Six Haunted Hairdos (Hamlet Chronicles) - Hardcover

Maguire, Gregory

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395786266 ISBN 13: 9780395786260

Publisher: Clarion Books, 1997

Synopsis

In this sequel to Seven Spiders Spinning, the rivalry between the boys and girls in Miss Earth's class takes a ghostly turn when the girls transform themselves into the Six Haunted Hairdos, but the whole class will have to cast aside their rivalries to stop a real haunting.

About this title

About the Author:

Gregory Maguire is the popular author of many books for children, including the Hamlet Chronicles for Clarion, as well as several adult books, including WICKED (HarperCollins), upon which a Broadway musical was based, and its sequel, CONFESSIONS OF AN UGLY STEPSISTER (Regan Books). He lives in Concord, Massachusetts.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Having survived an influx of giant, poisonous Siberian snow spiders (Seven Spiders Spinning, 1994), the rival boys and girls of Miss Earth's class in Hamlet, Vermont, face another set of prehistoric critters: a herd of ghost mammoths hunting through the centuries for a misplaced youngling. In the wake of a classroom argument about the existence of ghosts, the Tattletales (girls) gleefully don fright masks and beehive wigs (`` `There is nothing quite so terrifying as hairstyles that have gone out of fashion' '') and send the Copycats (boys) fleeing down spooky Hardscrabble Hill in panic, where there are actual ghosts--indistinct mounds that appear at the first sign of peanuts and wander about with a mournful air. With the help of the new boy, Salim Bannerjee, a newly deceased pet mouse named Jeremiah Bullfrog, plus lots of chocolate donuts from the local bakery-cum-auto repair shop, the Copycats divine the source of the mammoths' unhappiness; they ease it with a handy baby elephant ghost that has followed Salim all the way from the Bombay Zoo. Then, using many cans of hair spray, they give the obliging pachyderms new hairstyles to turn the tables on the Tattletales. Maguire's wit sometimes slips its leash, but the climax is sidesplitting and the gender rivalry thoroughly skewered, although the heartwarming ectoplasmic adoption scene prompts a Thanksgiving Day truce between the factions. (b&w illustrations, not seen) (Fiction. 10-12) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Clarion Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0395786266
• ISBN 13: 9780395786260
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160
• Illustrator: Clayton Elaine