GHOST BUDDY: ZERO TO HERO by Henry Winkler & Lin Oliver

“Is it me, or is this ghost talking like the Fonz from Happy Days?” I wondered, the whole time I was reading GHOST BUDDY: ZERO TO HERO. When I spent a little time with Henry Winkler at a Scholastic dinner during the International Reading Association Convention recently, he assured me that I wasn’t imagining things.  In fact, when he and his co-author Lin Oliver were working on the book, Winkler says, he spent much of his time walking around the room talking in his Fonzie voice, channeling one of television’s most famous cool guys to create a great, fun voice for his super-cool ghost. As a total writing-process geek, I was delighted with this tidbit of information and loved the book all the more for it.

GHOST BUDDY: ZERO TO HERO  is about a kid who moves into a new house in a new neighborhood and discovers all the usual challenges waiting for him — being the new kid at school, facing a bully, finding his way around, and… a ghost living in his closet.  At first, the uber-cool ghost doesn’t have much patience for uncool Billy, but the kid gets under his skin after a while, and before long, they’re as close as two friends living in different dimensions can be. Mix in a little baseball, and you’ve got a delightful, funny book. This is a quick read with loads of appeal for readers in grades 2-5 and great potential to hook those reluctant boy readers in older grades, too.  Book two in the series, GHOST BUDDY: MIND IF I READ YOUR MIND, shares a book-birthday with my upcoming mystery, CAPTURE THE FLAG – both will be available July 1st.