Young Adult | Book Chatter

Skeleton Creek
By Patrick Carman
Publisher: Scholastic, Inc.
Pub. Date: February 2009
ISBN-13: 9780545075664
Age Range: 9 to 12
192pp
Series: Skeleton Creek Series

The blurb from the publisher:

Strange things are happening in Skeleton Creek . . . and Ryan and Sarah are trying to get to the heart of it. But after an eerie accident leaves Ryan housebound and forbidden to see Sarah, their investigation takes two tracks: Ryan records everything in his journal, while Sarah uses her videocam to search things out. . .and then email the clips for Ryan to see.

In a new, groundbreaking format, the story is broken into two parts — Ryan’s text in the book, and Sarah’s videos on a special website, with links and passwords given throughout the book.

The Short of It:

Not your average mystery! Told through journal entries and super spooky video clips, this one keeps you on your toes.

The Rest of It:

I really enjoyed this one. It’s geared towards the 9-12 group but as the story unfolds, you are asked to visit a website and provided with a secret password to view Sarah’s videos to Ryan. The videos are creepy!! I got spooked many times (think Blair Witch) so even though I am way past the target age range I still managed to get into the story.

My son refused to read the book as he was being a PILL but he was looking over my shoulder during the video clips, so I suspect that he will pull the book out and read it on his own within the next couple of days.

Skeleton Creek is the first book in a series. Ghost in the Machine is the next book and it comes out in October! Just in time for Halloween.

Thanks to Patrick Carman for sending me this review copy.

When I visited the Festival of Books a couple of weeks ago, I picked up The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton for my almost-eleven-year-old-son. As some of you may recall, he is not a reader and constantly fights with me over books and reading. To him, reading is boring. He often considers it punishment which is a bit of a stretch but I guess if you really don’t enjoy doing something and your mom makes you do it anyway… I digress.

Do you remember reading The Outsiders? We took turns reading it in my junior high English class and then we saw the movie when it came out. I fell in love with Ponyboy who was played by C. Thomas Howell. Actually, I fell in love with a lot of the characters and the movie had a star-studded cast (Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio, Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Leif Garrett, and Diane Lane). As far as adaptations go, I felt this was a pretty good one. Francis Ford Coppola directed and I remember sleeping with the movie posters plastered all over my room.

So as I stood in the FOB tent pondering the purchase, I decided to give it a shot. I bought it with the hopes that it would strike a chord with my son. This book was written over 40 years ago. Can you believe that? Anyway, I handed it over to him, he smirked, said “thank you” and tossed it into his backpack.

The other night he came up to me, sat on the couch and in his “cool kid” way said that he likes the book…a lot and that he wants to read more books like it. He has been talking about the book to his friends too. I told him about the movie and we both got online to look up all the other books that S.E. Hinton has written and he was thrilled to know that there are several more out there. All this time I have been handing him adventures, fantasies and humorous books that are quick reads but sort of fun and it turns out he likes the deeper stuff.

So after all these years, The Outsiders are IN! For more information on S.E. Hinton, check out her website and this post by Jill over at Fizzy Thoughts. Jill attended the S.E. Hinton discussion at the Festival of Books and now in hindsight, I wish I had attended that one myself.

If you’ve never read the book, try it out and definitely see the movie afterward. My son and I plan to have a movie night and I will post his thoughts after the viewing. If you happen to know of additional books that are similar in style or theme, I would love to hear about them.

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