Here are two stories of kids standing up to haunted houses and the horrors behind them – one more action-oriented and the other more introspective. Both of these books have been nominated for the Cybils Award, and these reviews reflect my personal opinion, not that of the full panel.

Finch House by Ciera Burch. Read by Joniece Abbott-Pratt. Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2023. ISBN 978-1665930543. Listened to audiobook on Libby. 10/18/23

11-year-old Micah is feeling melancholy over the last days of winter break, as her mother prepares to move them away from Micah’s beloved Poppop, with whom Micah is very close.  One of their favorite hobbies is “networking”- cruising around richer neighborhoods to salvage their cast-offs.  The only place they never go is a cul-de-sac with an abandoned Victorian house at the end of it – a house whose faded walls and turret have always intrigued Micah, especially when she learns that it was originally built by a Black entrepreneur, before being absorbed by a whites-only neighborhood.

On a day of exploring on her bike, Micah finds Finch House fixed up and a white boy her own age, Theo, sitting in the snow. Eventually, they go in for cocoa, and Micah feels like her grandfather’s warnings were overblown.  Until the next day, when her Poppop goes missing, his truck left parked outside Finch House…

Now the creepiness that Micah and Theo wanted to pretend wasn’t there returns in full force, as they can both hear whispers behind the wall and have found multiple stories of children going missing in Finch House over the years… including Micah’s own great-aunt.  Will Micah be able to rescue her Poppop and keep Theo and herself from being trapped in Finch House themselves?

This was a wonderfully exciting and creepy story, beautifully read by Joniece Abbott-Pratt, whose expressive voice I recognized immediately.  While it does mention the racism of redlining in passing, most of the story focuses on secrets both within Micah’s family and in Finch House’s past to solve the mystery behind its hauntings and disappearances.  Micah, in turn, gains confidence that will help her in her near future.  

Nightmare House by Sarah Allen. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023. ISBN 978-0374390952.  Read from a library copy. 10/18/23

11-year-old Penny was fearless until the Halloween when she was 7.  Then, she thought it would be nice to give the monster under her bed a candy, and she ate the candy apple it gave her back.  Since then, with a bitter apple seed lodged inside her, she’s had trouble sleeping because the Fear Maker with his too-pale skin and red eyes is always lurking in her dreams, showing her the progress of the house he’s building in the woods and making subtle threats.  She’s seen the house in the waking world, which was bad enough.  But now that her beloved poet grandmother has had to move to a nursing home, now that her parents are so worried about money that she can’t talk to them – now she’s starting to see people with blank eyes that mean the Fear Maker has taken their souls.  The Fear Maker tells her he’s getting closer and that she’s too stupid to do anything to stop him.  The one hope Penny has is the magical garden she finds from time to time, where giant sunflowers and blue skies give her space to breathe easily.  And better, the boy her own age, Aarush,  who likes to hang out with her grandmother while his mother works at her home is sympathetic, if only she can trust him with her truth.  

First-person chapters are interspersed with poems on black pages describing Penny’s fears. The poetry is in a range of styles and Penny discusses some of the techniques she uses making them tiny literary studies as well as tools that Penny and her grandmother use to fight back against their monsters. I would personally rather have had the garden without the kindly bearded Gardener who shows up to give Penny wise advice from time to time, but the story was still absolutely chilling, despite or perhaps because of its very small focus on the people right around Penny.   I would not have been able to read this as a child, and even now, it was hard for me to read at bedtime. 

For more books for the season, see my lists of 8 Spooky Middle Grade Books and 8 Eerie Middle Grade Books.