by Ellen Booraem
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Death stalked the spider, pre-algebra book in hand.”
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Conor O’Neill has fears. Spiders, safety, his father pressuring him into taking the entrance exams to one of the elite high schools in Boston. Even with his fears, Conor’s managing. Until his worst fear comes true: a banshee shows up in his window, waiting to keen for a death of one of Conor’s family.

At first, Conor tries to keep the banshee — whose name is Ashling — a secret, but (of course) that doesn’t work. She’s bored waiting for the death to happen and it’s her first time out of the Underworld since her death 1600 years ago. She wants knowledge, and (of course) middle school is a good place to get it. Except for the whole “if people see you keening when something dies, they die too” thing.

It’s more complicated than that, obviously. There’s a side story about one of Conor’s former lives in which he had a relationship with Ashling. And there’s a trip to the Underworld so that Conor can cheat death (not his own; and he doesn’t, really, in the end. Spoilers, I know.).

While I liked Booream’s treatment of Celtic mythology (and other; there’s some Greek and African mythologies in there as well) and her modernizing of banshees (and the Underworld, for that matter), in the long run, this just didn’t work for me. I think my main problem with it was Conor. He was so insecure, so unsure of himself, that I felt that, for most of the book, he was just spinning his wheels. I wanted him to be proactive and DO something instead of just being reactive to everything around him. And by the time that happened, I felt like it was too little, too late. (And his younger 10-year-old sister Glennie was just annoying.) I did like Ashling, however; I thought Booream caught the idea of a supernatural being — especially one who wouldn’t have encountered the modern world — enthused with the mortal world. I liked Ashling’s discovery of cell phones, computers, buses, even sidewalks. That charmed and amused me.

I’m just disappointed it wasn’t all like that.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)