If you are interested in reading a good ghost story for the season then you must read The Seer of Shadows, by Avi. I know this book would have been a popular book to have on my classroom bookshelves for my 6th graders. My students always loved Avi’s books so I know this one would have been a popular choice for them to read. Eerie, fascinating, well-written and informative. It was easy to get caught in it and read it straight through.

From the  publisher, Harper Collins, 2008:

The time is 1872. The place is New York City. Horace Carpentine has been raised to believe in science and rationality. So as apprentice to Enoch Middleditch, a society photographer, he thinks of his trade as a scientific art. But when wealthy society matron Mrs. Frederick Von Macht orders a photographic portrait, strange things begin to happen.

Horace’s first real photographs reveal a frightful likeness:  it’s the image of the Von Machts’ dead daughter, Eleanora.

From the book:

It was like the process of developing a photograph I have described: as if the shadow were coming from some mystic depth, emerging from another world, taking, little by little, bodily shape and form until that shadow becomes . . . real. Exactly what I’d done for Eleanora’s spirit!

…The facts of the matter were perfectly clear—though surely not normal. My picture taking had summoned a ghost, and not just any ghost, but one bent on murder!

Avi is a wonderful writer and storyteller! This was a spooky and fun read for both middle grade readers…and us older folk!

Click here to visit Avi’s web site.

This was my fifth book read for Readers Imbibing Peril, XIII.