Ghostlight

Written by Kenneth Oppel

Puffin Canada

978-0-7352-7233-0

400 pp.

Ages 10+

September 2022

With Halloween almost upon us, how about a new middle grade novel about a trio of teens trying to help a ghost from the 1800s fight an evil one and save her father? Want some fantasy? How about some horror? Action-adventure? Ghostlight has it all. (Even a little romance.)

Sixteen-year-old Gabe is working the summer at Toronto Islands giving the island ghost tour while his best friend Yuri, a mechanical whiz, works maintenance for the rides at the amusement park. Part of Gabe's tour is the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse whose original keeper, William Strand, and daughter Rebecca met their unexplained and tragic ends in 1839. After Gabe unintentionally makes a connection with the ghost of Rebecca Strand in the off-limits lamp room of the lighthouse, enabling him to see and hear her, she tells him that she and her father were murdered by the ghost Nicholas Viker who devoured others to make himself more powerful. Rebecca's father, one of his victims, had been part of the Order of Keepers who protected harbours, cities and coastlines from ghosts by using powerful amber lights called ghostlights to strengthen a lamp's beam and zap ghosts.

We stand guard over the night, to protect the living from the wakeful and wicked dead. (pg. 12)

Enlisting the help of Yuri and a new acquaintance, Callie Ferreira, a teen who works at the CN Tower but also writes a ghost blog, Gabe and burgeoning-techie Rebecca follow ghosts and history to locate the ghostlight and thwart the diabolical Nicholas Viker–"His rage was boundless. His dream denied. His envy unvented." (pg. 109)–who wants the amber crystal for his own nefarious use. It's a race across time and space to find that ghostlight, fight evil spirits, ally themselves with those who do good, and reunite Rebecca with her father, while Gabe also comes to terms with the death of his own father after he'd abandoned the family. Whether they can make things right for Rebecca and her father, the other ghosts, the city of Toronto, and themselves is the story of Ghostlight and it's a doozy. 

 

Kenneth Oppel will always give us a grand story, often taking realistic fiction into the realms of fantasy but with such subtlety that the reader will always wonder: Could this really have happened? Whether it's bats or alien invasions, a sasquatch or a live-forever machine, Kenneth Oppel makes us believe. Often, he does this by embedding a strong historical basis for his story, as he does in Ghostlight, taking us to legitimate Toronto locations like the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse, the Grange, the CN Tower and the Fisher Rare Book Library at U of T, and including real persons as characters such as George Brown and William Ward. And Ghostlight makes us believe in the spirits that are still of our world, whether looking for release to a better place or to create havoc for the living. 

 

Whether you read Ghostlight for Halloween or save it for another time, Kenneth Oppel will give you the creepiness of a great ghost story but also remind readers of the pervasiveness of history, good and bad, and the promise of overcoming evil through partnerships. And that's as brilliant as any ghostlight.

From Ghostlight by Kenneth Oppel

• • • • • • •

Check out the following post for news of an author event with Kenneth Oppel this weekend.

The Ferryland Visitor: A mysterious tale

by Charis Cotter

Artwork by Gerald L. Squires

Running the Goat, Books & Broadsides

978-1-927917-05-3

36 pp.

Ages 7+

2016

This is a mysterious tale but a true one of a visitor to the Ferryland Newfoundland lighthouse taken over by artist Gerald L. Squires, his potter wife and two young daughters, Esther and Meranda, in the early 1970s.  Believe it or not.

“They could always see when somebody was coming to visit, because they could see most of the road from the kitchen window–curving through the downs, inching along the narrows, twisting up the hill and disappearing around the corner.” (pg. 6)

The Narrows on the Road to the Ferryland Lighthouse 

by Gerald L. Squires

From The Ferryland Visitor by Charis Cotter

So the family is surprised when a knock on the door heralds a large man in a long black coat and big boots. When he says “Your dog asked me to come in” (pg. 14) it seemed true, as Houndie was more pleased than alarmed by the stranger’s appearance on their doorstep.

A former policeman in Ferryland, the man regaled them with stories, including one about the death of a boy from pneumonia and his wake at the lighthouse.  But when he left, thanking them for their hospitality and acknowledging  “now I know you’ll be good for this lighthouse” (pg. 17), Esther couldn’t spot him on the road.

The next day when visiting  a neighbour on the other side of the hill, Esther and her father tell Arch about their visitor.  After asking a number of questions, Arch reveals that the man sounded like Dick Costello, a constable who had been good friends with the keeper.  But Dick Costello had died twenty years earlier.

The following year, Gerald L. Squires shared the story with the visiting daughter of Dick Costello who, though stunned, confirmed that her dad always said the same thing when he walked into someone’s house: “Your dog asked me to come in.”

The story of The Ferryland Visitor could well be considered a ghost tale, something Charis Cotter, whose own The Swallow: A Ghost Story (Tundra, 2014) won the 2015 IODE Canada Violet Downey Book Award, knows a thing or two about telling well.  But this is a true story, and one that publisher Marnie Parsons recounts hearing upon her own move to Newfoundland with her family.  Still, at its heart, it’s a story of family and community, and using Gerald L. Squires’ own artwork, as well as photographs, brings that sense of place and people to the story’s core.  There’s a feeling of desolation and isolation and expanse, along with surprise and magic, to the landscape and the story, told spookily but straight up.  The Ferryland Visitor is an amazing story for eerie October, the month in which the mysterious visitor came to call, or anytime young readers want to be transported to the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland and stay for a good yarn.

Dark Cave Under the Light by Gerald L. Squires

From The Ferryland Visitor by Charis Cotter

Last Chance Island

by Norma Charles
Ronsdale Press
978-1-55380-458-1
228 pp.
Ages 10+
March 2016

The cover art of Last Chance Island put me in mind of a maritime story that I was sure took place off the coast of Canada on the Atlantic side.  North Atlantic Ocean, perhaps, or the Celtic Sea, but Canada, definitely not.  Last Chance Island, the island of the title, is the journey’s end of  the two protagonists of Last Chance Island,  the book, which is told in the alternating voices of thirteen-year-old Kalu of Nigeria and fifteen-year-old Canadian Lily Spiekeford a.k.a. Spike.

While Kalu and his young cousin Aisha escape an attack on their African village by rebel soldiers, Spike is being sent home from boarding school upon learning  of her father’s death.  As much as both parties would love to stay put, unforeseen circumstances propel them away from their homes.  Kalu, with only a few pebbles and herbs and his bamboo flute as mementoes of home, takes Aisha to a small seaside village, hopeful of getting work on the boats.  Finding nothing, Kalu makes himself available to a less-than-honest fisherman he calls Mister Elliot, squirrelling Aisha away on board.  Meanwhile, the purple-haired, nose-ringed Spike is being sent away by her father’s live-in girlfriend to stay with Maureen Calhoun, a relative of Spike’s dead mother, who is a lighthouse keeper on Last Chance Island off the coast of Ireland, hopeful the girl will find a place “where you’ll belong.” (pg. 17)

Upon learning that the Irish coast guard is checking for illegal migrants and apprehensive about being caught with more than just his smuggled contraband, Mister Elliot drops the kids off at the island, promising to return when it’s safe.  On the other side of the small island, Spike is being delivered by the water taxi of old Seamus who recognizes her as Lela’s daughter and tells her of Lela’s family living on the island, which he calls the “Beginning Place.” (pg. 55)

You know that the two sides are going to meet and it is fortunate for them to do so, even though Kalu is desperate to survive while waiting for Mister Elliot’s return, and Spike is bidding her time until she can escape the island and return to Dublin to join a group of street musicians she’s met.  It’s the meeting of Spike with Kalu and Aisha that brings them all to realize that Last Chance Island has become their new home.

Norma Charles, whose book Run, Marco, Run (Ronsdale Press, 2011) also focuses on a young person escaping to a new home, contrasts the very different lives of Kalu and Spike as beginning places but demonstrates that circumstances can bring unlikely allies together in purpose and acceptance.  The stories of Spike and Kalu may be on different trajectories but these paths are destined to collide at Last Chance Island, which thankfully is more opportunity than just destination terra firma. Norma Charles ensures that Last Chance Island becomes more than just a beacon for marine travellers; it is safe haven for a few lost souls too.