Daybreak on Raven Island

Fleur T. Bradley's Daybreak on Raven Island is a spooky mystery for 8 year olds about three kids on a school trip to an abandoned island prison who miss the last boat home.

What happens

Tori, Noah and Marvin aren't friends when the day starts. Tori has been kicked off the soccer team for bad grades and is furious about it. Marvin is making a horror film and thinks a haunted prison is the best thing that's ever happened to him. Noah is the new kid with nobody to pair up with, so the teacher ends up as his buddy (awkward!).

Raven Island is properly creepy. The prison is falling apart, covered in moss and smelling of mould. A grumpy tour guide dressed as an old prison guard tells them about the bell that rang every time someone died, and about cell fourteen, where nobody survived.

Then a ghost-hunting TV crew turns up, and one of them rings the bell for a joke. A figure in old-fashioned prison stripes keeps appearing at the edge of the woods. And the ferry only runs twice a day because the currents are so dangerous.

Can you guess what happens when three kids go off to follow a mysterious figure into the forest?

From the start the chapters swap between Tori, Noah and Marvin, each one stamped with the time. You can feel the two o'clock deadline creeping closer, which makes it very hard to put down.

What really makes it, though, is how the three start looking out for each other. Noah carries a notebook where he writes down everything that scares him. His therapist suggested it after his mum died. Tori's brother is in prison and she hasn't been to see him. These are kids with real worries, not just ghost-story props.

It's not all spooky fun, though. There's a lot of talk of death, with drowned prisoners, sick patients and a dead warden in the island's history, and the three stumble on a real body among the trees. Noah's grief for his mum is part of the story from the start. The three are seventh graders, so a little older than your reader.

For a child who's easily spooked, the island itself might be a bit much. For one who loves a ghost story with a proper mystery at the middle of it, it's a great choice.

What to read next

For another Fleur T. Bradley mystery, try Midnight at the Barclay Hotel, about a boy who loves ghost hunting and gets a weekend at the spookiest hotel for miles around. He's a big fan of the same ghost-hunting show that turns up on Raven Island.