What Stays Buried

Suzanne Young's What Stays Buried is a ghost mystery for 10 year olds about a girl who can talk to the dead, with one week left before she loses the gift for good.

What happens

Calista Wynn comes from a long line of mediums. In her family the gift switches off at thirteen, and her birthday is only days away. That matters more than you'd think. Her dad and her grandmother are both ghosts, and Calista is the only one at home who can still see them.

So family dinners are lovely and sad at the same time. There's a place laid for Dad every night. He bickers with Gran about whether the chicken soup should have tomato sauce in it, and Calista passes on what he says to Mum.

Then things start going wrong in Meadowmere. Her six-year-old sister Molly is found on the street corner in her pyjamas, chatting to a "Tall Lady" that nobody else can see. Two thirteen-year-old boys have gone missing. And one of them appeared beside Calista's pillow that morning, confused, with blood on his collar.

Gran's old family books hold a nasty secret about a curse, and about an aunt Calista never met. Could it have something to do with the missing boys?

It's spooky, but it's also a very gentle book about grief. Calista has never really cried for her dad, because he never really left. Now the clock is ticking on that too. If your reader likes a story that makes them feel things as well as jump, there's a lot here.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

This is proper ghost-story territory. There's the ghost of a boy who may have been murdered, children going missing and talk of sacrifice in the family curse. Calista's dad died in an accident at work two years before the story begins (it's backstory, not something that happens in the book). A child who has lost a parent might find it close to home, and a very anxious reader might want to share it with you. A reader who loves being a bit scared will probably race through it.

What to read next

If they'd like another hero who sees things nobody else believes in, try The Otherwoods. River Rydell has seen spirits and monsters all their life, including the one who lives under their bed.