The Phantom Isles (review)

Ming, Orion, and Courtney weren't sure what would happen when they recited an incantation found in an old library book, but they certainly didn't expect to conjure up the ghosts of an entire island nation. The phantoms are trapped inside books that belonged to a missionary who had lived on the Ilhas dos Fantasmas years ago; disturbed by the friendships between the ghosts and the living, the missionary discovered a way to photograph the spirits and freeze them onto a page. Although it seems nearly impossible for the three middle-schoolers to find a way to right this decades-old wrong, they are determined to release the ghosts. Fortunately, they have a dauntless librarian as a helper, clues that are all too willing to be found (and a local spirit who guides the children to them), and access to an old photocopier that will be key in reversing the images. The adventurous quest of the children is fairly predictable, but it's still engaging; more intriguing and complex are the elegantly told flashbacks of the lives of the ghosts and clever side stories about the (fictional) scientific and astrological advances that led to their entrapment. Even in the midst of dreamy sequences about island life and what it feels like to die, however, Alter never loses focus on his three amiable protagonists: Ming, Orion, and Courtney are each richly developed characters, distinct from one another even in their closely aligned goals. Three black-and-white halftone illustrations backdrop the text, illuminating the convergence of ghost and page.