Les Enquêtes de Vipérine Maltais : Mortels Noëls by Sylvie Brien

Les Enquêtes de Vipérine Maltais : Mortels Noëls
Sylvie Brien
(Gallimard Jeunesse, Paris: 2004)

READ: June 2008

Un livre d'enfant, évidemment. En 1920, à Montréal, Vipérine Maltais, jeune pensionnaire, est chargée de déterminer s'il fut vraiment un fantôme qui a fait peur la nuit à une des soeurs. Concept simple, mais toute une histoire se développe. Très intéressant, facile à lire, puis une bonne manière de pratiquer mon français (j'ai appris toutes sortes de nouveaux mots).


A children's book, obviously. In 1920, in Montreal, Vipérine Matais, a young girl who lives in the convent, has been assigned the task of determining whether it really was a ghost that scared one of the nuns one night. A simple premise, but a whole story develops out of this. Very interesting, easy to read, and a good way to practice my French (I learned a bunch of new words).

Who is Frances Rain? by Margaret Buffie

Who is Frances Rain?
Margaret Buffie
(University of Toronto Press, Toronto: 1987)

READ: December 2007

Back in the days of Scholastic book fliers, I ordered this (gr. 5? gr. 6?). I've read it a few times since then, and it remains one of my favourite childhood books.

Elizabeth is going to her grandmother's cottage on Rain Lake, north of Winnipeg, for the summer, like she does every summer. Although this time, instead of it being just her, her little sister, and older brother, her mother and her mother's new husband have decided to come along. In an attempt to avoid the family strife, Elizabeth goes wandering, and she stumbles across a haunted island, of sorts, with a mystery to be solved.

It's a wonderful, short read, and while I can now see more clearly the gaps in the plot and the short-cuts sometimes taken by the author to meet certain conventions of the genre, it remains a magical, fantastical, and riveting story sure to impress and inspire kids. I highly recommend it.

Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories edited by Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories
Roald Dahl, ed.
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York: 1983)

Originally published in the United Kingdom in 1983.

READ: August-November 2007

In the late 1950s, Roald Dahl started collecting ghost stories. He was looking for the best of the best, the cream of the crop, with the intention of making a television series based on these stories. The series died after the pilot episode, but it left Dahl with an appreciation for the difficulties in finding truly good ghost stories:

The best ghost stories don't have ghosts in them. At least you don't see the ghost. Instead you see only the result of his actions. Occasionally you can feel it brushing past you, or you are made aware of its presence by subtle means. [...] If a story does permit a ghost to be seen, then he doesn't look like one. He looks like an ordinary person.

In preparation for the ill-fated television series, Dahl read over 700 ghost stories. He published this collection almost 25 years later, adding a few stories he hadn't included in his original list, and removing some others. The result isn't the scariest book ever. You can't pick up this book expecting to be scared out of your boots. Many of these stories are, to be honest, not very scary. But they are all well-written, and many of them were quite successful at making me feel fairly unnerved. A few positively rose the hairs on the back of my neck. I still think, for example, of Harry by Rosemary Timperley with a chill and a shudder. Others are just clever; for example, W.S. by L. P. Hartley and Playmates by A. M. Burrage. The bulk of the stories are from the first half of the 20th century, so the writing style may not be to everyone's liking, but overall, the stories are fairly entertaining and interesting, and it's a fairly worthwhile read.