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Author: Laura Ruby
Her book, Lily’s Ghosts, was nominated for an Edgar
• Writes books for adults, teens, and children
She lives in Chicago with her two step-children and
husband
She has a degree in English Literature from Rutgers
University
Setting: Time
• The time of the story is around the 2000s. I
think this because the dialogue is more like
our present slang than the past’s. Also, the
characters use very few electronics. If the
story was taken more in the future, the
characters and the environment would have
many more electronic devices. Based on the
cover of the book, the clothing looks like what
people currently wear as well.
Setting: Place
• This story takes place in Cape May, New Jersey
(around fall and winter). The characters are
mostly found in the protagonist’s (Lily’s)
haunted house and the cold beach.
Sometimes, the story takes place in the library
and the protagonist’s mom’s jewelry shop. The
most important events in the story are in the
house and the beach.
Setting: Mood
• The mood of this story is a mixture of creepy
and funny. It seems creepy because there are
ghosts involved with the story who haunt the
protagonist. The funny parts involve some of
the pranks the ghosts do to the humans.
There are some parts of this book where you
might get the chills, while others will leave you
with a grin on your face. It’s very suspenseful;
it always leaves you wanting more.
Characters: Protagonist
• The protagonist in Lily’s Ghosts is Lily. Lily is a
curious, but normal 13-year-old girl who lives in a
house of ghosts. She’s curious because she wants
to know who died in her house. In most of the
book, she’s trying to figure out the history of her
house; she wants to get an idea of which ghosts
died in her house. Based on her clothing style,
you can make an inference that she’s just a
normal teenager because she wears plain t-shirts
and blue jeans.
Characters: Antagonist
• The antagonist in this story is Uncle Wes. Uncle
Wes starts out in the story as a nice old uncle. He
was kind and polite to Lily and her mom until
something happened in the end that had him
reveal his real personality - abusive and scary. He
was scary and abusive because he ended up
hitting Lily, knocking her out cold. He’s very shorttempered because if he told Lily to do something
and she refused, he’d get very angry. To keep a
long story short, Uncle Wes is not a very good
person because he injures his family members on
purpose.
Plot: Conflict
• The conflict of this story is that Lily wants to
know which ghosts live in the house that she
just moved into. She believes it’s her Uncle
Max who died in a fire in the attic, but she’s
not completely sure. She spends a lot of time
going to the library to research information
about her family and the house.
Plot: Climax
• The climax of this story is very complicated and bizarre
because it comes out of nowhere. Uncle Wes accuses Lily of
knowing about a treasure. He makes her show him where
it’s hidden, but she really doesn’t know. Somehow, she
finds a map located inside a stuffed bear and Uncle Wes
forces her to go to the beach and dig for the treasure. He
ties her mom up so she doesn’t object to the plan or help
her daughter get out of that mess. When Lily eventually
found the treasure chest in the sand, but refused to take it
out, her uncle hit her and knocked her out cold. When she
was unconscious, she saw her Uncle Max who died in a fire
in her attic. Meeting Max, she figured out that he didn’t
start the fire. It turned out that Uncle Wes started the fire
and blamed Max.
Plot: Resolution
• The resolution of this story is that an invisible
ghost puts a fishing net over top of Uncle Wes
and ties his legs together. This makes it harder
for him to breathe and he falls over. After this,
he doesn’t get back up so everybody else just
goes on with their lives. The same ghost
unties Lily’s mom and she goes out to the
beach to be with her daughter again. Lily and
her mother then have a wonderful life.
Theme
• The theme of this story is to never judge a book by its
cover. In the book, Lily thought that Uncle Wes was a
nice old uncle that you could trust. He came over for
dinner a couple times and he was pretty polite. This
made her get a good impression of him. Towards the
end, though, he was very rude and violent. He was
threatening Lily with a gun because she didn’t do what
he told her to do. This tells you that you shouldn’t
judge a book by its cover because the person on the
inside could have a completely different personality
than the person showing on the outside.
References:
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Biography
• My name is Brynn Jacobs. I enjoyed Lily’s Ghosts
because it was very suspenseful. Every time a
chapter ended, it led you on the edge of your
seat yearning to read more. For example: when
one of the ghosts in Lily’s house put jelly in her
shoes, it didn’t say what Lily did or said until the
next chapter. I also liked this book because I love
to read books that have something to do with
ghosts. Ghosts always fascinate me, and it’s
always interesting to read about them.