Emmaline loses her mother to a sudden illness when she is ten and almost loses her father too. Her father becomes obsessed with creating a ghost machine to bring her mother back. His obsession results in a lack of care for Emmaline. Emmaline comes to resent the machine for the time it takes her father from her but is moving on from her grief while her father is still locked in his.

One night, Emmaline pours some tea that she makes, which is just like the tea her mother used to make for her during thunderstorms, into the machine. The machine has a reaction finally and Emmaline's mother comes back for a brief period of time. But there is a cost, Emmaline can no longer remember the tea or what her mother was like during thunderstorms. She shares what she learns with her two best friends - twins Gully and Oliver - who have different reactions to Emmaline's mother's return.

When Emmaline's father finds out that the machine is working and loses a memory to see his wife again, he begins to lose his obsession and pay more attention to Emmaline though he refuses to unplug the machine. Then tragedy strikes again...

This was an amazing story with wonderful language and lots to think about. What would a person give to bring back someone who has died even if it is only for a little while? Is it worth the cost? The story also has a lot to say about grief and moving on with your life and how people take different amounts of time to begin living their life again.

I recommend this one to thoughtful middle graders.

I didn't like this. The story didn't feel like it would go over well with its intended audience. It was really, really heavy and so incredibly sad. I wouldn't hand this to a kid.

The Girl with the Ghost Machine by Lauren DeStefano is a middle grade novel. When Emmaline Beaumont's father started building the ghost machine, she didn't expect it to bring her mother back from the dead. But by locking himself in the basement to toil away at his hopes, Monsieur Beaumont has become obsessed with the contraption and neglected the living, and Emmaline is tired of feeling forgotten. Nothing good has come from building the ghost machine, and Emmaline decides that the only way to bring her father back will be to make the ghost machine work, or destroy it forever.

The Girl with the Ghost Machine is a heart breaking novel about loss, friendship, family, and grief. Emmaline has learned to survive after the loss of her mother, and her father's obsession with the ghost machine he has built. She is taking care of herself quite well, with the support of her two best friends, at least until in an attempt to destroy the machine she figures out how to make it work. The conflicts and emotions were very poignant, and felt real. The characters were dynamic and had a good mixture of the expected and surprises in their personality and actions. I rode the roller coaster of Emmaline's emotions, and was engaged through the whole read. The book comes mainly from Emmaline's point of view, but we occasionally get the viewpoints of others, which gives readers a better overall picture of the action and state of the entire cast of characters. I will admit that there is a twist, and that I saw it coming. It was like watching a horrible accident unfold in a movie when you know something is coming, and want to shout at the characters, but can do nothing to stop it. The story crushed me many times, in many ways, but it also gave me hope and warmed my heart.

The Girl with the Ghost Machine is an engaging read that torn at my heart, and then put it back together. The characters and their pain was so real that I think the story will touch, and stick with, many readers.

Just not for me. I wanted to like it but I wasn't connecting with the characters and I thought the story was flat.

I continue to be really impressed with Lauren DeStefano’s middle grade offerings, to the degree that I downloaded her forthcoming YA which might be a biiiiig mistake, but I guess we’ll see. The Girl with the Ghost Machine is another solid, cute, dark middle grade novel.

DeStefano’s middle grades consistently deliver. She manages to write really simple, almost fairy tale-esque, stories, which somehow manage to pack a wallop in terms of feelings and intensity. Plot-wise, there’s not a lot that happens in The Girl with the Ghost Machine, and it’s oddly anticlimactic, but it also just works for reasons I can’t totally explain. I still think that DeStefano’s writing style fits very perfectly with these surprisingly dark but sweet little tales.

The Girl with the Ghost Machine is a sort of meditation on loss and what grief can do to a person. Emmaline’s mother dies, and she effectively loses her father too: to his pursuit of creating a ghost machine, which would allow him to get his wife back. Emmaline accidentally figures out how to make the machine work by trying to break it, and she figures out that the visit with the ghost comes at the cost of memories of the person. It’s a classic “be careful what you wish for” sort of book, and young kids should learn a lot without feeling preached to.

That’s another excellent mg from DeStefano. She’s three for three on these, and I recommend them to mg fans highly.

I admittedly do not read a lot of middle grade fiction, but I love Lauren DeStefano and I really enjoyed A Curious Tale of the In-Between enough to pick up her newest middle-grade work The Girl With the Ghost Machine. DeStefano seems to be finding her stride with writing grief stricken stories from a child’s point of view. 

Like A Curious Tale, this spends a lot of time dealing with the feelings of loss and loneliness that surround death. However, I found The Girl With the Ghost Machine to be a lot darker and surrounded with a lot more death. Though I didn’t necessarily have the same longing feeling as I did during A Curious Tale and actually felt this was a bit underwhelming. 

There were some really great things here though; I loved the dynamic that twins Gully and Oliver gave the book. They were kind of like the devil and the angel on Emmaline’s shoulder, though much less sinister. They were twins, but quite opposite, and provided the two sided debate that exists around the subject of the afterlife. It was really interesting to use these two innocent characters with big, genuine hearts, to provide the two side of the reality of the ghost machine.

This also brought up a lot to think about, specifically what you were willing to give up to see a loved one one more time. I liked the importance it gave memories over fleeting relived moments. It was a really sweet sentiment that I think a lot of people might need in a time of grieving. 

I think this would be a great book for anyone, but specifically for youth trying to deal with the complications of grief and loss. It doesn’t give any answers, but there’s something comforting about the essence of memories living within you forever.

Ever since the death of her mother nothing has been the same. Her father can't seem to get over it and spends all his time tinkering with his "ghost machine" in an attempt to bring his wife back. In frustration, Emmaline tries to destroy the machine only to discover that it actually works. By feeding it something that holds a memory of the person (or animal) that has died that ghost will return for a short while but then that memory is gone forever. But is it right to lose a memory for a short visit with a ghost? Shouldn't the dead be allowed to be dead and the living move on? These are the struggles Emmaline and her best friends Gully and Oliver face. But then a tragedy makes them question their decisions even more.

More meat than I thought with this one - quite good and a relatively quick read.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1989095589?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

I received this book in exchange for an honest review, this has not altered my opinion.

It has been a while since a book made me cry, or nearly cry. I don’t cry for very many books, I think the last one was A List of Cages, which should also be read. But this book brought out some very strong feelings and all of the characters felt so very real. I don’t read a lot of children’s books either so I wasn’t expecting this sort of depth of feelings, although looking at the subject matter it’s hard to not assume that.

Emmaline’s mother has died and her father is unable to get himself through it and ends up leaving Emmaline to take care of herself for about two years. The majority of this story takes place two years after her mother’s death and it was actually quite difficult to read at points. Not for any bad reasons, but because all Emmaline really wants is to have her father back. Grief affects people in many different ways and this book shows, better than any other I’ve read, how it can affect a child as well as a spouse or parent. The message from her best friend, Gully, that a person lives on in the stories and memories you have of them is especially touching.

This story is raw and touching and a pretty quick read. I would highly recommend it and I think it is something that people need to talk about. 5 out of 5 from me!

This is one of those middle grade books that I couldn't stop reading. I don't always get through those reads quickly and I'm not always sure what to expect when I start one, but I instantly found that I moved along this novel at a rapid pace and it wasn't because it was a short read but because the story really caught my attention.

It's a novel about losing a loved one and what it means for them to be gone, how life moves on, and how to keep going forward even when faced with the ability to see them for moments at a time. The idea that a memory is lost for every moment you get to spend with the deceased, is a bit daunting and painful. Faced with that chance, how far would we go to keep seeing their faces, to hold them, to love them just a little longer?

I felt I could connect in some parts with Emmaline, but not always with the same mentality. She was stronger than most of us would be in that situation, having to choose at her young teenage existence to never see her mother again in this world. I understood her concerns and the heartache she felt from having a father that was gone to everyone around him while he worked on the ghost machine for all those years, but I don't know if I would be able to walk away from something that life changing.

While I contemplated such a decision, the characters gave their many reasons as to why it would be best to make that tough choice and walk away from something so promising. It's a read that makes you wonder about possibilities and how strong we all really are. Some parts of this novel were harder to read through as there is more than one lost loved one, making them question everything they have already decided on. 

I could see how people might want to walk away from such a machine that could perhaps be the most ground breaking thing to happen to the world, but I was not completely convinced with Emmaline's father and his choices, after so many years it just didn't feel plausible, but I do understand that this is a middle grade novel and the latter would have made for a much more heartbreaking read. But, that aside I did get taken in by its content and how it made us question what we would do in that situation. It's not something my boys might read anytime soon, but it's one I will probably get for them as they get older. 

***I received this copy from Bloomsbury USA Childrens via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.***

I’m going to come right out and say that I found this book underwhelming and forgettable. I love the concept and how thought-provoking it was, but the characters were weak and I couldn’t connect to the story because of that.

Nothing about Emmaline’s personality stood out to me. Her situation was sad and I enjoyed the way she approached the idea of the ghost machine and how she struggled with her feelings upon discovering it works. For each visit with a ghost, the person using the machine would have to give up a memory attached to the person they’re bringing back. Emmaline was wary of the cost immediately and she posed very thoughtful arguments to her father as to why this machine shouldn’t be used. But her personality didn’t come through so I didn’t really feel for her, more for the situation itself.

The rest of the characters made even less of an impression on me and it caused what I believe should have been an emotional and pivotal part of the book to fall so flat that I found myself wishing I could force myself to react appropriately. I wanted this scene to evoke some emotion in me other than “huh,” but I just couldn’t muster up more than that. I know page counts in middle grade are often on the short end and I think this stopped the characters from feeling developed.

This is still a good book to broach the subject of the loss of loved ones and what we would sacrifice to see them again – and if we should even be allowed to make that choice. Younger readers might find this book more moving and I would still recommend it even though I didn’t get the feels I was looking for.

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

This is the saddest book I've read in a long, long time there's been many times that I haven't cried while reading tearjerkers but this time I sobbed and I don't see how anyone could not cry while reading this. It's a rare and beautiful thing when a book hits me as hard emotionally as this one did. I'm in awe of the skillful writing it's utterly captivating and thoughtful there was passages about taking care of yourself and finding reasons to smile. The whole book is just so well executed it's a book that's impossible to forget I'll be thinking about it for a long time.

Many people might not want to give something so sad to young readers however even though it is very sad it handles the tough subject of loss wonderfully and it was hopeful, I often found it to be bittersweet. Books are a great way to escape but also a great way to understand something better and to find characters who are going through the same thing as you. Emmaline is such a strong character that I think many will find inspiring or even comforting. For those reasons no one should hesitate to recommend this to middle grade aged children and to everyone, this book is timeless and can be and should be enjoyed by readers of all ages.

After Emmaline's mother dies, her father locks himself away in the basement, trying to create a machine that will draw her spirit back to the house so that they can visit. He doesn't work, he doesn't take care of Emmaline, and it's as if she has lost her father as well. In anger, she throws a cup of tea into the machine hoping to break it, and her mother appears and has a cup of tea with her. Talking about this later with her friends, next door neighbors and twins Gully and Oliver, the three decide that in order for the machine to work, an object related to a memory has to be thrown in, the ghost appears, but then goes away and the memory is lost. The twins ask to see their dog Tidbit, and three neighbor ladies ask to see their long gone brother, but the only one who uses the machine a lot is Emmaline's father. He seems a little happier, and goes back to work, but Emmaline still doesn't feel that he has returned to her. After a tragedy, her father sees the error of his ways. Emmaline grows old with the machine in the basement, but manages not to use it, with one notable exception.
Strengths: I like the name Emmaline, and the blue and brown on the cover are attractive.
Weaknesses: The entire book is about sadness and loss in a very sad, soggy way. While Emmaline is to be applauded for not wanting to use the machine, I can't think of any of my students who ask for "poignant" books that are this slow and sad.
What I really think: If a ghost machine really existed, I would throw in every memory I had of people who were gone. Then I wouldn't remember them at all, and I wouldn't be sad about them anymore. Is this the lesson the book wants to teach us? Because that's what I got out of it.

This is a great book for middle school age kids as it handled a difficult topic with a loving grace. There was something heartfelt, beautiful and visceral in the way Lauren DeStefano created characters the reader could develop an emotional attachment to along with showing the poignant turmoil that accompanies great loss in a person’s life. Beyond the obvious storyline I also thought it was sweet the way she wove practical and helpful advice on the mourning process that can be applied beyond the literary pages.

It provided an interesting commentary on the different ways parents versus kids handle grief and the responsibility we as parents have to not forget the living while mourning the dead.

This tearjerker may make your kid, as it did me, become an emotional mess but I think it’s an important topic and one that can open great dialogue between you and your kid. If you know someone who is dealing with grief it might be a good idea to give this to them so they have a different world to lose themselves in that will allow them to explore what they’re feeling in a safe environment.

It’s one of those stories that stays with you.