ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 3, 1997 TAG: 9701030007
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-6 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
If you ask the real experts - the kids - what they like about Lou Kassem's novel, "A Haunting in Williamsburg," be prepared for a whirlwind.
Kassem recently received the Virginia State Reading Association Young Readers Award for 1996 for the elementary level, and she likes the award most because it's given by her readers.
Children tell her she connects with them in her writing. Four fifth-graders from Kipps Elementary School in Blacksburg agreed. Katie Spillane, 11, Isha Mehmood, 10, Sunita Perumpral, 10, and Konstantin "Kostja" Brazhnik, 9, read the novel in class last year.
"It's mysterious and you never know what to expect, what will happen next," said Kostja.
Isha was frustrated because the teacher "wouldn't let us read ahead ..." It seems that Kassem has a way of ending her chapters so her readers want to read more and more.
When the four start talking about the book, it's hard to stop them as their words spill over each other's, talking about "ghosts" and being inside the heroine's mind.
Katie: "You couldn't stop reading it. It was in Williamsburg and about her family's ancestors, but spooky."
Kostja: "It's like the book reaches out and grabs your mind and starts pulling you closer and closer." Then, what a bummer, you have to stop reading "because your mom says you gotta go do your homework."
Katie: "It's very detailed. She paints a picture for you."
Isha: "It wasn't like 'Spot got the ball ... '"
Kostja: "It really gives a picture in your mind, and you can create your own movie in your mind."
Isha: "She tells you what it looks like ... ."
Sunita: "And they wore ruffled bonnets and aprons ... ."
The four really cared what happened to the characters of the complicated novel: Jane, a present-day girl living in Williamsburg, reads journals about her ancestors during the Revolutionary War and hears the ghost of Sally Custis crying over her broken love affair with Colin, whose family sent him back to England.
The children laugh about one character's stubbornness. They talk about other characters as if they really had been there.
Kassem, herself, is excited that her books are helping to hook children on reading. Her thank you from her young readers was the award from the Virginia State Reading Association - the vote by 100,000 of Virginia's pupils that confirmed that this quiet Blacksburg woman has become an established figure in children's literature.
LENGTH: Medium: 53 linesby CNB