Olive and the Backstage Ghost

Gr 4–6—Laurel Preiss was a theatrical star as a child, and her daughter, Olive, inhabits her enormous shadow. Desperate to escape her mother's disparaging eye and scathing critiques, Olive stumbles down an alley and discovers Maudeville. Eager to find a mentor who will honor and nurture her gifts, Olive embraces the ghostly figure of Maude Devore and her vaudevillian theater of Eidola. As Maude tells the tale of the fire that destroyed the theater and created her dreamland, she says, "But a lowered curtain isn't content to remain that way forever, Olive. It's just waiting to rise again." Olive does rise, in the company of apparitions: mimes, ventriloquists, jugglers, fire-eaters, and even severed hands that play beautiful piano accompaniments to her singing performances. Schusterman's language is haunting and elegant, filling the narrative with prose poems that float like ghosts themselves.