Module #8:  Doll Bones

Book Summary: Doll Bones by Holly Black is a fantasy book about three friends who set out on a mission to return a doll, made from the remains of a dead girl, to her rightful resting place. On their journey, they do more than face obstacles: all three - Zack, Poppy, and Alice - realize that their childhood is also coming to an end.  This is a horror/adventure story, but it is also a story symbolizing the end of childhood and the beginning of adolescence, and how frightening that can be.

APA Reference of Book:

Black, H. (2013). Doll bones (1st ed.). New York: Simon & Schuster.

Impressions:

This book was dark, creepy, and sad.  It is a book that lets children know that growing up is scary and that things do change. Like Zack, I also remember being told I was too old to play with toys, and being confused and sad at the same time. This is a great book to recommend to older children who may be looking for something more than Goosebumps.

Professional Review:

Doll Bones by Holly Black; illus. by Eliza Wheeler Intermediate McElderry 247 pp. 5/13 978-1-4169-6398-1 $16.99 e-book ed. 978-1-4424-7487-1 $9.99 Twelve-year-old Zach and his longtime friends Poppy and Alice have created an elaborate, ongoing imaginative game they act out with their dolls and action figures. When his dad throws away Zach’s figurines (“it’s time you grew up”), the distraught boy abandons the game with little explanation to the others (“you can’t play pretend forever”). Poppy attempts to lure him back with the game’s all powerful Great Queen, a bone-china doll so precious that Poppy’s mother keeps it in a locked cabinet. Poppy takes the queen, only to be haunted in her dreams by the ghost of a girl whose ashes are inside the doll. The ghost won’t rest until she has been properly buried, so Poppy persuades Alice and Zach to journey with her to the girl’s gravesite. The impromptu trip includes a scary bus ride, eerie supernatural encounters, and an action-packed sailboat voyage, all of which provide ample thrills for readers, with Wheeler’s pencil illustrations softening spooky aspects of the adventure. The narrative is uneven: while the doll is believably creepy, the horror elements and the ghost story remain underdeveloped, as do Poppy and Alice’s characters, and the resolution is rather abrupt. But through Zach’s complex perspective, author Black poignantly and realistically captures how adolescence inherently brings change; how growing up affects the ways children play; and the inevitable tests friendships face. Cynthia k. Ritter.

Ritter, C. K. (2013). Doll Bones. Horn Book Magazine, 89(4), 122-123.

Library Uses: This book has elements of mystery, horror, and adventure. It is also a book that parents may want their children, who are on the verge of adolescence, to read.