Ghost Buddy: Mind If I Read Your Mind? is the second book in the Ghost Buddy series from New York Times Best Selling Authors, Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver. I don’t like starting books in the middle, so thankfully they had given me the opportunity to read the first book as well, Ghost Buddy: Zero to Hero. Assuming that you may not have read #1, I am going to start there because this series really deserves to start at the top.
The series begins when Billy Brocolli and his Mom move in with his new Step-Father and Step-Sister in, what I assume, an attempt to bring their separate lives closer together. Instead of living in the typical Southern California house, they move into an old architectural masterpiece. The house only seems to reflect how Billy Brocolli feels on the inside, an outsider in this new place. He starts school on Monday in a new district, without friends and although he is seemingly ‘uncool’ and having the characteristics of most icky tweenage boys, Billy is full of a lot of thoughtfulness and heart.
The house gets a little more interesting when Billy finds that he is sharing a room with a ghost named Hoover Porterhouse III, who had been occupying the premises of his family’s ranchero for 99 years. Hoover (Hoove) realizes that Billy could be the key for him to move past the boundaries set by the “Higher-Ups” and Billy realizes (after getting over the jitters and the annoyances of rooming with a ghost) that Hoove could be what he needs to move on up on the social ladder in middle school and not be the ‘loser’ he was destined to become.
The beauty of this first book is the twist at the very, very end when they both realize something very important. This book really encompasses the importance of standing up for yourself, how to have confidence without becoming a bully and how important it is to follow what is in your heart.
In the second book, Billy finds out that he has to demonstrate a special skill for the class contest. With his best friend Hoover helping him trick everyone into thinking he’s a mind reader, Billy’s so-called ‘skill’ lands him lots of praise and the one thing he’d been hoping for since he started the new school, friends.
With new friends to hang out with and exciting opportunities, Billy starts to take advantage of his best-friend Hoover. Can their friendship outlast Billy’s new found popularity?
As with the first book, the authors smoothly bring in a few topics. The first is about taking advantage of people you care about and the second being on how to do the right thing even when it’s tough. Both concepts are written into the story so well that instead of being extremely obvious they seem to float at you through the words until you grasp them with your heart. I began to see the circumstances on a mutual level, both Hoovers side and Billy’s side and with that it leaves an impression and a deeper understanding.
For tweens and teens, I think this story is the epitome of what we are wanting our children to learn and define about themselves. Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver do a tremendous job with subtlety so that young readers aren’t turned away from the lesson, but rather come upon it by both angles, eventually learning (and reasoning) why it is important to do the right thing no matter the cost.
I really enjoyed these books! They’re not so long that a tween would be put off on reading them; roughly 170 pages in larger type. Kid’s these days are distracted so easily that even the idea of a thick novel in their hands makes them feel like you are oppressing them with knowledge. The stories are very well written and I even found myself laughing at Billy Brocolli and his sister Breeze, plus they’re very relatable to children in Middle School who have the same fears and concerns as one or more of the characters. Despite Hoover being a ghost, he really has a big heart under all that ‘coolness’ and this is something I really only think could be shined up by Henry Winkler who played ‘The Fonz’ for a decade. Not that you keep getting the impression of his old character, more that he has always been imbued with that prowess and it really comes out in understanding the ‘the ghost with the most’.
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| Photo by Alan Baker |
This isn’t their first series, Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver are veterans at making New York Times Bestsellers with their Hank Zipzer series. Henry Winkler is an award winning producer of family and children’s programming along with winning a distinguished award as a Officer of the Order of the British Empire “for services to children with special educational needs and dyslexia in the UK.” Lin Oliver is the Executive Director of the Society of Children’s Writers & Illustrators as well as a producer of family oriented movies and television. Needless to say, these may be middle-school aged books, but they are written by exceptional authors with the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books, Scholastic.
I really think you and your children are going to love these books, don’t miss out because the next one is coming up soon, Ghost Buddy: How to Scare the Pants off Your Pets! And if you are a Teacher and looking for some printables to go along with the story for your students, check out Scholastic’s Teacher Site!
Connect: You can connect with Scholastic on their Facebook Page and/or @Scholastic on Twitter.
Purchase: You can purchase Ghost Buddy: Zero to Hero and Ghost Buddy: Mind If I Read Your Mind? for $5.99 in paperback on Scholastic!
