Return of the Grudstone Ghosts

When Daphne, an inquisitive student in grade seven, sees a teacher plunge from the school's belfry, she simply cannot sit still. Along with her good friends Nick and Peach, Daphne becomes embroiled in a breathtaking mystery.

Return of the Grudstone Ghosts, by Arthur Slade, a Saskatoon-based children's writer, is a spine-tingling thriller for junior-high aged readers. It is set in the tunnels of Moose Jaw, the city where Slade was born. "I spent many of my weekends in Moose Jaw as a child, visiting my cousins and my grandma and grandpa. My grandfather owned a hotel called the Harwood and I would often explore the whole building," he says.

"The staff told us tales of tunnels under the hotel. A very intriguing concept to a kid! Years later the Moose Javians turned similar tunnels into a tourist attraction. So, I decided to set a novel in the tunnels."

Grudstone Ghosts is Slade's seventh published book. Some of his other works include The Loki Wolf, Tribes, and Dust, which won the Governor General's Award for Children's Literature in 2001. He says that the biggest challenge he faces when writing for young readers is "engaging the audience. Writing a book for ages 13 and up is entirely different than writing for ages 8-9. I find myself trying to write novels that I would have liked reading at those ages. That was when I most loved reading, when I could disappear into a book. The real difficulty is finding that same magic that inspired me as a youth," he explains.

Not only was Slade into reading from an early age, but also writing. He wrote a short story when he was in Grade 11, which received a perfect mark from his teacher. "That amazed me and I was lucky that my teacher was quite supportive," he says. "I wrote my first novel in Grade 12 - no one ever published it, thankfully. But I caught the writing bug and continued to write novels."

Slade wants young writers to know that "writing isn't just about inspiration and creativity - it's also work. And the only way to become a good writer is the write as much and as often as possible." He knows this from first-hand experience - his first published novel, Draugr (Orca Books, 1997) was the seventh book he had written.

Part of the Canadian Chills series, Slade refers to the series as "Canadian propaganda - its goal is to excite the interest of readers in a small part of the country. This book is specifically Moose Jaw 'thrills and chills' propaganda! These are quick and exciting stories that usually revolve around a mystery."

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