A Touch of Ruckus

by Ash Van Otterloo

Overview

A laugh-out-loud, ghostly Southern mystery that's perfect for fans of Cassie Beasley and Natalie Lloyd.

Tennessee Lancaster has a hidden gift. She can pry into folks' memories with just a touch of their belongings. It's something she's always kept hidden — especially from her big, chaotic family. Their lives are already chock-full of worries about Daddy's job and Mama's blues without Tennie rocking the boat.

But when the Lancasters move to the mountains for a fresh start, Tennie's gift does something new. Instead of just memories, her touch releases a ghost with a terrifying message: Trouble is coming. Tennie wants to ignore it. Except her new friend Fox — scratch that, her only friend, Fox — is desperate to go ghost hunting deep in the forest. And when Tennie frees even more of the spirits, trouble is exactly what she gets... and it hits close to home. The ghosts will be heard, and now Tennie must choose between keeping secrets or naming an ugly truth that could tear her family apart.

Magic and mayhem abound in this spooky story about family legacies, first friendships, and how facing the ghosts inside can sometimes mean stirring up a little bit of ruckus.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781338702033
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	09/07/2021
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	1,142,104
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Ash Van Otterloo is the author of Cattywampus. When they're not writing and freelance editing, they love gardening, hiking, exchanging playful banter, and collecting folklore stories. A longtime resident of the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, they now live in Washington with their family and an enormous collection of plants.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Cattywampus:

An Indies Next pick

An Indies Introduce pick

"Deftly weaving elements of magic and nature with a story of adolescent change, debut author Van Otterloo conjures a timeless contemporary fantasy." — Publishers Weekly

"A spirited debut." — Kirkus Reviews

"Lively and entertaining! Ash Van Otterloo delivers spooky fun and an essential new kid-lit character in this spirited debut." — Ingrid Law, Newbery Honor-winning author of Savvy

"Cattywampus is a Southern yarn in all the best ways — it's warm and welcoming and promises you a wild ride. You'll want to settle into this story and stay awhile." — Erica Waters, author of Ghost Wood Song

"It is southern, witchy, magical fun about friends and family and the histories that connect us and haunt us. The dialogue is fireworks... The subtle creepiness won't scare you (too bad), but the vibrant, beating heart of this story will haunt you for a good long time." — Natalie Lloyd, New York Times bestselling author of A Snicker of Magic

From the Publisher

2021-07-08
A touch of magic helps a girl understand her family’s past and improve their future.

When 12-year-old Tennessee Lancaster goes to stay in the country for a month with Mimsy, her maternal grandmother, she’s making yet another attempt to hold her family together. Their finances are strained to the point where they’ve just moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Athens, Georgia, that won’t hold their family of six, but her mom’s relationship with Mimsy is tense, and Tennie fears a return of her mother’s depression. Tennie resents her role as peacemaker but is too anxious to let it go. Adding to her burden, whenever Tennie touches something, she risks feeling whatever past emotions are embedded in the item. A budding new friendship in Howler’s Hollow with Fox Sanchez-Griffin, who is nonbinary, helps ease her worries over the realization that Mimsy is struggling financially and emotionally too and her misgivings about Mimsy’s rich city-slicker beau. But Fox can sense ghosts and has secrets of their own. Van Otterloo’s narration gets a bit too folksy sometimes, with similes jammed in like Walmart on Black Friday, but they do well at unfolding the narrative over time. The things Tennie learns through magic lead to a nonmagical and healthy solution to her family’s problems. Tennie and her family are White; Fox is cued as having Latinx ancestry, and there is diversity among secondary characters.

Heads in unexpected directions and ends satisfyingly. (Fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews