Took: A Ghost Story by Mary Downing Hahn

When I was book shopping for my grandchildren for Christmas, I noticed that Mary Downing Hahn had a new book. Took: A Ghost Story is classic Hahn. She gives the reader the creeps in a good way. This story has it all: a witch or two, folklore, a creepy doll, time travel, a beast, a haunted child, and an old house.

Blurb from Goodreads: “Folks say Old Auntie takes a girl and keeps her fifty years—then lets her go and takes another one.”     Thirteen-year-old Daniel Anderson doesn’t believe Brody Mason’s crazy stories about the ghost witch who lives up on Brewster’s Hill with Bloody Bones, her man-eating razorback hog. He figures Brody’s probably just trying to scare him since he’s the new kid . . . a “stuck-up snot” from Connecticut. But Daniel’s seven-year-old sister Erica has become more and more withdrawn, talking to her lookalike doll. When she disappears into the woods one day, he knows something is terribly wrong. Did the witch strike? Has Erica been “took”? 

If you like Mary Downing Hahn or Betty Ren Wright, you will enjoy this story.

Read to a child today even if that child is you.