Revenge of Superstition Mountain

Elise Broach's Revenge of Superstition Mountain is a spooky desert adventure for 8 year olds about three brothers who've found a lost gold mine and can't tell a soul.

What happens

Simon, Henry and Jack moved from Chicago to the little town of Superstition, Arizona, at the start of the summer. They live in their late great-uncle Hank's house, in the shadow of a mountain where people have gone looking for gold and never come back. This story picks up after their earlier adventures there, and the first chapters fill you in on what you've missed.

It opens with the boys and their friend Delilah squashed in a bush under the library window, trying not to be heard. Inside, the historical society is meeting. And the grown-ups are admitting they caused the rock slide that nearly killed the children!

Now those grown-ups want the gold for themselves. So the gang heads out on their bikes to an abandoned ghost town, to search the old hotel before anyone else can. Rope and torch packed, just in case.

Henry is the one we follow, and he's a worrier. He always needs to sneeze at exactly the wrong moment (you can guess how that goes). He wishes he were brave like Uncle Hank. Simon is the bossy, logical big brother, and Jack is little and LOUD. They argue about who owns the best bit of gold like real brothers do.

Then there's Josie, the family cat, who hisses at the creepy librarian like she knows something. And in the ghost town hotel the children find an old drawing of a woman holding a black cat with a white splodge on its neck. A cat that looks exactly like Josie. Spooky or what?

The scares are proper but not too much. There's a cellar full of rats, a police car heading their way across the desert and a tombstone with their own surname on it (that's from an earlier adventure). If your reader enjoys shivers with a bit of mystery, they'll love it.

What to read next

If they like their mysteries hot, dusty and full of rattlesnakes, Louis Sachar's Holes is a great next step. Stanley's family blame everything that goes wrong on a no-good great-great-grandfather.