Steinbeck’s Ghost
Steinbeck’s Ghost
Lewis Buzbee
Young Adult (Ages 10-14)
Hardcover, 352 pages
Feiwel & Friends
ISBN-13: 978-0312373283
$17.95 Buy the book
Somehow the characters of the books that Travis devours in Steinbeck’s Ghost manage to breathe their lives and cares right into his life. As a result of the exchange, readers follow Travis as he becomes increasingly thoughtful, courageous, and mature.
It is this passionate creative relationship with books and reading that renders the magic in this book. More than a mere ghostly mystery, this book and its hero point up the alchemical communication that takes place between a work of fiction and its reader. It is a process that alters both, and which is made new with each successive encounter. In this age of greater appreciation for renewable resources, a book like Steinbeck’s Ghost reminds us that books are infinitely renewable experiences that change as we do.
In Buzbee’s book, hero Travis and his parents have recently moved to a new neighborhood. A whole new life seems to have come in the bargain, in which his formerly relaxed folks now leave early and arrive home late, and Travis is left to make a place for himself in an environment he finds at turns boring and strange.
One day Travis bikes all the way out to the John Steinbeck library (site of former happy times with his parents). There he learns from his friend Miss Babb, the librarian, that city budget cuts now threaten to close the library for good. As he leaves with a fresh stack of books, Travis enters a reverie about how a book can unfold a world, and the fun begins.
Mysterious figures appear — a young writer at a desk in a lighted upper window at night, the eerie Watchers who seem to be calling him somehow, and Gitano, as well as a host of other characters sprung from the pages of Steinbeck’s novels. All have converged, we learn, to impart a message, to tell an untold story. Gradually Travis, the reclusive writer Ernst Oster, and Travis’s newfound best friend, Hil, are all drawn into solving this irresistible mystery.
We admire Travis’s intellectual courage and his philosophic curiosity as his relationship to books and to the world repeatedly interweave, each challenging the validity and solidity of the other until Travis learns to allow the two — the world right under his nose, and the world he finds with his nose in a book — to co-exist.
As for the untold tale and the fate of the library?
Read and find out!
Lovers of books, be warned: this novel will likely draw you irresistibly to the enigmatic works of John Steinbeck (or to return trips, if you’re a veteran) as well as to the more recent yummy goodness of Ursula LeGuin, E.L. Konigsburg, and Laurence Yep.
A video homage to the life and works of John Steinbeck:
Cletus is in his workshop, humming along with his latest invention. Blossom is plotting how to get his marbles back from Beatrice. Learn what makes this multispecies family tick: check out the Runt Farm series for young readers. Subscribe to this blog!
A comment from the author himself:
Dear Ceci Miller,
I just had to write and thank you for the incredibly lovely review of Steinbeck’s Ghost on Nummy Books. I’m happy to say the book’s done quite well, and the reviews have been good, but this review, well, this is the kind that writers can’t believe they’re getting–from a writer who absolutely “gets” what the book is about. It’s so kind of you to take the time to read the book and to then write this great review.
All best,
Lewis Buzbee
nummybooks
January 28, 2009
Yes, I loved this book and what you said about it as well. What a great read. I reviewed it too on one of my blogs. In fact you can find it here: http://giftedandtalentedblog.com/?p=11
Amanda
Amanda Lorenzo
January 28, 2009
[...] Buzbee is also the author of the extremely well-made YA mystery Steinbeck’s Ghost (reviewed here earlier) and the recent The Yellow-Lighted [...]
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