The Ghost in Apartment 2R

by Denis Markell

Overview

What if there was a ghost in your brother's room? This kid-friendly mystery about three friends who try to help a restless spirit find peace is perfect for fans of Under the Egg and The Book Scavenger.

It stinks. Danny's older brother has moved out and gone to college—and Danny doesn't even get his nice big room. But you know what's worse? It seems that he's left behind an angry ghost!

With the help of his friends Nat and Gus, Danny interviews everyone his Brooklyn neighborhood to find out about spirits. Is it an Arabian ghoul? A Korean gwishin? A Polish haunting? Maybe the answer lies with Danny's own bubbe and her tales of a dybbuk, a Jewish spirit. In the end, one thing is certain: a good night's rest is hard to get when a ghost is around.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525645740
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	09/15/2020
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 7.69(h) x 0.78(d)
Lexile:	680L (what's this?)
Age Range:	10 - 13 Years

About the Author

Denis Markell has written two other novels for kids—the puzzle-packed mystery Click Here to Start and the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired adventure The Game Masters of Garden Place. He lives in a small, definitely not haunted apartment in Brooklyn with his wife, illustrator Melissa Iwai; his son; and their possibly demonically possessed Shiba Inu, Nikki.

Read an Excerpt

The Great Injustice That Is Happening to Me

 

 

Okay, in the Grand Scheme of Things, as my favorite history teacher, Mr. Nordstrom, likes to say, maybe it’s not a great injustice.

 

Or as my dad likes to remind me, “Do you know how many kids would kill to be in your situation?”

 

Because this is really just about a closet.

 

Which wouldn’t be such a big deal, except it’s where I sleep.

 

So, yes, there are kids much worse off than I am, and I totally get that. But for a normal thirteen-year-old kid living in Brooklyn, what happened to me is, I think anyone would agree, a pretty big miscarriage of justice. Not like being enslaved, or made to feel like a second-class citizen or anything . . . Well, that’s not true. I do feel like a second-class citizen. At least in my family nest.

 

We live in what is referred to as a two-bedroom apartment, since there are two bedrooms.

 

Which seems like a stupid detail but is actually a major part of this story.

 

Because I have an older brother and a set of parents (one of each sex—I only mention this because my friend Kyle has two moms and I want to be fair), that means two bedrooms for four people.

 

Now, in a typical family, I would share the bedroom with Jake (that’s my brother’s name), but since we’re six years apart, it was decided when I was a whining little kid that me being in there would be a distraction from Jake studying.

 

And then he was a teenager, and then it was really important that he have his own room because, well, “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

 

Well, I am older now, and a brand-new teenager myself, and nobody is saying I need to have my own room.

 

Okay, I do have a room.

 

Kind of.

 

Once I was too old to stay in my parents’ room, they took the closet near the front door and turned it into a room.

 

I mean, it’s a nice closet, as closets go, with a sliding door and shelves and room for a small futon. So that’s my room.

 

And please do not make any Harry Potter jokes, because I’ve heard them all. I remember when I was in like first grade and friends would come over and think it was neat, because they would have normal rooms and mine was so different. Or they had normal families and shared a room with a sibling. “You’re so lucky!” they would say.

 

Yeah, lucky me. Sleeping in a closet.

 

You might think that this is the injustice I’m talking about, but honestly, I didn’t mind it, because of a promise my father and mother made to me when I got big enough to start complaining about the situation.

 

The promise was that I would get Jake’s room right after he went to college. Which seemed totally fair. And Jake was cool with it, too. It’s our parents who made the decision that totally ruined my life and changed everything.

 

Because in my moral universe a promise is a promise. Not something you can take back because it’s not convenient. My dad says that there’s a difference between “never” and “not right now,” but I think that’s garbage.

 

Basically, what happened was that Jake got into Cornell University. Which is an amazing thing, and was his first-choice school, and he totally deserves to go. But Cornell, I found out, is unbelievably expensive. And we just don’t have that kind of money. Jake got a scholarship (I guess all that studying paid off), so I thought everything was fine, until the day after we dropped him off at school. It was late August, and I still couldn’t believe I was finally going to have a real room to myself. I was thinking about how weird it would be to not have Jake around, when my parents knocked on my closet door.

 

I hear my dad clearing his throat. Then: “We need to talk to you.”

Editorial Reviews

"[An] affectionate tribute to a richly diverse, close-knit Brooklyn neighborhood and its multigenerational residents.” —Publishers Weekly

“ A layered chiller that is also a valentine to the story’s setting." —Booklist

"A diverse, interesting cast . . . hair-raising ghost stories . . . to appeal to fans of comic spookiness." —The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

PRAISE FOR CLICK HERE TO START

A School Library Guild selection 
An Amazon Best Books of the Month Selection

"In this clever debut, Markell takes readers on a clue-filled adventure...[and] maintains an energetic, entertaining balance of character-driven narrative and tricky challenges." —Publishers Weekly

"Highly entertaining...a well-paced read with fully realized and likable characters...[and] should have strong appeal to gamers, fans of video game-based stories, and reluctant readers." —SLJ

"This book will appeal to a wide audience. Readers who enjoyed Schreiber's Game Over, Pete Watson will enjoy the video game component; fans of Fitzgerald's Under the Egg will enjoy reading more about the Monuments Men; detective story aficionados will revel in the inclusion of The Maltese Falcon story. This is a great book to hand to just about any middle grade reader." —YA Books Central 

PRAISE FOR THE GAME MASTERS OF GARDEN PLACE

"So inventive, and so much fun!" —Wendy Mass, NYT bestselling author of the Candymakers series

"A love letter to a legendary game." —Michael Northrop, NYT bestselling author of TombQuest

"An epic adventure...for young fans of Stranger Things." —SLJ

"An exciting new adventure exploring friendship...[with] often humorous commentary on social issues. —Booklist

"Both funny and heartfelt...[it's] a story that has as much to offer diehard fans as it does newcomers to fantasy role-playing." —The Bulletin

From the Publisher

2019-07-24
Everything changes for 13-year-old Danny when older brother Jake leaves for college.

Danny sleeps in a converted closet in a two-bedroom apartment in an old brownstone in Brooklyn. He has long been promised Jake's room, but the promise is broken when his parents decide to host tourists to supplement their limited income. There are computer problems and disappearing digital photos, easily accepted as odd glitches by his parents. Danny experiences cold drafts, strange voices, faces at the window, mirror writing, humming, and glowing lights. Visitors appear to be possessed by a grieving young woman who demands to know the whereabouts of her little boy. His parents don't believe him, assuming he's dreaming. When Danny tells his best friends, Gus and Nat, they treat it all lightly at first. But his bubbe Ruth and his friends' grandfathers are more willing to listen, telling him of dybbuks, ghouls, local ghosts, and more. The friends get to work researching ghosts and the history of Danny's building, finally finding some answers. Danny speaks directly to readers, always with a light touch, making his fearsome experiences even eerier. He intersperses the narration with admiring, insightful descriptions of his robustly diverse Brooklyn community, amusing translations of his Bubbe's Yiddish expressions, and hilarious chapter headings. Danny and his family are Jewish, Nat is Arab Christian, and Gus is white.

The tale is gently scary with plenty of fun and a sweet conclusion, and its protagonist is absolutely delightful. (Fiction. 9-13)

Kirkus Reviews