By Kyle Lukoff
The summer before middle school, a grieving child in a haunted house untangles a ghost's message and, with it, the truth of who he is.
It's the summer before middle school, and Bug's beloved uncle Roderick has just died. Bug lives with mom in an old, drafty house that has always been a little haunted, but now the haunting has turned insistent. Doors slam, things move, and something clearly wants Bug's attention. As Bug works out who the ghost is and what it's trying to say, a second, quieter truth surfaces right alongside it: Bug isn't the girl everyone assumes he is. Bug is a boy.
It's two books braided into one: a genuinely spooky haunted-house mystery your child will race through, and a tender coming-of-age story about Bug slowly realizing he's a boy. The ghost story does the pulling, so you keep turning pages to find out what it wants, while the discovery underneath unfolds so gently it feels like relief rather than a lesson. It's a Newbery Honor book and it earns it. Bug's voice is close and honest the whole way.