Suddenly Supernatural Book 1
Suddenly Supernatural: School Spiritby Elizabeth Cody KimmelKat is not your typical seventh-grader. Her mother is a medium and can see and talk to spirits. Not the best kind of mother to have when you're trying to fit in at middle school. The worst part is that when Kat turns thirteen SHE starts to see spirits, too! Now along with her new best friend Jac, Kat must try to help out the spirit of a girl who died at their school 50 years ago and try to not attract the wrong kind of attention from the Cool Girls who could (and do) make her life miserable. Will Kat accept the Gift of sight that she has or will she spend her teen years trying to hide from the spirits who want her help? The answer can only be found in the pages of the first book in the Suddenly Supernatural series!What caught my eye for this book was the purple highlights on the cover and the binding. I LOVE me some library type binding. Remember those old school Nancy Drew books with the hard cover library binding? They just made the book seem so much better! And this book feels just like that. And hey, it's got purple highlights!
I also love the cover art. The whole package seemed right up my alley and so I picked it up and read the back. I was instantly hooked.Of course I did not buy it at that time (ok, so "at that time" was my Monday trip to the bookstore, as opposed to my trip last night where I picked it up). Another thing that solidified my decision to pick this up was the price. Due to the stupidity of book prices in Canada right now, I am trying VERY hard to stick to paper back books because the difference in price on those is not always as earth shattering as the hard covers. But this one wasn't bad. $10.99 US and $11.99 Canadian. Since I pay about $11.99 for a regular mass market book normally (yes, I know. Ugh.) I thought what the heck! The binding was irresistible to me and made the purchase worth it.Also worth it? The story! As I was reading the story I did not realize that there might be more books and it was making me sad because I loved Kat and Jac and their ability to joke around and stand up to the silly mean girls who thought they weren't cool because they were different. Being 13 is hard enough, but being the target of mean pranks and comments on top of that is just horrid. Luckily these two helped each other through the worst of it and I loved the way they handled the obstacles in their way.The story was funny, well written and decently paced. I didn't feel like anything was being rushed or left out just to get to the climax at the end. I am looking forward to the next instalment, which according to the author's webpage is due in Fall 2008. Woot!The only thing that I was disappointed about was the lack of art in the book itself. I know not all Young Reader books have art as a part of the book, but even Nancy Drew had a few images in the story and I know that The Spiderwick Chronicles mixed words and images beautifully. I would have like to have seen some art in the pages of this book. The cover art itself was lovely enough that I hoped I would see more. That's just me though.The type face is large and well spaced out. Easy to read and likely good for young readers who aren't that into reading or have trouble. Certainly something I would recommend to parents looking for a good summer book for their children (probably more girls than boys though). Not quite as dark and morose as the May Bird series, but Kat is just as likable as May was, though possibly written a little younger.Click here to read my 5 Questions with Elizabeth Cody Kimmel!Suddenly Supernatural Series