Doll Bones
by Holly Black
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2013
244 Pages
Mid-Grade (10-14)
Poppy, Zach, and Alice are playing a game of pretend with dolls and action figures, but it’s more like an ongoing live action role-play with props. It’s what childhood play always should be, a collaborative, cooperative archetype, captured flawlessly by Black’s description. Lady Jaye and William the Blade fight against the evil Duke of Deepwinter Barrow. (If only we’d been creative enough for names like that in real life!)
Each character has her or his own challenges. Zach has issues with his father, Alice lost both her parents and has been saddled with an overly strict grandmother, and Poppy is poor, she and her brothers thought of a hoodlums in the neighborhood.
One day Zach suddenly decides he no longer wants to play. He is 12. Has he outgrown it? Before he can explain, the leader of their game, The Great Queen, makes her play: Poppy finds herself haunted by the spirit of a little girl named Eleanor whose bones were ground to create the porcelain for the doll’s head, and whose ashes were wrapped and hidden deep inside the doll’s body.
Eleanor’s un-restful spirit needs to be laid to rest by burying the antique doll (Someday Poppy’s mom was going to bring it to the Antiques Roadshow and make a fortune,) and thus the trio has a real-life quest. Zach and Alice are not sure if Poppy’s tale of haunting is true, but it doesn’t matter.
”When Eleanor died, her dad went totally crazy. He couldn’t bear to put her in the ground, so he took her body back to the kilns at his job, chopped her up, and cremated her. He ground up her burnt bones and used them to make a batch of bone china, then poured it into a mold cast from one of Eleanor’s favorite dolls. So her grave stayed empty.”
The first night, they run away with plans of being home before their absence is noticed, but they are accosted on the bus by a crazy bum who can apparently see the little blonde girl who is their fourth. That night, as they sleep, their shared sleeping bag is shredded, their food scattered, and at dawn, the doll is no longer where they left her.
Children are dirty, her aunt said, and forbade her from playing outside. She gave her chores instead, making her wash the windows and sweep the floors and move the furniture around.
When the going gets tough, they all begin to change. As Alice gets to her breaking point and demands to go home, Poppy blackmails her friends to get them to continue the quest. Zach steals a sailboat in order to be more like his character, the pirate. Alice kicks in the window of a library. Is it pressure from the stress of the adventure, or is it something else?
What does Poppy blackmail them with? Just the fact that Alice, growing up maybe faster than the others, has a crush on Zach. She’s in love. And Zach– he doesn’t really want to end the game. But he doesn’t have a choice.
After the library reveals more of Eleanor’s story, the adventurers escape from the frying pan and head towards real trouble in order to reach the cemetery where they think Eleanor’s remains should be buried. If they fail, the strange happenings, their odd behavior, the dream visions they’ve begun to have… may never end.
I am reluctant to embrace the pop-culture references like Roombas and Doctor Who that pop up here. They can help with setting, but just as easily date the story, as in: “I looked up at my posters of The Cure and Frankie Say… while my modem screeched its hello…” The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp (Richard Peck) suffered from that, as did Susan Cooper’s The Boggart, in their references to computers. On the other hand, John Bellairs loved to throw in 40’s references that legitimized his stories. We’ll see how this book withstands the challenge of time; because I’m guessing it will be in print for quite a while.
I like that the action is split between the characters, something I really can’t remember since Madeline L’Engle. Even Harry Potter’s trio was really just Harry and his backup. Here each character has an equal part to play. The action builds until the climax, and the suspense is just right for a mid-grade. The idea of a doll made from a dead girl’s bones alone is enough to keep me checking under the bed.
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