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Ghost Writer
by Julia Jarman

Release Date: 3rd Jul 2008
Publisher: Arrow
ISBN: 978 1 8427 0827 9
RRP: £4.99

Average Customer Rating: 
(0.0 based on 0 ratings)

Frankie sees a ghost and it's trying to tell him something...

This book has thrown up a series of questions: when it is acceptable to substitute an educational message over plot? How far can publishers and authors go to take advantage of buzzwords or buzz-disabilities in order to sell books? How can we, the reader, know whether or not their intentions are pure?

To elaborate on our dilemma over this slim book; our concern is it's preoccupation with dyslexia - a relatively common disability that renders its sufferers unable (or at least with some degree of difficulty) to read and write. Frankie is a young boy who has recently moved to a small village as his mother hopes that a small school will show more compassion where his dyslexia is concerned. To be fair, in the real world, this would just pile an enormous amount of pressure on a tiny school with tiny resources - and therein is my first issue.

My second issue, is that a teacher at the school, a Miss Bulpit is immediately frogmarched out as the villain of the piece and treats Frankie with such scant regard for his wellbeing that it made my skin crawl - that may well have been the intention, but I find it impossible to believe that in such a small, village school such unprofessional and victimising behaviour would go on unnoticed and unpunished (even in the end she gets off scot free and simply retires).

Lost amongst all this angst is the plot. Frankie discovers that he can see the ghost of a boy in Room 9 at the school - a ghost that appears to live in a cupboard at the back of the class. The further Frankie delves (although, to be fair, it is the school secretary, Miss Trimm that does the delving) into the school's one hundred-year old past, the more certain he becomes that something untoward happened to the boy and is determined to prove that the old Miss Bulpit (yes, there's another one) had something to do with it. It all works out alright in the end though - there are no real casualties other than the feeling that your money might have been better spent.

The book tries hard and so does the author to ram it home that dyslexia is something that needs to be understood and accepted in modern day life and equally that there are techniques, skills and equipment available to make things a little easier for sufferers. DBNT - Dyslexic But Not Thick is the motto of this book, and quite right too - although, I sense that most of us knew this already.

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