Sedgwick, Marcus. The Ghosts of Heaven. New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2014.

A mind bender is just what the reader gets from Marcus Sedgwick. I feel like I need to read his stuff multiple times in order to begin to understand it. I surely don’t feel like a veteran AP literature teacher. Here’s the thing though. I had to wait until summer to even get to read The Ghosts of Heaven for the first time. I start teaching at upward bound soon, so - no rereading just now.

To summarize this book is difficult. The content is organized into four quarters. I read them in the order that they are published, but theoretically they work in any order. One is set in prehistory and focuses on a young girl, who struggles to decipher original writing on the walls of a cave, to make magic for her people’s hunt, to survive the invasion of another group of people. I am transformed back in time. Another is set during the height of witch hunts and executions. A young girl who is a healer like her newly passed mother, is learning to use herbs to help the neighbors who come for aid at all hours. She only wishes she could heal her brother who suffers randomly from debilitating seizures. Then new priest arrives. His mission? To remove her village from the clutches of evil and witchcraft. Another, and likely my favorite, is set in an insane asylum sometime in the 20s. The new assistant superintendent is learning the secrets of the supposedly progressive assignment while keeping some pretty profound secrets of his own. The story revolves around him, his daughter Verity, and the alarmingly lucid, but “insane” patient who guides them both. And the last quarter I read set sometime in the distant future - beautiful science fiction, and I don’t always love science fiction - in a spaceship hurtling toward a “new earth.” The sentinel who wakes every 10 years to check the ship’s progress notices some startling developments. People are dying; systems seem to be failing; he might not really know the truth of his journey. What do all of these stories have in common? The spiral - at some level the character’s are drawn to, mystified by, afraid of the spiral - seen in nature, in stairways, in paths through space.

I love that Sedgwick’s work transcends labels. The book is marketed as young adult, but is populated equally by characters of all ages. I will definitely have to market this to my older and more sophisticated readers, but am pleased to have it to offer to them. Honestly, I can’t wait to have a few of them read it, so that we can talk the ideas through together. I love his talent at creating works in different eras and styles that stand independently and yet work seamlessly together - historical fiction, science fiction, prehistoric fiction. One of the reasons that I have to work so hard to understand the meaning is that I am drawn into the narrative and just need to know what happens, so I rush. A second reading becomes almost necessary...but the time. I love that this book forces the reader to be an active reader, to seek connections, to look beyond the words on the page. This book is intriguing; thought provoking; a mind bender - exactly what I’ve come to expect from Marcus Sedgwick.