Review: Ghost Squad

Ghost Squad by Claribel Ortega.
Scholastic, New York, originally published 2020, my edition 2021.
MG fantasy, 246 pages + excerpt.
Lexile: 810L .
AR Level: 5.5 (worth 7.0 points) .

Lucely Luna’s father Simon might be in the business of ghost tours, but the way her Dominican family’s ancestors appear as firefly ghosts is a secret known only to her best friend Syd – who has a witchy grandmother of her own. But with the family finances leaving their house (and magical tree) in peril, the mayor acting weird, and helping Syd hunt for a spellbook through all the town’s graveyards, Lucely is more than stressed. Would a strange spell make everything right or will it add to their problems?

Ghost Squad by Claribel A. Ortega.

Ortega is definitely an author to watch. I appreciated so many aspects of this. Lucely is being raised by a single dad. This comes up a few times, especially as she still struggles with how her mother suddenly left without warning and has almost no contact with them now, but it isn’t part of the main plotline and isn’t magically fixed by the end of the book. Although I no longer work in schools, this is a problem I recall – some students are being raised by single dads (or even grandpas) yet few books reflect that reality.

Lucely isn’t popular at school, but does have a strong support network between her many ghost relatives, her father, and her best friend’s family. The family is financially struggling, but they still make a large breakfast for their extended family who are deceased (since virtuous ghosts can still taste food and enjoy eating).

Announcement: New Tags

Yes, another housekeeping post.

At one point, I didn’t tag any of the books with Black content because that was the primary content of this blog, but it was recently brought to my attention that since the original scope of Colorful Book Reviews has greatly expanded, I should probably start using that tag.

After some reflection, I’ve decided to add the following tags:

Black
African American
white/presumed white
Afro-Latinx

It was also brought to my attention that I probably should be tagging books with biracial main characters also. After some conversations, what I’ve decided to do is tag each ethnicity as well as using biracial tags. I understand that the biracial people in my life are not necessarily representative of all biracial people everywhere, and that some might differ in opinion. For now I’ll be making two tags, biracial (white) and biracial (nonwhite). This is not to diminish the importance of literature about biracial people from two different nonwhite cultures, but simply to reflect the reality that far more children’s literature currently exists including biracial characters with partially white heritage.

While embarking on this tag clean up project, I’m also toying with the idea of region-specific tags for Africa, and will probably consolidate the Caribbean tags since I just don’t post enough about most countries there.

It will probably be May or June before I have time to actually start implementing these changes on past posts in the blog, since my main priority continues to be reading and writing reviews. But I wanted to mention it early to have a chance for feedback before all these changes.