The roses were planted 100 years ago, Zoe's mother says, by a mother whose daughter Zoe died on her eleventh birthday and now lies buried in the cemetery. Conrad's Eden of backyard and playhouse becomes sinister when Zoe's mother appears and takes Zoe into the woods, where a bank of roses marks the border of an earlier garden. Stonewords shares many devices with Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden (Lippincott, 1984) comparison of the two books could stimulate a fascinating literary discussion.
Zoe Louise becomes Zoe's beloved playmate, invisible to grownups. She immediately discovers that their 19th-century house is haunted by Zoe Louise, a beautiful child dressed in old-fashioned clothes, eagerly anticipating her eleventh birthday party. Zoe tells her story, beginning when she is five and comes to live with her devoted, nurturing grandparents.
This scene sets the mood for an eerie and gripping time fantasy by a talented writer. Grade 5-9- In a cemetery on an island off the northern coast of America, Zoe's unstable mother weeps for the dead, while Zoe stares at a gravestone with a single legible inscription: her own name.
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