Starry Nights

Guilty over their older brother's drowning and their mother's subsequent breakdown, fourteen-year-old Vida ventures into the occult but it is ten-year-old Jess who meets the ghost who is trying to help them.

Jess was happy when her family lived by the bay, but something is wrong with their new house. Since her family moved, her sister Vida has become wild and furious and believes in all kinds of strange magic. The children begin to suspect there's a ghost in the house. Jess's brother Clem says that he can see her. Too preoccupied and jumpy, he hasn't even unpacked. Their mother is lying sick in her bedroom upstairs and refuses to talk or come out, which is getting on Jess's nerves. The ghost is definitely starting to appear to Jess — a fast blur in the corner of her eye, the swish of invisible legs keeping step with her own, the skin-crawling feeling that someone is watching. Who is this ghost and with whom does she want to communicate?

Publishers Weekly

This tantalizing ghost story from Australia will keep readers on the edge of their seats. As the novel opens, 10-year-old Jess's family has just moved to an isolated house in a small suburb. Here, it is hoped, Jess's mother can recover from her recent nervous breakdown. The cause of her illness is not named, but it seems connected to Jess's irrational fear of water, older sister Vida's sudden interest in spirits and older brother Clem's private meetings with a mysterious schoolgirl named Amy, who bears an eerie resemblance to one of his mother's childhood friends. A supernatural aura permeates the narrative and grows stronger as Jesse feels that she is being followed by a spectral presence. Meanwhile, Clem experiences a "strange little kernel of cloudy knowledge [that] he might not be around much longer." With masterly skill, Clarke (Night Train; Wolf on the Fold) sprinkles in just enough clues to fan the audience's interest. As pieces of the puzzle begin to fit into place, tension rises at a steady pitch before exploding in a dramatic climax. A spine-tingler with staying power. Ages 10-up. (May) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Judith Clarke was born in Sydney, Australia, and lives in Melbourne. She is the author of many award-winning books for young adults, including Kalpana's Dream, Wolf on the Fold, Night Train, and Friend of My Heart. "The best job I ever had," says Judith, "was as a tea-lady in a Sydney radio station. The worst was as governess/minder/parole officer of two teenagers whose parents had gone away (escaped?) for the long summer holidays." "I never made a conscious decision to be a writer; I never saw it as a profession or career. Writing was something I began doing when I was a child in the western suburbs of Sydney in the 1950s. All of the kids in my neighborhood were boys, and though they let my sister and I play with them, they pinched our marbles and comics and bashed us up. Writing stories was less dangerous." AWARDS Kalpana's Dream (Front Street, 2004) Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book in Fiction and Poetry Wolf on the Fold (Front Street, 2002) Children's Books of the Year Awards Winner-Children's Book Council of Australia Night Train (Holt, 2000) Children's Books of the Year Awards Honor, Older Readers -Children's Book Council of Australia Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Winner, Young Adult Fiction-State Library of Victoria, Australia