Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	A Stir of Bones
	Author:	Hoffman, Nina Kiriki
	Date Published:	2003
	Genre:	Supernatural
	Grade Level:	6 -78
	Booktalker:	Kathy Preller

Booktalk:
Susan is beautiful, smart, lives in an expensive house, has attentive parents. It looks like she has a perfect life. But Susan has a secret. An awful secret. And she's never had any real friends, because she can't let anyone get close enough to wonder about the secret. Then came the day that things started to change. Susan was researching a school project in the library when she overheard three kids talking about a place to be private. One of the voices she heard belonged to Julio, the son of Juanita, the housekeeper. They used to play together when they were little, but these days they rarely saw each other. Julio was saying "I had a great idea…it's perfect…the haunted house…there are so many scary stories about, that no one goes there." With uncharacteristic forwardness, Susan went around the bookshelf and said she wanted to go with them. They were surprised to see her, and not too pleased that she had overheard their plans. Julio reassured the others- "it's all right Susan doesn't gossip." "I won't tell", Susan said, "but I want to go with you." The next day the all four kids met in front of the neglected old house at the end of a run-down street. They crept through the overgrown bushes, around to the back door, and broke in. What they found was a house with a life and a ghost of it's own. The house and ghost will try to pry out Susan's secret. And she must decide if she can live with that or die with it.