The Doll in the Garden: A Ghost Story is a children's novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Mary Downing Hahn

Mary Downing Hahn

Mary Downing Hahn is an award-winning American author of young adult novels. Her first published book, The Sara Summer, was released in 1979, when she was forty-one years old. Since then she has written over twenty novels...

. It was first published in 1989.

Plot summary

In The Doll in the Garden, Ashley and her widowed mother rent a house once owned by mean Ms. Cooper. While looking in Ms. Cooper's dead rose garden with her neighbor, Kristi, they find a buried doll with an apology note. They later notice a white cat that casts no shadow. Ashley once follows the cat without Kristi and travels back in time and finds a young girl, Louisa, dying from a sickness. Louisa wants the doll Ashley has found and Ashley soon comes back with Kristi and introduces her to the girl. Ashley then realizes Ms. Cooper is the girl that stole and buried the doll years ago. Kristi and Ashley convince Ms. Cooper to come with them and give the doll back. They find a sick Louisa in bed and then leave after giving the doll back. After returning to the present, they go to the cemetery hoping they made Louisa so happy she didn't die. They find the girl's grave where Ashley cries herself to sleep. Ms. Cooper comes and lays roses on her grave and they leave. Together they left and thought of what could have happened.

Film adaption

Cricket Kovatch has written the storybook for the film adaption. The film is in production and due for release in 2011.

Reception

• It has won a Children's Sequoyah Award.
• It won a Mark Twain Award.
• It won a William Allen White Children's Book Award
  William Allen White Children's Book Award
  The William Allen White Children's Book Award is an annual book award chosen by Kansas students. It was established by Ruth Garver Gagliardo in 1952, in memory of William Allen White and is administered by Emporia State University. It was the first statewide readers' choice book award in the United...
  
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