Review by Nancy Holzner

You’re reading a book and then you put it down, turning your attention to other things. What happens to the book’s characters when you stop reading? That’s the question James Bow asks in The Unwritten Girl, a charming and imaginative fantasy for middle-school readers.

Rosemary Watson prefers facts to stories; she’d rather read the Encyclopedia Britannica than get emotionally involved in the pain and conflict of literature. But when her older brother Theo literally loses himself in a book, Rosemary must venture into the Land of Fiction to find him and bring him home.

Rosemary is helped on her quest by Peter, a new boy at her school, and Puck, Midsummer Night’s Dream character and their guide in the Land of Fiction. Every bit as strange as you might image, the Land of Fiction is the kind of place where ideas grow on trees and a boy can turn into an eagle just by asking, "What if?" It’s populated by all kinds of characters: from numbers to knights, from detectives to a villainous mad scientist. There’s also a girl very much like Rosemary, who was left in a terrifying situation when Rosemary stopped reading her book.

Puck describes the Land of Fiction as “a patchwork of stories,” and that’s how Rosemary and Peter experience it. With each new story they enter, their clothes and surroundings change, and they encounter new characters and a new test. Rosemary is smart and resourceful, and Peter makes a likable and loyal sidekick. As they themselves become characters in a series of stories, they face increasing danger and learn important life lessons.

Author Bow clearly had a lot of fun creating this world. The Unwritten Girl is the kind of book that richly rewards imaginative involvement. Middle-school-aged readers will enjoy Bow’s silly puns and sometimes mind-bending ideas, although they’re likely to miss literary allusions to writers such as Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

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Review by Nancy Holzner

In a small Pennsylvania town, five eighth-graders, friends since childhood, form the Halloween Horror Club. For the five weeks leading up to Halloween, each friend will tell a scary story, followed by a group vote on whose story was best. To set the right atmosphere, they decide to meet in the abandoned Tuttle house, site of three unsolved murders fifteen years earlier. No one ever learned who killed Mr. and Mrs. Tuttle and four-year-old Stacey or what happened to fifteen-year-old Paul, who disappeared the night his family was murdered. Despite the kids’ private misgivings, the spooky old house is the perfect setting for their club­ until it becomes clear that they’re not alone. Someone is watching them. Someone who gets a little closer, a little bolder each time they meet.

The book’s structure embeds each friend’s story in the larger story of what’s happening in the Tuttle house. These are stories you might hear around a campfire­: demonic possession; sisters lost in endless, frozen woods; the ghost of an old woman frightened to death; a vain girl unaware of her parents’ terrifying secret; a haunted road to nowhere­ and each reveals something of its teller’s personality. Although the stories are fun, each teller’s voice sounds too much like the others’, making it hard at times to distinguish the kids. Of the five friends, two emerge as complex characters: David, who acts tough to cover up his insecurities, and Marlene, the smart, “perfect” girl who neglects herself to care for others. The other three friends never rise above their initial, somewhat stereotypical impressions: Peter, the chubby, glasses-wearing nerd; Erin, the pretty girl who doesn’t know she’s pretty; and Roy, the late bloomer who has a crush on Erin.

With each tale, a sense of menace builds until events explode in an action-packed conclusion. The friends’ courage, smarts, and loyalty are tested as they face the house’s mysterious inhabitant. With just enough violence to sustain a sense of real danger, the climax keeps you guessing until the plot’s final twist.

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