Doll Bones
Holly Black
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, MG Chiller/Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since almost before he can remember, Zach has been best friends with Alice and Poppy. Their games take on lives of their own, stories of mermaids and pirates and curses and adventures, many featuring the dreaded Great Queen: the antique bone china doll locked in the glass case in Poppy's house, which the children are forbidden to touch but who has come to rule their imaginary world. Zach can't ever imagine anything changing... but change is coming, whether he wants it or not. They're in middle school now, and surely none of his friends on the basketball team play with dolls or action figures anymore - especially not with girls, who are starting to seem a little different to him in confusing, irritating ways. Now that Zach's father is back in his life, the man is encouraging his boy to "grow up" and stop playing kiddie games, even going so far as to throw out Zach's action figures. Through his frustration and anger and grief, the boy is starting to wonder if everyone else is right, and he is being a baby. He decides it's time to stop playing.
Then Poppy does the unthinkable: she opens the glass case and lets the Great Queen free. Suddenly, what was a remote, untouchable inspiration for childhood stories seems a lot more sinister - especially when Poppy insists the doll is haunted, that it contains the bones of a murdered child, and that the spirit won't rest until they give it a proper burial in its home town, hours away by bus. Already it's plaguing her dreams. Despite his misgivings, Zach agrees to what he's more than half certain is just Poppy's final, big game with her friends before they all get too grown up for such things... but there's more than just imagination at work, here, and spirits are not to be trifled with...
REVIEW: This is a nice, somewhat unsettling story of friendship, imagination, and what growing up means (and what it doesn't, particularly the idea that growing up means having to let go of everything that makes a person who they are in favor of what other people tell them they should be). At twelve, Zach and his friends are at the end of true childhood and entering adolescence, a time of confusing changes that can make a body feel they don't even know themselves, let alone their friends, or what's expected of them now that they have one foot in adulthood but one still lagging behind. He's also struggling to deal with a father who, after a prolonged absence, is trying to settle back into his home and his life, and not doing the best of jobs; throwing out his son's favorite toys is his way of making him "man up", but he didn't think through how the boy would take having his privacy violated and favorite possessions literally tossed in the garbage. In true adolescent fashion, Zach doesn't handle the frustration well, lashing out at family and friends, who are going through their own problems. The "quest" to bury the china doll Eleanor becomes much more than a game to all the children, and not just due to the supernatural aspect (which is very strongly implied but never specifically or blatantly confirmed): they all recognize the journey as a pivotal point in their lives and relationships, possibly the last "game" of their innocent youth, and even if they remain friends afterward they know nothing will ever go back to the way it used to be before. Running away from home to go to another town feels grown-up, but doing so for the sake of a haunted doll also feels childish. Yet the more time Zach spends on the road, finding eerie echoes of their games, the harder it is for him to pretend that the ghost is all in Poppy's head. By the end, the children and their relationships have indeed been changed, but they've also managed to set their own terms, at least for now, on what growing up will mean for them and their bond. It makes for a memorable and worthwhile story.
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