For one night every year, the fairy tale kingdom of Piosanto is terrorized by mischievous ghosts. Mischief Night attacks mostly destroy property and annoy everyone, but people can get seriously injured, too. When teen orphan Zora tries to fight back, her first counterattack on a ghost winds up hurting a younger orphan. Next year, Zora declares war on the ghost kingdom. Far from trying to dissuade her, the queen of Piosanto tells her about the magical weapon that will destroy the ghost kingdom if some heroic Piosantan can lay hands on it. Zora volunteers.

Some say the best way to destroy enemies is to make them friends. When Zora is caught spying, the ghost king is strangely lenient with her. While his attendants propose death and other penalties, he sentences her to complete six tasks, all of which amount to getting acquainted with ghosts and their side of the story. No points for guessing that, by the time she finds the weapon, Zora will not let it be used to harm the ghosts.

We learn that King Enochtis became a ghost because his queen was apparently a horrible person. When he spoke to her unexpectedly from behind, she always got startled—even annoyed. For reasons that will be explored in the book, the queen rejected Zora when she was born and turned the king and his friends into ghosts. However, it doesn’t appear as though the king ever thought of learning to respect Queen Catherine’s boundaries. Without giving anything away, he and other extroverts in their society ultimately deserve very little sympathy for how they treated the queen—and the book’s inability to understand her original point of view is a major flaw in the story.

In some ways, R. Van Brabant’s THE MEANING OF MISCHIEF NIGHT seems intended to break up stereotypes. Zora is an inventor; for a fantasy world, characters’ names seem strangely like the names of a multiethnic group in our world (Junpei, Vincenzo, Kline, Tusita, Sadayako, etc.); there is a sympathetic male couple, a grumpy soldier who is protective of his horse, and even an orphanage manager who loves and is loved by the orphans. So why one really bad character should be described specifically as an introvert is hard to explain; because of this, the book comes across as particularly unenlightened about this major personality type.

However, the more empowering way to confront harmful stereotypes in fiction is to recognize them as flaws and enjoy the story in spite of them. This novel offers much: it’s richly visual (with illustrations by Olive Reekie), deliciously weird, witty, kinetic, and warmhearted. THE MEANING OF MISCHIEF NIGHT will appeal to teenagers, ambitious middle-grade readers, all who love Halloween, and pacifists of any age.

R. Van Brabant’s THE MEANING OF MISCHIEF NIGHT is a fun read—lively, colorful, witty, and packed with mostly nonviolent action.

~Priscilla King for IndieReader