Books for gifted children from Royal Fireworks Press, publishers for the gifted education curriculum.

Ghost from the Schenectady Massacre

Novel

Class sets of 20 or more: $7.00 each. (Order Code: 5477S) Add to Cart

It is the first day of school, and fifth grader Marsh Mayo has secretly taken his pet white mouse to school. It has escaped through a hole in his pocket. Fortunately, there is an early dismissal, and March is able to walk the short distance from his home back to school and with the permission of the janitor get into his classroom to look for “something he left behind.” While March is in the process of catching his mouse, a sudden chill and a smoky odor fill the room—a ghost is present! March is thrilled that the rumor of Stockade Elementary School being haunted is true. He has always been interested in ghosts, and it doesn’t take him long to figure out “who,” “what,” “when,” and “why” of this one.

Unceremoniously he touches a part of the ghost’s aura, and is transported by the ghost, inadvertently, into its time and dimension. The ghost is the minister of Schenectady, Dominie Perrtus Tesschenmaeker, who cannot rest until he finds his Liturgy and conducts the Service for the Dead, his massacred congregation. The dominie’s body is also Mayo’s portal back to the present. Coincidentally, Mayo’s class is studying The Schenectady Massacre.

Very quickly, Mayo is able to involve two classmates, Albert, the brain, and John, the bully, in the quest for the Liturgy, and author Jack Reber is into a double story-line that entertains and teaches an action-packed history lesson. While the class studies the textbook version, Mayo, Albert, John, Casper the mouse and the reader are interactive witnesses to the activities on both sides and the realities of February 8, 1690, the day when the French and their Native American allies attack the Dutch settlement. Through the typically modern boys, the reader is involved in the historical moment, sharing in the lifestyle of the period and the horror of the massacre. The boys do find the Liturgy, now displayed as an artifact in their church. The indentifier tag says that it is opened to the Service for the Dead. A copy machine is used to duplicate the pages, and the boys get them to the ghost.

Jack Reber is the authour of The Eerie Canal, an historical time travel novel. Jack Reber is a resident of New York.

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