Ghost Collector, The

Fifth-grader Shelly lives with her mother and grandmother and often accompanies her grandmother, who is a Cree ghost catcher, on her search for ghosts. When Shelly’s mother dies, Shelly collects ghosts, hoping her mother’s spirit will come to her, and her ghostly friends provide Shelly with friendship and perspective and help her accept her new reality. This engaging Canadian novel for grades 4-7 introduces difficult concepts of death, loss, and grief from a child’s perspective, and deals with fear, longing, family relationships, acceptance, poverty, cultural values, and Indigenous worldviews. Suitable for read-aloud, literature circles, or class novel study.