Not Quite a Ghost Educator guide

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anne Ursu is the author of acclaimed novels The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy, The Lost Girl, Breadcrumbs, and The Real Boy, among others. Her work has been selected as a National Book Award nominee, a Kirkus Prize finalist, and as a best book of the year by Parents Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com, and School Library Journal. She lives in Minneapolis with her family and an unruly herd of cats. Find Anne online at anneursu.com.

 

BLOG TOUR STOPS 

January 16 Nerdy Book Club @nerdybookclub

January 17 A Library Mama (@librarymama)

January 18 Charlotte's Library (@charlotteslibrary)

January 21 Teachers Who Read (@teachers_read)

January 22 Bluestocking Thinking (@bluesockgirl)

    ReadWonder (@patrickontwit)

January 23 A Foodie Bibliophile In Wanderlust (@teacherlibrarianbeth)

January 25 Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers (@grgenius)

 

"I forgot that I might see so many beautiful things"

My students and I have been reading Wonder by RJ Palacio as our class read aloud since January. This week we came to a very pivotal moment in the story that brings out a lot of emotions, within the characters and also within the reader. Communities of readers are built on moments like these.

And despite the fact that my future in the classroom is uncertain right now, and despite my perpetual exhaustion since our Spring Forward on Sunday, it's weeks like this one that reaffirm my vocation and tug at me, reminding me why I'm here in the first place.

Besides the emotional catharsis of reading Wonder together, a couple other reaffirming moments happened in the classroom this week:

Moment #1
Earlier this week I had a dream that one of my students was single-handedly responsible for getting one of my favorite authors/illustrators, Adam Rex, to visit our school. When I told her about this dream the next day, she had this look on her face like she was blown away that she could manage to not only infiltrate my dreams, but that she was also able to carry out such an amazing feat as to get a rock star author like Adam Rex to visit our school. Her reaction to this new knowledge was, "Really? I was in your dream? And I got Adam Rex to come here? I could do that. Do you want me to do that? I'm on it."

Then the next day, this same student approached me and said, "Guess what Mrs. Shaum? You were in MY dream last night. Adam Rex did come to our school and for some reason you were wearing a big curly rainbow wig. But then you got mad because he poured caramel sauce over himself since he didn't want to repeat himself by doing chocolate syrup again, but he got it all over the carpet in the classroom so you were not very happy."

So Adam Rex, I apologize if you get a random email from a 6th grader in Michigan. My dream, accompanied by her own, apparently gave her a mission she feels the need to carry out.

Moment #2
Today the 6th grade Skyped with my friend Kellie who works for Walden Pond Press. When I finally met Kellie in person at NCTE in November, we spent a wonderful dinner together and the one thing that really struck me when she talked about WPP's books is how enthusiastic she was about the titles her imprint puts out for kids. I immediately had the idea that what better way to get kids to want to read WPP's books than to have someone directly from the publisher book talk them.

My instinct was not wrong. Kellie book talked four titles today and by the end of the day, this was the waiting list:

Notice that one of the books has a shorter waiting list than the others. Why is that? Because I was the one who book talked that one. So clearly Kellie is a rock star book talker, but also, I was able to reaffirm that it helps if teachers branch out and find other people and methods to get kids excited about books instead of doing the same thing over and over again. I mean, I've had The Fourth Stall in my classroom library all year, but it wasn't until Kellie book talked it that I had kids clamoring for it. When I talked to the kids after Kellie's Skype visit, a large number of them said, just as I did, that she was an amazing speaker and that she knew how to get kids excited about books. That was music to my ears.



*Title quote from the song "Beautiful Things" by Andain, which is also quoted in Wonder.