Book Nook: Ghost Girl

Ghost Girl Zee Puckett can see ghosts. She's always known she's a little different, but then a new principal comes to town and her gift comes out. She needs to work with her closest friends to save the town from this sinister influence.

I had a chance to review the book, and I really enjoyed it. It's actually perfect book as we near Halloween, with a plot that is just eerie enough to be intriguing without being gory or scary. It touches on friendship, unity, self-confidence, and family, and is quite well-written - both my daughter and I loved it.

I had a chance to interview the author to learn more.

Where did you get the idea for this book?

Zee as a character has lived in my head for a long time and I tried slotting her into different stories and nothing was working. Then I got really into the music of Nick Cave and he has this one track called Tupelo. I was coming up the subway steps and the track started with this great crash of thunder and all of a sudden I had the beginning of a story. A storm! A strange dangerous man comes to town! And Zee fit this story perfectly. And the final place this book came from was that I got my heart broken by publishing and to find my way back to loving writing I returned to the stories that mattered the most to me as a kid   -  middle grade horror

What was the biggest surprise for you as you were working on this book?

How much I modeled the story after my own life. From big things like the town I grew up in and the friendship I had with my best friend around the corner to little things like my dad and i always saying "i love you more" and the eyes painted on trees. Although when my friends and I did that it was not nearly as sinister as it is in Ghost Girl

Besides an intriguing plot, what do you hope readers will take away from reading this book?

Great question. I think one of the things that I have seen readers responding to is that there are deeper topics in Ghost Girl - things like mental illness, poverty, and bullying but also things like families that many readers might not have seen before. Kids that are being raised by their siblings, for instance. Representation matters and I wanted to make sure that my kids felt authentic to my readers. 

Ally Malinenko is a poet, novelist, and librarian living in Brooklyn, New York, where she pens her tales in a secret writing closet before dawn each day. Connect with Ally on her website at www.allymalinenko.com.