Ghost Runner by Ann Malaspina
West 44 Books (June 16, 2025)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Award-winning children’s author Ann Malaspina writes about the environment, social justice, history, and current events in her picture books, chapter books, and YA and MG verse novels. She holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her newest HI-LO novel-in-verse is Ghost Runner.
For readers unaware, HI-LO books, short for high-interest, low-readability books, are key to cultivating reading skills and a love for literature in tweens. These engaging and relatable books are invaluable in sparking interest and enhancing literacy in middle schoolers. These books will have limited vocabulary and need to focus on a very specific target age range, so to capture a ghost story in such a limiting format is impressive. Malaspina creates a story of a younger twin, Essie, whose brother, Nate, died under mysterious circumstances. Guided only by her brother’s dog and the innate sense of companionship that twins have, Essie is determined to solve the secret of her brother’s death and avenge his ghost.
This book absolutely works for the targets it has to hit. The language is simple and direct, and the verse uses some of the tools of prosody to create tension but also isn’t too ornate to scare off young readers. Older readers might enjoy this tale, but it’s very much centered on a YA/tween audience. For those readers, this would be an engaging tale of justice, revenge, and forgiveness, and a way for them to dabble in horror without being too scared off.
