In the deep, dark, frigid days of winter, what could be more fun than curling up in a blanket with a shivery ghost story? Set during summer vacation, The Ghosts of Pandora Pickwick is a wonderful combination of two evergreen middle grade tropes: the aforementioned ghost tale and an adoption/origin story.

Protagonist Mia Jones has never fit well with her adoptive family. Cautious and organized, Mia’s mother has “everything under control. She had already packed Mia’s suitcase three days ago, only to then repack it another five times. Now Mia was even equipped with a shoehorn and wart remover.” Mia, though, feels much more comfortable at her Aunt Harriet’s shop, Pandora Antiques, which was started by and named after her adoptive grandmother, Pandora Pickwick, now deceased. In contrast with Mia’s mother, Aunt Harriet is “messy” and a bit forgetful, so much so that at first, she doesn’t even remember that Mia is being dropped off for the summer.

Unbeknownst to Mia, her aunt runs a placement agency for ghosts, something else she inherited from Pandora. “Ideally, ghosts like to haunt old castles or manor houses. They need space,” the aunt explains. “In the last fifty years, many of the old castles have been sold. People don’t have the money for a huge, drafty place like that these days. Besides, the new owners are often rich bankers or pop stars or something, and they don’t want ghosts in their houses. They’d rather kick them out.”

Mia is intrigued–especially because it turns out that she’s a “ghost-seer,” even outside the witching hour of midnight to 1 a.m. That’s when many people–like her Aunt Harriet and unlike her mother–can see and hear them. With the help of a spectral boy, a “pestergeist” named Alistair, Mia learns about other types of ghosts, such as buzzlings and vanishers, and how to cross into the spectral realm. Over there, though, things get stranger and often scarier, particularly after she gets invited to Sir Paxton Blake’s 400th birthday party. Although she hesitates initially, the bait of finding out about her birth parents lures her
forward.

A middle grade ghost story must hit a challenging sweet spot: it has to be tame enough for its youngest readers not to get nightmares, and yet it has to have enough fear factor to keep tween readers on tenterhooks. The Ghosts of Pandora Pickwick treads the line successfully, with an action- and spirit-packed denouement that is sure to satisfy.

The Ghosts of Pandora Pickwick
Written by Christina Wolff
Translated from the German by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp
ISBN: 9781646900466
2025, Arctis Books

You can buy a copy here* or find a copy of it at a library.

*Book purchases made via our affiliate link may earn GLLI a small commission at no cost to you.

Award-winning opera singer Nanette McGuinness is the translator of over 140 books and graphic novels for children and adults from French, Italian, German and Spanish into English, including the much-loved Geronimo Stilton Graphic Novels, as well as Tiki: A Very Ruff Year (nominated for the 2023 Eisner and Harvey Awards) and Alice on the Run: One Child’s Journey Through the Rwandan Civil War (2023 GLLI YA Translated Book Prize Honor Book, 2023 Mosaic Prize winner, 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalist and 2023 Harvey Award nominee). Accolades have also gone to her translations of Up in the Blue Sky: Journey from the Earth’s Surface to Outer Space (2025 Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection), Ellie in First Position (2024 ALA Top Ten Graphic Novels for Children), Magical History Tour: Vikings and Magical History Tour: Gandhi (both 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalists), Luisa: Now and Then (2019 Stonewall Honor Book; 2020 GLLI YA Translated Honor Book; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2019) and California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before the Mamas & the Papas (2018 Harvey Award; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2018).