Ghost Boy
Iain Lawrence
Laurel Leaf
Young Adult
ISBN: 044041668X
352 pages

• Read an Excerpt

Fourteen-year-old Harold Kline is an albino, a boy with no color. His skin is pale, his eyes are bad, and his hair is white. Because he is different, he is shunned by the other children and called Ghost Boy. His mother remarries after his father and his brother are killed in World War II, and he finds his stepfather cruel and mean. Harold wishes that he fit somewhere, that there was a place for him.

Then he discovers Hunter and Green's Traveling Circus. Finally, he is with people like him, people who understand him. The Cannibal King is also an albino. Tina, the tiny woman known as the Princess Minikin, mothers him, and Samuel, the Fossil Man, hugs him in a jolly jam. Thunder Wakes Him mesmerizes Harold with his Indian legends. Together they squeeze the sadness from the Ghost.

Harold gets a job teaching the elephants to play baseball and he falls in love with Flip, the beautiful trick rider. But the Gypsy Magda foretells trouble ---tragedy seems to follow Harold.

He's looking for respect and acceptance, but will he find it among the circus freaks or with the so-called normal people? He tries to fit in with both groups but he soon finds that when he has to make a choice, he cannot justify giving up his friends.

GHOST BOY is full of psychological implications and emotions as Harold struggles to grow into a man, accepting and learning about life. Will he find happiness as he trudges towards Oregon, the trip he and his brother David had planned to make after David returned from the war? Will he be able to finally accept his brother's death? When Harold makes his decision, it surprises everyone except the Gypsy Magda.

Iain Lawrence spent a great part of his childhood on the Canadian prairies and once had a job tearing down a traveling big top. This inspired the setting of GHOST BOY. He is the author of two other books: THE WRECKERS and THE SMUGGLERS.

--- Reviewed by Audrey Marie Danielson

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