Glow in the Graveyard

Middle schooler Clara has always lived near graveyards with her parents, who raised her to love them, teaching her the history behind each one and the dead who were buried in them. Clara claims that “there aren’t many safer places to be than graveyards,” and she doesn’t believe in zombies or ghosts, which “only exist in books and movies.” But then she and her family move to an unspecified metropolitan location, and strange things start happening in the graveyard behind their new house. After noticing a light outside her bedroom window—that vanishes before she can show it to anyone—Clara resolves to uncover its origin. Venturing into the graveyard one afternoon, she stumbles across a dilapidated mausoleum. Inside, she meets the ghost of 12-year-old Sarah, who drowned in the nearby river, in an encounter that forces Clara to confront everything she thought she knew about life and death. As Clara’s and Sarah’s lives become intertwined in this gently told, never-too-scary story, Gravel (Creepy Classroom) accessibly highlights—through their differences and similarities—themes of mortality and reckoning with the unknown. The protagonists read as white. Ages 9–12. (May)