Island of the Stone Boy

Is death the only way off McGraw Island? "There he was. In the window ...His hair was red, his face pale. Sickly white. Ghostly white.Staring down.Watching me. Watching Mom. Then he began pounding his hand against the glass, but I couldn't hear any sound. His lips, a moldy green, moved. Opened, closed. Open, closed. What word? What syllable? I strained to understand ... And then I got it. 'Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom'." Bret Carver has been through a lot lately. First, his big sister died. Then his parents began fighting non-stop. His life couldn't get any worse. At least, that's what he thought before his mother won a vacation to a private island resort. McGraw Island isn't Bret's idea of a dream destination. The hotel owners are freaks. Their niece is a snob. And the island's rightful heir, a boy who drowned in 1968, haunts the place, searching for the mother who abandoned him. When a hidden portrait reveals that Bret's mother is a dead ringer for the ghost's mother, Bret realizes all the "accidents" haven't been accidental. The ghost has mistaken Bret's mom for his own-and he'll kill to be reunited. "If I'd learned anything in the last six months, it was that sometimes it's better if Mom doesn't know everything there is to know." -- Bret Carver But what Mom doesn't know could prove deadly. Reading Level: Grade 4+ (Students, parents and siblings)