Ollie Mitchell's Ghosts

Step aboard the Ghost Train if you dare, and let a beloved storyteller lead you into the dark—and out again—in a masterfully distilled (give or take an earwig) vision of the terror and beauty of being human.

A Carnegie Medal winner and recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Award returns to his roots in a wondrous-strange story of friendship, mystery, and community. Since his da died, Ollie Mitchell, is obsessed with turning his family’s battered old caravan into a fairground attraction. A SCARY one, packed with dangling skulls and actual creepy-crawlies, scrawled with bloodred warnings. Most of the neighbors think it’s weird, but Davie knows Ollie needs pals right now and agrees to help. As the two boys paint and hang bones and practice their ghoulish groaning, Davie finds himself writing everything down, as if his own life were a story. (Is everybody’s life a story?) As summer wears on, other kids get involved. Then a local TV station hears about it, and suddenly a project hatched in grief becomes a source of pride for the whole neighborhood. Radiating warmth and philosophical wonder, with luminous and haunting illustrations, this tale of unlikely bonds and the supportive power of community will keep you up at night, flashlight in hand, your mind ablaze with questions.