Monet's Ghost (Dragonflight) - Hardcover

Grade 7-9. Fifteen-year-old Geena Howe's ability to think herself into a painting provides the plot mechanism that moves this mediocre fantasy forward. The teen decides to explore a favorite piece of art, one of Monet's water lilies. She projects herself into it, enters the previous century, and encounters a young man, Crispin, and his aunt, who are convinced that the castle in which they live is controlled by a ghost. This figure continually transforms their world, with whole wings of the castle appearing and disappearing and their clothes and hair changing on a daily basis. Astute readers will see right through the author's setup, since plenty of hints that Monet is the ghost are provided. While Yarbro does an admirable job of describing scenery and period clothing, as well as the extraordinary light that inspired Monet's Giverny paintings, the book gets bogged down in its repeated exploration of the differences between the two centuries. Since Geena is a plucky and courageous character, determined to find the answers to many of the castle's baffling mysteries, YAs might stick with the book until she successfully navigates back to the 20th century. However, several questions remain unanswered, such as why the characters that Geena encounters in France speak English. Finally, although Geena worries about explaining her absence when she returns to her own time, the author takes the easy way out by ending the novel before she actually faces the police or her parents.?Ellen Fader, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 6-10. Geena Howe, 15, has an unusual talent--she can think herself into a painting. The first time it happens unexpectedly while she is looking at a Mondrian canvas; two weeks later, she deliberately enters a Vermeer and learns she must exit from the same place she entered. The adventure really begins, however, when she slips into a huge Monet painting of water lilies floating in a castle moat. What she encounters is bizarre, to say the least. The castle is inhabited by a boy named Crispin, his aunt Lucrece, and a cook. The castle is haunted by a ghost that materializes shortly before drastic changes occur--stacks of wheat appear in a field, castle towers appear or disappear, the castle furnishings change in period style, hair and clothing styles change, etc. When the moat vanishes, Geena despairs of ever getting home. The eerie details and scary happenings are enticing and well worth the suspension of disbelief; the interactions between the very modern Geena and the "old-fashioned" Crispin are amusing; and despite its predictability, the ending is satisfying. Readers with an interest in painters and paintings will especially enjoy the story. Sally Estes