The Bellwoods Game, spooky, age-OK scary for mid-elementary and up

The heel is what drives the narrative. It’s why you watch wrestling and a stronger heel will always make a book worth reading. The heel, or bad guy, can make a decent book highly enjoyable or transform a movie that’s just ok to one that is a waste of your time. The Bellwoods Game lays down the heel in short order and does so in a way that any kid who’s ever grown up in any neighborhood will relate to. It will bring back memories of their childhood in an upper-elementary, mglit package that delivers the chills without skimping on the relationships.

When I was growing up it was a shortcut through the woods that led from my friend’s house to the elementary school. There was a small pond that would freeze over just enough to where you could take three steps out on it before the surface started to crack and one of your feet would go into the cold water. The skinny bike trail ran parallel to the pond before opening up into two trails, one that went to another friend’s subdivision while the other one passed an abandoned shack that would later be burned down by a middle school arsonist.

But in these woods, there was a ghost. This ghost didn’t have a name that I can recall, but it would wander the woods around sunset. The spirit would leave kids alone who brought tomato juice and those chocolate marshmallow-covered cookies with them, if they dared enter the area close to the end of the day. Never mind that my friend happened to love those cookies, as well as, that drink, the rumors of this ghost, who didn’t have a name or even a pattern of their haunts, and certainly had never left physical proof, was real.

Every kid has grown up with some story like that and The Bellwoods Game takes that urban legend and amps it up in every positive attribute for ages eight and up. The book also manages to achieve the delicate task of entertaining those middle-elementary ages, without making it boring and predictable for middle school readers. There are moments where readers will have genuine tension and squirm with disgust or mystery as to what the characters in The Bellwoods Game are going through.

The preface starts out in the past, as Abigail Snook is about to enter the woods. Some school jerks make fun of her that have said she’d get sucked into the woods, never to be seen again. However, Abigail knew that she’d make it to the bell that was located in the open field, after the thick trees, that would ensure her safety. She even brought a trinket as an offering to the spirit, just in case it caught up with her and demanded something for her safe passage.

It doesn’t work out and a generation later, the ghost is Abigail Snook, the girl who was never seen again. She haunts the local woods and, as a team, this generation of kids dare each other to enter the woods and ring the bell. After Snook disappeared, the town went through years of despair, unemployment and a general downturn in the economy. The local kids blamed Snook and are intent on someone in the group ringing the bell, if nothing else to take a walk in the woods with their crush or to prove to others how brave they are by ringing the bell.

The story in The Bellwoods Game happens in one night. While there are flashbacks, they’re very brief and help add to the character development of the group of kids playing the game. It’s a pack of five kids, all of whom are experiencing something that a fifth or seventh-grade student is going through. One of the kids thinks that the others are ostracizing them. There’s a fun sequence where the group is able to make very fast progress through the woods, but they have to cut through a dark cave in order to accomplish that.

This is a fun book to read. It’s also helped that The Bellwoods Game has many illustrations to break up the text. In some cases it’s a simple leaf at the bottom, other times it’s a half-page illustration of some spiders who are chasing the kids or the background of the page might be black, with the text written in white. This illusion is especially effective when they’re running in the woods and require a flashlight.

The Bellwoods Game moves at a very brisk pace. Those elementary school readers won’t have time to catch their breath, and each chapter is just short enough for them to read in one sitting. Older readers will be reminded of It or Stranger Things, but it’s not as scary or gory as either of those. This is just a well-paced, age-appropriately scary book that kids don’t need to save for Halloween to enjoy.

The Bellwoods Game is by Celia Krampen and is available on Antheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

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